Managing protected areas in post-apartheid South Africa: A framework for integrating conservation with rural development

The South African National Parks (SANParks) initiated this study in order to provide a policy framework for integrating national parks with the development needs of local people living adjacent its national parks. However, based on the selection of case studies and the changing legal framework in the post-apartheid era, the study extended to cover all state protected areas (PAs). Indeed, the transformation of state agencies following the postapartheid election of April 1994, in part, drove the need for this integration. Given the history of land alienation during apartheid rule, the relationship between land tenure rights, various levels of ownership, and PAs formed the central hypothesis of this study. Hence, case studies with tenure arrangements ranging from weak, through intermediate, to strong ownership, were selected to test the attitudes of beneficiaries towards PAs. To set the study in its widest context, obstacles and challenges surrounding biodiversity loss, the key motive behind conservation efforts, were analysed (Chapter 1). The review concluded that governance in conservation and development initiatives (CDIs) could enhance the accountability of key role players involved, i.e., the state, private sector and local people within the context of institutions (Chapter 2). Based on the South African context, case studies were selected (Chapter 3). The results of this study demonstrated that strong ownership out- performed lesser ownership levels on short-term and medium-term benefits arising from PAs (Chapter 4). Thus, lesser ownership cannot secure biodiversity in PAs in times of pressing social needs. The study limitation is that relatively wealthy individuals of strong ownership were compared to relatively poor individuals of lesser ownership. The influence of conservation agencies on the attitudes of local people to PAs under different provincial contexts and philosophical approaches was somehow important only if it could be sustained (Chapter 5). For lesser ownership, combinations of explanatory variables acting together on medium and long-term benefits co-deterrnined the attitudes of respondents to different benefits arising from PAs (Chapter 6). Of these combinations the most important were: the conservation agency in charge, the age and the ownership of respondents for they acted across medium and long term time frames. In the post-apartheid era, the challenges to transform conservation agencies in order to achieve the developmental imperatives under the 1996 Constitution are fraught with difficulties. Using SANParks as a case study (Chapter 7), it became clear that without good leadership with well-articulated desired outcomes, technocrats could scupper transformation efforts. Given all the challenges, the new legal framework for PAs, rural development, and policy guidelines is outlined (Chapter 8), and thereafter recommendations and conclusions of the study are presented (Chapter 9).