The conservation of resources which fall under communal tenure has been a major dilemma for the
past 60 years. In South Africa communal lands support more than a quarter of the country’s citizens,
mostly the poorest members of society whose livelihoods rely heavily on natural resources. Wildlife
enterprise is an alternative land use strategy for implementing community based resource
management on communal lands. Additionally, safari hunting has been recognised as an efficient
means of initiating wildlife based land use practises. In the 1980’s a community owned game reserve,
which utilised safari hunting as an income source, was established on one of South Africa’s black
homelands, the Ciskei. Since then, the reserve has been disbanded but little is known about how it
operated, the reason it was formed or why it failed.
The aim of this study was twofold: firstly, to document and understand the happenings of a failed
community owned hunting reserve in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province and secondly, to
determine what level of support there would be amongst the local residents if the reserve was to be reestablished.
Semi structured, qualitative interviews were conducted to gather information about the
reserve from key informants. Structured, randomly selected household surveys were used to gauge
local residents support on the idea of having the reserve re-established. Additionally, in doing so it
was possible to view, though indirectly, the thoughts and attitudes of the residents to the notion of
safari hunting as a land use option.
In review of the reserve history it was found that complexities that make up the social settings of
communal lands in South Africa were ignored and dealt with through the age-old approach of topdown
management regimes. Once the power of the initial authorities was lost the entire project was
doomed to failure as local residents felt no need to keep the project alive. Results showed that 73.7%
of the respondents would support the redevelopment of the Ntabethemba Reserve while 19.5% would
not. The remaining 6.8% could not say whether they would or would not. The majority of the
respondents (73%) believed that the area should be marketed for safari hunters, whilst 13% were
against it, 9% were neutral and 5% were unsure.
The Ntabethemba Reserve can be viewed as a ‘joint-management’ project where management
responsibilities were adopted by a non-community party. If a future project is to be undertaken it
needs to be aware of the complex socio-ecological setting of the area and account for this in ways that
are beyond those advocated in the traditional approach to protected area conservation. The highly
skewed distribution of livestock ownership needs to be taken into consideration in that those few
individuals who own the most livestock would lose the most from any development that reduces
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grazing lands. Both the benefits and the costs need to be distributed in such a way that a situation is
avoided where only a few are benefiting at the expense of others.