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THE TORRA CONSERVANCY – TRAVESTY, TOIL & TRIUMPH

Chris Roche & Ilana Stein Photographs by Mike Myers

In 1974, in a ‘proud’ moment for the old South Africa, 800 people and their belongings were parcelled up and relocated over 1000 kilometres from their home north of the Augrabies Falls National Park to southern Damaraland in what was then South West Africa. These families were, and indeed are, the Riemvasmaakers and, in a curiously

just way, for some their tale has a happy and encouraging ending for both the community and the wildlife of their area. We visited the area and saw why current developments are just so significant for Namibian wildlife populations and why this story could serve as a model for southern African conservation in general.

Today the majority of Riemvasmaakers still in Namibia, together with the neighbouring Damara people, are masters of their own destiny.

The land on which they were resettled in Namibia is a productive earner of income; they have received some measure of national and international prestige; people and wildlife peacefully coexist, and the outlook for young people growing up in this community is a vastly different one from that of 30 years ago. It was not always the case...

A little historyDuring the German-Hottentot War of 1904-1907, refugees of Nama, Damara and Herero descent fled German South West Africa and settled in South Africa, in a ‘Rural Coloured Reserve’ north of Augrabies known as ‘Riemvasmaak’ after the local missionary settlement of the same name. A small community of Xhosa people had also settled in the area and Afrikaans became the lingua franca as the various ethnic groups intermarried and continued their traditional lifestyle, farming goats, sheep and cattle. In 1974, however, the area was declared a military training zone (approximately 4 000ha was added to the Augrabies Falls National Park, while 70 000ha was devoted to the military) and as a consequence the Riemvasmaakers were moved: those of Xhosa origin to the Transkei, the so-called ‘Coloureds’ to adjacent areas, and those with South West African heritage to southern Damaraland.

The relocation (to use a surreally innocuous term) was set against the backdrop of the 1962 Odendaal Commission, as a result of which in the 1970s, South West Africa - then ruled as a de facto province by the segregationist South African government under a post-World War II mandate – was divided into a ‘homeland’ system, the country carved up into parcels of land reserved for the use of specific ethnic groups. In the north-west, white farmers were bought off their farms and Damara people settled in what became known as Damaraland. It was into the southern part of Damaraland that the Riemvasmaakers and their meagre possessions were unceremoniously offloaded in 1974.

One of the sites that became home to this community was an old farm near the confluence of the dry Huab and Aba-Huab Rivers called De Riet. Under the leadership of Jakob Basson, the community established De Riet Village as their new community headquarters – a small settlement in a harsh environment of rugged mountains, sand, gravel plains, dry riverbeds and an annual rainfall of only 50-100mm. Gradually, families spread out to other permanent springs in the area and renewed their mainly pastoralist subsistence lifestyle, running goats, sheep and cattle in an arid landscape not entirely dissimilar to their erstwhile home north of the Orange River. The original Riemvasmaak, meanwhile, was used as a weapons testing site.

Life was certainly not easy for this resettled community, a fact attested to by various inscriptions on the headstones in the De Riet cemetery, and between 1974 and Namibia’s independence in 1989, the community remained under the thumb of a colonial-style government. Matters were made even worse by a severe drought in the 1980s which further reduced a wild game population already ravaged by poaching, and made stock farming even more marginal than before. Ironically, it was during this period that things began to change for the Riemvasmaaker community and the neighbouring Damara and Nama people.

rebirth of the red rocksBy the beginning of the 1980s, wildlife numbers for the entire Damaraland and Kaokoland region were estimated at a paltry 650 Springbok, 400 Gemsbok, 450 Hartmann’s Mountain Zebra and 250 elephant. In response, a pioneering community-based conservation project – the community game guard network – was started by a small group of

concerned Namibians, with Garth Owen-Smith as the field leader. The Endangered Wildlife Trust supported the project for many years.

This well-known and much lauded poacher-turned-gamekeeper programme evolved into the non-governmental organization and trust, called Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC), run by Garth Owen-Smith and Dr Margie Jacobsohn. What was then a new and community-empowering approach to conservation brought about a change in both game numbers and the prevailing attitudes toward the wildlife in the area. Slowly, the realisation dawned in the community that wildlife could be a useful and financially beneficial commodity, and game numbers began to increase, including those of the species that began it all – the desert-adapted Black Rhino and elephant.

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The success and novelty of the programme brought a new kind of eco-tourist to the area, those who sought the thrill of rhino and elephant encounters, wild, wide-open spaces and the opportunity to support a community-based conservation and tourism project. It was then that the foundations of Namibia’s ground-breaking conservancy system were formed.

Of course, conservancies are not a new idea, but this Namibian variation, supported by enabling legislation in 1996, certainly broke some new ground. Instead of several private land owners adopting the same set of land management principles and removing internal fences for the good of wildlife, in Namibia tens of villages combined their communal land (already without fences) and agreed on a management plan that best suited the needs of the community: a plan that allowed the continuation of subsistence farming while also permitting the utilisation of the rebounding wildlife populations. Hence, the IRDNC definition of a conservancy as ‘a self-defined common property management and social unit of unfenced multiple use areas zoned by members for their livelihood needs, including crop and livestock farming, mixed wild and domestic animal grazing and exclusive wildlife and tourism.’

The pioneering role of the IRDNC and the Legal Assistance Centre in the Riemvasmaaker and neighbouring Damara communities continued into the 1990s when, in June 1998, a 352 200-hectare conservancy was officially registered by the Namibian Government. Called the Torra Conservancy (the name Torra describing the local ‘red rocks’ in the Damara language), the conservancy - one of the first four to be gazetted in the country’s communal areas - has since gone from strength to strength and continues to be recognised as a pioneer at the forefront of community conservation in Namibia and, indeed, southern Africa. The success of this and more than 25 other such registered and emerging conservancies has meant that the numbers of key wildlife populations in the Kunene region have grown substantially, and in 2000 were estimated at 74 500 Springbok, 15 000 Gemsbok, 12 500 Hartmann’s Mountain Zebra and 700 elephant - a significant increase on the low numbers of the

early 1980s. The Black Rhino population has grown at similar levels and is currently being used as a source population for relocations to nearby conservancies without members of this species.

dAmArAlAnd democrAcyOne sunny Saturday in May, truckloads of people arrive from the surrounding villages at the school hall in Bergsig, all smartly dressed and ready to voice their opinions at a public meeting of the Torra Conservancy. There are 450 registered members, who democratically elect a committee from amongst their number - close to 200 arrive at this meeting on foot and in an assortment of vehicles ranging from trucks and double cabs, to older bakkies and dilapidated sedans and even donkey carts. The committee - currently comprising five men and a single woman - is the representative body of the Conservancy, charged with

Namibia conservancy map

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advancing the interests of the approximately 1200 people living in the area and publicly answerable to them in the quarterly public meetings. Besides the committee, a total staff of eight (five game guards, a field officer, a community activator and a receptionist) is employed by the conservancy.

The purpose of the meeting is to give feedback to the community and to introduce new plans for the development of the Conservancy. It is loud, vociferous and long, lasting from midday until well into the night - because nothing happens in Torra without some form of consensus, and absolutely anyone - and everyone - is entitled to their say. Subjects range from compensation for elephants eating vegetables, to a planned public campsite, training for community guides, a mooted paprika farming project, and, of course, the finances of the conservancy.

The Torra Conservancy was the first such protected area to become financially self-sufficient, and since 2001 (just over four years after its registration) has met all its own management costs from a variety of income sources. In fact, income to the conservancy has grown from zero in 1997 to a modest number of N$300 000 in 1998, to more than N$1 million in 2003. Aside from support from the Namibia Ministry of Environment and Tourism, the IRDNC, Save the Rhino Trust and

other NGOs, a large part of this success has been due to a pioneering partnership with private enterprise in the form of Wilderness Safaris, which in 1998 opened a luxury tented camp in the conservancy. The lease held by Wilderness Safaris extends for 15 years and, while all finance and thus, risk, is provided by the company, it features a staggered hand-over of the assets to the community culminating in 100% ownership after the completion of the 15 year period.

Today it is already entirely staffed by conservancy members including the inimitable manager Pascolina Florry. The seminal nature of the partnership, and the extent of its contribution to the community in terms of lease fees, employment, outsourcing of services, such as laundry, transfer of skills and the like, has been recognised with several global awards. In only its second year of operation the camp was recognised by the British Guild of Travel Writers as one of the top three eco-

tourism destinations in the world, and in 2004 won the United Nations Environmental Programme’s Equator Initiative for communities that demonstrate successful simultaneous efforts to conserve biodiversity and reduce poverty.

As the founding president of Namibia, the Honourable Sam Nujoma, has been quoted as saying: “Conservancies empower local people to make their own decisions about their own resources, while enabling them to benefit from these resources. Conservancies should be seen as creating the institutional structure in helping to diversify rural economies. Through the conservancy system my government has created the opportunity for natural resource-based industries to develop.” In 2005, Damaraland Camp was recognised as the most environmentally sensitive camp in Namibia, and Torra added another significant string to its bow when previous awards were topped by the World Travel & Tourism Council’s 2005 Tourism for Tomorrow Conservation Award.

Although the bulk of income (around 65%) to the Torra Conservancy in 2003 was achieved from joint venture tourism of the type described above, this is not the only source of revenue. Alternative uses of game populations, in zoned areas of the conservancy, range from trophy hunting (Springbok, Gemsbok, Hartmann’s Mountain Zebra and Greater

Kudu) to live game capture and sales to other conservancies (up to 500 Springbok may be caught each year). Game is also used by members of the conservancy, and meat derived from hunting distributed amongst the villages. Craft sales and the earning of interest are two other revenue earners, as of course is employment of 25 staff in the joint tourism venture with Wilderness Safaris (a further 40 people from the community are employed in Wilderness Safaris camps elsewhere in Namibia).

Small portions of conservancy income have commendably been used for various projects in upgrading the school premises in Bergsig and in funding various community and Independence Day celebrations. A dividend totalling N$200 000 was also paid to all registered conservancy members in 2002 to mark the fifth year of the conservancy’s existence. About a third of Torra’s income is used to manage the conservancy, with the rest invested or spent on implementing new developments.

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the futureThe Riemvasmaak community has not just benefited from the success of its partnership in the Torra Conservancy. With the dawn of the new South Africa, they submitted a land claim for their former home north of Augrabies National Park and won the right to return there in 1995, with some members of the community choosing to do so. A low-density tourism project has also been implemented here, with the provision of rustic self-catering chalets at the hot springs north of the Orange River and the design of various 4x4 and walking trails. It is not yet as successful as Damaraland Camp, but already the Namibian model is being extended to other countries in the subcontinent, and this can only boost community-based tourism and conservation in the region. Early on the final morning of our visit, as the sun peered over the Etendeka Mountains, having seen Cheetah, Spotted Hyaena, Black Rhino, Giraffe and numerous Springbok the previous day, we drove down a wide, sandy road in search of desert-adapted elephant. As if on cue, large round footprints appeared in the fine sand on the road’s surface and then headed across in the direction of a small reservoir a little distance from a little ‘village’ - a modest collection of houses and shacks in a copse of mopane trees. A young man, dressed in pink satin shorts and a torn shirt smiled at us through sleepy eyes when we asked him: “The elephant,” he said in the clicking Damara tongue to our multilingual guide, “drank here early this morning and then moved off in that direction.” We thanked him for

his help and he wished us luck in finding the large, grey pachyderms. One couldn’t but help wonder at how attitudes must have changed in community attitudes, and how perfect all this coexistence seemed: From jealous and aggressive protection of water resources a few years ago, to the peaceful sharing of them today. It’s a relationship that has its rocky moments - as was clear from comments made in the conservancy meeting – but it’s a start. This success of the Torra Conservancy is surely well-deserved and is a model that should be considered everywhere.

Chris Roche, Ilana Stein and Mike Myers are all employees of Wilderness Safaris and between them have a collective 50 years experience in the ecotourism industry in southern Africa. They are passionate about the modern model of ecotourism employed by a number of companies such as Wilderness Safaris, and believe wholeheartedly that conservation can and should be achieved through responsible tourism involving genuine commitment to rural communities, sustainable operating practices and a respect for the sanctity of nature.

For more information on Wilderness Safaris see: www.wilderness-safaris.com. To contact the company: Tel: +2711 807-1800 • Fax: +2711 807-2210 e-mail: enquiry@wilderness.co.za