Punto de partida: descripción de dos estilos docentes

As I described in the previous chapter the appropriation of the Sabi Valley by white settlers occurred fairly late in history, because of its endemic malaria and tsetse fly. It was indicated that the Sabi Valley was ‘unsuitable for white habitation’. The first white settlers entered the stage only in 1923 when the Bridges family obtained land from the BSAC which would become Devuli Ranch, named after the river which formed its northern boundary and joins the Sabi River.1 In the 1930s, a second tract of land, south of Devuli Ranch became

white land, bought by the General Manager of Devuli, Sommerville, later in conjunction with James Whittall, who had come to Africa drawn by the example and writings of the most famous white hunter in Africa, Frederick Selous. Whittall, like Selous a generation earlier, went to Rugby School in Britain, and was also an avid hunter. Later the Whittalls bought Sommerville

out and became the sole owners of what became Humani Ranch.2 The main

economic activity, right from the start until the end of the 1980s was extensive

1 _{Tschiffely 1953: 190.}

cattle farming. Only in the 1960s did the production of sugar and citrus begin in the Lowveld under a new irrigation programme, running parallel to cattle farming.3 _{It was mainly one of the sons of James Whittall, Roger, who kept up}

the white hunting tradition and who set aside parts of Humani for wildlife utilisation.4 It was only when in the 1980s it finally became clear that cattle

farming was not a viable economic activity in the area (anymore) because of its unreliable rainfall and when the Devuli Ranch was carved up and sold to different and new (white) owners that the idea of starting a joint operation on wildlife utilisation took root and finally led to the formation of the Savé Valley Conservancy (SVC) in 1991.

The official formation of the SVC should not be seen as a point in time, before which there was nothing related to SVC type activities. Nor that at the time of formation there was a fully organisationally developed conservancy structure or wildlife utilisation scheme. In June 1991 a group of landowners signed the constitution of the SVC, but even that constitution was a temporary one which was amended in the time following the signing.5 The establishment

of the SVC is more of a particular moment in an ongoing process, which had already begun years before its official installation, for instance on Humani, and has continued afterwards. It actually went on, especially in efforts to find a way to relate to the neighbouring communities as I shall describe in the next chapter. The year 1991 is a ‘beacon-date’ for the history books only and should not be interpreted as indicating any stage of finality. At best its installation should be seen as a symbolic expression of the consensus amongst the landowners that they should opt for wildlife utilisation as a land-use alternative in this part of the Lowveld. This interpretation also implies that chronology cannot tell the story of the birth of the SVC exactly. Things have happened since the inauguration of the SVC, which can still explain parts of the process leading up to its formation in the first place in earlier years. Things that were anticipated and came true. The drought of 1991-1992, for instance, actually coincided with this period and after the strict formation date of the SVC. Even so, this drought has explanatory value as it strengthened, and in a way confirmed and proved, the earlier consen- sus amongst the landowners to go into wildlife utilisation through a conser- vancy structure. The same holds true for the parts of land sold by Devuli after the inauguration of the SVC in the first half of the 1990s. It followed the trend, set in the southern part of the SVC on Senuko and other properties before 1991,

3 _{Yudelman 1964: 31; pp. 69-70, Haw, R.C. (1966), Rhodesia. The Jewel of Africa,}

Salisbury: Flame Lily Books.

4 _{Interview with landowners Humani, 8 October 1998.}

5 _{The latest updated copy I could get at the Conservancy Office during my year of}

of attracting buyers who were not planning to go into cattle, but to pursue commercial interests through tourism, thereby making the conservancy structure more opportune.

The basic idea of the SVC was to restore the environmentally degraded area after years of cattle farming, restock it with wildlife which had been thoroughly eradicated for the purpose of cattle ranching in the previous period, over and above the black rhino for which they were already providing a safe haven on their properties. They wanted to let conservation pay for itself and make a financial profit through wildlife utilisation, primarily by launching hunting operations, which are referred to as ‘consumptive tourism’.6 The buffalo is the

most sought-after, and therefore the most economically profitable, hunting trophy in Africa. For that reason the SVC wanted to restock the conservancy with buffalo, alongside many other forms of wildlife like giraffe, wildebeest, kudu, sable, waterbuck, zebra and the like. One of the strict requirements imposed by the DNPWLM in Harare was that in order to buy and later on hunt buffalo, the area first had to be fenced off by a double electrified fence, in co- operation with the DVS, with a stretch of seven metres of cleared land in between, to prevent buffalo of contaminating cattle outside the conservancy with the much dreaded FMD.7 _{The erection and maintenance of the fence and}

the pursuit of buffalo to restock the conservancy are the dominating themes of the SVC in the 1990s. The influence of these two issues is not confined to the SVC alone, but has even more serious and severe consequences for the relations between the SVC and the surrounding communities. Firstly the huge fence denies the communities access to the natural resources they were used to exploiting inside the SVC when it were still separate cattle farms, like thatching grass, firewood, building poles and the like. Secondly, they fear the contagion of FMD for their own cattle, as they are the closest neighbours of the SVC. Thirdly, the fence seems to symbolise and to mark the relationship of exclusion between black and white social identities in the Save Valley.

In this chapter I shall describe the conservation record and tradition of wildlife utilisation in the Lowveld of Zimbabwe and its almost inevitable continuity in the formation of the SVC. On the basis of this historical descrip- tion, I shall describe in detail the issues of the fence and the buffalo as they are not only essential to understanding the development of the SVC itself, but seem even more important for its paradoxical consequences on the reciprocal

6 _{Consumptive tourism refers to an activity whereby wildlife is taken and ‘consumed’}

through hunting or culling / harvesting, as opposed to non-consumptive forms of tourism whereby the wildlife is not taken but where people for instance look at and photograph the animals on photographic safaris.

exchange relationship with the neighbouring communities. On the one hand it seems clear that, in order to be able to invest financially in community relations, the SVC needs to earn money, which is done most successfully by offering hunting operations, especially buffalo, to tourists. For that reason it seems only logical and natural that the SVC should erect a fence in order to be formally allowed to pursuit that most favourable economic opportunity.

On the other hand the fence and the buffalo mean that the white landowners of the SVC and the black members of the neighbouring communities are physically separated from each other, making the fence seem to become a fatal symbol of the general history of black and white relations, in the context of land, in Zimbabwe. In a way the fence could be said to block and facilitate the development of a reciprocal relation between the SVC and the surrounding communities simultaneously.