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Routinising genocide: the politics and practice of vermin extermination in the Cape Province c.1889–1994
Abstract
Adhikari has recently argued that genocide was a practice particular to colonial frontiers where commercial stock farmers encountered indigenous hunter-gatherers. This paper supports and extends Adhikari’s analysis by broadening its anthropocentric focus to include other species. It shows that the key technologies of genocide employed in the extermination of San hunter-gatherers were subsequently incorporated into everyday Cape stock farming practice and redeployed from the late nineteenth through to the end of the twentieth century in a continual ‘vermin extermination’ campaign against other indigenous commercial stock ‘predators’. The institutionalisation of animal genocide in Cape stock farming served to maintain white farmer solidarity and hegemony, especially in marginal environments, by both militarising the countryside and intimidating the rural proletariat through the routinised symbolical re-enactment of the original act of conquest into acquiescence to white stock farmer ownership and use of the land.
... Sources of information are cited in the last column. Beinart, 1998;Macdonald, 1992;Van Sittert, 2016;Nattrass et al., 2017;Louw et al., 2017;Dean and Milton, 1991;Dean, 2000;Dean and Milton, 2004;Skead, 2007Skead, , 2011SANParks, 2019;Lloyd, 2007 2 Macdonald, 1994;Milton and Hoffman, 1994, Milton et al., 1994, Hoffman and Ashwell, 2001Seymour et al., 2010;Rutherford and Powrie, 2013 (continued on next page) Moran et al., 1993;Milton et al., 1999;Le Maitre et al., 2007;Milton and Dean, 2010;Shackleton et al., 2017Shackleton et al., 1930Shackleton et al., −1994 Recession Poynton, 1987;Milton et al., 1999;Moran et al., 1993;Shackleton et al., 2017 to have been sparse, patchy and determined by the distribution of surface water and mammalian fauna (Beaumont et al., 1995). Variation in the abundance of archaeological artefacts that can be dated suggest that hunter-gatherers used the Central Karoo only intermittently during the mid-Holocene, but increased thereafter as temperatures cooled and rainfall increased (Deacon, 2014). ...
... Predator control in Karoo areas (Table 1, 2.04) began with settled livestock farming (Beinart, 1998); Van Sittert, 2016). In 1814, a bounty system was introduced to encourage predator control and promote the growth of the wool industry. ...
Arid regions globally have suffered ecological damage as nomadic cultures have virtually all been displaced over the past 300 years by European colonists who, in attempts to create permanent settlements, exploited grazing, fauna and water unsustainably. The Karoo is one such arid region that covers about one third of South Africa. In common with arid regions globally, this sparsely-populated shrubland was historically used mainly for ranching, but is now becoming increasingly important for renewable energy generation (wind and sun), for adventure tourism, and potentially for mining. Current and future land users in the Karoo face challenges posed by damage caused by past land use, particularly overgrazing and impoundments. Land users of the future will probably experience additional challenges caused by the combined impacts of damaging land use and climate change. This review synthesizes the bodies of literature on the archaeology, ecology, land use history, environmental change and development planning. In doing so, we address the effects of historical land use on biodiversity and ecosystem goods and services in the region. We also identify avenues for future research, including mitigation and restoration actions required to make continued human occupation of the Karoo sustainable. Insights on the sustainability of the Karoo region are relevant when considering the socio-ecological futures of arid regions elsewhere.
... This finding was particularly surprising for samples from the Central Karoo and Namaqualand, regions where caracal populations appear to be large and have good connectivity (Avenant et al., 2016;Tensen et al., 2018Tensen et al., , 2019. To some extent, this may reflect a legacy of persecution by colonial settlers starting in the 1600s and livestock farmers in the early 20th century (Avenant et al., 2016;van Sittert, 2016). ...
Wildlife populations are becoming increasingly fragmented by anthropogenic development. Small and isolated populations often face an elevated risk of extinction, in part due to inbreeding depression. Here, we examine the genomic consequences of urbanization in a caracal (Caracal caracal) population that has become isolated in the Cape Peninsula region of the City of Cape Town, South Africa, and is thought to number ~50 individuals. We document low levels of migration into the population over the past ~75 years, with an estimated rate of 1.3 effective migrants per generation. As a consequence of this isolation and small population size, levels of inbreeding are elevated in the contemporary Cape Peninsula population (mean FROH = 0.20). Inbreeding primarily manifests as long runs of homozygosity >10 Mb, consistent with the effects of isolation due to the rapid recent growth of Cape Town. To explore how reduced migration and elevated inbreeding may impact future population dynamics, we parameterized an eco‐evolutionary simulation model. We find that if migration rates do not change in the future, the population is expected to decline, though with a low projected risk of extinction. However, if migration rates decline or anthropogenic mortality rates increase, the potential risk of extinction is greatly elevated. To avert a population decline, we suggest that translocating migrants into the Cape Peninsula to initiate a genetic rescue may be warranted in the near future. Our analysis highlights the utility of genomic datasets coupled with computational simulation models for investigating the influence of gene flow on population viability.
... Predator control by small-livestock farmers has a long history, dating back to 1652 (Beinart 1998;Nattrass et al. 2020b), with programs mostly targeting black-backed jackals (Canis mesomelas, hereafter jackal). The passing of the Fencing Act and the spread of enclosures in 1883 to keep livestock within selected areas and predators out encouraged farmers to increase their use of poison within fenced areas, often with devastating effects on the populations of various animals, including non-target species (van Sittert 2016). In 1973, the Hazardous Substances Act restricted the use of sodium cyanide (1080), with the result that small-livestock farmers in the arid Central Karoo began experimenting with a variety of readily available agrochemicals as poisoning agents (Nattrass and Conradie 2015). ...
The use of poison against predators is pervasive and negatively impacts biodiversity and ecosystem health globally. Little is known about the correlates of poison use as a lethal control method on small-livestock farmland. We used a mixed-methods approach to investigate commercial farmers' experience with and perceived effectiveness of predation control methods, reported poison use and its correlates in the Central Karoo. Farmers perceived lethal methods to be cheaper and more effective than non-lethal methods in protecting their livestock from predation. They reported more experience with lethal methods, and over half reported having used poison. This is higher than other estimates in southern Africa and consistent with other survey-based evidence from the Karoo. Reported poison use was positively related to perceived efficacy, declining on-farm employment and perceived threats of predators. It was negatively related to terrain ruggedness. Our findings provide an understanding of the context and motivations shaping this illegal behavior.
... Van Sittert hypothesises that the compulsion to eradicate vermin coincided with a social crisis among the Cape's rural population, who were suffering acute economic and social stress. 36 As was true of policy in other arenas, South West Africa administrators sought to apply Union vermin policy where they could. 37 Complaints surrounding vermin depredations appear in Namibia's National Archives from the beginning of the 20th century. ...
In the first half of the 20th century, the racialised policies of apartheid affected not only the people of South West Africa but the predator population as well. This article explores how South West Africa’s colonial administration enabled the destruction of predators on white settler farmland while frustrating African efforts to combat livestock depredation by predators in ‘native’ reserves. Drawing upon archival sources and published government documents, the persecution of predators is shown to be an expression of white supremacist policies founded primarily in economic concerns. In particular, the cases of African wild dogs on settler farmland and African lions on ‘native’ reserves are contrasted. The effects of predator eradication policies from this era are still visible in the geography of these two species within Namibia. This article deepens historical understanding of the more-than-human effects of apartheid and of social policies in general. It also contributes to scholarly understanding of historical human–animal relationships in non-urban spaces.
... Leopards and other wildlife have persisted in this region, despite intense historical persecution (van Sittert, 1998(van Sittert, , 2016, due to their tolerance of rugged, mountainous terrain. These rugged areas are generally unsuitable for agriculture and cover large parts of the Western Cape. ...
Global distributions of most terrestrial large mammals have been dramatically reduced through the loss and fragmentation of natural habitat. These impacts are likely to be intensified by the effects of
global climate change. Here we use two free roaming leopard (Panthera pardus) populations to explore the intersecting influences of climatic conditions and land use on the feeding ecology of a large carnivore. We predicted that greater aridity would influence land use, and that this would in turn influence species richness and consequently leopard diet. We compared diet, mammal species richness and land use patterns in two topographically similar regions of south-western South Africa, the Boland, a mesic temperate region and the Little Karoo, a semi-arid region located approximately 200 km to the east.The Boland has retained only ∼33% of natural land at low elevations, compared to over 90% in the Little Karoo. Extensive camera trap surveys in both regions revealed far lower mammal species richness in the Boland (22 species) than the Little Karoo (51 species). Leopard diet differed significantly between the two regions; leopards in the Boland fed on fewer (n = 15), smaller prey species (ranging from 3–25 kg) associated specifically with mountain habitat. By contrast, leopards in the Little Karoo had a broader prey range (n = 21), and were able to access larger prey (up to 138 kg). These results suggest that aridity has a significant influence on anthropogenic land use patterns, and that these changes are reflected both in the richness of the mammal community, and the diet of a large carnivore. However, the less intensive land use in the Little Karoo also increased the potential for conflict between leopards and people. Increased aridity
as a result of global climate change may thus present opportunities to enhance the conservation status of free-roaming carnivores, but may also increase the potential for human-wildlife conflict as carnivores
recolonize previously transformed areas.
... Farmland thus created "winners" and "losers" (McKinney and Lockwood 1999) among the mediumto large-sized terrestrial vertebrate community in the Karoo. These findings support the general trend that large species, in particular carnivores, are more sensitive to anthropogenic land use change than other functional groups, in accordance with our prediction (P4) and the literature (Msuha et al. 2012;Kinnaird and O'Brien 2012), and given their historical and continued lethal control throughout the livestock farming regions of the Western Cape (van Sittert 1998, 2016. Large carnivores (i.e. ...
Extensive farming is an important source of food and fibre and often the only viable land use in the more arid regions of the globe. Yet, land use transformation for livestock grazing can lead to natural habitat degradation and fragmentation, identified as the main threats to biodiversity worldwide. Understanding which species are “winners” (i.e. species with a higher relative abundance index on farmland than protected area) and “losers” (i.e. species that have been extirpated or have a lower relative abundance index on farmland) in farming landscapes is crucial for the global sustainability of food production and biodiversity conservation. We used camera traps across 332 locations, over 23,796 trap nights to compare species richness and several aspects of community diversity (evenness, dominance, functional diversity and community structure) on 22 extensive small-livestock farms and a nearby protected area in the semi-arid region of the Karoo, South Africa. Species richness was not significantly different between the two land uses, but there were important differences in community structure and composition. Large carnivores were the “losers” of extensive livestock farming. Farmland displayed a lower effective number of species and functional diversity and a higher dominance than the protected area. The latter had a positive influence on the presence of large mammals and on the relative abundance of the region’s main mesopredator, the black-backed jackal (Canis mesomelas). Contrary to consensus, extensive small-livestock farming may be beneficial to some species and may therefore represent an important opportunity for biodiversity conservation outside of formally protected areas.
Wildlife populations are becoming increasingly fragmented by anthropogenic development. Such small and isolated populations often face an elevated risk of extinction, in part due to inbreeding depression. Here, we examine the genomic consequences of urbanization in a caracal ( Caracal caracal ) population that has become isolated in the Cape Peninsula region of the city of Cape Town, South Africa and is thought to number ∼50 individuals. We document low levels of migration into the population over the past ∼75 years, with an estimated rate of 1.3 effective migrants per generation. As a consequence of this isolation and small population size, levels of inbreeding are elevated in the contemporary Cape Peninsula population (mean F ROH>1Mb =0.20). Inbreeding primarily manifests as long runs of homozygosity >10Mb, consistent with the effects of isolation due to the rapid recent growth of Cape Town. To explore how reduced migration and elevated inbreeding may impact future population dynamics, we parameterized an eco-evolutionary simulation model. We find that if migration rates do not change in the future, the population is expected to decline only slightly, with a low projected risk of extinction. However, if migration rates decline or anthropogenic mortality rates increase, the potential risk of extinction is greatly elevated. To avert a population decline, we suggest that translocating migrants into the Cape Peninsula to initiate a genetic rescue may be warranted in the near future. Our analysis highlights the utility of genomic datasets coupled with computational simulation models for investigating the influence of gene flow on population viability.
Ecosystem governance is a highly contested issue where competing human stakeholder groups wield unequal power over nonhuman species. Pluralistic approaches to ecosystem governance consider a diversity of voices and disciplines to apply translational ecological knowledge to policy. However, the rights, agency, and welfare of nonhuman species – at the abstract (macro) and individual (micro) levels – are rarely considered, distancing nonhumans from human interests. This ‘othering’, results in nonhumans being treated as subservient to humans in power relations, which can result in poor welfare and even death. This study draws on multispecies ethnography, posthumanism, multispecies livelihoods, decolonial ecology, and translational ecology literature to critically review current paradigms in ecosystem governance and questions how to represent nonhumans equitably in ecosystem governance. This essay also considers qualitative data collected during 15 months of a multi-sited, multispecies ethnographic study that explored wolf-human (Canis lupus) relations in the western United States during the Trump Administration. A pluralistic posthumanist wildlife-human coexistence framework for translational ecology is presented that emphasizes nonhumans’ rights, welfare, and agency in ecosystem governance.
This article examines conflict between farmers and elephants in the Addo region in 1910s–1930s South Africa to explore the porosity of the concepts ‘wild’, ‘tame’, and ‘domestic’, and their relationship to race, degeneration, nature conservation, and colonialism. In the 1910s, settler farmers indicted the ‘Addo Elephants’, as ‘vicious’ thieves who raided crops and ‘hunted’ farmers. This view conflicted with a widespread perception of elephants as docile, sagacious, and worthy of protection. Seeking to reconcile these views, bureaucrats were divided between exterminating the animals, creating a game reserve, and drawing upon the expertise of Indian mahouts to domesticate them. Ultimately, all three options were attempted: the population was decimated by hunter Phillip Jacobus Pretorius, an elephant reserve was created, the animals were tamed to ‘lose their fear of man’ and fed oranges. Despite the presence of tame elephants and artificial feeding, the reserve was publicized as a natural habitat, and a window onto the prehistoric. This was not paradoxical but provokes a need to rethink the relationship between wildness, tameness, and domesticity. These concepts were not implicitly opposed but existed on a spectrum paralleling imperialist hierarchies of civilization, race, and evolution, upon which tame elephants could still be considered wild.
The black‐backed jackal Canis mesomelas, henceforth jackal, has re‐emerged as a threat to South African sheep farmers. This sparked contestation between farmers and conservationists over the reasons for their return and the relative merits of lethal and non‐lethal approaches to protecting livestock. Three separate reviews of the scientific literature converged on the same broad conclusion that lethal control of jackals is probably ineffective, but that more scientific research is necessary, especially on farms. We draw on historic evidence and recent research across a range of disciplines to show that jackal diet and behaviour varies regionally and alter in response to changing threats and opportunities. More data will not support generalisable conclusions and have already been eclipsed by broad‐scale changes in the political, economic and ecological landscapes of South Africa. Reduced government support for farmers, rising production costs and falling product prices, together with an increasing frequency of droughts, have conspired to weaken the collective management hand of farmers and, ultimately, contributed to a decline in the sheep farming industry. Many sheep farmers have sold their land to non‐commercial ‘lifestyle' farmers or expanding nature reserves, creating a growing network of safer spaces for jackals to persist, from which their offspring can sink into neighbouring commercial farmland. When these landscape‐level changes are combined with the wide phenotypic plasticity and catholic diet of the jackal, we should be neither surprised at their resurgence nor contented with suggestions that more ecological research is likely to facilitate any sustainable solutions. Black‐backed jackal (Canis mesomelas) diet and behaviour varies regionally and alters in response to changing threats and opportunities. Universalisable or sustainable solutions to the conflict between jackals and sheep farmers in South Africa are unlikely.
This chapter will recount how badgers came to play a surprisingly important role in the professionalisation of ecology in British academic and government science during the late twentieth century. It will explore the world and work of a second epistemic community clustering around disease ecology, alongside its adoption of the caring practices of naturalists and the newly developing field of animal welfare science. It discusses the developing connections between applied ecologists and the UK state under the aegis of pest control, including their engagement with previous episodes of wildlife disease and ‘badger conflict’ long before connections were made with bovine TB. The chapter then investigates how MAFF’s applied ecologists researched the new problem of badger/bTB, making major contributions to field biology along the way.
“Dr Cassidy draws pertinent general conclusions about generating policy and mediating the role of the expert in today’s science-sceptic and increasingly polarised society... It is both a useful and original contribution, specifically to the history of zoonotic disease policy, and policy history more generally.”
—Helen Bynum, Author of Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis (2012)
This open access book provides the first critical history of the controversy over whether to cull wild badgers to control the spread of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in British cattle. This question has plagued several professional generations of politicians, policymakers, experts and campaigners since the early 1970s. Questions of what is known, who knows, who cares, who to trust and what to do about this complex problem have been the source of scientific, policy, and increasingly vociferous public debate ever since. This book integrates contemporary history, science and technology studies, human-animal relations, and policy research to conduct a cross-cutting analysis. It explores the worldviews of those involved with animal health, disease ecology and badger protection between the 1970s and 1990s, before reintegrating them to investigate the recent public polarisation of the controversy. Finally it asks how we might move beyond the current impasse.
This chapter introduces the contested problem of how badgers and bovine TB are connected—and what to do about it—outlining the key events explored across the rest of the volume. I will discuss how my analytical approach to this research falls into three key themes: knowledge controversies and epistemic communities; good care, good work, good knowledge; and animal roles and traces. I then explore two historical backstories essential for understanding this controversy: the history of tuberculosis itself (in humans and other animals); and the history of the Great British Badger Debate, which stretches back to the Victorian era and beyond. Finally, this chapter will provide an overview of the rest of the book, summarising the overall structure and content of the chapters to come.
In my Conclusion, I will draw together the various stories traced throughout the book and provide some answers to how the UK got into the tangled mess that is badger/bTB—and how we might get out again. I will discuss changes in knowledge about badgers, mycobacteria, ecosystems, animal health, farming and the connections between them. I will summarise my findings in terms of TB in humans and other animals; the Great British Badger Debate; care as a driver of controversy; and repeating cycles of building (and breaking) expectations. I will end by outlining what we need to know next and making some suggestions for those involved in the debate. However, these cannot become properly useful or useable policy recommendations without their input and as such I invite their thoughts.
This chapter explores in detail the world and work of the first epistemic community (knowledge network) to engage with bTB—that of animal health, comprising veterinarians, farmers, policymakers and politicians. It will recount the origins of animal health as a core aspect of agricultural governance in the UK since the late nineteenth century, and the role of Mycobacterium bovis in positioning veterinary expertise in government. This chapter will analyse caring practices in animal health, explaining how it must weigh up the best interests of animal populations and human societies against animal suffering and life. It charts the engagement of animal health with the new problem of badger/bTB, including the causes and outcomes of the first ‘independent expert review’ on the topic—delivered to government by Lord Zuckerman in 1980.
Conflict between predators and small-livestock farmers is a global phenomenon adversely impacting the preservation of wildlife, the well-being of livestock and human livelihoods. Such conflict is pervasive in the Karoo region of South Africa but its contemporary history and various causes remain poorly understood. In this study, we interviewed 77 small-livestock farmers in the Central Karoo between July 2014 and March 2015 to (1) assess the spatio-temporal distribution and severity of the reported predation problems with the main regional predators of livestock (black-backed jackal, caracal and baboon) and (2) describe the perceived reasons for changes in predator numbers. Farmers reported that serious predation problems have increased since the 1990s for all three predators. Jackal predation appears to have re-emerged, particularly since the 2000s, while baboon predation seems to have escalated rapidly since 2014 for select farmers. Farms with more rugged terrain were more likely to experience serious problems with baboons and caracal but ruggedness did not predict the year of onset of problems. Farmers perceive predator numbers to be increasing and attribute this trend to declining government support for predator management, changes in farming practices and the associated increase in suitable predator habitat, from which they can recolonise commercial farms.
The hunting of buffalo in the Bathurst district of the Cape Colony during the closing decades of the 19 th Century serves as a case study of the system of issuing permits to shoot big game introduced by the Game Act of 1886, and provides an opportunity to identify and interrogate the competing interests of those who wished to obtain for themselves the right to hunt these increasingly threatened animals. The administrative process by which the Department of Agriculture considered and determined permit applications is a lens through which to view the use of influence and connection in the pursuit of personal hunting interests, particularly when the clerk to the local Civil Commissioner, whose duties included recommending permit applications, sought to secure hunting opportunities for himself to the exclusion of others.
Economic development always entails disturbance and control of nature. This is a major feature of modern history and a condition of contemporary society; nevertheless, it seems important that those who wish to reassert the argument for incorporating the natural world into historical analysis should develop further an understanding of ecological influences and constraints - or illustrate how nature can bite back. This article touches on some of these dilemmas for environmental history and tries to conceive nature as a dynamic element - mroe than 'merely ... a backdrop' to human interaction. In exploring the natural history of an unruly pirate of the veld, it provides an example of the difficulties of control and, on occasion, the unpredictability of its outcome.
This article considers the historical roots of, and scientific evidence for, rival ‘jackal narratives’ about the ecology and control of the black-backed jackal (Canis mesomelas) in the Karoo, South Africa. During the mid 20th century, state-supported co-operative hunting and jackal-proof fences largely contained jackal predation. But as South Africa moved towards democracy in the 1990s, in a context of falling on-farm employment and the ending of subsidised fences and state-supported predator control, jackal predation re-emerged as a problem for economically and politically marginalised commercial sheep farmers in the Karoo. When CapeNature (the government body responsible for maintaining biodiversity on agricultural lands in the Western Cape province) sought to restrict the trapping and shooting of predators by farmers, an emotive battle with political ramifications erupted over the science of predator ecology. A rival ‘citizen science’ from farmers and hunters emerged to challenge the dominant ‘environmental jackal narrative’, which blamed hunting for the increase in jackals. We argue that the environmental jackal narrative was supported by the science of predator ecology (showing that predator numbers can increase as a result of persecution), but that the linked policy recommendation that farmers learn to ‘live with the jackal’ occupied less solid scientific and historical grounds. The rival ‘farmer jackal narrative’, which sought to justify the lethal control of jackals, resonated not only with farmers’ historical experience but also with some emerging conservation theories and practices regarding the culling of jackals in national parks.
As a direct result of the general extermination of larger predators such as Lion (Panthera leo)
and Brown Hyaena (Hyaena brunnea) in some regions of South Africa, the Black-backed
Jackal (Canis mesomelas) and the Caracal or Lynx (Caracal caracal) have become bigger
threats to livestock, while smaller carnivores such as genets (Genetta spp.), mongooses
(Cynictis spp., Ichneumia spp., Galerella spp. and Paracynictis spp.) and otters (Lutra spp.
and Aonyx spp.) cause occasional losses of poultry. Predators and scavengers have long
been indiscriminately and unethically persecuted causing the relationships between the
predators and their natural prey to be irreparably altered. This forms the basis of South
Africa’s “ damage-causing animal” situation today.
A variety of methods of killing “problem animals” are used today including traps, poisons,
snares, ‘coyote getters’ and other lethal weaponry. These also cause significant mortality
amongst non-target species such as the Bat-eared Fox (Otocyon megalotis), Aardwolf
(Proteles cristatus), Suricate (Suricata suricatta), many bird species and other small
carnivores. The Endangered Wildlife Trust’s Poison Working Group (PWG) estimates that in
excess of 500 000 wild birds and animals die from poisoning alone in South Africa every
year. The indiscriminate trapping of animals in gin traps often causing a slow and agonising
death and the death of many non-target species, continues in many agricultural areas in
South Africa today. This unacceptable situation led to the three host organisation, namely the
Endangered Wildlife Trust, CapeNature and the NSPCA to secure the funding to convene
this workshop in an attempt to finally develop a coherent, holistic and non-lethal approach to
resolving human-wildlife conflict in the agricultural sector in South Africa.
Negative attitudes towards carnivores continue to prevail with some species still labelled as
‘vermin’. Conservation authorities must therefore strive to change these attitudes by
supplying farmers and landowners with appropriate information, empowering them to employ
alternative exclusionary control measures and changing the relevant legislation and
regulations.
To address this serious situation, the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group (CBSG)
Southern Africa, the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), CapeNature and the National Council
of SPCAs jointly convened a national workshop from the 10
th
– 13
th
of April 2006 at the
Ganzekraal Conference Centre in the Western Cape entitled: The holistic management of
human-wildlife conflict in South Africa. The workshop brought together fifty-five
participants from around South Africa representing the farming and agricultural sector,
provincial and national conservation authorities, conservation organisations and NGOs,
animal welfare organisations, communities and academic institutions. This was an
opportunity to share information, to create a better understanding of all components of this
contentious issue and attempt to improve current practices by:
i. exploring various exclusionary techniquesfor keeping damage-causing wildlife out of
farmland;
ii. developing a manual of guidelines for best practice on non-lethal "problem animal"
control, so providing preventive measuresto farmers and provincial authorities;
iii. developing a proposal for a revision of relevant legislation; and
iv. exploring the possibility of establishing ethical brands for agricultural products such as
beef and mutton, farmed using only ethical predator control or exclusionary methods.
An holistic approach must be implemented toaddress these problems and “best-practice”
preventative measures should be established to effectively reduce human-wildlife conflict. A
preventative approachaddresses the problem rather than the “problem animal”. Three
principles therefore underpinned the workshop:
Resolving Human-Wildlife Conflict: Prevention is the Cure 2006 6
i. No species as a whole can be designated as problematic, only specific damagecausing individuals.
ii. Prevention has to become the preferred method of conflict management; and lethal and
/ or injurious techniques to kill or capture wildlife should no longer be promoted or
utilised.
iii. Overall, the key principle upon which the workshop was convened is that Prevention is
the Cureto solving human-wildlife conflict in South Africa. This marks a significant
change in attitude and is in-line with new thinking world-wide whereby, environmental
issues should be managed within ecological parameters rather than destroying
ecological components of ecosystems, which then leads to further and often greater,
problems.
In preparation for the workshop, a briefing document was prepared for all workshop
participants. This included the historical perspective on the development of problem animal
management in the Cape Province by Hannes Stadler, advantages and disadvantages of
various control methods and an overview of the provincial legislation and policies regulating
the control of problem or damage-causing animals. Participants were asked to prepare for
the workshop by reading through the relevant documentation and providing feedback at the
workshop.
In this article, we discuss how farm conversions to wildlife habitats result in the reconfiguration of spatial and social relations on white-owned commercial farms in the Karoo region of the Eastern Cape in South Africa. Farmers and landowners justify such conversions stressing economic and ecological rationales. We illustrate how conversions are (also) a reaction to post-apartheid land reform and labour legislation policies, which white farmers and landowners perceive as a serious threat. They seek to legitimate their position in society and reassert their place on the land by claiming a new role as nature conservationists. We argue that game farms should be interpreted as economically and politically contested spaces for three reasons: (1) whereas landowners present the farm workers' displacement from game farms as the unintended by-product of a changing rural economy, the creation of ‘pristine’ wilderness seems designed to empty the land of farm dwellers who may lay claim to the land; (2) game farms further disconnect the historically developed links between farm dwellers and farms, denying them a place of residence and a base for multiple livelihood strategies; (3) this way the conversion process deepens farm dwellers' experiences of dispossession and challenges their sense of belonging. Game fences effectively define farm workers and dwellers as people out of place. These dynamics contrast government reform policies aimed at addressing historical injustices and protecting farm dwellers' tenure security.
In 1914, there was a rebellion against the young Union government by some 11,000 Afrikaans‐speaking men. This social movement has primarily been understood as an Afrikaner Nationalist phenomenon. This article focuses on the gendered identity of the rebels in order to illuminate the Rebellion in a different light. In 1912, the introduction of the Defence Act threatened the identity of Boer men who had come to have their masculinity encoded and reinforced in the Republican commando system. The Defence Act was not a rarefied piece of legislation, but a law that touched people at the level of their religion, their language and their identity. Hardest hit was the Boer Republican self‐conception of masculinity. The main focus of this article is on the period after 1912, when the Defence Act imposed modern training methods, uniforms, ranking system, disciplinary codes and promotional norms. In the build‐up to World War I, Afrikaans‐speaking males living on the periphery of the new locus of central state power began to turn to alternative authorities to express their grievances. In the western Transvaal and the northern Free State, farmers and bywoners who were alienated by the state's failure to alleviate the economic recession and increasingly anxious over issues of class and race, went into rebellion, with the hope of re‐establishing a republic. Cultural images of commando may have corresponded little with the reality of warfare, but seductive imagery propagated by rebel leaders helped fuel the Republican nostalgia that centred on a particular understanding of Boer masculinity. The Defence Act was introduced into a context of anxiety over urbanisation, loss of control over black labour and social upheaval. Fear about the loss of manhood and its manipulation, was not the sole reason for rebellion: for some it was a prime cause, for others a final straw, a justification, or an articulation of otherwise inexpressible feelings. But the Act further distanced some Boer men from the new state and severed their already tenuous allegiance to the legislature. The 1914 Rebellion was the last battle for a threatened manhood in the complex of ideas and institutions that characterised industrialising society.
The Rise of Conservation in South Africa is an innovative contribution to the growing comparative field of environmental history. Beinart's major theme is the history of conservationist ideas in South Africa. He focuses largely on the livestock farming districts of the semi-arid Karoo and the neighbouring eastern Cape grasslands, conquered and occupied by white settlers before the middle of the nineteenth century. The Cape, like Australia, became a major exporter of wool. Vast numbers of sheep flooded its plains and rapidly transformed its fragile natural pastures. Cattle also remained vital for ox-wagon transport and internal markets. Concerns about environmental degradation reached a crescendo in the early decades of the twentieth century, when a Dust Bowl of kinds was predicted, and formed the basis for far-reaching state intervention aimed at conserving natural resources. Soil erosion, overstocking, and water supplies stood alongside wildlife protection as the central preoccupations of South African conservationists. The book traces debates about environmental degradation in successive eras of South African history. It offers a reinterpretation of South Africa's economic development, and of aspects of the Cape colonial and South African states. It expands the understanding of English-speaking South Africans and their role both as farmers and as protagonists of conservationist ideas. The book is also a contribution to the history of science, exploring the way in which new scientific knowledge shaped environmental understanding and formed a significant element in settler intellectual life. It paints an evocative picture of the post-conquest Karoo, analysing the impact of self-consciously progressive farmers and officials in their attempts to secure private property, curtail transhumance and kraaling, control animal diseases, enhance water supplies, eradicate jackals, destroy alien weeds such as the prickly pear, and combat drought. It concludes by analysing conservationist interventions in the African areas, and discussing evidence for a stabilization of environmental conditions over the longer term.
The question of rural safety in South Africa has been a contested terrain for a number of years. In most cases, the safety crisis threatened the farmers and their labour force. In order to contain the situation, the commandos played a significant role of providing security to both the farmers and the farm workers. Although the commandos provided this security, in the main the structure was regarded as the National Party’s (NPs) initiative. To the new African National Congress (ANC) as the ruling party after the April 1994 general elections where it got the majority votes, the organisation wanted to replace the commando units with another security force in the rural areas. However, this initiative was not welcomed by the farming communities who were mostly White. They viewed the disbandment and the replacement of the commandos as an attempt by the ANC’s government to make them vulnerable for physical attacks, which in most cases led to deaths. Therefore, this study attempts to highlight the socio-political impact of this initiative to both the farmers and farming communities. The question of whether the commandos were to be retained or not in favour of rural safety had a huge socio-political impact and divided the South African rural communities.
This article addresses farm workers and farm dwellers' tenure insecurity and its relationship with farm conversions in the agricultural district of Cradock, located in the Eastern Cape Karoo. It argues that consequences of farm conversions for farm workers/dwellers' tenure security must be understood within the context of regional land and labour histories. Its main contention with existing positions that ‘blame’ farm conversions for increased evictions and an efflux of workers/dwellers from farms is that there is a correlative rather than causative relationship between farm conversions and farm worker/dweller displacements in the semi-arid areas. It argues that the extreme nature of the historical land question and the continued dominance of a historically white land-owning class in the semi-arid areas render farm workers/dwellers structurally vulnerable to having their residential arrangements on farms terminated at any given moment. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Cradock between 2009 and 2011, the article shows that game farm conversions tend to perpetuate existing land and power relations on farms as they have prevailed over time. However, it also argues that the distinctiveness of game farm conversions lies in their near ‘irreversibility’ as a land use form which creates more permanently securitised and sealed-off pockets of consolidated land in the countryside. These transformations increase the erosion of farm workers/dwellers' embedded social histories and cultural imprint as a labouring class on the landscape.
The paper outlines the impetus to, trajectory and impact of enclosure in the Cape Colony between the passing of the Fencing Act in 1883 and 1910. By increasing landowners' control over their environment, fencing enabled a suite of remedial measures that raised the productivity of the commercial small-stock sector. Fences also came to stand in the stead of the landowner in defending farms against human or animal trespass. The compartmentalization of the countryside into enclosures facilitated a more general re-ordering and re-assigning of humans and animals within it, resulting in a depersonalization of rural social relations. In all these ways the enclosure movement laid the ideological foundations for the hegemony of private property and the market economy in the countryside.
Historians of southern Africa have long recognised the value of epidemic diseases in sharply illuminating social and mental landscapes of the past in ordinary times otherwise obscured from view. Rabies was different, being at once an epidemic of urban animals and one incubated by the middle class. In 1892, with imported canine mania at its height, it was left to the newly appointed colonial bacteriologist to remind that rabies ?may assuredly be expected to arrive sooner or later in these days of quick steam traffic?. By the time of writing the disease was already spreading, as yet undetected, among Port Elizabeth?s canine population. The rabies epidemic and its suppression completely altered the urban ecology of Port Elizabeth. The extreme evolutionary pressure of canicide produced a surviving feral dog population that was nocturnal and defied all efforts at final extirpation.Keywords: Canicide; canine mania; Port Elizabeth; rabies
The full account of how the Royal Society of South Africa acquired its Charter and Statutes in 1908 is given here for the first time. The article explains the socio-political context in which the Society was founded in 1908 and analyses the legacies of other learned societies in southern Africa—particularly the South African Philosophical Society which was established in 1877—that preceded it. The relationship between the Royal Society of South Africa, the Royal Society of London and similar societies is briefly examined. As the premier South African multidisciplinary scientific society during the twentieth century, the Royal Society of South Africa has contributed to the intellectual vibrancy of the country as well as to its national research output, and the institutional transformations and challenges relating to the Society over the past one hundred years are explored1.
In the 1890s and 1900s in the Transkei, South Africa, colonial relations were severely strained as Cape colonial officials attempted to constrain African men's hunting activities by systematically poisoning and shooting their dogs. For colonial foresters, such efforts were part of a larger strategy to ‘protect’ flora and fauna by controlling African environmental activities and mobility more thoroughly. Yet on the ground in many areas, state-sponsored dog-killing was drawn into more complex understandings of, and popular frustrations with, transformations in local landscapes and livelihoods during this period. As rural men and women responded to the particular changes in their local political ecologies arising from colonial wildlife preservation policies, they also located conflicts over state forestry and its policies of exclusion within broader popular experiences of political, economic and ecological subordination. In several communities, rumors and stories proliferated, connecting the killing of dogs to other official attempts to poison and bewitch Africans, their animals and their landscapes. Such stories were ways for people to express deeper concerns over the spreading influence of colonial power in their daily practices and its toll on local communities’ health and welfare.
The history of the imperial/colonial elite's preoccupation with saving a handful of specific ‘game’ species in reserves has come to stand for the relationship of all classes with all wild animals in both South Africa and the wider world of the British empire. The result is a narrative of process and periodization flawed in general and false in the specific case of the Cape Colony/Province, where economics rather than ideology was both the primary motor of game conservation and the mediating factor in human relationships with wild animal species. Here the general trend across the century from 1850 to 1950 was, contra MacKenzian orthodoxy, towards private not public ownership of game propelled by a rural rather than an urban elite. Public ownership was instead restricted to ‘vermin’ species in which the state created a market in which it became the chief consumer. The Cape's great tradition was refracted through its customary permissive legislation to yield a myriad of small traditions at the regional or local level. Rather than an argument for Cape exceptionalism, its wild animal history is a caution against glib generalizations from the elite archive and an indication of the need to broaden prevailing ‘game reserve history’ to include the full range of human and animal inhabitants as agents rather than as residual analytical categories in any narrative.
The final ending of slavery in 1838 marked a radical break in the agrarian
history of the Cape Colony. The liberated slaves could and did make use of
the mobility that emancipation allowed them. This amounted to a real
negotiation of the price of labour, for at various points in the nineteenth
century the price of labour threatened the very profitability of farming. For
the greater part of the century many landlords were led, in the words of one
colonial official, ‘to look back…with something very like an envious eye, to
the days in which slavery was tolerated by law, because then the slaveholder
could command labour whenever it was needed.’
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