University of Aarhus ECOTOURISM AS A WAY TO PROTECT ...

Ecotourism as a sustainable way to protect nature
hunting privileges, it treated all landowners equally, whether white or African”
(Carruthers, 1995).
The Transvaal Game Protection Association (a group of Englishmen who
worked to protect wildlife in the name of a class sport as hunting) became an
important pressure group. They tried to convince the authorities about the basic
idea that wildlife was in danger because of the native Africans, in saying so,
they could maintain the elitism of their sport. Since the very first moment, this
has been shown not to be true and on the contrary “…the over protection of
game in some parts….have resulted in the most disastrous consequences to the
Natives who had in many cases lost their whole crops” (Carruthers, 1995).
The situation in Kruger National Park (KNP) was as follows: a white
colonialist minority who took the KNP under control to protect wildlife for
game hunting was against a majority of black natives who had lost their land
(and therefore the only opportunity to survive) simply to protect the white’s way
of living.
To create this National Park, thousands of Africans were evicted from
their lands and “…not only were (they) forcibly moved to overcrowded and
marginal agricultural lands on the periphery of these new reserves; colonial laws
also denied them hunting and fishing licences and the right to use firearms or
hunting dogs. They were also forbidden to kill wildlife that wandered outside
the reserves and destroy their crops and domestic animals, and they were banned
from collecting any wood or grasses within the reserves. Invariably, the colonial
state chose to protect wildlife instead of the local Africans. In times of drought
or when water was scarce, Africans were forced to move out” (Honey, 1999).
But “Preventing Africans from hunting was not merely an economic strategy; it
was embedded in white cultural perceptions. Whites generally regarded Africans
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