2. Spatial severance and nature conservation

Abstract

We review conservation policy and legislation and its impacts under the territory’s post World War 1 administration from Pretoria, prior to the formalisation of an Independent Namibia in 1990. We trace the history of nature conservation in Etosha-Kunene during the times of South African government. In the initial phase ‘game preservation’ was not high on the agenda of the South African administration, which focused instead on white settlement of the territory, requiring a continuous re-organisation of space. After World War 2 the potential of tourism and the role of ‘nature conservation’ for the economy was given more attention. Fortress conservation was the dominant paradigm, leading to the removal of local inhabitants from their land. Shifting boundaries of Game Reserve No. 2 characterised the 1950s up to the 1970s: part of Game Reserve No.2 became Etosha Game Park in 1958 and finally Etosha National Park in 1967, which in its current size was completely fenced in 1973. The arid area along the coast was proclaimed the Skeleton Coast National Park in 1971. Alongside these changes new allocations of land following the ideal of apartheid or ‘separate development’ were made, ‘perfecting’ spatial-functional organisation with neat boundaries between ‘Homelands’ for local inhabitants, the (white) settlement area and game/nature. Land, flora and fauna, and people of various backgrounds were treated as separable categories to be sorted and arranged according to colonial needs and visions. A new impetus towards participatory approaches to conservation began to be initiated in north-west Namibia in the 1980s, prefiguring Namibia’s post-Independence move towards community-based conservation.