The Pilanesberg Game Reserve

Report on the Socio-Economic Effects of the Pilanesberg Game Reserve on the surrounding population. Univ. of Witwatersrand. p.277.

Copies of this Report are no longer available, although one copy is believed to be locked in the SOAS (London) library and one may be available in South Africa’s archives in Pretoria.

The Pilanesberg Game Reserve was established in the apartheid era in the supposedly ‘independent’ South African ‘Bantustan’ (homeland) of Bophuthatswana (now South Africa’s North West Province). Bophuthatswana was the flagship of South Africa’s apartheid policy. The Pilanesberg Game Reserve was therefore highly controversial and seen by many as a means of ‘greening’ apartheid. As a result of criticism of the Pilanesberg ‘National Park’ (PNP), Jeremy Keenan, despite being known as a critic of apartheid and its ‘Bantustan’ policy, was asked to conduct a formal survey of the attitudes of the local people to the Park. The findings of his comprehensive survey revealed high levels of discontent and criticism of the Park, which angered the Park’s managers and backers, including the World Wildlife Fund which had connections to South Africa’s apartheid regime at that time through ‘Operation Lock’. The report was not digitalised and the PNP went to considerable lengths to track down and withdraw copies from libraries and distributors.

Key features of the Report, including the relationship (proximity) of the PNP to the Sun City casino hotel complex in Bophuthatswana are discussed in two of Keenan’s Books: Dying for Change: Revisiting Apartheid Soth Africa and The Story of J.

The extract below is from a history of the Pilanesberg National Park (1960s to 1984), written by Jane Carrethers in 2011 (https://scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0075-64582011000100005)

“In order to identify and address issues of concern, it was decided to conduct a formal survey of the attitudes of the local people to the PNP. In 1984, Jeremy Keenan, a sociologist then employed at the University of the Witwatersrand (and who did not disguise his anti-Bophuthatswana views), was tasked to report on community relations (Keenan 1984). Keenan and his researchers uncovered seriously negative perceptions of the national park at many levels. There was discontent over the verbal initial arrangements regarding the evacuation of the crater and inadequate financial and property compensation, particularly as cattle-rustling and other theft of property occurred during the removals. The Bakgatla perceived the administration of Bophuthatswana and its officials as 'dictatorial and deceitful' (Keenan 1984) and they alleged that farms intended for compensation had been given away to government ministers and Mangope cronies. To demonstrate their discontent, they had decided that they wanted to take back their land in the PNP and, to this end, had begun a court action (Keenan 1984). The fact that Tidimane Pilane was a leading figure in opposition politics exacerbated the situation further. People involved at the time believe that the PNP was used to score political points in these oppositional politics at a time of unrest in South Africa, creating divisions even amongst BopParks staff members (Boonzaaier pers. comm., 01 March 2010). […] Because the report was leaked to the media by Keenan himself, it attracted a great deal of attention that resulted in the managers of the Pilanesberg being caught in the middle of the fracas between the government and the Bakgatla.”