ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SEPARATION: THE HISTORICAL … · 2012-11-14 · Africa 78 (2), 2008 DOI:...

Africa 78 (2), 2008 DOI: 10.3366/E0001972008000132

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SEPARATION: THEHISTORICAL ECOLOGY OF A SOUTH AFRICAN

‘COLOURED RESERVE’

R. F. Rohde and M. T. Hoffman

Namaqualand is an anomaly in South Africa because of itsdistinct cultural, social and environmental conditions. However, themarginalization and poverty experienced by the people of the missionstations and reserves in Namaqualand during the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries display a generic profile that they share withthe communal enclaves, labour reserves, and former homelandsacross South Africa. Today, Namaqualand is at the forefront of theimplementation of land reform, communal tenure reform and themanagement of municipal commonage (Rohde et al. 2002, 2003;Wisborg and Rohde 2003, 2004; Lebert 2004; Lebert and Rohde2007). These developments take place against a history of landpolicies that progressively enclosed both communal and private farmland, resulting in the overcrowding and impoverishment of communalareas. This article traces the environmental history over the last 100years or so of one village in a communal area of Namaqualand,showing how environmental change took place against a backgroundof repressive or inappropriate government policies, in conjunction withfluctuating macro-economic conditions, intermittent drought eventsand the agency of communal farmers themselves. It details the impactof this history on the environment and biota of the village commons inrelation to a number of different land-use practices that have changedsubstantially over time.

Covering 50,000 square kilometres, Namaqualand is sparselypopulated by about 66,000 people, 45 per cent of whom live in thesix communal areas scattered throughout the district. Covering just25 per cent of the area of Namaqualand, the communal areas arehome to the descendants of the Nama-speaking Khoekhoen, the firstherders in the region, who arrived here with their sheep around 2,000years ago (Webley 1992). Contact between Nama-speaking herdersand San hunter-gatherers, and later with runaway slaves and whitesettlers, resulted in Namaqualand’s contemporary ‘coloured’ Afrikaans-speaking population.

R. F. ROHDE is currently a research fellow at the Centre of African Studies, University ofEdinburgh.M. T. HOFFMAN holds the Leslie Hill Chair in Plant Conservation, University of CapeTown. Over the last 10 years, both authors have worked in partnership on research projectsrelating to the historical ecology of southern Namibia and South Africa’s Northern Cape andWestern Cape Provinces.

190 ENVIRONMENT IN A ‘COLOURED RESERVE’

FIGURE 1 Namaqualand is a relatively poorly defined geographic region inthe north-west of South Africa covering about 50,000 square kilometres andstraddling two provinces. It stretches from the Orange River in the north to theOlifants River, just south of Van Rhynsdorp, in the south and about 100 to 150kilometres inland from the Atlantic seaboard. Most of the region prior to 1994was held under private tenure but several communal reserves (shaded areas)formed discrete islands in the landscape. Paulshoek forms the south-easternsection of the Leliefontein communal reserve

The widely dispersed Coloured Communal Areas are importantsocial and administrative features of this landscape. They beganas mission stations, places of refuge from the increasingly violent,marginalizing effects of frontier colonialism. Later they became labourreserves for commercial farming and mining interests and today,although overcrowded and poor, they provide a limited safety netagainst the uncertainties of contemporary life. Leliefontein is one sucharea, comprising ten widely dispersed villages: Paulshoek is one ofthese villages, surrounded by 20,000 hectares of communal grazingland.

In order to set the pattern of environmental change aroundPaulshoek within a regional context and to give structure to whatotherwise might seem a progression of arbitrary events, we haveborrowed the idea of ‘ecological revolutions’ (Merchant 1997: 19).These are defined as ‘major transformations in human relations withnon-human nature’ that arise due to changes in the relationship

ENVIRONMENT IN A ‘COLOURED RESERVE’ 191

between society’s mode of production and its ecology as well asbetween society’s mode of production and reproduction.

We hypothesize that three distinct ecological revolutions occurredin Namaqualand during the last two millennia (Hoffman and Rohde2007):

1 The pastoral ecological revolution, which took place as a result of theintroduction of domestic livestock and pastoral societies into the areaapproximately 2,000 years ago;

2 The colonial ecological revolution, which spread first through patho-gens, making way for the first white trekboers who moved intothe area during the mid-eighteenth century. Over the next 200years, white colonists appropriated most of the land for commerciallivestock farming and mining, confining the original inhabitants toincreasingly small communal reserves and creating the apartheid oftwo distinct social, economic and ecological outcomes;

3 The post-agrarian ecological revolution during the last forty years or so.Evidence of this can be discerned in the overall decline in livestocknumbers, a substantial reduction in crop land and the decline inthe rural population associated with rapid urbanization. This phaseincludes the transformation of the South African social economyafter 1994, the end of agricultural subsidies to white farmers, theexpansion of the communal land base through land reform, and anupsurge of conservation activities associated with tourism such asthe creation and expansion of the Namaqua National Park.

We have argued elsewhere (Hoffman and Rohde 2007) that theseecological revolutions can be clearly identified in Namaqualand’slandscapes. The evidence we present here is concerned with thetransformation that has accompanied the end of the colonial periodand the post-agrarian ecological revolution. This process can beconceptualized in terms of distinct phases or ‘acts’ within the colonial‘eco-drama’ (Weiskel 1987; Rajan 2002). The history of Paulshoektakes place in the last act of the colonial eco-drama and is made up of anumber of ‘scenes’ in which the dynamics of exploitation, dependencyand marginalization within the colonial ecosystem are played out.

The social economy of Paulshoek has evolved from a subsistence wayof life dependent on livestock and cropping within the narrow confinesof the communal area of the Leliefontein Reserve in the first half of thetwentieth century to one reliant on the regional and national economyby way of formal and informal jobs, remittances and (increasingly) statewelfare during the second half. This process has been accompanied bythe establishment of centralized service villages and a minimal level or‘safety net’ of state support. The ‘scenes’ which encapsulate this processcan be set within the following time frames or ‘acts’:

1900–39 – peasant farmers and dispersed outstations;1940–65 – villagization and gradual transition from subsistenceagricultural economy to wage and state welfare dependence;


1966–93 – formal employment within parastatal industries andmining, the policy of economic units and retrenchment;1994–2005 – political, agrarian and economic transformation.

Each of these acts of social, economic and broad political changewas accompanied by environmental impacts that can be traced clearlywithin the landscape today.

The landscape is a manifestation of the dialectical relationshipbetween human interactions and nature, in which practices, decisionsand ideas are given physical form that in turn influences humanbehaviour. To a greater or lesser extent, landscapes are adapted tothe socio-cultural and political systems that have coexisted with them(Balee and Erickson 2006). This is not to say that landscape and liveli-hood change are in a direct ‘driver-feedback’ relationship, since humanagency is subject to the shifting relations of power and knowledge thatform the context and outcomes of human–environmental relationships(McCusker and Carr 2006). Preceding publications concerned withthe political ecology of landscape change in Africa are too numerousto discuss here (examples include Crosby 1986; Tiffen et al. 1994;Beinart and Coates 1995; Leach and Mearns 1996; Fairhead andLeach 1996; Grove 1997; McCann 1999; Dahlberg and Blaikie 1999;Showers 2005) and we should point out that our main intention is tocombine socio-economic and political history with biological evidencewithin an historical ecology framework.

This article has purposely avoided engaging directly with a numberof debates concerning issues of rural transformation in Namaqualandand South Africa today. Such debates address questions of land man-agement, conservation objectives, poverty reduction, land reform anddemocratization. Often these debates revolve around conflicts of inter-est and political values and world views – and they are often couched inthe ‘objective’ language of scientific discourse. The evidence we havepresented here might contribute to these debates but our main objectivehas been to link the historical narrative of Paulshoek with the methodsof environmental science in order to show, in some detail, just how andwhy this particular landscape has evolved during the twentieth century.

A PROFILE OF PAULSHOEK TODAY

The majority of Paulshoek’s 120 households (approximately 600residents) rank among South Africa’s rural poor. A survey conductedin 1995 (Rohde et al. 2003) found that the average per capita incomewas R215 per month, which is below all standard measures of povertybased on income (DBSA 1998; Eckert 1996; Carter and May 1998)and in international terms is roughly equivalent to a per capita incomeof less than $2 per day.1 Forty-two per cent of Paulshoek’s population

1 The 2001 census shows income levels to be much lower, averaging less than US$1per capita per day (equivalent to R4 at the time), but we believe this underestimates thereal income of the village.


aged between 15 and 65 are economically inactive and 38 per centare unemployed – leaving only 20 per cent in employment (Stats SA2001). Only a third of school leavers between the ages of 15 and35 are employed, with an average monthly wage of R754 (Rohdeand Hoffman 2005).2 Wages and remittances earned by Paulshoek’smigrant labourers form 51 per cent of village income; state support inthe form of pensions, disability allowance and child support providesan underlying safety net for almost a third of village households. Only20 per cent of village income is accounted for by locally generatedself-employment, casual labour and farming, although this is probablyan underestimation of the real value of local income when the fullsuite of natural resource utilization is taken into account (Rohde et al.2003).

While livestock and crop farming are a minor factor in the casheconomy of the village (4 per cent), these activities provide a criticalsupplement to an otherwise limited diet and a latent ‘capital’ surplusto be drawn on in times of need. In spite of the low economicvalue of agricultural outputs, many aspects of Paulshoek’s cultural andsocial economy remain rooted in historical land-use practices, the mostobvious being the maintenance of strong links between the village andstockposts. Approximately 8 per cent of total village income is derivedfrom the surrounding environment when estimates of the use valuesof natural resources are added to income from crops and livestock(ibid.).

Stockposts are usually situated close to water sources consisting ofnatural springs, shallow dug wells or boreholes. Some consist of apermanent dwelling adjacent to rain-fed croplands. They tend to beoccupied by single men or, rarely, a husband and wife. Due to thespatially and seasonally unpredictable rains, transhumance across thePaulshoek landscape is an integral part of the pastoral system butreasons for moving are complex and include a range of environmentaland socio-economic factors (Baker and Hoffman 2006). The relativelysmall number of stock farmers (approximately 30) tends to obscure thefact that nearly half of Paulshoek’s households own livestock.

Wide inter-annual variations in rainfall and the frequent occurrenceof droughts coupled with high stocking densities mean that stockfarming is a highly uncertain enterprise, but it remains one of the onlylivelihood opportunities in the village. Many different people engage infarming at various times of their lives as part of a suite of risk reductionand livelihood strategies. The fact that this resource is open to anyvillager who has the means to acquire animals means that it often actsas a social and economic link for migrant labourers, both while they areaway working and when they wish to come back to live in Paulshoek(Debeaudoin 2001; Modiselle 2001; Anseeuw and Laurent 2007).

2 R754 was equivalent to US$125 (or $4 per day) in 2003.


FIGURE 2 Stockposts within the Paulshoek commons have been a persistentfeature of the landscape during most of the twentieth century. The upperphotograph was taken by Mr A. J. Andrews in 1938 before the creation ofthe village of Paulshoek, when most families would have been dispersed insmall groups and alternated between seasonal croplands and grazing areas.Today (lower photograph taken 1 March 2004), although building materialshave changed, such structures remain movable and semi-permanent


PAULSHOEK’S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY

Pastoral and colonial background to the creation of PaulshoekUp until the late nineteenth century, grazing practices were migratorywithin the ambit of Leliefontein’s three distinct agro-ecological zones:the sandveld near the coast, the Kamiesberg escarpment and thesummer rainfall grasslands of Bushmanland to the east (Webley 1986,2007). Although seasonal transhumance continued throughout thenineteenth century, it became increasingly restricted and less adaptableto seasonal climatic changes. By 1850 the Leliefontein mission landswere divided into a number of outstations (one of which was near thepresent-day village of Paulshoek), and discrete internal divisions withinthe area demarcated winter and summer grazing lands (Figure 3).

The fortunes of Leliefontein inhabitants rapidly declined in thewake of recurrent extreme drought events during the 1880s and1890s, causing crop failure, loss of livestock and destitution (Marais1968; Price 1976; Rohde et al. 2003). The effects of drought werecompounded by legislation which attempted to control and reformcommunal institutions: the imposition of a house tax in 1878,the attempted privatization of communal lands in 1890, and theestablishment of government control over the mission stations in 1913are examples. Gradually, sedentarization occurred as a result of thealienation of large tracts of private land allocated to white farmerssurrounding the mission and increasing population pressure within. Bythis time parts of the landscape had already been transformed by thedaily concentration of large herds around a limited number of waterpoints. The frontier was closing quickly and the final act in the colonialecological revolution was in progress.

Scene 1: peasant farmers and dispersed outstations – 1900–39The elderly men and women of Paulshoek agree that the origins ofthe village began with an exodus from the old mission station ofLeliefontein in the early years of the twentieth century and increasinglyfrom the late 1920s as the grazing land around the mission becameovercrowded. Paulshoek was at that time an outstation, used duringthe months preceding the breeding season when rams needed to bekept separate from the rest of the herd. These rams were herdedcommunally, under the guardianship of an old man named Paul Joseph.The name followed naturally: ‘And every time the people asked “wherecan I put my ram” the people said “send him to Paul’s corner” [Paul seHoek]. So the place became Paulshoek’ (Interview with Ouma Betjie,23 June 1999).

Dirk Dirkse, a relation of Paul, built the first stone house in thevicinity of Paulshoek around the turn of the century. He was one of the‘pioneer’ communal farmers – the first to settle the area on a more orless permanent basis – having herds of cattle and using oxen to ploughthe first fields. These pioneer communal farmers had much in common,economically and agriculturally, with their counterparts among the


(a)

(b)

(c)

Transhumance within Leliefontein Reserve, 1800–1900

Transhumance within the Leliefontein Reserve, 1998–2003

FIGURE 3 Transhumance routes of Nama livestock keepers in (a)Namaqualand during pre-colonial era c. 1700 (upper map); (b) Leliefonteinmission station and reserve during the nineteenth century (centre map); and(c) Paulshoek (and other villages of Leliefontein) today (lower map)


white farmers who settled on land adjacent to the Leliefontein Reserveat this time. During the first decades of the twentieth century thisscattered sedentary population gradually cleared more land to plantwheat, oats, barley and rye as it was divided up amongst succeedinggenerations by the children of the original pioneer farmers (on privately-owned farms as well as in communal areas), who continued to keepcattle, sheep and goats.

The economic depression of 1929–33 occurred during an extendedperiod of exceptionally poor rains between 1923 and 1938, resultingin impoverishment and the disruption of peasant production in thereserve. One elderly woman recalls the desperate circumstances of herchildhood:

The people were poor, very poor. I remember a boy who had no clothes, noteven a jacket or pants or nothing. His mother walked around in rags. So mymother gave her some of our clothes, and she at least made him somethingfrom that. (Interview with Ouma [Grandma] Betjie, 23 June 1999)

Because reserve borders were unfenced and still permeable at thetime, communal farmers were able to migrate and exploit grazing onadjacent state or commercial land. They also began to settle the moremarginal parts of the reserve and during this period many familiesmoved to Paulshoek. Some came from outside the reserve while otherswere from Leliefontein village because it was becoming too crowded:

In the early days there were very few of us and the land was open on allsides: we could graze on what is now commercial land to the south, east andwest of us. At that time there was no need to migrate to the onderveld oranywhere else because there was enough space in this area. (Interview withOom [Uncle] Karel Joseph, 14 March 2000)

To an extent, this corner of Leliefontein represented the last fragmentof a rapidly closing frontier and as such was a faint reflection of the earlycolonial settler way of life.

While population pressures internal to the reserve continued, thecreation of individual title for white farmers in Bushmanland during the1930s is one example of how external events affected Paulshoek. Notonly were the emergency grazing areas of Bushmanland alienated fromcommunal farmers, but coloured farmers and farm workers, knownas Basters,3 who had settled in the area during the late nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries, were forced to resettle within already crowdedreserve areas. One group of such exiles moved to Moedverloer, a fewkilometres to the east of Paulshoek, in an area that had been onlysparsely and sporadically inhabited as an outstation. Such communal

3 ‘Basters’ were a population of mixed Khoen and European descent that emerged inthe late eighteenth century on the northern frontier as a result of white farmers takingNamaqua wives. Later they formed a distinct group, some of whom migrated to Rehoboth incentral Namibia. The Bushmanland Basters were known as Bosluis (bush tick) Basters, whoeventually congregated as a community in the Richtersveld during the 1950s.


grazing land still contained a significant cover of palatable shrubs (suchas Eriocephalus microphyllous, Hirpicium alienatum and Ruschia robusta).Radical environmental change coincided with the immigration of eightBosluis Baster families who had been evicted from white farms in Bush-manland in 1938, along with over 2,000 sheep, goats and donkeys. Thisnumber of animals almost doubled during the 1940s before the Bastersfinally moved to the Richtersveld in the early 1950s (personal commu-nication, Oom Karel Joseph, Paulshoek village elder, 14 March 2000).By this time, Moedverloer had been transformed from a veld ‘roughand overgrown’ with palatable perennials to an area capable of sustain-ing only small herds of livestock during reasonably good rainfall years.

In 1932 in Kleinfontein, a long narrow valley to the west of thepresent village of Paulshoek, Jacobus (Ouboetetjie) Joseph constructeda small stone house, which was subsequently used by the communityas a church and then also as a school. Between 55 and 60 childrenattended classes (see Figure 4).

In 1937 there was such a terrible drought here. We were so hungry when wewent to school . . . . And if we came across a rabbit that jumped out in frontof us then we wouldn’t go to school for the day. We would rather spendthe day catching that rabbit. We didn’t have matches. We would use a stick,which we would rub against a stone. Then the stick would get so hot andwe would put it into some donkey dung and hold it up to the sunlight andthen it would burn. Then it would start smoking and then we would make afire. Then we would braai [cook] the rabbit and eat it up. It wouldn’t matterif we got to school that day – we would rather get a hiding: we could neverresist a rabbit. (Interview with Oom Samuel van der Westhuizen, 14 March2000)

This scene in one of the last acts of the colonial ecological revolutionwas played out in much the same way as it had been in other reservesthroughout Namaqualand. Early peasant settlers began a process ofagrarian transformation of the landscape that was to escalate overthe coming decades. Croplands that were ploughed in deep sandybottomlands at this time show little sign of recovery, and stock poststhat were first inhabited on a seasonal basis have become permanentlysettled. While there is no doubt that by the early twentieth centurythe peasant population of Leliefontein and Paulshoek was integratedin the regional economy, many communal farmers retained the abilityto earn a substantial part of their income from agriculture. At theend of this first scene, we have photographic evidence that thelandscape was indeed transformed, at least in the main settlement areas(figures 2, 4, 8, 9).

Scene 2: The growth of Paulshoek, closing borders and wage dependency –1940–65

We were living far apart, and just temporarily in our places. And thatwas in 1940 to 1945. We stayed in [stock posts] such as Jan Cloete se


FIGURE 4 The Kleinfontein school house in 1938 (top photograph) and1998 (lower photograph). Prior to the creation of Paulshoek the area washeavily impacted by grazing and cropping. Sixty years later there has beenlittle change in ground cover or species composition, due to continued heavyutilization. (Photos by A. J. Andrews and the authors)


Puts, Perdedam, T’oeroegorras, Windpoort, Pan se Plaat and Gooikloof,Golmuskie, Moedverloer. And then we moved to Paulshoek in 1946. Welived in all those places, but we all came to this little church in Kleinfontein.(Interview with Oom Samuel van der Westhuizen, 14 March 2000 – seeFigure 4)

During the decades following the depression, livestock numbersreturned to late-nineteenth-century levels and the reserve’s humanpopulation increased by a third (Cape Archives 1891, 1904, 1909;Carstens 1966). This came about as a result of government policies thatsimultaneously consolidated white settler farming on reserve bordersand promoted territorial segregation with the migrant labour system. Atthe same time, the Union government was busy finding ways of linkingsegregationist policies to ecological recovery. De-stocking schemes andthe introduction of the camp system to communal areas were promotedafter the 1936 Drought Commission and in 1939 became a cornerstoneof Betterment planning (Beinart 1984). This was taken up later withrenewed vigour by the Tomlinson Commission of 1956 in the contextof the Bantu Authorities Act (1951) in order to combat soil erosion andpromote agricultural expansion within viable Bantustans. Formal rulesgoverning rights of residence and access to grazing were instituted inthe Namaqualand reserves along with various taxes on livestock, arableand residential land. The Boards of Management and Advisory Boardsthat were set up to administer the reserves’ internal affairs were ineffect institutions designed to ensure that the economic developmentof these areas was in line with the interests of the state and the labourrequirements of commercial farmers and mining companies.

Up until 1940 many whites were little better off than thereserve inhabitants, both groups having suffered during the prolongeddepression (Sharp and West 1984). However, the colour divide steadilydeepened as legislation such as the Land Settlement Act of 1940provided grazing licences, eventually converted to ownership rights,to white farmers. In 1948, grazing regulations to be administered bythe Reserve Management Board were passed, which set limits on stocknumbers and stock post movements (Government Notice 2600).

Meanwhile, reserve families began to gravitate to the newlyestablished Paulshoek village in 1942 in order to be closer to the schooland church and because of new regulations relating to summer andwinter grazing. During the winter, families and their livestock wereconcentrated around Paulshoek in kraals built just outside the villageboundary. ‘Now we stood in a line and we left our croplands till thesummer time, after the harvest, then we would move back’ (Oom KarelJoseph 14 March 2000). A linesman was employed to enforce theexclusion of livestock from the village and to make sure that croppingareas were reserved for summer grazing and the lowlands for wintergrazing. This system seemed to work for about 20 years, but a majorchange in the practice of seasonal transhumance occurred in the 1960s,coinciding with a period of extended drought (1964–73), increasedlabour migration and changing lifestyles in the younger generation. The


effects of this ‘line’ are evident in the landscape surrounding Paulshoek,which today has few palatable shrubs as a result of the heavy grazingassociated with the concentration of kraals located here during thisperiod.

In 1950 almost 10 per cent of Leliefontein’s population consisted ofwhites (some of whom had immigrated from as far afield as Cornwalland St Helena) and mixed marriages were common (Leeuwenburg1972; Sharp 1984). All this would change with the introduction in1950 of the Group Areas Act which confined ‘coloured’ farmers to thereserve areas, denying them access to non-privatized, state land acrossthe reserve borders (Archer and Meer 1998). Not only did the GroupAreas Act result in a dramatic increase in the reserve population as aresult of forced removals from other parts of the country, but, with theprovision of pensions, many retiring coloured farm workers ‘returned’to the reserves, often with their families and livestock.

This expansion of the reserve population within a limited landbase was exacerbated by the agricultural policies that encouragedneighbouring white farmers to fence their land, sink boreholes andinitiate a paddock system with rotational grazing practices. This hada substantial impact on the communal farmers since the porousborders became fixed, effectively enclosing the communal farmersinto the commonage. This happened during the mid-1950s, at thepeak of livestock numbers in Namaqualand (see Figure 5). Contraryto what Dean and MacDonald (1994) have argued, evidence fromNamaqualand suggests that the overall decline in livestock numberswas not a result of degradation, but rather a direct consequence ofan agricultural policy that promoted de-stocking while the communalareas continued to carry increasing numbers of livestock (Rohdeet al. 1999; Benjaminsen et al. 2006).4 For the people living inPaulshoek, livestock movements, firewood collection and medicinalplant harvesting were thereafter restricted to the communal area.

Between 1950 and 1970 copper and diamond mining and the fishingindustry flourished, producing low unemployment and a degree ofprosperity (Sharp and West 1984). Employment opportunities gaveboth white and coloured Namaqualanders a chance to overcome theuncertainty attached to farming in a marginal environment with anunpredictable climate. Whites were able to invest capital in commercialfarming by amalgamating private farms, while others moved off theland altogether. This depopulation of privately-owned farms made itpossible for whites to increase the size of individual land holdings,making commercial livestock farming that much more viable. Manywhite commercial farmers bought second farms in the summer rainfallBushmanland region to the west of Leliefontein, or in the succulent

4 According to Dean and MacDonald 1994: 295), stocking rates in Namaqualand fell from4.27 LSU (Large Stock Units) per square kilometre between 1911 and 1931 to 1.41 LSU persquare kilometre between 1971 and 1981. However, livestock data from Leliefontein showjust the opposite: here stocking rates have risen steadily from 2.3 LSU per square kilometrein 1890 to 3.8 LSU per square kilometre between 1972 and 1987.


FIGURE 5a The number of large stock units (LSU) in the magisterial districtof Namaqualand between 1860 and 1996

FIGURE 5b Large stock units in Leliefontein Communal Area, 1824–2002

rich sandveld towards the coast, thereby increasing their managementoptions and effectively reproducing pre-colonial transhumance herdingpatterns, a practice which continues today among many white farmerswho move their stock between farms according to seasonal and climaticconditions.

The effect of this economic growth on local people who had inthe meantime been classified as coloureds was somewhat different:


newly erected fence lines coupled with the prohibition of colouredfarming outside the reserve meant that, from the late 1950s onwards,communal pastoral mobility as a response to drought and seasonalgrazing conditions was increasingly confined to discrete village grazinglands within the reserve (Figure 3c). Such restrictions were mitigatedsomewhat by the fact that coloured people were not restricted by passlaws, nor were they forced back into the reserves from urban areas likemany Africans (Hendricks 1997). Permanent out-migration from thereserves to the urban centres of Namaqualand and further afield madeit possible for remaining reserve inhabitants to crop and herd livestockfrom this limited resource base and for extended family networks ofreciprocity to function between rural and urban areas in time of need(Sharp 1984). This freed the reserves from the levelling effects ofprogressive overcrowding leading to absolute poverty.

While many family members sought work away from the village,those resident in Paulshoek were largely engaged in agriculturalproduction and over thirty extended families held rights to croplands,covering most if not all of the potential arable land. The clearingand cultivation of croplands reached its peak during the 1960s at atime when many young villagers still aspired to becoming smallholderfarmers. Migrant labour had been a way of supplementing familyincomes since the inception of the reserve system, but with increasingpopulation pressure and drought during the 1960s, young men leftthe village to become migrant mine workers, or to join parastatalsthat controlled many industries, including the railway and telephonesystems.

The number of households in Paulshoek increased by more than 70per cent during the 1960s. The new village continued to attract familieswho had previously resided on stockposts in Paulshoek and Leliefonteinas well as the families of agricultural labourers from the surroundingcommercial farms (Leeuwenburg 1972). At the same time as labourmigration increased, villagers became truly sedentary as a result of thesecurity provided by village life and remittances from absent familymembers.

Until this time, little material improvement was discernible from onegeneration to the next. Ouma Sara Maarman’s story is one of longhours of hard work and deprivation as a female herder on the white-owned farms to the east of Paulshoek. Her daughter, Tannie [auntie]Hanna, spent her childhood under material circumstances just likehers, working as part of the family unit for a white commercial farmer.The story of the family’s rise to better fortunes began when TannieHanna met and married Oom Damon. At first they worked together asherders, moving from farm to farm. In between these periods of paidemployment they began to re-establish the family in the reserve:

In the sixties we came back, mainly for the children. They were able to goto school here, and my brother was living here already. We left the childrenhere, but we had to go on working for the farmers. We still had to pay thelevies. In 1973 we came to stay for good. For the first couple of years we were


lessees, but eventually we became citizens and could work for ourselves.(Tannie Hanna Jas, 22 June 1999, quoted in Abrahams 1999: 18).

It was a time of rapid social change. Population expansion and thecontinued proletarianization of the reserve population spelt the declineof mixed farming as a viable livelihood option for all but a few. Many ofPaulshoek’s once extensive croplands have remained fallow since then.The separation of private and communal land with fences created anenvironmental division that has only widened with time. The fenceline contrasts, which today are often cited as evidence of communaldegradation, are also an indication of how the veld can recover underreduced grazing pressure. This period marks the real beginning of thedivided landscape, in both socio-economic and ecological terms, thatcharacterizes the divisions of Namaqualand today.

Scene 3: Formal employment, economic units and retrenchment – 1966–93The 1960s were a pivotal point in the social economy of Paulshoekand mark the transition from a mixed-farming subsistence economysupplemented by migrant wage remittances to one that was almostwholly dependent on migrant labour and state pensions. By the end ofthe 1960s Paulshoek had about 70 households – approximately half oftoday’s population. People who settled or returned to Paulshoek wereno longer farmers or agricultural labourers drawn from the surroundingrural areas, but predominantly migrant labourers from mines, urbancentres or the highly intensive grape and vegetable farms of Klawer andVredendal to the south. Families increasingly sought the security ofestablished rights to residence, where their children would have accessto education. The aggregation of extended families provided a form ofsocial security, not only for those in need, but also for those who hadaccess to employment outside the village and required a family networkto care for those who were left behind.

During the 1970s and 1980s, people settled in Paulshoek for verydifferent reasons than they had previously. The amenities of the village,its safety and the ability of the unemployed to survive here on very littlemoney, made it attractive to many members of extended families whohad been absent, often for most of their lives. The village also grewas a result of redundancies and forced retirements from the regionalmining sector and increasingly from the parastatal industries. Relativelyhigh wages and retirement packages enabled many to build comfortablebrick houses, a trend that continues into the present. Some of thesereturnees also invested capital in livestock, in many cases providingsubsistence wages to local herders.

During the second half of the twentieth century most nationalagricultural policies were designed to promote the interests of (white)commercial farmers, using ecological models based on equilibrium andsuccession (Tainton 1999) as a justification for promoting the campsystem, infrastructure grants, stock reduction schemes and droughtrelief programmes (Benjaminsen et al. 2006; Rohde et al. 2006). Such


policies were predicated on the notion that extensive soil and vegetationdegradation was occurring as a result of overgrazing. This formedthe background and justification for the Rural Coloured Areas Law(Coloured Persons Representative Council) of 1979 which establishedthe basis for privatizing much of the commons. It was decided tosubdivide the Leliefontein reserve into ‘economic units’, in order toencourage entrepreneurship and the development of the region. It wasthought that privatization would lead to more ‘developed’ farmingtechniques and better conservation of the area, and that these changeswould rid the area of ‘whimsical’ and ‘irrational’ traditions that wereretarding modernization (Boonzaier et al. 1990; Rohde et al. 2006).

Thirty of the 47 farming units established in 1984 for the LeliefonteinCommunal Area were rented to individuals or syndicate groups, whilethe remaining 17 units were reserved for communal use. The majorityof people who were granted economic units had other sources ofincome – they were typically shop owners, teachers and mine workers(Archer et al. 1989). The majority in Leliefontein never accepted the‘economic units’ initiative because it marginalized communal farmerseven further than previously. Popular resistance against this scheme waswidespread and it was successfully contested in 1988 when communalresidents won their case in the Supreme Court on legal technicalities.

Traces of the economic unit policy are visible today in the rangelandsof Paulshoek where fences, in various stages of disrepair, still demarcatecamp boundaries. On the whole, this period is a faint mirror imageof the ecological revolution of de-agrarianization which occurredthroughout the region at this time (Hoffman and Rohde 2007).Communal and commercial croplands were abandoned and many,especially in more marginal areas, remain fallow today; the partialrecovery and recruitment of perennial plants is often misinterpreted asevidence of overgrazing (Hoffman and Rohde 2007).

Epilogue: political and economic transformation – 1994–2007The 1990s represent another watershed period for the village ofPaulshoek. With the democratization of national politics and thecreation of several development and land reform programmes, materialimprovements have occurred in the village. Many previous observersbelieved that the reserve’s pattern of marginalization, poverty and socialfracture were somehow inevitable (for example, Price 1976). It wassuggested that the worst-case scenario of a ‘laissez-faire policy’ (which isbasically what transpired during most of the twentieth century) wouldlead to an ‘increase in absolute poverty, growth of class distinctions,migration away from the area, deterioration of physical resources anddecline in internally generated capital’ (Leeuwenburg 1972: 26). It istrue that these processes have occurred – poverty exists, as do classdistinctions. There has also been no immediate improvement in theconservation of natural resources and there is little to suggest thatoutside capital has been put to productive use inside the communalarea. The solution of land privatization or ‘group-based, industrial


farming’ was unsuccessful. However, events since 1994 have shownhow quickly the transformation of the rural social economy can occur.The addition of commonage through the Land Reform Programme(Rohde et al. 2002; May and Lahiff 2007), new housing providedunder the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), thereorganization of local government, the inclusion of Paulshoek’syounger generation in the political decision-making processes of thevillage – these and other recent developments would have beenunthinkable only 20 years ago.

In spite of these positive changes, little has changed in terms ofland use and its impact on the commons, which are typically portrayedby policy makers and agricultural advisers as examples of degradationcaused by overgrazing and inappropriate land-use practices (Hoffmanand Ashwell 2001). Today, land redistribution within the Land ReformProgramme is dependent on the formulation of management plansapproved by the Department of Agriculture, along lines which arenot dissimilar to those promoted under the ‘economic units’ policy.Commercial farms bordering the Leliefontein communal area arebeing bought by the Department of Land Affairs and made intoMunicipal commonage to be administered on a different basis fromthe old commons. Management plans for these new communal farmsstipulate a low fixed carrying capacity, adherence to the camp system,a prohibition on donkeys and kraaling or the erection of shelters forherders, and a monthly payment per head of livestock (Rohde et al.2002; Lebert 2004; Lebert and Rohde 2007). The imposition of amanagement system based on commercial farming models, as well asthe relatively large distances that have to be travelled to access the newMunicipal commonage, has meant that to date only wealthier farmershave benefited from these programmes.

IMPACTS OF LAND USE ON THE ENVIRONMENT

Land-use practices in Namaqualand have always been stronglyinfluenced by the climate of the region, especially rainfall andtemperature. These climatic influences are not static in either spaceor time but vary considerably across the landscape and over days,months and years. Paulshoek falls within the arid and semi-arid winter-rainfall Succulent Karoo biome and has a mean annual rainfall of200 millimetres with high inter-annual variability (see Figure 6). Thistemporal variability is matched by a significant spatial difference inannual rainfall across the landscape, determined largely by distancefrom the Kamiesberg massif and by local topographic features.Livestock herders appreciate this spatial variability and sometimesmove their stock posts to areas of better grazing where isolatedthundershowers have fallen.

While rainfall is a key driver of ecosystem processes and humanresponses in the region, several different land-use practices, some of


which have changed substantially in their extent and intensity overtime, have influenced the composition and dynamics of Paulshoek’slandscapes over the last 100 years. However, not all landscape units(such as rivers, sandy pediments, rocky uplands) have been affectedin the same way or to the same extent, and neither have all land-usepractices had the same degree of influence. Two distinct processesaccount for the obvious environmental differences observed acrossfence lines between communal areas and neighbouring privately-ownedfarms: the impact of decades of firewood collection and relatively highstocking densities on the communal side and the lower stocking levelswithin rotational systems of fenced camps on the other. The collectionof medicinal plants (Goldberg 1998) and reeds and other materials suchas Polymita albiflora (Evans 2001), used for constructing shelters, havehad a relatively small and insignificant impact on the environment.

Before 2003, when electricity was installed in the village, householdsrelied predominantly on fuelwood for their energy needs. Although18 different species were commonly collected and used for a rangeof different purposes (such as cooking, heating, baking, ironing)Rhus undulata, a 2–3 metre evergreen shrub, was preferred and usedextensively by all households (Solomon 2000). Using a time seriesanalysis of aerial photographs which start in 1960, Solomon (2000)has shown that, despite decades of use, this species has not declinedin abundance in the region even at localities close to the village. Itsability to survive drought and to re-sprout after being harvested (evenwhen all of its above-ground stems were experimentally removed atground level) has ensured its survival. However, the impact over manyyears of the removal of the dead material from a number of small(less than one metre) shrubs which dominate the region has perhapsbeen more significant. In an assessment of the impact of fuelwoodharvesting on rangeland succession, Solomon (2000) experimentallyremoved dead shrub skeletons and measured the response of seedlingsgrowing underneath. She recorded a 17 per cent increase overallin shrub mortality when dead material was removed. Such impactson the differential recruitment of key rangelands species could havesignificantly influenced the composition and biomass production ofPaulshoek’s environments over the long term. With the installationof electricity, total fuelwood consumption has declined by 75 percent, although many poorer households continue to collect and burnfuelwood to augment their energy needs (Price 2005).

For the first half of the twentieth century cultivation was widelypractised on the sandy pediments by all households in Paulshoek. Thisformed part of a general subsistence production strategy that includedlivestock. However, the rise of a cash economy in the village, whichwe suggest occurred from the mid-twentieth century, resulted in ageneral decline of cropping as an economic activity in the region.Detailed cropping records, collected since 1996 in the village, showthat an average of only eight farmers have cultivated crops of anysort (predominantly wheat and oats but also small quantities of barleyand rye), and then usually only a few hectares in any one year.


Although many croplands in Paulshoek have lain fallow for more than50 years, their impact on rangeland composition and productivityis still evident today. Soils of abandoned croplands are significantlylower in nitrogen and organic matter than surrounding rangelandsoils and remain dominated by the unpalatable and semi-toxic shrub,Galenia africana even after many years (Allsopp 1999). Annuals arealso common on old lands following good rains. However, a fulland productive complement of perennial leaf-succulent and evergreenedible shrubs such as Ruschia robusta and Eriocephalus microphyllous,which are abundant in unploughed and lightly grazed areas in theregion, appears unable to recolonize croplands under high grazingintensity.

Heavy grazing by goats, sheep and donkeys over decades has alteredthe composition of Paulshoek’s rangelands substantially, particularlythe low-lying productive sandy areas. The Department of Agriculturerecommends that if Paulshoek’s 20,000 hectares were to be used forsustainable commercial livestock production, then fewer than 2,000small stock (goats and sheep) should be kept on the range. However,since 1971, when reliable stock records were first assembled for thevillage, an average of 3,458 goats and sheep have grazed the Paulshoekcommons (Figure 6). This number has fluctuated between 1,007 and6,269 animals over this period, largely in response to rainfall.5

Heavy grazing results in both a general loss of perennial vegetationcover and a predictable shift in species composition (Todd andHoffman 1999). Palatable perennial shrubs are reduced in cover byas much as 20 to 30 per cent in heavily stocked communal lands(Seymour and Dean 1999; Todd and Hoffman 1999; Mayer 2004).In this semi-arid environment where cover rarely exceeds 50 per cent,this represents a significant reduction in biomass of nearly two tonnesper hectare. During high-rainfall years, geophytes and annuals areabundant in areas where perennial shrub cover is reduced, but theyare generally absent during drought conditions. Besides the physicaleffect that heavy and continuous grazing has on preferred plant species(Riginos and Hoffman 2003; Mayer 2004), an important way in whichthe communal area rangelands are transformed over long time periodsis through the continuous removal of reproductive material duringthe spring flowering season, resulting in reduced or non-existent seedset and recruitment (Todd and Hoffman 1999; Todd 2000; Riginosand Hoffman 2003). Not all species are affected in the same mannerand those species with relatively few, showy and nutritious flowers,such as Cheiridopsis denticulata and Tripteris sinuatum, are most affected(Hoffman et al. 2003; Mayer 2004).

Changes in plant cover and composition have cascade effects fora range of organisms and associated ecosystem properties (Hoffman

5 These totals exclude the 200–300 donkeys which currently graze the area and whichtherefore contribute, in terms of the amount of forage consumed, the equivalent of anadditional 780–1,170 small stock to the range.


FIGURE 6 Rainfall (bars) and sheep and goat numbers in Paulshoek forthe period 1971–2004. These two variables are related by the followingrelationship: y = 12.62x + 01133.7 (where y = number of animals in anyone year and x = previous year’s annual rainfall total) (n = 26; r2 = 0.4217;p < 0.001)

et al. 2003). For example, soil nutrient levels in the region aresignificantly influenced by the density as well as the size, canopy spreadand chemical properties of different perennial shrub species (Allsopp1999). A reduction in plant cover and density and a shift in speciescomposition thus not only lower soil nitrogen and plant-availablephosphorus levels, but also affect several other associated properties,such as arbuscular mycorrhizal infectivity, soil moisture and soil pH(Allsopp 1999).

Other organisms within the region are also affected by thetransformation in plant cover and species composition broughtabout by heavy grazing. Seymour and Dean (1999) show thatthe dominance of granivorous, florivorous and predator/scavengerinsect guilds increases in response to the increase in flower andseed availability associated with the heavily grazed, annual-dominatedcommunal areas. Differences in soil temperature, shrub size and plantspecies composition between heavily grazed and lightly grazed sitesalso influence the abundance, diversity and dominance of differentinvertebrate habitats in the region. Seymour and Dean (1999) arguethat the change in insect guild dominance has long-term implicationsfor a range of ecosystem processes such as flower production, seeddispersal and perennial plant recruitment, and, because of this,compounds the effects of a transformed landscape.


Working in both heavily and lightly grazed environments inPaulshoek, Mayer (2004) recorded a decline in insect pollinatordiversity and abundance in transformed vegetation. This resulted ina decrease in fruit set in several leaf-succulent shrubs. Low vegetationcover and the dominance of unpalatable plants in a landscape appearto disrupt co-evolved plant–insect pollination systems.

A reduction in plant cover as a direct consequence of heavy grazingalso has knock-on effects for the diversity of small mammals and birdsin the region (Joubert and Ryan 1999). Different guilds within thesebroad groups of organisms are affected differently, primarily by thechange in habitat structure and food availability.

While different land-use practices, particularly firewood collection,crop cultivation and heavy livestock grazing of the communal landsover many decades, have affected the biota and ecosystems ofPaulshoek, not all landscape units have been affected in the sameway or to the same extent. The impacts have been greatest forthe sandy pediments and the many low-lying valleys in the region(Petersen et al. 2004), which comprise less than 10 per cent of thearea (Vetter 1996). River systems, and particularly the rocky uplands(Anderson and Hoffman 2007), appear better buffered from long-term,intensive land use.

At a somewhat smaller unit of scale, the effects of heavy grazingpressure are also most pronounced in the immediate, 400–500 metreradius around permanent stock posts (Riginos and Hoffman 2003).The location of water points and stockposts, which are usuallyeasily accessible to herders, as well as the necessity of having deepsandy soil for cultivation, are some obvious reasons why it hasbeen these lowland environments that have been most transformed.Furthermore, this pattern of major transformation of the lowlands,so evident in Paulshoek, is repeated across the communal areas ofLeliefontein (Anderson and Hoffman 2007) and appears to be a generalphenomenon for Namaqualand as a whole, irrespective of land tenureregime (Hoffman and Rohde 2007).

How has this transformation of the environment affected Paulshoek’slivestock production system over the last 33 years? Figure 6 showsthat stock numbers in Paulshoek fluctuate in a significant relationto rainfall. A significant correlation between stock numbers and theprevious year’s rainfall has also been observed in the communal area ofConcordia, some 100 km north of Paulshoek (Benjaminsen et al. 2006);it appears to be a general pattern for the heavily stocked communalareas of Namaqualand. Although the trend in livestock numbers inPaulshoek since 1971 is slightly downward, it is difficult to know ifthis will persist over longer time periods. With the loss of perennialplants under heavy grazing, the livestock production system becomesmore reliant on annual plants for forage, as is the case for the lowlandsof Paulshoek. Under these conditions, multiple-year and even severesingle-year droughts have a significant impact on stock numbers. Poorlyfed, thin animals are also very susceptible to the cold snaps which oftenfollow severe dry periods. In August 2003, for example, a quarter of the


animals in Paulshoek died in a single evening after an exceptionally coldand wet period following the protracted drought in the region, althoughthis has been an observed feature of the livestock production system inNamaqualand since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Webley2007). The recent downward trend in livestock numbers might alsobe explained by several other factors, including a general declinein interest and investment in farming characteristic of processes ofde-agrarianization.

Finally, what historical perspectives are there on the ratesof environmental change and how easily could communal areaenvironments be restored if land-use practices were altered? Anecdotalevidence and observations from a 6-hectare exclosure erected inPaulshoek in 1996 suggests that the rocky uplands recover reasonablyquickly (perhaps over timespans of a few decades) when fully protectedfrom grazing, and particularly when a reasonably diverse complementof perennial species is present prior to protection. In addition, anhistorical analysis of aerial photographs suggests that, with a reductionin stock numbers to recommended levels, recovery of the vegetation ofthe lowland environments is also possible (Figure 7).

Before Paulshoek was enclosed by boundary fences separating privatefarms from the communal area in the 1960s, borders were porous andfarmers grazed in relative freedom within an expanded commons. Atthis time stocking rates were relatively high both in communal areasand on private farms (Hoffman and Rohde 2007). The impact ofgrazing was therefore similar for both tenure systems and the aerialphotograph taken in 1960 of Kuile, a lowland area on the southernborder of Paulshoek, shows little difference in the cover of perennialshrubs between the communal area and adjacent private farm. In 1997,however, following nearly 40 years of relatively low stocking densitieson the private farm, an increase in perennial plant cover in the aerialphotograph is easily discernible. Field observations at this site confirmthe presence of a diversity of perennial shrubs, including many leaf-succulent shrubs (Todd and Hoffman 1999). The communal area,however, looks little different from how it appeared in the 1960 aerialphotograph, and field observations confirm that it is dominated byGalenia africana and annual plants during high-rainfall years (Todd andHoffman 1999; Mayer 2004).

A series of fifteen repeat photographs depicting croplands, stockpostsand grazing areas confirms that much of Paulshoek’s pastoral landscapehas changed very little since 1940 (see figures 2, 8 and 9). Underthe current stocking regime in Paulshoek, however, it is unlikelythat perennial leaf-succulent plants will re-establish on the bottomlands, since recruitment is dependent to some extent on the presenceof mature adult plants in the vicinity able to provide a sourceof seed for recolonization. Leaf-succulent species within the familyAizoaceae are notoriously poor dispersers (Parolin 2001) and can takedecades to cross even short distances of a few hundred metres. Wind-dispersed diaspores within the Asteraceae, however, are often morewidely dispersed and can probably cover hundreds of metres or even


(South African Department of Maps and Surveying, 443/21/6009, 8 August 1960)

(South African Department of Maps and Surveying, 998/04/1276, 1 January 1997)

FIGURE 7 Aerial photographs of the boundary between Paulshoekcommonage (upper half of photograph) and Rooiwal private farmland (lowerhalf of photograph). The 1960 image was taken two years after the fencewas first erected and shows that grazing had a severe impact on both areas,indicated by the low vegetation cover. Thirty-seven years later, recovery on theRooiwal side of the fence has occurred due to reduced stocking rates, whilelittle change is evident in the communal area.


FIGURE 8 (Top photograph taken in 1937, bottom photograph taken in2005) This stock post has been in continuous occupation since 1937. Theinvasion of short-lived non-palatable perennials (Galenia africana) is indicativeof ecological processes that have occurred throughout the landscape ofPaulshoek in disturbed sandy areas during recent decades. Note the persistenceof the low dark trees (Rhus undulata) in the rocky areas. These are the mosthighly valued source of firewood – this image illustrates the sustainable use ofthis resource. (Photos: A. J. Andrews and the authors)


FIGURE 9 (Top photograph taken in 1938, bottom photograph taken in1999) Kleinfontein – threshing floor, croplands and rocky uplands. Note thetransformation of the fallow croplands in the mid-ground. Much of this consistsof non-palatable perennials (like Galenia africana), although there is somerecruitment of long-lived palatable shrubs, indicating that recovery is possibleas land-use intensity declines over long timeframes. (Photos: A. J. Andrews andthe authors)

kilometres in a single dispersal event. In the absence of reproductivelymature adult plants, however, recolonization of transformed lowlandsis going to be slow and will probably not occur under current stockingrates.


DISCUSSION

During the twentieth century, the village of Paulshoek, and villages likeit across Namaqualand, have been transformed from sparsely populatedoutstations of subsistence agriculture to nucleated settlements relianton migrant labour and state welfare. Throughout this time, the lives ofvillagers have been constrained by increasingly repressive governmentpolicies, and disproportionately influenced by events and circumstancesfar beyond the borders of the communal lands. The endgame ofcolonialism as played out in the state’s takeover of the mission stationsin 1913, the great depression which swept the globe in the late 1920sand 1930s, the titling of farms for white farmers in Bushmanlandin the late 1930s, the rise of the National Party and its support forwhite farmers surrounding the communal areas, the promotion oflabour reserves in association with commercial agriculture, mining andnationalized industries – all had knock-on effects on the communalenvironment.

Each scene from the political and socio-economic drama ofPaulshoek’s history has left a corresponding mark on the surroundingenvironment. While little direct evidence exists for the changes whichaccompanied the settlement of the area by peasant farmers in the earlypart of the twentieth century, some inferences can be drawn from oralhistories and comparative studies with well-documented commercialfarms on the borders of the reserve. Photographs of the Paulshoekarea in the late 1930s and early 1940s, before the village was created,show that the land was already heavily utilized for both grazing andcultivation. The repeats of these photos show that the environment haschanged very little since this heyday of agricultural production in thereserve. Just the opposite is the case in the surrounding privately-ownedcommercial farms. Such fence-line contrasts are an obvious illustrationof the dialectical process of landscape change in relation to socio-cultural and political factors. This stark separation in the landscaperepresents a much deeper and intractable issue of contemporarytransformation in South Africa’s social and political environment.

The response of the communal population to such external processesand events can be traced in the landscape of villages such as Paulshoek.Reminders of the last days of the colonial ecological revolution, asplayed out in the aborted ‘economic units’ policy of the 1970s and1980s, criss-cross the landscape as defunct and broken fences, built inorder to enforce the privatization of communal land. This apartheidattempt at ‘land reform’ took place at the cusp of a new post-agrarian era when large tracts of cultivated land were abandoned acrossNamaqualand in both the commercial and communal sectors (seeBryceson 1996). Livestock numbers began a steady decline in thecommercial sector, largely as a response to government de-stockingschemes and subsidies, whereas the communal areas were largely leftout of the loop of agricultural or any other type of development until1994.


Apart from the obvious decline in the importance of agricultureto the regional economy, the symptoms of a post-agrarian ecologicalrevolution include the increasing importance of conservation in policyand development, and its association with a growing tourist industry.And yet the communal areas lag behind in many important respects,still fixed in the dying phases of apartheid divisions. The process whichcreated the ubiquitous ‘fence-line’ contrasts, so favoured by agriculturaladvisers seeking to demonstrate the effects of high stocking rates onNamaqualand’s communal rangelands, is ongoing even today. On theone side of the fence, the end of agricultural subsidies has led to theexodus of white farmers from the area, where a 30 per cent reductionin occupied farms has occurred during the last eight years alone(May and Lahiff 2007). On the other side, the decline of the miningindustry swells the communal population with more unemployed andretrenched labourers, who often seek to reinvest their retrenchment orpension capital in livestock (Anseeuw and Laurent 2007). Although thepopulation in villages such as Paulshoek has declined slightly during thelast ten years, partly due to the concentration and growth of economicand political power in a few large towns such as Springbok, communalstock farmers with few or no other livelihood options continue to ekeout a meagre income from the land. As a result, the fence-line contrastspersist. But the post-agrarian ecological revolution in the form of touristdevelopment has come to Paulshoek, which itself now has a touristcamp and several new guest houses. These, however, are occupiedfor the most part by a newer breed of tourist – academic researchers(including the authors of this article).

During our time in Paulshoek, we have been able to answer manyquestions about the dialectical relationship of nature, people, landand power. The question of how long it will take to undo theenvironmental and socio-economic effects of 100 years of separationremains unanswered.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Our gratitude goes first and foremost to the people of Paulshoek, without whoseforbearance, intelligence and humour none of this would have been possible. Ourthanks, too, to the many generous researchers, officials and friends in Namaqualandwhose interest and engagement with the current process of social and politicaltransformation made this research so rewarding. This article was made possibleby EU funding under several projects, including ‘Management and Policy Optionsfor the Sustainable Development of Communal Rangelands and their Communitiesin Southern Africa (MAPOSDA)’ (INCO, ICA-CT-2001-10050) and ‘FloodwaterRecharge of Alluvial Aquifers in Dryland Environments (WADE)’ (GOCE-CT-2003-506680). The European Commission cannot accept responsibility for any informationprovided or views expressed. The contribution of BIOTA Southern Africa, sponsoredby the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research under promotion number01 LC 0024A, is also gratefully acknowledged. Finally, we thank the Mazda WildlifeFund for the use of a courtesy vehicle.


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ABSTRACT

During the twentieth century, the 20,000 hectares commons surrounding thevillage of Paulshoek as well as the neighbouring privately-owned farms havebeen significantly influenced by evolving land-use practices driven largely bysocio-economic and political change in the broader Namaqualand and SouthAfrican region. Land-use practices in the communal lands of Namaqualandwere based initially on transhumant pastoralism, then on extensive drylandcropping associated with livestock production under restricted mobility, andmore recently on a sedentarized labour reserve where agricultural productionnow forms a minor part of the local economy. For the first half of thetwentieth century, farmers on communal and privately-owned farms sharedsimilar transhumant pastoral practices and both moved across unfenced farmboundaries. By the middle of the century, however, fence-lines were establishedand commercial farming on privately-owned farms was increasingly managedaccording to rangeland science principles. As the population grew in thecommunal areas, families gravitated to new ‘service’ villages such as Paulshoekand became increasingly dependent on migrant labour and state welfare.While the majority of former croplands are now fallow, many of them fordecades or more, communal livestock populations have remained relativelyhigh, fluctuating with rainfall. The impact of this history of land use can becompared with that of neighbouring privately-owned farms where low stockingrates, coupled with a variety of state subsidies, have had a very differentenvironmental outcome. This article charts the environmental transformationsthat have occurred in the area of Paulshoek as a direct result of the region’spolitical history and the evolution of the regional economy. We present a varietyof evidence drawn from archival sources, oral history, repeat aerial and groundphotography, and detailed climate, cropping and livestock records to show thatevents far beyond the borders of Namaqualand’s communal areas have had aprofound influence on their environments.

RÉSUMÉ

Au cours du vingtième siècle, les 20,000 hectares de terrains communaux quientourent le village de Paulshoek, ainsi que les fermes privées environnantes,ont été fortement influencés par l’évolution des pratiques d’utilisation desterres, largement déterminée par les changements socioéconomiques etpolitiques survenus dans la région du Namaqualand et plus largement enAfrique du Sud. Les pratiques d’utilisation des terres sur les terres communalesdu Namaqualand reposaient initialement sur le pastoralisme transhumant, puissur la culture sèche intensive associée à la production de bétail avec mobilitélimitée, et plus récemment sur une réserve de main-d’œuvre sédentariséeavec une production agricole qui ne représente plus qu’une faible partie


de l’économie locale. Pendant la première moitié du vingtième siècle, lesexploitants de terrains communaux et les exploitants de fermes privées avaientdes pratiques pastorales transhumantes similaires et tous deux traversaientdes terrains non clôturés. Pendant la seconde moitié du siècle, en revanche,les clôtures étaient posées et la gestion de l’activité agricole commercialedans les fermes privées répondait de plus en plus à des principes de sciencedes pâturages. Au fur et à mesure de l’accroissement de la population dansles zones communales, les familles ont gravité vers les nouveaux «villagesservices» comme Paulshoek et leur dépendance vis-à-vis de la main-d’œuvremigrante et de la protection sociale de l’État s’est accrue. Alors que la majoritédes terres de culture sont aujourd’hui en jachère, et ce depuis des décenniespour certaines, les populations de bétail communal sont restées relativementélevées, variant selon les précipitations. On peut comparer l’impact de l’histoirede l’utilisation de ces terres avec celui des fermes privées voisines dont lafaiblesse des taux d’exploitation du bétail, associée aux subventions publiquesdiverses, a eu des conséquences très différentes sur l’environnement. Cetarticle retrace les transformations environnementales survenues dans la régionde Paulshoek en conséquence directe de l’histoire politique de la région etde l’évolution de l’économie régionale. À partir de données variées issuesd’archives, de l’histoire orale, de photographies aériennes et au sol répétées,ainsi que de registres détaillés du climat, des récoltes et de l’exploitation dubétail, il montre que des événements situés bien au-delà des zones communalesdu Namaqualand ont eu une influence profonde sur l’environnement.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SEPARATION: THE HISTORICAL … · 2012-11-14 · Africa 78 (2), 2008 DOI:...

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