Stakeholders and stickholders: power and paradigms in a South African development context

Abstract

The alluring vision that ecotourism can drive both rural development and ecological objectives has taken deep root in post-apartheid South Africa where severe economic inequalities persist as a result of dispossession and grossly restricted access to resources during the colonial and apartheid years. It has justified the establishment of ever growing numbers of public and private game reserves. However, anthropological fieldwork in and around Madikwe Game Reserve in the North West Province has revealed a less appealing story, one of marginalisation and exclusion of local residents. This was despite the rhetoric of the Reserve's managing agency which claimed that Madikwe was run on ‘people-based conservation’ principles. The discrepancy between rhetoric and practice revealed and emphasised a power imbalance within Madikwe's development initiative and highlighted how, regardless of extreme shifts in approach to development, there was a persistent reliance on paradigmatic models that were unable to accommodate the complexities of local lived realities.