Impalas run through the thorn bush, ibis soars above the lake and lightning strikes the horizon as a storm approaches from the Drakensberg.
The visitors who are driven through the 10,000 or more acres of the Nambiti Game Reserve in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa will see what they believe is an unaltered and unaltered natural landscape.
Njabulo Hodla, the reserve’s assistant manager, sees something else: thickening of the undergrowth that someone needs to prune, tracks to be cleared, fences to restore and animals that eventually need to be cleared, all victims of Covid again. “It is difficult, very difficult. I’ve never seen a season like this, ”said the 31-year-old, who has been with Nambiti since 2008.
Across the continent, Covid has hit South Africa hardest with more than a million confirmed cases and 29,000 deaths according to official figures. As elsewhere in Africa, the pandemic caused enormous economic damage, with thousands of businesses going bankrupt and tens of millions unable to make a living. The economy cut 2.2 million jobs in the second quarter of 2020.
Nambiti reserve map
The massive tourism industry – which employs about one in 20 workers and provides just under 3% of GDP – has been devastated.
Once upon a time, the Christmas season in December meant that tens of thousands of foreign visitors spend hundreds, even thousands, of dollars every day. With the number of new infections rising in the country and authorities struggling to stop a second wave, no one expects tourists to return any time soon.
South Africa’s 500 or so private game reserves are often located in more remote and impoverished parts of the country. They spend significant amounts of money every month to feed and care for the animals. Many have been forced to shut down permanently, lay off staff, and sell or even shoot animals. Others survived – just.
“Reserves like ours went from a pretty decent income for 300 jobs and a huge conservation project to literally nothing. We fell off a wall, ”said Clarke Smith, president of Nambiti. “We are still feeling the pain … and the impact on the region has been very pronounced.”
Nambiti, unlike many others, is a community owned project so a significant portion of the profits and an annual lease is paid to local villages. This year, these revenues have been sharply reduced and with many of the reserve employees still working limited hours or at home, the coming months will be very difficult.
“Instead of an end-of-year bonus, people only take home half a salary or nothing,” said Hodla, who grew up in one of the nearby villages. “The communities here are just at stake. The reserve plays a major role. Everyone knows someone who works here. “
Many fear that if the crisis continues for many more months, hundreds of thousands of acres in South Africa that have been converted into more lucrative game reserves in recent decades will return to livestock or grain farming – with massive loss of habitat for endangered animals and other species.
But if conservation activities have been badly affected, so has the protection of other parts of the country’s heritage.
Like many parts of rural South Africa, northern KwaZulu province suffered from acute unemployment, massive health problems, including tuberculosis and HIV, and deep poverty even before the pandemic. Industries have been gutted in recent decades, with many mines and factories closing.
In some places, such losses were partially offset by a thriving battlefield tourism trade. Tens of thousands of British visitors have come to walk the sites where British troops fought the Zulus in the bloody war of 1879 that strengthened the imperial hold over southern Africa.
The battlefields of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift are the main attraction for British tourists who are usually old enough to be fans of the 1964 film Zulu which dramatized the story of the catastrophic British defeat and the final despair at the sites.
This winter – or summer in the southern hemisphere – both battlefields are “empty”, the memorials, tombs and museums deserted.
“There is no work. We just sit there. The situation is so bad. There is a drought and no harvests in our fields, and a bag of flour. [maize flour] costs twice as much as in the spring, ”said Dalton Ngobese, a local guide who has not worked since March.
With the tourists gone, so are the hawkers selling ethnic handicrafts, snacks and water. Part of the battlefield admission fee goes to schools, so this source of income has also dried up.
The lodgings were closed for much of the summer and have only recently reopened, reducing the number of guests. The lodges provide jobs and also fund support programs for local students, charities, orphanages and other projects.
“When we suffer, the whole community will be hit,” said Shane Evans, manager of the Isandlwana Lodge, where groups toured the battlefield.
In the village of Isandlwana there is resignation. With so few jobs on site, men have traditionally traveled to Johannesburg, a six-hour drive north, to work in mines or, more recently, hotels. But both industries are also suffering and most of the Isandlwana residents who were employed have lost them.
Government support has been patchy and a huge burden for a country that continues to fight the legacies of the racist, repressive apartheid regime. The ruling African National Congress, in power since 1994, has been accused of incompetence and corruption, but also faces a declining economy, tens of millions of people in poverty and massive debt. A job support program is guaranteed until the end of the year, but money is slow to come in.
One consequence in the villages around Isandlwana is that crime is on the rise, with livestock theft and burglary getting worse, Ngobese said. A recent drought has left local communities around the battlefields unable to plant crops that traditionally supplement income and diet.
Nellie Buthelezi’s husband was one of those fired by the local government for job cuts earlier this year, while the lodge where she works has been closed since March. The 41-year-old mother of four has lived in Isandlwana all her life and cannot remember ever being this bad.
“Food is expensive and it goes so fast. We don’t have any money to rent, ”she told the Observer. “We just hope with God for a better new year.”