Comments on: SANParks launches National Parks Week

By: SANParks to launch 2009 SA National Parks Week on 14 September | Travelwires.com

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 15:43:53 +0000

[...] 7, 2009 at 5:43 pm The country’s body charged with the management of national parks, South African National Parks (SANParks) will officially launch the 2009 SA National Parks Week (SANPW) in the Mopani camp of the [...]

By: SANParks revise filming and photography permit process | Travelwires.com

SANParks revise filming and photography permit process | Travelwires.com — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:48:42 +0000

[...] Featured, Sales & Marketing — By Muzi Mohale on August 26, 2009 at 12:48 pm South African National Parks [SANParks] has revised its procedure and tariffs for commercial filming and photography in the [...]

By: Conservation Stars Shine at the 2009 Kudu Awards | Travelwires.com

Conservation Stars Shine at the 2009 Kudu Awards | Travelwires.com — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:16:36 +0000

[...] a glamorous “Green Tie Affair” at Gallagher Estate on Thursday night [25 June 2009], hosted by South African National Parks, individuals and groups who had contributed significantly to conservation were honoured with the [...]

By: Kathy Dumbrell

Kathy Dumbrell — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:19:19 +0000

While this initiative is to be applauded, I cannot help but read the report with outrage. How can SANParks claim to be a responsible custodian of *both* our “natural and cultural heritage” when a frighteningly long list of old or vernacular buildings (artefacts of our cultural heritage) within their parks are neglected? While I’m sure SANParks will be quick to dismiss this post as irrevelant and will point out all the cultural resouces they do care for, I’d like to point them, the author of this article, FNB and the readers to the sad state of the old farmhouses within the West Coast National Park. I refer here not to Geelbek, but to Mooimaak, “Kitnooi se huis” on Boerplein, Uitkyk, the complex of stone longbuildings next to the lagoon south of UItkyk and to the house at Abrahamskraal, demolished and replaced with a faux Cape house. Why??? Perhaps SANParks National headquarters will respond – the officials of the West Coast National Park haven’t since I sent them letters between 2004 and 2006. But I hear my letter is referred to almost as an offfice joke… Well, heritage management isn’t a joke and it’s time SANParks officials realised that the environment is more complex than just flora and fauna. If they cannot truly act as custodians of the places (such as the Lagebaan Lagoon) that only survived as “wilderness” because ordinary people eked out their existence there in a subsistence manner over centuries – and, under apartheid were overlooked because they weren’t “purebred” and easily classifiable into racial groups. Surely the stories of the people of a “Nature Reserve” or “National Park” should not be swept away to create a myth of “wilderness”??? Is that any different to the now-discredited historiographic tradition of Chistian National Education that taught generations of South African children that South Africa was a an uninhabited wilderness until the Voortekkers “discovered” it?