Thirty-six years ago, South Africa's white-minority government forced a small community known as the Makuleke people from their land so that it could be included in Kruger National Park.
They resisted. But their houses were destroyed, and the Makuleke were put on trucks with their belongings and ordered to resettle an area 30 miles (50 kilometers) away.
In 1998, four years after the fall of apartheid in South Africa, the Makuleke won back their ancestral territory.
The community then faced a tough choice: Whether to return to their land or to stay put and preserve their land to gain income and jobs from ecotourism and park-approved hunting.
After much discussion and thought, the Makuleke chose the latter, recalls Livingston Mululeke, a community spokesperson.
"The older people longed for their land and wanted to go back there," he said. "They remembered how hard it was for them to lose it. They remembered how they were bundled on government trucks with such belongings as they could take and transported to the new place.
"It was terrible. Our old people to this day shiver when they talk about that experience."
With the younger people it was different, Mululeke says. "They did not have the same connection as the old people with their ancestral land and were not as anxious to go back there. They could see the advantages of rather letting it remain part of the park."
Including himself among the younger generation, he said: "Our argument was that it could be of bigger benefit to the community. We said we could get a fixed income from giving concessions to game-lodge operators, and our people could get jobs from it."
"Finally the older people agreed. And as it turned out, we have delivered on our promises," Mululeke said.
By opting to keep their land in the park and earn income that way, the Makuleke have set an example for community involvement in parks that is being followed in other parts of South Africa.
Tourism and Jobs
