Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
landowner and regulator to advance citizen participation at the operational level
of the Okavango's lodge sector.
This short historical sketch highlights an important facet of tourism in the
delta: the development of the sector was largely driven by expatriates (or
Botswana nationals of European descent) with links to east and southern Africa
who - sometimes in rent-sharing partnerships with members of the Botswana
nationals elite - have continued to dominate ownership patterns. This trajectory is
strengthened by the global structure of high value tourism, which finds its source
markets in the (mainly white) north-Atlantic world and relies on complex sets of
personal, cultural and commercial linkages between in-country operators and
northern suppliers (and markets). This racialized pattern is further reinforced by
the branding strategies associated with African safari lodges. The sector typically
taps into a semiotics of wild Africa rooted in a romanticized vision of the conti-
nent as a place of spectacular but savage beauty sparsely populated by exotic
tribesmen and heroic Western explorers. This notion is deeply embedded in the
Western imagination and provides a rich repository of images, continually
reinforced in the popular media:
Europeans invented a mythical Africa, which soon claimed a place of
privilege in theWestern imagination.We cling to our faith in Africa as a
glorious Eden for wildlife.The sights and sounds we instinctively associ-
ate with wild Africa - lions, zebra, giraffe, rhinos, and especially elephants
- fit into the dream of a refuge from the technological age.We are unwill-
ing to let that dream slip away… The march of civilization has tamed or
destroyed the wilderness of North America and Europe, but the emotional
need for wild places, for vast open spaces like the plains of Africa, persists
(Adams and McShane, 1996, pxii).
This dream - which is rooted in the colonial era and generally denies or ignores
the history of dispossession and struggle that shaped the continent's rural
landscapes - has formed popular perceptions of Africa in the West and provided
fertile soil for the branding of the Okavango Delta in its main source markets.
Typically, the experience on offer in the Okavango is marketed as a journey into
the authentic and pristine mediated by skilled, mostly expatriate (white) guides
assisted by unskilled local (black) labourers (Massyn and Koch, 2004; Turner,
2004; Wells, 1996). These expectations tend to entrench racialized employment
patterns by focusing on the safari guide as a latter day version of the early Western
explorer. Disrupting such expectations may reduce the appeal of the Okavango in
its principal (northern) markets (Turner, 2004; Wells, 1996).
However, the rise of demand from tourists for a more ethical approach
coupled with people-friendly reforms in the conservation sector has seen the
beginnings of a shift in the expectations and practices associated with the lodge
sector. Some enterprises - often located on communal land or based on some
other form of partnership with local people - have self-consciously promoted
beneficial linkages with the rural poor. But generally the new pro-poor practices
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