Etcetera II

SANDY GRANT | Monday April 26, 2010 00:00

What a fortunate and intriguing coincidence it has been that the launch of the multi-authored book on Tsodilo should have taken place almost simultaneously with the opening of UB's new Research Centre for San studies; and that, within a short time the new Visual Arts Centre there will also be open.

It is to be hoped that there will be a strong, continuing relationship between them. 

The magnificent Tsodilo book, the result of 45 years of broad spectrum research led by Alec Campbell, describes the complexity of those hills which have been occupied and utilised by varied people for at least a breathtaking 100,000 years, some of whom have left for posterity - which right now means us - a minimum of 4,000 hand painted images!

Many of UNESCO's older World Heritage sites have survived only because they became buried and were lost, or because they were hidden in dense jungle or rain forest.

Tsodilo in its totality has survived until today because it was extraordinarily remote, because it was unrelated to modern trade routes and because Europeans had no interest in the specularite for which the place had been hugely mined.

The German, Passarge, in 1898, may have been the first European to visit the hills, but it was van der Post's 1950s best selling Lost World of the Kalahari which brought it to the outside world's attention.

Even then, the Hills could be approached only by way of a long, really tough, ten kilometers an hour road.But when that road was upgraded to allow BMWs to get there in air conditioned comfort and with the Hills accorded World Heritage Status, everything changed. Visitor numbers suddenly shut up from a few hundred a year to 15,000 and much hard thought is now needed if that extraordinary fragile legacy is not to be ruined within, say the next 20 years. Unless we assume that there will be some seismic change in the world's circumstances, we are obliged to accept that there will be a steady, even dramatic increase in world tourism.

If  Zimbabwe ever gets back to even relative normalcy, people will arrive here from all over the world on packaged holidays which will give them a quick in and out sniff of the Delta, the Falls, Tsodilo, Kasane, perhaps Great Zimbabwe, the Matobos, and maybe tomorrow, the Gcwihabe Hills. What an irresistible combination. With the completion of a real road from Johannesburg through Nata to Kazangula and its new bridge it is  possible, even probable, that the numbers of visiting regional tourists will far exceed those coming from further afield.

Past figures will provide no guide to estimates of future visitor numbers but the three governments and their responsible Ministries and Departments should now be thinking that fairly soon they could be dealing with maybe 200,000 visitors a year to each of those places.

Current thinking in those governments might now be working around ways of means of milking this gorgeous Heritage cow - more and more lodges, better roads, more fuel stations, shopping malls, enlarged parking areas, fewer irritating controls and restrictions, and money rolling in from all sides.

The reality, certainly at Tsodilo,  may be very different - sites overrun by tourists whose numbers have overwhelmed the systems prepared for them, control lost, garbage everywhere, blocked and overflowing toilets, with resultant health hazards and the rapid deterioration of some of the world's most precious treasures transformed into some of its uglier, saddest, scenarios. Exaggeration?

Change cannot possibly occur in such a short time? Or can it? Have we already forgotten that even thirty years ago this country had huge herds of wildlife which roamed within touching distance of nearly every town and village in the country. 

Within a single life time, those herds have been decimated and are gone forever. Tsodilo is the country's jewel which is cared for, on its behalf, by the National Museum. Custodianship can be an awesome burden but this can be relieved by developing partnerships with other interested and concerned institutions.  The San Centre should be one of them.