The impala runs through the thorn bush, the ibis flies over the lake and the lightning forks on the horizon as a storm enters the Drakensberg mountains.
Visitors to the 10,000 or more hectares of the Nambiti Game Reserve in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province see what they believe is an unchanged and unchanged natural landscape.
Njabulo Hodla, the reserve’s deputy director, sees something else: the thick undergrowth that someone has to cut, the traces that need cleaning, the fences to be repaired and the animals that will eventually have to be slaughtered, every victim of Covid. “It is difficult, very difficult. I have never seen a season like this, “said the 31-year-old, who has been working at 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 in other parts of Africa, the pandemic has caused massive economic damage, with thousands of companies failing and tens of millions unable to make a living. The economy lost 2.2 million jobs in the second quarter of 2020.
Nambiti reservation map
The huge tourism industry – which employs about one in 20 workers and provides just under 3% of GDP – has been devastated.
Once upon a time, the December holiday season meant tens of thousands of foreign visitors who spent hundreds, even thousands, of dollars every day. Now, as the rate of new infections in the country increases, as authorities struggle to check for a second wave, no one expects tourists to return soon.
The approximately 500 private gambling reserves in South Africa are often located in more remote and poor parts of the country. They spend considerable sums every month to feed and care for the animals. Many were forced to close permanently, lay off staff and sell or even shoot animals. Others survived – only.
“Reserves like ours have gone from a pretty good income that supported 300 jobs and a massive conservation project to literally nothing. We fell off a wall, “said Clarke Smith, president of Nambiti. “We still feel the pain … and the impact on the region is very marked.”
Nambiti is a community-owned project, unlike many, so a substantial proportion of the profits and an annual rent are paid to local villages. This year, these incomes are much lower and, with many reserve employees still on reduced hours or at home, the coming months will be very difficult.
“Instead of a year-end bonus, people take home only half a salary or nothing,” said Hodla, who grew up in one of the nearby villages. “The communities here are just on the line. 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 hectares of South Africa that have been turned into more profitable game reserves in recent decades will return to cattle or grain farming – with massive habitat loss for endangered animals and other species.
But if wildlife conservation has been severely affected, so has the protection of other parts of the country’s heritage.
Like many parts of rural South Africa, northern KwaZulu has suffered from acute unemployment, massive health problems, including TB and HIV, and deep poverty just before the pandemic. Industries have been evacuated in recent decades, with many mines and factories closed.
In some places, such losses have been partially offset by what has been a booming trade in battlefield tourism. Tens of thousands of British visitors came to the places where British troops fought the Zulus in the bloody war of 1879 that strengthened the imperial path in southern Africa.
The battlefields of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift are the main attraction for British tourists usually old enough to be fans of the 1964 film. Zulu which dramatized the story of the catastrophic British defeat and the last site on the sites.
This winter – or summer in the southern hemisphere – both battlefields are “empty”, memorials, graves and empty museums.
“There is no work. We’re just sitting there. The situation is so bad. There is a drought and there are no crops in our fields and a sack of plates [maize flour] it costs twice as much as in the spring, ”said Dalton Ngobese, a local guide who has not worked since March.
With the tourists gone, as well as the sellers who sold ethnic boats, snacks and water. Part of the entrance fee to the battlefield site goes to schools, so this source of income has also dried up.
The accommodation cabins have been closed for much of the summer and have only recently reopened, receiving far fewer guests. The lodge provides jobs and also funds support programs for local students, charities, orphanages and other projects.
“If we suffer, the whole community will be beaten,” said Shane Evans, manager of the Isandlwana Lodge, which hosted groups that visited the battlefield.
In the village of Isandlwana, there is resignation. With so few jobs locally, men have traditionally traveled to Johannesburg, a six-hour drive north, to work in mines or, more recently, in hotels. But both industries also suffer and most of the people in Isandlwana who had jobs lost them.
Government aid has been uneven and a huge burden for a country still struggling with the legacies of the racist, repressive apartheid regime. The ruling African National Congress, which has been in power since 1994, is accused of incompetence and corruption, but it also has to deal with a bleak economy, tens of millions of people in poverty and massive debt. A job support program has been guaranteed until the end of the year, but the money is slow to arrive.
One consequence in the villages around the city of Isandlwana is that crime is on the rise, cattle theft and burglary are getting worse, Ngobese said. A recent drought has meant that local communities around battlefields have failed to plant crops that traditionally supplement income and diet.
Nellie Buthelezi’s husband was among those fired by the local government over job cuts earlier this year, while the lodge where he works has been closed since March. The four-year-old mother, 41, has lived in Isandlwana all her life and does not remember the times being as bad.
“Food is expensive and goes so fast. We don’t have money to rent, “she said Observer. “We only hope in God for a better new year.”