Botswana: fencing out the equity issue. Cattleposts and cattle ranching in the Kalahari Desert

Botswana: fencing out the equity issue. Cattlepostsand cattle ranching in the Kalahari Desert

J.S. Perkins

Department of Environmental Science, University of Botswana, P. Bag0022, Gaborone, Botswana

(Received 20 February 1995, accepted 21 April 1995)

This paper examines the advantages of the traditional cattlepost systemagainst the recent drive towards the fencing of Botswana’s rangelands and theestablishment of privatised, commercial beef ranches. Consideration ofoperational and environmental factors emphasise the benefits of the cattlepostsystem, while socio-economic and political factors explain why the currentdrive towards fenced ranches will continue for the foreseeable future. It isconcluded that while the degradation issue on Botswana’s rangelands hasbeen overstated, alleged concern for the conservation of the grazing resourceis explicitly driving Botswana’s current New Agricultural Policy. By accentu-ating the existing marked socio-economic inequalities within the livestocksector, such misplaced policies will fuel much graver environmental prob-lems, as the underlying equity issue remains unaddressed.

©1996 Academic Press Limited

Keywords: rangeland degradation; Kalahari; cattle ranching;hunter-gatherers; Botswana

Introduction

Cattle-keeping in Botswana has traditionally been based upon the so-called ‘cattlepostsystem’, whose operation has survived remarkably intact for centuries, if not thousandsof years (Denbow, 1982). Generally confined to the easternmost quarter of thecountry, the so-called hardveld, which supports the bulk of the country’s humanpopulation (1991 estimate 1·3 million), it was not until the advent of boreholetechnology that cattleposts were able to expand deep into the semi-arid Kalaharisandveld. The latter term refers to 75% of Botswana that is covered by a deep layer ofnutrient-poor Kalahari sand (see Fig. 1), with the mixed tree bush savanna it supports,long seen as an untapped potential grazing resource by the colonial Government(Debenham, 1952).

Following Independence in 1966, and bolstered by a lucrative 90% market subsidyby the European Union (EU), these desires began to be realised under a series oflivestock development projects, with borehole-led cattlepost expansion into theKalahari reaching unprecedented levels in the 1970s, in the good rainfall years ofTyson et al.’s (1975) 18-year rainfall cycle. Officially, this expansion occurred after the

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auspices of the Tribal Grazing Land Policy (TGLP) of 1975, with its drive towardsfenced commercial ranches in designated sandveld areas: following the Ministry ofAgriculture (MOA), ranches are taken to be perimeter fenced and internallypaddocked, with a system of water reticulation and rotational grazing, managed on a99 year lease.

In reality, much illegal drilling had already taken place in large areas of the Kalahari,with the boreholes managed under the cattlepost system and stocked to a level thatoften far exceeded the designated stocking rate (Cooke, 1985; Perkins, 1991).Ironically ranches were therefore too often only to mirror cattleposts, with thegenerous loans lent by the World Bank to the Government owned NationalDevelopment Bank (NDB) much abused and directed primarily at the drilling ofboreholes, rather than the development of ranch infrastructure (McGowan Inter-national & Coopers Lybrand, 1988).

Although this decade has seen fences appear with remarkable rapidity in theKalahari, the cattlepost system remains pervasive. This is perhaps surprising as it hasbeen almost universally castigated in the literature and has been widely associated with‘traditional methods’ of cattle-keeping with their apparently mandatory absence ofrange or herd management procedures and emphasis upon the number rather than thequality of livestock (Abel et al., 1987).

This paper outlines a case in defence of the cattlepost system and contrasts it withthe officially desired ranching set-up. The case of freehold ranches is not considered,and while this paper focuses upon the Kalahari sandveld, implications for thecommunally grazed areas, here taken to be broadly synonymous with the hardveld, arealso touched upon. Although operational, environmental, socio-economic and

Figure 1. Botswana, showing the extent of the Kalahari sandveld and the location of ranch areas(After Thomas and Shaw, 1991).

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political factors are considered in turn, it must be stressed that it is their inherentconnectivity which is so basic to understanding why Government Policy is sofundamentally flawed.

Kalahari cattleposts

Following a colonial ruling that was probably related to what was considered areasonable grazing area, cattleposts are on average 8 km apart. They comprise aborehole, kraals-fenced or thorn bush enclosures where the cattle are kept at night, andoften adjoining, huts of herders. The water point comprises the borehole itself, astorage tank and the water trough, though the quality of this infrastructure can varyconsiderably, with some boreholes pumping directly into a flooded water trough area.Infrastructure costs are therefore minimal, unlike the case for ranches, where due tothe remote and inaccessible nature of the Kalahari, establishing and maintainingfences, paddocks and water reticulation systems can be considerable (Sweet, 1986).

The cattlepost system displays a uniform rhythm of night kraaling, and release in themorning following milking, with the herd returning to the borehole in the lateafternoon. It is a remarkably simple system, with routine herding confined to thecollection and kraaling of animals around the water-point at dusk, and theirsubsequent release in the morning, in a daily cycle that is clearly adapted to avoidworking in the extreme heat of the Kalahari days, and is more generally based upon theminimum expenditure of energy (Abel et al., 1987).

The need to recognise the existence of subtle but effective management practices,aimed in particular at the manipulation of the innate behaviour of cattlepost herds, hasonly recently been emphasised (Abel et al., 1987). The ‘borehole is the herder’ (Jerve,1982), with the regularity of late afternoon watering and night-time kraaling restrictinglivestock movements and instilling both the idea of a home range upon herd behaviourand an affinity for the kraal–waterpoint axis (Abel et al., 1987).

Kraals vary in both size and number, but generally reflect the number of herds ofdifferent owners that are utilising the borehole (Perkins, 1991). To each is assigned aherder, who although fully aware of which beasts are in their charge and have, forexample, strayed from the cattlepost, do not rationalise the herd in a numerical way.Straying, especially after the first rains, results in much time and effort being spent inretrieval of the beasts and covering of large distances (c. 40 km), often on foot.Effective kraaling, especially in the initial period of cattlepost operation, helps toreduce cattle losses by straying, although the often stated need for a night-timeenclosure to protect livestock from predators is now a redundant issue over much ofthe sandveld.

Borehole breakdowns are a frequent occurrence in the Kalahari (Hitchcock, 1978;Perkins, 1991), resulting in the despatch of a messenger to notify the borehole ownerand the daily trekking of livestock to water at a neighbouring borehole, often for longperiods (e.g. 6 months). In addition, spatially patchy rainfall and periodic drought,coupled with the fact that livestock-owning families often have a network of boreholesand/or contacts throughout the region, means that herd movements, often over largedistances, constitute an important strategy to alleviate drought effects and spatialvariations in the grazing resource.

Consequently the cattlepost system is not a static one, but is in fact characterised byconsiderable herd mobility and flexibility (Perkins, pers. obs.), as evidenced by largevariations in veterinary cattle crush statistics over time (Brookhaus, pers. comm.).While not explicitly obvious, like the rotation of herds within a 6400 ha ranch, it is animportant management strategy which is undoubtedly compromised by the latest drivefor fencing and ranch establishment in the Kalahari.

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Kalahari ranches

The Ministry of Agriculture’s recommendations for the operation of TGLP ranchesare necessarily geared to the resources available to the individual borehole and/or herdowners, but suggests a minimum of two watering points and two paddocks. The latterare primarily to enable herd improvement through selective breeding with a smallpaddock (1000 ha) for bulls and weaners, and the remaining larger paddock (5400 ha)for the rest of the herd. The provision of two watering points in the latter is regardedas optimal with spacing based on the assumption that cattle graze up to 4 km from thewater point (MOA, TGLP Unit, pers. comms.).

A phased approach to ranch development is envisaged by the MOA, with aminimum of four paddocks preferred, but perimeter fencing not recommended whereit is clear that the ranch will simply operate under the cattlepost system (Tsimako,pers. comm.). Implementation of the ranching programme has been problematic withdrought, water availability, absentee management, poor co-operation amongst groupranchers, poor infrastructure development and ‘gross overstocking’ cited as majorconstraints to its successful operation (Tsimako, 1991).

Rangeland degradation

The view that Botswana’s rangelands are undergoing widespread deteriorationthrough overstocking and overgrazing is now widely held and has become almost anaccepted fact amongst some authorities. Colonial reports by District Administratorsdocumented the urgent need to destock and conserve rangeland if the inevitablecollapse of grazing systems and subsequent population upheaval was to be averted.Although unheeded, with the livestock population today close to 3 million, thisphilosophy has remained pervasive in almost every range study conducted over thepast three decades.

Multifarious reasons account for the predominance of what Sandford (1983) termsthe ‘Mainstream View’ (see Thomas and Middleton, 1995), not least the definitionalcrises surrounding the desertification debate, the short timescale of consultancyreports, the paucity of field data and the complete lack of ecosystem functioningstudies in the Kalahari. This is unfortunate, with the much dramatised environmentalconcern for ‘overgrazing’ and the need to manage the rangelands now a high profile‘raison d’etre’ for the Botswana Government’s twin pursuits of privatisation andcommercialisation of the livestock sector.

Sandford, from a predominantly socio-economic perspective, was one of the earliestprotagonists of the alternative view that pastoralists were in fact rational people,capable of managing the semi-arid systems their herds grazed, which were in any casecharacterised by marked resilience, i.e. the ability to recover from such perturbationsas drought and heavy grazing (Sandford, 1983). A growing body of researchers arenow providing field data to support Sandford’s case (see Behnke et al., 1993; Scoones,1995), although the UN, together with its initiatives (see MOA, 1994), outwardlyappears to remain firmly entrenched in the old desertification rhetoric. This isunfortunate, with cattleposts implicitly associated with range degradation (see Pearce,1993), even though such effects not only appear to be spatially highly localised aroundwaterpoints (Perkins & Thomas, 1993a, b) but seem likely to be much morewidespread under ranching systems (Abel & Blaikie, 1989).

Eastern Kalahari cattleposts

Driving towards a borehole in the Kalahari along any sand track, a striking contrast is

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apparent between the passage through a dense cover of thorn bush and the suddenentry into a seemingly vast, open expanse of bare ground, with the water trough at itscentre. Heavily browsed shrubs, sometimes nothing more than stumps, herds of goats,negligible herbaceous cover and, in the late dry season, wind-blown sand gives theimpression of a devastated area. Indeed, Stoddart et al.’s (1975) concept of a sacrificezone appears to be particularly relevant, as recovery of the vegetation seemsunlikely.

Full details are provided by Perkins (1991) and Perkins & Thomas (1993a, b) (seeFig. 1 for the location of the study area), but the impact of cattle around point-watersources, or boreholes may be summarised into five major zones (Fig. 2). If the soil isregarded as the basis of sustainability (Warren & Agnew, 1988) the 0–50 m zonearound the water trough is irreversibly degraded, due to the input of dung and urineand extreme nutrient enrichment of the soil, which effectively causes toxicity.Herbivore use intensity (HUI), coined by Georgiadis (1987) in reference to thecombined grazing, trampling and excretion effects of livestock, therefore occurs atextreme levels in this 0–50 m zone. Beyond the confines of the water trough is an areaof negligible herbaceous cover (0–40 m) characterised by surface rippling and localisedmovement of the sand over the surface, sometimes forming low dunes (0·5 m high). Ina ‘good’ rainfall year, it grades into a zone of palatable grasses at medium HUI(400–800 m): in the eastern Kalahari Digitaria eriantha often dominates, but otherpalatable grasses like Cynodon dactylon can also form monocultures (for example, onthe heavily grazed soils around the Rakops and the Boteti River — it should be notedthat after the early rains and at the time of the MOA survey (MOA, 1994) annuals oflittle or no forage value dominated, with the plains of Cynodon coming with the laterrains after the survey perid (pers. obs.)).

The bush encroached zone (200–2000 m) can form an impenetrable thicket, but isprobably able to revert back to open savanna, via fire effects, in the long-term (c. 60years) (Walker et al., 1981) and is also important in maintaining the resilience of theKalahari by preventing vast areas being laid bare and prone to wind erosion (Perkins& Thomas, 1993a, b). This zone is also an important source of browse and likely to becritical in enabling some cattle to survive through a drought period. Beyond, is theunpalatable grazing reserve (Abel & Blaikie, 1989), characterised by tufted perennial

Figure 2. Piosphere zonation around boreholes (After Perkins and Thomas, 1993b).


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grasses, often of low palatability to livestock, but likely to be an important seed bankand so essential to recovery of primary biomass in good rainfall years.

The zonation may be attributed to the ‘piosphere effect’ (Andrew, 1988), the directresult of an exponential increase in available grazing area with increasing distance fromthe water trough (see Perkins, 1991; Perkins & Thomas, 1993b) (Fig. 3). Theuniformity of soil and vegetation changes around Kalahari cattleposts is thereforestriking. It appears that the various zones form relatively quickly following theoperation of a borehole and that, particularly, the bush encroached zone expandsoutwards with time.

However, the severe periodic droughts Botswana experiences, coupled with thepiosphere effect, whereby heat stress and physiological limitations result in cattle beingunable to graze extensively in the unpalatable grazing reserve, ensures that it isimpossible to maintain high stocking rates on drought-depleted rangelands for longperiods of time (see Mace, 1991). Under the cattlepost system the integrity of thegrazing reserve is therefore maintained.

Eastern Kalahari ranches

The ranching programme in the eastern Kalahari, like its predecessors such as theNcojane Ranches, western Botswana, (Odell, 1980), has not developed as planned.The decision to operate as a ranch remains the perogative of the borehole owner, suchthat while they may be zoned as ranches on District Land Use maps, many boreholesin fact operate along the cattlepost system. However, perimeter fences are nowappearing with remarkable rapidity over much of the sandveld, with such ‘improvedcattleposts’ in the eastern Kalahari, apparently based more on a desire to keep thecattle from neighbouring boreholes out than to practice a system of rotational grazingusing multiple paddocks.

It is worth noting that the explicit aim of commercial ranches is to even out HUIeffects by distributing the stocking rate more equitably over the ranch, so that palatablegrasses will dominate, as occurs around cattleposts at medium HUI in good rainfallyears. However, if Walker et al.’s (1981) assertion that this palatable monoculture isprone to disappear during a drought is true, the higher trampling and excretion effectswithin more intensively grazed paddocks of ranching systems are likely to be just asprone to collapse. Intensive management for stability (of livestock numbers) effectivelycompromises resilience.

The marked stocking rate variability that occurs on cattleposts due to the piosphere

Figure 3. The increase in available grazing with distance from a borehole.

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effect is therefore lost. It is an effect that is heightened by the observed tendency to veryheavily graze an individual paddock before rotating the herd. Although such paddocksare then rested, the level of disturbance reached has been far higher than that enduredover most of the grazing area on a cattlepost, with the notion of vegetation recoverybased upon the increasingly discredited ‘range-succession model’ (see Westoby et al.,1989; Behnke et al., 1993). That seasonally ungrazed paddocks can offer anything buta short-term respite from drought conditions appears similarly mythical.

On several ranches, borehole owners had leased out their paddocks to other herdowners (e.g. relatives), creating a ‘tragedy of the commons’ (see Hardin, 1968) typescenario within a private ranch. Unless borehole density increases, fragmentation ofranches through fencing seems the only way to accommodate the aspirations of well-off Botswana for livestock ownership. In any case, the ecological justification forranching appears entirely misplaced, while the more urgent socio-economic issue ofwho owns what and where remains entirely unaddressed.

Social

Populations

People on cattleposts comprise the borehole pumper, herders and their families andother residents including hunter–gatherers, all of whom may be regarded as remotearea dwellers (RADs) (all people living outside organised village settlements —Government of Botswana, from Gulbrandsen et al., 1986). Government policy hasbeen to establish ‘Communal Service Centres’, with a primary school and clinic, toprovide basic education and health facilities to RADs. Unfortunately, and unlike theprovision of veterinary infrastructure with its quarantine camps and resources whichhave penetrated rapidly into the Kalahari sandveld over the past 30 years, CommunalService Centres are not only few in number, but largely confined to the hardveld andso inaccessible to most RADs.

The survey by Perkins (1991) found no significant difference between TGLPranches and cattleposts in terms of the population, payment and livelihoodcharacteristics of the borehole residents. Although the actual characteristics may varyconsiderably from borehole to borehole, the average number of residents per boreholewas 20, with some 30% of the enumerated population (n = 1099) made up of infants(less than 6-years-old). Indeed, small children were often responsible for small herdsof goats and calves.

A further 12% of residents were children, of whom a greater proportion were male,reflecting the fact that cattlepost labour is predominantly male-based with mostparents making every effort to send girls to school. Although schooling is free inBotswana, the problems of paying for compulsory school uniforms and the childrenachieving locational proximity to educational establishments were factors that clearlyopposed this movement, as did the loss of wage earning potential, although this wasmore often perceived than real.

Borehole/herd ownership

The large overhead costs of drilling a borehole and the TGLP loan procedures,whereby the borrower puts up 25% of the total cost (in cash or in kind) (McGowanInternational and Coopers Lybrand, 1988), have ensured that cattle-keeping in theKalahari remains the preserve of large herd owners. It clearly constitutes a prestigiousmeans of economic investment for the latter, who typically comprise a salaried urbanelite, who visit their borehole or herd only once or twice a year (McGowan


International and Coopers Lybrand, 1988), and for whom the low-input demands ofthe cattlepost system are inherently appealing.

The Perkins (1991) survey found that on average there are two herd owners perborehole, with herd sizes typically upward of more than 500 head, although the rangeis considerable, from 77 to 1500 head of cattle (n = 143). Livestock ownershipamongst herders and!rheir families and other cattlepost residents is negligible and atmost confined to several donkeys and/or goats per borehole. It is a long standingcondition directly related to the nature of cattlepost employment.

Employment

Cattleposts in the Kalahari sandveld have remained remarkably unchanged through-out this century, such that Mosienyane’s (1992) observation that the livestock industryemploys 30–40% of the population of Botswana, either formally or informally, must beput into context. Blair Rains and Yalala (1972) touched upon the issue by stating that,‘In addition to the nomadic Bushmen, numbers work for part of the year for othergroups performing the duties of herdsmen in exchange for milk and other items. Thesearrangements are the result of mutual agreement and should probably not be examinedby any other standards.’ (p. 42).

The eastern Kalahari survey by Perkins (1991) supplemented that of Tideman(1987), together covering 1586 people on 73 boreholes. The detailed results are givenin Perkins (1991), are mirrored by those of Hitchcock (1978), and are furtherreinforced by the broader survey carried out by Campbell, Main and Associates(1991). All surveys found that the majority of herders and cattlepost residents exist atsubsistence level. It is a condition, maintained by generally low and sporadicpayments, often comprising a basic food ration (often a staple such as sorghum ormealie meal), that has also prevented the vast majority of herders and cattlepostresidents accumulating any cattle or smallstock of their own.

Tideman (1987) provides an adequate summary, ‘The survey team suggests thataction should be taken concerning the incredibly low salaries cattlepost employees earnat some places…We feel that human decency dictates better treatment of fellowhuman beings…and express concern in writing to the borehole owners who deservethis.’ (p. 2). Hitchcock (1978) pointed out that the eastern Kalahari cattlepost dwellersregarded themselves as ‘the forgotten people’, while Perkins (1991) found that manyrealised the hopelessness of their situation and expressed disillusionment at the valueof further surveys when the expectations of those of the past had failed tomaterialise.

Livelihood

Herders and their families and other borehole residents, such as hunter–gatherers werefound to be heavily dependent upon milk from the kraal (on average each boreholeproduced > 20 l day–1) and Drought Relief/Recovery food, in order to survive.Although the latter, constituting a basic food ration, performed a vital role in the1982–86 drought and has been widely acclaimed (Hay et al., 1985; Charnock, 1986;Holm & Cohen, 1986), it is important to recognise the fact that it is the underlyingsocio-economic factors that account for the poverty of Kalahari residents (Perkins,1994). Drought accentuates the latter but is not the cause.

Following from this structural poverty, the Botswana Government’s recent decisionto end all emergency food rations to Remote Area Dwellers under the Drought Reliefand Recovery Programme (DRP) will cause considerable hardship. Only RADs whoare destitute will now be able to receive food rations under the Destitute Relief Policy,

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while those who are able-bodied can participate in the Labour Intensive Rural PublicWorks (LIRPW) programme (UNICEF, 1992). The latter refers to the creation ofemployment through the maintenance of public infrastructure and by carrying outland and water schemes on a labour-intensive basis: with the LIRPW expanded rapidlyin drought years.

The ending of DRP food rations for RADs follows a desire on the part of theGovernment to target beneficiaries more effectively under the DRP, and to reduce itsoverall costs. Unfortunately, it misses two essential points. Firstly, the Perkins (1991)survey showed that RADs were entirely dependent upon the DRP food rations, whichthrough extensive food sharing and mutual trust (that characterised the cattleposts)actually provided essential relief to a far greater number of people than those actuallytargeted. Secondly, opportunities for LIRPW programmes in the remote cattlepostareas of the Kalahari sandveld are extremely limited.

Suspension of emergency food rations in 1991/92 following the Evaluation of the1982–90 DRP caused considerable hardship. As opportunities for hunting andgathering continue to decline, due to both the dramatic reductions in the populationsof Kalahari ungulates and the loss of wild food plants following the introduction ofcattle into sandveld areas, RADs will be entirely beholdent to borehole and herdowners for their livelihood. While there are a few exceptional cases, the Perkins (1991),Tideman (1987) and Campbell, Main and Associates (1991) surveys, showed thatremuneration is entirely at the discretion of the herd owners, with payments typicallymeagre, infrequent and sometimes negligible.

While the need to provide new relief initiatives for RADs is explicitly recognised bythe Government (UNICEF, 1994), removal of the inadequate but essential ‘safety net’the DRP food rations provided appears totally unjustifiable. Consequently, the nextdrought in the Kalahari will cause considerable hardship for the RADs.

Future prospects

It is clear that the continuation of either the cattlepost system as practised, or thedevelopment of the TGLP ranches as proposed, offers little prospect of constructivechange for RADs in the future. The impression gained from the active liaison approachin the Perkins (1991) survey was that RADs wished to own livestock and wanted accessto health and education facilities, but also wished to continue residing in the sandveld.As one group, squatting on a borehole adjacent to the Central Kalahari Game Reserveput it, ‘if the Government wants to help us, tell them they will find us here’.

The essential point is that strong linkages exist between the ongoing crisesconcerning the future of hunter–gatherers in the Kalahari sandveld, the poverty ofcattlepost residents and small herd owners, the concentration of an expandinglivestock sector into fewer and fewer hands and the decline of Kalahari wildlifepopulations. Ecological change in the Kalahari is accompanying the expansion of thelivestock sector, with range degradation continuously cited by Government and all keyinternational players as the justification for any policy decision — for example, tofence the rangelands, commercialise livestock production, conserve wildlife andrelocate hunter–gatherers from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

Removal of the overgrazing justification to policy making, or at least a questioningof the ecological relevance of a desertification paradigm, reveals a socio-economicpolicy largely bereft of any form of equity concerning access to and ownership of thekey resources of land, water, livestock and wildlife. Ironically, by accentuating theexisting inequalities in wealth, such policies although explicitly based upon environ-mental conservation will fuel a much graver and more real ecological crises in thefuture. In the Kalahari the RADs will remain at best as lowly paid herders existing atsubsistence level.


Economic

Ranch and cattlepost productivity

The fact that the Botswana Government’s New Agricultural Policy is based uponunsound assumptions is not a new revelation (see Abel and Blaikie, 1989). Themarkedly increased productivity of commercial ranches (Rennie et al., 1977) has beenshown to be untrue (Hubbard, 1982), with cattleposts more productive if all livestockproducts (milk, meat and draught power) are considered on a per ha basis (de Ridderand Wagenaar, 1984, 1986). Similarly, the association of fenced, rotationally grazed,ranches with improved conservation of the rangeland resource appears equallymythical, and as outlined earlier, may actually damage the resilience of the grazinglands.

However, the dual myths of ‘overgrazing’ around ‘traditional’ cattleposts and theopposite around ranches with their associated increased secondary productivity, hasprovided the cattle lobby with a very powerful, yet entirely misplaced, justification forfencing and commercialising the livestock sector. It is revealing that recent researchquestioning the desertification paradigm is not popular in Government circles and thatthe increased productivity of ranches is in fact ‘mythical’, is vehemently denied (seeMosienyane, 1992). In reality, the TGLP ranching programme is in financial trouble.Many of the problems that beset the Policy’s role models (Livestock DevelopmentProjects I and II) (Odell, 1980), have recurred with equal potence. Indeed, ‘thecapacity for the National Development Bank to manipulate its models and testalternative approaches to ranch development has increased. However, the basic realworld problem of low or negative ranch profitability has not yet been addressed.’(quoted from McGowan International and Coopers Lybrand, 1988, p. 8. Appendix.D)

The financial costs have been high and the crises within the NDB to date abated bythe Botswana Government foregoing the debts incurred by the non-repayment ofTGLP loans, as it did in the drought period of 1982–86 (McGowan International andCoopers Lybrand, 1988). While this may be politically expedient, a more significantcost has been borne by Kalahari wildlife populations with far reaching implications forboth the livelihood of large numbers of rural people and the international credibility ofthe Botswana Government’s commitment to wildlife conservation.

Wildlife conservation and the livestock sector

The network of veterinary cordon fences that criss-crosses Botswana’s rangelands hasbecome a sensitive issue, with the Botswana Government severely criticisedinternationally for the spectacular declines of migratory ungulates that have occurredalong the fences, especially in the severe drought of the 1980s. Significantly, the factthey result from the EU’s insistence on cordon fences as a control on foot and mouthdisease, and so an essential pre-requisite to privileged access to EU markets andcontinuation of the beef subsidy, is often overlooked, or given only token recognition(for example, Pearce, 1993). Similarly, the scale of the decline of Kalahari wildlifepopulations over the past two decades is not generally appreciated.

Migratory species such as wildebeest and hartebeest, which form the bulk of theanimal biomass in the Kalahari, suffered as much as 90% mortality in the 1980s(Patterson, 1987; Murray, 1988) and will never recover (Spinage & Matlhare, 1992).Drought, habitat displacement and hunting have undoubtedly all contributed to thisdecline, but the large populations reported in the late 1970s by the CountrywideAnimal and Range Assessment Project (DHV, 1980), and widely quoted, even at thetime of pronounced die-offs (see Cooke, 1985) are simply no longer relevant.

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All large herbivores in Botswana, except elephants, have been shown by the aerialsurveys carried out by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks to be in decline(DWNP, 1995), some species such as buffalo, seriously so. Reasons for this decline arecomplex and inter-related, but include the geographic expansion of the livestock sectorinto areas formerly occupied by wildlife; especially the loss of some key resource arease.g. Lake Xau and the Boteti River (see Parry, 1987; Verlinden, 1994), veterinarycordon fences, drought and overhunting.

Fencing of TGLP ranch blocks and individual ranches can only further decrease theflexibility of Kalahari rangelands to support both cattle and wildlife populations,especially transient herds of ungulates in a drought period. The fencing crisis istherefore ongoing in the Kalahari rangelands as the decline of wildlife continues andthe sightings of stressed and isolated herds of ungulates against fences continue tooccur.

Efforts by the Botswana Government to secure tourism as the number twocontributor to GDP under the new National Development Plan (NDPVIII) willtherefore be increasingly compromised, and a major source of livelihood to ruralpopulations via subsistence and citizen hunting will be lost. The key question is nowone of balance. How far should the livestock sector, with its increasingly explicitdesires to increase borehole densities and/or degazette portions of the National Parksand Game Reserves to legally accommodate cattle, be allowed to run its course?

Throughout the Kalahari, this issue is already being settled as three decades ofdeliberation concerning the establishment of ‘Wildlife Management Areas’, essentiallybuffer zones and wildlife ‘corridors’ between National Parks and livestock areas (Parry,1989), has seen many of them become saturated with boreholes for cattle; the latternow graze unofficially in almost all the National Parks and Game Reserves in thecountry. Similarly, the recent drive to establish ‘Controlled Hunting Areas’ (CHAs),where sustainable wildlife utilisation and community involvement is actively promotedwithin the private sector, also misses the critical point that many of these areas do notcontain sufficiently large wildlife populations to make them economically viable.

Botswana’s good reputation for wildlife conservation is therefore based upon a seriesof inter-connected myths (see also Williamson, 1994). That the Kalahari still has largeherds of migratory ungulates (Cooke, 1985), that, the oft-stated 17% of the countrythat is set aside as National Parks and Game Reserves and 22% as WildlifeManagement Areas means anything except on paper, and that the NationalConservation Strategy (NCS) has the power to act in a meaningful way and influenceGovernment Policy, remain pervasive, yet wholly incorrect. The issues are inherentlypolitical, with the EU, World Bank, and the international community powerful andinfluential players, promoting privatisation and commercialisation of the livestockindustry on the one hand and yet becoming increasingly critical of the BotswanaGovernment’s wildlife conservation record on the other.

Political

Although accurate statistics are lacking, about 45% of all rural families in Botswanaown no cattle, while about 7% of cattle owners own half the national herd (McGowanInternational and Coopers Lybrand, 1988). The additional fact that a few wealthyindividuals are able to command the purchase of livestock over large areas ofBotswana, often purchasing from smaller herd owners via agents, and via fatteningranches, market and sell the beasts to BMC at lucrative prices, places the EU’s claimsthat the beef subsidy is an effective form of aid in dubious light.

Continuation of the EU subsidy, more recently allied with international pressureand aid for wildlife conservation, coupled with misplaced concern for overgrazing andrange degradation in the Kalahari, are powerful and yet inherently contradictory forces


being brought to bear on the Botswana Government. Three decades of lobbying thecattle sector with desertification rhetoric has helped lead to the present disastrouspolicy, with the Government’s view, ominously summed up by Mosienyane (1992), ‘Itis unfortunate that the majority of livestock, about 70 per cent of the cattle population,50 per cent of sheep and 90 per cent of goats, are in the hands of communalproducers.’ (p. 81).

Rather than a conservation ethic, the fencing issue underlies the more urgent issueof land shortages. Communal systems of livestock ownership that maximise secondaryproductivity and distribute the benefits of access to, and ownership of, livestock asbroadly as possible within rural communities has hardly been addressed in Botswana.The problem of dual grazing rights, whereby large herd owners deplete the communalgrazing resource before moving their herds out to their cattleposts or ranches remainsa major grievance of small communal farmers, despite the fact that this problem wasexplicitly targetted under the TGLP, NCS and the New Agricultural Policy.

Political controls on herd sizes is not a realistic option (Hubbard, 1982). Indeed, ‘inour judgement widespread administrative control of grazing livestock is not feasibledue to a lack of political will, popular support and practical means of enforcement.’(quoted from McGowan International and Coopers Lybrand, 1988, p. 32. AppendixD). In any case, drought and the piosphere effect, provided borehole densities do notincrease, impose their own limits to the growth of the national herd.

A more realistic recommendation for a higher tax on throughput at BMC, on thebasis that ‘it would be both economically efficient (low collection costs) and sociallyequitable (being paid mainly by the wealthy, owing to the skewed distribution of cattle,and obliging a wealthy, subsidised industry incurring heavy social costs to pay its wayfiscally to a greater extent),’ (Hubbard, 1982) has never been seriously entertained, asit is also politically unpalatable.

Conclusion

The whole ranching vs. cattlepost debate misses the essential point that the problemson Botswana’s semi-arid rangelands are being driven by socio-economic inequalitiesthat are amongst the most pronounced in the world (Pearce, 1993). False informationabounds; while the ranching programme has been an economic failure, reports that,for example, the Ncojane ranches are overgrazed (Cooke, 1985) and the majority offences down (White, 1993) are simply not borne out in the field. On the contrary, goodrainfall years in both cattlepost and ranch areas bear testimony to the resilience of theKalahari ecosystem, while herders themselves do not cognise grazing as a limitingfactor or hold any regard for the concept of range degradation.

The New Agricultural Policy of the Botswana Government and mounting pressurefrom the international community for controls on ‘overgrazing in the Kalahari’therefore misses the real issues entirely. Deepening rural poverty, urban migration andthe continuing decline of Kalahari wildlife populations continue to be the dominantforces affecting the lives of most Batswana. The need to seriously question the benefitof the EU beef subsidy and to link ecological change with human socio-economicbehaviour has never been greater.

A modified version of this paper entitled ‘In Defence of Cattleposts’ was presented at the FourthSeminar on Applied Research in Environment and Land Management, 21–24 November, 1994,at the Gaborone Sun, Gaborone.

J. S. PERKINS 514

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Documents

Botswana: fencing out the equity issue. Cattleposts and cattle ranching in the Kalahari Desert