On November 25 1927, about 40 Mozambicans attacked five park rangers, killing one, Stephanus Mtebuge, and seriously injuring another, Cement Mathlabi. The attack led the Union of South Africa’s National Parks Board, with the approval of the defence department, to issue firearms to all African rangers.
The decision marked the formal reversal of a policy that had been in place since James Stevenson-Hamilton assumed control of the park in 1902. I say “formal”, because even though Stevenson-Hamilton had long refused to arm African rangers with guns, white park rangers had enjoyed the discretion of deciding whether to give African rangers guns.
The discretion acknowledged the seriousness of the poaching problem as much as it did the importance of African rangers in the fight against poachers.
African rangers were, after all, the first line of defence against poachers. It was not just that the rangers were on the ground, patrolling great distances on foot and by bicycle; they knew many of the poachers personally and understood the communities from which the poachers came. Some of them had been poachers themselves, hired by Stevenson-Hamilton on the principle of “setting a thief to catch a thief”.
We get a glimpse of this familiarity through a close inspection of the attack on November 25. The attackers had crossed into the park to rescue a man by the name of Penny, who the rangers had arrested the day before for poaching two waterbuck and one steenbok. Penny had been part of a three-man gang accompanied by six dogs.
His two accomplices, named Shilikana and Government, had fled back to Mozambique. The rangers had destroyed four of the dogs and confiscated the remaining two. According to Cecil E Kidger, a magistrate ordered by the minister of justice to look into the incident, the attackers sought to “intimidate the rangers from patrolling the border”.
Kidger also found that there was widespread resentment towards the park’s rangers and its officials among Mozambicans. This had been “intensified by the fact that a number of their cattle which had been brought over the Union border for water during the drought, and found in the park by the native rangers, were destroyed on the instructions of the Department of Agriculture some few months ago, under the East Coast Fever regulations.” Kidger also heard rumours that, before Penny’s arrest, rangers had killed two poachers from Mozambique.
He objected to the decision by the National Parks Board to give African rangers firearms: “I wish to point out that this course is fraught with danger and may lead to international complications if our native game rangers should fire across the border at their ‘enemies’ the Portuguese natives whose kraals are within easy range of Union Territory.”
Rather than give African rangers firearms, Kidger suggested, the South African police should establish posts at intervals along the border “with a view to the preservation of the peace, the checking of raids, and, incidentally, to keep an eye on the native game rangers of the park”. This last task was especially important because the African rangers were, “after all, not a disciplined body, but just raw natives”.
Meanwhile, state law advisers, who had been asked by Prime Minister JBM Hertzog to offer an opinion “as to the remedy which the Union Government may have against the Government of Mozambique” regarding the attack, said that the Mozambican government could not be held responsible for the incident. Also, SA could not push for the assailants’ extradition because it was bound by an extradition treaty between Great Britain and Portugal, which explicitly barred Portugal or any of its colonies from extraditing “any Portuguese subject”.
Even though most of the group were, in a formal sense, Portuguese subjects, in truth they were known to their victims. Rangers Cement Mathlabi and Johannes Mgvemana, for example, were well acquainted with Penny, whose rescue motivated the fight. As Mathlabi told Kidger’s inquest, “I know Penny well.” Mgvemana also knew his assaulters quite well. “I had known these men before,” he said, referring to Penny and the two who fled back to Mozambique to mobilise the attackers. Mathlabi and Mgvemana each knew at least eight of the aggressors by name. As Mathlabi told Kidger, “I knew five of them well.” Mathlabi and Mgvemana also knew Batane Ndhlovu, the “petty chief” who led the group.
According to the surviving rangers, Ndhlovu’s band did not speak much during the attack, except one man named Mbueni Maseu, who allegedly told Mathlabi, “They say they are going to arrest you and take you to Portuguese Territory. If they do you must agree and let them handcuff you.” Mathlabi refused: “I declined and said as they had killed Stephanes they had better kill me.” The assailants responded, “You can go as we have given you enough.”
Mathlabi and Mgvemana were not the only ones to know the gang. Stevenson-Hamilton also knew at least five of them, including Mahashi Gumbane and Mahashi Matebula, both former park rangers “discharged for ill-conduct”. What’s more, the five that the warden knew were, in fact, South African “subjects” who “at various times have decamped into Portuguese East Africa, to escape punishment for offences committed while residing in the Game Reserve”. Three of the attackers had lived in the reserve until their escape to Mozambique. As for Mahashi Gumbane, one of the former rangers dismissed for “ill-conduct”, Stevenson-Hamilton said, “I know from personal knowledge to be a very dangerous character”. The warden worried he might not “get justice done without active assistance from the Portuguese authorities”.
But he need not have worried. Drawing on personal connections with the Portuguese official in charge of “native immigration” in the border town of Komatipoort, Stevenson-Hamilton lobbied the Portuguese to act. The Portuguese agreed to arrest the attackers and to punish them under Portuguese law, thereby making it unnecessary for SA to go against the treaty between Great Britain and Portugal. The warden’s lobbying was informal.
These were not faceless men and women driven by bloodlust into killing wildlife. They were individuals with names, relatives, and interests
The Portuguese kept their word. In January 1929, five of the attackers were each sentenced to six years’ hard labour, three were each sentenced to seven years’ hard labour, and three were each sentenced to two months in jail.
We should hesitate before we pronounce on the appropriateness of these sentences and the extralegal manner in which they were secured. Contra Mavhunga, we should also resist the urge to see the attackers as heroes, going against a foreign authority impinging on their mode of life. But we should see them for what they were: men and women with grievances and material interests.
These were not faceless men and women driven by bloodlust into killing wildlife. They were individuals with names, relatives, and interests. They knew what they were doing. But how could the Native Affairs Department address African grievances when the problem was colonial rule itself? Not prepared for the bigger fight about the legitimacy of colonialism, colonial administrators and conservationists fought about depredations instead.
On October 24 1930, the National Parks Board wrote to the secretary for native affairs to protest against plans by the Native Affairs Department to acquire land near a town called Acornhoek, adjacent to the southwestern section of the park, for African settlement. JS Potgieter, the secretary of the board, wrote:
“The Board learns with considerable alarm that your department is making enquiries for the purchase of farms near Acornhoek in the vicinity of the Kruger National Park. The Board desires that the danger of having Natives in areas bordering on the park should be pointed out, and it will be glad if you will be so good as to inform it of your Department’s policy in this regard.”
In his response, dated November 17 1930, John S Allison, the secretary for native affairs, did more than simply apprise his National Parks Board colleagues of his department’s policy. He reminded them of the department’s mandate, which flew out of the 1913 Natives Land Act. In terms of the act, Africans could buy land in “certain areas”, so-called released or scheduled lands as laid down by the act. He wrote:
“Your department will no doubt fully appreciate that it would be most difficult and invidious for this Department to prohibit Natives, who, it must be remembered prior to the commencement of the Native Lands Act, had an unrestricted right to purchase privately owned land throughout the Transvaal, from acquiring land within the released areas, the extent of which, it may be added, is limited and by no means adequate. Indeed, it would seem that no object would be achieved by such a prohibition, seeing that under the law as it stands at present it is open to any European owner of a farm adjoining the Park to keep on such farm as many Native families as he pleases under labour conditions.”
Allison was of course pointing out the board’s hypocrisy in trying to use its power as a government agency to undermine a law that was, from the point of view of Africans and their legal guardians in the Native Affairs Department, already bad enough.
However, the board was not deterred. In April 1931 the board again wrote “with great regret” to complain about plans by the Native Affairs Department to find Africans land, in keeping with the provisions of the 1913 Land Act, near the Kruger National Park. The board said that such a transaction would be regrettable. It would also go against the interests of the board. The National Parks Board did not want Africans near the park, believing they were responsible for depredations against game.
In a letter dated April 27 1931, Potgieter wrote that “it was most desirable in the interests of the Kruger National Park that the farms in question should be continued to be owned by Europeans who favoured the protection of wildlife”. The farms in question were Sandringham and Birmingham, southwest of the park. The Mhlangana tribe under Chief Shopiana Mnisi wanted to buy them. Native affairs secretary AL Barrett, in his response to Potgieter’s April 27 letter, wrote, “The properties in question are some considerable distance from the Kruger National Park and … their acquisition will not extend native-owned property in that direction.”
This was neither the first nor the last time the Native Affairs Department would clash with the National Parks Board over land for Africans.
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