Ten years ago, few people had ever heard of Wakkerstroom, a tiny farming village 285 kilometers southeast of Johannesburg. Dilapidated houses dotted the landscape. The residents themselves seemed embarrassed to even live there, said Elna Kotze, who moved to Wakkerstroom in 1989 to build a guest house in the pristine rural setting. "They all wondered who was this mad woman from Pretoria coming to build a guest house in a town that nobody ever visited," she said.
One decade later, Wakkerstroom is definitely on the map, especially for the thousands of birders who visit each year, hoping to catch a glimpse of some of the rarest birds in the world. Orthodox birders come from across the world, eager to accrue "mega-ticks" on their lists of sightings.
Others come simply to escape the stresses in South Africa's major cities and enjoy timeless scenery, which hints of a bygone era. Aside from its natural beauty however, Wakkerstroom has a much broader significance, representing a microcosm of the new South Africa, as well as the global debate about how to reconcile human development and conserve nature.
Behind the facade of its rolling hills, complex dynamics are at play that may cause an upheaval in the region's social and natural environment. Blacks from townships, some of them farm workers native to the area, are seeking land via post-apartheid land restitution legislation. In order to afford the land, several hundred families must pool their funds to create dense settlements that will exceed the land's carrying capacity. Spillover effects make it difficult to resolve communal land issues with adjacent landowners.
There are valid concerns about the land's ability to sustain new settlements that these families would build if they become too dense. More threatening to the region's environmental balance are short-sighted attempts by various timber companies to replace a sustainable economy with timber plantations.
Elna Kotze operates in the middle of this contest, trying to facilate understanding between various players while advocating for the needs of the natural environment. In her battle to save the grasslands, she hopes that tourism will promote conservation, augment the region's traditional stock farming economy and reduce racial tension by bringing whites and blacks together.
