The Kruger National Park: A Century of Management and Research

DAVID MABUNDA, DANIE J. PIENAAR, AND JOHAN VERHOEF

In this chapter we provide a brief historical overview of people and events that made Kruger the world-renowned park it is today. It has been said that those who do not honor their past do not deserve their future, but an in-depth analysis of some 40,000 years of history is not possible in one chapter. However, we did feel it necessary to include some early history because it shows how long humans have interacted with this ecosystem. The different eras were chosen to show when human impacts on the system, political power, and management or research philosophy changed. These changes were seldom abrupt and usually had a developing period or overlapped and sometimes coincided with increased technology or the influence of certain people (Figure 1.1).

The Hunter-Gatherer Period

Archaeologists also use the phrase "Stone Age" for this period because of the stone tools that were used during this period. Deacon and Deacon (1999) dated the divisions of the Stone Age in relation to the present as follows: Earlier Stone Age, 2.5 million–250,000 years before present (BP); Middle Stone Age, 250,000–22,000 years BP; Late Stone Age, 22,000–2,000 years BP; and Iron Age, 2,000 years BP to the colonial period.

The Earlier and Middle Stone Age people and the San (or Bushman) of the Later Stone Age period lived in this area for many thousands of years and are thought to have had little impact on the natural processes and populations. The San, the last remaining group of the Stone Age (Deacon and Deacon 1999), were hunters and gatherers and possibly scavenged from the prey of carnivores. They led a nomadic life in small groups, wandering through the area following migrating game herds (Plug 1982). They used the bow and arrow and microlithic tools and left a rich heritage of their rock paintings of animals and humans in numerous shelters in rocky outcrops in Kruger as well as deposits of ash, bone, small stone tools, and ostrich eggshell beads. They would have witnessed the arrival of a different cultural group who herded cattle, sheep, and goats, planted crops, and worked metal about 2,000 years ago.

Humans affect the environment in two ways: through physical presence in high numbers and in an intangible social manner through decision-making, induced conflict, religion, and so forth. The hunter-gatherer peoples surely possessed these characteristics, but population densities were so low that it is generally accepted that early humans did not shape the environment in a permanent way; rather, the environment at that time shaped them. Low-density occupation and low-intensity resource use of the Stone Age hunter-gatherers probably would have constituted a low-impact period in Kruger's history.

Farmers, Metalworkers, and Traders: The Iron Age (AD 200–1836)

Archaeological research has demonstrated that Iron Age communities had settled in southern Africa by at least AD 200 (Hall 1987), and by about AD 400 the first Bantu-speaking people started settling in the present-day Kruger area along the Letaba River. They possessed metalworking skills, traded, and had a residential lifestyle based on pastoralism. In the next 1,000 years additional groups settled along the Luvuvhu, Letaba, Olifants, Sabie, and Crocodile rivers. Population numbers are thought to have peaked around 15,000 during this period, resulting in localized homogenization of the ecosystem. They constructed villages, collected wood for fire and building material, cleared bush for grazing areas, prepared lands for agriculture, and stayed in an area until resources were depleted (Plug 1982). They hunted in formidable groups, often using fire and game pits to capture bigger animals. Hunting was still a major survival strategy because irregular and erratic rainfall and indigenous diseases limited herding and cropping (Plug 1989). Climatic fluctuations probably led to fluctuating densities of human settlements, with associated periods of higher and lower impact on the environment. Although it was probably a popular hunting locale, the Kruger area is considered to have been marginal or transitional in terms of cultural-historical occupation and farming, with a noticeable influence of human and livestock diseases such as nagana and malaria.

By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was active trade in ivory, skins, slaves, and gold between Mapungubwe along the Limpopo River and Arab traders who used the Sofala port in Mozambique (Huffman 1996). From Thu-lamela, a fifteenth-century site in the northern Kruger, these activities were continued until approximately 1650 (Kusel 1992). However, trade continued from other centers thereafter, and of significance are the references to ivory trade: Ferreira (2002), for instance, reports that ivory export via Inhambane amounted to 26,000 kg in 1768.

When Francois de Cuiper, the first recorded European to set foot in the lowveld, undertook his expedition from Delagoa Bay in 1725 to an area just north of the Crocodile River...