THE WILD HAS TO PAY ITS WAY:
"Challenges facing artists, poets, writers, green activists, educators in our highly commodified and globalised Neoliberal Southern Tip of Africa"
Abstract:
Vultures, eagles, hawks and kites that have majestically glided across our skies are becoming extinct. Patriarchal capitalist institutions are directly responsible for the majority of current and historic extinctions in the wild. “The extinction crisis is over. We lost…; today the guiding hand of evolution is unmistakably human, with earth-shattering consequences.” (Stephen M. Meyer.)
Do we allow the patriarchal elite of big business and mining magnates to cleave our wild coast apart, denude her forests and mangroves, degrade and deface her sand dunes? Do we become complicit in the slaughter and eventual extinction of our birdlife and so echo Mugabe, “The wild has to pay its way?” Will there be no treasured heritage to pass down to our young? There is no compromise to the debate of social upliftment via the agency of mining versus development through self-sustaining conservation and ecotourism.
Our endemic Palm Nut Vultures are being threatened. This rare, endangered species inhabit the Raffia Palm groves along our subtropical East Coast to Mtunzini in Zululand. As sedentary birds, they rarely leave their breeding sites, roost in their nest trees and thrive on a diet of palm nuts. Their persistence is highly reliant on the survival of their critical habitat. Any factor that reduces habitat protection can swiftly and dramatically impact on their numbers. They face the peril of habitat destruction and a real risk of extinction when Exxaro KZN Sands, starts operations to extract titanium worth billions; this at the expense of irreparable destruction and degradation of our pristine coastline with five estuaries of ecological significance.
The article explores the tenuous state of our birdlife though mindless habitat destruction and degradation and the dolour caused by greed triggered by the dollar. In its drive to troubleshoot a workable solution the article hopes to unify and mobilize the Arts Community of poets, musicians, artists, writers, ecologists, biologists, conservationists and green organisations to create art forms such as songs, poems, art, writing, plays and musicals depicting the precarious state of our bird, marine and wildlife. It asks our artists to spell out the sin of complicity through non-intervention.
1. INTRODUCTION
“The artist” said Pablo Picasso “is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place…” Picasso intuited the idea of the emotional permeability of artists; how we are receptacles for inspiration garnered via osmosis from diverse directions: “from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing ship, from a spider's web.” His words, like his art, stir up a train of images. They demand an exercise in mindfulness as sharp and intense as the gaze of a midwife. We are compelled to ask, what aerial messages are we receiving? What is the planet telling us? How did the scrap of paper evolve? What news did the passing ship convey? Am I the spider or the cocooned insect hanging on the web? Words that Picasso had spoken casually, last century, that now communicate a myriad images: the imperilled earth, the threatened wild, the plethora of pending extinctions of our birds, wildlife, plant species, terrestrial and aquatic creatures determined by the human hand that our inner and outer ecologies are faced with, are dragged into the light.
About a year ago, I received my scrap of paper, quite unexpectedly, and read. What I read stirred me; shook me awake. It broke the disturbing news that mining operations were close to penetrating our wild. Intended to strip, violate, deface our untamed coastline. The threat was real; we are facing the reality of a looming inevitable disaster. Unscrupulous mineral hunters intended to intrude and wreck the pristine birding areas south of Mtunzini, someday soon, and that the forest and the birds and the people and the Palm Nut Vulture were threatening to disappear, irretrievably. This catastrophe, we’ll all agree, must at all costs, not be allowed to come to pass, for it is, as Merlin, in Excalibur warned, “…it is the doom of men that they forget." In this century, Merlin’s observation can be adapted to read, the doom of humankind is their eagerness to barter nature for convenience. In “Big Yellow Taxi” a song that Joni Mitchell wrote when she looked down onto the parking lot out of her hotel window in Jamaica she observes this tradeoff made by “practical” people.
They took all the trees
And put them in a tree museum
Then they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see ‘em
Don’t it always seem to go,
That you don’t know what you’ve got
‘Til it’s gone
They’ve paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
In her article, “EMPTY SKIES: World’s Birds at Risk,” Janet Larson (2005) writes that “worldwide, some—one out of every eight birds—are threatened with extinction. Destruction and degradation of habitat is the number one danger, threatening 87 percent of these vulnerable birds.”
We witness the state of the world's birds deteriorate. This signifies deeper problems in our environment and in the way we take care of our world. There is a mining boom globally. We’re part of the global community and therefore vulnerable to foreign, alongside our local, mineral hunters who have their eyes on the natural resources above and below our forest floors, rivers and oceans. We must be vigilant and opt for cultural heritage and conservation and sustainable development that does not imperil our world.
My ecological and conservation consciousness was shaped by folk music and poetry. Folk is a genre of music that has always had the most opinionated views on politics and ecology. Artists like Bob Dylan, John Denver, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Joan Baez, Yusuf Islam, Tracey Chapman, Harvey Andrews, Jackson Browne, Bruce Cocksburn and Labi Siffre sing about politics and the environment to educate as well as entertain listeners. John Denver’s “The Eagle and the Hawk,” allows us to experience the palm nut vulture riding the air currents in Mtunzini:
I am the eagle, I live in high country
In rocky cathedrals that reach to the sky
I am the hawk and there’s blood on my feathers
But time is still turning they soon will be dry
And all of those who see me, all who believe in me
Share in the freedom I feel when I fly
Come dance with the west wind and touch on the mountain tops
Sail o’er the canyons and up to the stars
And reach for the heavens and hope for the future
And all that we can be and not what we are
My article explores the devastating impact that heavy metal open cast sand dune mining will have on our coastline, primary forests, birdlife, the coastal communities and the pristine, ecologically sensitive spaces in our country.
The mining versus conservation debate has been up and active for more than a decade. Amongst others, the Wavecrest Community, the Amadiba Crisis Committee and Sustaining the Wild Coast (SWC), that is a coalition of organizations and private individuals, environmental lawyers, activists and conservationists are currently lobbying to make the Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) become conscious of the environmental livelihoods [that] will be ruined and consequently revoke the irrational licenses granted to mine our ecologically sensitive coastline.
The SWC is a civil society organization and social movement that aims to “promote sustainable livelihoods that conserve, rehabilitate and protect the natural environment, including the geosphere and the biosphere.” They act by means of “research, public education, advocacy and the execution of projects and programmes directed towards the promotion of grassroots insights into what action is needed to ensure the long term sustainability of livelihoods of people who depend on the wild coast region.” They also “act as a watchdog to identify unsustainable and harmful practices that destroy the integrity of the natural environment and threaten the life prospects of current and future generations.”
Finally, the article confronts the challenges facing, green activists, artists, poets, writers, educators and birders working, living, dreaming and creating on the commodified and globalised neoliberal southern tip of our continent. It also brainstorms how we, as the artistic and educational communities, can help spread environmental consciousness and activism and the need for conservation through our artwork and creative teaching methods, demonstrations and the indomitable will to reconstitute and sustain the wild. UK artist, Harvey Andrew does so most poignantly with his songwriting. I’ve clipped two lines from his song, The Mallard:
For all things of beauty they could not believe in
They could not conceive so they had to destroy…
2. PAVE PARADISE – PUT UP A PARKING LOT
One can talk about sustainable utilization. One can talk about Parks beyond Parks as we do in Kenya. One can talk about the involvement of communities in wildlife management; one can even go as far as to say as … was said recently in this country [by Robert Mugabe]: every species must pay its way to survive. Well, that surely is not is not the case. We cannot live on a planet where every species has to pay its way. –Richard Leakey, Conservationist
“Indifference is the Essence of Inhumanity.” –George Bernard Shaw
“Housing delivery will not be “held hostage by butterfly eggs.” –Lindiwe Sisulu
“The earth has enough for everyone’s needs, but not for some people’s greed." –Mahatma Gandhi
As our richly bio¬diverse Wild Coast struggles to find an equilibrium between the allure of economic development through mining operations, conserving the environment and developing community based eco-tourism; state aid to kick-start the eco-tourism industry, that comes highly recommended and promises to make our Wild Coast self-sustaining, is not forthcoming. Does this mean that we’ve arrived at the point where “…every mountain, bird, fish and frog, snake, animal, plant and tree in the wild, “in its commodified status must pay its way to survive?” just as Robert Mugabe had dismissively recommended.
When did the demonstrations to rescue our coastline begin? Ever since the day the Department of Minerals & Energy (DME) began to consider mining, in conservation areas, as a lucrative option. For over a decade, green activists and ecologically sensitive citizens have been up in arms.
Two years into the new millennium online and media activism spearheaded by Sustaining the Wild Coast (SWC) allowed a wide range of writers, environmentalists, private individuals, students, law experts, academics and journalists, to inform, conscientize the public and to voice their dissatisfaction at the ecological insensitivity of our state departments.
A Wild Coast social worker, John Clarke, environmental lawyers Richard Spoor and Jeremy Ridl law experts, as well as The Human Rights Commission (HRC) environmentalists and eco-activists act on behalf of the coastal residents, continue to challenge the mining plan and are vociferously lobbying that the socially, culturally and environmentally ruinous operations, in the offing, be stopped. They demand that the DME “overturn the decision to permit open cast sand dune mining in Pondoland” and other ecological hot spots on the Wild Coast. There has, however, been an oversight. Mtunzini does not appear on the list of threatened areas. It is therefore imperative that the residents of Mtunzini link up with the broader struggle so that the DME can be pressured into refusing mining rights to Exarro KZN Sands who await permission to begin mining the dune forests at their Fairbreeze Extension C site, south of Mtunzini.
Oblivious of or confused about their rights, the coastline and its communities continue to subsist, shrouded in insecurity and tenuousness while the controversy rages on. The mining debate pivots on the intention of Australian mining house, Mineral Commodities Limited “to extract 15 million tons of heavy minerals a year from the [Xolobene] sand dunes along a strip of pristine coastline of international ecological significance.” This part of the coastline, the “Kwanyana block, in the Xolobene project, includes five estuarine systems.”
The Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT) had, according to Fred Kockott’s (2008) article “officially rejected the mining plans because they could cause irreversible damage to estuaries, pollute ground water and lead to a permanent loss of biodiversity and the extinction of aquatic fauna.” Kockott (2008) elucidated that the DEAT had intimated that the environmental impact assessment (EIA) conducted by the mining company's consultants was not performed competently. Specialist studies on “pollutants likely to be produced, rehabilitation of dunes, waste-storage and treatment plans” were found to be missing. The mining company also required “separate authorizations for associated bulk infrastructure developments, including roads, sewage, water supplies and electricity to support the mining.” This information gives an overview of the wholly intrusive nature of mining operations that leave broken and displaced animal and human communities and wastelands in their wake. The nightmare of sustainable development through mining would also cause the vast ecotourism potential in the areas to be irreversibly destroyed.
There is nothing to negotiate. I am not backward thinking or anti-development but we have so much to lose and the damage will be irreversible. The destructive racially tainted thinking of our Minister of Minerals & Energy, Buyelwa Sonjica needs to be challenged and revised. In an interview with Fred Kockott (2008) in which she “dismissed opposition to the mining as the work of rich whites who were only interested in enjoying South Africa's pristine wilderness areas,” she attacked Spoor and the campaign to save the wild coast:
“…There is a man called Richard Spoor who has divided the community. He is a white person…I ask myself: How much does he get for dividing our community? What is his agenda for not wanting progress in our community? …Why do we need permission to mine natural resources? Why do we have to wait for people to teach us about nature? They come here to play; while we are hungry…We lost St Lucia - us, as the government. We gave it up, but what is happening in St Lucia today? It has been declared an exclusive area, and only rich, white people go there…We are going to mine in this area at Kwanyana. …one thing is sure, we are going to mine."
Minister Sonjica’s grand plans to mine our coastlines must be stopped at all costs. The ecological devastation and annihilation of our coastal thickets, endemic birds, amphibians and mammals, and the rich diversity of plant and aquatic species, estuarine systems as well as the threatened farms and livelihoods of the residents, is unthinkable.
As yet, all is not lost. Something can still be done. Ridl (2008 cited in Kockott, F., 2008) pointed out that “all organs of state were subservient to the National Environment Management Act, with the DEAT the final authority on the implementation of this legislation.” Hence, he revealed that “any decision on a development that has a negative impact on the environment and does not have approval from the DEAT is not legitimate and can be challenged by any member of the public." Spoor in Kockott (2008) corroborated that the DEAT had supreme authority to stop mining operations and he publicly challenged authorities to enforce laws at their disposal to stop the Xolobeni mining project.”
But, in spite of the public outcry and the unsuitability of the region for mineral extraction, Minister Sonjica overrode the recommendations and granted Mineral Resources Commodities Ltd. (MRC) a quarter-century-long license to mine, ready to start on the last day of October 2008.
We’re in a battle against time. Should mining operations commence at the end of this month, the huge ecotourism potential in the region would be wrecked. What do we do? We wait, lobby, observe and wonder: Will the complaints and pleas of the residents who were not properly consulted about their right to decide their own future, protect their livelihoods, land and human rights and the lasting and irreversible impact that mining operations will have on the environment and their lives, be heard? John Clarke, Richard Spoor and environmental law specialist Jeremy Ridl have been instrumental in representing the affected communities and lobbying against the prospective mining operations and the serious travesty of environmental justice that is occurring before our eyes. We find ourselves in the terrible position of
watching the space.
George Bernard Shaw’s words, Indifference is the Essence of Inhumanity, surface as I try to make sense of how anaesthetized we’ve become, how for granted we take the spectacular beauty of our coastline. How does it become possible for the Minister of Minerals and Energy, Buyelwa Patience Sonjica, a mother and caring human being, in her capacity and authority as Minister to allow the rape of our coastline; to sign away the heritage of our children, hers included!
It becomes possible, even easy, just like taking candy from a baby, when we become alienated from nature as Terrence Des Pres had written about American politicians in Self/Landscape and Grid, (1994) “…But for all of them, we and the landscape are expendable, to think that way, after all, is their job.” Then the blind-and-mute stance taken by the DME and the pro-mining stakeholders to the Environmental Impact Assessment reports and the toothlessness of the DEAT; and the betrayal of our coastline to the visions of Eldorado offered by our own mining giant, Exxaro as well as the Australian mining moguls, begin to make sense. To add insult to injury, the good Samaritans (BEEs and pro-mining stakeholders) bandy around the abject poverty of the Amadiba people like an unsightly disease that needs a quick fix. The Wild Coast residents do not want their lives, as they know it, to be violated by foreign as well as local mining intrusions. “Is this the freedom we fought for, our hard-won freedom?” they surely ask! Our freedom is still in its adolescence; their history was written in blood.
In the lines that follow, Arundhati Roy (1999) poignantly depicts the psychological blackmail exercised over the people by patriarchal capitalist institutions: “Power is fortified not just by what it destroys, but also by what it creates not just by what it takes but also by what it gives. And powerlessness affirmed not just by the helplessness of those who have lost, but also by the gratitude of those who have (or think they have gained.)”
The Deadly Sin of Greed laced with the indifference of the DME and the mining magnates who have become anaesthetized to the beauty of nature could be seen as the root cause of the perceptual squint that has caused our coastline to be plunged into the precarious situation which threatens the existence of all that walks, flies, swims and grows on it. Having taken fathomless centuries to evolve, the mountainous sand dunes with their forests and mangroves, the estuaries with their aquatic nurseries, the landscape now spectacularly beautiful that, once terminally defaced, can not be reconstructed – will vanish into a black hole. Luc Bourgault (1997) explains the dire straits our planet finds herself in through the mindless destructiveness of the commodified mind, programmed to pursue profits at the expense of moral, cultural or aesthetic values:
…Mother Earth is a living being who needs our
respect, in the same way as our biological mother.
We have taken everything from her to satisfy our own
greed without worrying about what will remain for the
generations to come. We shave the Earth’s hair (forests)
right down to the soil. We have exploded atomic bombs
in her stomach, thus provoking earth shocks that have
shifted the North Pole by three for four metres…Equally
we suck out her hormones (oil) to run our cars and heat
our homes and we pollute her blood (the waters of the earth)
and her lungs (the atmosphere). Thus we are creating a
major imbalance in the body of Mother Earth. (p.22)
We marvel at how “nature is transformed from an ecological into an economic entity dissolving its holistic totality and its integrity into an ensemble of individual natural resources.” Should the demonstrations fail, seven kilometres of pristine beach and “significant areas of the Wild Coast will be mined for titanium sands.” Spoor (2007) pointed out the sacrilege of the intent to mine a region as spectacularly beautiful and ecologically important by poignantly asserting how ridiculous the plan is, “mining Pondoland Wild Coast is the moral, cultural and aesthetic equivalent of quarrying Ayers Rock for granite, or the Great Barrier Reef for calcium carbonate”.
This small blue green planet is the only one with
comfortable temperatures, good air and water, a wealth of
animals and plants, for millions or (quadrillions) of miles.
A little waterhole in Vast Space, a nesting place, a place of
singing and practice, a place of dreaming. It’s on the verge
of being totally trashed – there’s a slow way and a fast
way. We are all natives here and this is our only sacred
spot. We must know that we’ve been jumped and fight like a
raccoon in a pack of hounds, for our own and all other lives.
-Gary Snyder-
The habitat destruction and defacement of the coastline, stripping away of whole forests, killing off of mangroves, throttling and blocking of estuaries, degradation of the landscape, sudden death and extinction of birds such as the endangered crested crane and palm nut vulture, animals and a plethora of aquatic species, rare endemic plants, and butterflies in the wake of the mining operations are not considered a debacle by the DME.
After the DME’s deliberations at which stakeholders such as the Amadiba Community, the Department of Forestry who owns the land and the Wavecrest community were not included, the DME granted a license to Australian Mining Company, MRC along with its local subsidiary Transworld Energy & Mineral Resources and its BEE associate Xolco. The license was awarded after their receipt of the EIA reports. They were fully conscious that the areas were found to be environmentally sensitive and therefore unsuited for heavy metal dune mining.
The full impact and the fallout of such mining ventures on our coastline, as well as the deterioration of the quality of life of the coastal communities, under threat are not regarded as a serious problem by the DME. It appears that instead, in the spirit of revenue, the DME fully supports the forays of avaricious Mining Houses both foreign and national into our ecological hotspots and other equally environmentally sensitive places.
The DME Report 2007 lauds the contribution of mining to the “Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). After all, “mining is our country’s “largest industry in the primary economic sector….” The mining industry in post independence South Africa, according to the DME, is “placing greater emphasis on stimulating black economic empowerment (BEE).” The DME asserts that this major investment in the historically disadvantaged “has yielded significant results” in that it has led to the mushrooming of BEE companies of substantial size in South Africa’s mining and resources sector in a short period.
Mining has consequently become a prime focus of the RDP in terms of entrepreneurial development, black economic empowerment and stimulation of employment and economic growth.” This RDP might, no doubt, have worked for “BEE and economic growth” but definitely not for the “stimulation of employment.” Unemployment rates in our country remain ridiculously high and are spiraling.
New BEE mining giants such as Exxaro Resources have begun to shape the post independence South African mining landscape. It has achieved the position as “South Africa’s flagship BEE mining Company.” As one of the largest South African-based, JSE listed mining groups, it is also “the largest black-controlled, diversified mining company, with existing operational interests in Namibia, Australia and China and strong project pipeline provide a base for growth in international markets.”
Exxaro’s mineral sands operations “(formerly known as Ticor SA), and Australia Sands, which encompasses its Australian operations’… joint venture with US-based Tronox Inc. include KZN Sands on the east coast, the Namakwa Sands operation on the west coast of South Africa. The combined developments position this South African mining giant as one of the world’s largest suppliers to the titanium and zircon industries.”
Exxaro “KZN Sands is focused on the exploration, mining and treatment of mineral sands deposits in KwaZulu-Natal, and exploration in Limpopo and Eastern Cape provinces in South Africa.” From the information gleaned from their website it is very clear that Exarro as well as the DME have no regard for our birdlife, environment, ecology or the impact on our biosphere and geosphere.
Entrepreneurial Mining Companies, both local and international, bank on the rank ignorance of the underprivileged communities of our coastal and rural areas and their agents are dispatched to broadcast the good news of the magical creation of thousands of mining related jobs and the added gifts of infrastructure, roads and recreational facilities they’ve been denied that would instantly pop up in the wake of the mining operations and transform their lives. They do not clearly communicate the fallout; the invasion and irreversible destruction of the communities’ lives as they knew it.
The damming of their rivers, the polluting of their ground water, the degradation of the farms they grew their crops on, the denuding of their forests and the loss of everything that was. How can mining in a pristine areas with forests, spectacular birdlife, varieties of indigenous flora and fauna, rivers, streams and estuaries be traded and lost in lieu of the limited offerings of a few jobs and promises of social upliftment and infrastructural quick fixes offered by mining barons guarantee to transform the lifestyles and living conditions of socially disadvantaged people?
Unprincipled BEE groups proliferate, working hand-in-hand with foreign and local mining scouts and the DME is more concerned about how lucrative such billion dollar ventures promise to be to them and the mining magnates who get the lion’s portion, anyway; the fur and feathered and human inhabitants, and even the Wild Coast royalty, have no say, they were never part of the equation, anyway!
It appears as though our sacred places which are, without doubt, a boon to eco-tourism are not recognised for their cultural, spiritual or aesthetic value because they’ve been condemned into becoming commodities; price-tagged and commodified as is every facet of our lives in our spectacularly beautiful country with its overarching patriarchal, neoliberal framework.
Currently Exxaro KZN Sands is awaiting “DME approval of mining rights for the Fairbreeze C extension and Braeburn” sites south of Mtunzini. The Exxaro Annual Report 2007 notes that “delays are already affecting operational activities” at the earmarked sites and that “production is planned to start in July 2010” when our country will be over the moon with soccer mania. While our homegrown mining giant expects to be granted the license to kick-start its deleterious operations any day now, there has been no public outcry regarding this new threat to Mtunzini’s diverse birdlife and biodiversity in the print, audio or visual media. Action needs to be taken! After a thorough search I found only one study on Mtunzini; a dissertation by an MSc student, Bryan Maritz. In Maritz’s (2007) dissertation chapter titled “Threatened herpetofauna of the Exxaro KZN Sands Fairbreeze C Extension mining area” he reveals another critical dimension linked to the proposed strip mining incursion as he explores the impacts of mining operations on the amphibian and reptile populations native to Mtunzini
Maritz (2007:2) alerts us to Exxaro KZN Sands’ planned development of “a heavy minerals strip mine south of Mtunzini, KwaZulu-Natal. His research probes the potential impacts of strip mining and the degree to which the planned operations could negatively affect “local herpetofauna.” This significant study provides us with “an objective assessment of the conservation status of all amphibian and reptile species occurring, or likely to occur on the Exxaro KZN Sands Fairbreeze mining site.”(Maritz, 2007:68)
2010 looms large on the horizon. While our people lose themselves in World Cup soccer mania, armed with its license, Exarro will be strip mining the dune-forests on the coastline south of Mtunzini. The concomitant damage and irreversible devastation that is predicted to occur in that mining company’s tenure of wasteland creation, is unthinkable but as certain as death; it is in the pipeline; an event poised to happen, unless drastic measures are taken to reverse and overturn the decisions made and the contracts signed.
The devastation, should it occur, will sadly be permanent. The birds and raptors, reptiles and amphibians, animals and mangroves, raphia palm cathedrals, centuries-old forests and endemic plant species that depend on rivers and specific ecosystems are consequently sentenced to death and face imminent extinction. What Minister Sonjica and her staff at the DME needs to learn is to make responsible decisions based on their impact on the Earth and their contribution to sustainability. As humans we’re part of nature and therefore, subject to its rules. When we violate rules we do so at our own risk and we put our people and our environment at risk at the same time.
“We have no right to exterminate the species that evolved without us.
We have the responsibility to do everything we can to preserve their continued existence.” –Sir David Attenborough
In my villanelle, which surfaced on Heritage Day, 24th September 2008, I echo the sentiment:
The Wild has to Pay its Way
Touch heart; trash immoral deals; our wilderness is not for sale!
Alien Magnates are blasting dunes, rock-face, estuaries, mangroves, away;
I ask you, why, why does the wild have to pay its way?
Africa’s southern tip spins on its burdened axis; a netted populace wails:
Tagged are our dreams, labour, fauna & flora, land, lives & days;
Touch heart; trash immoral deals; our wilderness is not for sale!
Shells strip verdant Raphia forests, make pink-backed pelicans ail,
Damn rivers; engender toxic lakes, kill stirring things straying their way;
I ask you, why, why does the wild have to pay its way?
Thabo Mbeki’s era abruptly expired; does the new era augur grace or travail?
Palmnut vultures, butterflies, our young, in dread of a global hammer sway;
Touch heart; trash immoral deals; our wilderness is not for sale!
In our land of ubuntu the faceless, voteless; homeless, still starve and rail;
Who fixes price-tags, hacks up habitats; heeds the Dollar’s honeyed refrain?
I ask you, why, why does the wild have to pay its way?
And you, my Mother Nature’s Son, up there on the Milky Way sail,
I thank, praise you now for villanelles that effervesce as they proclaim.
Touch heart; trash immoral deals; our wilderness is not for sale!
I ask you, why, why does the wild have to pay its way?
-Deela Khan
3. Art is a Hammer
Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.
- Bertold Brecht.
Brecht projects art as a hammer with which to hammer reality into shape. The notion of activism present in his pregnant lines compels us to re-vision our position as artists. We seriously need to commit ourselves to the fact that art has a legitimate place in the movement for social change, ecological protection and conservation. Brecht’s words are a summons to use our art as armourment for the defence, restoration and conservation of our natural habitat, sacred spaces and pristine places and to teach and build consciousness around these principles. We, essentially, have to harness our art; make it a vehicle to create and sustain the reality of a cherished, protected Earth; not the vision of an over-industrialised wasteland devoid of dreamtime: like the lines in Cat Steven’s “Where do the Children Play”:
Well you’ve cracked the sky, scrapers fill the air. But you will keep on building higher ‘til there’s no more room up there?
The war on the wild, the defacement of forests, mountains, coastlines and countryside, the grubbing after resources by foreign governments, mining magnates, developers and unscrupulous prospectors has continued unabated across the timelines. Many birds became extinct because of the colonization and exploration of many parts of the world, its islands and archipelagoes by the patriarchal colonizing powers. The activities of the British and the French in Mauritius were directly responsible for the habitat destruction and the dying out of the Dodo.
Mauritius was once the paradise of the Dodo Bird until it fell into the gaze of the Dutch East India Company, the French and the British. Its history is akin to Robben Island, our island prison, now a World Heritage Site. It, too, was a paradise of birds, seals, penguins and whales till the arrival of the colonizing Portuguese, Dutch and the British.
It took less than a century of pillaging to make the Dodo extinct. Its image now graces Mauritian stamps and the pages of websites and encyclopedias. Our penguins and seals, threatened with a similar fate, have survived despite the heavy looting. Currently, our Palm Nut vulture and the birds and raptors of Mtunzini are threatened. It is imperative that we learn from the past.
What do we do to make sure that Xolobene, Mtunzini, Pondoland, Walvis Bay, the entire Wild Coast and West Coast is protected from invasion by alien mining companies, our own mining barons, our misguided DME and the mindless Black Empowerment Companies that have mushroomed. One feels a sense of foreboding. For the sake of synchronicity and parallel histories with Mauritius that saw the extinction of the Dodo, I am including an extract from my long poem on Robben Island:
The moment they saw you,
they had discovered you.
You were their prize#8213;
They had the right to take you,
name you, loot, plunder and destroy you#8213;
Your protracted rape across the timeline
began with the breaking of your birds, your beasts
and the rockshelf that undergirds
all that grows on you ...
Whole colonies of trusting penguins,
called ‘feathered fish’, by the English,
were herded into longboats to be butchered,
their eggs harvested by the boatload
not allowing them the grace of time to recover
to regenerate their kind#8213;
Voluptuous seals, the ‘fattest ever seen’, bludgeoned
for pelts and ‘sea-wolf’ steaks and a bay full of whales,
prime blubber, harpooned to near-extinction over three brief centuries.
With blue-print of mistrust-for-humans imprinted within their genes,
your seals are still gone,
your whales are still gone#8213;
Your penguins have returned
but scuttle away at the threatening
sounds of approaching footfalls#8213;
Our generation needs to earn their respect,
needs to regain their trust once again.
I stumbled upon the “Wild at Heart” website and discovered the following disturbing news:
Of the estimated 5-15 million living species sharing the planet, the vast majority are under some kind of threat from humankind, whether it is by destruction of habitat, erosion of foodscapes and food sources, pollution, hunting, overfishing or climate change. Humans, through a dangerous combination of greed, indifference, and ignorance, are destroying numerous animal species, along with the rest of the living planet. –Wild at Heart
What do we do to make people more mindful of the environment; make humans buy into the idea that we’re part of all things animate and inanimate? What do we do to make a difference? If we have not done so as yet, I ask that we commit to a pledge of creative partnership with Nature. We have to vow to be more mindful than ever before and to use our artistic imagination to advocate for the natural world, which will help dispel the false vision of a border separating the two worlds.
This is the essence that we have to articulate and communicate by putting our talents to good use through creative teaching, writing, playwriting, art, photography, poetry, dance and music. For us to be able to revivify socially, environmentally and emotionally estranged beings, to bring about real and lasting change, we need to help re-establish our lost connection to not only the land, but to our true nature and draw energy and insight through our wild roots dangling dormant; to establish a firmly rooted sense of place; and create hope for the future of the only tangible planet we have; our ailing Mother Earth.
If we take to heart, Marx's declaration, that it was not the task of the philosophers to interpret the world but to change it, we would affirm that it is high time that we start to accept our role as "the antennae of the race" (as Ezra Pound had defined poets/artists/writers). What Muriel Rukeyser portrayed as "the armored and concluded mind" is definitely not how the artistic mind has been described through the ages; true creators, really responsible artificers, should make artifacts which are capable of mobilizing humanity into re-visioning the global shambles patriarchal civilization has fallen into. We have to harness creativity to help find new, more workable alternatives so that a genuine healing process may be put into action.
We can no longer afford to deny history or allow ourselves to succumb to the nihilistic luxury of becoming decadently disinterested and begin wallowing in the impotence of our art. In order for us attempt to reconstitute the tattered quilt of our world as it is, we, in concert with role models like Kundera, Benjamin, Camus, Forché, Rich, Hikmet, Iqbal, Milosz, Neruda, Whitman, Paz, Machado, Lorca, Yevtushenko, Alegria are impelled to agree that our contemporary poets-artists-writers can no longer opt for the autism of resistance towards history-in-the-making but (for the conservation of our planet, devoid of which we, let alone poetry and art, would not be able to exist) choose to be political and historical, green conscious and admit the truth of Carolyn Forché’s assertion that "a poet should be of his or her time,” that our “human condition demands a poetry of witness" and that "there is no such thing as non-political poetry.
Songwriter-musician, Tracey Chapman, sings her poetry of witness:
You’ve seen her strip mined
You’ve heard of bombs exploded underground
You know the sun shines
Hotter than ever before
Mother of us all
Place of our birth
We all are witness
To the rape of the world
In similar vein, in The Greater Common Good, Arundhati Roy (1999) tells how:
“Day by day, river by river, forest by forest, mountain by mountain, missile by missile, bomb by bomb - almost without our knowing it, we are being broken.”
Ironically, we find that the main cause of the extinction of birds right now is the destruction of their natural habitats for the greater common good. The GreenMuze Staff poignantly points out how humankind is “systematically colonizing the entire planet, from the water to the land to the skies. Development, deforestation, mining, war, farming, industry and pollution, all contribute to habitat loss and fragmentation. Habitat destruction is universally the most dominant threat to species. In fact, habitat loss and degradation affect 89% of all threatened birds, 83% of mammals, and 91% of threatened plants reports The World Conservation Union (IUCN).
They continue the disturbing article by providing unbelievable statistics: “The planet is currently losing animal species at a rate of 5,000-10,000 times higher than the natural rate of extinct. IUCN, a global tracking agency for species, reported in 2007 that life on earth was disappearing at an increased rate. In 2007, there were 41,415 species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and 16,306 of them are threatened with extinction. 80% of the birds, mammals and amphibians on the Red List have been directly affected by habitat loss. Scientists refer to the increasing trend of species erosion as the “global extinction crisis”. This is the dire state of affairs uncut. We are shocked into taking responsibility for so many birds and animals that have died out and are endangered due to our activities in the past and current history. What are we doing to stop the carnage?
Much more still needs to be done. Focused goal setting and commitment is needed from all of us. We need to work to realize a community where wildlife conservation is a top priority and skilled conservationists and conservation professionals are engaged in ensuring species survival. We need to strive to reconstitute our people’s aesthetic consciousness and shift their attitudes and learnt mindlessness to be able to create a place where wildlife is abundant and extinctions are rare. What we ultimately envision is a planet where we value our internal and external wildernesses and recognize how vital biodiversity is.
We also have to network and co-operate more fruitfully with international organizations to find the best workable strategies to save our threatened species from extinction, protect habitat, and improve ecological welfare through collaborative projects with researchers, scientists, ecologists, green activists and trainers.
Awareness around the cultural, ethical, aesthetic and economic reasons to conserve and protect species for future generations must be publicized effectively so that uncalled for ignorance may be avoided. We still have time to turn the tide of ignorance and inertia and opt for the future of life.
As artist watchdogs of society, we have to demand that all pristine sacred places of ecological importance be made heritage sites; this would circumvent the intrusion of crooked prospectors and things that adversely influence the conservation of birds through the degradation and modification of their breeding habitats and ecosystems, pollution from mining operations and other negative disturbances by humans. In so doing we can recreate the vision of timelessness and security that our wild is fast losing, that we’re fast losing.
“African Sky Blue” by Johnny Clegg & Savuka celebrates the vision of a new dawn:
African sky blue,
your children wait for the dawn
African sky blue,
soon a new day will be born
African sky blue
African sky blue,
Will you bless my life?
WORD COUNT: 6, 554
© Deela Khan, 2009
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© Deela Khan 2009
