Superpark - Phase One. (30 September, 1996)

Sixty years ago Jan Smuts mooted the idea of a contiguous wildlife park from South Africa to Kenya. Twenty years ago The Star began promoting the first phase - a wildlife and tourism zone from St Lucia to the Zambezi, an enormous 'peace park'capable of becoming the world's most exciting ecotourist destination.

Last week the World Bank announced its willingness to put several million dollars into such a scheme. It has proposed that, initially, game reserves and national parks in South Africa and Mozambique be joined. Later, possibly, those in Zimbabwe could be added. This is an indication that the situation at this end of Africa is stabilising.

Stability must be a prerequisite to such an international park going ahead. South Africa has, over the last few years, sacrificed a great deal - including the lives of game rangers - to defend our own stocks of wildlife against ivory and rhino horn gangsters. Our resources have been strectched to the full defending the 40km-wide Kruger Park. If Kruger is to melt with a chunk of Mozambique, and if the poaching menace remains undefeated, then Kruger would become even more vulnerable.

An international park incorporating Zululand's reserves, those of Mozambique right up to Gorongoza and then west to Zimbabwe's Chimanimani mountains (named in the World Bank's proposal) would be just a start. The proposed huge ecotourist zone could in the not too distant future stretch along both the Limpopo and Zambezi valleys into Botswana and Namibia. There would be no other tourist attraction on earth to touch it in terms of terrain: desert, riverine forest, swamps, savannah, warm and secluded beaches. The 'peace park' would stabilise the conservation of wild animals and wild places in southern Africa and provide tens of thousands of permanent jobs based on a renewable resource - nature. Editorial. Courtesy of The Star newspaper, Johannesburg.