It's cold outside Zuma's ANC. But there's little warmth left inside

A protest in support of Raymond Suttner released from detention in 1988 by apartheid authorities.
Robert Botha/Times Media Group

In the liberation struggle against apartheid a small number of white people joined the battle to overthrow the South African regime. One of them, academic Raymond Suttner, was first arrested in 1975 and tortured with electric shocks because he refused to supply information to the police. He then served eight years in prison because of his underground activities for the African National Congress and South African Communist Party.

After his release in 1983 he was forced - after two years - to go underground to evade arrest, but was re-detained in 1986 under repeatedly renewed states of emergency for 27 months – 18 of these in solitary confinement.

First published in 2001, Suttner’s prison memoir “Inside Apartheid’s Prison”, has been made available again, now with a completely new introduction. The Conversation Africa’s Charles Leonard spoke to Suttner.

Why did you write the book?

I was hesitant to write it because there is a culture of modesty that is inculcated in cadres. I used to think it was “not done” to write about myself. I also thought that my experience was a “parking ticket” compared with the sentences of Nelson Mandela and others. But I came to feel that I have a story to tell.

Nevertheless I hope that resources will be found so that more stories are told, not only of prison but the many unknown people who pursued resistance in different ways in a range of relatively unknown places.

You were imprisoned and on house arrest for over 11 years. It was based on choices you made. Would you make the same choices today?

Yes. I did what I believed was right at the time and even if things are not turning out so well at the moment that does not invalidate those choices. I saw the liberation struggle as having a sacred quality and considered it an honour to be part of it.

I was very influenced by the great Afrikaner Communist Bram Fischer. He had nothing to gain personally and could have been a judge, the president of the country or anything else. Instead he chose a life of danger and later life imprisonment. I was inspired by that example, amongst others, to do what I could.

When one embarks on revolutionary activities there are no guarantees of success. I was not sure that I would come out alive. I did what I believed was right and would make the same choices again.

So those choices were worth it?

Definitely. This was not a business venture where one could answer such a question through balancing profits and losses. For me joining the struggle, as a white, gave me the opportunity to start my life afresh by joining my fortunes with those who were oppressed. It gave me the chance to link myself with the majority of South Africans.

That was a more authentic way of living my life than whatever successes I may have achieved, had I simply focused on professional success. Most importantly I see this choice – to join the liberation struggle – as giving me the opportunity to humanise myself as a white South African in apartheid South Africa.

Do you still feel the damage after all these years in prison?

Yes. I have post-traumatic stress. I am not sure that it will ever be eliminated or that I always recognise its appearance. Many of us live with scars from that period.

I have not always acknowledged or understood that I have been damaged but it is directly related to my having fibromyalgia (a disorder characterised by widespread musculoskeletal pain accompanied by fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues), according to the specialist who diagnosed it. She cautioned me about returning to my prison experiences, in this book, fearing the possibility of it setting off physically painful symptoms. That didn’t happen as far as I am aware and returning to the scene of trauma may be part of healing, according to some.

Why did you break with the ANC over 10 years ago?

I had not been happy with many aspects of Thabo Mbeki‘s presidency but that did not mean I should align myself with his successor Jacob Zuma. Zuma’s candidacy was promoted not only by ANC people but especially the South African Communist Party (SACP) and trade union federation Cosatu’s leaderships, presenting him as having qualities that were not valid. In particular the claim that Zuma was a man of the people with sympathy for the poor and downtrodden was untrue.

It was already known that he was linked with corrupt activities before he was elected as ANC president in 2007. But what was decisive for me was Zuma’s 2006 rape trial. There was something very cruel in the way the complainant, known as “Khwezi”, was treated, in the mode of defence that Zuma chose. I found that unacceptable.

Is it not lonely outside the ANC?

Raymond Suttner in 2001, when ‘Inside Apartheid’s Prison’ was first published.
Raymond Preston/Times Media Group

I miss the comradeship that I understood to bind me to people with whom I had shared dangers, joys and sorrows. When you are together in difficult times it creates a special bond. I did not conceive of that being broken.

But when you break away in a time of decadence, what is it that one misses? I cannot resume relationships on the same basis as those which I previously counted as comradeship. Our paths diverged. I went out into the cold and some with whom I used to be very close chose to link themselves with a project that has meant corruption, violence and destroying everything that was once valued in the liberation tradition.

These former comrades have all been accomplices in Nkandla (Zuma’s private rural home which was upgraded at a cost to the country of R246-million to taxpayers), the social grants scandal and many other features of this period which have seen some individuals benefit unlawfully and at the expense of the poor. I do not say that every person I know has been improperly enriched. But all those who have been in the ANC/SACP/Cosatu leadership have endorsed, indeed even provided elaborate defences of some of the worst features of the Zuma period.

In the new introduction to the book I use the word “betrayal” and I choose it to refer to these people, many of whom were once brave, who turned their backs on those from whom they came or whose cause they once adopted as their own.

Yes, it’s lonely. But that loneliness cannot be remedied by resuming bonds
with people who have taken fundamentally different paths. I now build relationships with others from whom I am learning and growing.

Raymond Suttner, Emeritus Professor, University of South Africa and part-time professor Rhodes University, Rhodes University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

The battle for control of South Africa's state isn't just about personalities

A protester calling for President Jacob Zuma’s removal.
Reuters/Mike Hutchings

It is probably no consolation to Brian Molefe, the CEO of South Africa’s power utility Eskom, that his woes are evidence that President Jacob Zuma’s March cabinet reshuffle has so far had precisely the opposite effect to that which was expected.

Nor, no doubt, would it cheer Molefe to know that his plight has become a symbol of an important reality: that who occupies which political post is turning out to be far less important to the government’s economic decision-making than it seemed.

Molefe’s woes are evidence that the country’s infamous cabinet reshuffle has so far had precisely the opposite effect to that which was generally expected.

Before the reshuffle, many expected that, if Zuma did fire the finance minister and deputy minister, the balance of power in government would sharply change. Walls which held the state’s capture at bay would come tumbling down.

But this has not happened. The ANC patronage faction may have strengthened its presence in the Cabinet. But its attempt to take control of key institutions is in retreat in the face of opposition within the governing party and from unions, business and civil society groups.

Thus far the patronage group’s opponents have also turned the tide by winning changes which reverse its gains. This does not mean that the patronage faction’s opponents have won: the battle will continue to be fought decision by decision, day to day, possibly until the 2019 election. But the patronage group’s expected triumph has not materialised despite changes in the faces in government.

Molefe’s Pyrrhic victory

It is widely known that the Treasury is a key prize for the ANC’s patronage faction. It was also expected across the spectrum that if Pravin Gordhan and Mcebisi Jonas were out of the way, it would be able to get on with handing over public resources to private interests without hindrance. Molefe’s recent experiences shows that this has not happened.

After leaving Eskom in response to the Public Protector’s State of Capture report which linked him to the Gupta family, Molefe landed in Parliament chosen by North West province, a patronage faction stronghold.

When Zuma told ANC leaders he planned to replace Gordhan, it became clear that Molefe had not been given his seat as a consolation prize – the president wanted to appoint him finance minister. He backed off because half the ANC’s top six leaders insisted that Molefe was unacceptable because he had become firmly linked to the patronage faction.

This seems to have made Molefe so politically radioactive that he was not given any post in the reshuffle. Since he presumably had not come to parliament to sit on committees, he was given his Eskom job back.

This prompted a backlash – from within the ANC as well as outside it. The governing party issued a statement rejecting the appointment and the ANC national executive committee, its decision-making body between conferences, agreed that Molefe should go.

He now relies on courts to give him back his job – the same courts which have barred him temporarily from Eskom property, suggesting that they may see less merit in his case than he hopes.

What is the political import of these events? Not only have the president and the patronage faction been unable to secure Molefe any job in the Cabinet which would enable him to take the economic decisions they want. They have also failed to persuade an ANC national executive committee that Molefe should keep his Eskom job. That hardly suggests an all-conquering patronage faction ready to do with the state whatever it pleases.

Other patronage faction losses

Molefe’s fate is not an isolated incident. Since the reshuffle, every key government decision has gone against the patronage faction. The president has finally, after months of stonewalling, signed the Amendments to the Financial Intelligence Centre Act. The amendments aim to tighten control on illicit financial activity and were opposed by the patronage faction.

The interim board of the South African Broadcasting Corporation has begun an attempt to retrieve it from the faction. A deal between the armaments parastatal Denel and a company with links to the Gupta family, VR Laser Asia, has been halted.

Berning Ntlemeza, head of the Hawks, the special investigating unit which hounded Gordhan and Jonas and was seen as a loyal instrument of the patronage group, has been removed by new Police Minister Fikile Mbalula.

Investigations have been ordered into Eskom transactions.

There is a clear pattern here and it sends the opposite message to the one expected before the reshuffle. It is consistent with a takeover by the patronage faction’s opponents, not the faction itself.

How do we explain this? Why, after Zuma, a key figure in the patronage faction, removed key impediments to it at the National Treasury and other ministries, and saw off attempts to remove him, is the ANC and government behaving as if the patronage group lost?

It’s about much more than just personalities

The short answer is that the framework through which many in business, the media and the academy look at the ANC’s economic battle places far too much stress on personalities. It assumes that, if Zuma stays, the patronage group is rampant - if he goes, they will be put to flight.

It was similarly assumed that Gordhan and Jonas were the thin line which kept the patronage faction at bay: once they were gone, it could trample over the fiscus like an invading army.

But the battle is about far more than personalities. It is about how important sections of the ANC and the society relate to the market economy. Within the ANC there are significant groups who see patronage as a mortal threat to the economy. They enjoy substantial support from anyone who has a stake in the formal economy: unions and their members as well as professionals and business people.

They did not disappear on the night of the reshuffle. On the contrary, they regrouped quickly. They seem to have decided that they could win important battles on what government should and should not do about the economy regardless of who is president and in the Cabinet. And they seem to be winning thus far.

While the mainstream debate concentrates on who occupies which positions, the patronage group’s opponents are showing that it is possible to limit the use of public funds for private purposes regardless of who wins the personality battles.

It is, of course, not yet clear how lasting the patronage group’s retreat is – it may well recover. What is clear is that, even if its opponents win the ANC presidency, this faction will not disappear: it may continue to control several provincial governments which can be used as patronage strongholds. So its success, too, depends less on who gets what position.

Molefe’s recent travails, and the events which surround it, show that the battle for the fiscus will continue. And that the economy will be shaped by who wins the battle on concrete decisions more than who sits in government offices.

Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of Johannesburg

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Saudi rift with Qatar exposes growing division in the anti-Iran alliance

US and Gulf Cooperation Council forces conduct field training, in Kuwait in 2017.
U.S. Army, Francis O'Brien/

This is the worst diplomatic crisis in the Gulf region in decades.

On June 5, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt decided to break off ties with Qatar, accusing the Gulf state of supporting terrorism and of destabilising the whole region.

Qatar had fired the opening shot by what seemed to be open criticism of the Saudi-led and US-assisted anti-Iran alliance pushed by Donald Trump after his visit to Riyadh on May 21.

On May 24, Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the ruler of Qatar, allegedly criticised the US-Saudi move and described Iran as an “Islamic power”. The Qatar News Agency quoted the emir as saying, “There is no wisdom in harbouring hostility towards Iran”. This infuriated Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Qatar then questioned the veracity of the comments and said its news agency was hacked. Nevertheless, the diplomatic rift been deepening, culminating in the current crisis.

Not the first diplomatic imbroglio

This is not the first time that Qatar, a thumb-shaped emirate of the size of the US state of Connecticut, has become embroiled a diplomatic imbroglio with its Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) partners Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.



These three Gulf Arab states withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar’s capital Doha in early 2014, on the pretext that the country had links to the Muslim Brotherhood and gave refuge to its leaders after the fall of Egypt’s first democratically elected government in July 2013.

Saudi Arabia declared the Muslim Brotherhood, which it views as an alternative source of authority that’s opposed to hereditary monarchical rule, a terrorist organisation in early March 2014.

But the current crisis is much more serious than the 2014 diplomatic spat, which was resolved after eight months, with Saudi, Emirati and Bahraini ambassadors returning to Doha in November of the same year on the condition that Qatar would never allow the Muslim Brotherhood to operate from its territory.

Iran in the centre

Unlike the 2014 crisis, the current Qatari–Saudi rift is not just an intra-GCC falling out, as it involves Saudi Arabia’s regional rival Iran.

Qatar is seen by the Saudi government and its Emirati and Bahraini counterparts as a spoiler of efforts to forge a unified Arab–Muslim position, undergirded by the Trump administration, against Iran’s so-called “terrorist agenda” in Arab countries.

A week before US President Donald Trump visited Riyadh to consolidate the anti-Iran alliance, the Saudi arabic-language daily newspaper Okaz reported a secret meeting between the Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad Bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani, who was officially visiting Baghdad at the time, and the Iranian Quds Force Commander Qasim Sulaimani.

The newspaper accused Qatar of exiting “early from the Arab-Islamic consensus” on Iran, adding “its defence of the Iranian terrorist regime shows the secret Doha-Tehran alliance intends to strike at Arab and Islamic solidarity.”

All of this while Qatar signed the anti-Iran Riyadh Declaration issued after the Arab-Islamic-America summit on May 21 2017.

But why would Qatar, a country that hosts the largest US air force base in the Middle East (Al-Udeid), veer off the Saudi-led GCC military and diplomatic track?


Gulf watchers know that Qatar is suspicious of Saudi goals under the GCC umbrella, and it wants an independent foreign policy, free from Saudi or Iranian influence.

Qatar hardly sees Saudi Arabia as a harmless neighbour. Tensions in Saudi-Qatar relations started right after the former emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khaifa Al Thani (1995 – 2013) came to power via a bloodless coup in 1995 by overthrowing his father Sheikh Khalifa Bin Hamad Al Thani. Sheikh Khalifa was visiting Saudi Arabia at the time, which embarrassed the Saudi government.

Sheikh Hamad’s takeover in 1995 was preceded by a Saudi attack on a Qatari border security post in September 1992, in violation of a mutual defence treaty the two states had signed in 1982.

Riyadh also thwarted Qatari initiatives to export liquefied gas to other GCC member states in the 1990s. Emir Sheikh Hamad began to pull Qatar out of the Saudi shadow, a policy that Emir Sheikh Tamim is also pursuing.

Qatari satellite news channel Al Jazeera occasionally broadcasts programs criticising Saudi Arabia and, much to the anger of Riyadh, it hosted Saudi dissidents in a popular talk show in June 2002.

The incident led to Saudi Arabia recalling its ambassador from Doha in September 2002. Full diplomatic relations between the two countries were restored five years later, in September 2007, on Qatari assurance that Al Jazeera would refrain from broadcasting anti-Saudi programs.

A big push in the region

At the same time, Qatar, with the massive amount of oil and gas-generated income in its coffers (US$191 billion GDP in 2012), has been pushing for a bigger foreign policy and diplomatic profile in the region.

Doha successfully mediated a series of conflicts in the 2000s. It broke the political impasse in Lebanon by persuading the Sunni-led Lebanese government and the opposition Hezbollah to sign the May 2008 Doha Agreement; it mediated the conflict between the Yemeni government and Houthis in February 2008 (though it failed subsequently to find a permanent solution to the conflict); and, in February 2010, it facilitated a ceasefire agreement between the Sudanese government and the opposition Justice and Equality Movement.

Sudanese parties sign Darfur truce deal.

These successful mediations brought the tiny country enviable diplomatic plaudits from home and abroad.

In 2011, to the surprise of many regional states, the Qatar military participated in the NATO-led intervention to dislodge the Gaddafi government in Libya. It wanted to achieve a similar goal in Syria – to topple the Bashar Al-Assad government – but did not succeed primarily due to Iranian and Russian opposition.

Despite being an autocracy, Qatar presented itself as a frontline Arab state for politically transforming the Arab world, under the rubric of the Arab Spring movements.

Its objective was to strengthen Qatari national security and foreign policy autonomy in the Gulf region, a neighbourhood dominated by giants such as Iran and Saudi Arabia.

What next?

Nonetheless, the diplomatic spat with Saudi Arabia does not bode well for Qatar. The Saudi-led diplomatic offensive has isolated it from the rest of GCC and the Middle East region by cutting off air, land and sea routes to Doha.

Doha has been accused again of supporting regional terror groups – al-Qaeda and ISIL in Iraq and Syria - and cooperating with Iran.

Qatar has always denied funding extremist groups, but the small country has been accused in the last few years of allowing terrorist financiers to operate within its territory with impunity.

The Qatari government has also pledged support for Hamas, the Palestinian group regarded as a liberation force against Israeli occupation by most Muslim countries, but as a terrorist organisation by the United States, Israel, Egypt and Canada.

Qatar can expect no serious help from Iran either, as any possible Iranian political or diplomatic help runs the risk of further embittering Saudi-Qatar relations and permanently subject Doha to Saudi wrath.

The Trump administration is definitely not on Qatar’s side, as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, speaking in Australia, indirectly hoped to resolve the intra-GCC irritants and put Qatar back in the Saudi-driven GCC orbit.

Cracks in the Saudi-Qatar relationship would undercut the joint Arab-US fight against regional terror and extremist groups. It’s difficult to say how long Qatar would be in the position to resist the Saudi diplomatic offensive.

But backing down from the fight with Riyadh looks set to produce two outcomes. First, Doha would be obliged to downgrade its support to rebel groups in Syria, linked to either Muslim Brotherhood or al-Qaeda. And second, it must be willing to shed some degree of its foreign policy autonomy to participate in the Saudi-led offensive against Iran.

In either case, Qatar has undermined the anti-Iran alliance, giving Tehran more time to reassess the situation and consider its options.

Mohammed Nuruzzaman, Associate Professor of International Relations, Gulf University for Science and Technology

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Selling sex: Wonder Woman and the ancient fantasy of hot lady warriors

Wonder Woman embodies the male fantasy of warrior women.
Variety.com

When the film Wonder Woman is released in early June, it will surely join the blockbuster ranks of other recent comic book-inspired film franchises, including Batman, Superman, Spiderman, and X-Men. But that’s not just because it features a sword-wielding Gal Gadot in knee-high boots and a metal bodice.

Wonder Woman has long been a bestselling creation, originally imagined in 1941 by the psychologist William Moulton Marston, and the film follows some of the main plot lines developed in the comic books.

Wonder Woman is a superheroine known as Diana, princess of the Amazons, who is trained to be an unconquerable warrior. When an American pilot, Steve Trevor, crashes on the shores of her sheltered island paradise and tells tales of a massive conflict raging elsewhere, Diana leaves her home, convinced she can stop the threat.

Though Wonder Woman was portrayed as a feminist icon in the 1940s, she is also a highly sexual character.



We can only wonder – no pun intended! – about the reasons for this imagined link between war and female sexuality. As a sexy but fierce lady warrior, Wonder Woman is hardly alone. Throughout history, cultures across the globe have envisioned and revered the femme fatale, from feline killers to sensual goddesses to sassy spelunkers.

The Sumerian “wonder woman”

In 3000 BC, in the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk in Mesopotamia, the first kings of human history ruled over the south of modern-day Iraq, protected by Ishtar, a great goddess of war and love often associated with lions.

Ishtar, naked on a vase.
Louvre/Wikimedia

Ishtar would reveal the kings’ enemies and accompany them to the battlefield. It was said that she fought like an unleashed lioness protecting her young – in this case, the Sumerian people. Like Wonder Woman, Ishtar’s sacred duty was to defend the world.

She could also be sensual. More than merely worship the goddess, the Kings of Uruk claimed to be Ishtar’s lovers, who, according to royal hymns of the era, would enter her bed and “plow the divine vulva”.

For the king, receiving sexual and military favours from a goddess served his political agenda, legitimised his reign and made him into an exceptional hero for his people. In the Wonder Woman film, this role is filled by the American pilot.

References to divine lovemaking are also found among ancient Palestinians, Babylonians, though scholars can’t confirm what was really going on in those temples.

Cat girls from Sekhmet

Bastet as a lion.
Mbzt/Wikimedia, CC BY-ND

Lee Meriwether as Catwoman in the 1960s.
Ebay/Wikimedia

What’s more sexy than a powerful woman? Taming her, of course.

In ancient Egypt, the most fearsome goddess was named Sekhmet. Like Ishtar, she had two sides – fierce beast and loving companion.

Sekhmet was often portrayed as a terrible lioness, the butcher of the Pharaoh’s enemies. At times, though, she would transform into an adorable cat named Bastet.

Today, the feline is still symbolic of female sexuality. Catwoman, another comic book heroine, was born a few months before Wonder Woman (not that a lady reveals her age) and is the most contemporary avatar of a feline woman.

With her curves and her bondage fetish, Catwoman has always been hypersexual, though some critics regret that her sexuality – not her intelligence – has become her greatest asset these days.

Amazons, the lonely sailors’ dreams

Warrior women with sexual natures are also found among the ancient Greeks.

Their myth of the Amazons tells of a Mediteranean kingdom in which it was women who fought and governed, while the men were relegated to domestic duties. Marston’s Wonder Woman comic invokes the Amazons’ city, Themiscyra, and the name of their queen, Hippolyta.

He embellished his ancient Amazonian setting with details from the legend of the women of Lemnos, in the Aegean Sea, adopting the isolated island idea as Wonder Woman’s home.

According to the Greek story, the women of Lemnos had revolted and massacred all the men on the island, young and old. Living in a forced sexual abstinence, the ladies were delighted when sailors unexpectedly landed on a local beach. They immediately set upon the Argonauts, a team of beautiful and famous mythological heroes that included Hercules and Theseus, compelling them into long orgiastic intercourse.

The sex-starved but unattached women theme is another favourite male fantasy, offering imaginary satisfaction of sexual scenarios that may be difficult to realise in real life.

Our modern Amazon.
TombRaider Wikia

By the late 20th century, Lara Croft came along to update the idea of the Amazons and the ladies of Lemnos. Croft, an English archeologist-adventurer who started life as a character in the 1990s video game Tomb Raider, was the ultimate virtual-reality dream girl: she is an expert in martial arts, great with a gun and super smart.

Plus, she always leaves the guys wanting more. Reincarnated on the big screen in 2001 by actress Angelina Jolie, Croft often gave the cold shoulder to her male counterparts. Later sequels featuring Alicia Vikander continued to pitch Croft as a sex symbol while bolstering her feminist credentials.

Women and weapons, the ultimate fantasy?

The new Wonder Woman film seems to have made a careful choice of actress, looking beyond just a pretty face and a remarkable body. Gal Gadot has both of those, but she’s a lot like the heroine in other ways, too.

Voted Miss Israel in 2004, Gadot was also a sports coach in the Israeli army. In a August 2015 interview with Fashion magazine the actress, who was then 30, affirmed that her military experience prepared her well for a Hollywood career.

Gal Gadot in the Chinese film poster for Wonder Woman, to be released in China on June 2.
Reddit

On screen and off, the ancient link between femininity, sexual attraction and the military, seems to still be going strong today. Everything from Wonder Woman and the Instagram account of Israeli soldier-cum-amateur model Maria Domark to the rise of a new sub-genre of lady warriors in Asian cinema and, of course, American weapons catalogues, confirms the old masculine fantasy associating pretty faces with guns.

The new Wonder Woman film channels all this history. Pop culture attempts to showcase the heroine as a feminist cannot counteract thousands of years of global sexual fantasy. But you can bet it’ll be a hit at the box office.

Christian-Georges Schwentzel, Professeur d'histoire ancienne, Université de Lorraine

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Meet the villagers who protect biodiversity on the top of the world

Gyala Peri and Namcha Barwa - Tibet.
梁逸晨/wikimedia, CC BY-SA

It was a chilly February day. Dangwen and his wildlife monitoring team patrolled along the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. The river was frozen solid, easy for poachers to walk over.

That day, they encountered 220 blue sheep, five white-lipped deer, and a line of otter footprints. On the infrared camera traps that they had set up throughout the valley, three snow leopards appeared, a mother and two cubs – and the cubs had grown much bigger than three months earlier.

Dangwen comes from Yunta, a village located in Sanjiangyuan, Qinghai Province on the Tibetan Plateau. Sanjiangyuan, is a 400,000 km² area that serves as an important habitat for rich and unique biodiversity and a watershed of the three largest rivers in Asia, the Yellow, Yangtze and Mekong, which serve a billion people downstream.

Dangwen isn’t officially a researcher or an activist. But he has taken upon himself the task of monitoring local wildlife with a team of other villagers, as part of a conservation project driven by the Shanshui Conservation Center, a Beijing-based non-governmental organisation

A pilot village for conservation

A mining company attempted to prospect the area almost a year before wildlife monitoring in the region started. The villagers were deeply disturbed because mining the mountains would go against the spiritual values of Tibetan Buddhism and threaten their safety.

So, when the Shanshui NGO proposed in 2013 the idea of organising villagers to monitor wildlife and protect their lands, Dangwen volunteered without hesitation. Having grown up in the village, he is very familiar with the land, the river and the wildlife, and he is especially proud of the sacred mountains that surround all of them. This is the fourth year that Yunta villagers have carried out this monitoring, patrolled the village to spot poachers, and managed rubbish to keep the land and rivers clean.

Monitoring data shows that local wildlife populations, including snow leopards, are increasing. The villagers’ conservation conduct is officially authorised by the local government – their stories have been reported by China Central Television – and the mining company never returned.

An inspiration for the Tibetan plateau

Inspired by Yunta, four neighbouring villages began their own wildlife monitoring and anti-poaching patrols. With encouragement from local authorities, a village-based conservation network is being formed along the Tongtianhe Valley.

Recognised as a conservation priority in China, the Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve was set up in 2003 and designated a national park in 2016. But the area faces big conservation challenges: government agencies have limited manpower to manage this vast area and grazing rights to all its grasslands were given to households in the 1990s.

This means that conservation in Sanjiangyuan would not be possible without support from local Tibetan communities. As Buddhists, these communities embrace the value of respecting nature and caring for other living beings. Their system of sacred lands is very similar to modern protected areas.

That makes them natural allies for conservation. Yunta’s experience has proven that, with proper training, villagers can become very qualified conservationists. Essentially, they are providers of ecological services and should receive benefits from conservation in return.

Based on this experience, a policy recommendation was made to the government, and the newly designated Sanjiangyuan National Park quickly responded.

A total of 16,400 jobs as guards, with monthly salaries of 1,800 yuan (about US$260), are to be offered to villagers living inside the park (one per household). The next step is to explore the possibility of reducing grazing in key habitats to allow wildlife – especially large carnivores such as snow leopards – to increase, and to slow down grassland degradation.

Protecting animals and humans

The Tibetan Plateau is the last place in Asia that still maintains a relatively intact ecosystem where large carnivores and ungulates, many unique to the region – such as the snow leopard, the Tibetan brown bear, the Tibetan antelope, the wild yak, the Tibetan wild ass, the Tibetan gazelle, and the blue sheep – roam freely.

Maintaining this vast ecosystem is challenging because its population of pastoralists is rapidly increasing. The human population of Sanjiangyuan has doubled since 1980.

Meanwhile global climate change may have added to pressures on the grassland. Is it possible, under these conditions, to protect the ecosystem successfully while supporting the cultural and economic well-being of Tibetan communities?

A red-billed chough, thought to be the reincarnation of this woman’s daughter, sits on her shoulder.
Tashi Duojie, Author provided

After three decades of fast economic development, and demands by the Chinese people and government, a better environment is becoming a higher priority. Several large ecological programs have been initiated – perhaps among the largest financial schemes in the world – to pay for protecting and restoring forests, grasslands and wetlands, though their effectiveness could be improved by more scientific planning and participation.

The call for nature education from citizens, especially parents, is rapidly growing, and this has generated broad concerns over ongoing ecological degradation. Public participation in conservation is now protected by environmental laws. Political will, the interests of society, and traditional values are all coming together.

This makes us believe that co-existence between humans and nature is not just wishful thinking. Yunta offers a strong starting point.

This article is a joint initiative with the UN Environment magazine Our Planet and a contribution to World Environment Day 2017.

Lü Zhi, Professor for Biology, Peking University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.