Swazi life and culture

Abstract

Summary One cannot speak on the need for the conservation of wilderness of a Black homeland in South Africa without substantiating such a need as opposed to other pressing needs of the Black people concerned. It is the bread and butter issues that count in the lives of our people and the very mention of the words “wilderness conservation” cannot be made without making oneself irrelevant to the issues of the day. Hunting, for example, was part of the Swazi traditional way of life and our older folk cannot understand why it is that today, a hunter is regarded as a poacher. The need for the conservation of wilderness in the Swazi Homeland must therefore be viewed against the background of our traditional utilisation of fauna and flora before we came into contact with the White man, as welI as against the background of the present homeland concept with regard to the Land.