TALKING POINT

Camdeboo Valley of Desolation

Reynold “Rey” Thakhuli General Manager: Media, Events and Stakeholder Relations

It is hard to believe that the first quarter of the financial year is behind us and we are halfway through the calendar year.

At the recent State of the Organisation address, the Acting CEO, Mr Dumisani Dlamini, highlighted amongst many other topics that our performance as an organisation is at 87%. Colleagues, let us aim for 100% performance as we enter into the second quarter of the financial year. Let us continue remaining focused and pushing to reach each our individual targets as a whole.

The month of May is declared Worker’s Month in South Africa, where 1 May (Worker’s Day) serves both as a celebration of workers’ rights and as a reminder of the critical role that trade unions play in the fight against workers’ rights.

Workers’ Day in South Africa holds its own cultural significance, as the public holiday has come to signify not only the sacrifices made on the long road toward fair employment standards, but also the bitter battle against Apartheid in which trade and labour unions played a key role.

In line with Worker’s Month, we celebrate all SANParks employees, and more especially those essential workers who continue to keep the SANParks boat sailing even during the busy holiday and festive season. Colleagues, we celebrate your passion and dedication toward keeping our customers happy so they are able to relax and enjoy the natural beauty our country has to offer. We also celebrate four employees in this issue – Bra Lazarus Makitla, Multimedia Officer, based at Groenkloof National Park, who is celebrating his 40th year at SANParks this year; Mr Edward Moumakoe, the new anti-poaching Security Manager in Addo and a creative conservationist at heart; and award-winning Sydney Mikosi who is now heading up Activities in Addo. We also celebrate Innocent Lebepa, Section Ranger at Mapungubwe National Park who heroically used his own hands to remove a three metre python from underneath a truck. Read more on their inspirational stories inside.

In addition and quite significantly, three key environmental days were observed this past month – the International Day for Biodiversity celebrated on 22 May, World Environment Day on 5 June, and World Oceans Day on 8 June. These calendar days place special attention on our purpose as SANParks, including our specific outcome goal of realising sustainable biodiversity across land and see for the people of South Africa and the world, now and in the future.

Being a custodian of 21 national parks, we should all be honored to be at the forefront of this worthy cause of nature conservation, including that of ensuring every citizen realises their constitutional right to an environment that is not harmful to their health or wellbeing, and to have the environment protected for the benefit of present and future generations.

On a corporate level, we were delighted to have hosted the second Tourism Investment Summit on 31 March 2022. Live-streamed from The Capital in Sandton, Johannesburg, several of our PPP investment opportunities were presented. We hope that through this strategic initiative we will continue to develop and improve our tourism offering to our customers. The Honourable Ms Barbara Creecy attended the event amongst several other sector leaders.

In this issue, you will also read more about a new project which pairs Table Mountain and Reunion Island National Parks, and about the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Save Our Species (SOS) support for Black Rhino Monitoring and much more.