As a Historical Studies student, I have to take you on a bit of a journey to the past in order to uncover one of the most impressive writings on environmental issues. Bophuthatswana is located in South Africa and was legally recognized as a location for Tswana citizens of black South Africa. Even though donkeys are not indigenous to South Africa, Bophuthatswana became enriched with them so much that there was a terrible incident that erupted in the region concerning environmental issues surrounding the amount of donkeys that the citizens owned. This incident has not been famously written about but Nancy Jacobs wrote a paper on it called the Great Bophuthatswana Donkey Massacre: Discourse on the Ass and the Politics of Class and Grass. This paper, in my personal opinion is one of the most impressive writings concerning environmental issues due to the fact that it looked at the small, seemingly insignificant people of Bophuthatswana and how they suffered as a result of a lack of environmental planning and proper environmental policies.

The Donkey Massacre occurred in the 1980s when it became a concern of the colonial government regarded donkeys as a nuisance and hindrance to their economic expansion through cattle rearing. To them, donkeys competed with cattle for pasture and this was bad for their businesses. The donkey massacre saw up to 20, 000 donkeys being slaughtered as a result of lack of proper environmental research being done. Nancy Jacobs argues the case that the case that donkeys competed with cattle for pasture was not properly investigated and that had this investigation been carried out, it would have been realized that these animals live in “over-lapping” environments. This paper is significant with environmental issues because it raises the issue of need to research, investigate and also to comprehend the effects that policies taken to address environmental issues will have on the physical and social environments. At the end of the donkey massacre, disease occurred due to the amount of dead donkeys and blood and the people of Bophuthatswana were negatively impacted.

While environmental policies need to address issues concerning the bad practices of people, it must be kept in mind that people rely on certain means (however disruptive they are) as a way of economic survival. Taking away their livelihood is not what environmental awareness should do but instead, targeting environmental issues must also create new livelihood means for such groups. For instance, the colonial policy to slaughter donkeys was through to be a good solution for success in cattle production but the full effects of the massacre were not considered on the people of the Kuruman area. Policies should give people new options, so that they happily realize the good way of doing things instead of imposing new ways that are alien to them. When imposition takes place, a vicious cycle of resenting the policy makers, staying ignorant and continuing to harm the environment goes on. For instance, the people of Bophuthatswana should have been made aware that in drought situations, such as the one that occurred in the 1980s, it would be wise to conserve the natural resources by keeping fewer animals.

This paper teaches the brutal and hard to hear lesson that while environmentalists do a good job of telling people what they are doing that is wrong and how to right this wrong, no one is doing anything to give the people new ways of living. For instance, people in rural Africa still depend on the burning of fossil fuels but we know how harmful this is to the environment. Simply telling them to stop will produce no results as long as we do not give them a new way to live. It is simple, all people, rich and poor have to eat. Telling people to stop what they are doing make it seem as if we are saying that they should starve. We need to hear the hard truth that we should, instead, give people alternative lifestyles and choices so that they too understand and do not have to rely on being told they are wrong all the time. It is time-consuming and truthfully, it hurts to always be acknowledged for being the wrong one. It defeats the purpose of ensuring sustained human existence because if no one is happy, then life is not worth it.