Places to stay South Africa - Eastern Cape

Eastern Cape - Mbodla Eco-Heritage Route

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Route Area:

The Fish River (Nxuba) Valley is located adjacent to a thriving game-farming area of the Eastern Cape. Prestigious world-class game farms like the Shamwari and Kwandwe Private Game Reserves have now been joined by numerous private and public initiatives, including the Greater Addo National Park and the Greater Fish River Complex. All these facilities already attract a considerable tourism clientele in the wildlife tourism sector. The Mbodla Eco-heritage Route adds an original, Afro-centric, environmental, cultural and heritage dimension to the region’s offerings.

The Fish river Valley is located within a two hours drive from the Eastern Cape’s centres such as Port Elizabeth and East London. It is strategically located on the National Route of the N2, which runs from Port Elizabeth to Durban, carrying a lot of tourism traffic, and forms one end of the Garden Route. The N2 highway also passes through the southern end of the Mhala valley, giving extremely easy access to visitors from all he major urban centres in the Eastern Cape. The area has rich historical sites that showcase the interaction between the Xhosa people and Europeans through 100 years of frontier wars.

Mhala Community:

The Mhala traditional community are the main habitants and are an important embodiment of this Route. The Mhala Community, under the leadership of Chief Makinana, is named after the eldest surviving son of Chief Ndlambe, a prominent and pivotal Xhosa leader who was expelled – along with 20 000 followers – from the area between Port Elizabeth and the Fish River in 1812. This community still resides along the banks of the Fish River, in an area that represents the history of their determination to militarily resist colonial encroachment through four more frontier wars from 1819 to 1853. The assets of this route therefore lie in the rich cultural history of the valley and also in its beautiful natural attributes, including important indigenous thicket forests.

The marketing strategy of the Eastern Cape Tourism Board is to attract visitors from the Port Elizabeth hub to travel further inland for exposure to the rich history of the Xhosa people and their interaction with Europeans through 100 years of frontier wars. The Mhala community is ideally situated to attract such visitors. It is the traditional area closest to the concentration of tourists, has extraordinary scenery and is rich in the history of the frontier battles.

Mhala Development Trust

The Mhala Development Trust is one of six community development agencies constituted under the King Sandile Development Trust. This trust has identified Heritage Tourism as one of the strongest areas for potential economic growth and development. Heritage and nature based tourism holds potential to generate income for communities as tour and field guides as well as from crafts, entertainment, and catering. The heritage tourism development project of the Mhala Trust is designed to start with providing services and opportunities for day visitors as a first phase, to be followed later by the development of overnight accommodation and a wide range of faculties.

Socio Economic Context

On the eastern side of the Fish River, in the former Ciskei, communal land-ownership under traditional leadership predominates. The population is mostly rural or semi-rural, being distributed across numerous villages of varying size. These communities have experienced marginalisation and associated poverty related to the history of the region, and some villages have complex socio-political histories related to forced removals, land restitution and tensions linked to political affiliation. There is a critical need for provision of basic services and upgrading of infrastructure in this part of the domain. The people tend to be heavily dependant on natural resources for medicinal purposes, fuel wood, building material, indigenous food plants and game meat, as well as for various cultural and spiritual purposes. The intensive use of natural resources holds the potential to lead to environmental degradation or habitat transformation, which provides a strong incentive for sustainable natural resource use.

There is a critical need to create economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable job opportunities and to provide the necessary training for people to be able to perform these jobs. The tourism potential of the area is immense (both eco-tourism and heritage tourism) and all of the affected municipalities have listed nature-or heritage-based tourism development as the main programme to drive economic development and social upliftment in their Integrated Development Plans. The other products identified in a feasibility study which have a potential to generate income include heritage sites, cultural entertainment, arts and craft production, the development of fishery projects and a nature conservation area.

Subtropical Thicket Vegetation (Valley Bushveld)

The subtropical thicket is a biome rich in biodiversity and vital to the livelihoods of thousands of people. Its degradation leads to the depletion of natural and cultural resources and the provisioning of important ecosystem services, hence the need to conserve it.

The Fish River region includes a wide range of vegetation types dominated by various forms of thicket and bushland, interspersed with afromontane forest in the cooler valleys and kloofs, shrubland and low fynbos, and grassland thicket.

The natural vegetation of the area also has subtropical thicket characterized by closed shrubland to low forest dominated by evergreen, sclerophyllous or succulent trees, shrubs and vines. It is often almost impenetrable, is generally not divided into strata, and has little herbaceous cover. The subtropical thicket (also known as valley bushveld), is characterized by impenetrable Spekboom. This vegetation protected the last remaining elephant and buffalo from being wiped out by hunters.

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