Travel / Wildlife: A Park Where Freedom Reigns

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Eighty-four-year-old South African tobacco baron Anton Rupert returned last week from a grand tour of Europe. But he didn't buy any paintings. He was collecting money, lots of it, from corporate and personal friends for what will be some of the largest tourist attractions on Earth. His organization, the Peace Parks Foundation, has brought the idea of the transborder park to southern Africa, where it has the potential to spark a socioeconomic transformation of the region.

The first one, Kgalagadi, which means Land of Thirst, was created last year by merging two parks that straddled the border of South Africa and Botswana. The combination is a 14,600-sq.-mi. wilderness area in which tourists and animals can move freely. Since the formal opening last May, tourist traffic has been projected to triple to 150,000 visitors annually. A Peace Parks Club run by the foundation offers 10-day tours of the park that include tracking wild game on foot with experienced rangers of the San tribe, the indigenous bushmen of the Kalahari.

Rupert's organization has plans for eight more such parks. By year end he will launch the first phase of a giant park straddling South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The GKG (Gaza-Kruger-Gonarezhou) Peace Park will eventually have an area of nearly 38,600 sq. mi., the size of Portugal. More than 350 Mozambicans are being trained in game management and ranger work to provide for an expected increase in tourism to the new area. "I'm a realist who believes in miracles," says Rupert. "The secret is not to do things for people but to do things with them."

Rupert, who built a corporate giant from a backyard cigarette factory, has been a crusader in enlightened business practices. His company led the way in establishing pay and fringe-benefits standards for black workers during the apartheid years. Now, with the ambitious conservation project roaring to life, he has earned a new kind of title: Anton Rupert, bio-diplomat.