Borders and border people in the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier

In southern Africa, transfrontier conservation areas (hereafter TFCAs) are founded on the principle of reshaping borders for conservation-related objectives. Proponents of TFCAs perceive borders as a legacy of colonialism and as fragmenting habitats. It could be argued that this reasoning renders borders irrational and irrelevant. The aim of this study is to investigate how redesigning of border landscapes to establish TFCAs affects border people. The paper argues that while such newly-created transnational spaces prioritise biodiversity conservation and privilege/promote commercial stakeholders and enterprises, they overlook and indeed impose costs on border people. Thus, the creation of TFCAs is not for locals as claimed by its proponents, but is rather a landscape devoted to nature conservation and commercial enterprises. To advance this argument, the study uses the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area (GMTFCA) on the Botswana-South Africa–Zimbabwe borderlands as the case study.