Manukelana Art and Nursery came into being when a group of friends decided that enough was enough and started a campaign to prevent the total destruction of one of the most beautiful forests in South Africa. The Dukuduku Forest is under threat from the local population who are practicing a policy of slash and burn within the forest to utilise the land for subsistence agricultural practices, as well as indiscriminate use of raw materials gathered from the forest. This has been going on for a number of years and the strange politics of the South African people has allowed this process to continue unabated. There have been numerous attempts by politicians to have the forest dwellers removed from the forest. Due to the nature of politics within our country and the fact that this community is almost exclusively black, the issue became politicized along racial grounds instead of environmental grounds.
The group who formed Manukelana Art and Nursery are opposed to the continued destruction of their natural and historical heritage. Legend has it that Chaka King of the Zulu Nation hid and trained his elite troops within the Dukuduku Forest, during the early days of his reign. Today most of the people living within the Dukuduku forest are uneducated, unemployed and living well bellow the poverty line.
Manukelana Art and Nursery aim to protect the forest and prevent its destruction by a new approach to the problem. This approach will utilize the current inhabitants of the forest to protect it, instead of destroying it. This will come about once those living within the forest realise the economic worth of the forest. This will be done by educating the local population about tourism and the tourism potential of the forest and its fauna and flora. Once the natural tourism potential begins to be exploited and the inhabitants start to see an improvement in their life style. They will soon expand the tourism potential to include historical and cultural attractions, thus increasing the tourism potential of the area as a whole even more .
Manukelana Art and Nursery aim to use the sale of indigenous plants grown in their own nursery and art works created from materials gathered from the forest in an ecologically sustainable manner, to fund this ambitious education program. Manukelana Art and Nursery have already acquired a piece of land and started the nursery project on a small scale, and have a few artists creating woodcarvings for the project. We have come to realise that this project needs to be attacked on a much larger scale than we have so far been able to accomplish, and have thus embarked on a grand version of our original idea. This will entail finding funds to get the project expansion under way from some external source, and perhaps necessitate looking for sponsors and donors for individual projects which are smaller sections of the big picture.
