Colonial, tourist and alternative views of commodified South African wilderness

M.Tech.The landscape of South Africa has changed dramatically since early colonisation. Even so, it appears that the conventions employed in portraying landscapes have not; colonial landscape imagery that helped promote European immigration to this country during the Nineteenth Century remains remarkably similar to conventions employed in contemporary landscape representation used to market game reserves. In this dissertation, it is argued that colonial landscape imagery facilitates and supports a view of nature as an „authentic‟ wilderness available for expropriation. It is proposed that wildlife reserves, both in their intent and realisation, present a simulacrum of wilderness, also available for the consumer and promoted by advertising imagery. It is further argued that it remains the imperative commodification of nature which informs the pictorial conventions adopted in both cases. Thus, the myths inherent in both colonial representations of landscape and the utopian vision proffered in game reserve marketing are challenged. This research project employs discourse analysis that is framed in a qualitative, interpretative paradigm. Colonial imagery is examined in terms of post-colonialist critique of imperial landscape representation, while a post-modern approach is used to investigate contemporary imagery. This research project demonstrates that landscape imagery used to promote a „natural‟ wildlife site, is persistently presented according to prescribed canon as a functioning system regardless of its actual condition. Futhermore, the research project leads to an alternative view of nature, presented in my practical work, that is cognisant of the problems experienced in reality