Ian Manning's reply to Bart Dorrestein memo...

11 December 2006


Bart Dorrestein
The Chairman
Legacy Group Holdings
Johannesburg


Dear Bart,

Thank you for your memo of the 5th, which caught me as I was leaving for Joburg.

As you rightly observe, my whole development vision is built around investment partnerships, rather than donor aid – the latter a continuing development retardant. My Landsafe Investment Model for protected and customary areas places massive emphasis on attracting investors to take up partnerships with local communities, government and NGOs, but within a trust structure. This model I have been implementing for the last four years in partnership with a community of 8000 or so villagers in the Luangwa – taking up where I left off in Zambia in 1975.

As coincidence would have it, I had at one time been negotiating with Nick Frangos and his American partner for a golf estate within that part of the Luangwa where I am working. However, this was in a Game Management Area – part of a customary area, and the land tenure arrangements were therefore different as no alienation was to be considered, unless the investors insisted as a sine qua non clause on ‘owning’ some land under leasehold similar to what you have in Mosi. But, of course the customary area is 460,000 ha. and not 6,000 ha, and it is not a National Park, or a World Heritage Site.

We desperately need your Group in Zambia, but not in Mosi under the present development plan. There is a group of us in Zambia who would put their shoulders to the wheel to clear a path for a viable investment for Legacy: we know the country intimately, its history, its wildlife and protected areas and could guide and assist you in going forward. If you would like to have a chat about these things I would be most happy to meet, even though your chaps in Lusaka appear to have sicked the dogs on me – though I have yet to see the legal note, confirming the impression I have had from the start, that Legacy Zambia have kept you fielding in the dark whilst dropping balls themselves.

Yours aye,
Ian

I.P.A. Manning
083 321 4406