re-settled. Following that, all buildings in the area, including the mission church on Driefontein but excluding the magistrate court building, were demolished. (The magistrate court building, a lovely Cape Dutch style structure, burned down in an accidental blaze in the 1980s. It was subsequently partially rebuilt. A new building, the Pilanesberg Centre, was also erected near where the court used to stand.) Additionally, all non-native flora were razed from the region in an attempt to ensure only authentic native plant life would exist in the park.
Following negotiations with the Bophuthatswana government, the Bakgatla tribe, under Chief Tsidimane Pilane, agreed to the inclusion of the mountainous region of their property within the Pilanesberg reserve. The 60 families of the Bakgatla tribe farming and living near the mission station at Driefontein were re-settled under an agreement with the tribal authority. They were moved to a newly planned town on the farm Sandfontein, to the east of the Pilanesberg Game Reserve.
The Bophuthatswana administration also negotiated with the Bakubung tribe to purchase their land within the southern region of the park. The tribe was offered land on adjacent farms Zandrivierspoort, Palmietfontein, and Mahobieskraal, in exchange for portions of the farms Ledig, Koedoesfontein, and Wydhoek, on a hectare-for-hectare basis. As the agricultural value of the new land on offer exceeded that of the old, the Bakubung eventually accepted the offer. (Around the same time, Sun International obtained a ninety-nine-year leasehold over the adjacent farm Doornhoek and built the Sun City complex, which abuts the Pilanesberg reserve, along the common boundary with the farm Ledig.)
It was at this point that work began on Operation Genesis, which involved the reintroduction of long-vanished species after completion of approximately 100 km of fencing around the reserve's perimeter. This reintroduction was still ongoing when the
