It's debatable whether introducing humans into wild animal habitats causes less harm than introducing wild animals into human habitats. Certainly better for the individual animals, but I'd imagine that having a bunch of jeeps running around on safari in the middle of virgin wilderness has all sorts of negative effects on the ecosystem.
Nice theory but there are a lot of people in Africa without a lot of money who are looking for things to eat. No safaris etc. means no justification for some of these pristine parks, least of all for enforcement.
Witness the scores of elephant poisonings in Zimbabwe for poaching purposes. If you view people as contradictory to Nature, your efforts on the largest of continents will come to naught.
It's so easy to argue for ideological purity when it doesn't directly affect you or your family (abstract you, for all I know you may live down the road from Kruger). Ultimately though there has to be an incentive for the people affected to part with the resources and opportunity offered by the big animals. Safaris are one (not terribly effective) compromise that at least justifies economically why big animals need to be preserved (no animals means no safaris means a lot less rich visitors).
Not sure why the downvotes for this; maybe it was the way it was said? Ultimately, I feel that conservation that balance some of the local interests in mind will run into much fewer problems than those that don't.
I also feel that you need some of the natural habitat to remain humanly accessible, in part so that people can experience nature and thus get behind preservation efforts. Creating walled off territory where no one but a few Specially Approved Scientists and deep backpackers can enter does not seem to be the best way to build public support. For portions of land, it may be necessary (hence the wilderness preserve designation in many places) but for much of the land, there is a fine balance between preservation and accessibility.
Safari parks are imperfect but in my opinion fall into this category. Even in the US, the politics of parks can be contentious. (http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/storie...) I can only imagine what a developing country would be like.
That said regarding an earlier comment, I don't view all zoos as 100% horrible these days. A lot are making genuine efforts to try and improve animal welfare as much as possible.
