The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild (2 page)

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Authors: Lawrence Anthony,Graham Spence

BOOK: The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild
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I was still reeling from the shock of becoming an instant elephant-owner, when I got another: the current owners wanted the herd off their property within two weeks. Or else the deal would be off. The elephants would be shot as the owners regarded them as too much of a liability. Unfortunately, when an animal as large as an elephant is considered ‘troublesome’, it is almost always shot.
Two weeks? In that time we had to repair and electrify twenty miles of big game fencing and build from scratch a quarantine
boma
– a traditional holding pen – strong enough to hold the planet’s most powerful animal.
When I bought Thula Thula, in 1998, it was 5,000 acres of primal Africa, the only improvement being an old hunters’ camp with outside ablutions. But its history is as exotic as the continent itself. Thula Thula is the oldest private game reserve in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and thought to be once part of the exclusive hunting grounds of King Shaka, the near-deified warrior who founded the Zulu nation in the early nineteenth century. In fact it was so exclusive that anyone caught hunting there without the king’s express permission was put to death.
From Shaka onwards, for most of its existence Thula Thula’s teeming wildlife has made it a hunting magnet, attracting wealthy clients seeking trophy antelope. In the 1940s the owner was a retired Governor General of Kenya,
who used it as an upmarket shooting lodge for the gin and tonic set.
That’s all in the past. Hunting was scrapped the moment we took over. The characterful but dilapidated old biltong and brandy camp was demolished, and in its place we built a small luxury eco-lodge set on expansive lawns leading down to the Nseleni River. The beautiful Old Dutch gabled farmhouse overlooking the reserve became home and offices for Françoise and me.
But to get there has been a personal odyssey. I grew up in ‘old’ Africa, before the days of mass urbanization, running barefoot under big skies in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. My friends were rural African kids and together we ranged the wild world that was our backyard.
During the early 1960s my family moved to the sugarcane-growing coastal belt of Zululand, South Africa. The hub of the area at the time was a hamlet out in the boondocks called Empangeni. It was a tough town with character. Stories of leathery farmers partying all night and skidding their tractors through the main street swigging ‘spook ’n diesel’ (cane spirit mixed with a smidgen of Coca-Cola) are still told to this day. For us teenagers, you had to hold your own and play a hard game of rugby to earn respect.
My shooting skills, honed in the deep African bush, also stood me in good stead and farmers sent me out on their lands to bag guinea fowl and grouse for the pot. The backwoods was my home; I could hit a can thrown into the air at twenty paces with a .22 rifle and think little of it.
After finishing school I left for the city, establishing a realestate company. But my youthful memories of wild Africa followed me. I knew one day I would return.
That happened in the early 1990s. I was poring over a map of the area west of Empangeni and was struck by the profusion of unutilized tribal land, far too feral for even the
hardiest cattle. These trust lands gallop right up to the borders of the famous Umfolozi-Hluhluwe reserve, the first game sanctuary established anywhere in Africa and where the southern white rhino was saved from extinction.
The trust land, a massive tract of gloriously pristine bush, belonged to six different Zulu clans. An idea light-bulbed in my head: if I could persuade them to join in conserving wildlife instead of hunting or grazing, we could create one of the finest reserves imaginable. But to do this I would have to convince each tribal leader to agree individually to lease the land to a single trust. It would be called the Royal Zulu, and benefits such as job creation would go straight back into the struggling local communities.
Thula Thula, with solid infrastructure already in place was the key to the project. It was a natural wedge abutting the tribal lands and forming a crucial eastern gateway to the reserves. And for the first time in fifty years it was on the market. Destiny? Well … who knows?
I took a deep breath, spoke nicely – very nicely – to my bank manager and Françoise and I ended up as the new owners.
I fell in love with it from the moment I went walkabout. It’s something I still do, jump in the Land Rover and drive out onto the open savannahs or into the thickest, most thorn-scrubbed veldt I can find, and go for a walk. There is nothing more energizing than inhaling the tang of wilderness, loamy after rain, pungent with the richness of earth shuddering with life, or taking in the brisk dry cleanness of winter. In the outback, life is lived for the instant. The land thrums with exuberance when everything is green and lush and is stoically resilient when it isn’t. In the bush, simple acts give intense atavistic pleasures, such as sliding a sprig of grass into the tiny slot of a scorpion hole and feeling a tug that pound for pound would rival a game fish. Even today that triggers memories of my born-free adolescence as
vividly as a lovelorn youth recalling his first heart-thudding kiss.
So too does the chime of songbirds, the tunesmiths of the planet, where even a panicked warning call is perfectly in pitch. Or watching life’s endlessly fascinating passing show, the brutal poetry of the food chain where life is so precarious yet pulses so powerfully in every shape, colour and form.
Those solitary hikes in Thula Thula evoked the path I first walked as a child in untamed places. Now decades later I was bringing a herd of elephants, to me the definitive symbol of wild Africa, back to an ancient Zululand home. Thula Thula’s landscape is an elephant’s paradise: woodlands leading to sweet savannah, riverbanks choked with nutritious grasses and waterholes that never run dry, even in the bleakest of winters.
But we had to get cracking, electrifying the fences and building a sturdy
boma
. The word
boma
means stockade and with antelope it’s a simple matter of erecting barriers high enough to stop them from leaping over. However, with elephants, which are stronger than a truck, it’s a different ballgame altogether. You have to spike the fences with enough mega-volts to hold a five-ton juggernaut.
The electrical force is designed not to injure the animals; it’s only there to warn them off. Thus it’s vital that the
boma
is a replica of the reserve’s outer border so once they have learned that bumping into it is not much fun, they will later steer clear of the boundary.
There was no way we were going to be able to do all that in just two weeks but we would certainly give it a damn good try and wing it from there.
I radioed David and Ndonga to come to the office.
‘Guys, you’re looking at the owner of a herd of elephants.’
Both stared for a moment as if I had gone loopy. David spoke first. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve been given nine elephants.’ I scratched my head, still hardly believing it myself. ‘It’s a one-off deal – if I don’t take them they’ll be shot. But the bad news is that they’re a bit of a problem. They’ve broken through fences before – electric ones.’
David’s face lifted in a massive grin.
‘Elephants! Fantastic!’ He paused for a moment and I could see he was mulling over the same concerns that I had. ‘But how are we gonna hold them here? Thula’s fences won’t stop ellies.’
‘Well, we’ve got two weeks to fix them. And to build a
boma
.’
‘Two weeks? For twenty miles of fence?’ Ndonga spoke for the first time, giving me a doubtful look.
‘We’ve got no choice. The current owners have given me a deadline.’
David’s unfettered enthusiasm was gratifying and I instinctively knew he would be my right-hand man on this project.
Tall and well built with handsome Mediterranean features, David was a natural leader with a sense of purpose about him that belied his nineteen years. Our families have ties stretching back decades and it was, I believe, fate that brought him to Thula Thula during this pivotal period. A fourth-generation Zululander, he had no formal gameranger credentials but that didn’t worry me. He could do a hard day’s work and was in tune with the natural world, which I have found to be one of the best recommendations for anyone, regardless of vocation. He also had been a top rugby player, a flank forward with a reputation for almost kamikaze tackles. This tenacity would certainly be tested at Thula Thula.
I then called in the Zulu staff and asked them to put the word out among the local community that we needed labourers. The nearest village to us is Buchanana where
unemployment runs at 60 per cent. I knew there would be no problem finding able bodies, the problem would be the skill factor. A rural Zulu can build a decent shelter out of sticks, a puddle of mud and a handful of grass, but we were talking of constructing an electrified elephant-proof stockade. The gangs would have to be heavily supervised at all times, but they would develop skills which would stand them in good stead when job hunting later.
Sure enough, over the next two days there were hordes of people outside Thula Thula’s gates clamouring for work. Hundreds of thousands in rural Africa live close to the brink, and I was glad to be able to contribute to the community.
To keep the
amakhosi
– local chieftains – on our side, I made appointments to explain what we were doing. Incredibly, most Zulus have never set eyes on an elephant as nowadays the giants of South Africa are all in fenced sanctuaries. The last free roaming jumbos in our part of Zululand were actually killed almost a century ago. So the main aim of visiting the chiefs was to explain that we were bringing these magnificent creatures ‘home’ again, as well as providing assurances that the fences were electrified on the inside and thus wouldn’t harm any passers-by.
However, the fact that none of the locals had seen an elephant before did not stop them from voicing ‘expert’ opinions.
‘They will eat our crops,’ said one, ‘and then what will we do?’
‘What about the safety of our women when they fetch water?’ another asked.
‘We’re worried about the children,’ said a third, referring to the young herd boys who do a man’s work looking after cattle alone. ‘They do not know elephant.’
‘I heard they taste good,’ piped up another. ‘An elephant can feed all the village.’
OK, that was not quite the reaction I wanted. But generally the
amakhosi
seemed well disposed to the project.
Except one. I was away for a day and asked one of my rangers to discuss the issue with an interim chief. Sadly all he succeeded in doing was antagonizing the man. The chief kept repeating ‘these are not my elephant; I know nothing about this’ to anything said.
Fortunately Françoise was there and took over. She did so reluctantly as rural Zulu society is polygamous and uncompromisingly masculine. No man wants to be seen listening to a woman.
Chauvinism? Sure, but that’s the way it is out in the sticks. It took skill and charm for Françoise to hold her ground. Eventually the chief relented, admitting he had no real concerns.
With approval from the
amakhosi
secured, we selected seventy of the fittest-looking recruits and in record time were up and running. Singing ancient martial songs, the Zulu gangs started work and despite the impossible deadline, as the fence slowly crept across the countryside, I began to breathe easier.
Then just as we started to see progress we ran up against a wall.
David came sprinting into the office. ‘Bad news, boss. Workers on the western boundary have downed tools. They say they’re being shot at. Everyone’s too scared to work.’
I stared at him, uncomprehendingly. ‘What do you mean? Why would anyone shoot at a gang of labourers?
David shrugged. ‘I dunno, boss. Sounds like it has to be a cover for something else, perhaps a strike for more money …’
I doubted that, as the workers were paid a decent rate already. The reason for the strike was more likely to be
muthi
, or witchcraft.
In rural Zululand belief in the supernatural is as common
as breathing, and
muthi
is all-powerful. It can either be benevolent or malevolent, just as
sangomas
– witchdoctors – can be both good and evil. To resist bad
muthi
you need to get a benign
sangoma
to cast a more potent counter spell.
Sangomas
charge for their services, of course, and sometimes initiate stories of malevolent
muthi
for exactly that purpose – and that’s what could be happening here.
‘What do we do, boss?’
‘Let’s try and find out what’s going on. In the meantime we don’t have much choice. Pay off those too spooked to work and let’s get replacements. We’ve got to keep moving.’
I also gave instructions for a group of security guards to be placed on standby to protect the remaining labourers.
The next morning David once more came running into the office.
‘Man, we’ve got real problems,’ he said, catching his breath. ‘They’re shooting again and one of the workers is down.’
I grabbed my old Lee – Enfield .303 rifle and the two of us sped to the fence in the Land Rover. Most of the labourers were crouching behind trees while a couple tended to their bleeding colleague. He had been hit in the face by heavy shotgun pellets.

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