AFRICAN BUSH
Reclaiming the wilderness
One night recently, I awoke to a rumble in the jungle. No, I wasn’t in Zaire reliving the 1974 fight between Mohammed Ali and George Foreman: I was in Limpopo and what I heard was an elephant browsing nearby.
There are many sounds redolent of the African bush and those who visit it regularly are familiar with at least some of them – the roar of lions, hyenas cackling, fish eagles calling, nightjars warbling… name your own favourite.
Few people, however, get to hear an elephant’s digestive system at work. Adult elephants eat up to 300kg a day, causing a comforting belly gurgle that carries a long way at night.
It was rather nice to roll over and go back to sleep, realising that the piece of wilderness in which Tintswalo Lapalala ( www.tintswalo. conceals itself is just 300km from Jozi.
The Waterberg is a familiar getaway for Gauteng bush-lovers but my only previous experience of this region was nearly 40 years ago after the local Member of Parliament, Dr Andries Treurnicht, broke from the ruling Nationalists to form the opposition Conservative Party.
Of course, much has changed in the intervening decades, not least the place names; that part of the old Transvaal has become Limpopo while the towns Warmbaths, Nylstroom and Ellisras have become Bela-Bela, Modimolle and Lephalale respectively. The only name I recognised was Vaalwater.
Another significant change was the creation of Lapalala Wilderness Reserve, a process that began in 1981 when artist, writer and conservationist Clive Walker persuaded his friend Dale Parker to buy a 7 000 hectare farm called the Double R Game Ranch from retired professional hunter Eric Rundgren.
Rundgren was one of the local first landowners to reintroduce white rhino but the animals almost immediately decamped across the shallow Palala River (which gives the reserve its name) to a neighbouring farm.
Parker and Walker repeated the experiment more successfully in 1982, buying six white rhino from the Natal Parks Board for less than R5 000 (a few years ago, the animals would fetch R500 000 each).
Lapalala became the first private game reserve in South Africa to acquire black rhino when five of these highly endangered animals were brought to the reserve in 1990 after an absence of 150 years.
When Parker purchased the farm, all that remained of the once abundant wildlife were three sable antelope, 35 plains zebra and a few ostriches. Today, the game list is home to 60 mammal and 290 bird species.
The entire Waterberg measures more than 650 000ha. Currently at 55 000ha, Lapalala is the largest reserve in the region and home to free-roaming Big Five; about 24 elephant, 14 lions, 300 buffalo, 26 leopard and a number of black and white rhino.
Parker spent two decades adding a further 16 farms and a hunting concession into his original purchase and Lapalala Wilderness Reserve – then covering 36 000ha – was born in 2001. Parker died the same year but Walker, founder of both the Endangered Wildlife Trust and Lapalala Wilderness School, still lives on the property.
After Parker’s death, responsibility for running the reserve was assumed by his son Duncan and the owner of a neighbouring farm, Gianni Ravazotti.
One cannot tell the story of Tintswalo Lapalala without telling that of the reserve since theirs is a textbook example of the symbiotic relationship between wildlife conservation and tourism.
Historically, says reserve chief executive Glenn Phillips, “Lapalala was run as a private game farm. It was only formally proclaimed as a private game reserve in March 2020.
“Unfortunately, conservation is a financial black hole and it’s a constant struggle to ensure a reserve is self-sustaining. You don’t make money from conservation… you have to find a way to commercialise it.
“A few years ago, there was good money to be made in breeding high-value species such as buffalo but the market collapsed.
“Operations are especially expensive when you stock endangered species such as rhino. Maintaining an anti-poaching team constitutes about one-third of our annual operating budget,” says Phillips.
Eradicating alien vegetation, rehabilitating farmland and erecting and maintaining fences are also prohibitively expensive.
Three years ago, bowing to the inevitable, Parker and Ravazotti invited Ernest and Gaye Corbett to build and operate a commercial facility under their trademark Tintswalo name.
The couple, who ran a boutique hotel in Cape Town and a luxury lodge outside the Kruger National Park, knew the Waterberg well. It didn’t take them long to pen the deal and get to work creating a five-star family friendly camp comprising six tented units and a suite for four people.
The units are named after African tribes and decorated accordingly. My tent was dedicated to the Himba of northern Namibia and was furnished lavishly but without being crassly overdone for the benefit of foreign tourists.
The tents are grouped around a waterhole but spread out to ensure privacy. Raised off the ground to prevent trespass by
creepy-crawlies, they are accessed by an elevated walkway and camp staff escort guests back from the main lodge after dark.
Tintswalo Lapalala is one of two commercial operations on the reserve and a third is due to open this year. They will have a combined capacity of fewer than 40 guests and each lodge is allowed just two game-viewing vehicles.
In contrast, nearby Welgevonden Game Reserve is significantly smaller than Lapalala but features 20 commercial lodges.
With fewer star attraction animals and more game-viewing vehicles at Welgevonden, sightings can be frustratingly short. There is also a strict no bundu-bashing policy, so viewings are limited to what can be seen from the road.
The low-volume tourism approach at Lapalala means visitors get to spend more time at sightings. Their presence is less unsettling for the animals and the impact on the environment is minimised despite the fact that limited off-road traversing is permitted. Due to the Covid pandemic, the only other guests at Tintswalo during my visit were two couples from Johannesburg with their young children.
Early starts were not the youngsters’ forte, which meant there were only three of us on the morning game drives; myself, Dave Jacobs – co-general manager of Tintswalo with his wife, Tania – and Daniel Bott (ex-Madikwe), who had been at Lapalala a total of four days and was learning the local “ropes”. There was no pressure on Dave, who doubles up as head guide, to race around trying to see as many animals as possible and hours passed with the three of us talking quietly.
“Lions and cheetah were introduced to Lapalala at about the same time I arrived here two and a half years ago,” he said as we sat surrounded by a small pride of lions. “As you can see from their size and the fading birth spots on them, the cubs are about a year old.
“This means the males and females settled in quickly and started breeding. They are also very calm in our presence and that of the vehicle.
“Neither of these things would have happened had they been constantly harassed.”
Earlier that morning, we’d been entranced by a pair of gangly young cheetah exhibiting youthful exuberance and simultaneously practising their nascent hunting skills on their mother, pouncing and trying to trip her up as she walked towards us through the long grass.
A later conversation took place under one of the old marula trees that tower over a glade still known as Rundgren’s Rest (whence the “Double R” of the original name) where the hunter-turned-protector had his homestead. In passing, Jacobs brought home to me just how much the Waterberg had changed since I’d passed through on my way to interview the politician known as “Dr No”.
When Walker and Parker bought the Double R, 88% of the region was given over to cattlefarming, with hunting providing a profitable secondary income. Conservationists were viewed with distrust.
Four decades later and nearly 90% of the Waterberg is conservation land.