FULL CIRCLE

In about 1970 my father used to tell me about how, when he was a boy, he used to shoot kudu in the area where Hamilton School stands in Bulawayo. Later, I used to tell my kids how in the early eighties we used to hunt buffalo a mere thirty-minute drive from the center of Bulawayo.

Yet, in the blink of an eye – all those things changed. And in just about every case, things changed for the worse. Look at Zimbabwe – what a wildlife paradise it was in the years shortly after independence! But, as in all situations like this – you don’t appreciate something - you don’t appreciate what you have - until it’s gone. Game was everywhere in the early eighties – just about all communal land and private ranch land had fantastic numbers of wildlife, and we accepted it as the norm. But just a few years of madness – and it was all gone. Poaching, an exploding population, politics, erosion of the rule of law, corruption, and the rapid shrinkage of wildlife habitat – these are among the many curses of Africa.

But if one looks hard enough – you will find that there are sometimes, (albeit rarely), some success stories. And these successes need to be recognised, celebrated, and emulated – because the world’s population is not getting smaller, and power-hungry politicians are not becoming saints.

In 1985, shortly after I started my own safari company, I