Mabuasehube – loosely translating to “Red Earth” from the local San language – is one of the last truly wild places in Africa. When overlanders hear “Mabua”, encounters of the close kind with the king of the jungle comes to mind, with images on social media often showing a pride of lions taking over the campsite. Pure magic!
Mabuasehube is on the Botswana side of Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park and is situated in southwest Botswana. This is Kalahari in its purest form. If you’re looking for solitude, look no further. This is one of those places you can literally hear your soul breathe a sigh of relief.
The Kalahari Gemsbok National Park in South Africa was established in July 1931 and seven years later, in 1938, the Botswana Gemsbok National Park was proclaimed by what was then called Bechuanaland. That same year the farmers on the Botswana side, 84 families with more than 5 000 head of stock, were resettled to the area south of the park. The ruins of old dwellings and several graves are still located close to Rooiputs. Mabuasehube Game Reserve was established in 1971 and was incorporated into the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park in 1992.
In 1948 an informal verbal agreement between the Bechuanaland Protectorate and the Union of South Africa was made to set up a single conservation area in the adjacent areas of the two countries. In June of 1992 representatives from the South African National Parks Board (now SANParks) and the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP)
