by Boyd Varty
My dad always used to tell me that Winnis had no fear of lions whatsoever. If he found a pride gorging themselves on a zebra or giraffe, he wouldn’t think twice about running straight at them with a spear to chase them off the meat; he’d then cut himself a hearty fillet for his camp dinner.
My father claims that he was never a very good hunter; he said he lacked the attention span and disliked the way the cold, dewy grass would soak his pants through on a winter morning. If he let out a stifled cough on a hunt, Grandpa Boyd would spin round and give him a chilling stare. When they found lion tracks going into thick bush, they’d circle the area to see if the tracks came out on the other side. Once they’d established that the lions were still in the thicket, they would wait for the heat of the day to lull the cats to sleep, then crawl into the bush on all fours, sliding on their bellies alongside the tracks until they could spy the sleeping lions through the leaves. Then they would open fire as a hell of growling, snarling, and lashing exploded around them, lions bursting in every direction, some keen to escape, others on the attack as gunfire rang in the air. These moments of complete pandemonium and danger were what my grandfather lived for, what made him chuckle to himself around the fire. And the stories of those exploits, told around a different fire, were what I lived for.
I carry my grandfather’s name, although I never had the honor of knowing him. The stories my father has told me about him are the stuff of family legend. One of the most stirring tells of how, in July of 1969, for the very first time, my grandfather brought the family accounts with him down to the farm that would become Londolozi, an act that he himself had up to this point considered sacrilege. To him the wild and hunting were sacred and were not to be tarnished by the calculation and blandness of business requirements. Prior to this trip, even the mention of work while in camp could elicit a severe reprimand.
But on this trip, to the bewilderment of the family, each day after the early morning hunt, Boyd Varty would pull Uncle John off to a sunlit spot at the “lookout,” a flattened-out section overlooking the Sand River where the main deck at Londolozi now stands. Father and son would meticulously go through the accounts. Over the course of that trip, he taught my uncle bookkeeping.
Later that season, with sections of the camp already packed up in preparation for the epic journey back to Johannesburg, my grandfather and father drove out on the single dirt road that ran down to Winnis’s kraal, or village, to say their last goodbyes to their old friend and tracker. On the way, my grandfather parked his ancient American Plymouth in an open clearing, and they both sat on the hood dressed in old tweed coats and hunting boots as the sun went down, enjoying the silence and that beautiful evening cool as the sun dropped below the escarpment miles off to the west.
As the light faded, an impala stepped out onto a patch of white sand way down in the clearing. My grandfather picked up his old .30-06 Springfield, the one he had built himself with the characteristic peep site that he preferred to all others, and threw it into his shoulder. I know what the action looked like and I know the distance of that shot because I’ve often driven out there with my dad and parked in that same clearing while he told me the story, irresistibly acting it out as the words and emotion of the moment came tumbling out of him.
The impala went down with the first shot. My grandfather worked the action of the rifle open, and as he handed it to my father, he said with an uncharacteristically satisfied grin on his face, “Always remember your old man could shoot.” He wasn’t joking; in fact, looking at the range of that shot with an open sight, I would go so far as to say there are probably only a few people in the world who could make it. My grandfather considered being in the wild and hunting a great honor, so I know that he was also saying, “Remember how deeply I honor this land.” He gave the impala to Winnis and his family and left early the next morning; Dad had decided to stay on a bit longer.
My grandfather, the first Boyd Varty, died of an apparent heart attack a few days later. His ashes were sprinkled in the river around a large, dome-shaped granite rock that marks one of his favorite spots in which to stop and rest while the sun rose on an early morning hunt. On the place we call Plaque Rock, black letters on dark brass read:
BOYD VARTY
HE LOVED THE BUSHVELD
Uncle John was eighteen years old when his father died; my dad was fifteen. The two boys were told by their mother’s financial advisers to sell the land that my great-grandfather had been “so damn romantic over” and “knuckle down” to university degrees and conventional lives in the city. Why not sell mining equipment, the family business? They tried; then they squirmed; then they threw down their toys and refused. Led by intuition, as well as their love of their father and of the wild, they decided they would hold on to the land. They had nothing but the idea of a home and a dream out in that wild landscape, and a determination to build them both one brick at a time. We call my gran “the mother of Londolozi,” because when her teenage boys pled their case to her, she never hesitated: “If you want to keep it, just keep it.”
It’s difficult to convey the vastness of this undertaking. The land was situated in a wilderness roughly the size of Switzerland. The previous tenants had fenced out the wildlife and drained the wetlands. Dave and John were just kids; how on earth could they hold on to the land and support their newly widowed mother? A neighbor had started a game camp, so they just figured they’d go into the safari business too, leading groups who wanted to hunt or do wildlife photography. They had no real plan. They simply pulled the name Londolozi, which means “protector of all living things,” out of a Zulu dictionary and set to work.
It’s at this point in the story that I always stop my father. “But weren’t you worried?” I can’t imagine being that young and shouldering so much responsibility.
Dad always gets a faraway look in his eyes when I ask that. “We just knew we couldn’t sell,” he says, and then he goes quiet, as if back in that moment.
Dad seems to have created his life philosophy from a baker’s mix of two mottoes: “Hack it through from the ground up” and “Hope the ball bounces your way.” The safari business was practically brand-new. Dad embraced a light-on-your-feet, make-it-up-as-you-go-along style when facing unforeseeable challenges with neither money nor resources. He employed both to full effect in bringing Londolozi into being. My father has told the whole story beautifully in his own book, Full Circle, but from what I gather, Dad and Uncle John basically built Londolozi using impala skins. Dad would buy them at a discount from the guys who ran a tannery on the farm next door, load them into an old truck, and drive them to Johannesburg, where he would sell them for a profit to the fancy shops there. Dad always managed to sell just enough skins to bring in just enough capital to keep the creditors at bay and the business running. He and Uncle John would also sell crayfish door to door to get money for petrol for the truck.
Young upstarts that they were, Dad and Uncle John realized—not so much in a political as in a practical way—that the best way to make Londolozi work was to have the Shangaans working beside them, and to hell with apartheid, the law of the land instituted in 1948 that segregated blacks and whites. Under apartheid, black people were denied the vote. They were issued identity cards according to the color of their skin; sometimes family members were separated. Interracial marriages were outlawed. Most horrifically, blacks were forcibly removed to resettlement areas, including the infamous township of Soweto, which became the direst of slums.
Uncle John was born in 1950, Dad in 1954. They grew up in an all-white suburb in Johannesburg where ignorance was standard operating practice. Black people did all the hard labor and cleaned your shoes; this was the norm, and as children they simply accepted it. White people all over South Africa were complicit in the crime of segregation through their silence and acceptance.
Yet out in the bush, the law of the land didn’t exist. When Dad and Uncle John hunted a wounded lion in thick bush with Winnis, all playing fields were leveled. If t
he hunter doesn’t shoot or the tracker doesn’t track or one of the party tries to run away instead of defending the group, someone can get his throat ripped out. When men face danger together, they lose the frivolous definitions of the world and simply become people who must work in harmony in order to survive. In the bush, the two brothers’ view and experience of race simply didn’t align with South African law.
When they began to bring Londolozi into being in the early 1970s, Dad and Uncle John employed blacks and whites alike because it was simply the most practical way to coax the land back to life. Dad and Uncle John are first and foremost advocates for nature. The Shangaans shared their reverence for the earth and the desire to reclaim it. It was a given that everybody would work side by side.
Although to this day Dad would never describe himself as political—he and Uncle John believe all politics to be flawed—he nevertheless traces his awakening to the 1976 riots in Soweto. He started to see how apartheid was damaging the entire country. Soon after, he and Uncle John met Enos Mabuza, who had a great influence on their thinking. Enos was an activist who later supported the ANC, or African National Congress, the political party that rose to power in 1994, abolishing apartheid. He told Dad and Uncle John to “pour the cultures together,” and this is what they tried to do.
The Londolozi Club House, where blacks and whites gathered to enjoy a beer, watch a rugby match, and play pool, became Dad and Uncle John’s favorite place to “pour the cultures together.” This was a surefire way to bring a warning from the Special Branch—the police unit dedicated to suppressing black resistance to apartheid. They were constantly told, “We’re watching you.”
At the same time, Dad and Uncle John became wildlife activists. They believed that the promotion of wildlife should have benefits for all people. In the seventies, there were almost no private game reserves that charged admission to look at wildlife. If people wanted to see animals, they went to national parks like Kruger, which were bastions of the old apartheid regime. Dad and Uncle John’s plan was to create an “economy of wildlife”—to make it economically feasible for people to make their livings not by destroying the land by raising cattle and sheep on it, but by conserving the land, encouraging wildlife to spread across it, and helping everyone living there to enjoy its benefits. A game reserve would return the land to its natural state. It would also employ locals—everyone from rangers and trackers to chefs, maids, and hospitality staff—affording more opportunities across the board for everyone. A poor community could prosper. Dad and Uncle John saw this as the only thing that would encourage people to conserve the land, but they were constantly being accused of exploiting nature for profit. Their “radical” belief—now a model for ecology—got them branded as Communists and outsiders, which made it that much harder for them to bring their vision into being, but it failed to deter them in the slightest.
At first Dad and my uncle worked at their fledgling safari business part-time. They’d make a booking from town, then double back to the camp to lead an expedition. Their tracking lessons from Winnis stood them in good stead. Word got out that two mustached hippies out in the bush could find game. At a time when the safari business was still quite new and guests might typically see not much more than a herd of impalas, this was a real edge.
Dad had no model for guiding or for finding game. The Varty brothers told guests, “Bring a musical instrument—and a Land Rover if you have one.” They had three levels of service. “Luxury safaris” meant the guests didn’t have to bring their own food; they got their impalas cooked for them. “Regular safari” guests had to bring their own food. A “walking safari” meant the Land Rover was probably broken and you got around on foot and slept under the stars. On the day of their first “canoe safari,” there was so little water in the river that they could barely get the canoe over the rocks; then someone sprained their ankle on a hippo’s head. The first canoe safari was also the last. They were always running out of food, so they’d just get the guests drunk and hope for the best. Inevitably, visitors would end up catching the spirit of these two outrageous adventurers.
Everything I’ve learned from my father comes from two premises: You’ve got to know your way around the bush, and have faith that whatever comes your way, you’ll figure it out.
Dad and Uncle John realized the next step in their mission to restore the land and protect its inhabitants. They decided to focus first on a species even scarcer than leopards. “The biggest endangered species in Londolozi was the cheetah,” Dad told me. “We decided we needed to save the world by raising money to save it.” The logo of the Endangered Wildlife Trust at the time—a cheetah with the tagline “The cheetah … racing to extinction”—had made a huge impression on him. Dad and Uncle John formed the Londolozi Game Trust. They’d read that cheetahs were going to be shot in Namibia, so they decided to raise the funds to rescue three. They managed to attract enough attention that by the time they brought the cheetahs to Londolozi, the press was waiting to cover the hoopla. Dad and Uncle John were ecstatic, convinced that the publicity would bring attention to the plight of the animals and help build their safari business. With great fanfare, they raised the gates on the cheetahs’ cages. The cheetahs shot out and bolted the area, never to be seen again. The Great Cheetah Rescue was a huge bust.
Why had they fled? Why had the sable antelopes likewise disappeared, while wildebeests, waterbucks, and elephants were also declining at Londolozi? Dad and Uncle John went searching for information, and one person’s name kept cropping up again and again: that of the pioneering environmentalist Dr. Ken Tinley. Tinley was a tall, wiry, self-confident Clint Eastwood look-alike. He was also a high school dropout who had gotten himself enrolled in university after he drew a picture of a butterfly with such profound detail and brilliance that the leading professor of natural sciences there allowed him into the course without a diploma. He became one of the original game rangers and conservationists who worked with Dr. Ian Player, the famous South African conservationist, to restore the rhino populations in the Hluhluwe Game Reserve. A genius naturalist, Tinley got dropped into the greatest wildernesses in Africa by various conservation groups and worked almost exclusively by himself for months at a time, mapping the ecology and biodiversity of these areas. He’d been instrumental in fighting the South African government when officials had wanted to put a fence through the Damaraland and Etosha reserves in northern Namibia. Later he went to what is now Gorongosa National Park, in central Mozambique, and spent months mapping its waterways. It was there that he developed his profound understanding of the importance of preserving the moisture content of the soil in a reserve, information he would later bring to the restoration of the land at Londolozi. In the late 1970s, when civil war broke out in Mozambique, the Renamo rebel group shot up Tinley’s research camp, and he literally ran for his life. An open-minded thinker, Tinley was always talking about incorporating the local people holistically into any conservation project. That irritated pro-apartheid scientists. He was also a generalist, whereas most scientists insisted on narrow fields of specialization.
“Don’t listen to that radical,” Dad and Uncle John were told. “He’s way out of the mainstream.” Naturally, they sought him out. When they eventually got Tinley to Londolozi and walked out onto the land with him, he was able to show them how animals and the land were intricately interconnected. Drawing on his knowledge of the water courses and soil types, he could explain why a certain tree grew in a certain area. He was an artist of the landscape.
Tinley scoffed at the cheetah project, however: “The trouble with you guys is, all you want is to get your picture on the social page by doing these glamorous relocation projects. They’re all a bunch of bullshit. You’re not really into conservation. You’re pseudoconservationists.”
Dad and Uncle John rose to their full heights and said, “No, we’re not!” Tinley harrumphed and walked them around Londolozi and said, “Look at the scrubland. Why do you think you’ve got that here?”
“Because that’s how it is,” Dad said.
Tinley frowned. “Follow me.” He walked them to the lowest point of the land, where all the water would flow down to because the grass cover on the slopes was gone; cattle had overgrazed the grass and trampled it. Without grass, rain hit bare soil and ran off. Only deep-rooted shrubs could survive in that arid soil, so the animals that used to feed on the grass, and the animals that fed on those animals, including cheetahs, had left the area. “Cheetah hunt in open grassland. No matter how many you bring in, they’ll simply bugger off,” Tinley told them. “You’ve got to partner with the land.” They needed to clear the scrub and stick some of the uprooted bushes into the knickpoints, blocking them like a plug stoppers a bathtub drain, to hold some of the water back. Once they fixed the water, the grass would grow back naturally. “Make nature your partner; follow her master plan. If you fix the land, the animals will come,” Tinley promised them.
Tinley changed Dad and Uncle John’s lives, widened their vision. They slowly began to restore the wetlands that had existed before the cattle farms destroyed them. They tore out alien plant species. They rebuilt microcatchments. And they did it side by side with the Shangaan because Tinley had told them that unless local people see benefit from the wildlife, they have no reason to protect it. A lot of people attacked Dad and Uncle John’s vigorous approach to repairing land as too heavy-handed because they used a bulldozer to clear thick scrub, but years later they have been proved right. And when Nelson Mandela visited Londolozi, he endorsed the brothers’ vision of harmony between people of all races, animals, and the land.