The Short Story of
“White Elephant”
God wrested the beautiful Lebombo Mountains from the steamy Maputaland plains and here
nature ruled with a harsh hand for hundreds of years...
But the vast herds of game lured determined men : hunters and explorers. So began the
advance of white man in the early 19th century. Hunters made considerable fortunes. One such
hunter known as “Elephant White”, shot 150 elephant in one season. In the plenitude that was
Africa, everything seemed inexhaustible.
But, the abundant game began to dwindle. In 1874 President Kruger proclaimed the Pongola
Game Reserve, the first reserve in Africa.
The Anglo Boer War in 1899 brought chaos and the new Game Reserve was abandoned. For
years thereafter due to a lack of funds, muddled boundaries and political agendas, the game
reserve became a “white elephant”.
After the 1st World War, man toiled on the steamy plains planting fields, building houses and
railway lines but nature ruled ruthlessly with droughts and disease.
Man fought a bitter struggle for almost 30 years against sleeping sickness and the tsetse fly.
For a long time angry gunfire echoed across the plains. “Kill the game!” man cried for he
believed he had to destroy the animals to rid the land of the tsetse fly. Hundreds of thousands
of animals thudded to the ground. By 1940 the game was gone but the tsetse fly remained:
Another “white elephant” in this history of man.
In 1948 man finally won the tsetse fly war, with the notorious DDT insecticide. Cattle now
flourished and sugar cane crept further along the course of the Pongola River...The
construction of the gigantic Jozini Dam began in 1970. But it was a flawed dam that caused
considerable controversy and it, too, became known as a “white elephant”.
Finally, in 1993, the wheel had turned full circle. Fences were dropped and game reintroductions began. Two elephant herds were re-located to our “new” reserve. One of these
elephants is an albino, not entirely white but a symbolic reminder of the past “white elephants”.
After 100 years, the Lebombos reverberated again with the triumphant sounds of nature.
In 1999, shrouded in the mists of early morning, an elephant bull pushed over the mighty
Mphafa tree in the lodge’s garden. It was this tree that had given the Safari Lodge its previous
name i.e. Mphafa Lodge. It seemed fitting that the restored lodge be named “White Elephant
Safari Lodge”.
A century has passed since the first proclamation of the Pongola Game Reserve, one hundred
years in which man has struggled against nature. We cannot undo what has been done. We
cannot rewrite history. We can shape our future from past lessons.
One day vast herds will once again migrate freely across our plains at the foot of the
Lebombos. Our struggles, too, will be difficult. But they are different from those that our
forefathers fought.
Our aim is to return this land to the wilderness,
to Mother Nature.