The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild by Lawrence Anthony (the ebook reader txt) 📕

also under threat. In post-apartheid South Africa, tribes were encouraged to claim back traditional lands that had been unfairly annexed by the apartheid government. The Biyelas had years before lodged land claims against Thula Thula and surroundingfarms. The claims had failed legally and the matter had been amicably resolved on a social level with Nkanyiso Biyela. However, the cattle cabal, not content with just spreading lies against me, was also attempting to reactivate these discarded claims. Not only did they covet the Royal Zulu – they wanted Thula Thula as well.

I went to my office and began working on the most crucial address I would ever give. The future of Thula Thula depended on it. For if the cabal succeeded and moved into Thula Thula with families and cattle, our indigenous animals would be exterminated: including the herd. Nana and her family had at last found a place where they were happy. But because of the danger they presented to intruders, they would be the first to be shot if I failed at the meeting.

That thought sobered my fevered mind considerably and a plan started to take root. I knew the cabal was going to accuse me of harbouring combatants, thus I had to prove it was physically impossible to police every square inch in a reserve as vast as Thula Thula. I was certain that they had witnesses claiming combatants had been on my land. How could I know? If I knew everything that happened on Thula Thula, poaching would be eradicated overnight.

This meeting would be no clinical court of law and I had to provide graphic and practical proof to ordinary folk that would get me off the hook. My speech would not be dry legalese, but an appeal to reason.

Although the accusations could not be more serious, my good standing in the area would not be ignored by local leaders. It was well known that I abhorred apartheid and had worked closely with the national Zulu leaders in the years preceding the run-up to the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994.

I decided that the first thing to do was get a translator. Although my Zulu was adequate, the fact that each questionhad to be laboriously translated from Zulu to English would give me more time to formulate answers. However, the translator needed to be acceptable to both sides otherwise I would face accusations that I wasn’t answering the questions properly.

Ngwenya, my security induna, gave me the name of a local priest, whom he said was an esteemed member of the community, to translate for me. The priest, a kindly old man agreed and suggested that I come to his church for a ritual blessing.

There are a host of ministers in Buchanana, but most are not what you would call traditional men of the cloth. They mix Christianity with ancestral worship and animism. In short, this is a truly hybrid spirituality, uniquely African and drawing inspiration from every source imaginable.

I arrived at his church the next day. It was a simple shack with walls and roof of corrugated iron. Inside were a few rickety wooden chairs. One had been placed in the centre of the room where he asked me to sit down. A simple white cross hand-painted on the tin wall was the only decoration.

He then put a large zinc tub of what looked like river water by my feet, sprinkled some powders in it and began circling around me, chanting in Zulu, imploring both God and the ancestors to hear his calls. While he did so he tore pages out of a newspaper, set them alight, waved them around and then threw them into the water. The pages were thickly wedged together and continued burning while floating.

After several minutes he stopped and stirred the smoky water. It wasn’t clean water to start with, and the liquid soon became a soggy mess of burnt-paper flotsam. Still chanting, he decanted the stuff into an old plastic water bottle.

‘This is good muthi,’ he said afterwards. ‘When you gointo the meeting, you must drink from the bottle, and the people must see you do that. This meeting will then go well for you because you have been blessed.’

I thanked him, took the bottle and said I’d see him later in the week.

Five days later I arrived at the Buchanana village hall with David. The sun was not even midway in the sky but the air inside was like an oven and the simple brick and corrugated-iron building squatting on the top of a barren hill was bursting at the seams with people. There was no way the tiny windows could ventilate the seething room and the air inside was fetid and rank with sweat. Hostility hung just as thickly.

Outside many armed tribesmen who could not find a seat milled about. Men pointed at us as I drove up. One shook his fist; another brandished an iklwa – a traditional Zulu stabbing spear, named after the sucking sound made as the blade is yanked from a victim. I didn’t feel too good about my chances.

There was a heavy police presence and I deliberately parked my Land Rover near their vehicles.

The cop in charge, a Zulu woman in a bright-blue uniform came across. ‘Why are you here?’ she asked, intrigued at seeing whites at a strictly tribal meeting.

‘I’m speaking today.’

‘Oh.’ She stared at me with interest. ‘Then you are Anthony.’

I nodded. ‘How is it inside?’

‘Hot,’ she replied. Unfortunately, she wasn’t referring to the weather. She was using the colloquial Zulu word for dangerous. In other words, Code Red.

She clicked her tongue, unhappy that my presence could spark more problems. ‘Are you sure you still want to speak?’ I followed her gaze as she watched a crowd of men arrive,one waving a dilapidated shotgun. ‘I’ve already had to radio for reinforcements.’

The phalanx of police was due primarily to the smouldering faction fight and not because of me personally. Nevertheless it was disconcerting to know that even they thought this meeting