South Africa: Spotted in Africa

A leopard in the Sabi Sands reserve. Photo / Getty Images

Cameras have replaced guns on safari in MalaMala.

The cold is dull and relentless, as are the corrugations in the dirt road. Juddering, shuddering. Dawn is still 5km down the road, over the Sand River, up the east bank and round the corner.

Our guide, Bens Marimane, says nothing as he drives, his eyes roving into the undergrowth on either side, his ears straining for the crack of a twig over the growl of the Land Rover.

On a cradle on the dark green bonnet is the rifle, a .375 Holland & Holland. Google it. They call it the "all-round African rifle". This is what you use if you want to take down a lion, a hippo, an elephant.

Marimane slows the open-top Land Rover. He swings the vehicle around, and heads several minutes back the way we came, leaning out over the windowsill, scrutinising the tracks, the droppings. He stops. He lifts the .375 from its cradle, checks the two-way radio is active, then steps softly out onto the road, rifle in hand.

He has found leopard tracks. He walks 10 metres up the road in front of the Land Rover. He stops. He looks down. Then he turns sharply and walks briskly back to the vehicle. He knows where this leopard is headed - and ploughs the Land Rover into the spiky undergrowth in pursuit.

As we come to the west bank of the river, Marimane slows again - and one of our group, Nicole, spots him, the leopard in the grass. Calmly, the leopard pads towards us, up to the front grill, and then round the left side of the vehicle. Bigger than I had imagined, sleek, muscular. He pauses, sniffs the bushes, then walks on. We turn and follow behind for a few minutes.

The leopard is unperturbed. The rifle is back in its cradle, and he knows it. The animals here feel safe around humans - it's not often that a gun is fired in anger in this reserve.

MalaMala main camp lodge, where guests stay before venturing out to spot the wildlife. Photo / Supplied

The 13,500ha MalaMala Game Reserve was carved out of a 19th-century gold-rush trail that claimed innumerable lives, many gold-seekers falling victims to wildlife just like this. Malamala was established in 1927 and the walls of its opulent riverside bars and lounges still bear the weight of enormous trophies - buffalos, elephants.

But MalaMala is different, a trailblazer in a land that more often brutally punishes pioneers.

The game park once hosted gun-toting royalty, but in 1962 the camera replaced the rifle, making MalaMala the first private photo safari park in Africa and a model for the safari tourism industry. The reserve was purchased by Michael Rattray two years later, and this year he celebrated 50 years' running the world-renowned reserve.

He marked that milestone with the successful settlement of a land claim, under which South African President Jacob Zuma returned ownership of the NZ$100 million MalaMala reserve to the area's original Tsonga people.

The Rattray family remains in charge of the lush bougainvillea-bedecked camp sites, managing the tourism operation and paying a dividend to 960 local households on the edge of the park.

Bens Marimane grew up in his nearby village, scared of wild animals.

"Most of the black people were scared of animals," he says. "There was a fence between us and the game reserve, so you used to see some animals, a few elephants in the distance."

His first day learning to be a tracker was in 1997.

"Most of the elephants were coming from Kruger National Park, and they were not used to the Land Rovers. I was not driving - I was sitting in the back seats with the other trackers.

"We came round a blind corner and surprised them. And us. It was a herd. They came from the side and charged us. But we were able to drive."

Elephants in MalaMala Game Reserve. Photo / Supplied

Now the 37-year-old is a ranger, paid more, a charming and softly-spoken host to MalaMala's international guests - but really, he's still a tracker at heart. The other rangers, ruddy young Afrikaaners most of them, seem to look up to him. Their game reserve management is learned at university; his was learned through sometimes grim experience.

"When I started work as a guide, one day I was surrounded by lions. I was tracking them on foot - and suddenly I found I was in the middle of them.

"I heard a big growl and I stepped back quickly. One of them jumped towards me, five metres. I had decided to shoot - when another lioness came from beside me, on my right, and then another. They never stopped growling. I stepped back slowly, and she kept coming. I looked behind me and there were eight cubs behind me."

His terrified guests were watching from the Land Rover, 100 metre away, and called for help on the radio. The other rangers asked where they were. We don't know, the guests said, but there are some big rocks.

For about seven minutes, Marimane stood there among the lions, an African stand-off. Finally, help arrived, and he was able to slowly step away from the pride of lions and return to the vehicle.

Marimane's wife, Khensni Ndlovu, also works at MalaMala, in the laundry. Once every four weeks, they return home for a couple of weeks' break.

Home is the village of Utlha, barely 10km to the north, but more than an hour's drive up the dirt roads in the staff truck. Don't waste your time googling Utlha - all you'll find is a grainy satellite image of perhaps 300 tiny houses, and a weather forecast. Sunny, no rain today, none tomorrow, none for a few more months.

Bens and Khensni have one of those 300 houses: one bedroom, one bathroom, six children ranging from 8 to 18 years old. When Bens and Khensni are working, their family look after the children. It sounds tough, but the couple are well-off compared to many of their neighbours.

During his weeks at home, Marimane is building the family a bigger house. Something keeps drawing him back to MalaMala, though, and it's not the money.

In part, it's the knowledge he is part of the solution for South Africa's wild animals. Tourists bring in much-needed revenue that helps the local community, and funds thousands of kilometres of fences and armed patrols that help protect the wildlife from poachers.

MalaMala is part of a grouping of neighbouring reserves, collectively called Sabi Sands, that have their own anti-poaching police. Often, though, it is the rangers like Marimane who know the land best, who sense something is amiss, who spot the traces of the poachers, who find the dead and mutilated elephants and rhinoceroses.

"I've seen dead rhinos," he says.

"One time, I found footprints - and then I found a bullet on the ground. I don't know if they were ever caught.

"What made me very sad to see was one female white rhino, shot, and she was with her baby. And we just came across the very small baby. The baby was still alive."

It's the last morning of our visit, and we're barrelling along a dirt track on MalaMala's northern boundary. Over the previous few days, we've watched a giraffe pace slowly along the river bank, eyeballed a family of elephants, given the short-tempered hippos a wide berth, kept pace with a pride of Kruger lions as they searched for prey at dusk and, yes, watched a mother rhino protect her baby.

We could tick most of the boxes on the list of animals that was handed to us on arrival.

But we haven't seen the wild dogs. These extraordinary animals, athletic and ugly, move at speed when they are hunting. The management at MalaMala despairs at the damage done to the suspension of the Land Rovers in high-paced pursuit of these dogs.

Now, Marimane has found tracks. We're bouncing along at 30 or 40km/h, but on these unforgiving tracks it feels like we're doing 100.

We grip the handles on the outside of the Land Rover. All we need is Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries booming out of over-sized speakers, and it would feel like a scene from a Vietnam War movie, or perhaps Clint Eastwood's White Hunter.

The difference, though, is that the rifle remains safe in its cradle. There will be no shots fired today.

The sun is up, warming our backs, and the dusty wind swipes and clutches at our hair. Everything feels alive.

IF YOU GO

Where? MalaMala Game Reserve is located between the Sabi Sand Game Reserve and the Kruger National Park. It has a 19km open boundary with the National Park, across which the wildlife roams.

Why? The vast diversity of habitat types create wildlife-viewing opportunities that are regarded as some of the best on the continent. MalaMala was the first private game reserve in South Africa and, in 1962, became the first to replace the rifle with the camera.

MalaMala Main Camp: $871 per person per night sharing a luxury room; or $954 per person per night sharing a suite.

How to get there: There's a daily one-hour Federal Air flight directly into MalaMala's landing strip from Johannesburg, or it's a two-hour road transfer from Nelspruit.

The writer travelled courtesy of South African Tourism and South African Airways.