The Elephant Whisperer

The events of The Elephant Whisperer take place on the Thula Thula game reserve, owned by Lawrence Anthony, which is situated in Zululand, a part of the KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa. Anthony’s conservation efforts and work on the reserve are impacted by the history, culture, and customs of the area, necessitating an understanding of the area’s historical context.

The Zulu were Nguni-speaking people, originally settled near the White Umfolozi river. The legendary Zulu warrior-king, Shaka, famed for his military strategies, conquered the different Zulu groups and consolidated them into a single, powerful Zulu nation in the 19th century. Thula Thula is an important piece of Zulu history, as along with being the oldest private wildlife reserve in the province, it is also the former hunting ground of this legendary king.

The Zulu nation was influential throughout southern and central Africa until clashes began with the Westerners, first with the Afrikaner Boers in 1838 and later with the arrival of the British Empire in the late 19th century. Although the Zulus claimed initial victories in the Anglo-Zulu war, they were eventually defeated and annexed into Natal in 1897 by the British. The early 1900s saw land commission partitioning, which took away two thirds of Zulu land, including the most fertile portions. Furthermore, KwaZulu was made a province in 1910, and the remainder of the traditional Zulu land was converted to Native Reserves by the South African government. These were governed by chiefs under the supervision of white administration.

The increasing population in the Native Reserves, both Zulu and non-Zulu, concurrent with the growing competition for land, saw a rise in tensions between different groups. This history explains the resistance Anthony faced from the cattle cabal toward the Royal Zulu project. As Anthony himself explains, the tribe’s previous experience with Westerners had seen the latter seize fertile tribal land for their own uses, leaving the Zulus deprived of livelihoods. Thus, Anthony’s proposal to use tribal land for conservation rather than cattle grazing is met with suspicion and antagonism.

In 1959, the areas of Zulu residence became the “Zulu homeland.” At this time, Anthony’s family moved to Zululand. With the end of apartheid in the 1990s, scattered blocks of KwaZulu fused with Natal to form the new province of KwaZulu-Natal in 1994. By the time Anthony returned to Zululand and bought Thula Thula in 1999, it was nestled in this freshly formed province—the key piece to uniting different tribal lands in Anthony’s ambitious Royal Zulu project.

Anthony and Françoise run the reserve with deference to the area’s history and customs. Colonialism sees many Zulu people converting to Christianity, but a number of ancestral beliefs live on, with ancestral spirits forming an important part of Zulu religious life. The acceptance of spirits and their impact on the material world also leads to magic and the supernatural being a way of life in Zulu society—superstitions and witchcraft are taken seriously. Thus, the book details many encounters Anthony has with sangomas (diviners or traditional healers) and muthi (witchcraft). These aspects of Zulu life impact both Anthony’s daily life and his conservation work in a myriad of ways, leading to many a colorful anecdote in the book.