Our ‘The World We Have‘ columnist visits the Loziba Wildlife Reserve in the Valley of the Kings, in search of South Africa’s last free-roaming herd of elephants, and while he struggles to spot these aptly-named “ghost elephants,” a few campfire beers uncover the reserve’s tragic history.
It was a steep road that took us up and out of the grazing lands and sugar cane fields of eastern KwaZulu-Natal to the top of the provincial ridge line. But once there, looking down, a vast, rolling and untouched golden valley, unlike any other in the whole of South Africa, opened up below us–Emakhosini, “the Valley of Kings”. We turned off the tar road and bumped along until we came to the small, unassuming gate which read, “Loziba Wildlife Reserve.”
Seasoned conservationist and project director, Grant Fowlds, had picked me up in Durban three hours earlier and was telling me all about the battles that this reserve had faced since its inception. But, despite the setbacks, their mission had never altered: to protect the last free-roaming herd of African elephants in the whole country.
For almost 20 years, these so-called “ghost elephants” lived in relative peace in this remote, rugged part of the country. But as grazing lands extended, rural populations increased, and economic situations in the area continued to deteriorate, desperate humans turned to the wilderness on their doorstep for a lifeline. This inevitably led to contact and catastrophe. The elephants also had no legal status, making them particularly susceptible to the whims of human-wildlife conflict. And so, in 2019, the idea for a reserve to protect the animals was created. Led by visionary reserve owner Beyers Coetzee, the idea was to partner with the communities on their doorstep to create a conservancy that protected these animals whilst also generating meaningful socio-economic benefit.
Getting the local Zulu chief, Sbu Jiyane, who saw the potential in conserving this iconic part of Zululand, was key. They then partnered with Grant, who quite literally wrote the book on “Rewilding Africa”, and it should have been the perfect team. But facing off fierce poaching rackets, consistent community scepticism, and the unpredictability of unfenced wild animals, the last six years had been a war on all fronts. It is a sad reality of conservation in South Africa, which is unique in most of sub-Saharan Africa, but the best way to protect these animals for the long term is to provide a safe enclosure for them. And so, at the end of 2025, when they finally found a donation big enough to put up the fence, which once and for all granted the elephants legal status, it was an enormous win for the project, and Grant was still smiling about it as we drove along the still sparkling fence line and turned into the reserve.
The road condition quickly deteriorated as we entered, the result of a particularly heavy rainy season, and we bumped along all the way to the top of the hill. I was told with a chuckle that, on the reserve’s long list of needs, unfortunately, the road was not quite at the top just yet. After checking into our brand new safari tents, we drove up to the koppie at the top of the ridge, which gave us an unhindered view of hundreds of kilometres of pure Zululand wilderness. It was breathtaking. Grant carried on guiding me along the edge of the valley drop-off until we reached a small cave. Quietly, without saying much, he started to point out what looked like miscoloured rocks and weathered stains all along the roof of the entrance. And then the stains started moving. They shifted and changed shape, revealing animals, people, and strange elongated symbols.
This was an ancient Bushman site, sacred and protected. Looking out over the view, it was not hard to see why they had chosen this spot. Grant told me how they had seen a leopard family using the cave as a den a few years ago, and on our walk back, we spotted a rare mountain reedbuck across the valley. I was very quickly starting to realise how special this place was.
The next morning, I woke up to my whole tent being illuminated by bird song and a fiery red sunrise. I went and sat outside on the deck for a while, contemplating the shifting sands that these hills had seen over the millennia. Along with the bushman site on the ridge behind me, Ulundi, the centuries-old royal seat of the Zulu kingdom, was just over the horizon to the East. The famous 19th-century warrior-king and founder of the Ndebele nation, Mzilikazi, had his ancestral kraal among the hills just to the North, and the name ‘Loziba’ was actually the name of Mzilikazi’s wife, a homage to the history of this place. I could feel the roots of this land ever-present as the dawn greeted me. Emakhosini, indeed. And now, Chief Sbu Jiyane, who was the owner of most of the land given towards the reserve, was trying to keep this pristine landscape intact for future generations. But it all rested on one unlikely herd of elephants. And that day, we were going to try and find them.
We had received GPS signals from two of the animals that were collared the night before, and so, thinking we were hot on their tails, we drove into the bush. But it was not long before we realised why they had earned the nickname “ghost elephants.” After four hours of searching, we still had nothing. The sign of them was everywhere: fresh dung, broken tree branches, even pulled-up roots all along the road, but no elephants. We parked up at the top of the valley and thought our best bet was to use our binoculars to scan the hills, erosion lines, and waterholes we could see. We then sent up the drone to try and get as wide an angle as possible in the hope it might offer some more luck, but, apart from a beautiful big Martial Eagle, we saw nothing. And so we turned back, somewhat disheartened, to try again tomorrow. Later that night, we received another GPS location and realised that we were no more than two hundred metres away from them at one point. They would have heard us, smelt us, and known exactly where we were–and yet, we were oblivious.
Despite the slight disappointment of the day, sitting around a fire that evening, under the stars with a cold beer and a full stomach is not something I will ever take for granted. I was fortunate enough to meet the 82-year-old temporary reserve manager, Christo, who was an energetic, foul-mouthed Greek from another time. He had been the previous owner of this particular farm site and had taken over the manager role as the reserve was between full-time managers. He ran his team like an army general and, even at 82, was not going to be outworked by anyone–despite using some questionable methods of conflict resolution. He fed us an absolutely delicious moussaka, which was a first for me in the bush, and we sat around telling stories of this strange, wild place we found ourselves in. The fire had its effect on all of us, and the traumatic recent history of this place inevitably unfurled. “There’s been many dark days,” Grant said, while reflecting on his journey with this landscape and these elephants. But one day in particular seemed to stand out for everyone.
On the 18th February 2020, Beyers Coetzee was on the far side of the reserve, attempting to keep the elephants away from entering the land of one particularly prickly neighbour, when two young bulls ambushed him and his party. The other two men he was with narrowly escaped, but Beyers, the visionary of the whole Loziba project, was tragically killed by the very elephants he was fighting to protect. That harrowing event set off a chain reaction of legal battles, family in-fighting, and deep regional mistrust, which has held the fate of this iconic herd in the balance ever since. In 2024, without any notice, the parks and wildlife authority for the province then flew in and unceremoniously authorised the killing of nine of the elephants–including a pregnant female.
“My wife has told me at least ten times to give up,” Grant says after his emotional account of those fateful events, “but I’ve found that spending time here… under the mountain, and realising that every single hectare you are trying to protect is important. And that now we have 150 mouths that are dependent on us… You can’t give up.”
And so, taking his advice, we were off again the next morning to find the elephants. We drove right round to the Southern edge of the reserve, towards a Berg sandstone mountain called Nhlazatshe. The road was particularly jarring as we dropped down into the valley, and the novelty of being in the back of a bushwacking 1980s Land Rover Defender without any suspension wore off almost immediately. The road grew narrower and narrower until it disappeared entirely. We were now following the path through the thick sicklebush that the elephants themselves had made.
We came to a place where the car simply couldn’t go any further, and so, following our rifle-clad anti-poaching ranger, Zane, we got out and walked. Sicklebush is one of the densest thorn bushes in Africa, and the reality is that we would only ever see anything if we came face to face with it–which was not a hugely enticing concept. We came into a small waterhole clearing we hoped to find them in, but there were no fresh traces of them having been there at all. And so, in a last-ditch effort, we sent the drone up again in the direction we thought they might have gone.
After almost an hour, we still had nothing to show for it, and we were losing hope. Then we heard it… crack! Everyone went deathly quiet. It was a branch snapping. And then another one… crack crack. It had to be them, and it didn’t sound far away from us at all. We sent the drone toward the direction the cracks were coming from, and the closer it got to where we thought they were, the more cracks we heard. The buzz was clearly disturbing them, and they couldn’t be more than a few hundred metres away, but we were still getting nothing coming through the picture. It was as if they were completely invisible. It always blows me away how twenty-five two-ton animals can simply disappear if they don’t want to be seen.
And then, they broke. We were all crowded around the drone screen, trying to catch a glimpse, when all of a sudden, every bush we were looking at seemed to morph into an elephant. They were running. And fortunately for us, in the opposite direction. We followed them for a short while, but not wanting to disturb them more than necessary, pulled the drone back in. After three days of searching, all we had was thirty seconds of shaky drone footage. But it was entirely worth it. We got what we needed.
This project was at the coal-face of conservation. They have fought poachers, lawyers, landowners, farmers, and, very often, each other to try to protect this landscape and the ineffable animals that call it home. But seeing that these animals were safe and healthy was all the motivation they needed to keep working. Despite the traumatic history, this valley and all its inhabitants might finally be looking out over a brighter future.
A few days later, I was at home, still reflecting on the tensions and contentions of where I had been, when I received a very excited WhatsApp message from Grant. After some deeper analysis of the drone footage we had captured, the team’s suspicions had been confirmed–the herd had just welcomed a brand new baby. The tides of hope had finally begun to turn in their favor.
