Welcome to the Wilderness Leadership School

In the annals of South African conservation, the story of the Wilderness Leadership School is a very profound one. Its origins date back to 1955 when the American concept of wilderness was first introduced to the school's founder Dr. Ian Player by a senior game ranger Jim Feely.

By 1958 half of the Imfolozi Game Reserve (now the Imfolozi-Hluhluwe Game Reserve) and a part of Lake St Lucia had wilderness areas proclaimed. These areas of wilderness allowed people to go into them only on foot, horseback or canoe.

These were the first official wilderness areas in Africa.

The first group of schoolboys (from St John's College) to be taken on a wilderness trail of sorts dates back to 1957 at Lake St Lucia. While the school was only formalised as such in 1963, trails of young people were being taken out in the late 1950's by game rangers in both reserves. This was the time that Dr. Player came into contact with Magqubu Ntombela, an extraordinary game tracker for the then Natal Parks Board. He was to prove to be one of the greatest influences on Dr. Player's life and one of the foremost sponsors of the Wilderness Leadership School idea.

In 1959 Dr. Player and Magqubu Ntombela took the first official Natal Parks Board trail into the Imfolozi wilderness area. It was the beginning of something very special in the annals of wilderness hiking.

Apart from all else the hike was being traversed over particularly historical ground. The area between the White and Black Imfolozi rivers was an area that had been occupied by the famous Zulu King Shaka, who undertook controlled hunting in this very area back in the 1860's.

In other words this Imfolozi wilderness area lay at the heart of the early Zulu Kingdom.

In fact Magqubu Ntombela's grandfather had been one of King Shaka's indunas (a chief) and Magqubu carried with him the oral history of the time, perpetuating the venerable Zulu ritual of vivid storytelling. Enshrined in tribal tales were also the old conservation practices of the Zulus, vital for an understanding of the culture and the land.

And the significance of Imfolozi was enhanced even further as one of the greatest scenes of global conservation history when a collection of select game rangers saved the White Rhino from extinction. It was right here that white rhino numbers had plummeted to such a degree that unless they were captured and relocated it was conceivably they would have been wiped out.

And so when one talks about the origins of the Wilderness Leadership School one situates it amongst these crucial events.

Hundreds of people and many local and international bodies have since been involved in the growth of the school. But it was the friendship of these two men, Dr. Ian Player and Magqubu Ntombela and all that they stood for that infused the school with its significance and helped unfold the enduring lessons that the wilderness has on people.