Tembe Elephant Park: walking free in a KwaZulu-Natal peace park

TTembe Elephant Park is a critical link in a planned transfrontier park on KwaZulu-Natal’s northernmost border with Mozambique and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland). This area is home to some of the largest jumbos in southern Africa, and for a very long time they were among the most feared. Now they welcome visitors. 

Tembe Elephant Park began as a small, unpromising reserve in 1983 and has since become something of an inspiration. It has also become a crucial lynchpin in the planned great Lebombo Transfrontier Park between South Africa, Mozambique and Eswatini (Swaziland). This initiative of the Peace Parks Foundation seeks to restore natural, rather than man-made boundaries to conservation areas, creating parks that conserve whole ecosystems across national borders. 

The 1980s were difficult years for many people in this area because of the civil war raging in Mozambique, which borders South Africa and ‘the Mountain Kingdom’, as Eswatini is poetically known. The park was declared as a bulwark protecting the last free-ranging herds of elephants that were migrating back and forth across borders fleeing bullets and explosions. 

But the park could only be opened in 1991, because the elephants were so traumatised by the warfare that the safety of tourists could not be guaranteed. The brave ecotourists that visited the park in the early 1990s returned with eye-widening stories of elephants charging them in thick bush. But there were no injuries, and gradually the elephants calmed down. 

They now number more around 200 and remain awe-inspiring – among them are the largest elephants in southern Africa. 

Until recently, the Tembe park had three of South Africa’s biggest tuskers, but now only one survives: a bull called iSilo with tusks 3 metres long, believed to be the largest in South Africa. 

The habitat at Tembe, in the far north corner of KwaZulu-Natal, is subtropical and tropical. It protects rare sand forests, thick woodland, wetlands and verdant pans. The rest of the Big Five (lion, leopard, buffalo and rhino) are also here, along with 340 species of birds. 

Some birds are at the very southernmost point of their range. Here you can see Rudd’s apalis, the plain-backed sunbird, the African broadbill, the steppe eagle and the swamp nightjar. 

The park is managed by Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, but the Tembe people who live in the area benefit from tourism because the comfortable tented lodge here is half-owned and run by them. Their dancers will come, on request, to sing and act out folklore from their history, making their culture come alive for you. Any money collected for such events goes towards buying school uniforms for the children in the local community.