African Epic, The Story of Paul ‘Kambada’ Grobler ,
By Richard Harland
I get jealous on safari watching the hunters’ wives read The Diary of Bridget Jones or The Devil Wore Prada, and am woefully ignorant of the brouhaha surrounding a book named The Da Vinci Files. Instead, my few precious hours for reading are filled with wounded ‘Dagga Boys’ springing out of the jesse and marauding tembos being punished with a bang from a mighty barrel, especially with the rising flood of memoirs being written by the safari industry’s most distinguished PHs, many now well past their ‘golden years.’ It’s downright incredible that so many of these adventure-addicted geezers live to ripe old ages, despite malaria and snakebite, wounded dangerous game animals, crashing bush planes, natural disasters and landmines, political cataclysms, clumsy clients, incalculable rounds of big-calibre, and the occasional jealous husband.
Given the high dose of hunting stories consumed in our household, it’s not often I raise a glass to a book and an author. But I popped champagne for Richard Harland’s , African Epic, The Story of Paul ‘Kambada’ Grobler, published in 2005 with the usual heft and high standards of a Rowland Ward publication. At 268 pages, with dozens of rare black and white photos that capture the times, Harland’s expertly written text propels the reader down the path of a quintessential Southern Rhodesian life.
Paul Grobler’s story ranges from tobacco, stock and crocodile farmer (producing and processing over 5,000 hides a year); ivory hunter, elephant culler, game cropper and meat and hide processor; pilot, commercial fisherman and safari operator; plus husband of a saint, father to a brood, and hardworking in-law to a vast web of Zambezi Valley relatives.
Harland, the author of his own elephant-downing autobiography, The Hunting Imperative also published by Rowland Ward, and most recently, Ndlovu: The Art of Hunting the African Elephant, published by Ivory Imprints, is a darn good storyteller and it’s a pleasure to read his prose, whether he’s describing the landscape, recounting a conversation, or filling in the reader on all the ‘spare parts’ that go into making a ‘typical’ white Rhodesian life – including the making of local bush beers; rain-making ceremonies and the use of lion fat in a witchdoctor’s brew; the steps in planting, raising and selling tobacco, and breeding and processing crocodile; the natural history of the albida tree and its use for canoe-making by the Batonka people; how to fish for tiger fish; and the compelling statistics on the building of the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi in 1958 and its180 x 20-mile lake.
He is also extremely well versed in anything having to do with elephants – behaviours, calibres, the dynamics of elephant populations - noting that between 1965 and 1991 in Zimbabwe, some 46,000 elephants were legally culled or hunted.
‘Kambada’ – from the Shona word mbada meaning leopard - is the African name given to Grobler by an old African nganga (witchdoctor). Whether it refers to Grobler’s consistent ‘landing on his feet’ or his energetic approach to life, ‘Kambada’ fits the image of a man whose moustache, dark curly hair and eyes full of daring could have landed him a role in King Salomon’s Mines.
Paul’s parents were married soon after the end of the Boer War, in 1905 in the village of Louis Trichard in northern Transvaal. By the time Paul was born in 1922 in Southern Rhodesia, he was baby number nine. These early pioneering years are fascinatingly described by Harland – the trekking, the desperate poverty of Depression times, and the natural abundance of the African bush. By age nine, Paul took his dad’s 7.9 Mannlicher Schönauer and shot dead his first elephant. It was the first of many thousands of elephants he killed.
By 16, Paul had a miner’s blasting certificate, but also hunted for the crew’s big cooking pot on expeditions that took him as far as Pygmy-country in the Belgian Congo. Then WWII intervened. By 1948, Paul was assisting the District Commissioners in animal control, starting out with his only rifle – a ‘sporterised’ ex-military .303, with round-nosed 215-grain bullets by Kynoch - the only calibre ‘for which ammunition could be found in reasonable quantities almost anywhere in southern Africa.’
Over the years, Paul knocked down elephant in groups of five to 40. ”I shot my first 80 elephants with my .303 and used 88 rounds. After 300 or 400, even (my wife) Marie couldn’t be bothered to keep track.” Many were bagged under the worst of conditions in the jesse thickets of Zambezi country (see below).
Large-scale elephant culling in Wankie Park began in earnest in 1966 and from then on was handled by Paul. Wherever elephants were to be hunted, he was there with a .416 Rigby or .458 BSA. He knew their secret watering holes and how the wind changes as the sun heats up the air currents of the Zambezi Valley. Paid 15 pounds per dead elephant (turning the tusks over to the government), soon he was shooting elephants with every calibre available: .375 H&H, 9.3 mm (which, with soft-nose bullets, he especially liked for lion) .425, .465, .460 Weatherby, .470, and even a .600 that came complete with 45 cartridges, switching to soft-noses whenever solids were unobtainable. The cash from the elephant carcasses or ivory paid for the first family farm.
For ASG readers, of course the best parts of the book are the dozens of elephant chases that marked Grobler’s life, revealed during his two-year questioning by Harland. Once, with three angry cow elephants crashing towards him, the bolt of his rifle “slid forward with no resistance and something landed on his shoe. The slight metallic ‘clink’ was the magazine floor-plate opening. There was no cartridge for the bolt to pick up and feed to the chamber. The three rounds were lying at his feet.” On his way home, he had the opening permanently welded closed!
Another time, while being tossed in the air by a buffalo, as he cartwheeled above it, his finger pulled the trigger of his rifle. Miraculously, the bullet went through the buff’s back between its shoulders, hitting the heart and saving his life.
A full cast of original characters and colleagues animate the book, including from the 17 years, starting in 1972, that Paul outfitted safaris in Omay, Ume and Bumi near today’s Lake Kariba. At one point, he employed 600 people, had 60+ vehicles, 44-foot fishing boats, and three aircraft for his game processing, crocodile farming, and kapenta fishing and safari operations. The simple ivory-hunting days were over.
Grobler is considered a capable, calm, unhurried man and a natural leader in all he does. An astute businessman, a successful farmer, and a passionate hunter - it all worked together in creating a satisfying and successful life. ‘Never a Dull Day’ is the title of one chapter, which sums up best the Paul Grobler story.
Studying the 1940 map of Southern Rhodesia in the book, one cannot avoid a squeeze of the heart, knowing what has happened since to the families, investments and harvests of generations of white Zimbabwe citizens. Since it is impossible to go back in time, a read of African Epic is the next best thing.
African Epic is published by Rowland Ward. 268 pages with dozens of black and white photos.
Harland’s Description of “Jesse.”
In that impossible vegetation called jesse, derived from the Makorekore word for dense thicket, muchesa, the mass of multi-stemmed shrubs grow 10 or 20 feet high, branches drooping down to entangle in every neighbour’s branches, with poor visibility along the resulting low tunnels and archways. In full leaf cover during and after the rains, the walls of solid greenery make hunting big game about as close to suicidal as the hunter can get. As the dry season progresses and leaf fall speeds up, conditions become more workable, though by August there is such a thick carpet of dead dry, crisp leaves underfoot that silent stalking is extremely difficult.
Jesse often has its islands of sanity, relief and respite. Usually a monumental old baobab tree, or a thick-trunked pod mahogany holding a great canopy of branches high above the surrounding grey tangle, or a cone-shaped termite mound with a top-knot of bushes and a tree or two. Encircling the central feature of the island will be a cleared area of five or 10 yards radius, caused by animals spending the midday hours shifting around like the hands of a clock, following the most shady patch away from the fierce heat of the Zambezi sun.
Hunters will instinctively linger awhile at one of these islands to stand up straight and stretch the muscles, aching from walking bent over and ducking under branches or thorny scrub. There the water bag will be passed around, a cigarette smoked, and shoes removed to shake out all the debris. In the stifling, motionless atmosphere of the jesse, these little havens give the hunter a brief and welcome psychological ‘breath of free air.