Meet the former poacher now one of South's Africa's most celebrated safari guides
It isn't too often you see a real life case of poacher-turned-gamekeeper, which makes it all the more touching when one comes along. And Innocent Ngwenya certainly fits the bill.
At the age of 27, he's one of South Africa's youngest "lead trackers" - a role that involves finding and identifying wildlife, and requires an impressive level of knowledge and skill - working at one of the country's most prestigious safari reserves.
These days, he's an advocate for the conservation of leopards, but in his younger years, he was hunting them. Innocent turned his life around after finding the father he never knew. I met him during a recent stay at the Londolozi Private Game Reserve in Sabi Sands, next to the Kruger National Park, and, in between spotting well-camouflaged creatures from his seat on the front of our 4X4 with near-supernatural precision, he told me his story.
Innocent was born into extreme poverty, one of many siblings. His parents separated when he was young, which is rare in the Shangaan culture from which he came, and his grandmother asked his father to stay away from the family. Lyson, Innocent’s father, respected her wishes.
"Hunger disturbs your brain," he says of his earliest memories. "When you are very hungry, the only thing you want is food. It doesn't matter how you're getting it - you'll try anything you can to survive."
Innocent started off catching small birds to feed his mother and younger brothers and sisters, and he was very good at it. Encouraged by peers in his village, things quickly escalated.
"Some of the older boys were starting to jump over the fence into the Manyeleti Reserve nearby to hunt bigger animals," he recalls. "Soon I was hunting for money and not food. You can fetch a huge price for the skin of a leopard." These skins are particularly valuable to the Sangomas, a group of ritualistic Zulu healers, he explains.
"When I look back now, I realise how much I was heading down the wrong path. My head was down on the scent of money."
Innocent continues: "What really saved me though, was another kind of hunger - the hunger to meet my father."
At the age of 16, he tracked Lyson down to the Ngala Game Reserve, not far away, where he was a ranger, having formally been a chef.
"I think he knew that one day I would try to find him," Innocent says. The bond was instant, and the two went on to live together in a tiny room at the reserve, where Lyson started teaching him about the importance of preserving nature, and enrolled him at the Tracker Academy, which trains unemployed people in the art.
The school's co-founder, Alex van den Heever, notes: "Very few skilled trackers remain in Africa, and the few who do possess these traditional skills are disappearing fast."
Innocent was a natural. "Early one morning I was asked by one of my mentors to find a gemsbok (South African oryx) from its tracks," he recounts.
"The moment I began on that path, the instinct came alive inside of me and I felt myself pulled along the trail like a magnet. When I found it, it was so close and so beautiful I had an overwhelming urge to cry.
"I felt the energy of hunger that has always driven me to hunt and kill these animals literally shift away. It was then that I realised I wanted to become one of the best trackers in the world."
Innocent proved to be a highly talented tracker, outperforming even his teachers. During one of his final exams - he graduated with the highest possible qualification - he was asked to identify a barely-discernible hoof print. Innocent stated it was that of a duiker, but lost marks when his instructor declared it to be that of a steenbok.
Innocent was absolutely convinced he was right, insisting they further investigate and as it later transpired, he was. The tracks belonged to a duiker.
All successes aside, he was dealt a devastating blow when around this time his father was diagnosed with cancer. "We both knew that our time together was coming to an end," he says sadly, "but I stayed true to the most important thing that I learnt from my father: to respect nature, respect myself and respect other people."
Two years later, Lyson got a job at Londolozi, a well-protected reserve that is therefore home to an unusually high number of leopards.
"It dawned on me that just a few years ago I was catching and killing these same animals in snares," he says. "That memory makes me sad. But it also fills me with pride that now my skills help to protect them. Here I track them every day and it is one of the best safe havens for them in the world."
Having spent several days with Innocent, it's hard to imagine him hurting so much of a fly. Former Londolozi guide Amy Attenborough agrees. "Innocent is one of the most remarkable humans I know," she says. "He is kind, gentle and driven. He smiles more than anyone I’ve ever met, nothing is too much effort for him and he is well-respected for his tracking genius.
"He is a person who has not allowed circumstance to determine who he is or how his life has mapped out."
Innocent now tours local communities like the one he grew up in to teach them about conservation, and encourages people to train as trackers, rather than get swept into the poaching industry. He's also a mentor for students at the academy, and flies around the world to speak at events.
"With the help of my father, I saw that you can make it in life, even if you don't have money," Innocent concludes. "As long as you've got hands and a deep hunger for a better life, you can become whatever you want."
