James Stevenson-Hamilton - Stevenson-Hamilton and The Sabie Game Reserve

Stevenson-Hamilton and The Sabie Game Reserve

In 1902, Sir Godfrey Lagden (the newly appointed Commissioner for Native Affairs in South-Africa) appointed James Stevenson-Hamilton as the warden of the Sabie Game reserve. As a “bachelor, a man of means and a professional soldier,” (Cartwright 1960) Lagden deemed him fit for the job even though the post was viewed as unusual and unheard of. Stevenson-Hamilton signed a 2 year contract as warden, found a map of the area and set off with a wagon, oxen, provisions and ammunition for an unchartered and malaria filled land described to him as the “white man’s grave” (Panter and Nussey 1986). Game-ranging was still a new term and this allowed Stevenson-Hamilton to have free over reign over the Sabie Game reserve, his only order from Lagden being “to make himself generally disagreeable” (Cartwright 1960) and try and put an end to poaching. In 1902, he reached Nelspruit.

His first order of business was to announce that no shooting was to be allowed and that if he and his servant could live on tinned meat, so could the white-men and natives who were inclined to shoot an impala whenever they felt the need to. He believed “that if there were no shooting, if animals where left to live in the veld as they had lived before man came on the scene, they would lose their fear of human beings and flock to an area that had once been described as ‘red with impala’” (Cartwright 1960). He then moved his headquarters from Crocodile-Bridge to Sabie-Bridge and appointed two rangers, the most famous of them Harry Wolhuter, and together they trained native rangers. Poachers soon realised that he was serious about the ‘no shooting’ rule and many were caught. “Including, on one occasion a party of senior policemen” (Duggan 1990) who were caught killing a giraffe and wildebeest and were convicted and fined for their crimes. After this, Cartwright (1960) said that “what he did is now a matter of history. He trained his rangers, thinned out the lions and the wild dogs, declared war on the poachers and patrolled the whole area.” He also became the magistrate, customs collector and border guard, as well as watcher of the railway line to the south of the reserve. After this his focus went back to Johannesburg and Pretoria where he started to convince companies in the vicinity to lend him land, eventually giving him a huge block in a remote corner of Transvaal. By doing this, he created the space that is known today as Kruger National Park. Extending the reserve from the original 1200 square miles to 14,000 square miles. Game could therefore, roam freely from the Crocodile to the Limpopo River.

In 1904, he was summoned back to war and his two year contract had expired. James Stevenson-Hamilton was destined to become the commander of his regiment, the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons. Yet he was unable to resign and asked for leave instead. He had grown too fond of Africa and as he later said of himself; "For me the pathless jungle, the reedfringed rivers with the wild call of the fisheagle ringing down the long reaches, and still, warm, nights, their silence punctuated by the throb of the lion’s roar" ( Labuschagne 1958). His stay in London did not last long and England lost a soldier and South-Africa gained a warden. In the 20 years following, Stevenson-Hamilton created history through his ability to protect and regulate the park.

In 1912, he first presented his idea for the nationalization of the park to then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jan Smuts. The idea was to transform the reserve into a national park, but to do this he needed “the support of the public, but to gain that support visitors should be allowed into the park” (Paynter and Nussey 1986). Unfortunately, the war temporarily paused these events. In 1926, Piet Grobler established the National Parks Bill in parliament as encouraged by Stevenson-Hamilton and presented the park as a realization of the dreams of Paul Kruger and renaming the Sabie Game reserve as Kruger National Park of South Africa. In 1927, the park was opened to the public.