Sabi Sand Nature Reserve, on the Sand River west of the Kruger National Park. The house dates its beginning to 1926, when Charles Boyd Varty bought degraded cattle land and built a hunting camp called Sparta; the fifteen-year-old Dave Varty refused to sell the bankrupt property in 1969, and he and his brother John began again with 53 rand and one broken Land Rover. Londolozi is this register’s clearest case of a safari house that argued photographic tourism could pay to restore land.
The house
Londolozi gives its origin twice. Its centenary page says the story “began in 1926 when Charles Boyd-Varty purchased degraded cattle land west of Kruger National Park”; its essay on South African ecotourism has Charles Boyd Varty and Frank Unger deciding “it would be a fantastic idea to purchase a bankrupt cattle farm” in the Lowveld. The camp they built was called Sparta, and the original Sparta Camp still stands inside the present Varty Camp, “representing where Londolozi began in 1926”. The turn came in 1969, when the fifteen-year-old Dave Varty refused to sell the bankrupt family land and started a safari company with his brother John.
The renaming marked the change of purpose. John Varty took the word from a Zulu dictionary, and the house translates Londolozi as “the protector of all living things”. A mission statement it dates to 1972 states the working proposition: “Our primary objective is to demonstrate that man and wildlife can interact on a sustainable basis.” Nelson Mandela stayed after his release from prison — the same article puts the visit in 1990 in its text and 1991 in a photograph caption. In 1993 the last game fences to the Kruger came down and Londolozi joined Relais & Châteaux, which it says made Tree Camp the first safari camp in Africa to hold the status.
What distinguishes it
The land was bought to be hunted and kept to be restored Londolozi says the 1926 purchase was of degraded cattle land, and that the camp built on it was a hunting camp called Sparta. The reversal carries a date: a mission statement the house puts at 1972 commits the property to demonstrating “that man and wildlife can interact on a sustainable basis”. The ground now carries the argument it was bought to contradict, and the house has kept the hunting camp standing inside the guest camp as the record of it.
A name taken from a dictionary, and the register should say when The house says John Varty “pulled the word ‘Londolozi’ (‘the protector of all living things’) out of a Zulu dictionary”. The property had been Sparta for more than forty years before that. The renaming is the sharpest marker of the 1969 handover from the generation that shot to the generation that photographed.
The tracker sits at the front of the vehicle, and that is the product Every drive is run by a ranger-and-tracker pair, the tracker reading fresh spoor from the front of the Land Rover. Londolozi says its rangers and trackers “have 350 years of experience between them” and that it “boasts two of only 17 Master trackers in South Africa”; it credits Richard Siwela with “an unbroken 42 years tracking leopards every day at Londolozi”. The Tracker Academy was made possible in 2010 by Gaynor Rupert.
1993 removed the fence and added the membership The Sabi Sand Nature Reserve states that in 1993 “the final game fences between the Sabi Sand Nature Reserve and the adjacent Kruger National Park were dropped”. Londolozi, which gives itself “over 34,000 acres of traversing wilderness”, stopped being an enclosure in the same year it joined Relais & Châteaux. The house says Tree Camp “became the first safari camp in Africa awarded Relais & Châteaux status in 1993”, followed by Pioneer Camp and the Private Granite Suites.
A visit the house dates two ways Londolozi says Nelson Mandela stayed after his release from prison. One article has it that “In 1990, Enos Mabuza, an ANC member and friend of the Varty’s had arranged for Mandela to stay at the lodge”, while a photograph on the same page is captioned “A rare photograph of Nelson Mandela during his visit to Londolozi in 1991”. The register records both years and settles neither.
Varty Camp holds ten chalets, and the house is a set of small camps in the Lowveld priced as a Relais & Châteaux property. Children under six are not accepted; Varty and Founders take children between six and sixteen, and families with them must book a private Land Rover. A guest who wants a large hotel, a beach, or a safari without the early mornings that tracking requires will not find any of the three here.
Signature rooms and dates
Competitive landscape
People anchored here
Sources
What the entry rests on, read 13 October 2026. Each reference records the facts it supports, so a disputed line can be traced to the account it came from.