Thula Thula
Private game reserve in South Africa
Thula Thula Private Game Reserve is a private game reserve situated in Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa. It is part of the Royal Zulu Biosphere.
Thula Thula means ‘peace and tranquility’ in Zulu.
History
Thula Thula was once the private hunting grounds of the mighty Zulu Warrior, King Shaka. The first historic meeting between Shaka and his father, Senzangakhona, which set the stage for the creation of the Zulu Nation, took place at the Nseleni River at Thula Thula.
The land became a game reserve in 1911 and is believed to be the oldest private game reserve in KwaZulu-Natal.
The reserve has two lodges.
Owners
Thula Thula was owned and operated by international conservationist and founder of the Earth Organization Lawrence Anthony, and by his wife Francoise Malby-Anthony. The reserve is the setting for Lawrence's books The Elephant Whisperer (2009) and The Last Rhinos (2012).
Following Anthony's death in 2012 the Earth Organization was separated from Thula Thula; Francoise Malby-Anthony founded the South African Conservation Fund and continues to run the reserve.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7798736. Authority coordinates are -28.590, 31.758. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1911, 2009 and 2012.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thula Thula” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.