How Hannes took on a buffalo – and nearly paid the price

Hannes became a professional hunter because, as he says in his fine book Strange Tales from the African Bush, he missed ‘the smell of cordite… the clatter of the helicopters and the memory of the blood brotherhood that few, other than soldiers under fire, are lucky enough to know’. He’s a 14th generation white African and a veteran of the famous Rhodesian Light Infantry that fought valiantly in that country’s civil war. He still loves Africa and lives in the Western Cape. When he visited our beach house on the Kenya coast, I managed to persuade him to tell me a few stories, fuelled with bottles of Tusker – a much-loved local lager which is named after the elephant that killed the original brewer.

After the civil war, when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, Hannes tried being a barrister.