Mario Kawayawaya

It may seem arrogant, or even offensive, for one who has travelled my journey wanting to write about his experiences.

I gained notoriety as a poacher in the lower Zambezi Valley of Zambia during the early 1990s. In those days they called me first, ‘The Leopard’, or sometimes, ‘The King of Poachers’, because I always escaped capture, despite the efforts of the law enforcement authorities to apprehend or kill me on foot, in boats or helicopter gun-ships. My ‘reign’ stretched over four years (1988-1992). Then one day in October 1992, I looked into the pleading eye of a bull elephant and experienced a massive change of heart. Instantly I stopped poaching. But from April 1993 to January 1994 I was in and out of jails and detention areas in Chirundu and Lusaka, and, along with many others, tortured. This was all brought about in part by a wish to punish me - though my crimes were committed in Zimbabwe and not Zambia - followed by attempts to ‘persuade’ me to return to poaching; for many of the paramilitary torturers were themselves part of the commercial poaching business in Zambia.

In 1994 I became a conservationist and worked as an education liaison officer for the David Shepherd Conservation Foundation, working closely with the NGO, Conservation Lower Zambezi and Chieftainess Chiyaba, and collaborating with both the Zambian and Zimbabwean wildlife authorities.