Left to right: Sergeant Mahoboti Dave Rushworth Button, Paul’s hunting companion for many years. Paul Coetsee Button – Diminutive in stature but a skilled tracker and hunter. Paul Coetsee Mece Machavana – one of the ‘old school’ – a bush-man and naturalist in the true sense of the word Bryan Orford
CHAPTER 4: GAME SCOUTS & TRACKERS
attributes his elephant hunting skills to Sergeant Mece’s tutoring. He was Tom Orford’s right hand man on wilderness donkey trails and a firm favourite with trailists. Those who knew Mece will remember his bush attire – ‘manyatelas’ (car-tyre sandals), torn shorts, a holey vest and his little hand axe, so sharply honed it could take the hairs off your arm. Mece was a legend in the lowveld, and rightly so. A year or so after Independence, Mece was retired at the assumed age of 65. Mike Fynn, who’d also left the Department by then but still lived in the Chiredzi area, employed him and set about arranging for his Government pension to be paid, which had not been attended to. Around 1984, and now the proud owner of a scotch cart given to him by Mike and Clive Stockil, Mece retired to his home near Bole in the Matibi Communal Lands. He died a short while later. Mike Fynn notes, “He was a man who could barely write his name, totally illiterate, but what a genius in the bush.” Research Officer Brian Sherry was stationed there and found that Mece had a huge wealth of knowledge of the Gonarezhou, having grown up on the Lundi River; he also knew the Guluene/ Chefu area intimately (a one-time tsetse corridor separating the northern section of the Park from the south) and the southern Nuanetsi area too. He taught Brian much of his naturalist knowledge of the area in general. Mece was a very good all-rounder in the bush – physically hard and grizzled, he was a true ‘bush-man’, having little interest in the modern ideas about life, which were becoming more common among the younger staff. He was an excellent tracker and had a feel for the bush that was exceptional. Sergeant Manwere – Dave Rushworth Taken on initially in the old Game Department days where he was promoted to the rank of Senior Scout, I worked with Manwere at Marongora and at Sinamatella when the station first opened in ‘63. In those days Manwere always carried a Westley Richards .500 double rifle. He was a good and fearless hunter, but never managed to master firing single shots. With a finger on each trigger he always pulled a ‘double fusillade’ every time he fired. His ‘twin shot’ entry holes were his trademark. Sergeant Mjoyce Buyotsi – Bob Thomson I first met Mjoyce when I was transferred to Chizarira in early 1972. He had worked with my brother Ron at Main Camp in the early days, and was transferred to Binga with him around 1964. He was a completely un-schooled San bushman from Jozivanini in Botswana, just beyond the southern tip of Wankie National Park, and was originally employed around 1949 as Ted Davison’s herd boy at Main Camp. His job was to look after the ‘indicator’ herd of cattle held in Wankie to monitor the presence of tsetse fly. After Chizarira, Mjoyce moved with me first
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