Scroll, and the map answers. Six chapters across the Sabie-Sand catchment — the project area, the people, the planting, the proof.
The Sabie-Sand catchment runs from the Drakensberg escarpment in the west to the Mozambican border in the east. Two rivers, the Sand and the Sabie, drain the same watershed. They feed Kruger National Park, the Sabi Sand Game Reserve, and downstream, the city of Maputo.
Three biomes inside the boundary — savanna, grassland, forest. The catchment sits inside one of Africa's 162 Keystone Protected Areas, ranked by independent science for outsized biodiversity contribution to the continent. Elephant, lion, leopard, wild dog. Cycad, marula, mopane. Without this water, the parks downstream do not function. Without the biodiversity, the tourism economy that sustains ~ZAR 2.6 billion annually and roughly 10,000 jobs does not function either.
This is the unit of work. Not a province. Not a country. A river system, and what depends on it.
Eight Traditional Authorities sit inside the project area. Hoxane, Mathibela, Thabakgolo, Sethlare, Moreipuso, Mnisi, Jongilanga, Amashangana — together they cover almost 190,000 hectares of the catchment.
Customary tenure predates the modern South African state. Chiefs (Kgosi, Hosi) and headmen (Ndunas) hold land for their communities by inherited right; decisions are taken in traditional councils, sometimes over weeks, often in consultation with elders and royal houses. The relationship is generational, not transactional.
This is not state land. This is not freehold. It cannot be bought. It can only be partnered with. Consent is not a signature on a form; it is an ongoing relationship the project must keep earning.
Between March and April 2025, the project team engaged with six Traditional Authorities. Amashangana hosted the first meeting on 30 March under King Bayethe Hosi Abednigo Nxumalo. Hoxani, Mathibela, Mnisi, Jongilanga, and Moletele followed within weeks.
"His Royal Highness expressed strong support for the project and requested expedited implementation of the pilot phase."
The signed FPIC report is independently validated under the CCB Standard.
Of the five planting phases, Phase 1 begins here — in Jongilanga Traditional Authority, central catchment. 7,010 hectares of cropland conversion and agroforestry within homestead land. Approximately 351,000 trees at design density.
Jongilanga is where the first seedlings go into the ground. It is also where the model has to prove itself before it scales — to Amashangana, Hoxane, Mnisi, and Mathibela in turn. Five phases. Forty years. One catchment.
Five propagation nurseries — Ntirihiso, Tiyimeleni, Hlulani Farm, Skukuza, and Amashangani TA — supply seedlings within walking distance of every planting site. Five Good Work Foundation Digital Learning Centres — Dumphries, Justicia, Dixie, Huntington, Hazyview — train the next generation in conservation, hospitality, and digital skills.
Together, they are the means. The project does not parachute in to plant trees and leave. It hands over seedlings, training, income, and dignity — so the people of the catchment become stewards of it. Households earn from the tree standing, not from the ground cleared.
Permanence by design, not permanence by contract.
Phase 1 Jongilanga (7,010 ha), Phase 2 Amashangana (14,924 ha), Phase 3 Hoxane (8,042 ha), Phase 4 Mnisi (7,000 ha), Phase 5 Mathibela (3,420 ha). Together, more than 40,000 hectares of restoration work over forty years.
2.5 million trees, projected. 7.5 million tonnes of CO2e removed by 2066, projected. The catchment, the people, the planting — the same picture.
Swandla swa hlambhisana. Hands wash each other.