Meet Renias Mhlongo, the man who embodies the spirit of wilderness.
There are few people who know the land like Renias Mhlongo. Fewer still who belong to it in the way he does.
Born in 1963 in a mud hut in what is today the southern Greater Kruger National Park, Renias didn’t just grow up in the wild – he grew with it. His earliest lessons weren’t taught in a classroom, but under a mopane tree, cattle stick in hand, eyes trained on the earth for signs that told stories only the initiated could read. His childhood game, xitumbelelani – a Shangaan version of hide-and-seek – wasn’t just a game, it was an early apprenticeship in the ancient art of tracking.
He is one of the last people alive to be raised in the old ways of the Shangaan hunter-gatherer. And it shows.
But not all stories of the land are ones of peace. In the same year that Nelson Mandela was sentenced and imprisoned, the Apartheid regime branded Renias’s father a poacher, bulldozed the family home, and forced the Mhlongos into exile. Renias remembers wading through a river under cover of darkness, clinging to the tail of a cow to help him cross – his entire world displaced overnight. They would resettle in the village of Dixie, where Renias still lives today.
He never finished school. He didn’t need to. The bush was his teacher. The tracks were his textbooks.
In 1984, Renias found his calling at Londolozi. There, he stepped into the role he was born to play – tracker, guide, teacher. Over 36 years, he helped habituate the now-iconic leopards of the reserve, his quiet patience and unmatched instincts earning him Senior Tracker certification in 2002 and Lead Tracker accreditation in 2013. But those titles barely scratch the surface of what Renias is. He’s not just a tracker. He’s a living library of indigenous knowledge. A quiet philosopher. A master teacher.
Renias has shared his skills across South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique, Kenya, Rwanda, Malawi – even as far afield as Brazil, Chile, Australia, and North America. Alongside his longtime collaborator, Alex van den Heever, he co-founded the Tracker Academy and co-authored two books – The Tracker Manual and Changing a Leopard’s Spots. Their work is rooted not just in tracking, but in teaching the value of relationships – between people, and with the wild.
Renias is also a co-founder of World Trackers, a company that co-owns the Kruger Untamed camps. He is a shareholder not just on paper, but in principle. His influence is etched into every footprint we leave behind – and more importantly, into the ones we don’t.
Here, at Kruger Untamed, Renias is not a face on a brochure. He is the pulse of the experience. Every season, a select few are invited to join him on foot – Walk With Renias is a signature experience that strips safari back to its most ancient form. No vehicle. No noise. Just the earth beneath your feet and a master tracker by your side. It is not just a walk. It is a lesson in presence, in listening, in humility. Because some wisdom isn’t meant to be taught. It’s meant to be passed down.
Renias Mhlongo doesn’t just know the wilderness. He is the wilderness. And to walk with him is to walk with history, with heritage, and with a future that still has room for wildness – if we choose to protect it.
Get in touch to find out more about the Walk With Renias signature experience at Kruger Untamed.
