Justa Frans, tracker
Justa Frans
Making the choice to keep her Kwhe family traditions alive, 25-year-old Justa Frans went on a journey to learn the art of wildlife tracking.
Now she’s the first formally accredited female tracker in the Karoo.
The settlement of Platfontein, about 22km from Kimberley, in the Northern Cape, is home to the Kwhe and !Xun descendants of the San Namibian trackers.
In the 60s they were first deployed by t he Portuguese Angolan military forces in Angola, and later in the 70s by the former SA Defence Force in the Namibian struggle for independence.
After that war ended many chose to relocate to South Africa.
Frans’ family was one such. This 25-year-old was determined to keep alive her Kwhe family traditions so she made a choice.
She rejected the modern hip-hop culture burgeoning in Platfontein and is threatening the old folklore, storytelling, traditional music and healing dances.
“I didn’t want to lose my culture,” she says. “I chose tracking.”
Frans now works at the Karoo Lodge in the award-winning Samara Private Game Reserve located on 28 000 hectares of wilderness in the middle of the Eastern Cape.
Last year she graduated from the Sact Tracker Academy, a training division of the SA College for Tourism in Tswalu, South Africa’s largest private game reserve in the Northern Cape.
It’s a fully accredited training programme with the Culture, Arts, Tourism, Hospitality and Sport Sector Education and Training Authority and is the first tracker training school in South Africa to achieve this distinction.
Frans graduated with a Level 3 tracking qualification that requires a 90% score.
“I was taken into the bush. I thought it was just a classroom day. But it turned out to be the exam.”
She is now working as an intern at Samara Reserve that also has a tracker academy on site, and hopes to be appointed to a permanent position.
She is thrilled that Samara has recently become home to the first elephants and lions in the region for more than 170 years.
“I can now track the Big Five.”
She laughs as she says that guests are usually very surprised to have a woman tracker on their guided game drives and bush walks.
“I love to see their faces!”
Her ambition now is to get her driver’s licence and to teach other students, especially women, tracking skills.
“Tracking is in my blood,” says Frans firmly. “I know that in the past it was only the men who did the tracking but now a woman can too.”
She adds shyly: “Sometimes now the men are a bit jealous.”
– Kate Turkington
Read: Meet Justa Frans, the Karoo’s first formally accredited female tracker
