The tears welled up as I watched Thuza and Kusasa stepping cautiously from their crates into the new Imvelo Ngamo Wildlife Sanctuary created especially for them. After four years of planning and pandemic-induced delays, culminating in an exhausting 500-mile overnight journey across Zimbabwe, these two white rhino bulls had finally come home.
Excited schoolchildren lined their route to the sanctuary, waving banners and flags. VIPs, including the local chief of the Ndebele people, village headmen and district councillors, waited in hushed anticipation on platforms overlooking the boma to catch sight of the first white rhinos to set foot in the Hwange area for nearly two decades.