About
The man who hosts your safari
Jacques van Zyl
Twenty years a professional hunter
Ask around about JVZ and the same thing comes back: Jacques is there. Not a rotating roster of guides, not a manager who greets you on day one and disappears. The man whose name is on the safari picks you up, hunts beside you, pours the sundowner and plans tomorrow at the fire.
What sets him apart is a genuine love of hunting, and of the people he hunts with. The joy he takes in seeing a guest get the animal they came for is plain to watch, and it is why the few who hunt with him tend to come back every year, often booking the next season before they have unpacked at home.
He hunts the way he was raised: the way of the Boer, the Afrikaans tradition of the veld handed down father to son for nearly four centuries. Hard days, fair chase, respect for the animal, and a fire at the end of it that feels earned. If you love hunting, a week beside Jacques is the version of Africa you came looking for. There are not many of those weeks in a year.
Jacques runs JVZ together with Anthea van Zyl, whose camps, kitchens and hospitality are the other half of what guests remember.
The man himself, between hunts
The road here
From Cameroon to the Waterberg
The apprenticeship
Jacques qualified as a professional hunter at twenty-one, studying under Kobus Schoeman, and cut his teeth running the hunting department at Ubundu Game Lodge in Bela Bela, the same ground the Waterberg camps hunt today.
The freelance years
From 2005 he hunted as a freelance professional hunter specialising in big game, on assignments that ran from Cameroon down through Zambia, Namibia and Mozambique. Few working PHs carry that breadth of African ground.
The concession years
Between 2008 and 2020 Jacques owned and managed his own concessions in Mozambique, in Sofala and the Niassa Province, hunting elephant, leopard, lion and buffalo, alongside sable and Livingstone eland. Running wild-ground concessions teaches a PH things no lodge can.
JVZ Safaris
Since 2010 he has built the South African operation deliberately: accessible for international clients, rich in species, and small enough that he can host every safari himself. That last part is not a marketing line. It is the business model, and it is why the calendar holds only a handful of weeks a year, most of them kept by guests who come back.
The philosophy
“Jacque, Anthea and their staff run the best quality lodging in Limpopo Province, with the quality of animals to match. They were responsive from the first message. I recommend them to anyone booking a South African safari.”
Scott Nelson · USA · two safaris and counting