You Can Stay at the Safari Camp Where Nelson Mandela Wrote His Memoirs

After two hours of driving north from Johannesburg into the dusty, spare expanse of Limpopo province, the entrance to Shambala Private Game Reserve feels like nothing short of an oasis (fitting, seeing as shambala is a Sanskrit word for peace). Upon turning off the road, all cars drive up to the park’s front gates through a meticulously flooded driveway—a metaphor to do with purity, rebirth, and connecting with nature. Design aspects such as that grandiose entrance signal that this is a safari experience unlike most others.

Owned by South African billionaire Douw Steyn, the property is designed as a luxurious take on the African bush: carefully controlled populations of Big Five animals roam the reserve; comfortable and spacious guest bandas sit nestled alongside a bubbling natural stream; and long days of game drives are capped off with sundowner cruises on the largest man-made lake in southern Africa. The whole place feels like an adult eco-playground of sorts, and it’s difficult to resist its charms, especially on one of those aforementioned sundowner cruises. Just imagine—marigold twilight floats on the air, you spot a bathing hippo winking at you from the distance, and a server onboard asks if they can refill your rosé. Don’t mind if I do.

Shambala is a decadent experience for sure, but there are many luxurious camps across the African bush. Ol Jogi in Kenya has Hermès bed linens and Buccellati silver. Jack’s Camp in Botswana has a mahogany pool in the middle of the arid Makgadikgadi Plains. And Volcanoes Safaris’s Virunga Lodge has a vista of the Virunga Mountains so perfect it looks Photoshopped. Believe it or not, it isn’t the service, the food and wine, the game drives, or the privacy that sets Shambala apart—although those are all excellent. It’s the fact that for years, former South African president Nelson Mandela used Shambala as his bush retreat and summer villa.

As a tribute to their long-lasting friendship, Mr. Steyn built an opulent bush home for Mandela deep in the grounds of Shambala in 2001. The home was to be used not only as a hideaway from public life, but as a place to entertain world leaders and promote deep, meaningful conversation. Until his death in 2013, Mandela used the place as a retreat, a work space, and a place to entertain his influential network of politicians, businesspeople, and celebrities.

To arrive at the Nelson Mandela Villa is an experience itself. There’s a wide exterior courtyard decorated with artworks, including one by Picasso. Open up the massive Mozambican teak doors and you’ll find yourself in the entry foyer, where a guest book so large it can only be described as a “tome” sits on a table. Leaf through and you’ll see that many of Mandela’s famous friends and houseguests have signed it, including Naomi Campbell, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Matt Damon, and Morgan Freeman. Look carefully and you’ll see a note left by Oprah Winfrey, where she calls one of her many stays at the villa “a blessing.”

Today the Nelson Mandela Villa is available for guests to rent. Although not cheap (rates hover around $6,500 per night, for up to 12 guests including all meals and safari activities), the property is an exercise in natural beauty, modern comfort and historical relevance you are unlikely to find anywhere else. The bed in which Mandela slept is still in the master suite. The desk at which he penned his memoirs is still in the office. An entire reserve’s fill of elephants, gazelles, and leopards awaits just outside. And this month, Pan Macmillan publishes Dare Not Linger, a posthumous memoir of Mandela’s presidential years—so the time might be right to splurge on an entirely different sort of holiday. By the time you leave Shambala and drive back across that flooded driveway, you’ll be feeling all sorts of emotions you didn’t think you’d encounter on safari.