Sometime in September 1920, an unnamed African from Mozambique was killed and his corpse eaten by hyenas inside the Sabi Game Reserve. According to the findings of a government investigation launched by CL Harries, the Sub-Native Commissioner for Sibasa, the African was part of a group of labour recruits travelling from a place called Mpafula on the Portuguese side of the border to Punda Maria, in the northern section of the reserve. The group, which included the man's son, was led by Mafuta Sitoye and Longone Makuleke, ‘native runners’ for the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association. Popularly known as Wenela, the association was a labour recruitment agency founded in 1900 by the Chamber of Mines to help the mining industry meet its needs. The runners’ job was to accompany recruits from the Portuguese territory through the reserve to a pickup point in the northern section of the sanctuary, from where the workers would be sent by donkey wagons, trucks and trains to mines in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. Every member of the September 1920 group, except the unnamed man, was a contracted recruit, meaning each had signed a contract to work on the mines for at least 18 months. The man had decided to travel with the group in order to visit friends on the South African side of the border. However, while the group was walking through the reserve, he fell ill. His son was ordered by the runners to stay and look after him. Father and son slept in the bush, but the next day, the runners came back and ordered the son to leave his father behind and proceed with them to Punda Maria, as he had contractual obligations to meet. The son duly left his father and moved on to Punda Maria. Meanwhile, the father was abandoned for ten days and ‘left to suffer and await death at the spot where he first took ill’. The two runners passed him often during those ten days as they ferried recruits back and forth through the reserve.