Remembering Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall, primatologist, conservationist, vegan, storyteller, and friend to chimpanzees, has passed on at the age of 91. The world has lost one of its great voices for nature and for the voiceless, but what she planted in our hearts, minds, and forests will continue to grow. For those of us in Mpumalanga, her legacy is no abstraction. It is in the living, breathing chimpanzees of Chimp Eden, just outside of Nelspruit.

Goodall’s journey began in Tanzania in 1960 when she went to Gombe Stream as a young woman without formal scientific credentials. Over decades she watched, listened, and learned and rewrote the story of what makes us human. She saw chimps use tools, show complex emotions, nurture social bonds, wage war, express love, grief and curiosity. These are not 'just animals.' These are beings whose lives echo ours.

Because of her fearless respect and patience, scientists had to rethink assumptions about intelligence, about what divides humans from animals. She named chimps rather than numbering them. She insisted on empathy. In doing so, she taught us humility.

Here in Mpumalanga, Chimp Eden stands as one of Goodall’s gifts to us. Established in 2006, it is South Africa’s first and only chimpanzee sanctuary. Set in the Umhloti Nature Reserve, some 1,000 hectares of forest 15 kilometres outside Nelspruit, Chimp Eden rescues chimpanzees who survived bush meat trade, illegal pet trade, entertainment exploitation or were orphaned and traumatised.

Here, the chimps live in large semi‑wild enclosures, where they can forage, form natural social groups, heal, behave like chimpanzees should and we get to witness it. We see the curiosity in their eyes, their playful energy, the way they interact. We see what might have been lost. Chimp Eden shows us what we still have and what we must protect.

It is a privilege to be able to drive out to those forested viewpoints, to stand quietly, to observe something wild, something raw and alive, not confined to cages or lost to habitat destruction. Chimp Eden lets us connect, let us care, let us imagine a different future.

Jane Goodall is gone, but her voice remains, loud where it must be, gentle where it needs to touch our better selves. Let us honour her by doing more, not just remembering, but acting. Protecting habitat. Funding sanctuaries. Teaching compassion. Engaging today so that those chimps we see and love today are still with us tomorrow.

Jane Goodall showed us a different way to live in this world - with curiosity, humility, respect, courage. She saw that animals are not 'other': chimps are cousins, mirrors, teachers. Her life was a bridge between our species and theirs.

𝓛𝔂𝓷𝓮𝓽𝓽𝓮.