THE STORY OF KHAKIBUSH MAGAZINE – From the Edge of Darkness to a passion reborn.

This story runs far deeper than what can be written in a single blog post. What you are about to read is only a snapshot of the journey — the highs, the lows, and the unexpected twists that came with starting KhakiBush Magazine. It’s a story of loss, struggle, resilience, and ultimately finding purpose when life felt like it was falling apart.

My name is Craig Mitchell, and I’m the founder of KhakiBush Magazine.

This is the story of how I started KhakiBush. Not the nuts and bolts of building a magazine, but the real reason behind it — the personal journey, the struggles, and the strange chain of events that followed. At times it has almost felt like starting KhakiBush brought a curse into my life.

Yet at the same time, it may also be the very thing that saved me.

The story really begins during COVID.

When the first lockdown arrived, life was actually going pretty well for me. I had spent most of my adult life working in property development. Over the years I had owned several properties, flipped houses, and probably owned close to over 50 vehicles in my lifetime. I had been fortunate enough to experience a fair amount of success doing property projects.

At the time lockdown started, I was busy flipping a house. Fortunately, I had enough financial breathing room to carry the project and keep my staff paid while everything was shut down. In many ways, that first lockdown felt almost like a strange holiday.

But despite doing reasonably well in life, something inside me felt unsettled.

I wasn’t unhappy. I had a good life, a great family, and things were stable. But deep down I knew that this wasn’t what I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing.

During that quiet lockdown period, I started thinking about something I had registered back in 2005. It was an idea called KhakiBush.

The concept behind KhakiBush was simple but meaningful to me. I wanted it to tell the story of Africa — its wildlife, its conservation challenges, and its humanitarian issues — while also attracting people through adventure travel stories, incredible destinations, and the spirit of exploration that makes this continent so special.

During lockdown I started building a travel directory for Southern Africa, listing lodges, camps, hotels, and destinations across different provinces and countries. It quickly grew into something substantial. Before long, I had listed over 3,000 lodges, and eventually thousands more.

It was something positive that kept me busy during lockdown, and I found myself genuinely enjoying the process of discovering new places and building the directory.

Once the travel directory was established, something interesting happened.

Some friends of mine in America who run a print magazine started encouraging me. They had seen the amount of content I was sharing on social media — travel stories, destinations, wildlife, and adventures — and they suggested something I hadn’t really considered before.

They said, “Why don’t you start a digital magazine? You’re already sharing so much great content online — why not put it into a magazine format?”

At first, I hadn’t seriously thought about that.

But the idea stuck with me.

And before long, KhakiBush Magazine was born.

Starting this magazine would coincide with some of the most difficult years of my life.

Everything began to unravel. right from the start.....

When Everything Started Unravelling

So things started to unravel early on in the above story.

The second COVID lockdown arrived just before my 40th birthday. Maybe it had nothing to do with KhakiBush at all. Maybe it was just the universe reminding me that turning forty sometimes comes with its own set of challenges.

Like many people during COVID, I couldn’t celebrate properly. There was no big party, no gathering with friends and family. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it was frustrating. Turning forty is supposed to be a milestone.

But in hindsight, that birthday seemed to mark the beginning of one of the toughest chapters of my life.

Not long after lockdown restrictions eased, I was involved in a property deal that went horribly wrong. I ended up being heavily defrauded and lost several million rand. It took years of legal battles trying to recover some of that money.

The damage it did to me mentally was enormous.

I had to shut down my business while fighting the legal battles, and the pressure pushed me into a major depression. It was one of the darkest times of my life.

During that same period, life kept dealing more blows.

My Great Dane, my big boy, passed away from old age. He had lived a great life, but losing him still hurt deeply.

Not long after that, another dog we had adopted later in his life also passed away from old age.

And — my Jack Russell, still young and full of life, was diagnosed with leukemia and had to be put down far too early.

Losing three dogs in such a short time, while battling depression and financial disaster, was incredibly tough.

I found myself in a very dark place mentally. I struggled to function. I had bad thoughts, the kind that creep into your mind when life feels overwhelming and hopeless.

Thankfully, my wife stepped in and convinced me to go see someone who could help. A wonderful Dr helped guide me through that time and slowly I started coming out of the depression.

It wasn’t easy.

When you lose that kind of money and your life suddenly changes, everything feels like it stops. I could not buy my wife and kids birthday presents and Christmas gifts I couldn’t fix things around the house. Gate motors were broken, things were falling apart, and financially we were basically living off what was left of the bond and credit cards and sell assets for cash, while I tried to build something.

During all of this, I kept working on KhakiBush.

The magazine wasn’t making money. In fact, for the first couple of years it was purely a labour of love. Some friends would support it by buying small adverts — sometimes R600 here or there — just to help me keep it going. Others supported the brand with small sponsorships or gear because they believed in what I was trying to build.

But financially, it was hardly a business.

Still, it gave me something to focus on.

It gave me a reason to wake up each morning.

Eventually, after a long period of depression and working through things with holistic treatment and support, I started to feel better.

By Christmas that year something had changed.

For the first time in a long time, I was smiling again. Friends noticed it. I was genuinely happy, almost strangely happy after such a dark period.

Then January arrived.

On the 1st of January we went for a simple family walk on the beach. Nothing extreme. Just a normal walk along the shoreline.

When I got home later that day, I could barely walk.

The pain in my back was unbearable.

For the next couple of months, we tried everything — doctors, therapists, medication. At one point I was taking 14 Mybulen tablets a day just to cope with the pain.

Eventually, thanks to my father-in-law’s best friend who is a surgeon, and also a neighbour of my father who runs an MRI facility, I managed to get an emergency scan.

Within 24 hours of the MRI, the doctors confirmed the problem.

A severely herniated disc had pushed nearly two centimetres into my sciatic nerve, causing the immense pain. The surgeon told my wife that the level of pain I had been experiencing was the equivalent of giving birth every day for months.

Surgery was scheduled immediately.

The operation was successful, but recovery took time. I spent months mostly on my back.

Yet through all of that, one thing never stopped.

KhakiBush Magazine continued to go out every single month.

I never missed an issue, never missed social media posts.

Even during the worst moments, I refused to let the magazine stop.

Eventually I recovered enough to start moving again. I remember the excitement of being able to drive after months of recovery. At the time I had a lifted Land Rover Defender, although with my back it wasn’t exactly easy to climb into.

When I went to visit my friend Chris, he looked at the situation and said something I’ll never forget.

He said, “You can’t drive this thing anymore. I’m buying it from you and I’ll get you another one.”

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have amazing friends and family who believed in what I was doing with KhakiBush. Some helped with camera equipment, others with gear and support that allowed me to keep creating content.

Chris bought the Defender and helped me get another one — a longer wheelbase version that was easier to drive after my surgery. I will always be grateful for that kind of support.

But the challenges still weren’t finished.

Shortly afterwards, my wife’s Land Rover Discovery engine blew, leaving us with a R250,000 repair bill that we simply couldn’t afford. Eventually we had to sell the vehicle for R60,000, taking a huge loss.

Then later in Durban I was T-boned by a taxi while driving the new Defender. The insurance company wanted to write the vehicle off, but I fought that decision and managed to repair it for around R50,000, keeping it on the road.

Later on another issue with the turbo, caused by poor mechanical work during a trip, ended up destroying the Defender’s engine. That engine is currently being rebuilt.

So yes, when I look back sometimes I joke that starting KhakiBush was a curse.

Because ever since I began building it, life seemed to throw one challenge after another at me.

But the truth is something deeper than that.

Through all of it — the financial losses, the depression, the surgery, the setbacks — KhakiBush kept my mind going.

During the day, when things felt overwhelming, the magazine gave me purpose.

My family were there for me every evening and Christmas holidays while getting the magazine finished for publishing and they are the most important people in my life. But during the long days when I was rebuilding myself mentally, my family KhakiBush gave me something to fight for.

For the first two years, it made almost no money.

But it kept me alive.

And if it wasn’t for my wife, my kids, my family — and KhakiBush — I honestly don’t know if I would still be here today.

KhakiBush isn’t just a magazine to me.

It’s part of my life.

In many ways, it is me.

And that’s why I fight so hard to make it succeed.