Twenty months after the release of Nelson Mandela on 11th February 1990, Frans Schütte bought his first farm, Braemar White River, from an old Scottish friend George Cursons. He named the farm after the village Braemar, in Scotland, where he was born and raised and which town, close to Balmoral castle, is well known for the Braemar Highland games frequently visited by the Royal family.

George farmed pecan nuts, but as adjacent land was acquired frequently, the farming activities on the banks of the White River, close to Kruger National Park, changed to the production of Macadamia nuts.

In 2006 the first Bushveld farm in the Lowveld of Limpopo, Kilima, was acquired. A farm that resembled the Gonarezhou, Mateke Hills, and Bubi River regions of Zimbabwe.

A few years later, Cottondale Game Ranch was procured in the Letsitele area of Limpopo, nestled amongst the Murchison mountains and Mulati River. The Farms Fauna and The Neck bordering Cottondale were attained soon afterwards.

Several visits to the Namib desert, Aus, Lüderitz and Swakopmund, and the Kalahari Desert flamed the yearning for red dunes adorned by majestic Oryx, teasing Springbuck and Hartman Zebras at the watering holes.
Transfrontier Game Breeders, with the credo, “the future of historic ranching,” was born from this craving, and by 2015, 12000ha of plain hills and red dunes was acquired in the Springbok area of Namaqualand.

As many starlit nights are spent by the family in the companionship of Dionysus, also known as Bacchus, it was evident that somewhere along the meandering wanderlust soul of the family, the footprint will eventually establish the Winelands of the Western Cape. Such an opportunity arose during Covid-19 2020 with the procurement of a stunning Villa in Franschhoek. A Food and Wine Mecca of Africa.