Normally, the Letaba River is a stream of brown water making its way placidly from the Drakensberg mountains through the Kruger National Park towards Mozambique and the sea. Three weeks ago, the disastrous rains in south-east Africa changed all that, and this week it got worse.

At the beginning of the month, the Kruger's Lone Bull Camp, where black South African teenagers go on special wilderness courses, was under six feet of water as the Letaba broke its banks and invaded the surrounding bush. When the water receded, there were high hopes it could be repaired and working again before long. But last weekend the rain began again and the water rose with a vengeance.

"We could see it going higher and higher and, after three hours, the camp was flooded again and the river looked more like an ocean," said Ishmael Makwaeba, manager of the Imbewu Youth Programme, which runs the camp. "The whole course of the river has changed and eroded the land and created new sandbanks. I suspect the camp will have to be abandoned and move somewhere else. It could be months before we get going again."

A small story, perhaps, after the death and destruction wreaked by the floods, above all in Mozambique. Lone Bull Camp was little more than a wire enclosure and a few basic facilities which £30,000 would bring back to life, while the Kruger has suffered £8 million worth of damage: bridges and roads washed away, and lucrative tourist camps flooded.

What makes Lone Bull Camp important is that it is an attempt to bring about a vital change in the understanding by South African youth - especially urbanised youth with its Coca-Cola values - of the natural heritage that so few of them had access to during the years of apartheid. Not many of the country's children have ever seen an elephant.

Imbewu was set up three years ago by South Africa's long-established Wilderness Leadership School. So far, around 1,500 teenagers and teachers have been on courses there, many of them from areas near the Kruger, where some people see the park as a theft of ancestral land for white-dominated tourism.

Makwaeba said that the most vital part of the four-day courses is the contribution of experienced black park rangers, who pass on their knowledge of traditional culture and the belief that man must live in harmony with the rest of nature and not simply exploit it.

"The kitchens, the bedrooms, the fireplaces are all under big trees," he said. "There is a big camp fire where the old men tell their stories and show their wisdom. They sleep under the sky and become astronomers before their first dream. Imbewu means 'seed' in Zulu, and we hope they will take it back with them and it will grow."

There are hopes that the mining company Gold Fields, which financed the building of Lone Bull Camp, will help with reconstruction. Some of the money might also come from a fund-raising venture in this country being organised for Imbewu by the Wilderness Trust. This venture consists of two 10-day wilderness trips in May, each for 32 people who can raise £2,250 from their own resources, or sponsorship, or both. The aim is to raise £64,000 for training Imbewu guides and awarding scholarships to teenagers who show special commitment to conservation.

"Diverting some of this to the camp would be up to the Wilderness Trust UK," said Andrew Muir, project manager for the Wilderness Leadership School. "But I'm sure that with an emergency like this they would be happy to meet the shortfall. We will get something from insurance too."

The two trips, called the Imbewu Way, will be similar to the experiences offered in Lone Bull Camp - walking for five days through the bush, camping under the stars, keeping watch by the fire. The differences are that it will take place in the Umfolozi Game Reserve, 150 miles south of the Kruger, and will end with a couple of relaxing days on the beach.

The big question about Imbewu is whether it will really change attitudes towards wildlife and conservation among young black people whose main preoccupations are likely to be finding work and food for their families: conservation, while important for the future of the planet, is taken up more readily by the affluent.

Muir said it's impossible for a course at Lone Bull Camp to have no impact at all. "The question is, how deep, and how long-lasting? A couple of signs are that some youths have gone back and started environment and conservation clubs in their schools, on their own initiative. If only a handful have felt the full impact, that's already a huge success."