South Africa

South Africa, Maverick Life

Elephants in the Eastern Cape: South Africa’s wildlife heritage bounces back

Elephants have had a long history in the Eastern Karoo. (Image: Chris Marais)

23 Apr 2025

Hundreds of years ago, the Eastern Cape was full of elephants. By 1931, there were only 11 left. Now their numbers are expanding again, even along their long-forgotten tracks through the Karoo.

There are few experiences more joyful than spending time at a waterhole watching the resident herds of Addo Elephant National Park, north of Gqeberha.

Go in the early afternoon, when the water shines and all is quiet. You may see a warthog or two, attended by wagtails on the lookout for the small insects they flush. There could be a pair of white-faced ducks preening their chestnut feathers, or a blacksmith lapwing pacing the banks. Just as you are wondering if there are any elephants left in Addo, they drift silently into the landscape.

Once at the water, they relax, splash and play, becoming quite goofy in front of their human admirers. There always seem to be babies around, as endearing as toddlers in a mud puddle, indulged and held safe by their mothers and aunts in a tangle of trunks.

Read more: A day trip to Addo Elephant Park where giants roam

It’s hard to believe that only a century ago, the ancestors of these elephants loathed and feared humans.

The feeling was mutual. In 1918, farmers in the Sundays Valley in the Eastern Cape were clamouring for their blood. By then, the Addo elephants had killed four hunters and at least a dozen farmworkers. They destroyed farm dams and were regularly flattening fences to get at crops, orchards and their all-time favourite, prickly pears.

There always seem to be babies, held safe in a tangle of trunks. (Image: Chris Marais)

The youngsters relax, splash and play, becoming quite goofy in front of their human admirers. (Image: Chris Marais)

Soul Brothers on the move. (Image: Chris Marais)

The man in leather

In 1919, Major Alfred James Sellick, a councillor from Uitenhage, journeyed up to Nylstroom in the old Northern Transvaal where he personally delivered an invitation to renowned hunter Major Philip Jacobus Pretorius to kill the elephants. Most were in the Addo area just north of Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha). Sellick incorrectly estimated the population at between 200 and 300.

In fact, according to ecologist Dr Graham Kerley of Nelson Mandela University, there were fewer than 140, and this was the largest herd in South Africa at the time. Barely 150 others were thinly scattered around Knysna, what would become Kruger National Park, and Tembe in northern KwaZulu-Natal.

Before accepting the invitation, Pretorius went to have a look at the terrain. He came away shaken.

“If ever there was a hunter’s hell, here it was.”

But he accepted, thanks to the generous retainers and incentives, including permission to sell the ivory and skins.

Pretorius had himself a full hunting outfit and hat made out of leather “for protection against the thorny thicket”, found himself a “few gaol birds from Uitenhage”, and headed off on his mission. He set up camp at Kinkelbos with his huntress wife Susanna and his comely secretary Miss Godfrey, used a ladder to find elephants in the dense thicket, and began blazing away.

Within 14 months, Pretorius had killed nearly 120 elephants and captured a few more for circuses. But Pretorius himself was against killing all the Addo elephants. He was adamant (especially in correspondence with South African Museum director Dr Louis Peringuey) that at least 16 should be spared.

Notorious leather-clad hunter, Major PJ Pretorius, with his wife Susanna and his secretary Miss Godfrey, in the dense bush at Kinkelbos outside Addo. Photograph published in Colin Urquhart and Norbert Klages’ book Addo: More Than Just Elephants.

There was once a thriving ivory trade in the Eastern Cape Karoo, enough to support a market in Graaff-Reinet in 1875. (Image courtesy Graaff-Reinet Museums’ William Roe Photographic Collection.)

There were other unlikely elephant allies. A farmer called JT Harvey, “who had previously hunted the beasts and been in favour of their extermination, now afforded the remnant herd protection in the dense bush on his property in the lower reaches of the valley near Barclay Bridge”, wrote Colin Urquhart and Norbert Klages in their book Addo: More Than Just Elephants.

In 1931, Addo was proclaimed a national park, and the last elephants, which had dwindled to only 11, finally had official protection. Not surprisingly, they still hated humans. Tourists could only glimpse them in a separate fenced area until the late 1970s.

The Addo Elephant National Park has since expanded dramatically, from 2,270 hectares to 164,000, stretching to the coast and northwards to the Karoo. The elephant population now tops 650. Conservationists have translocated Addo elephants to several private parks in the Eastern Cape, including the Karoo’s Samara Private Game Reserve.

South of the Sneeuberg

The Sneeuberg mountain range rears up in a series of plateaux and broad-shouldered peaks in a high-altitude massif between Nxuba (previously Cradock) in the east, and Graaff-Reinet in the west.

The herd forms a protective phalanx around the first baby born on the reserve (2023). (Image: Chris Marais)

A small herd of elephants under the massifs of the Sneeuberg Mountain Range at Samara Private Game Reserve. (Image: Chris Marais)

Elephants have had a long history in the Eastern Karoo. (Image: Chris Marais)

In the foreground, dwarfed by Kondoa, Honey Mountain and the distant peak of Nardousberg, a small matriarchal herd and a bull made up a scene that could have leapt straight out of the pages of National Geographic magazine.

They had been translocated to Samara in 2017, with another small group from Addo arriving in March 2025.

“I am convinced that elephants would have been here permanently in certain places in the Karoo, like this area with its higher rainfall, among spekboom, grasslands and riverine vegetation,” says Samara co-owner Sarah Tompkins.

Read more: Tented Safari in the Sneeuberg — the marvels of Plains Camp at Samara Karoo Reserve

Tusks everywhere

It turns out that nearby Graaff-Reinet was once a major ivory clearing house. Dr Anziske Kayster, the curator of the impressive museum complex in this historic town, showed us a sepia photograph dating back to 1875, displaying piles of tusks for sale on the pavement at the corner of Caledon and Church Streets.

In fact, once you start talking about tusks, it seems they were found everywhere in the Eastern Karoo Midlands. One was found on Halesowen farm 9km south of Cradock in 1950, then two more at a brickworks 3km from the town in 1964, and another on Glen Alfa farm near Fish River Station.

Of course, these might have been trophies carried from elsewhere. But as Jack Skead points out in his book Historical Incidence of the Larger Land Mammals in the Broader Eastern Cape (updated in 2007), this could surely not have been the case for the entire elephant skeleton found on Matjieshoek farm, 27km south of Murraysburg.

“There seems to be no ecological reason why elephants should not have deserted the richer coastal belt and ventured up the valleys of the Great Fish River to Cradock, the Sundays River to Graaff-Reinet and the Grootrivier, a large tributary of the Gamtoos River, to Murraysburg,” he said.

“If elephants can live in the Kaokoveld of Namibia, under far greater aridity than anything experienced in the Eastern Cape, they should have no difficulty in the Midlands.” DM

This is an extract from Karoo Roads IV. For an insider’s view on life in the South African Heartland, get the Karoo Quartet set of books (Karoo Roads I-IV) for only R960, including taxes and courier costs in South Africa. For more details, contact Julie at [email protected]

Categories:

Tags:

DM is much better if you are signed in...

South Africa

The man in leather

South of the Sneeuberg

Tusks everywhere