22/02/2025
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐇𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐍𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐚
𝐀 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲
by Ron Swilling
The Wild Horses of the Namib Desert, aka the Namibs, are a small population of horses that gained their freedom a century ago, shaking off their domesticated origins over the decades and adapting to the harsh terrain of the Namib Desert.
When they first came to my attention I was drawn to their wild beauty, their tough existence, their freedom - and ultimately their story. I’ve spent many cold winter mornings at the hide overlooking the Garub waterhole, between Aus and Lüderitz, with a mug of coffee in my gloved hands waiting for the sun to wash over the desert landscape and the groups of horses to gallop in with the wind whipping their manes and the dust billowing at their feet. They hold all the romantic appeal that wild creatures do when they break the bonds of confinement. For a moment, your breathing stops and you are absorbed into the golden morning landscape and the wonder of the scene. And no matter how scientific or objective we can try to be, the Namibs pull on our heartstrings. They elicit awe, inspiration and hope in a world where sometimes magic is hard to come by.
The Namibs have become part of Namibia’s story and history, and like many of her people who came from elsewhere over the centuries, they arrived and made the arid land home. I learned their story from Manni Goldbeck, who as a hobby historian had delved into the archives and put the disparate puzzle pieces of their origin together in a more coherent form. Then I learned about their behaviour from Dr Telané Greyling, who has studied the behaviour of the wild horses extensively and monitored the population over the last few decades. It was a complete eye-opener. Until then I had never really comprehended that all the horses that I had ever come across were domesticated, and that the horse, Equus caballus, was a wild creature until it was domesticated on the Eurasian steppes five to six thousand years ago. From that time on horses have been in service to humankind for work, exploration, transportation, recreation and war. Civilisation has been carried on the horse’s back. I learned that the small pockets of wild horses that exist throughout the world, like the Namibs, all descended from domestic stock. The only horses that have never been domesticated are the Mongolian Wild Horses, also known as the Przewalski’s Horses, which owe their survival to a captive-breeding programme.
One cold early morning, more than a decade ago, I accompanied Telané to the Garub hide. We washed the ice off her windscreen and spent the morning at the hide bundled in our jackets. We were silent, she was watching the horses and taking notes, and I was appreciating their wild magnificence as they drank and then slowly moved off, and the next group approached, in gentle flowing equine waves. She surprised me when we climbed into the car a few hours later by saying that it had been a busy morning of horse antics. Had it? Had I completely missed the action. It seemed that I had because I was completely unaware then of the dynamics between the horses and how wild horses lived. There had been greeting rituals and dung pile rituals, sometimes accompanied by a snort and kick, with a dominant stallion or mare directing its group with subtle head movements when it was time to move on. Telané knows every single horse, its family group and history, and enlightened me as to how horses live in the wild when they have the chance to form their own family groups, each with their mares, stallions, colts and foals, and the bonds they make over time.
Although many farfetched theories surround the Namibs’ origins, the most plausible is that their ancestors came from the Khubub stud farm, 35km from Garub, established by the mayor of Lüderitz, a Dr Emil Kreplin, in the early 1900s. While mules were bred for the mines, horses were bred for the racecourse of the booming diamond town. It is supposed that during the tumultuous time of WWI the horses, without fences to contain them, moved off following the grazing and ending up at the borehole maintained for the steam trains at Garub. The good breeding is still visible in the conformity of the horses today. At Garub they would have joined up with any horses left behind by the Union troops when Garub was bombed in 1915 by German forces. Over the years the horses developed resilience and adapted their behaviour to ensure their survival in the desert, learning to endure a certain amount of dehydration, a condition which would severely stress a domesticated horse. Left to themselves, they remembered the natural innate behaviour of wild equids and made a home in the unlikely place of the Namib Desert.
For fifty years the horses lived a protected life in the restricted diamond-mining area, the Sperrgebiet. In the late 1970s and 80s a portion of the Sperrgebiet where the horses reside became part of the Namib-Naukluft National Park. Over the years a hide was built overlooking a water trough where the horses come to drink on average every two to three days, depending on the weather and the proximity of the grazing. When the grazing is far away, they come in, drink and then quickly move off. When there is grass nearby, they spend their time near the hide, delighting visitors. They soon became one of the main tourist attractions in southern Namibia and have come to symbolise the rugged, wild and free allure of Namibia.
The lives of the wild horses are dependent on the desert conditions and the cycles of the Namib Desert. There have been years of abundance and years of drought, keeping their numbers low according to the carrying capacity of the land and strengthening their gene pool.
About ten years ago the wild horse numbers plummeted when a clan of spotted hyaena moved into the area, targeting the horses, with not a single foal surviving during the period between 2013 and 2018. In 2013 alone, nearly a hundred horses were killed, fifty of them foals. In a matter of years the population was reduced from 286 to a mere 74 horses. At the end of 2018 public outcry caused the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism to intervene, removing some of the hyaenas, and this in turn sparked off heated debates between various conservation groups. The population teetered precariously on the brink of extinction. The horse numbers still remain relatively low, although some foals have now managed to reach adulthood, providing hope for the horses’ future.
But there are other factors that also affect the population numbers. Horses are frequently struck by motor vehicles on the main road which bisects their home area and some perish after being given unsuitable food by well-meaning but uninformed visitors. Their future hangs in the balance.
What will the next years bring, will the Namibs survive? I hope so. Their absence won’t make a difference to the wildlife numbers in the national park, but it will make a difference on the deeper level of the human spirit. Without their presence, there will be a gap where magic and magnificence once graced the Namib Desert.
Beautiful Self-catering apartment, sleeps 4 in two bedrooms from R1400 per night for 2 guests. Plus We also offer 5 % discount to members of SADC countries.
