We are parked in our Land Cruiser in the golden grasslands of the Mababe Depression in Botswana, surrounded by mud-covered Cape buffalo.
“There must be 3,000 of them here,” our guide Jonah Seboko says quietly, examining the area with his binoculars. “Good, just good.”
It’s not a word I’ve ever associated with the infamous, merciless buffalo, known as ‘widow makers’ or the ‘Black Death’ for their ferocity and vengeance.
Along with elephants, rhinoceroses, lions and leopards, Cape buffalo are part of the Five Beasts of Africa, a special group of animals named because historically, big game hunters considered them to be the most dangerous. Today, the big five have become the most sought after safari-goers.
However, the buffaloes are not as attractive as other popular quintets. They are not considered ‘charismatic megafauna’, lovable mammals that attract us to care about them and their habitats.
And unlike other members of the Big Five coterie, they don’t have their own ‘Earth Day…’ to celebrate and raise awareness of their conservation.
Yet they are eco-engineers and are revered in African cultures as symbols of strength, resilience and unity.
Those characteristics come to the fore in the brutal interactions between Africa’s largest herds of buffalo and fearsome lions. The plains of Mababe set the stage for one of the continent’s most intense natural dramas played out by these two great enemies.
Bad Depression
Lying between the Okavango estuaries and Chobe National Park in Botswana, the Mababe Depression has seen many changes. Since 2007, this old dry lake has become a new ecosystem after earthquakes and shifting river plates to the area.
During the dry season, from August to November, this great blue and gold basin becomes the only source of water and nutrient-rich pastures, attracting large herds of elephants and buffaloes.
Mababe soon attracted its first camp, Wilderness Festival, after the community that owns the property chose to switch from hunting to photo safaris, giving them access to their 500km² concession.
About 400,000 Cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer caffer – one of the four species of African bison) roams throughout southern and eastern Africa.
They are classified as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List due to population decline caused by human intervention, hunting, disease and habitat destruction by animals.
The large herds of Mababe are made up of many small obstacles, which is a collective term given their nature. From around August, they all gather here when essential food is scarce elsewhere. The rains will come, they will disperse again.
Meeting the buffalo
“Mekote means ‘festival of animals’ and that’s what this place is about,” explained Jonas as we looked through the binoculars to find elephants and zebras roaming beyond our herd of buffalo, instead of more buffalo in the distance.
Looking menacingly, the buffaloes surround our car and I can see their strength is close at hand. Brawny bovids have coarse gray or black skins, their calves are a distinctive reddish brown. But it’s the horns that I find fascinating, they vary greatly in shape, size and markings.
“They are all different – that’s how calves recognize their mothers.” This one is beautiful,” says Jonas, pointing to a female with deep hanging horns that curve upwards into a perfect U shape.
Males are easily identified by the ‘boss’ – a mass of bone and keratin where the two horns meet on the top of the head. Regardless of shape or size, buffalo horns can cause fatal injuries.
If buffaloes attack, they have a reputation for taking no prisoners, going back to attack, hunt and kill predators or hunters, even if they are wounded.
“Buffaloes do not look ahead: they will break out at any time.
I doubt I would have the strength to lie down if an 850kg bovid that could run at 60kph came at me. Fortunately, our herd seems calm and there are no lions around to disturb it.
Instead, the predators are eating the three elephants that we saw at the time they fell of old age in the temperature of 40˚C. The deathly stench of rotting flesh and disemboweled intestines hung in the air as vultures swarmed around the corpses.
The threat of lions
In the 18 years I’ve been traveling in Africa, I’ve never seen people killed, and I’m not sure I want to. The head guide of the Festival, Vasco Tebalo, shows me a video on his phone of five lions choking a buffalo amidst the dust and noise of the herd. It’s a tough watch.
“This is real nature,” says Vasco. “It’s not like TV shows, which are edited.
they think they want to see the killing but sometimes they cry.”
The next morning, we find six lions covered in glistening blood stains, tearing at the ribs of the buffalo they killed for breakfast. Lazy hyenas hang around looking for scraps of bones, while foxes wait their turn in silence.
We meet three lions who are chasing ‘nwanwa wa mateko’, an old man of the buffalo world, whose name means mud in the Zulu language.
When the buffalo has passed its prime, it leaves the herd to form its own gang or wanders off alone, often wallowing in mud pools to keep cool and protected from insects.
You don’t mess with these guys. They are known to be very aggressive and lions decide to give this person a miss.
We then meet two Golden Boys wandering the road. These undefeated lions, all snarling and ravenous muscles, look bluer than gold from the ubiquitous dust of black cotton soil, but their swaying trunks are the color of grass and they walk with a rock star. One comes to my side of the Land Cruiser to rest in its shade.
But there is more to Mababe than lions and buffaloes. Giraffes, ostriches, zebras and warthogs congregate in the floodplain, as well as antelopes such as roan, sable, impala, dainty steenbok and herds of russet antelope, all of which are vulnerable to wild dogs and hyenas.
Above the ground, thousands, perhaps millions, of queleas the size of red sparrows hum with a seductive hum, darkening the morning sky.
The hunt follows
One morning I join Russell MacLaughlin, a wildlife filmmaker, who is making a film about the interaction between lions and Mababe buffalo.
“When I first saw the hunters, I was amazed,” he says. “This place is very special, I came here for a week and stayed for three years.”
As we drive, the rising sun illuminates the flood plain like a sheet of gold under a stormy sky. A lioness calls softly to her six cubs and the black tips of their tails protrude above the grass.
A person plays with a broken ear horn like a cat plays with a ball of fur. It’s hard to imagine these cute pups attacking burly bovids, but they play by their own rules when it comes to attacking.
Russell says: “I saw pictures of these lions hunting buffalo when they were three months old.
“The Chobe pride hunts in the middle of the day when the normal lions are sleeping. This area is open and there is no shade, but they have adapted to the heat and are waiting to ambush the buffaloes when they come to drink.”
Using his drone, Russell sees a broad black line 6km long and counts a herd of about 12,000 buffalo. We drive an hour to get there, only to find out that the Golden Boys and eight Chobe pride got there first.
He explains: “These girls are not even three years old. They are big and strong because they have killed so many buffaloes.”
Amid the dust and thunder of hooves, the distraught buffaloes stare down the predators for what seems like an eternity, maintaining a united and protective wall. Lions, full of belly, do not hurry.
They will watch and wait until the buffaloes go to water. Finally, we let them in and Russell explains what it’s like to be in the thick of the action.
He says: “You can feel the earth moving as they trample the lions chasing them, and all the dust is flying around.”
“Seeing the herds moving from the top to the top is one of the most amazing things. I’ve worked on every continent but I’ve never seen what I saw here: The festival was the highlight of my career.”
Eco-engineers of the Maba Depression
On my last trip, dust clouds in the distance lead us to a herd of 5,000 bison on the move. Interestingly, research suggests that females ‘vote’ the direction of the herd, turning in the direction they wish to go.
The majority wins and the old buffaloes take the lead. They graze on the long desert buffalo grass they love, which grows in abundance here, and chew it when they rest.
As eco-engineers, their role is to clear the plains to make way for the sweet short grass favored by special pastures such as steenbok, roan and sable. At the same time, they enrich the world with their dung.
Cattle egrets fly around them, glowing white in the sun against the monotone shadows of the bovids. The birds pick up the insects that these animals bother, and similarly, when they sit on the buffalo’s back or horns, they act as a means of early warning of the presence of predators.
Similarly, red oxpeckers pick ticks from buffalo skin, and at the same time find food while cleaning their hosts.
The herd slowly passes us with frightened bulls bellowing and coming up behind.
Jonah says: “These guys are very protective.
“They are crazy to protect the herd. For protection, they become one group, like a big wall, with the cubs in the middle, which makes it difficult for the predators to break through. But the lions are smart, they wait until the perfect moment, then they will sneak up, divide them into small groups and identify the few that cannot continue.”
As if it were good luck, the herd of buffaloes start bumping into each other, grunting loudly, their hooves resounding and kicking up dust. I look around nervously for lions, half wanting to see my first kill, half not.
“Don’t worry,” said Jonah, when they calmed down. These guys see warthogs every day, but today, they decided to cause a ruckus.
I ask Jonas how he feels about the buffaloes of Mababe.
“They are exciting,” he replies. “You enjoy the many herds here because they are open and I never get tired of watching them. It’s amazing but I miss it when it’s gone. It’s very good. That’s the only word for it.”
You are right. Overall, they are very good.
And to be close to the buffalo, to feel their strength, their fierce nature and their protective loyalty… it’s beautiful, just beautiful.
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