Images created from 2013 to 2016

There are currently estimated to be between 21 and 29 million sheep in South Africa. 

Livestock farming practices, and specifically sheep farming, in South Africa, dates back to about 2000 years ago, and perhaps even more, according to a discovery made in the Northern Cape by the University of Cape Town.

When the Dutch came to the Cape in 1652, European breeds of sheep were introduced and interbred with local livestock to create hardier and more resilient breeds that were better suited to the harsh and unforgiving African environment, but which yielded better results in terms of meat production than those generationally adapted smaller animals of the local Khoe people.

Sheep farming went on to be wildly successful due to the high nutritional value of natural pastures especially in the semi-arid region called the Karoo, an area that covers about 70% of South Africa’s interior. 

Invasive plant species were introduced as fodder for drought support. Wind pumps were introduced, making more land viable for farming throughout the year. Goats, hardier animals, are often farmed alongside sheep, and their milk often used to feed orphaned lambs. 

As European settlers encroached on more and more of the land which was inhabited by local populations of San and Khoe people, and eventually Bantu peoples further east and north east, conflicts arose over livestock, game and land, leading to several atrocious crimes committed against native people. 

In the early 19th century, Merino sheep with their prized fine wool, was introduced to South Africa for the first time. They thrived in the drier climate, and in the 1950s, during the Korean War, a massive increase in demand for warm clothing caused wool prices to soar. In the Karoo, they spoke of a “pound for a pound”, an astronomical amount of money for wool in those days. This Wool Boom led to farmers taking advantage of this favourable market circumstances and maximising profit by keeping significantly more sheep on the arid Karoo land than its maximum carrying capacity allowed, leading to overgrazing, erosion, and the resulting loss of habitat and extinction of native species. Farmers thrived financially, and wool went on to become a major part of the national economy. 

Another challenge that came with the arrival of large-scale sheep farming in the Karoo, was livestock losses due to native predators like black-backed jackal, caracals and baboons. Lethal culling methods, like hunting, brutal traps, and poison, is employed in response to livestock losses, yet studies have found that culling predators is associated with even greater livestock losses the following year, indicating lethal control not only counter-productive, but devastating to other innocent wildlife, notably vultures, which are now largely absent/extinct from the Karoo. 

In 1963, the South African Government passed the Fencing Act, compelling landowners to fence off their land, disrupting migration corridors, restricting wildlife movement that lead to population fragmentation, altering predator-prey dynamics, increasing human-wildlife conflict, contributing to ecological damage and becoming a direct hazard for animals getting entangled in them. 

The ancient sustainable and traditional farming practices and the people who farmed these lands for centuries before the arrival of Europeans, have now largely been lost in favour of production and profit and an ever increasing consumer appetite for Karoo Lamb. 

Land ownership remains a contentious issue in South Africa. Today, the benefactors of land use in the Karoo, and livestock production yields, remain largely of European descent. More sustainable practices are being introduced by some educated farmers, but a large proportion of generational landowners remain stubbornly conservative and staunch in their views on predators, their divine right to dominate over nature, and fearful of a changing world. Descendants of the Khoe and other groups have found employment as farm hands.