Kalahari Desert

The Kalahari Desert - or Kgalagadi, as it is known in Botswana - covers the western part of Namibia, a large part of Botswana, and north-western South Africa north of the Orange River. Although it is called a ‘desert’, large parts of the Kalahari are in fact rather park-like, with flat, open savannah. In some areas, annual rainfall can be as high as 250 mms (about 10 inches), which accounts for the luxuriant grass cover during good years. However, as with all dry areas, the only thing that is certain about rainfall is that it is uncertain and highly variable; in consequence, a good year might easily be followed by one or two years of low rainfall, during which the grass will wither away and scores of thousands of animals, wild and domestic, will die.

The Kalahari in Namibia is characterised by red dunes that run roughly north to south, with grass-covered valleys or ‘streets’ between them. In years of adequate rainfall, the dunes are covered in golden grass, which – under the deep blue of the sky – makes for a wonderfully colourful display, especially in the early evening. The vista is enhanced when there are gnarled and rugged acacia trees in the vicinity, perhaps bearing the shaggy bulk of a large sociable weaver birds’ nest.

Having mentioned the sociable weavers and their nests, it is appropriate to note that these birds are ubiquitous in the western parts of the Kalahari as well as in the adjacent Namib Desert. In fact, their territory covers most of Namibia, with the exception of the coast and the country's northern extremities. While the birds certainly prefer trees, thorny if possible, on which to build their nests, in the dry, far south – the region north of the Orange River – they overcome the lack of trees by building their nests on telephone poles and even on power pylons. These ingenious nests-on-poles can be seen in the Karas region of Namibia as well as in the adjacent Upington region in South Africa. The nests are always busy places, with hundreds of birds flitting to and fro, twittering excitedly, carrying nesting materials and feeding their young. On an idiosyncratic note, sometimes a nest becomes so big that its supporting branch collapses under the weight and the inhabitants set about building a new nest on another branch, busily transferring material from the old site to the new one.

Habitat of Sociable Weavers

(from Birds of Southern Africa - reference at bottom of text)

Other characteristic Kalahari birds include the secretary bird, the (wild) ostrich, and a variety of raptors, including vultures – testimony to the wealth of animal life, both domestic and wild, that occurs in this so-called desert.

Crossing Kalahari dune fields from east to west by car is like a motorised roller coaster ride, as the road rises to the top of a dune and then descends into the valley, only to rise again. In Namibia, for example, motorists travelling the Mariental – Aranos road get a comprehensive experience of rollercoastering across the dunes. While on the subject of roads, it should be mentioned that the central Kalahari has been open to high-speed motoring since the Trans-Kalahari Highway was completed in the late 1990s. This road links Namibia’s main port of Walvis Bay with Gaberone, the capital of Botswana, and onwards to South Africa’s industrial and commercial ‘heartland’, Gauteng Province (including Johannesburg and the Witwatersrand). From there, the east coast is easily accessible, so that it is possible to drive in comfort all the way across the sub-continent, from Walvis Bay on the Atlantic Ocean to Maputo, capital city and main port of Mozambique on the Indian Ocean.

Because of the variability in rainfall and generally arid conditions, the Kalahari is sparsely populated. In Namibia and South Africa, there are large ranches, which can be from 20 000 to 40 000 hectares in size. These raise mostly sheep and ostriches. In Botswana, although there are some private ranches, the land is mainly used on a communal basis, with the inhabitants raising goats and cattle. The best known of the Kalahari’s inhabitants are the so-called Bushmen, numbering only a few thousand and squeezed into inhospitable pieces of land where they are often exploited as cheap farm labour. They are the sad remnants of Southern Africa’s original inhabitants – as far back as anyone knows – who occupied the whole sub-continent long before black and white settlers invaded their territories and forced them to the margins. As proof of the fact that they occupied extensive territory, there are the superb ‘Bushman’ rock paintings that are found in great numbers in caves and rock shelters from the east coast of South Africa, to South Africa’s western regions, throughout the central parts of Southern Africa, to Zimbabwe and Namibia. Together with rock engravings, these paintings, often defaced by humans and decaying because of natural forces but nevertheless moving and evocative, are Southern Africa’s greatest contribution to world art. The ‘Bushman’ are also celebrated by environmentalists for their sustainable and Earth-friendly hunter-gather lifestyle – a way of life that is still practised today by some groups, where circumstances permit.

Now for some scientific details! The Kalahari is reputed to be the largest continuous area in the world that is underlain by a significant depth of aeolian (windblown) sand. The sand covers a calcareous ‘underburden’ that sometimes appears above the surface, looking like white-coloured ‘rock faces’. The red colour of the renowned dunes is caused by iron oxides.

The trans-frontier Kgalagadi Park – a joint enterprise between Botswana and South Africa - adjoins the south-eastern corner of Namibia but is not accessible from Namibia. Here visitors can see the ‘dune world’ at its most characteristic, while also sighting indigenous wildlife such as black-maned lions, leopards, hyenas, cheetahs, springboks, ostriches, and ant-eaters. However, perhaps the most characteristic animals of the Kalahari are very different in size, namely the small meerkat and the large oryx or ‘gemsbok’. Meerkats are burrowing, gregarious members of the mongoose family that are best known for the way in which they perch on their hind legs in groups, peering with large-eyed curiosity at the passing scene. The oryx, with its straight horns that can extend to more than one metre in length and its striking black and tan colouring, is probably the truly iconic Kalahari animal.

Click here for a description of honey badgers, which are quite common in the Kalahari Desert in Namibia and Botswana.

Although Namibia does not have a national park within the Kalahari region, visitors can enjoy the strikingly colourful ‘dune world’ and its resident birds and animals at a number of private lodges and game reserves such as Bagatelle Kalahari Game Ranch

Lodges in the Kalahari

Auob Country Lodge, Bagatelle Kalahari Game Ranch, Bitterwasser Lodge, Camelthorn Lodge, Dune Lodge, Zebra Lodge

Further useful information about the Kalahari Desert can be found at http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalahari_Desert.

Click here for more information about Deserts.

(Map taken from Kenneth Newman: Birds of Southern Africa (1992, expanded edition; published at Halfway House, South Africa by Southern Book Publishers: page 406)

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