South Africa's famous wandering hippo

From 1928 to 1931, a hippopotamus trekked 1 600km from what was then northern Natal to the Eastern Cape's Keiskamma River near Peddie, where it was shot dead by a posse of farmers. As Mike Burgess writes, this journey would immortalise the hippo in South African history.

- Mike Burgess

It all began when The Natal Mercury ran an article about a hippo in a sugar cane field north of Stanger in Natal on 23 November 1928. As it turned out, this very same wandering hippo would travel down South Africa's east coast for around 1 600km before being killed.

The hippo's adventures were eagerly described in various South African newspapers, including The Natal Mercury, Daily Dispatch, The Cape Mercury, and The Daily Representative. In time, international publications such as the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and the famous British magazine Punch, joined in and published articles about the animal.

These media reports often anthropomorphised the hippo so that people could relate to it on a human level. For example, it was first named Billy, then Hubert, and eventually Huberta and was declared South Africa's 'national pet'.

When Huberta was shot in 1931, a massive public outcry ensued, followed by legal proceedings to bring her killers to justice, as she had by then been declared 'royal game'.

HUBERTA AND HUMANS