Beat it: Den Staat farmers in South Africa use drumming and fire to deter elephants

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“Last night we had a very big fight with an elephant in our tomato field,” said Joeman Moyo, a farmer at Den Staat farm in South Africa’s Limpopo region. “We used a torch … to…

“Last night we had a very big fight with an elephant in our tomato field,” said Joeman Moyo, a farmer at Den Staat farm in South Africa’s Limpopo region. “We used a torch … to make a fire. The elephant would go away but return when I put out the torch. I also burned a tire, but this did not scare it away for long. It kept coming back when the fire died down.”

Moyo, who looks after a 5-hectare (12.4-acre) plot, described an experience reflecting the challenges facing Den Staat’s smallholder farmers, as elephants enter their fields at night and threaten crops that provide an income. Farmers use several creative methods to deter the animals, including beating metal tins, hanging empty white plastic containers on wires and lighting fires.

The history of this land is important background for understanding the situation today. Den Staat is land reclaimed by a community whose members and ancestors were affected by forced removals under apartheid. The farm was returned to the Machete community in 2010, and it is now held collectively through a Community Property Association (CPA).

Today, more than 160 people live on the farm where they often face encounters with elephants, which residents say are their biggest concern because they are the most destructive. However, elephants are not the only raiders. Farmers also lose produce to baboons, warthogs, zebras and wildebeests. Den Staat is part of the Greater Mapungubwe landscape, where elephants move across the borders of South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana. It is also adjacent to the Mapungubwe National Park. Den Staat’s position as a wildlife corridor places its crops and homesteads directly in the path of these movements.

A 2026 study analyzing elephant population data from 1991 to 2021 estimated the latest Mapungubwe National Park elephant population to be 243, with a reported annual population growth rate of 18% over the previous five years (although the larger area shows a decreasing population in recent years).

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