A Zebra Can’t Change Its Stripes – And Neither Can We
This past weekend, after dodging my fair share of social politics in the human world — the kind where everyone smiles until the knives come out — I did what I normally do: I escaped. Not too far, because budgets and Gauteng traffic are the great equalisers of ambition. Just home to see my family. And instead of wasting a Sunday trapped in Suburbia like a hamster on a plastic wheel, I decided to take my mother to Rietvlei Nature Reserve.
Now, Rietvlei is not the Serengeti. It doesn’t make you feel like a Baboon is about to lift a Lion cub above its head for the whole world to see. But it’s as close as one can get when time, money, and common sense insist you stay within ten minutes of Pretoria East. Rietvlei, at the very least, has a healthy zebra population. Far healthier, I might add, than the average South African diet.
And that’s where the drama began.
Two female zebras had clearly decided that grass and sunshine weren’t enough to keep them entertained. While most of the herd did what zebras generally do — eat, swish tails, look photogenic — these two launched into a proper, no-holds-barred brawl. Not the type of “fight” we humans are famous for these days, where hashtags fly across the internet like guided missiles and accusations are typed with trembling fingers behind a keyboard. No, this was the original version: teeth clamped, hooves flying, dust rising, ears pinned back. The full-blooded, hair-pulling, nail-breaking, biting, kicking, screaming match.
Naturally, I lifted the camera. Because when zebras decide to settle their differences with violence, you don’t intervene. You document. Later, while editing, I realised I’d captured one of my best photographs yet: a freeze-frame of striped fury, two mares mid-air, eyes wild, manes flared. A picture that said far more than any caption could.
Which is when I started thinking. Instead of slapping it onto Instagram with a smug “Look at me, I take nice photos” line, why not tug at the threads a little? Because what unfolded in front of me wasn’t just a wildlife sighting. It was a mirror.
Zebras, like us, don’t run on rainbows and mutual respect. They have rules, hierarchies, jealousies, politics. Strip away the stripes and what you get is us, only with more honesty. They don’t hide their grudges in HR complaints or awkwardly phrased WhatsApp groups. They just bite each other. And if that isn’t the purest form of authenticity, I don’t know what is.
The science is fairly clear. Plains zebras live in harems: one stallion, about several mares, foals included. That should sound familiar already. The mares don’t stand on equal footing — equality is a human invention, and one that works about as reliably as electricity in South Africa. No, the harem runs on seniority. The mare who’s been around the longest usually calls the shots, deciding when the group moves, where to graze, when to drink. Everyone else falls in line, because dissent is risky when hyenas are watching.
But just because the stallion holds the title of “head of the household” — which he also actually doesn’t but we’ll save that one for a later time — doesn’t mean the mares are passive wallflowers. Female aggression does happen. Sometimes it’s about foals — one documented case saw a mare attack another who’d just given birth, biting and kicking near the newborn as if motherhood itself was an affront. Sometimes it’s about newcomers. When a fresh mare joins the harem, the welcome wagon doesn’t exactly roll out. More often, the others harass her until she earns her place. And sometimes, as I witnessed, it’s about the subtle politics of attention.
When zebras square up, they don’t write polite letters of grievance. They flatten their ears, bare their teeth, lift their necks in a challenge. It’s posturing, the zebra version of the passive-aggressive email. But when that doesn’t work, the posturing becomes violence — neck wrestling, biting, hoof strikes, full mid-air collisions. It’s ugly, it’s chaotic, and the rest of the herd, much like a modern human crowd, does absolutely nothing but watch.
That’s the thing. Whether it’s a herd of zebras or a group of colleagues, nobody steps in when drama unfolds. We just spectate, gossip, and then go back to chewing our metaphorical grass. We film with iPhones; they stare in silence. Same instinct, different tools.
And here’s where it starts to get uncomfortable, because the parallels write themselves.
In every office, there’s a zebra mare: the one who’s been around since the fax machine era, untouchable by sheer longevity. Doesn’t matter if she’s right, wrong, or halfway to retirement; she calls the shots because she’s always called the shots. That’s your dominant mare.
Newcomers? We treat them the same way zebras do. We smile, shake hands, ask where they’re from — then quietly test them with small exclusions, subtle jokes, and the unspoken “Let’s see how long you last.” It’s harassment in polite packaging.
Fights at vulnerable moments? Humans love that too. Rivalries spike when someone’s on maternity leave, during illness, after a promotion. Zebras are no different — the arrival of a foal can turn mares into combatants faster than you can say “baby shower.”
And don’t get me started on jealousy. Stallions fight brutally for mares, sometimes abducting them from other harems. Humans wrap that same behaviour in candlelit dinners and Netflix dramas, but the script is identical. One zebra’s “romantic pursuit” is another’s abduction. One human’s “office affair” is another’s carefully worded resignation letter. Different names, same instincts.
Which brings me back to Rietvlei. The sighting itself was pure theatre. One mare had approached the stallion, brushed against him affectionately. He, being a stallion and therefore deeply unreliable, walked off as if he had something better to do. That should’ve been the end of it. But then the second mare appeared. No flirting, no subtlety, no warm smile. Straight to violence. She clamped down on the first mare with her teeth and the next three minutes were chaos: dust clouds, screams, hooves slicing the air.
The herd stopped. Watched. Held their silence like an audience at the Globe. If they’d had smartphones, I swear we’d have seen zebra TikToks trending by sundown.
And then, just as suddenly, it ended. The herd went back to grazing, like nothing had happened. The victim stood still, dazed, possibly asking herself the same question we all ask after a public ambush: How did we get here? A moment of good intention, misinterpreted, answered with fury.
I know the feeling. I have endured my own bout of this sh*tf#ckery over my lifetime, we all have — jealousy, delusion, biting, kicking, and screaming in human form. No dust, no hooves, but the effect was the same. Someone felt they weren’t getting the attention they deserved, and we paid the price.
That’s the real sting of this zebra story. It’s not the violence that matters, but the motive. Jealousy, pure and uncut. The kind that no self-help book, corporate strategy, or TED Talk has ever eradicated. You can do a hundred things right — be kind, loyal, attentive — and still, someone will take a bite out of you because you stole “their” spotlight. And conversely, there are those who need that spotlight like oxygen. Without it, they wither. With it, they thrive. Until the day someone else shines brighter, and then it’s all teeth and hooves again.
Which leaves me with the uncomfortable question: can zebras be narcissistic? Do they need validation, admiration, a steady stream of attention from the stallion and the herd? Do they measure their self-worth in stolen glances and pecking orders? I don’t know. But I do know this: when I find the perfect animal that embodies narcissism, I’ll recognise it immediately. And then I’ll probably recognise a few people I have know in its reflection.
So, yes. That was Rietvlei. A quiet Sunday with my mother turned into a philosophy lecture on stripes, jealousy, and instinct. A reminder that for all our airs and pretensions, we are still animals in disguise. We fight, we gossip, we crave, we sabotage. We’ve traded hooves for hashtags, but the behaviour is exactly the same.
And if you don’t believe me, ask the zebra still nursing bite marks on her flank and a bruised ego in her chest. She’d probably tell you what I already know: a zebra can’t change its stripes. And neither can we.
Wildlife Beyond the Lens 