Why I am Deathly Afraid of Boerboels

Even though my family left South Africa a long time ago, I still have vivid memories of the country I grew up in. There is one memory that stands out which still gives me occasional nightmares despite the passage of time. And that is of the Boerboel dog.

Now, I don’t hate dogs. In fact, I don’t remember a time when my family hasn’t owned a dog as a pet. Nonetheless, the Boerboel to me is a symbol for something that runs far deeper and darker than what meets the naked eye. From the mindset of a child, it represented the worst of racial segregation also known as Apartheid that wreaked havoc in South Africa from 1948 until 1994.

It’s funny that this particular dog of my nightmares came from a story related to me as a child and not on account of me seeing a living, breathing Boerboel.

Not that I ever wanted to see one for I was mortally terrified of them. In my child’s mind, I imagined myself being ripped to pieces if I ever had the misfortune of encountering one.

We lived in a little town at the base of the Maluti Mountains. If you haven’t been to South Africa then I’m afraid words cannot describe the beauty of the rugged mountains and open velds. You have to experience it for yourself to be able to understand when I say its beauty can leave an indelible imprint on the soul.

Like other towns at that time, our little town was also divided into three types of people based entirely on their skin color.

They were the Afrikaners and other assorted “Whites”, the “Blacks” who were relegated to a ghetto known as ‘location,’ situated a couple of miles away on a dusty hilltop, and the “Coloureds” (people of mixed European and African or Asian ancestry).

Mind you, it was predominantly a white town and non-whites were only allowed to buy houses there in the early 1990’s right about the time apartheid in South Africa was coming to an end.

I remember my father telling us kids that we were free to take walks in our pretty neighborhood except for one particular street. Apparently, the old man living there had Boerboels for guard dogs and not only did he give them free rein of his property but also did not hesitate to sic them upon people who he deemed were trespassing. On some occasions he let his Boerboel's attack people passing in front of his property just because he didn’t like the color of their skin.

The result of an attack by a fearsome guard dog that is the Boerboel is nothing short of horrifying (it has a bite force of up to 800 PSI). My father would know. He is a doctor who has treated several cases resulting from canine bites.

A Boerboel is a type of mastiff that was bred in South Africa in the 1600s in order to guard farms and their inhabitants from predators such as leopards, hyaenas, jackals, and also to keep marauding packs of baboons away from the crop fields.

In Afrikaans, Boer means farmer and boel is short for boelhond or bulldog.

To give you a clearer picture of what this dog breed is capable of, I would suggest looking into the breed history of Boerboels of South Africa which mentions that at one point these dogs were raised to hunt lions.

An article published by Animals 24–7 carries a snippet from the book “Canis Familiaris: A Dog History of South Africa” where the authors talk about how the Boerboels were bred during the apartheid era as a “deterrent to the real and imagined threat of black distribution.” The book further elaborates on this “Dogs, as much as people, patrolled and maintained the white cities and countryside of post-colonial South Africa and time and again were catalysts and actors along its social frontiers.”

As a child, I used to read stories about kids who strayed too far from home and ended up falling prey to strange beasts or wicked witches. Perhaps that is why each time we found ourselves walking past the intersection leading to that particular street, we kids would automatically silence ourselves for fear of rousing the Boerboels. I’m sure we also picked up our pace just to get to the other side of the intersection as fast as we could. And once we safely arrived on the other side, we would continue our chatter right where we left off as the unconscious dread of being ravaged by the Boerboels slowly faded away.

It was a sense of relief akin to the sun coming out after being momentarily hidden by ominous-looking clouds.

You may wonder what happened to the old guy who lived on that street? Well, he fell sick and urgently needed a doctor to make a house call.

Guess who went out to help him in his time of need?

Ironically, it was the dire need for medical attention that compelled a certain someone to not only lock up his prized Boerboels but to also overlook the skin color of the doctor attending to him.

Pathetic, if you ask me.

Perhaps my father should not have treated that racist old man. It took me a long time to come to the realization that by doing so, my father demonstrated to everyone who was the better man in that particular moment in time.

Jan van Riebeeck, the Dutch navigator who founded Cape Town, is credited with bringing the first Mastiff breed to South Africa. It was then bred with other canines that had a proven track record of surviving encounters with predators, finally resulting in the Boerboel.

But are the Boerboels really the brutes they are made out to be or does it have to do with the fear-mongering stories told about them?

An article in K9 Web answers this question as follows — “They can be a risky breed to have, but that’s where training comes in. They’re eager to please and trainable, but they should be trained and socialized as a puppy before they become dominant adults.” The article also goes on to add this cautionary advice “Although you won’t find Boerboels in the most dangerous dogs’ list, they’re one of the breeds you shouldn’t mess with.”

Source: You Tube (Middelpos Alpha and Dixie — Boerboel)

This is a YouTube video of two Boerboels Alpha and Dixie, just to give an idea of their impressive size and deep bark.

Due to their aggressive nature, countries such as France and Qatar as well as Mauritius and Bermuda have banned Boerboels. This ban also is in effect for certain cities like Geneva, Switzerland, and Fairfield, Iowa (USA).

“Apartheid still hangs in the air like a poisonous cloud leftover from chemical warfare” — Dervla Murphy

I am still deathly afraid of Boerboels but I find that I no longer hold a grudge against them. This is because, with time, I have come to see them in a new light. The Boerboel was raised to be a fierce protector of the homestead and its inhabitants which it faithfully did without backing down from much bigger, more aggressive predators. Because of the confidence in its capability as a watchdog, its owners were able to sleep peacefully at night in an otherwise harsh and unsafe environment.

In hindsight, I believe it is not Boerboel’s fault that I came to regard them the way I do. In a way, they too were victims of a deeply racial culture that used them to not only instill and perpetuate fear but to keep “non-whites” in line.

I would say that tactic, however disgusting, certainly worked.

Originally published on Medium