The Great Locust Plague of 1889: When Skies Turned Black in South Africa

A World Gone Dark

Imagine stepping outside one morning to find the sun hidden, not by clouds, but by insects. The sound is deafening, a droning hum like thousands of drums beating at once. The air itself seems alive, and when you look closer, you realize the sky is moving — wings upon wings, locusts in endless swarms.

This was the reality for South Africa in 1889, when one of the worst locust plagues in recorded history descended upon the region. Entire harvests disappeared in hours. Pastures were stripped to bare earth. Families who had waited months for crops to ripen watched as they vanished in a single day. For weeks, the skies remained alive with insects, and when they finally settled, famine and despair followed.

The Great Locust Plague of 1889 was not merely an agricultural disaster. It was a catastrophe that reshaped communities, economies, and memories, becoming one of the most haunting episodes of South Africa’s colonial era.

South Africa in the Late 19th Century

By 1889, South Africa was a land of transition. European colonial powers were firmly entrenched, with the British and the Boers carving out territories and expanding agriculture. Railroads linked ports to the interior, diamond mines brought wealth and conflict, and settlers worked to impose order on a land with deep indigenous histories.

But beneath this surface of progress lay fragility. The environment of southern Africa was harsh, alternating between droughts and floods. Agriculture depended heavily on predictable seasons, and any disruption could spell disaster. Communities, whether settler or indigenous, lived close to the land. When nature rebelled, it was felt immediately.

It was into this precarious balance that the locusts came.

The Arrival of the Swarms

The first reports came in early 1889. Farmers noticed small gatherings of locusts in the drier regions of the Karoo and the Highveld. At first, it seemed like nothing unusual. Locusts had always been part of the ecosystem. But these gatherings grew larger, thicker, and denser. Soon, clouds of insects were forming, lifted by the winds and driven by hunger.

By the height of the plague, witnesses described the skies as “black with wings.” The swarms stretched for miles, so dense that they blotted out the sun. Farmers spoke of locusts descending like living carpets, covering the earth so thickly that it was impossible to walk without crushing them.

The sound was overwhelming — a constant, thunderous buzzing as billions of wings beat the air. Travelers reported that trains had to slow down as tracks became slick with crushed insects. Roads became impassable. Wells and water troughs were clogged with their bodies.

Crops Devoured, Harvests Lost

The devastation was swift and total. Wheat, maize, and sorghum — staple crops for settlers and indigenous farmers alike — disappeared under the assault. Gardens, vineyards, and orchards were stripped bare. Pastures meant for livestock were consumed down to the roots.

Locusts are relentless eaters. A single swarm can consume thousands of tons of vegetation in a single day. In 1889, the numbers were unimaginable. Fields that had taken months of labor to prepare and sow were reduced to dust in hours.

Worse still, the locusts did not leave anything behind. They ate bark from trees, thatch from roofs, and even clothing hung out to dry. Stories circulated of them gnawing at leather harnesses and wood, leaving communities with not only no harvest, but no supplies.

Communities in Crisis

The human toll was immense. Settler farms collapsed under the weight of the destruction, while indigenous communities who depended on smaller plots or pastoralism faced famine. Entire families were left without food or income.

Colonial governments attempted to respond, but their resources were limited. In some towns, relief committees were established to distribute grain. In others, desperate measures were taken: people beat drums, lit fires, or waved blankets to drive the locusts away. But nothing worked. The insects returned again and again, drawn by the scent of green crops.

For the poor, the plague was especially devastating. Wealthier settlers might afford to import food from coastal cities, but small farmers and rural families starved. Malnutrition spread, leaving people vulnerable to disease. Some communities abandoned their land altogether, migrating to towns or mines in search of survival.

Colonial Science and Futile Solutions

The plague of 1889 also revealed the limitations of colonial science at the time. Agricultural experts debated how to fight the locusts. Some suggested digging trenches to trap them, others recommended crushing them with rollers or burning fields in advance. Chemical solutions were attempted, but with little success.

The sheer scale of the swarms made most efforts useless. Locusts could travel up to 100 kilometers in a day, carried by winds. Killing them in one valley meant nothing when another swarm arrived the next morning. The government eventually organized locust brigades, paying workers to collect eggs from the soil. Tons were gathered, but it barely made a dent.

The plague forced settlers and administrators to reckon with the reality that nature could not always be controlled, no matter how modern or powerful the colonial machine appeared.

Memory and Folklore

The Great Locust Plague of 1889 left scars that went beyond hunger. It entered the folklore of South Africa. Indigenous traditions, already rich with stories of locusts as symbols of destruction and renewal, absorbed the disaster into oral histories. Among Afrikaner communities, the year of the plague was remembered as a trial of faith, a reminder of biblical stories where locusts were instruments of divine punishment.

Even decades later, elderly farmers spoke of the sky darkening, of the sound of wings, of fields left barren in hours. Children grew up on cautionary tales of the plague, told as warnings of nature’s power and the fragility of human endeavor.

The Aftermath and Long-Term Effects

When the swarms finally dissipated, they left a broken landscape. Farmers had to start from scratch, replanting fields and rebuilding supplies. For many, recovery took years. Some never managed to recover, abandoning agriculture entirely.

The famine that followed reshaped patterns of labor and migration. Indigenous communities, stripped of food and livestock, were often forced into wage labor in colonial industries. Settler farmers, too, became more dependent on government aid and imported grain.

The disaster also spurred efforts to study locusts more systematically. In the decades that followed, colonial administrations established entomological stations and locust control programs. Yet plagues continued to return in cycles, each one a reminder of 1889.

When the Sky Fell

The Great Locust Plague of 1889 was more than an agricultural failure. It was an apocalypse of wings and hunger, a reminder of the terrifying scale of natural disasters. In its wake lay famine, migration, and memory, shaping communities for generations.

Today, locust plagues still strike parts of Africa and beyond, most recently in East Africa in 2020. Modern technology has improved control, but the basic reality remains: when the sky fills with insects, human power feels small.

For South Africa in 1889, the plague was a wound on the landscape and the people, a year when the sun disappeared, when fields turned to dust, and when hunger spread like fire. It remains one of the most chilling episodes in the history of colonial Africa — the year the sky itself seemed to fall.