Description
The story of Zulu is based on the life of a real stallion that lived on the Mashatu Game Reserve. The versions of the story of Zulu are about as numerous as the people who recounted them. The horse and the myth were at times indistinguishable.
In February 2000, tropical Cyclone Leon-Eline resulted in a storm so severe that the horses broke out of their enclosure and roamed wild and free before returning. Zulu was the only one that did not return. He was thought to be lost to the scourges of the Bushveld.
This account of his life has been stitched together from all those stories. Of the four years when Zulu ran free in the Northern Tuli conservation area virtually nothing is known, so that part was constructed from what is known about the place and the wild animals that live there. It all could have happened that way. It certainly happened, one way or another.
Years pass before Zulu is discovered to be not only alive and well, but running as the lead stallion of a herd of wild zebras. He is recaptured and returned to the safari stables as a much bolder and wiser stallion – knowledge he passes on to the other horses as well as the humans of Limpopo Valley.