I can only imagine.
Having read very many books written by respected scholars and experts on bears black and brown, I have decided that I would rather not visit the habitat of Grizzlies or Alaskan brown bears.
Beautiful as brown bear habitat is, I’ll leave them to it and make do with photos or documentary films. 
I am a scholar who studies African history. It’s really not appropriate to characterize the entire continent based on the civil conflict in Sudan, for example. The tour that originally sparked this whole thread was based in South Africa. There’s quite a distance between Sudan and South Africa. Quite a distance, geographically, historically, culturally, in terms of current political situations, etc.
I’ve been on car safaris in a couple of game parks in South Africa and Namibia. If there are big cats in the park (lions, cheetah, etc.) you’re not allowed out of the car except in fenced areas. If you’ll be approaching elephants, same deal. I’ve been within 20 yards of several elephants in Namibia, in an open car, and because the tour was being run by a well-run company which had a good reputation with local people and, importantly, had a guide who knew all of the elephants as individuals (I kid you not), we were just fine.
Going on horseback through an area with large predators is going to be risky. More risky than being in a car. But, if it’s a well-run company, they won’t put you in a bad situation. The key descriptor in that sentence is “well-run.” And that’s hard to assess from several thousand miles away unless you know somebody who’s gone on a trip with that company.
I agree.
My comment on civil conflicts in Africa was a general one, I know, however my brother’s Peace Corps experience in Tanzania (over a decade ago) colors my impression. He had a great experience, enjoyed the people, and was able to help out and make a positive influence with education, but there were safety issues then.
I certainly don’t know more than you do about the regional conflicts of today.
I still would not travel to Africa, South Africa included, on a riding vacation now for several reasons.
My brother did mention that the hippos are fierce and that they should be given great leeway. 
Tanzania! I know nothing about Tanzania other than that the algorithm sent me an Instagram account called Tanzania Bus Company. Some of it is very obvious clear mayhem, buses and trucks bogging down in red clay mud and flooding rivers. But some of it is much more culturally opaque.
My impression is that there are several competing bus lines doing cross country travel, big honking new fancy buses bigger than your typical Greyhound. They look very important to local infrastructure going down proper 4 lane highways but also into back road villages and of course red clay. They have musical horns that play little tunes. They are way shinier and newer and more glamorous than the villages they go through but they regularly smash up too.
The part I can’t figure out is that there are many scenes of groups of men running alongside buses, waving, shouting, cheering, or maybe protesting. When the comments come up Google translates makes a hash of Tanzanian but I also think that the comments are cryptic and sarcastic and meant to be funny.
I’m assuming there’s some kind of political struggle playing out around the buses. But I can’t tell if it’s primarily a fight between bus companies over market share, or if the various bus companies align with various politicians, or if these fancy big buses have a connection to Chinese or other investment.
Or maybe this is just a trainspotting chanel.
So my question is: what’s up with bus culture in Tanzania?
I don’t know , the problems my brother had on the buses were too many crates of soda and other cargo that would land on the heads of passengers when the bus hit big bumps in the road ( a frequent occurrence.)
Peace Corp members , who are located in small villages well outside of the cities, when they have to travel to an actual city, are traveling there on the local buses, with chickens and other unusual passengers, and cargo that falls upon their heads etc…not the “fancy” tourist buses.
They also were given stern warnings about how to behave at different locations, and the cities that he visited were (in his experience) more dangerous than very the rural place that he lived.
South Africa was not immune to crime.
The elementary school I attended for fourth grade (I was a military brat and we moved A LOT) had an entire floor dedicated to a museum about Alaska and Hawaii as the 49th and 50th states. The exhibits had probably been there since statehood was achieved, but I was just fascinated and used to spend as much time as I could in it.
However, one of the exhibits was a stuffed Kodiak bear standing on its back legs looking wildly threatening. It absolutely towered over me and made a bit of an impression…
To this day I have zero desire to visit Alaska in person, although my parents have been several times and loved it.
The buses all.seemed to be Tanzanian passengers. But no chickens or.soda! They seemed to go into some fairly remote places. And the driving was hair raising. I didn’t see any obvious tourists.
I would expect parts of South Africa to be dangerous. Any place with huge disparities of wealth and a history of violent oppression remains dangerous even while it’s moving towards better arrangements.
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