I don't ride Kumba anymore because of the roughness so I don't get back to it often since its so far in the back corner of the park, I apologize if this is something that is widely known but I just haven't heard about it.
But something I noticed at BGT yesterday was at Kumba (which was running one train) they waited for every row to fill in the station before opening the gates. Since it was a walk on this took a while and was sometimes 10+ minutes between dispatches.
This was the only coaster they were doing this on, there was a period where I saw several empty rows running on Montu early in the morning. This leads me to believe since Kumba is now 32 years into daily operation they are trying to keep the ride operating while cycling the trains as little as possible. While an iconic coaster, the reality of Kumba is that it wouldn't be worth the money to entirely rebuild like it was for Incredible Hulk since its not a destination park owned by a huge mega corporation.
I will say the ride looks great. The paint looked good and it got some new signage a few years back. But I don't think that's an indication of the ride staying for the long term like some people do, as signage is pretty cheap and SW/BG was repainting and spending money on park appearance like crazy at both parks at the time. While I used to love Kumba and it was definitely one of the most iconic coasters in the world in the 90s, the fact is that was decades ago and I think its days are numbered.
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Kumba has been seemingly on the chopping block for years, particularly when there were reports of survey markers spotted along the northern perimeter of the park, suggesting they were considering a hyper/giga that would necessitate Kumba's removal. Given it's age and mileage, they're probably getting pretty close to where Hulk and Nemesis were when IOA and Alton Towers, respectively, chose to fully retrack those aging coasters. I do think it's interesting they've never converted Kumba to floorless trains, but I think in the next year or 2 BGT will need to make a decision on whether they will similarly do a full retrack or replace Kumba with something else.
I will say that the popularity has always suffered because of its location in the back corner of the park on a path that can be a bit tricky to find if you've never been to BGT before.