Reading the Cultural Landscape

Story and photos by Louise de Waal

Finding five quintessential safari tents on wooden decks with the old-worldly charm of bucket showers and paraffin lanterns, sets the mind for a full-on wildlife experience. Masebe Nature Reserve with its impressive sandstone rock formations is far from just a nature destination.

An overgrown grave stone of a young girl called Elsie Letitia Ackhurst is lost in history. Nobody remembers the story behind the passing of this 5 years old girl, but images of white farmers with ox wagons and the adversity of disease are easy to conjure up.

Remnants of Chief’s homes with more recent graves of Chief Ramotebele and his family. The place where girls would have their initiation. An area where the boys from the surrounding villages spend time with some of the elders for up to 6 months in the bush to pass the rite into manhood. The fire pit at one of the initiation sites is still visible, the many stories can still be heard when the wind whispers through the dry Mopane leaves, but the courage and anxiety of a 12 years old boy can only be imagined.

At Magagamatala, a 200 m high cliff on the reserve, over 200 Ndebele warriors jumped to their death in the aftermath of the Siege of Makapan in 1854. The warriors were cornered here by an expedition led by Commandant-General Stephanus Schoeman and his commandant Paul Kruger, in retaliation of the murder of a group of Voortrekkers and their leader, Hermanus Potgieter, near the Makapan’s Cave (about 90 km further south).

We can only speculate as to the real reasons of this tragedy, but one theory involves a traditional healer assuring the warriors that they would survive their fall, if they wrapped themselves in ox hide.

The most well-known and easy to reach San rock art site tells the story of hunter-gatherers roaming the area and finding refuge in some of the caves and overhangs in the sandstone formations. It requires a little more effort and scrambling to see the Ndebele clay pots and a smaller San rock art site, but nevertheless as intriguing.

The local communities consider many parts of the Masebe Nature Reserve sacred, steeped with ancestral significance. Historic settlements, battlegrounds, initiation sites, and graves are scattered across the reserve. Learning the history through oral tradition allows us to build many of the details in our imagination.