I have always been conscious of the nearness of times past which is why, I suppose, I always get a little melancholy when I stumble across old ruins. This may be because, all to often, an enormous energy had been galvanised in to building them, only for it to all fizzle out and come to nought. Or perhaps it is because they serve as a reminder of my mortality and the transitory nature of life.
Whatever the reason, I always like exploring these dry, skeletal, remnants of past lives.
It was because of this compulsion that I found myself, many hundreds of miles from my home, driving through Mpumalanga. I was after something. I didn’t know exactly what it was – some sort of spirit I guess. And a link with my childhood and the old Nyanga ruins I had grown up amongst in Zimbabwe.
The ruins I wanted to see, on this particular trip, constitute but a tiny fragment of the literally hundreds of thousands of stone wall-settlements that can be found in South Africa. Although there have been many fanciful theories as to who built them the general consensus, amongst professional archaeologists anyway, is that they are largely the work of the Sotho-Tswana people.
My sister, Penny, had agreed to accompany me on my mission. Having spent a morning exploring the old gold-mining town of Barberton we duly found ourselves barrelling westwards towards Badplaas, branching off just before Machadadorp and then heading back along the N4 in the direction of Mbombela (Nelspruit). The main purpose of this detour was to take a look at the ancient stone wall settlements that litter the open, virtually treeless, veld at Rooidrai.
Unfortunately, they were burning fire-breaks along the road in the area where these ruins are mostly situated so we were not able to get up close to them but, parking the car on the burnt verge, I was able to get out and examine them through my binoculars.
In a landscape so devoid of other detail, so empty of anything higher than a Hadedah’s head, they looked like nothing so much as giant pieces of geometric art etched in to the dry earth and bleached grass. The feeling of abstraction was reinforced by the contrast between the layered ground, with its graded colours, and the blue sky above.
Although they were, for all practical purposes, probably nothing more than old cattle byres it seemed strange they should have found their way to this lonely spot. Deprived of purpose, abandoned and ignored by all save a few curious onlookers like myself, they exuded an air of sadness, neglect and also mystery.
Rooidraai was still haunting parts of my mind when Penny and I set off again, a couple of days later, this time to the Lydenburg area. We had arranged to meet Marius Brits, an amateur archaeologist with a beard like my own and an extensive knowledge of all the old ruins in this area (See Ancient Ruins: A Window into the Lydenburg Stone-walled Ruins by Marius Brits).
A genial, friendly man, who owns a second-hand bookshop in town, he took us to two nearby sites:
The first was Badfontein, situated just off the Lydenburg to Machadorp road. The road there was riddled with potholes the size of bomb craters and the truck drivers who use it seem to have little regard for human life but the ruins themselves while not comparable in size, elaboration or fame to Great Zimbabwe made the journey worthwhile.
Covering a steep hillside overlooking a fertile flood plain, the site was presumably chosen for its strategic value rather than agricultural potential. We had chosen the right time of the year to visit because the magnificent Mountain Aloes (Aloe marlothii) that thrive in these barren, rocky conditions, were out in bloom
Built of round stones the size of cannon balls, the walls, themselves, are very similar in design and layout to the ones I grew up amongst in Nyanga: numerous stone walled structures, both simple and complex, with stone-walled roadways and terracing. Although overgrown and broken down in parts you can still easily appreciate the amount of work that went in to their construction.
At times it was a little hard to understand the science behind the walls as they tadpoled their way higgledy-piggledy all over the hills not that I wanted an explanation. I liked the mystery. There was something curiously serene about those old stones.
For the record, archaeologists believe they were built by the Bakoni whose civilization was fragmented and largely destroyed during the Mfecane in the early 19th century.
From Badfontein we travelled to Boomplaats on the Burgersfort road which contains one of the largest and most famous engraving sites in South Africa. Situated on the high plateau in open grass, with a range of hills running along the one side, it, again, exuded its own peculiar energy.
We were the only visitors. Indeed, I got the feeling few people bother to visit this intriguing outdoor gallery with its enigmatic stones and elusive scratchings.
Arriving there, walking amongst them, I was once again engulfed by the same sense of mystery and wonder that I had experienced at the other two sites.
According to the one theory I read, the reason for their existance is that the majority of the rock engravings represent settlements. Some of the engravings are plain concentric circles while others are elaborate settlement seen in plans: a cattle kraal surrounded by huts, with cattle tracks connecting various homesteads.
In other words: a sort of stone age Google Earth. A bird’s eye view of the land.
Initially, this sounded plausible enough. But then I found myself thinking – surely there must be more to it than just that? While I could, on a sort of flat-earthish level, see how the experts came to formulate this theory it raises still more questions – why this particular spot, why these stones?
Such dry, academic, reasoning fails to take in to account man’s quest for purpose and meaning, the need to believe in something beyond ourselves, a need that exists deep within the human soul.
Most African tribes do have a highly developed relationship with the spirit world, so, for me, it could just have easily served as a sacred site, a place for making offerings to the ancestors, performing rituals and possibly animal sacrifice.
There was plenty of support for this line of conjecture.
Some of stones have obviously been shaped and burnished suggesting a deeper purpose than mere illustration. There was one dome-shaped rock, for example, that looked like some sort of fertility symbol, another where what appeared to be an altar had been incised into the rock. We could even see traces of what looked like blood stain suggesting it might have been used, for these very purposes, fairly recently.
In other instances shallow hollows had been bored into the top of the rock. Penny, who has a PhD in Social Anthropology and is very knowledgeable about African belief systems, thought these could could have been used to burn incense and herbs for the ancestors.
It certainly left me thinking more research is required – when were they made, why and by who?
The farm on which the rock engravings occur was the subject of one of the first successful land claims under the ANC Government and has been returned to its original owners, the Dinkwanyane community. The hope is that they will realise the importance of the site and help preserve it.
So far the signs are not exactly encouraging..
The site itself has a sadly neglected air. There has been some vandalism. In one instance, a segment of a rock has been sawed off, elsewhere there is graffiti (including several Christian crosses). Another boulder has had a large trench excavated around its base. When Marius later spoke to one of the community elders about this, it turned out a sangoma had told some treasure-seekers that Kruger’s Gold was buried there! Other stones have clearly been removed in the past (some, regrettably, by museums).
Oddly, there are no road signs to indicate the presence of the rock engravings. I also felt the site would benefit from some sort of shelter that includes a display of maps and pictures directing visitors to important features and explaining the way of life of this vanished people.
Although numerous wood and metal, shanty-town-style huts have been erected on the bare, open veld, the whole place looked strangely deserted; other than a few cows, penned in a kraal, we saw virtually no one.
Late that afternoon we drove back to Mbombela with the sun dipping down towards the trees and throwing long shadows over the road. Tired as I was after a long day it was all so perfect; we had explored some intriguing ruins together and seen some magnificent country.
But I felt my quest for meaning was from over…
GALLERY:
I was so fascinated by Boomplats that I ended up taking a great deal of photos of the site. Here are a selection:
Stidy's Eye 