Page 10 - Our Land

OUR LAND 10

STEPS INTO THE PAST These terraces built by the Bakoni on the Verlorenkloof farm near Mashishing in Mpumalanga are beautifully well preserved. Historian and
author Peter Delius joined Verlorenkloof farm owner Eric Johnson and guide Joseph Mothupi for a special weekend of discovery of the area’s archaeological
heritage. Verlorenkloof Estate is home to a rich stone-walled legacy and lies at the epicentre of an extensive complex of late Iron Age (1500 to 1830 AD) archaeology
stretching along the escarpment from Carolina to Ohrigstad. Stonewalled homesteads with cattle tracks and terraces mark the sloping hills PHOTOS: JOHN HOGG
ne of contemporary archaeology’s
better-kept secrets concerns a group of
people called the Bakoni who lived in THE RUINS
the Mpumalanga Middleveld region
between 1500 and 1820.
O By all accounts, the Bakoni (roughly
Ohrigstad on the edge of the escarpment in the north OF OUR
translated as People from the North) were a peaceable
and industrious lot, who numbered 65 000 at the
height of their powers.
They built stone kraals and terraces, and cattle and
goat pathways, which are scattered generously across
Mpumalanga in a rough 150km line stretching from

to Carolina in the south.
kraals and grassed-over terraces. Winter is the best HISTORY
Their ruins and terraces are so ridiculously
widespread that you can casually catch sightings of
the formations through the car window while speeding
along the N4 outside of Machadodorp on the road to
Nelspruit.
Look carefully at almost any hill or koppie in the
area and you will see the lines of stone walls, circular

time to see the ruins because the grass is low and the
veld is burnt in places.
For 150km in Mpumalanga, the ruins of the Bakoni
ADVENTUROUS CHEFS
The ruins suggest the existence of a flourishing lie like figurative gravestones, marking a culture
precolonial culture and what the Bakoni bequeathed us
is a massive open-air museum spread across hundreds
of square kilometres. that fell from prosperity to extinction in little
However, outside of local landowners and a group of
academic historians, archaeologists and geographers, more than a generation, writes Luke Alfred
the Bakoni’s story remains largely untold. Currently
neglected by dysfunctional provincial heritage
authorities and stigmatised for years by an apartheid
world view that saw them as static and backward, The fields themselves, often ingeniously built, Middleveld, they might have had a growing season
their story of enterprise and endeavour with a tragic constituted massive outdoor exercises in water almost eight months long.
twist is past due for the telling. filtration, the terracing preventing erosion and
Here was a society that recognised, for instance, that preserving moisture. The rich volcanic soil contained ENTERPRISE AND TRAGEDY
they could prolong their growing season if they stayed everything from sorghum and millet to pumpkin, One of the finest preserved examples of Bakoni
away from the winter frosts of the Highveld and squash, peanuts and wild spinach. Supplemented by ingenuity stands on Eric and Heidi Johnson’s farm
planted in the intermediate zone called the Middleveld. meat, food was flavourful and various. Verlorenkloof, which is close to the Kwena Dam south
They built their kraals and terraces on east and south- Peter Delius, a Wits University historian who has of Mashishing (formerly Lydenburg). Beyond the little
facing hillsides close to water, but far enough away to studied the Bakoni, has found evidence of more than graveyard of the Dutch Ahlers family and a slightly
avoid flooding. They kept cattle in stone pens close to 20 recipes for cooking and preparing sorghum porridge. larger cemetery containing members of the local black
where they lived and drove them to grazing along This is a culture that appears to have been far more community who work on the farm, there is a fine
stone-lined cattle roads, fertilising the terraced fields industrious and creative than they’ve been given credit example of terracing that is hundreds of years old.
with cattle and goat dung. They were assiduous for. Their farming was intensive and their crop Supported by a 2m-high retaining wall both buttressed
recyclers long before it became fashionable. rotation was smart. On the moderate slopes of the and scalloped, the terrace is remarkably well preserved.