Page 11 - Our Land

OUR LAND 11

OPEN-AIR MUSEUM Verlorenkloof guide Joseph Mothupi speaks about the corbelled hut on the farm that has a tiny, ground-level entrance that looks more suited to
children than adults. The huts may have been lookout posts with long views up the Badfontein valley. INSERT The Bakoni kept cattle in stone pens close to where they
lived and drove them to grazing along stone-lined cattle roads, where their dung fertilised the adjacent fields of vegetables. The Bakoni’s farming methods were so ingenious
that they may have had a growing season almost eight months long

The walls themselves are constructed with care and by 1825, the Bakoni were mortally wounded. they constitute a tribe, a series of social groupings or a
forethought; they contain a kind of pre-wall made up By then, many of their women and children had series of disparate but linked clans, comes confusion
of a line of vertical rocks before giving way to the wall been captured by other tribes, including the Swazis, about where they stand in terms of restitution.
itself, which is often thick and varies in height. Ndebeles and Pedis, while their men had either fled or “In a sense, they’ve suffered a double tragedy,” says
Although the terraces are functional, they are not were dead. The stone circles and terracing we see on Delius. “Not only do they exist no more, but, after 1994,
purely so. This is a beautiful, peaceful space. the landscape are not only once-functional material the legal advice offered to them was for them to lodge
“The work here may have been done for a family remains, but figurative gravestones, a long and their claims as a community – which has proven to be
that was socially elevated,” says Eric Johnson. melancholy lyric to a culture that fell from prosperity counterproductive.”
While the Bakoni were savvy in taking advantage of to extinction in little more than a generation. Bakoni heritage is theoretically protected by the
local physical conditions and temperatures, their Nowhere is this better illustrated than on the Heritage Act, but, practically, the Mpumalanga Heritage
culture also prospered because it was at the crossroads Johnson’s farm. In the lee of towering orange cliffs and Resources Authority doesn’t appear to have any
of a far-reaching trade network. once camouflaged by hacked-away trees is a corbelled, interest in protecting any of the hundreds of Bakoni
The area exported gold and ivory to Portuguese and once moss-covered hut with a tiny, ground-level structures scattered across the Ohrigstad to Carolina
Arab traders, who shipped it off the east coast, entrance that looks more suited to children than cradle.
probably from ports in what is now Mozambique. In adults. There are many such huts scattered across the Landowners, academics and interested groups stand
return, they imported iron, beadwork and cloth. landscape, but the one on the farm is uniquely well in opposition to such bureaucratic blindness, but they
While initially advantageous, the fact that the preserved. are hard-pressed to make inroads amid the apathy for
Bakoni were situated at the junction of trade routes “We tie ourselves in knots over the corbelled hut,” the Bakoni. Their rear-guard action for recognition and
flowing to all four points of the compass ultimately led says Delius, noting later that such huts were probably funding is increasingly desperate.
to their undoing. lookout posts with fine long views up the Badfontein
valley. WHERE YOU CAN TOUCH THE
THE RIDDLE OF THEIR DECLINE “Though they may well have had a range of WALLS OF HISTORY
The academics and researchers aren’t completely sure functions,” he says. Beyond debates about restitution and heritage,
– there is a fair amount of spirited guesswork where The hut, therefore, is both the actualisation and the progress in putting flesh to the bones of the Bakoni
Bakoni history is concerned – but the prevailing view symbol of a culture in retreat. In a sense, whether it story is slow.
is that they got caught between marauding Pedi from was a granary, a smelter (unlikely), a lookout or a Delius, for example, doubts that oral history will
the north and Swazi raiders from the south. They were shelter is immaterial. Within only a handful of years, provide the key to unlocking the treasure that is the
ultimately unable to defend themselves in the ensuing this retreat became permanent. Bakoni’s ingenious past.
Mfecane slaughter. “The Bakoni were caught in a kind of no-man’s land Mothupi says that, even on the Verlorenkloof farm
According to Joseph Mothupi, Johnson’s right-hand between the Pedi and Swazi, and were subdued itself, there is need for further investigation because
man and guide to relics on the farm, the Bakoni fought completely,” says Delius. “Radical depopulation of the knowledge is incomplete.
at least one pitched battle in the vicinity of area was complete by about 1830.” Although they are thrilled with what has so far been
Mashishing, but were unable to defend themselves for Such a retreat was probably exacerbated by the discovered, everyone involved with the enigma of the
a prolonged period of time. Perhaps this had to do arrival of the trekboers in the northern reaches of the Bakoni and their rapid disappearance is also painfully
with the comparative looseness of their social area in the 1840s. aware of what they do not or cannot know.
organisation or a distaste for combat. Maybe their Then again, we have one of the world’s great open-
reluctance was metaphysical – they simply wanted to THE NEGLECT OF THE BAKONI air museums in the Bakoni’s stone remains. You can
be left alone. The neglect of the troubled Bakoni continues to this touch the walls and walk the terraces in a wonderland
The riddle of their decline – and, in some cases, day, a neglect sharpened by the fact that issues of that allows you to step into a completely different
reabsorption into other tribes – looks no closer to restitution rather than heritage and preservation have time.
being solved now than it was 100 years ago. hurtled to the forefront of the national debate about However, this wonderland is being encroached upon.
With the Mfecane in full, blood-curdling swing, land and land ownership. Delius points to a potential mining boom in the area,
academics have suggested that, as a pre-emptive When it comes to restitution, the Bakoni’s fate is particularly when it comes to chrome and platinum.
defensive move, the Bakoni retreated out of the sun- complicated. Firstly, their dispossession took place With a possible boom comes a frenzy for permits and
rich valleys and into the kloofs. roughly 100 years before the Natives Land Act of 1913, prospecting by those with little regard for the Bakoni’s
While this offered protection, the forests limited which is seen as the marker before which claims for tortured past.
their crops’ access to sunlight, and therefore affected land restitution (in the Restitution of Land Rights Should the opportunity arise, they will further
the stability of their food stocks. This, possibly Amendment Act) cannot be made. profane these sites that are an irreplaceable part of
combined with successive years of drought, meant that, Secondly, with historical uncertainty about whether our shared history.