Stephen Gray : Unspoilt places
I had seen a fine photo of the pan, like an encrusted sump, enclosed in circular hills. But I had not expected the tug of its metallic shine, like a white-ringed retina, focusing the light. I had seen the trail- map and the toposcope, but I had not realised how hidden it is. Nor how awesomely spectacular.
On the rim of Tswaing, at one of the yellow footprints that signpost the trail, one stands aghast at the result of the devastating event that occurred there, all of 220 000 years ago. This crater was long thought to be a volcanic blow-hole, like many other disc formations that pockmark the bushveld.
But now geologists have shown it is the impact site of a meteorite – a stone one, called a chondrite – that smashed to earth here with such force that it merely exploded everything. So Tswaing is a kind of geographical bomb-site, slowly weathering down into a basin of baking- soda.
We visited this strange place after Heritage Day, when thousands of people from the surrounding Winterveld and Soshanguve communities (numbering some million bush- dwellers) had been celebrating, very neatly, with dances and partying. A day later and we had it entirely to ourselves. Then a busload of Wits students arrived, architects planning a much-needed educational and exhibition centre.
The first human use of Tswaing dates to 800 years ago, when early Tswana-speakers called the Moloko arrived with their hunting-dogs, and with pots to process the briny crust – salt for preserving strips of game. Most of this century a donkey-driven soda-ash plant operated to provide alkali for the Witwatersrand mines, and so the site is marked with industrial debris.
The donkeys ate everything and sickle-bush took over. The Tswaing Forum which negotiates good community relations – it has to, otherwise the property would be vandalised – nowadays organises sickle- bush culling. Acacia and combretum are returning. So are blue guarri and sumptuous wild plum.
Take a water bottle, as the trail is 7km long and lasts three hours.
Only a floppy indigenous Nguni cow from the royal herd could drink at that chemical solution and make anything of it. Very few birds beyond a blackwinged stilt are long- legged enough not to rust on contact. For the record, the trail’s development was funded by none other than the Royal Netherlands embassy, so maybe also take a pack of Amstel. Certainly a hat.
Tswaing (meaning place of salt) is a branch of Pretoria’s National Cultural History Museum, curated on the spot by Ab Damaneyt, who joined the project after it had been an experimental farm in 1993 and has seen it through to its opening in March 1996. Abe himself has just published a novel in Setswana – he is that kind of genial all-rounder. He obliges with inspiring information for excursionists wanting guided tours (book in advance). As he buckets around in a 4×4, use his cell- phone (082 458 4862).
His educational officer, who keeps the reception centre up and merrily running, is Joas Maponya (at 01214 98-7302). Talk about ingenious options: should you be a penniless student, there is an alternative to their very modest entry fee – pay with 20 empty tin cans.
Then stride out in sensible shoes into the orange and green sandy bundu with thoughts like these in mind. Once upon a time, before the mighty collision, this was a yellow-wood forest.
Way back when, for others approaching this magnetic core, the attraction was the crude salt. And salt, if you boiled it, filtered it, evaporated it, became a fungible, like cash today – the savour of trade … For recent migrant workers, this was literally the salt-mines, a hell on earth …
Tswaing is located in north-west Gauteng. Take the M35 north of Onderstepoort for 32km and turn left at the Soutpan Trading Store