Stephen Gray
FRAGILE HERITAGE: A ROCK ART FIELD GUIDE by David Lewis-Williams and Geoffrey Blundell (Witwatersrand University Press)
The surface of the rock shelter overlooking the offices of this newspaper is blank these days; the bright gallery of San paintings that celebrated how the country had been for millennia has dimmed and eroded off. On Cottesloe hill is only a monument to the bittereinders of the Boer War, a Moerdyk church and the usual defacements of graceless Johannesburg: burst Castle bottles and condoms, spraycan rudeness.
But from this lookout, South Africa’s first artists had their vantage over the campus of the University of the Witwatersrand as well, gazing directly at where its Rock Art Research Centre would come to be. This brilliant field guide derives from there, recording what little of their achievement is still worth visiting.
I knew that the Rock Art Museum in the Johannesburg Zoo was always a well-kept secret. There, one could wander down the numbers with a headset to the yelp of wild dogs, getting the atmosphere. Now it is all removed to the MuseumAfrica for reasons of conservation. One item depicts their moment of decline: an engraving of the arrival of that snorting rain-animal, Burchell’s wagon. Burchell, in turn, recorded the reverse shot: little indigenes scampering from his blunderbuss. We still do not know precisely who they were, as they have vanished …
Only their traces remain, in inaccessible hideouts from Kamberg to the Cedarberg, from Thaba Sione to Cathedral Peak. One knows the museumised relics, for example at the new hands-on display at Pretoria’s African Window. But how, without trespass and a 4X4, does one reach the rest?
To test the usefulness of this guide, I chose the nearest outdoor location – north of Vereeniging at Redan. We were the first party in all of six months to pay our respects to – well, a breathtakingly beautiful site. Its guardian, Anina Mackay of the Vaal Teknorama Museum, showed us how, in the interim, due to pollution, one slab of the outcrop of ecca sandstone had simply peeled away, like roast chicken- skin. By the time this review appears, more may well have sloughed off.
Fortunately, the sky was overcast, so we lost touch with the rush-hour R59, the sour-smelling collieries with their dumps, burning ashpits and sinkholes. The preservative fence was long trampled down by the cloven-hoofed. A fine drizzle slowly brought out the shadowy petroglyphs, like pictures developing on a plate: shining sunbursts, funny walking penises, shape- changing beasts and bits of tortoiseshell design.
Why should we keep such a beguiling display from rust and ruin? Mackay’s documentation showed GW Stow, when prospecting, found thousands of celebratory medallions and doodles here. Doc Jeffreys, with the Archeological Society in 1948, traced hundreds, and surely he was right: they were loitering herdsmen at the watering- place above the stream that no longer runs, outpecking one another. Now there are barely a dozen images, weathering out.
My answer must be this. Drawing skills are learnt, not inherited genetically, so that the hand that holds this pen had to be taught by the hand that held that stone. Touch that slippery rockface (leaving no corrosive sweat or fingerpad grease). Learn the link, feel its power. Irreplaceable. Sacred.
As the guidebook says, the Redan rock engravings are easily accessible, at a bargain price. Take water and food. Just don’t shit on our heritage; the facilities are back at the fine Vaal Teknorama, where Mackay keeps the keys.
Anina Mackay can be contacted on 082 365- 7307 or (016) 450-3136