Sean O’Toole
“I am married to the idea of the symbolism of this place,” explains Reverend Deon Snyman. Yet it is not merely the symbolic that connects this mild-mannered Afrikaner, a minister with the Unifying Reformed Church, to the Emakhosini Valley in northern Zululand.
“In a certain sense it feels as if I am coming home to my roots, because my forebears have been a part of the history that took place here,” he says.
Snyman’s great-great grandmother was stabbed to death in the nearby hills 21 times, he says. Afrikaner heritage remembers Johanna van der Merwe as a martyr of the Great Trek. But as Snyman concedes: “That’s not that important to me now.”
It is only a small part of why this Potchefstroom-born theologian finds himself at Umgungundlovu, the burial place of the Zulu kings, once also famously home of King Dingane, and journey’s end for Piet Retief.
Umgungundlovu’s figurative importance is still much in evidence. The area is famous for its 23m concrete cross. Situated on an elevated position on Hlom’ amaButho, or “arm the warriors” hill, the mission cross is positioned on ground that once served as the gathering place for Dingane’s impis. It is a stark reminder of how literal symbols have imposed their ideology on the landscape.
The hill’s Christian significance, however, predates the Dutch Reformed mission. In 1837 a missionary, Reverend Owen, was granted permission to occupy the land. The artist-explorer Thomas Baines also famously used this religious enclave to document the visual splendour of the Zulu royal residence across the valley, a residence that once comprised 1 700 huts formed in a tight 5km circumference.
Set amid an undulating and thorny topography, Umgungundlovu is today known by many names. Mandla Nxumalo, the headmaster at KwaDingane Primary School, says that when the Dutch Reformed Church decided to establish a mission station here in 1949 under Reverend PP Stander, they preferred the more prosaic name Dingaanstad.
That was more precise than Umgun-gundlovu, which can be translated as both “the secret meeting of the king” (referring to the plot to kill Shaka), or “place of the large elephant”.
Dingaanstad also represented a significant improvement over Moordplaas, the name of the cattle farm established over the ruins of the vanquished Zulu kingdom.
“I am aware that, among a lot of Zulus, they are not pleased about the church being here,” Snyman says. “From the beginning, the whole idea of reconciliation here was quite an important idea, but because of the apartheid history of South Africa it never really materialised.”
As factionalism within the Dutch Reformed Church echoed the demise of the apartheid state, so too did it signal the collapse of the mission’s benevolent intentions and financial fortunes.
“This place went through a very difficult phase,” says Snyman. The theological seminary closed, the orphanage was never rebuilt and the trainee dormitories, built with money collected from the families of Afrikaners executed at Umgungundlovu, were left vacant. Dingaanstad, like the gutted remains of Dingane’s royal residence, became a living ruin, a place commemorating conquest and failure.
It was at this uncertain juncture in the mission’s history that Snyman became minister at Dingaanstad. “I realised when I got the call, that it was the right time. Politics is on our side now, and the symbolism of this place is so big that one can really start making something of it.”
Snyman (35) admits the mission is open to negative interpretations, but he believes that “you must use negative things to make something positive. We have a huge task ahead of making ourselves more acceptable in our community.” To this end Snyman supervises a home-based care project for people with HIV and Aids a trade workshop for the disabled, and a modest computer literacy initiative.
But these schemes are all secondary to Snyman’s primary function: ministering. “My congregation stretches over a vast area,” he explains. Encompassing the poverty-stricken Babanago nearby, it includes a number of satellite churches stretching all the way northwards to Vryheid about 80km away.
Over Marie biscuits and Coke, often within the modest interiors of a rural dwelling, Snyman offers a message that is spirituality uplifting yet rooted in the pragmatism poverty demands. His congregation is not entirely Zulu. “There are about 10 Afrikaans people in the church too.”
At the mission’s school, KwaDingane Primary, the influence of the large cross in this rural community is still apparent. Morning assembly is always preceded by a stirring hymn. Yet here, under the gaze of the cross and across the valley from Umgungundlovu, things have also changed.
The scholars are now taught the “new structures of history” says Mandla Nxumalo. “It’s not very difficult with primary learners, because the students don’t have many questions like high school children.”
Tourism is a future that many in the valley hope will revive its economy. Snyman claims the valley has been earmarked for development by central government, and many of the old farms have been expropriated. To keep pace with developments the old mission formed a trust. “We’ve put all the property, everything into a trust as a sign of reconciliation,” he says.
Looking to a future in which the community might function independently, volunteers assist with constructing tourist accommodation.
This commitment eludes the mission’s Siamese other, the battle site at Ncome River. The name Blood River will forever be etched on to the memory of all South Africans.
During the apartheid years, Afrikaner nationalists celebrated the historical defeat of Dingane’s army on December 16 1838 with near-religious fervour. Escaping this view of history is no easy task; countless apartheid monoliths still proclaim Afrikanerdom’s resilience and godliness.
Of these many skewed cultural edifices, the Ncome River battle site still maps out the divisions that animate history in its present tense. Here, alongside the fenced-in Blood River with its nationalist accoutrements, lies the Department of Arts, Culture, Science & Technology’s special heritage project, the eNcome Monument/ Museum.
Opened on November 26 1999, the bridge that connects this new museum to the older monument remains unfinished, halted by acrimonious threats to blow it up.
“I don’t like this Blood River thing at all,” says Snyman. “Blood River could have become something beautiful. Unfortunately I don’t think it is really going to become that because you have the far-right people with their own agenda.
“Afrikaans people have a very, very big responsibility. They must take the initiative, they must take the first steps towards reconciliation.”
Snyman is a signatory of the Home for All initiative, the contentious declaration of collective guilt for apartheid initiated by a grouping of prominent white South Africans.
He offers a humble, hands-on approach to reconciling symbol with everyday life. “If you don’t want to become a part of this process,” he simply states, “one must leave South Africa, because you are going to become irrelevant and irritate a lot of people.”