This was not a camping trip for softies. We had to take all our own water — for both drinking and washing. Toilet facilities extended to a spade that you had to take with you to a secluded bit of the bush. At night high winds howled through the tents, promising a rain that never came. Our skin, hair and clothes were permanently covered with fine dust.
But these discomforts were a small price to pay for access to one of the country’s hidden treasures: a plateau high up in the south-western end of the Soutpansberg.
Much of the terrain is a golden sandstone, remnants of a fossilised desert, thought to be about two billion years old.
It’s a dramatic landscape, alternately dipping into deep gorges and soaring into high sandstone monoliths — and its caves and cliff overhangs hide some of the most beautiful rock art in the country. Valuable artefacts that date back to the Stone Age lie undisturbed in caves.
Take it from me, this rock art lark can rapidly become addictive, particularly in a giant open-air gallery like the Makgabeng.
Striding across this eerily beautiful landscape, peeking under every rock overhang, more often than not, you’re likely to be rewarded with a private viewing of exquisite art. Tiny, delicate images, which, once you know even a little about it, are eloquent with meaning.
San shamans painted them after trance dances in which they entered the spirit world of animals to get rain-making power and attract wild animals. So you might see men with the cloved hooves of antelope and antelope with human characteristics. And circles of dancers, deep in trance, bleeding from the nose.
Very different but equally intriguing is the Northern Sotho art, also found in the Makgabeng.
It is one of these sites that is the focus of our visit. I’m part of a group of postgrad students from the Rock Art Research Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, whose job it is to formulate a tourism management plan for the Train Site, a spectacular mural painted across 24m of rockface a century or so ago.
The Train Site, so named because of the dominant image of a train that disgorges marauding settlers and swallows up Hananwa, records the story of a forgotten but seminal war in the making of modern South Africa.
It is known as the Moleboho War after Chief Moleboho, leader of the Hananwa and one of the last great African chieftancies to hold out against Paul Kruger’s insatiable demands for prime farmland and labour for the mines.
In 1894, when Maleboho refused to move off his lands or pay the hut tax that would force his men into the cash economy, Kruger assembled a conscript army and attacked. Han- anwa homesteads were burnt, their cattle stolen and grain stores raided.
Maleboho and his royal council fled into the mountains and the Boers laid siege at the foot. Eventually starvation forced them down and the chief and his men were thrown into Pretoria Central and the Hananwa parcelled out as slave labour to the Boers, who were given their land.
Six years later when the Anglo-Boer South African War ceded the Transvaal Republic to the British, the latter freed Maleboho as a reward for his valiant fight against Kruger and gave him back his land.
A Chief Maleboho still rules the people of the Makgabeng, who live in traditional villages in the shadow of the sandstone monoliths.
Each homestead consists of a central courtyard with individual rondavels off it; the walls beautifully decorated Ndebele-style.
Modern conveniences, such as decent roads, electricity and piped water — let alone toilets, long-drops
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or otherwise — have not yet reached the Makgabeng.
The most important stakeholders in the art of the Makgabeng are the communities who live among it. What do they want?
Their answer is unanimous: they want tourism, for the money it might bring to supplement the pensions and remittances sent by relatives from the city on which most of them live.
This sends us back to the drawing board. Researchers we have consulted have recommended the opposite: seal off the area — it is too precious and too fragile to be opened to the hordes.
The biggest threat to rock art the world over is from human vandalism. But the people have spoken and, for us, their words bear most weight.
We need to suggest a form of tourism that will do least damage, while bringing the most benefit. It is also dangerous terrain: there are mambas, puff adders and scorpions. You can get lost in a heartbeat and limited cellphone reception makes it difficult to summon help.
For this reason — and the need to protect the art — it is imperative that visitors are accompanied by a guide at all times.
The conclusion is a pragmatic one. There is an excellent local guide in the Makgabeng: Jonas Tlouamma has been trained by the South African Heritage Resources Agency and is studying archaeology at Unisa. His English is fluent and, best of all, he grew up in the Makgabeng and knows it intimately.
Chief Maleboho has given him permission to bring visitors to the area.
So, for the first time, the Makgabeng is open to the public — but on a restricted basis.
You have to go via Tlouamma, who will be your guide — both on the fabulous hikes available in the area and to the rock art sites, about which he is hugely knowledgeable.
The area is only accessible with a 4×4 and you have to take all your rubbish away with you — but you will also leave with some extraordinary memories.