It is difficult today to say who the victors were in a month-long stand-off between the Kekana Ndebele chiefdom and the Voortrekkers 150 years ago. At first, the Kekana seemed to be the losers, with heavy losses of life, after the Voortrekkers besieged Makapansgat (Makapan’s Cave) in the Strydpoort mountain range in Limpopo near Mokopane. They starved the Ndebele sheltering in the cave by cutting them off from food and water for more than a month.
Thousands of Ndebele, mostly women and children, died in the gat, while the loss of life on the Voortrekkers’ side during the siege was less than 10 people. The town the Voortrekkers established near Makapansgat was named after one of the men killed there, Piet Potgieter, hence the name Potgietersrus.
But the Ndebele king Mokopane, whom the Voortrekkers were after, was not caught in the siege. Now, 150 years later, Pot-gietersrus is an apartheid relic and old king Mokopane must be laughing in his grave, because the old frontier town now bears his name.
The history of Makapan’s Valley, now a national heritage site, stretches back far further than 150 years. Over the past century, the valley became world-renowned for its rich deposits of hominid fossils, which narrates more than three million years of human history.
Besides the Ndebele/Voortrekker stand-off, other dramas were played out here, especially between people and carnivores, as the discovery of giant hyena skulls in association with hominid skulls bearing deep teeth marks testifies.
This ancient valley is now earmarked for a multi-million-rand facelift. The National Lotto has given R16,6-million towards improving the site, which will make it one of Limpopo’s premier tourist destinations.
At present, tourists who wish to visit Makapansgat must book in advance. The facilities are still primitive, with only temporary toilets. But soon all this will change.
The lotto funds will be used to improve infrastructure around Makapan’s Cave. An interpretive centre and research facilities are to be created at the site. A 1950s farmhouse a few metres from the cave will be recycled to house the centre.
Extensive cultural and paleaonthological deposits have been unearthed in the valley. The Cave of Hearts is one of only two Stone Age sites in the world which contain an unbroken sequence of artefacts from the Early Stone Age to the Later Stone Age. Overall, the sediments, fossils, bones and artefacts in the valley’s caves preserve a unique record of hominid habitation and evolution dating back 3,3-million years.
Over the millennia, the valley has sheltered several cultures and communities. Makapanspoort used to be an ancient seasonal migration route for huge herds of antelope.
Researchers believe that conflicts between modern people in the area began in the 17th century. When Mokopane and his Kekana Ndebele hid in the cave, they were not the first.
The siege of 1854 between the Kekana Ndebele and the Voortrekkers was sparked by a dispute over toll fees, during which the Kekana captured one of the Voortrekkers and skinned him alive at a place thereafter called Moorddrift.
The angry Voortrekkers called upon every Boer in the old Transvaal to wreak vengeance for the unfortunate man’s hideous death, so the Ndebele fled into the cave in an effort to escape revenge attacks. Once the Voortrekkers discovered the cave, however, one of their commanders, Piet Potgieter, was killed during a skirmish. Paul Kruger, who would later become famous as the president of the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek, risked his life to retrieve Potgieter’s body.
Although thousands of Kekana starved to death during the siege of the cave, Mokopane himself escaped by tying himself under the belly of a cow. In this way, he passed undetected among the Voortrekkers while cattle were being herded out of the cave.
Today the remains of the stone wall they built as a bulwark are still clearly visible, but the cave itself is disintegrating, making it dangerous for tourists to enter.
Mokopane (the town) has lived through a series of name changes stemming from its history. In 1852, founding father Hendrik Potgieter named his settlement in the fertile valley between the Waterberg and Strydpoort mountain ranges Vredenburg. The vrede (peace) part of the name commemorates the peace established between him and Andries Pretorius, who had defeated the amaZulu at Blood River.
After the death of Piet Potgieter, it became Potgietersrus, and then in 2002 was named after the old chief Mokopane.
The valley still hosts a rich cultural diversity. The Voortrekkers of old who settled here were the ancestors of today’s big local farmers.
Sadly, there is still a huge racial divide in the area. At the 150th anniversary of the siege last November, a reconciliation ceremony at Makapan’s Cave between the erstwhile antagonists attempted to heal this rift.
Driving through the area, one may be surprised to encounter people wearing Scottish kilts, especially on festive days. Even more surprising is that these black ‘Scots” are not the descendants of some renegade Scotsman who took it upon himself to mix a bit of Scotch into the African gene pool. They are members of the Pedi tribe.
The kilts are worn as a sign of respect for the victors of a 19th-century battle in which nearly the entire Pedi tribe was wiped out. When the Pedis first saw the Scottish soldiers dressed in kilts, they believed they were about to fight women. This disdain proved to be a costly mistake.
The latter-day descendants of the Pedis who live near Makapansgat will benefit a great deal from the upgrading of Makapan’s Cave and Makapan’s Valley.
In the short term, many work opportunities will be created for the community, which will also have a say in how the upgrading process is conducted, says Ron Vinney, manager of the South African Heritage Resources Agency’s Limpopo office.
‘The improvement project will be enhanced by a long-term sustainability programme that will simultaneously promote tourism while ensuring the protection and conservation of the site,” he says.
Development will begin as soon as the social impact assessment is completed and the required regulations are fulfilled. Vinney says he hopes the upgrading of Makapan’s Cave will act as a stimulus for tourism-related initiatives around Mokopane.
‘There are big tangible benefits for these communities resulting from the project that cannot yet be calculated,” he says.
Community members are being trained as tourist guides and will also work on upgrading projects such as reinforcing paths.
The mission of the Makapan’s Valley Project is to transform the valley into a key tourism icon for Limpopo province, which includes application to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation for world heritage status.
‘Both in terms of a cultural landscape and as a natural environment, Makapan’s Valley encompasses assets which would qualify it for inclusion as a world heritage site,” says Vinney.
A protective buffer zone to ensure the long-term scientific integrity of a site is an essential prerequisite for consideration as a world heritage site.
The Mogalakwena Municipality, within which the town of Mokopane falls, recently donated the site to Limpopo’s Tourism and Parks Board and the University of the Witwatersrand, thus passing on the responsibility of its development to key decision-makers and academics. The cabinet of the Limpopo provincial government has also endorsed the use of Makapan’s Valley as a conservation area, in recognition of its great national and international importance.
The ancient fossils in the valley, which will play a part in the application for world heritage status, were discovered in 1925. Wilfred Eitzman, a maths teacher from Polokwane, inspired by anthropologist Raymond Dart’s discoveries at Taung, visited the limestone quarry in the area to search for hominid remains. He crated up his fossils and sent them to Dart, who was excited by the find.
In 1936, the Historical Monuments Commission was asked to consider declaring Makapan’s Cave a national monument. Professor C van Riet Lowe, secretary of the commission and director of the Archaeological Survey of the Union of South Africa, visited the site and decided that it warranted further investigation.
Excavations were halted during World War II and after the war a student expedition led by a young Phillip Tobias in July 1945 once again focused interest on the valley. It was during this time that the significance of the whole site and how it fitted into the bigger picture was first mapped.
Since then, excavation has continued and a great variety of hominid and extinct animal fossils have been found. The debris of some 50 years’ digging has largely been cleared and scientists have constructed a timeline of events through the millennia at the site.
Besides the wealth of hominid remains, many animal fossils were superbly preserved in the calcified cavern infills of a series of ancient caves within the dolomitic rocks. The well-preserved range of stone tools has allowed researchers to trace the development of stone tool technology over the past half-million years. The valley also houses one of the earliest sites where signs of fire have been discovered.