Every province deserves one, but thus far only Mpumalanga is so blessed. Deeply researched, written and edited with admirable clarity, and attractively presented, Mpumalanga: History and Heritage (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press) is the Mail & Guardian‘s choice for non-fiction book of the year.
Wits University history professor Peter Delius, editor of the volume, gathered a team of eminent historians, archaeologists, geologists, rock art specialists, geographers, economists and researchers to produce this definitive account of place, past and people. In analysing the past the book looks forward in the best ways possible as well, towards a future for the province informed by and drawing on its rich heritage.
Beginning before human beginnings, the book introduces one of the Earth’s most ancient rock sequences, one of the province’s treasures unguessed by the layÂperson. (The other is in Australia.) The story of that bedrock flows into the next chapter, “Stories in stone”, which deals with the Stone Age and early Iron Age developments and the coming of humankind, bringing in its wake metal, cattle and corbelled huts.
Careful unlayering and explanation of complex geological, archaeological, historical and anthropological concepts and facts is a hallmark of the book. What has lain beneath the surface of the Earth, or has been visible above but neglected, ignored or suppressed (people in the main), is here revealed by experts dedicated to making their subjects not only comprehensible but as gripping as a thriller. In this one has to acknowledge the endeavours of the editors, Pat Tucker and Riaan de Villiers, who have made the text fluid without sacrificing any of its academic rigour and profundity.
Chapters on ancient art and the more recent dynamics of nature conservation and management of natural resources beckon alongside chapters on the history of human habitation of the province, from the San, Bakgatla and Barolong to the visceral struggles over land in the 20th century and the story of the Struggle in the province during the National Party’s regime.
There is illuminating detail throughout. Readers will learn that Lake Chrissie, otherwise known as Chrissiesmeer, is the largest freshwater lake in South Africa. The province’s rock art treasures — paintings and engravings — are shown to be vast.
Complementary to the words are photographs, graphics and maps that constitute a heritage on their own; one could buy the book for this aspect of its knowledge and meaning alone. (Oddly though there is no map indicating the province’s place within South Africa as a whole.)
Notably, the book is the outcome of Delius’s long-held passion for the province allied to the foresight of its patrons: Mpumalanga and its premier Thabang Makwetla, the National Heritage Council and First National Bank. Stimulating and provocative, this splendid volume marks what I am hoping will be the first in a series of nine from the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, to whom much kudos too.
Jock of the Bushveld and transport riders are integral to the history of Mpumalanga and are both covered in the book above. In that light it’s worth revisiting J Percy Fitzpatrick’s Jock of the Bushveld, published in this its centenary year as a Penguin Modern Classic. This edition is notable first for the restoration of sections of the original 1907 text that have often been excised because of what’s deemed as their offensively racist nature. Second, its editor Stephen Gray has included “Postscript to Jock”, last published in 1932 and the previously unpublished “The Creed of Jock”.
The former gives a white adventurer’s eye view of South African history and is interesting precisely for that swaggering perspective of colonial superiority. Fitzpatrick does, however, lament and condemn the slaughter of millions of animals, in a prelude to what Jane Carruthers covers so well in the Mpumalanga book.
The latter, detailing “the little group of us who knew Jock well”, offers as fascinating insights into the Edwardian mindset, and into English war-making and conquering in Southern Africa, including Alan Wilson’s flying (and self-doomed) patrol of 32 marauding against the Matabele.
If Mpumalanga is a book of the year, Thomas Pakenham’s In Search of Remarkable Trees (Jonathan Ball) runs it close. Pakenham’s arboreal holy grail reaches its conclusion with this volume, dedicated to Southern Africa. (Its predecessors in the trinity were Meetings with Remarkable Trees and Remarkable Trees of the World.)
I’m absurdly pleased to “know” a number of the trees in Pakenham’s latest, from the dead river red gum at King’s Walden to the Modjadji cycads and the giants in the Woodbush Forest Reserve, all in Limpopo province. I was (also absurdly) disappointed that the great cabbage tree in the afro-montane forest at Kurisa Moya Nature Lodge near Haenertsburg (also Limpopo) didn’t make the book. Pakenham had been there, but the lie of the land probably ensured that no clear shot of this gigantic and magnificent tree was possible.
Beautifully photographed and reflected, the trees here are testament to a time before man (and I mean man) descended on old-growth forests and trees for mere lucre, floorboards and furniture.
All of that means that in many parts of this country there is only a fraction of indigenous forest left. The devastation is particularly marked where old-growth forest has made way for the plantations of pine and other wood that went towards making the paper on which the words you are reading are printed.
South Africa’s world-leading paper and pulp industry is a two-edged chainsaw. While it provides jobs, foreign exchange and penetration of global markets it also — as crucially — reduces vast tracts to green deserts. Driving through the seemingly pleasant green of a pine plantation is one thing; walking along its floor, strewn with dead pine needles and devoid of bird and animal life, is another altogether.
Pakenham’s book celebrates the astonishing survival against almost impossible odds — meteorological, animal, human — of remarkable trees. His magnificent protagonists are heroes and champions and monuments to the less fortunate members of their species, extracted and destroyed and gone forever.
Through this trilogy, Pakenham assumes the stature of one of Tolkien’s ents, those giant guardians of the forest. In showing and telling the wider world about the grandeur and fragility of trees, about their longevity and capacity to endure, he has served nobly the cause of trees and global heritage.
If you want an intimate account other than Pakenham’s of the river red gum at King’s Walden, turn to Bridget Hilton-Barber’s Garden of My Ancestors (Penguin).
I must admit a bias towards the subject. I know Hilton-Barber, worked with her late brother, Steve, and his wife, Monica, and memorably once visited King’s Walden as a paying guest. (At the very moment that Nato began bombing Belgrade over the state of affairs in Kosovo.) None of that detracts from what the book offers: it’s a moving, amusing memoir of a family, a special place (King’s Walden), and gardening of a high order.