Zonderwater POW Camp

John Lincoln's series on the history of Cullinan continues. This article looks at the village and surrounding area during World War II. Click here to view the series index.

In 1932 the mine closed for a second time and the village became a virtual ghost town. That was until 1939, when the military arrived. It was probably the vacant houses and the abundance of open veldt in which to practice manoeuvres that led the military to decide to select the Village and surrounding area to construct a massive camp.

The village was also connected to the railway network. The decision to construct the Italian POW camp at nearby Sonderwater (now Zonderwater) was probably influenced by its location well inland, as well as the close proximity of the SA Armed Forces.

The regiments of the forces decided to construct emblems of their military regiments on a koppie in the village. The two bagges visible in the above photograph are the “Regiment de la Rey” and the “Witwatersrand Rifles”. Other badges are “The Second Royal Durban Light Infantry”, the “Pretoria Regiment (Princess Alice’s Own)” and the “Central Army Training Depot” (John Lincoln)

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A fountain built by Italian POWs who were interred at the nearby Zonderwater POW camp around 1943 has been moved from its original position to a new site in the garden of the McHardy House Museum in Cullinan.

The fountain was built in an area called Hallsdorp. The miners houses built in this area in the early part of the last century were demolished at the end of the Second World War. The area became derelict and the fountain was quickly forgotten.

The fountain neglected in the bush (Cullinan Heritage Society)

Many decades later the Cullinan Heritage Society located the fountain and later applied for permission to move it to an area where it could be appreciated by the many visitors to the village. Volunteers of the Heritage Society worked to secure the fountain to prevent any breakage of the stone structure.

The fountain being secured (Cullinan Heritage Society)

The Petra Mine supplied the essential crane and transport to move the fountain. The operation progressed smoothly with no damage to 75 year old structure.

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Born in Palermo on 1st October 1910, Giuseppe Maniscalco was one of a large family of 8 children. After the sudden death of his father, his mother was unable to support the children alone and therefore decided to leave Palermo and travelled to family and friends in Trapani. With the consent of Giuseppe's mother, the children were split up and were adopted by other friends and relatives.

Giuseppe decided he would like to live with his uncle, Rizzuto Noncencio, who had a farm near Casablanca, in Morocco. His uncle traded in mules and horses, introducing stallions from the Abda and Chianda areas of Morocco, to improve the strain of Sicilian horses. All went well with Giuseppe until one day he had a traumatising experience involving the foreman, Mr. Poleo, who was unsuccessfully herding some animals into an enclosure. Frustrated, he told Giuseppe to stand at the main gate, waving his arms while he herded them in from behind. The animals stampeded towards him and he took fright and ran away. He hid in the bush and was rescued by 2 Arabs on camels who took him to their village. He spent a week with them, not understanding anything they said.

As no one had come to try and find him from his uncle's farm, he decided to run away again and made his way to the farm of Mr Pietro Mazzara, a Sicilian who had been farming in Morocco for many years. This family adopted Giuseppe and soon he was...

[Published on The Heritage Portal in June 2015] The Spargo's are an ancient and, according to the available historical record anyway, honourable Cornish family. However, they have been more notable for their commitment to the arts of peace than those of war and it therefore came as a surprise to me to discover many years later that as a young man my father had served as a volunteer in No. 2 Company, South African Medical Corps. This unit formed part of the Active Citizen Force (ACF), a form of volunteer peacetime army established by the South African Defence Act of 1912. Further enquiries, however, revealed that in those years the family, like numerous others, was so impoverished by the economic problems of the times that the lure of several weeks of free 'holiday' per year at Potchefstroom Military Camp as a member of the ACF was a major factor in his enlistment!

Alfred Hugh Spargo July 1943

However, the outbreak of war in September 1939 brought a sudden change in attitude and, like tens of thousands of other South Africans, he volunteered for full-time military service. As he suffered severely from a duodenal ulcer he was to his great chagrin rejected by the Union Defence Force (UDF), in spite of his pre-war membership of the ACF. However, a break in the dark cloud of rejection soon appeared. At...