North West

On the southern bank of Hartbeespoort Dam lies the archaeological site of one of the oldest farming and herding settlements in South Africa. It comprised several small interlinked homesteads and was first excavated by the pioneering Wits University archaeologist Revil Mason in the 1970s.

The inhabitants of this settlement at Broederstroom were the first Iron Age people in the area, and another leading archaeologist at Wits University, Tom Huffman, later used styles and patterns on potsherds from the site to trace their origins via the KwaZulu-Natal east coast through East Africa and back to the birthplace of the Bantu languages east of Nigeria. The site reveals that people were practicing agriculture, farming livestock, making pottery and smelting iron in South Africa 1,600 years ago. They brought with them the linguistic roots of the Bantu languages now spoken by 80 per cent of South Africans, and introduced methods of farming and animal husbandry that gave them considerable advantages over the Stone Age nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life that had, until then, existed in the region.

Farming and animal husbandry

The people of Broederstroom tilled the land and stored their produce in sealed underground pits lined with cattle dung. Methane gas from the dung lining of the pit controlled insect infestations, and grain stored in this way could last for several seasons. For daily use, grain was also kept in wicker storage bins raised on stones to keep out the damp.

Later Stone Age artifacts were found at the site, and it...

At the time of writing, the coronavirus Covid-19 is still disrupting life in South Africa. In this article we recall an earlier pandemic, the so-called ‘Spanish’ Flu that devastated the world of our great-grandparents a century ago. It had a major impact in South Africa and disrupted the building of Hartbeespoort Dam. In writing this Memoir I have relied heavily on the recent Van Riebeeck Society publication (2018), In a Time of Plague: Memories of the ‘Spanish’ Flu Epidemic of 1918 in South Africa by Howard Phillips, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Cape Town. Phillips's authoritative book was timed to commemorate the centenary of the 1918 Flu epidemic but its publication shortly before the emergence of Covid-19 has been fortuitous.

A cartoon from Die Burger, 16 October 1918 reproduced in Howard Phillips’ In a Time of Plague: Memories of the ‘Spanish’ Flu Epidemic of 1918 in South Africa.

The magnitude of the 1918 flu epidemic is sometimes forgotten. In the 18 months between March 1918 and August 1919 more than 50 million people worldwide died from the disease. This far exceeded the 14 million deaths resulting from World War I itself and the 36 million who have died in the past 15 years from HIV/AIDS. South Africa was one of the worst affected countries with more than one person in 25...

The Magaliesberg has a distinguished but little-known history in astronomy. Fifty years ago, three world class observatories were located in the region. Many prominent astronomers came here to observe the southern skies and their observations had far-reaching consequences; the estimated age of the universe was doubled, moon landings were controlled, and South Africa became a leader in astronomical science.
 
In 1903 the Transvaal Observatory (later the Union Observatory) was established in Johannesburg, the first major South African observatory outside the Cape. The director, Robert Innes, initiated a working collaboration with Leiden University in Holland that lasted over seventy years and a building for the exclusive use of Leiden astronomers was built in the Union Observatory grounds in 1936. However, by the 1950s the city lights began to impair observations and a new site was found on the southern shore of Hartbeespoort Dam near Broederstroom. Coincidentally, the locality is adjacent to the Early Iron Age archaeological site later excavated by Revil Mason and Tom Huffman.

Observatory Ridge, Johannesburg (The Heritage Portal)

The historic Franklyn-Adams...

The tiny town of Marikana (established in 1870) was never much of a town and for a long time was really no more than a railway station and a collection of shops. In fact, the outside world would not have heard of Marikana at all if it were not for the notorious Lonmin Marikana platinum mining strike and shooting, where 34 striking Lonmin miners were shot and killed by police in 2012. I visited Marikana three times for a research project on visual activity, looking to record visible signs of the 2012 atrocity - graffiti, posters, stencilled signs saying “Remember Marikana” - but there is no visible trace and no memorial. There is only the shabby town in the shadow of Lonmin’s platinum processing plant within whose ambit, thousands of people live in poverty. So much platinum has been hauled out of the ground, you would think the place would be electroplated in money, but it is not.

Stencilled sign

A few shops and a railway station

The current form of the town of Marikana reflects an early white Afrikaner farming history, with small shops and a railway station on the early Pretoria-North-Midway line. In about 1910, the farmers from the area around Marikana requested the railway siding on this line so that they could transport their agricultural goods to urban markets in Pretoria. To this...

The Afrikaans version of this article appears on Lennie's blog. Click here to read.

With the quiet of the past few days, one can probably hear the only working clock with bells in the tower of a church in Potchefstroom from kilometres away. That is the clock of the Reformed Church (RC) Potchefstroom Die Bult. This clock has a story with many twists and turns, starting its life in Great Britain and reaching Potchefstroom via Durban.

RC Potchefstroom Die Bult shares its church building with the Theological School of the Reformed Church on the corner of Borcherd Street and Thabo Mbeki Drive. The building was designed by the well-known South African architect Gerhard Moerdijk. After the foundation stone was laid on 2 February 1952 by Prof SP van der Walt, the church was officially inaugurated on 18 October 1952.

The third Theological School of the Reformed Church was designed by Gerhard Moerdijk and opened in 1952. The building was erected in conjunction with the Reformed Church, Potchefstroom-North (as RC Die Bult was previously known). The church was to serve as a meeting place for the synod, while the school, administrative offices, library and archives were housed in the same building.

In 2011 RC Potchefstroom-Noord amalgamated with RC Noordbrug to form...

What we see now happening worldwide with the Coronavirus is not new to Potchefstroom. Pandemics have passed through the city in the past. Three of them stand out. 

Although the Rinderpest did not kill humans, except those who ate the flesh of infected animals, it caused wide-spread devastation in the country. This lead to desperate attempts at containing the spread and aid to impoverished farmers afterwards. Likewise the “Spanish” influenza, or flu for short, of 1918/9 devastated South Africa. In Potchefstroom it caused the deaths of many. In 2003 Potchefstroom also had to prepare for a disaster when three students died of meningitis in the city. As with the current Coronavirus crisis public places were closed as a precautionary measure and sports and other events were cancelled.

The story below was first published on my blog: lenniegouws.co.za, which focuses on the history of Potchefstroom.

Rinderpest

The devastation caused by a highly infectious disease was seen in 1896/7 with the outbreak of Rinderpest.

It is estimated that 2,5 million animals perished from the disease, both domesticated and wild animals. Rinderpest affected all ruminating animals with cleft hoofs, except small game.

In 1975 a former transport-rider told his memories to Prof JH Coetzee of the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education and it was published in the second book in a series on the Groot Marico, called: Transportry, Runderpes en Poskoetse. He was CF Gronum.

The word Rinderpest is derived from German meaning cattle plague.

According to Gronum the Rinderpest was introduced to...

September was Heritage Month but here I was in October invited to spend a weekend at Kedar Heritage Lodge to join the celebrations for the unveiling of a memorial to Sir Winston Churchill. Why October? Why Churchill in the Bushveld? Then I remembered. Kedar is a modern reincarnation of President Kruger’s farm and country estate, Boekenhoutfontein (meaning Beech-wood Spring). Now located in the Northwest Province, it was once a jewel in the Transvaal Republic. The 10th October was President Kruger’s birthday (his dates 1825-1904) and if you were a child during the fifties, it was a date that was writ large in school history of that era. We used to celebrate Kruger Day as a public holiday. Today 10th October is just an average working day. It was one of those holidays that was dispensed with when South Africa transitioned to a democracy for all. Saturday 13th October was the nearest weekend to that now forgotten 10th October. The Kruger Farm has become Kedar Heritage Lodge and is part of the Recreation Africa group of hotels and restaurants owned by Robert Forsyth. This company began purchasing farmland in the area including the portion owned by Kruger’s daughter Gezina. Purchases continued and today the Hotel group owns some 1 200 acres.

Kgosikgolo Lentswe - c1857-1924. The...

In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie tells the story of her visit to the unique Oxwagon Lodge near Hartbeespoort. The article was first published on the Mogale City website on 30 October 2009. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

There’s not many things these days that last two centuries. One thing that has is the traditional Voortrekker wagon.

You can get to see half a dozen of them placed in a circle at the Oxwagon Lodge, east of the Hartbeespoort Dam, just beyond the northern border of Mogale City.

And if you want to know what it was like to be a Voortrekker trekking across the country, stay over at the lodge and sleep in a wagon.

They have been beautifully restored, and each has a double bed in it, with an adjoining bedroom and bathroom.

Retired entomologist Erik Holm, something of an expert when it comes to oxwagons, says: “Wagons are only one part of our proud history.”

As a curious entomologist he got into the wagon business when he decided to restore an old oxwagon. “I’m supposed to be a scientist, but I’m a jack of all trades.”

He discovered that there was more to it than he thought. “It involved all the crafts – carpentry, leatherwork and paintwork,” he says.

When he finished the restoration, he says, everyone wanted to sleep in it. And everyone, including the local museum staff, wanted him to come and restore the old oxwagons lying about in their backyards...

A Peep Into My Life, The Memoir of William Eastwood was reproduced in 2016, 82 years after it was initially published. This was done at the request of Eastwood's granddaughter Mary Drabbe, who is now proudly distributing his original work. Photographs and some relevant research has been added by compiler and editor Jennifer Els.

Mary reveals how her grandmother was so tired of hearing all the stories of her husband’s life that she persuaded him to write them all down. The reproduction of this memoir brings a fascinating story to a new audience. It was written by a man who came to Johannesburg in 1887, at the age of twenty-five, having been born in Bradford in the United Kingdom.

In the first section of the book, Eastwood records events of his childhood in Britain, the difficulties of finding employment and then of his adventures over a two-year period, when he travelled to and explored places like Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, the Fiji Islands and New York.

Eastwood's recollections of a three-month sea voyage in 1883 provide a vivid account of the conditions and dangers of travel on a sailing ship at that time. He returned to England after his adventures but on his father's urging soon set out for South Africa like so many others at that time.

He initially arrived in Potchefstroom where he stayed with his brother Phil who was working there. Both then and at a later stage, when he was employed to operate a three-stamp-battery, readers get a glimpe of...

One of the landmark historical buildings in Potchefstroom is to be sold by auction. The former King’s Hotel is up for bidding on 21 February. In its heyday the King’s was known as one of the best hotels in the country.

One of the best hotels in the country

King's Hotel in 1932

The Baumann family built the King’s in 1902 “in a substantial scale” according to a Potchefstroom tourism brochure, published in 1932. Building costs amounted to a whopping £25 000. The Baumanns owned a brewery just across the street from the hotel and their beer was exported in large quantities to the newly established Johannesburg, where it became quite famous.

The King’s was a magnificent building in the Victorian style. On the roof the name was delicately written in wrought iron work. Two ornamental towers capped both ends of the building which faced onto the Potchefstroom market square.

Wrought iron pillars supported a balcony that ran the length of the front. This created an excellent space where the genteel patrons could sip tea in comfort and shade and watch the bustling activities on the market square below. They also had a bird’s eye view on building activities...