At Moorddrift, some 13 kms south of the central Limpopo town
of Mokopane, the Nyl River is wide and shallow, with low sandy banks, an ideal
crossing point for the migrating herds of animals of the past, or for long
lines of barefooted African traders bearing heavy loads on their heads, or for
the oxwagons of the Trekkers moving north in their quest to find a homeland
somewhere in the African hinterland where they could live an independent
existence, far from British Rule.
It was the “Jerusalemgangers” – a Trekker religious sect
intent on reaching the Holy Land – that named the river thus, for it was the
first river they had encountered that followed a northwards course. They
thought, optimistically, that they had at last encountered the headwaters of
the Nile in their trek northwards. The Tswana had another more appropriate name
for it: they called it the Mogalakwena – “Mother of Crocodiles”, and the river
crossing was known as Esikweni Sengwenyama, the “forest of the Lions”.
The story of the murders at Moorddrift and the subsequent
siege at the cave of Gwaša belongs to a longer story of unrest in the northern
parts of Limpopo as a growing Boer presence impacted on local groups of Sotho
and Ndebele living there. The first white person to penetrate this far north
was the notorious frontiersman Coenraad de Buys (originally spelt de Bus), with
his fabled harem. One of his several indigenous wives was the sister of
Mzilikazi. The founding father of “the Buys People”, his numerous family members
eventually settled on the southern flank of the western end of the
Zoutpansberg, the settlement coming to be known as Buysdorp.
Then came the Trekkers:
Johannes Janse van Rensburg – “Lang Hans” – and Louis Trichardt in 1836,
with Commandant Andries Hendrik Potgieter hard on their heels. The Trichardt
party quarreled with the van Rensburg party over essential supplies such as
ammunition and lead which the latter kept borrowing without returning. The short supply of ammunition was soon to
prove fatal to the van Rensburg party who decided to push on independently of
the Trichardts in an attempt to reach the east coast where they had the
possibility of resupply. However, shortly afterwards, in June 1836, the van
Rensburg trek was murdered by a raiding party under the Zulu leader, Sakana or
Manukosi. The only survivors of the disaster were the children of Frederik van
Wyk (the son-in-law of Lang Hans), a six-year-old boy and a three-year old
girl, who were taken to live at Sakana’s kraal. It is probable that they died
there of malaria.
The Trichardt party, after suffering a terrible journey,
reached Lourenço Marques (Maputo) on 13 April 1838, only to be decimated by
malaria.
Commandant Andries Hendrik Potgieter (also known as Hendrik
Potgieter) ,however, settled on the south side of the Zoutpansberg, naming the
town he founded in this pleasantly wooded area Zoutpansbergdorp – which was
later renamed Schoemansdal. The road to his supply line in the south lay
through the Makapanspoort, the latter so named because Chief Mokopane’s
headquarters, Chidi, was nearby. The trekker highway therefore passed through
the territory of Chief Mokopane of the Kekana Ndebele, and crossed the river at
Esikwini Sengwenyama. This did not please Mokopane, who was even more perturbed
when in 1850, permanent settlement in the Makapanspoort, on the site of the
future Potgietersrus, began.
Commandant Potgieter had plans to formalize the
Makapanspoort settlement by proclaiming a town, and chose the name Vredenburg
for it to celebrate his recent reconciliation with his arch-rival Marthinus
Wessel Pretorius. However, in December 1852, before he could carry out his
intention, he died in Zoutpansbergdorp. His 30-year-old son, Pieter Johannes,
took over the reins of leadership and later carried out his father’s wish with
regard to proclaiming the town.
But trouble was brewing. Hermanus Potgieter, a younger
brother of the old Commandant, had an unappeasable predilection for the
livestock, land and labour of the local people. Even amongst his countrymen he
had a reputation for rough behaviour and for being a troublemaker. In this very
remote frontier region there was little to curb excesses of behaviour and
Hermanus Potgieter’s methods to secure what he wanted were chillingly ruthless.
He was notorious for demanding tributes of cattle, and more importantly, of
children, who were forced into indentured labour under the ingeboekt system, in
effect a form of slavery. In 1853, the famous trader João Albisini who ran the
safari trade from the Zoutpansberg to the Portuguese port at Delagoa Bay,
warned the Boers of incipient hostilities. Messages of mutilation on Boer
subjects and livestock were being sent out by the Ndebele rulers.
The last straw came in August 1854 when Hermanus Potgieter
shot and killed the brother of Mokopane over a dispute concerning a buffalo
that had been shot. The two Ndebele allies decided that enough was enough. A
month later, in September, twenty-eight Boers were killed in three separate
incidents by the two chiefs. There are multiple versions of these stories, both
in the form of varied oral traditions of the Kekana people, and in the recorded
and often conflicting testimonies of Trekker history. Mankopane avenged the
death of Mokopane’s brother by luring Hermanus Potgieter into his kraal at
Fothane with tales of ivory. Once there, he and his support party were tempted
away from the wagons by bearers carrying great tusks of ivory. They were caught
unaware and killed. Potgieter was flayed alive. Eight persons were also
murdered at Fothane – “moordkoppie”.
The other two murders were carried out near Mokopane’s
capital in the Makapanspoort. The first was at the river crossing at Esikgweni
Sengwenyama. Here, a Boer party camped under the camelthorn trees next to the
drift were set upon and murdered, the heads of six children being dashed to
pieces against the boles of the trees. Twelve persons were murdered here by
Mokopane, and their corpses mutilated in different ways. In subsequent years it
was to acquire the name Moorddrift. The third incident involved a smaller party
that had gone to trade at the chief’s village at Chidi, on the present-day
farms of Pruizen and Twenty Four Rivers just south-east of the newly proclaimed
trekker town of Vredenburg. They too were murdered. All the murders were
characterized by gory mutilation and brutality, the Ndebele hoping in this way
to scare the Boers from territory they deemed to be their own.
Such acts did not go unnoticed, and a commando led by Piet
Potgieter, nephew of Hermanus, and M W Pretorius was mounted against Mokopane,
even though it had been Mankopane (Mapela) who had killed Hermanus Potgieter.
Mokopane and his people had retired to a massive cave in the mountains, some 23
km north-east of Vredenburg. This cave has the local name of Gwaša, which
refers to whisperings, breaths or sighs – the “breath” of the cave is said to
be foetid with disease. The Boer name for the cave was, of course, Makapansgat,
from which the farm on which the historic cave is situated takes its name.
 |
| Swiss photographer H R Gros’ 1883 photo of the northern entrance to Makapan’s Cave showing interior fortifications and stone walling |
Makapansgat was declared a World Heritage Site in 2005 on
account of its rich and multi-layered heritage extending in an almost unbroken
record from Ape-man times about three million years ago to the present. The
cave of Gwaša, also known as Makapan’s Cave or Makapansgat, is situated on the
side of a hill in a narrow valley, in which there occur a number of caves.
Gwaša has two entrances, and the Kekana Ndebele tried to
fortify them by partially walling them off with stone and by creating
breastworks inside the cave. Sadly, being perched high above the valley bottom,
the caves have little or no water, which made the choice of the retreat a
disaster. The commando of M W Pretorius and Piet Potgieter caught up with the
fugitives on 25 October 1854 and laid siege to the cave. It was blockaded and two
small field cannon were dragged up the opposite flank of the valley and
attempts were made to fire into the wide mouth of the refuge. Kekana, firing
from behind the redoubts they had constructed inside the cave, made it too
hazardous to storm. Other tactics were tried. A plan to collapse the roof of
the cave by setting off explosive charges was adopted. However, the first
experiment failed and gunpowder was too expensive and scarce to allow a repeat
attempt. Huge piles of firewood were thrown off the cliffs above the cave and
set alight in the hopes that billows of smoke would be drawn into the cave and
so smoke the fugitives out.
Attempts to escape under cover of darkness were discouraged
by the deadly accuracy of fire of the night patrol – which claimed the lives of
more than 700 victims. After this more and more women and children gave
themselves up. On 6 November, Piet Potgieter was standing at the edge of the
cliff and peering over to see what was going on below, his body probably clearly
silhouetted against the sky. From the darkness within, a Ndebele sniper took
aim and his bullet found its mark. Piet Potgieter died where he fell, at the
mouth of the cave. His body was retrieved by a young Field-cornet Paul Kruger,
with the help of João Albisini’s headman, Manungu.
By the time 17 November 1854 came, resistance had collapsed and
parties of Boers began entering the cave and on the 21st the siege was
called off. A strong consideration in calling it off was the threat of horse
sickness which comes on with the onset of the summer rains, and the Boers would
have been left vulnerable without their horses.
It will never be known how many Kekana died in the siege.
Military reports state figures in excess of 2 000. However, the adage that the
first casualty of war is the truth is particularly true of casualty figures.
The figure of 2 000 would have left a large number of corpses inside the cave.
In fact, further exploration of the cave immediately after the siege was
discouraged by the almost unbearable stench of decomposing bodies. The site
should be seen as a mass grave. But what happened to all the bones is still a
mystery. Photographs taken by itinerant Swiss photographer H R Gros in 1883,
almost 30 years later show numbers of skulls which he used as photographic
props.
One consequence of the siege was the commemorative re-naming
of the rather inappropriately-named town of Vredenburg (town of peace) to Piet
Potgietersrust, later shortened to Potgietersrus. Still more recently, it was
renamed Mokopane in commemoration of the chief whose tribe was almost destroyed
in the cave.
Source:
Village Life (June/July 2007) - Dr Judy Maguire
