Tribal Farmlands
The tribal area surrounding Blouberg lies midway between two separate conservation sections making up the provincial Blouberg Nature Reserve. The closest town of any real consequence would be Bochum (now Senwabarwana), a bustling shopping mecca by local standards.
The superb landscape within the embrace of the Blouberg and Soutpansberg Mountain ranges makes it a favourite African Ivory Route destination. The montane woodland plains give way to imposing outcrops in the distance, each with unique Pedi names, indicating their historical, mythical or geographic importance.
The people who settled here - and who still hold the grazing rights to the lands surrounding the Hananwa Village - are the Bahananwa, a group of pioneer settlers who refused to accept the authority of their Batswana forebears. Thus they decided to decamp to their own piece of paradise here in the northwest of Limpopo, where their pastoral culture is grudgingly giving way to the accelerated urbanisation of rural South Africa.
That said, the Bahananwa continue to graze their cattle within these ancestral lands, where many of them still adhere to their early belief systems and traditions. Sangomas are active in the local community, and it will certainly be abrasive to Western sensibilities to see the medicinal barking of trees, or to hear about rock pythons being killed by the villagers only to be sold as muti.