Game, Minerals, Intrigue and Adventure
At the close of the eighteenth century, when the south-western Cape was a thriving colonial outpost of Europe, the rest of Southern Africa was still considered the dark continent of noble savages and mysteries.
Enlightenment took hold only in the 1850s, when David Livingstone ventured on his now-famous expeditions into the interior, and by then some of the subcontinent's most turbulent times were already history.
During the first three decades of the nineteenth-century explorers such as Andrew Geddes Bain and Captain William Cornwallis Harris made contact with the many tribes of the hinterland and discovered the vast riches of the land beyond the Vaal River.
To them, it must have seemed an inexhaustible storehouse of game, minerals, intrigue and adventure. When Cornwallis Harris traversed a range known to the local people as the Kashan Mountains he found herds of game such as had only been dreamed of.
Animals in their millions roamed these hot Bushveld plains. He even noted a species not yet recorded the majestic sable antelope with its gracefully curving scimitar horns and glistening black hide.
A Way of Life Destroyed
The Kashan Mountains are now called the Magaliesberg and it is believed they were named after the Tswana chief Magali (Mohale) who ruled a tribe to the north of the mountains.
At the time of the white man's early ventures into southern Africa these mountains were the centre of an apocalyptic turmoil which destroyed a way of life that had persisted there for hundreds of years.
The relatively peaceful pastoralists, who had grown their crops, tended their herds and hunted there since the beginning of their tribal memories, were wiped out and replaced by a bloody tyranny still remembered with awe.
Yet before the arrival of white man, before brown men or even yellow men, indeed before any member of our species walked these hills, they had been a cradle of life.
Man's early upright cousin Australopithecus africanus lived in the limestone caves of Sterkfontein and Kromdraai.
If there is a 'missing link' between man and apes then Australopithecus is as close to it as anthropologists have found, and it was in the dolomite caves near the Magaliesberg that early man developed into a toolmaker, and further as far back as 250000 years ago Stone Age man lived in the kloofs and caves here, feeding on the fruits and animals that abounded.
Dingiswayo
From about 400 AD an Iron Age culture settled in the area, although the Late Stone Age culture, represented by the Bushmen, retained a precarious foothold until relatively recent times.
The newcomers from the north generally believed to be Bantu-speaking Sotho, prospered as a developing agrarian culture until the last century. When devastating waves of breakaway Zulu impis left the area depopulated for the spreading white settlers to annex as their own.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century Dingiswayo, chief of the Mthethwa tribe from the land south of the Black Umfolozi River, journeyed to the Cape Colony.
So impressed was he by the military order of the white troops he saw and some other black tribes he met, that he returned to his own country to organize his Impis into a disciplined and fierce army.
He launched brutal attacks on neighboring clans and began to establish himself as a tyrant and feared enemy. By 1818 Dingiswayo was recognized as paramount chief of all the clans south of the Black Umfolozi.
His bravest and most trusted captain was young Shaka of the Zulu clan, who was soon installed as its chief.
Shaka
If Dingiswayo's armies were brutal they must have seemed tame when Shaka unleashed his own armies on the clans not yet under Dingiswayo's influence.
In 1822, after Dingiswayo's death, Shaka usurped the crown of the paramount chief and installed himself as king of the Zulu nation. He expanded his dominion south to the Tugela River and sent his own favourite captain.
Mzilikazi to subdue the Sotho tribes far to the north-west. On returning with his spoils of cattle and slaves, Mzilikazi defied Shaka by keeping the bounty and attempting to set up his own dynasty as chief of the Khumalo, or 'elephant' clan.
Fears of an attack from the Zulu, however, drove the Bull Elephant' across the Pongola River with his tribe. He crossed the hills near Majuba and first settled in the area where Middelburg now stands.
Chief of the Khumalo
From here began the path of blood that Mzilikazi’s impis left behind them as the tribe consolidated into the Matabele nation and moved westwards across the Highveld.
With single-minded ruthlessness he crushed all those who stood up to his armies, enslaved the young women and drafted the young men into his forces. He also demanded absolute subservience from even his closest indunos.
Soon he reigned supreme over an area bounded by the Soutpansberg in the north, the Kalahari in the west, the Vaal River in the south, and the Zulu domain in the east.
The first biting Highveld winter led Mzilikazi westward in search of a kinder climate. He built his royal kraal on the banks of the Apies River and then moved it even further west to the outer edge of the crescent formed where the Magaliesberg range arcs to the north. From here he firmly established himself as a ruler to rival the great Shaka.
Mzilikazi
So fierce were Mzilikazi’s raids against the neighboring tribes that when white explorers from the south ventured into the area they found the veld littered with skeletons and charred bodies.
The remnants of once flourishing tribes were living in trees like terrified primates, harassed by wild beasts and emaciated with hunger.
Robert Moffat, the charismatic missionary who worked among the marauding Griqua and Korana tribes in the northern Cape Province, travelled from his mission station at Kuruman to visit Mzilikazi. Despite being appalled by the horrors of the tyrant’s ruthless raids, he was at once impressed by Mzilikazi’s youth and friendliness.
After Moffat’s first reluctant visit to the Magaliesberg a firm friendship was established between himself and the Matabele king: indeed, Mzilikazi considered Moffat’s judgment impeccable and considered him an invaluable advisor.
Mzilikazi’s Undoing
From the Magaliesberg, Mzilikazi moved his headquarters to the Marico district. Determined to keep all foreigners out of his territory, he and his marauding impis slaughtered a number of Boer trek parties that ventured across the Vaal.
This was to be his undoing, for the doughty pioneers, led by Hendrik Potgieter and Gert Maritz, successfully warded off another attack at Vegkop, and in a series of battles and skirmishes in the late 1830s and early 1840s routed the entire Matabele nation. His armies in disarray, Mzilikazi fled north of the Limpopo River, later re-establishing his kingdom at Bulawayo.
In the mid-nineteenth century, once the dominance of the Matabele in the Transvaal had been broken, the abundance of game attracted more and more hunters, followed by white settlers. It did not take long for the vast herds to diminish as wanton killing continued. To shoot a giraffe for only one strip of its neck hide to make a trek whip was commonplace.
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