Graaff-Reinet
More than one town, at different stages of the development of South Africa, has laid claim to being the ‘Capital of the Karoo’. Today, however, there can be few who deny that Graaff-Reinet fills this role to perfection. It is the oldest town in the Karoo, and its strategic location makes it the perfect ‘Capital’.
Camdeboo Meat Processors Proprietary Limited, a public company with a number of game farmers and ostrich producers amongst its shareholders, is the biggest employer in the town and is also South Africa’s largest exporter of game meat, accounting for about 80% of all such exports. The Karoo town of Graaff-Reinet, (in the heart of one of SA's finest game and ostrich farming regions) has become a booming town with various attractions, including an active municipality and great tourism infrastructures like monuments and game reserves.
Andrew Conroy's ‘Karoo’
It is that huge empty space between here and there,
Yesterday and today,
Mountains, monotonous plains, but always distant horizons shimmering in the refractive air, heated by a merciless sun.
Dust devils in tango step
A sky, ablaze at night, the Milky Way, Magellan's clouds,
The enormity of space.
The planets' slow passage, a sunset Venus to a bird call dawn.
The retarding of time, watching a windmill wheel in a vagrant breeze,
The fury of August gales, dust obscuring that famed horizon.
The flat-topped hills, our hallmark.
It is the lark's song, the korhaan's bark, the Kelkiewyn's water-ward call, the
mourning dove that makes it great.
In rain's ascetic absence, and when it does the grateful earth's response,
Gives us life.
The peperkorrel veld ablaze
To others too.
A millipede training across a road
The meerkat's attentive stare toward the eagle from its lair.
Cranes abounding when love is in the air!
The shyness of an aardvark, so seldom seen, its work everywhere.
Springbokkies a-pronking, our only gold, our heritage, our own!
From Gariep's meander, the Swartberg's bastion, the plains between.
That is the Karoo. - Andrew Conroy