 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
• Bird Sanctuary and Nature Reserve • The Eye • Historical graves • Moffat Mission • Paragliding • Truce Tree • Village tour: Community tourism • Wonderwerk Cave -------------------- Bird Sanctuary and Nature Reserve The Eye The first white person to discover’ The Eye, on Sunday, 22 November 1801, was Samuel Daniel, the secretary, journal writer and painter of the Truter-Somerville expedition. It was this unfailing source of water that led to the establishment of a mission here in the early 19th century. This also led to The Eye being described as the ‘fountain of Christianity’. Thousands of visitors who visited The Eye during the past two hundred years described their visit as a memorable experience. Mary Moffat (1820) described her first visit to The Eye in the following way: “The last outspan place was the source of the Kuruman River. It is a vast rock... and on every side the most beautiful water that ever I saw gashing out. I went into the principal cave and went nearly knee-deep in the water as clear as crystal. The top of the cave was lined with bats, and in some directions we heard water rushing like a torrent.” (Due to vandalism and the danger thereof, the cave is not open for public viewing.) Underground water dams up against a diabase passage and has its overflow through The Eye. The fish in The Eye are mostly carp, barbell and blue Kurper populations. The Ichthyology Institute (University of Grahamstown) discovered an endangered species of cichlid fish, the Pseudocrenilabrus Philander that chose to make this wonder fountain their breeding ground. Fishing is not permitted. According to available information The Eye is the biggest natural fountain in the Southern Hemisphere. In the early years the Tswana people christened this fountain Ga-Segonyana, which means small water calabash with bubbling water. The Eye was proclaimed a National Monument in 1992. Due to this natural wonder, the town Kuruman is known as the oasis of the Kalahari. A well-known expression is that if someone drinks water from this crystal clear spring once, one will not leave Kuruman easily. Historical graves Moffat Mission Moffat (1795-1887) laboured at the mission for 50 years. His period is considered the ‘golden age’ of missionary work, especially amongst the Batswana. He was a man of considerable talents and oversaw the building of staff houses, a schoolhouse, storerooms, and the ‘Cathedral of the Kalahari’, the Moffat Church (opened in 1838), which seats 800 people. The Moffat Church is one of the world’s best-known physical missionary creations of the nineteenth century. At the same time, he worked on what was to be his greatest legacy: the Setswana Bible. He taught himself Setswana, developed the orthography and, with a broad team, translated the Bible. This he printed on a hand press - the first entire Bible printed in Africa. This press can be seen at Moffat Mission. The mission is also well known as the first African home of Dr David Livingstone. He arrived as an LMS missionary in 1841, and remained in contact with the mission through his marriage to Moffat’s eldest daughter, Mary junior. The remains of the almond tree under which Livingstone proposed to Mary Moffat can still be seen in the homestead garden. The mission also witnessed the ordination of other distinguished people such as the Reverend Lekalake Maphakela who served the church until he was 97. Moffat retired in 1870, at around the time that diamonds were discovered in Kimberley, an event that changed the social and political landscape and the economy of the country forever. The methods and resources of the LMS in the area were forced to adapt to the changes. While the mission struggled to maintain the fame Moffat brought to it, it continued its steadfast contribution to the mission work whose foundations were established in early times. The Mission suffered as a result of legislation such as the Group Areas Act during the apartheid period. With the development of written Setswana and the presence of a printing press, education became the central work of the mission. The mission school maintained an unbroken history for 126 years, and gave rise to the Moffat Institute and the reputable Tiger Kloof educational institution, now once again reclaiming a distinguished place amongst educational institutions. Tiger Kloof is a short way south of Vryburg. The mission fell into disrepair from 1960-70, but in 1981 the United Congregational Church (successor to the LMS) formed an Ecumenical Trust with the Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterian churches to revitalise the work of the mission. The historic buildings were restored and a conference centre built. The main buildings of the mission were declared a national monument in 1939. The historical buildings are open to the public. These include the Moffat church and homestead, the schoolroom housing the printing press, the Livingstone room, and a wagon house now used as the mission bookshop. All have excellent historical interpretative material to read. There are traces of the original water furrow built by Moffat and his team to tap water from the prolific Kuruman ‘Eye’. A modern furrow built alongside the original continues to channel water through the historical grounds. A vibrant contemporary library is also open to the public, as are the conference facilities, offering modest but comfortable accommodation, even to tourists passing through Kuruman. The work of the mission currently concentrates on leadership training, theological education and community development. Projects include an innovative initiative for the support and development of Early Learning centres in the area, straddling the border between the Northern Cape and North West Province, and a comprehensive new program for the training of life skills to pre-release prisoners in the local Kuruman prison. Other adult education programmes are also offered. The Kuruman Moffat Mission Trust is under the control of a full-time director and staff. There are presently five departments, each with a distinctive focus. The Mission is host to a constant stream of visiting researchers, academics and historical pilgrims. It remains a vibrant community-based organisation. Additional information is available at the Mission. Paragliding The bases of the huge, white cotton clouds deep etched into cobalt skies begin at between four and five thousand metres. Thermals soaring from the baking earth to cooler climes of high altitudes are average to strong. Their suitability for flying lies in their large diameters and pronounced cores. At 100 metres above the ground a dust devil might take you by surprise and launch you to well over 5000 metres. In a country where anything is possible, it is always best to expect the unexpected. Useful paragliding tips: Summer: Winter: Truce Tree These forts were erected during the second Anglo-Boer War. Sub-inspector Thomas Gash (Chief of Police) with his 75 strong unit and Magistrate DGE Bergh assisted in gathering a further 70 men to join forces as a home guard to assist Frylinck and his Commandos. This force consisted mainly of policemen and coloured citizens. From their base camp at the mission in Seodin Kemp and his forces tried in vain to capture Kuruman. As he only wanted right of way and supplies for his men he later convinced Frylinck to join him in negotiating a truce. Right of way was granted but Frylinck refused to surrender his men and government property such as horses, cattle, wagons and rifles. Frylinck and his men were allowed to leave Kuruman. When Kemp left Kuruman on the afternoon of 9 November 1914 on his epic journey through the Kalahari, Frylinck and his forces joined by Commandant Van Zyl followed and harassed Kemp through the waterless area. Battles occurred on 13 November at Mamaghodi forcing Kemp to cross the Langberg Mountains towards Witsand area and also on 16 November after which Kemp resumed his journey. Frylinck and Van Zyl then returned to Kuruman. These incidents later had a profound effect regarding the political rivalry amongst the Afrikaners. Village tour: Community tourism Wonderwerk Cave The keys and the visitors’ book are at the farmhouse where a token access fee is payable. Accommodation and refreshments are available by arrangement. Wonderwerk Cave is an ancient solution cavity, exposed at one end by hillside erosion, and running horizontally for 139m into the base of a low conical foothill on the eastern flank of the Kuruman Hills. Its geological context is stratified dolomitic limestone of the 2,3 billion year-old Ghaap Plateau dolomite formation. Permanent water sources in the area are presently limited to a seep some 5km to the south on Gakorosa Hill and a large sinkhole known as Boesmansgat, about 12km away. Research revealed that bedrock in the front portion of the cave is overlaid by four metres of deposits comprising of fairly horizontal layers of wind-blown dust with a variable admixture of roof-slabs. Initial radio-carbon and ionium readings indicate that the uppermost metre of sediments, 45m in from the cave mouth, span the past 300000 years, while extrapolation, based on that result, suggests that the lower levels range back to at least 800000 years ago. On-going archaeological excavations show that human occupation occurs in all layers, thereby making this one of the longest inhabited caves on earth. There were several archaeological excavations done and the finds are in the McGregor Museum in Kimberley (Tel 053 861 4211) for safekeeping. The finds are as follows: San hair, stone artefacts, decorated ostrich eggshells and pollen dating back 400000 years as well as Bushman paintings done with plant roots and blood, grass beds of the San, animal bones, and teeth of an extinct horse (dating back 800000 years). In the earliest levels of excavations discoveries were made that provide unique evidence as to how local humans lived during remote hand-axe times. There is clear evidence in the cave for a ‘home base’ mode of social organisation, shown by undoubted association of stone tools and animal remains brought back to the cave for shared consumption. These meat sources range from hare and tortoise to big game, including some that were larger than extant species, suggesting that hunters of that period were skilled, rather than largely scavengers, as has often been supposed. In many strata are extensive (over 50 square metre) lenses of humified-calcified remains of grass stems and shrub branches, indicating that early human occupants slept on carefully harvested bedding, made up of soft plants. Such areas are seemingly discrete from those used for tool making or food processing, thus permitting the further inference that activities within the cave were spatially patterned. There is also pervasive evidence, in the form of ash lenses, charred-calcined animal bones, and even fire-cracked stones, for regular use or production of fire throughout the past 800000 years. Also present in the upper hand-axe levels are undamaged quartz crystals and small coloured river pebbles that are foreign to the cave vicinity. Complementing those data is the presence in all these layers of red ochre fragments recovered from nearby outcrops and probably used for body decoration. This complex of advanced behavioural traits predates comparable occurrences elsewhere in the world and makes Wonderwerk Cave an archaeological occurrence of particular significance. In the area near the cave mouth the walls are covered by white, orange, red and black paintings that feature abstract patterns, ostriches and a variety of large game animals, including elephant. Such species and remnants of the San indicate that they lived in this vicinity at the time when traveller Henry Methuen first recorded the cave in writing in 1846. Some of the engraved stones from the Holocene levels (last 10000 years) are amongst the oldest dated rock engravings in Africa. N J Bosman, the massive farmer, his wife, eleven sons and three daughters, were the first white inhabitants who lived in the cave from 1909-1911, while building the present homestead. They made a floor in the cave from flat stones, found in the mountain range, to keep out the dust. Later they used the cave for some decades as a stock shelter. Exploration of the deposits of ‘bat guano’ from 1940-1944 resulted in major damage to the upper levels in the area from 35 metres into the back wall. Despite that loss, this cave contains a unique record of humankind’s history in South Africa and was for that reason proclaimed as a National Monument in 1993. In the cave is a stalactite, which still grows during a good rainy season. |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
