South Africa’s greatest man-made mystery?

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.” ― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

I fly-fish, mostly in Mpumalanga and mysteries intrigue me, especially in Africa, and in Mpumalanga we have South Africa's greatest man-made mystery. From Bronkhorstspruit to Lydenburg, and along the Crocodile River you see stone circles and walls from antiquity.

The illustration at left emphasise these circular stone structures found in Southern Africa and others in South America.

In October I fished at Verlorenkloof with my two cousins and a friend. One evening we started speculating about the hundreds, if not thousands of stone circles that dot the landscape in Mpumalanga. Large circular stacked stone walls with smaller circles inside. Circles without an entrance. Kilometers of "roads" or "channels" that link one stone circle with another, without entrance or exit.

What inspires humans to move millions of stones to create a mystery?

Arther C. Clarke said: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

During our stay at Verlorenkloof I showed my cousins the structures that baffles my QS brain.

Along a tributary of the Crocodile River is a huge stone wall built along the river bank. The image to the left shows my cousins next to the 2m high wall built on the embankment, on the other side the wall is less than a meter high with adjoining walls forming a door-less oblong.

You will note that the walls are very sturdy with two rows of boulder walls filled in with pebbles and earth. The walls at Verlorenkloof are unique as they form rectangular or oblong shapes void of entrances or doorways. Adjoining these "rooms" are retaining walls that form terraces and most probably were used for planting crops. But these rectangular shapes would puzzle most of us in the built environment. If these shapes were used for animals they needed a bridge to enter and exit. And why build the furthest wall on a steep embankment near to the stream? Why form terraces on the mountainside when there is more fertile soil adjoining the river below?

Just imagine an ancient architect asking you, a project manager and engineer to help construct his "dream" projects. You look at his plans and observe that there are no doorways. The engineer looks at a walled roadway and observes that even if we had wheels the roads are to narrow for two carts to pass. The project manager thinks of the duration and the millions of tons of stone to be moved. The QS asks; "Who is going to pay for this?"

The architect shrugs; "We will find a client."

The PM chimes in; "And what will you tell him? That it will take decades if not centuries to construct, and for what purpose? An African Stonehenge?"

A project that even the Construction Mafia will not claim their 30%!

There is evidence that these structures are normally found near to gold bearing waters and that the structures may be linked to an unknown technology to extract gold from the streams leading to-,and from the Crocodile River.

In the Sappi booklet on Forestry's Human Legacy they highlight that the interpretation given by Dr Cyril Hromnik, an expert in Dravidian culture, suggests the stone-walled ruins are Afro-Indian Temples, similar to those found in Madagascar and the East-African seaboard.

Hromnik believes that these are the ruins of temples built before the time of Christ by Indian sea traders known as Komates, a name is still present in the Lowveld in the form of Komati Gorge, Komati River, Komatipoort. (See ruins of the Dying Sun Chariot temple at Doornkop where I fished earlier this year)

The Sappi booklet also explains that :... "the simplest and most widely accepted explanation is that these are the ancient homesteads and cattle kraals of the Bakoni people. The Bakoni – or Koni (a name given by Sotho speakers to those they considered to be Nguni speaking invaders) – arrived in northern Mpumalanga from a number of different areas in the early 17th century. "

Whether they are cattle kraals or testament to an unknown technology, farmers and other people in Mpumalanga have used stone from these heritage sites to build kraals or homesteads! We have to heighten the awareness of their existence and protect them for the future when we have a better understanding of our past.

If you are heading towards Bambi on the R36 you will pass the Blaauwboschkraal Stone Ruins less than 400m from the main road.

The top circle is about 50m in diameter with a 5m almost adjoining circle to the north. The greater circle is subdivided with mostly circular walls with openings leading to demarcated areas.

During the Anglo-Boer war, the Battle of Helvetia actually took place on the lower stone circle and there is a Boer graveyard slightly up the R36 to the right.

The image at the left shows the highest wall of the circle. My cousin is looking at a hole we presume was blasted through the wall during the Battle of Helvetia.

Peta Hardy, Sappi's Area Environmental Manager Mpumalanga, concludes the booklet with these thoughts; “There is no doubt that the stonewalled structures dotted around the Mpumalanga Escarpment are remnants of a past history that need further investigation. For many years, this period of our history was not the focus of academic research and we are grateful that some light is now being shed on the origins of these structures.

Whatever your interpretation is of these ruins, the important thing is that examples of value to history are identified and managed within the plantation landscape to ensure their conservation. Sappi have recognised the importance of heritage and retaining what can still be conserved. A heritage database has been compiled for each plantation, capturing what is known from past records and from what is unearthed during the normal lifecycle of planting and harvesting compartments."

Compiled by Bert van den Heever