JOBURG has a rich history far older than colonialism and the gold rush would have us believe. Melville Koppies was home to prehistoric people as long ago as 100 000 years.
Neil Fraser
April 4, 2005
COME on be honest - when did you last visit Melville Koppies? In fact, have you ever visited Melville Koppies?
I have to admit to living in Johannesburg for 20 years before I went, in mid-November last year, and then at the specific invitation of Wendy Carstens, a volunteer "warden" for whom what is described as "Johannesburg's ecological jewel" is an abiding passion.
For anyone interested in the history of the area we live in and/or its flora and fauna, a visit is a must - the guidebook lists 13 mammals, 62 birds, 50 trees and 45 grasses! For anyone wanting to get out of the hustle and bustle of modern life and needing somewhere to relax and unwind and yet be within minutes of the inner city itself, it doesn't get better than this! This "green lung" nature reserve just seven kilometres from the centre of the inner city covers some 160 hectares. It was proclaimed a nature reserve in 1959 and a Natural and Historical Monument in 1968.
I loved the early morning walk along the nature trail, the peace and the spectacular views complemented by Wendy's intimate knowledge of the area. The nature trail, the Louw Geldenhuys Viewsite Nature Trail, was evidently constructed by a boy scout in order to get his Top Award badge. Another trail is the Westdene Ridge Trail, a two- to three-hour walk.
The Louw Geldenhuys Viewsite was part of the farm Braamfontein, bought by the Geldenhuys family in 1886. Initial prospecting for gold was unsuccessful and the family turned to fruit and vegetable farming to supply the burgeoning mining town just down the road.
Louw Geldenhuys was something of a philanthropist and employed survivors of the scorched earth policy of the British to build a dam on the farm. The dam was named after his wife, Emmarentia! The workers' children went to Louw's farm school, now the Louw Geldenhuys Laerskool. He also co-founded an orphanage. Politically astute, he became a member of Oom Paul's Volksraad and ultimately an MP in the first Union Parliament in 1910.
He died in 1925 and the family sold the land to property developers; in 1992 this still undeveloped area was saved and added to the reserve.
Interesting, but my main fascination revolves around its older and very rich history for it is the history of a people who lived and worked here from perhaps as early as 1000AD up to at least the early 1800s. The guidebook provides a brief outline, by RJ Mason from the archaeological research unit of Wits University, of the prehistoric people of Melville Koppies.
Mason points out that the reserve has three prehistoric living floors - 30cm below the present surface is an Iron Age Floor, possibly 1 000 years old; one metre down is a Middle Stone Age camp, perhaps 40 000 years old; and still further down hand axes of the Earlier Stone Age, which may be 100 000 years old, have been discovered. There are the remains of half-a-dozen stone walled settlements - "small southern counterparts of the grandiose structure erected by their distant relatives at Zimbabwe".
Iron Age people invaded what we now call Gauteng probably at the beginning of the first millennium AD, spreading to its length and breadth over the next few centuries - building villages, opening iron, copper and tin mines and starting farming operations. They, of course, had to have iron for their farm implements as well as for their war and hunting implements, and so built furnaces in which to smelt the raw materials. Just such furnaces have been excavated on Melville Koppies and samples of charcoal taken from one have been dated to about 1406.
Looking at the preserved smelting furnace one can imagine the intense activity that accompanied its usage. Iron ore lumps were collected by women and mixed with charcoal in the furnaces, which were fired up early in the mornings. Relays of men worked skin bellows throughout the day, directing the air stream into the furnace through clay blowpipes. In the evening the fire was allowed to die out and the crude iron was raked out and the hot ingots cut into pieces to be forged into hoes, axes, knives and assegai blades.
Interestingly, while women collected the iron ore lumps, they were not allowed near the furnace as it was perceived by males to represent the female womb, while the male-dominated process itself represented male control over female procreation. That wouldn't go down well today among our ladies!
Mason ends his short overview as follows: "Here then, at Melville Koppies, are archaeological reflections of Johannesburg's deep past, of the ancient cultures of hunters and early farmers, as well as the first miners of the Witwatersrand, and also of primitive artists. The whole fabric of the life of these prehistoric people of Melville Koppies was torn to pieces when the Zulu impis of Mzilikazi swept through the Magaliesburg and Witwatersrand area in 1823."
Well, the gold finds a half a century later were to have the same effect on the indigenous people of the area!
Wow, we have such a rich and long history prior to the colonial and apartheid periods that most people focus on - and Melville Koppies gives us just a little taste.
The reserve is open on the first and third Sunday of each month from October to April from 3pm to 6pm, and from May to September from 2pm to 5pm. On the second Sunday of each month it is open from 8.30am to 11.30am. I'm sure that Wendy Carstens would be happy to provide any additional information. Call her on 011-482 4797.
I received a number of letters regarding my Johannesburg Art Gallery comments last week. The first was regarding my concern about the lack of adequate budgeting for maintenance:
"Another statistic for you: the infrastructure officials (read 'engineers') last month tabled a report at Msunduzi Council that stated that maintenance (including renewal, refurbishment and replacement) for roads, stormwater and council buildings (i.e. not water and sanitation) needed R390-million per annum for each of the next 10 years. However, the actual budgeted figure for 2004/2005 had been only R9-million!"
The other was from Jillian Carman who rapped me (very sweetly I must say) over the knuckles, as follows: "I do NOT think Charlie and what's-her-name should use our precious Lutyens building as a guest cottage. I'm obviously far more positive than you about this new development. I think a downtown-Newtown JAG will attract visitors to the Joubert Park sibling, JAG can focus on its historic collection in the original Lutyens building (which does not have endemic leaks etc and is still in good shape), and a migration museum in the 1986 extensions would be very exciting and appropriate (can simulate the living conditions, with leaks and crumbling walls and sewerage pongs). JAG, the Drill Hall and the
Joubert Park Project can constitute one end of the cultural arc, which can sweep up through the historic/cultural parts of the health axis, through Constitutional Hill, Braamfontein and Wits, and down to Newtown and the new JAG. A shuttle service can then transport tourists via inner city gems back to the original JAG. We can always dream!"
Keep dreaming! Neil
