Mbombela - Visit anyone living in the Mpumalanga Lowveld, and they will invariably suggest an outing to Kaapsche Hoop, not far from Mbombela (Nelspruit).
Take their advice, and you might even encounter someone sitting on a stoep, quietly smoking a pipe.
If you stop to talk, you could discover that he’s a descendant of those prospectors who, some 150 years ago, armed with picks, shovels, a few essentials, and sacks brimming with hope, rushed to make their fortune.
In the tiny but spread-out village of Kaapsche Hoop – which positively bulges with character – it is easy to immerse oneself in the hurly-burly of those days.
So let’s take a mining cocopan back to 1882, when gold was discovered and diggers arrived in droves at Duiwel’s Kantoor (as it was then called). It must have indeed seemed like the Devil’s Office, as it teemed with rough and ready, beer- and spirit-swilling men who fought the land and each other in their bid for riches.
President of the former Transvaal Republic Marthinus Wessel Pretorius, on visiting the area, said it reminded him of the view from Table Mountain, so renamed it Kaapsche Hoop.
Tales are told of how children there rushed into the streets to collect flakes of alluvial gold, which were washed to the surface after storms. They then passed this to the diggers, no doubt for the price of a penny-lick sucker.
In the early days, about 4 000 diggers came to Kaapsche Hoop. Many moved on to the fleshpots and dancehalls of nearby Barberton, but even so Kaapsche Hoop burgeoned. We learn that, before a jail was built, those who misbehaved were chained to rocks in the town square, to reflect on their misdemeanours beneath the sweltering African sun.
Legends abound. Such as the one of a digger who set himself up as a diviner. Using three small nuggets and a knife-blade to move them around in the palm of a would-be punter’s hand, this crafty rogue supposedly ‘divined’ the success of a proposed venture.
Then there was the eccentric man who, accompanied by his dog and armed with a revolver, would walk to town to fetch the Sunday newspaper and drop off his grocery list at a village store on the edge of town. At times, though, he’d threaten the local postmistress, so he was eventually forced to leave his revolver at the store before proceeding into town. Maybe he fancied this corsetted guardian of letters, but didn’t know how to play the ardent lover, so resorted, instead, to bluster and threats.
During the Anglo-Boer War, British soldiers were stationed here. They often sent heliographed messages to the army camp in Barberton, telling them of mounted Boer movements in the area.
Then there was the luckless visitor with long brown hair who was mistaken for a baboon and shot dead as he (or maybe it was a she, given the length of the locks) was spotted moving among the rocks. The person who shot this hapless person was not prosecuted but, it is said, was plagued by guilt for the rest of his days.
In the 1930s a George Lutz came to manage one of the local hotels for its owner. Clearly an entrepreneur, Lutz also set up a taxi business between Kaapsche Hoop and the nearby Godwin River stage post, as well as a mail-carrying business.
When the road bridge over the Godwin River was washed away, the South African Railways let its trains stop on the line to offload mail.
Passengers headed for Kaapsche Hoop disembarked at the same time and walked half-a-mile through the veld to a point where George Lutz collected both them and the mail.
Lutz’s wife was also the only trained nurse in the village, so the couple were a backbone of village life. Mrs Lutz also assisted a Dr McVie, who apparently won the Irish Sweepstakes.
Kaapsche Hoop was located 750m above the Elands River, which runs through the valley below. Residents often travelled the precarious, muddy road to Barberton to watch a movie, then return at night. Seeing a niche for such entertainment, itinerant ‘bioscopes’ sometimes pitched a tent in the square, in order to entertain the locals.
A cableway from nearby Barrets village carried timber and asbestos in buckets to Elandshoek. At times African labourers rode the buckets, but if the cableway failed they could find themselves marooned, swinging in the air for a day or two, so this was a pretty precarious means of transport.
After World War II, King George VI, his wife Elizabeth and the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret passed through the valley and stopped for a while at Godwin River station. The villagers came out to greet them and, so the story goes, were delighted when the young Margaret tugged on the long white beard of an elderly man “to see if it’s genuine”.
Nowadays the town is also famous for its free roaming wild horses.
WHERE TO STAY
The Royal Coach offers accommodation in the original coach that Queen Elizabeth II travelled in on her visit to South Africa in 1947 (www.safarinow.com/go/RoyalCoachKaapschehoop)
Kaapsche Hoop Gastehuis (Guest House) has seven luxury en-suite rooms, a restaurant and bar with a la carte and buffet dinner. It also has self-catering facilities in town as well as on the outskirts on the escarpment. (www.kaapsehoopguest.co.za; 013 734 4161; 082 450 3466)
RESTAURANTS:
Salvador Pub offers an outside area to dine ([email protected]).
The Koek’n Pan offers pancakes, toasted sandwiches, waffles etc. It’s fully licensed, and the shady deck, both upstairs and down, is good for a warm day. ([email protected])
Myrtle Ryan, Saturday Star