Bushmanland
How do you make a living in the furthest, driest reaches of Bushmanland?
Ipause in Steinkopf to refuel the Renault Duster, then I proceed north on the N7, passing Eenrietberg just outside town. Beyond that, I turn right onto a wide, sandy road to Henkries. Close to Henkries, water is pumped from the Orange River. From there, for nearly 250 km, a pipeline provides water to nearly all the towns in this part of the Northern Cape: Steinkopf, Springbok, even distant Kleinzee. I pass construction vehicles – the pipeline, originally built in record time back in 1973, is currently being replaced for most of its length.
After a while I stop and get out. A hot wind blows. I walk towards a rondavel-sized quiver tree, 50 m away. It’s the only thing taller than calf height. It’s late January and bone dry, even for Bushmanland.
The quiver tree says nothing, and it says everything. I cup an ear to its trunk; there’s a heartbeat deep down inside. I whisper something to it, and return to the car. I pass a place called Doornwater – a booster pump station on the pipeline. Not a soul.
Before I reach Henkries, I turn right towards Goodhouse, a small settlement next to the Orange River.
A few years ago I travelled through here with 4x4 guide Rey Janse van Rensburg. That day we stopped and ate lunch in the shade of a shepherd’s tree. Shepherds appeared with their flock of sheep and goats, watering them at a trough. I walked over and met Iky Engelbrecht, a Steinkopf-based farmer. I decided then I would return one day to see how on earth people like Iky manage to survive in this semi-desert. And here I am.
I’m not meeting Iky in Goodhouse – he and his livestock are too far off the beaten track; I’d never reach them in the Duster. But through Johanna, Iky’s wife who lives in Steinkopf, I have set up a meeting with another well-known farmer called Jasper Cloete, also known as Oom Vick, or Vicky Jasper.
Jasper is currently encamped near Goodhouse. This whole area is communal land where farmers from Steinkopf lease grazing rights.
I scan the landscape for signs of life but see none. Just heat waves, rising from stubby, hardy grass called gha. How can anyone farm here?
Suddenly I spot a human silhouette, off to the left, 200 m away. I stop and wait for the sock of dust to pass over the vehicle before I get out.
Meet Kado
Rikardo Markus is 31 years old. People call him Kado, he tells me. People? I look around. Is there anyone to call you any name out here?
He laughs. “No, there is someone,” Kado says. He has a shy, gentle smile. There’s another shepherd who is currently encamped next to his stand, his staning. He points in the direction where I’m driving. “Ghagoup Kop,” he says.
I can see the hillock, also called Tagous, simmering like lava in the distance.
“If you continue with the Bloupad, then you drive right past our staning.” The Bloupad? It’s the road I’m on, I learn.
Kado patiently answers my questions. The livestock under his care belong to a teacher from Steinkopf called Bertus Yster. There are 250 swartskape (karakul) and 76 goats. An important part of Kado’s job is to know exactly how many of each. How does he know if one has gone missing? “I just know,” he says. “I look at them and I know.”
He has two children and a girlfriend in town. Sometimes she comes to visit. He works for three months, then he gets eight days off, or sometimes two weeks. If he needs it, he takes a month’s leave. The pay is poor but there is no work in Steinkopf. What do the animals eat? I ask, because to my eye there’s nothing green here, yet the sheep and goats appear to be in good condition.
“The gha grass can be very good,” he says. “But right now it’s too dry.” He points to the flimsy tree next to us.
It’s a green-hair tree, or lemoendoring in Afrikaans. Kado knows it by its Nama name, t’ha, which is pronounced like “nca”, as in nice. “The animals love its pods, especially the goats.”
There is nothing green on the greenhair tree. It looks like a cartoon character that received an electric shock. In its threadbare shade lie two sand-coloured dogs, Bassie and !Gais. By our feet is a delicate, grey puddle of ash, already leaking into the wind. Minutes ago, Kado made a tiny fire here, heating water for his tea in a tin. I think of Kado’s carbon footprint – it is literally the size of a side plate, that spot of ash.
“What do you eat out here?”
Kado laughs, because I’m asking stupid questions. “Bertus Yster brings me food. Tonight I might eat spaghetti or rice, and add a tin of something. I also bake my own broodjies.”
By day he carries four litres of water and sandwiches. Where did the animals drink today? Nowhere, they only drink every second day. I’m amazed – I didn’t know this was possible. Where? Kado points towards Henkries. Apparently, water is released from a purification plant there when they clean the filters – the waste water is used by shepherds to water their stock.
I ask if we can meet there the next day. “It’s only mountains that can never meet again,” Kado says, seeing the doubt in my eyes. “People can always meet again.”
It’s 4.40 pm and time for him to start heading to his staning. His animals have already assumed a streamlined formation and started a steady plod. They know the way.
Kado greets me and turns, Bassie and !Gais in his wake. The landscape doesn’t “swallow” them, as the cliché goes. It’s the opposite: If I stood here for another 15 minutes, I’d still be able to see them. If I put up a lifesaver’s chair right here and sat in it, I’d probably be able to see Kado all day long.
Goodhouse
Back in the Duster, the corrugations quickly turn to hard, blue gravel (hence, Bloupad) that threaten to rip the car asunder. I go slowly, manage not to lose a tyre, and reach a bigger road where I turn left to Goodhouse.
This road is easy. It draws me out of the open plains into the rocky mountains, many of which are inselbergs – isolated koppies that remind me of pyramids bulldozed into place. The landscape continues its gentle fall towards the Orange River. If you put down a soccer ball here, it would roll for hours.
I can already see the green ribbon where I know the water of the Orange River flows. But where the hell is Goodhouse? It’s the only thing that’s meant to be here, yet I can’t see it.
When the road forks, I go right.
A place appears: a cemetery, kraals, some ruins, and a low, zinc-roofed house. I stop just beyond the house, where the road ends. I get out and walk to the river. On the other side – in Namibia – is a farm called Hakiesdoorn where green lucerne, crop circles and a plantation of young date palms proclaim prosperity.
On this side of the river, there is none of that. There used to be a paprika project in the early 2000s, but it barely lasted two years before falling apart.
I squint and see people at the zincroofed house. Now that they’ve seen me, it’s a good time to go and introduce myself. I’m not entirely sure where I’ll find Jasper Cloete, and it’s impossible to call him. (“Phones aren’t my sort of thing,” he tells me later.)
But we are people, not mountains, I remind myself of Kado’s wisdom.
Now I can see Goodhouse – it’s a couple of kilometres downriver. Where I’m standing is old Goodhouse. Many years ago there was a border post here, and a pontoon that could take you across to what was then South West Africa. I reach the house, convince the dogs I’m a friend and meet Bennie Cloete, George “Goliat” Engelbrecht and young Clint Cloete.
Bennie listens to my story and says yes, he knows about me. I must wait. Jasper and his party went to Steinkopf; they’ll be back later.
It’s getting dark. I ask if I can pitch my tent at the river. Sure, Bennie says. But come, sit down first.
Quite a bit later, Jasper and his daughter Amanda arrive, finally back from town. Dis reg, Jasper says, I can stay over at their staning the next night.
There is nothing green on the greenhair tree. It looks like a cartoon character that received an electric shock.
The drone of water pumps coming to life on the farm across the Orange wakes me before sunrise. I get up, get dressed, pack my tent away and stroll over to Bennie’s house with a packet of rusks. Because they’re right next to the river, Bennie, George and Clint don’t have to move around with their livestock. The green along the river mostly consists of mesquite trees, a drought-resistant invasive species that bears especially nutritious pods – perfect for livestock. There are various ruins next to Bennie’s house. Among them is an old hotel that dates from a time when Goodhouse was on one of the main routes between the Cape and South West. Author Deneys Reitz once stayed over and writes about a good kuier he had with the owner, Carl Weidner (1869 – 1940) and his wife Caroline (1876 – 1943). The Weidners’ graves are here; the memorial plaque reads: “Together they established Goodhouse in 1913.”
The name Goodhouse comes from the Nama “Gádaos”, which means “sheep drift”. A shallow point in the river here was once used as a crossing.
Bennie’s home is simple and neat. A broad stoep faces west, fenced to just more than hip height by a wall of reeds that acts as a windbreak. Several beds stand on the stoep. On one lies a wide-brim hat; underneath it, a pair of vellies. A hi-fi stands on top of the freezer. A big water sack hangs in the middle of the stoep, the wind keeping the water cool.
I find Bennie on the back stoep, facing east. He’s been up since quarter past five. He’s already raked the yard and milked a goat or three. George is busy in the cooking shelter. Smoke billows out of the door, where a pot of pap for the dogs rests on the open fire on the floor. George, who doesn’t talk much, seems to be in charge of meals – he’s already baked some bread. Clint (24) is sweeping floors. On the roof, racing pigeons and a few fantails coo. Bennie was born in Steinkopf but grew up on a farm called Eyams. After school he learnt trades, joined the army, became a builder and worked on the SishenSaldanha railway line. Along the way he worked in Oranjemund, Koingnaas and Klerksdorp. During the years up north, he even saw Dolly Parton perform live, one night in December 1982 at Sun City. “We were seven brothers, but we all did our own thing,” he tells me. “Now I’m divorced, and my kids are all married – so I don’t have any worries.”
He got this patch of land in 1991, but only settled here for good in 2009. His children helped him get started with a few sheep and goats, and today his herd has grown to 130 animals.
Bennie was born in 1955, George in 1956, and they’ve been helping each other ever since.
“From being lighties,” Bennie says. “It’s been 50 years.”
At some point we talk politics, a conversation that Bennie ends swiftly after a long pause, by saying: “Apartheid didn’t do me any harm, but it did make me independent.”
Inevitably, we talk about the drought. They should receive an average of 75 mm of rain per year at Goodhouse, but in 2019 they only had 20 mm. “It’s been dry here for five years,” Bennie says. “But when we do get rain, the veld responds within two weeks. It starts with a grass we call twa, which comes up eight days after it has rained. It’s a soft and juicy grass. But you must never rush out to the Buiteveld just because it has rained.”
Twa grass is kortbeenboesmangras ( Stipagrostis obtusa), and by “Buiteveld”, he means the area further away from the river. Technically, along the river, we’re in a bio-region called Gariep Desert; Bushmanland is the Buiteveld. “Sometimes the animals can accidentally eat poisonous plants after the rain, and you can lose them,” Bennie explains. “I rather stay put. Farming is always a risk. But if you care for your animals and appreciate them, they’ll repay the favour.”
Henkries
My date with Kado at the watering point in Henkries is for any time after 11 am. I say goodbye to Bennie and the others and drive downriver, first passing through Goodhouse (a collection of about 50 houses) and then along a rugged but spectacularly scenic road. On the left are sheer, rock-strewn slopes; on the right the Orange River flows lazily but steadily. When I stop to appreciate the view,
I see the shimmer of fish beneath, and a grey heron stamping hieroglyphic-like footprints in the exposed mud.
I pass the place where water is extracted from the river – the start of the Henkries pipeline – then the valley opens a smidgen, just enough for a lucerne farm called Langkweek. At Henkriesmond, the road swings into a smaller valley, away from the river.
Between here and Henkries the road climbs three inclines, and the landscape between each changes markedly. This bottom bit is straight out of a B-roll from the Mars Rover, the next step up is all reeds and salty moisture leaching from the soil, and then there’s the appearance of a government date farm, which looks every bit like a North African oasis.
I pass a few houses, even a tiny church. This is Henkries. A kilometre or so further, more houses – most of the employees of the water purification plant live here. Just short of the plant I can see where the water must be – the green thicket of mesquite trees is a giveaway.
I park, get out and scout the area. Soon some karakul sheep and an assortment of goats start arriving, followed by a smiling Kado and his dogs. The animals greedily gulp down water, then fan out, some resting in the shade, others standing on back legs to reach a cache of juicy mesquite tree pods.
“They’re just enjoying themselves,” Kado remarks. “Now that they’ve had a drink, they’re at peace.”
So is Kado. He finds shelter from the sun and settles in for a couple of restive hours, the sound of water in his ears. The dogs flop down and stretch their long bodies out, snouts on front paws.
Kado became a shepherd at the age of
“Farming is always a risk. But if you care for your animals and appreciate them, they’ll repay the favour.”
15. “I always had a touch with animals, I love being around them,” he says. “I’ve got some livestock of my own, too. My little brother looks after them near a place we call Jakkalswater. The water there is down in a well – you have to pull up buckets to water the animals.”
Talking about jackals – are they an issue here? “Of course, this place is ingetrap with them, there are plenty,” Kado says. “And there are leopards in the mountains.”
We also talk about the drought.
“It’s been dry this season,” Kado says. “There was some winter rain last year in the Binnewêreld, but it said hokaai at Eenrietberg and then went back to the sea.” The “Binnewêreld” is what he calls the area near Steinkopf and west from there, towards the coast.
“This is a summer rainfall area,” he says. “We should get thundershowers.
But the earth is parched.”
A fresh flock of livestock arrives at the watering point – they belong to someone else. Kado doesn’t get a lot of time to socialise, but during the day he will generally see another shepherd who’s using the area next to him. They’ll shout to each another and make plans for a kuier.
“We might decide that I’ll come to his staning that night, then I’ll take some food along to share. You don’t always have a good appetite when you’re eating on your own all the time, but with a bit of company you can get some food down.” A shepherd must work frugally with what he’s got. Kado stretches a packet of Boxer tobacco to eight days, 10 kg of flour to a month.
“When I’m alone in the veld, I think about my girlfriend and my children. There’s a girl called Rochandré – she is six. And the boy is four; his name is Elvano. Of course, I also think about my own livestock over at Jakkalswater. And my parents, who are still alive. And my mother’s mother, my grandma. Those are the people I think about.”
The new shepherd appears – Edwin Engelbrecht. “These animals belong to Willemien Olyn,” he tells me. Edwin lives here in Henkries and unlike Kado, who wears co-op vellies, he wears fashionable white takkies.
“Sit nou!” he scolds a dog of his that doesn’t want to relax. Then he gathers a small bundle of twigs to start a fire. It’s teatime. Once the tea is ready, Kado digs out his bottle of fresh goat’s milk. The thick, creamy milk turns the tea into a rich, golden drink.
It’s time for a bit of gossip. Kado and Edwin discuss another shepherd who they refer to as a sprinkaan (locust). “That is one who is greedy,” Kado explains.
Edwin: “When one patch of land gets a rain shower, everyone goes there. That’s what a sprinkaan does. And when all the shepherds are in one area, you must watch your flock very closely.”
“If you stay too long in one place with the animals, they trample the staning to a powdery dust,” says Edwin, “and then you must move, because that dust makes them sick.”
Kado adds: “When you’re moving with the livestock, it’s important to have a good voorskaap and agterskaap.”
The voorskaap is the lead sheep, the agterskaap is the rearguard.
Edwin: “Your animals can walk far apart, but they must still follow one another.”
Kado: “You must teach them the route. If you don’t watch out, you can have big problems, you can lose animals.”
Losing a sheep or goat can happen in many ways: The animal could be stolen, or killed by a predator, or it could die after eating poisonous plants. Losing an animal is a shepherd’s biggest fear.
“To look after livestock is a huge responsibility,” says Kado. “It’s like you’re looking after the owner’s bank balance.
It’s big money.”
Stone tents
I drive back to Goodhouse (about 17 km away) along the same route. Next to the river, I stop and take a dip – it was 38˚ C at Henkries; here in the valley it’s 43˚ C. I meet Jasper Cloete back at Bennie’s place – it’s time to see his staning and get a glimpse of farming life in this inhospitable place. Unlike most “farmers” from Steinkopf, who outsource the hard work to people like Kado, Jasper is owner and worker. He and a small team of people live out here with the animals, day and night, year in, year out.
There’s his daughter, Amanda Cloete, and Tinkie and Desmond de Klerk. Desmond’s little boy, Allister, is also here. Between them they have two bakkies, a Toyota Hilux and an Isuzu KB – old models, both as hardy as an aardvark. Jasper doesn’t drive; Amanda is usually behind the wheel when he needs to go anywhere.
I follow in the Duster. The staning is just 5 km away, hidden behind an inselberg. In this area there are many such pointy inselbergs – Jasper and his kin call it “die Tentedorp” because the inselbergs look exactly like huge marquee tents from a distance.
The staning is like a good poem: everything it needs to be, nothing more. There is a small kraal in which the precious breeding rams are kept, plus two horses called Max and Frog. A small shack to sleep in, with a couple of beds standing outside in the open. The kitchen is another makeshift shelter. To the side is a trailer loaded with lucerne – fodder for the horses and the rams. Everything can be packed up and moved within hours. Most of the livestock has been taken down to the river for the day. Now, late afternoon, they are returning. I walk around the koppie so I can see them coming: a long trail of animals, the voorskaap close to me, the agterskaap more than a kilometre back. They make their way unsupervised to the staning, like iron filings drawn by a magnet.
As the animals start arriving, the shadows of the Tentedorp lengthen, providing respite to man and beast. The tired animals come to a standstill. The dust settles.
The staning is like a good poem: everything it needs to be, nothing more.
I look around the perfect, peaceful scene. There’s a donkey called Seska, a couple of cocks and a handful of hens, a full team of dogs and a kitten. Jasper and Tinkie are picking out sheep or goats they feel need some attention, dosing them with a supplement. Desmond jumps in a bakkie and drives off to go look for the cattle, which are somewhere nearby at another watering point and not brought in to the staning. They’re just checked on, as you’d check on a favourite aunt and uncle if you pass through their neighbourhood.
Jasper calls me over to the middle of the flock where a ewe is giving birth. The lamb’s tiny cleats exit first, glistening like damp white quartz.
Water is poured into troughs for the rams – white Dorpers and Meatmasters. Amanda has started a fire and is preparing dinner. Allister is playing in the dust, rolling a tyre. Billy goats are jumping around on big boulders, watched by a mountain wheatear that flicks its wings. A rock martin ducks and dives over the scene, and a small flock of Namaqua sandgrouse call out on their fast fly-by to who knows where. The sun sets.
Jasper is 63 years old and he has spent his life doing this. First, he farmed alone. He remembers icy winter nights when he had to make a fire, bury the coals and sleep on top of the fire for some heat. He realised he needed a partner and met Heloisa at a farm community called Kosies. They got married on 15 October 1977 and were inseparable. Lady Heloisa, as he calls her, died on 20 October 2019, and the hurt of her loss still lies shallow in the heart and eyes of Jasper Cloete. He looks away, over my shoulder.
It came out of nowhere, he says about that day. They had just lost 60 head of livestock after the animals ate poisonous plants. He thinks it might have been the shock of that setback that affected her. “Some days,” he says. “Some days I feel rudderless without her.”
Jasper believes women make better farmers than men. He loves talking about Heloisa, and in his stories she is always the hero. He tells me about a time when he went tracking lost livestock on foot and alone, when wet weather set in. Night fell and he had to shelter under an overhang, knowing there was a leopard nearby that had caught three of his sheep the day before. Heloisa followed his tracks in the bakkie and found him that night, bringing him food.
We enjoy the pasta made by Amanda. The staning is quiet but for the sifting sound of stars from above, for the Tentedorp’s roof has darkened in the meantime. Except for the rams, the horses and a couple of sickly animals, the herd will remain unfenced all night. The chickens have found roosting spots on boulders in the koppie. Nothing is in a cage.
When I crawl into my sleeping bag later, my mind wanders to Kado, who had to tread more than 8 km back to his own staning. I think of Bennie and George and a 50-year friendship that comes down to caring for a group of animals together, and sitting on the back stoep afterwards, enjoying a cup of tea. Farming here can be a desperate affair. The conditions are brutal. Only resilient people make it around the first bend. But at the heart of their survival lie intimate friendships and relationships, some that go back decades. There’s a mutual understanding that you need a friend out here. Tomorrow I’ll leave this place and return to a comfortable but sometimes meaningless world. For hundreds of farmers like Jasper Cloete, life will continue as before. It starts at 4 am, when a cock crows loud and clear. At dawn you’ll sit up in your bed, which might be outside in the sand. The first thing you’ll see will be an animal. A goat or a sheep or a chicken or a donkey or a horse or a dog. And it will see you. Someone will bend down and strike a match behind a cupped hand, the orange glow playing over the face like a brief, holy flash. You will make tea, eat pap, get something in your stomach.
The sandgrouse will fly back the other way, and the wheatear and rock martin will return to guard your staning all day, free of charge. Then, when the sun spills around the foot of the koppie the animals will suddenly get excited, stirred into motion by the voorskaap, and they’ll set out for where they know some juicy pods hang high on a tree, reachable only if you stand on your hind legs.
Postscript: Rain fell in the area during early June 2020. Steinkopf received 50 mm and parts of the Buiteveld near Goodhouse about 20 mm.