A kingdom of discovery
This park punches way above its size, with animals and astounding archaeology, finds Chris Harvie
‘WE just wish we had arranged to stay longer.” The departing couple walked, disconsolate, down the boardwalk towards us, binoculars still in hand, but on their way to the exit gate. “Look, there’s a pair of broad-billed rollers.”
We could see the birds clearly, only metres away. What a sighting!
The desire to stay longer was common to every visitor we met. Mapungubwe has the fastest-growing visitor numbers of any South African national park and everyone has a favourite aspect to recommend. It is that kind of place — it engenders the enthusiasm to share discoveries.
“Have you seen the Limpopo Valley View yet?” The river sweeps in a great arc from west to east and, beyond it, long views stretch across Botswana’s Tuli Block and deep into Zimbabwe beyond the Shashe.
“You must walk the length of the boardwalk.” Especially at sunset, we discovered. There is something apt about the clanging bells of the cattle in the riverbed, accompanied by the overhead whistle of the African harrier-hawk and the trill of the woodland kingfisher, while elephants galumph through the distant mopane trees.
“Walk the loop from deck to deck at the Confluence Lookout.” Skinks scurry, finches chirrup and hand-sized grasshoppers lurch through the dried-twig bush. Way below, the openness is broken by scampering baboons and dozens of waterbuck in laagered herds.
The Botswana flag flies from a distant pole, a single reminder of man’s often-absurd imposition of himself on Africa’s open spaces.
Mapungubwe is a glorious place. It offers a combination of beauty, history, wildlife and birding. There are over 400 bird species here, one of a very few places where you can easily see three pairs of broad-billed rollers on one walk — and purple, European and lilacbreasted rollers as well.
The park was established in 1995 and covers 28 000ha. Statistically, it may not compare very favourably with its nearest South African neighbour, the Kruger, but size is measured differently in the face of such unspoilt isolation. The elephants on the Khongoni Loop look bigger than most of their Kruger counterparts. Even the temperature reached a whopping 46°C when
we were there. And here’s a statistic: one of its baobabs has a 31m circumference.
The statistics tell us nothing, however, about the sheer dramatic beauty of the place; about its desolation and stillness.
Mapungubwe is more than a celebration of the wildlife and birds that live there. It is more than a great place to take photographs. It is more than peace and tranquillity in hot windless bush. It is greater than the camps in their extraordinary settings under red, brown and green kloofs and on forest-fringed riverbanks.
To the local people, Mapungubwe has a relevance that transcends all of this, arising from the ruins of its own ancient civilisation. Our guide was the erudite Johannes Masalesa, but the enthusiasm of the entire team is enthralling. Most of them are directly descended from a people who built a settlement on this site nearly 1 000 years ago.
The site was discovered in 1932 and has been excavated by the University of Pretoria ever since. In its listing for it as a World Heritage Site, Unesco describes Mapungubwe as the centre of the largest kingdom on the subcontinent before it was abandoned in the 14th century.
“What survives are the almost untouched remains of the palace sites and also the entire settlement area dependent upon them, as well as two earlier capital sites,” Unesco says.
Johannes’s tour begins with a riveting talk at an excavation of several layers, showing the different periods of the rise and fall of the kingdom.
“I am not scared now,” Johannes says before we head up the path to the summit, “but there was a time when I would not even look at this hill, let alone climb onto it.”
And climb onto it we did, the tales ringing in our ears of sharded clay pots, of giant walls and exotic glass beads, of buried chiefs in gold-wired bangles.
Three elite burial sites have yielded gold jewellery including anklets, bracelets, necklaces, beads and animal figurines. The signature discovery, however, was the Golden Rhino, found in 1933, leading to the excavation of the surrounding mountains and the villages in the valley below.
The rhino was supposed to symbolise the isolation of the king’s hilltop residence and the solitary nature of his position.
The enthusiasm of the team is contagious, so everyone who visits feels lucky to be part of bringing an exciting find like this to light.
Today, the solitude of Mapungubwe belongs to all of us. And it is magnificent. —