Sparkling stones, beautiful flowers & sheep
The northwestern corner of our country is arid and, for the better part of the year, drab. It’s no place for sissies. We travelled to Port Nolloth in search of relief, stopping in Pofadder and Springbok on the way, and realised that it’s the people who add colour to this region.
The far northwest of the Northern Cape is where three distinct regions converge: Namaqualand, Bushmanland and the West Coast. Each region has its particular characteristics, landscape, people and stories. And each is knows for a special “talent”: Namaqualand puts on spectacular displays of wildflowers, Bushmanland produces the best mutton and lamb, and the West Coast has its snoek and diamonds.
If you want to experience everything that’s on offer in these parts, take one of the long, straight highways that lead to the Northern Cape and aim for Springbok, Pofadder and Port Nolloth.
Sheep country
It’s just before 9am on a Saturday morning and plumes of smoke are hanging in the air above the rugby field at Namakwaland High School. Braai fires have been lit right around the pitch and people are gathered around them. Today, Springbok smells like braaivleis because the town and the Boesmanland Boerevereniging are hosting Braai Day.
“Actually, any day is Braai Day in Springbok,” says Francois Nelson. He and Peetie van den Heever are busy building a braai fire at the Springbok Toyota stand. “There are people here who braai every single day. Their monthly firewood bill is higher than their electricity bill!”
“We use only wood,” says Peetie. “If you use a Weber and briquettes, you belong in the city.”
This also applies if you eat vegetables. “We have a doctor in town who says vegetables should be fed to sheep to fatten them up,” says Francois.
He believes fatty mutton ribs are the best meat for a braai. “Salt, pepper and lemon juice – that’s it. Then you stand your grid upright next to the coals. For a long time. There’s nothing better.”
Springbok is regarded as the capital of Namaqualand. This part of the world is renowned for its wildflowers, but it’s clear that the locals are serious about their sheep too. The carcass of a Dorper lamb hangs in a refrigerated trailer
– first prize in the Boerevereniging’s guesstheweightofthecarcass raffle. Every now and then, someone opens the trailer door to take a look at the lamb.
“It is obvious it weighs 23,9kg,” says a father to his son.
Nearby, auctioneer André Smith starts to call for bids on young Dorper rams in the rapid auctioneering language that only farmers can understand. When two Yorkshire terriers extricate themselves from their leash collars and run towards the sheep enclosure, André casually requests someone to, “Get rid of those lions,” before he continues: “Ladies and gentlemen, here we have a beautiful Afrino ewe from Bushmanland. Lovely dual-purpose breed, wool and meat, and the wool price is not to be sneezed at. What do you say? How about R2 000?”
At the Springbok Hotel, Pieta and Magdalena van der Walt, too, are talking sheep. “You know, a few years ago a crazy journalist came here and ordered the catch of the day from the menu. He then wrote about how
disappointed he was that it was just an I&J hake fillet, because Springbok is so close to the sea and all that. No, man, this is Namaqualand – we only eat mutton and lamb here,” says Pieta, still a little irked about the idiocy. (Incidentally, Willem confessed he was that journalist. – Eds)
The Van der Walts moved to Springbok from Arniston in 2004 and have been managing the Springbok Hotel ever since. They now consider themselves Namakwalanners, says Magdalena.
“People here speak a different dialect. Some would say the Namaqualanders swear something terrible, but that’s just Namaqualand-speak,” says Pieta. “It took us a while to learn all the odd words. This is the only place I’ve heard the expression, ‘Hulle het geloop staan’
[literally, ‘They walked to a standstill’].”
Pieta says the two of them have also walked to a standstill, because they never want to leave Springbok. “It’s such a beautiful landscape. And the sea is not far away. We are crazy about the Port [Port Nolloth]. Some people wonder what we do here at the northern end of the country. But let me tell you, there’s always something to do. You just have to keep an eye on the church calendar, because it’s all there and there’s so much happening. We like doing things together in Springbok, like Braai Day, for example.”
Magdalena reckons they have access to all the things they would have in the city “except the rush and the rivalry. Because to me it looks like people in the city are always trying to do better than the next person – whereas here we really don’t care what you drive or where you live.”
Pieta says it’s a challenge to manage and maintain an old hotel like this. >
“It’s expensive to keep such a large place – with a restaurant and bar – open all the time. More people are choosing to stay at guesthouses these days, because their rates are slightly lower or they offer more privacy. The locals also don’t visit the bar as often as they did in the old days. Those who
do come to stay over usually want to experience something of the town’s heyday. I mean, just look at this copper footrest below the bar, look at the scuff marks. Many people have sat here over the years. It’s sad that these old platteland hotels have become so quiet.” SOMETHING YOU DON’T EXPECT to find in Springbok is a music shop. At The Music Box at one end of Voortrekker Street, David Swart says the people of Springbok love music and some are excellent musicians.
“There are omies in the community who play the guitar so well your jaw will drop in disbelief when you hear them. And many young people are interested in music, too.”
David, who grew up in Durbanville and studied electronic engineering, moved here when his father bought a farm in the district.
“So, in 2005, 900 Damara sheep and I arrived on the farm. Jislaaik, it was a major adjustment. But I immediately fell in love with the environment and life on the farm. I didn’t know much about farming, though. I was an English rookie from Cape Town. I didn’t fit in at the Boerevereniging for a long time. The guys only spoke Afrikaans. The name of the farm is Riembreek, and one of the farmers said to me one day, ‘You look like a riem that’s about to break!’”
David laughs as he tells the story, because these days things are going smoothly on the farm, he can speak Afrikaans fluently, and he feels more at home in the community. “I must say, since I opened the music shop [in 2012] and started to offer music lessons for kids, people have really made me feel part of the community. It probably also helps that the children are doing so well. We even produced the 2014 winner of
The Voice SA!” >
A story of two springs
Pofadder is roughly halfway between Springbok and Upington, off the N14, right where it starts to feel as if the road will continue straight indefinitely.
The town lies in an open, arid landscape, where there used to be a perennial spring. In the 1870s, Koranna leader Klaas Pofadder and his people lived here at the water source. In 1875, Christian Schröder from the Rhenish Missionary Society reached an agreement with Klaas to do missionary work here and to name the place Pofadder. But the first school and church in the region ended up being built 26km south of the current town, at another spring called Namies.
The town should really have developed there, but the current Pofadder was laid out in 1917 – and named Theronsville. The community preferred the name Pofadder, however, so it was later changed back.
The Niemöller family settled in the area in 1921. Luise Niemöller says her great-grandfather, Heinrich Niemöller, came here from Germany and bought the Pofadder Hotel and a few other businesses in the town.
“The hotel’s Jewish owner, a Mr Abel, lent my great-grandfather £1 000 to buy the hotel. In those days, Pofadder was a busy crossroads and the hotel also sold petrol. My grandpa Rudy apparently spent many nights sleeping on the stoep of their house so he could hear if someone arrived in the middle of the night looking to buy fuel. The diamond smugglers would move around at night.”
Luise’s father, Gertjie, had a big influence on the region during his lifetime. “He farmed, but he was really a stone hunter,” she says.
Gertjie had a major interest in the geology of the area and discovered a number of minerals, including sillimanite, which was in high demand in the late Forties because it was used in fire-proof bricks for blast furnaces. (Japan built blast furnaces on a massive scale for its steel industry.) But Gertjie’s sillimanite mine was not the only large industry he tackled; he also had one of the largest karakul farms and later began farming with dates on his farm, Klein-Pella, north of Pofadder. Today, these date plantations are the largest in the southern hemisphere.
In 2011, after 30 years in Johannesburg, Luise returned to Pofadder to take care of her 83-year-old father. “It’s fantastic to live here again. If you’ve grown up in Bushmanland, this place is in your blood and you always yearn for it. Like everyone else, I did have to leave. To go to school in the Cape and later to study >
in Stellenbosch. My husband was the actor Kerneels Coertzen (who played Swart Kat’s father in the popular local Eighties children’s TV series), but when I returned to Pofadder I became Niemöller again. The locals just pick up exactly where they left off the last time they saw you.” THESE DAYS, Pofadder is no longer the sleepy farming town with the pleasant platteland hotel that it once was. It now boasts a brand-new second hotel, but it’s still difficult to find a place to spend the night. This is because of the large solar farms established in the area, as well as the new Gamsberg open-pit zinc mine 40km west of the town.
“All the new projects have their positive and negative influences. But it’s great that Pofadder hasn’t turned into a ghost town” says Luise.
“We still have a quality of life that few other places offer. There is so much space and freedom here, so many opportunities to leave the road to explore the wonders of nature. The Orange River runs just north of us – on its banks you can truly relax for a day or two. And we braai up to three times a week, easily. This is the life!”
Pofadder doesn’t have many shops. There’s a Saverite Supermarket, a good butchery, a Foodzone and, of course, a farmers’ co-operative, the KLK.
Early one morning, we chat to two young guys busy unloading a bakkie at the co-op. Salesman Louw Wilken and floor manager Roger Kotze, who are both reasonably new to Pofadder, say there aren’t many other residents their age.
“The other day I went to the bar wearing my under-20 Springbok blazer, because I thought everyone would want to talk to me,” says Louw. “But nothing, not a single word. I go to Upington over weekends so I can be among friends.”
Roger agrees that this is one quiet place. “But it’s so much better than having to dodge bullets in Cape Town or Johannesburg and dealing with the hectic, fast-paced lifestyle.”
Louw grew up in Upington and Roger in Keimoes, so the laid-back lifestyle in Pofadder is not such a big adjustment for them. “The people of the Northern Cape are all really farm people. And we all get along,” says Louw.
That’s why the farmers can talk farming, rain and jackals when they come to the co-op.
And if they ask for a discount? “Discount! What discount?” jokes Roger. “No, no, we help where we can. Rather sell two pairs of velskoens for R600 than let one pair costing R500 sit there gathering dust.” >
Diamond of the West Coast
This West Coast town about 150km northwest of Springbok was founded in 1855 to serve as a harbour for the copper mines at Nababeep and Okiep. The scarcity of water meant that the ore was transported by mules instead of steam trains. The mules would draw wagons on a narrow-gauge railway, and fresh animals were harnessed every few kilometres. The mule trains also transported other goods and passengers on the two-day journey.
When the copper mines closed in 1919, the future of Port Nolloth was uncertain. But since Jack Carstens found the first alluvial diamond near Port Nolloth, thousands and thousands of carats have been removed from the sea between Alexander Bay and Kleinsee. And the town survives.
“This is the only place in the world where divers suction diamonds out of the sea,” says George Moyses, who was himself a diamond diver along this coast for 40 years.
George grew up in Senekal in the Free State. From childhood he dreamt of diving in the sea. “Quite far-fetched for a Free State kid who was barely familiar with water,” he laughs. He arrived in Port Nolloth in 1976 – “fled from the army” – and heard about people diving for diamonds. “I thought: ‘Now that’s something I want to do,’ and I immediately signed up for the necessary courses. And I started diving. It’s an incredible job, you know, even though it is difficult and dangerous.”
These days, George works at the Aukwatowa Museum in Port Nolloth, where he shares a wealth of stories and interesting facts with visitors.
There are countless tales about diamond smuggling. “In the early days, the guys would smuggle homing pigeons into the mine in their lunch boxes. They would secure packages containing diamonds to the pigeons so the birds could fly them home. One day, a guy overloaded his pigeon and the tired bird had to find somewhere to land. Between Alexander Bay [where the mine is] and Port Nolloth, there was a farmer facing tough times. He prayed: ‘Lord, please save me from my plight’, and there, out of the heavens, the pigeon came in to land next to the farmer.”
This is the reason no one in the area is allowed to keep pigeons, says George. Which doesn’t stop people from smuggling. “Brother, while we stand here, you can be sure an illicit diamond transaction is taking place somewhere around here.” >
“He prayed, ‘Lord, please save me from my plight’, and there, out of the heavens, the pigeon came in to land next to the farmer.”
HUGO FOOT IS ONE of the younger divers in the area. He says it’s hard to earn a living from diving alone. “Diving season is between October and April, and there are only between 30 and 50 days when the sea and the weather are suitable for diving. On the other days, you just have to sit and wait.”
That’s why, for the rest of the time, Hugo catches snoek, and he and a friend, Sean Nass, started doing sea rescues and offering emergency services. “It’s hard to believe, but there was nothing like it in Port Nolloth. We’ve done quite a few rescues. The most serious was a fishing boat that overturned with five men on board. We rescued four of them but couldn’t find the fifth man. His body washed up on the beach a few days later. Around here, people say a corpse is “walking back >
home”, because it floats upright under the water’s surface and it really does look as though it’s someone walking.”
Hugo has even had a close encounter with a ragged-tooth shark that knocked him around a bit while he was diving.
Does he find diving for diamonds exciting? “Look, there are many more beautiful stones than diamonds under the sea. But diamonds have always held a mysterious allure.” He laughs. “Here’s how you know you’re holding a genuine diamond in your hand: you immediately look around to see who is watching you.”