Brutal truths on a Magaliesberg hill/mountain

IN 1990 we still had book reviews. You had a concept of what was being written about your time and place. You might occasionally buy the reviewed book, but mostly you added it to the towering mountain of titles in your head, that you were going to read “one day”. Until you got old and a bit closer to wise and discovered that “one day” was a jest, the cosmos’s sense of humour, like harps and haloes.

Until now. History is made. For all its 28 years, Vincent Carruthers’ Magaliesberg has been on my “one day” list. Last week, at a gem of a Magaliesberg lodge, Quiet Mountain, Vincent’s book was on a coffee table, and I was riveted.

Your classic Cockney, living in the shadow of the Tower of London, supposedly sees the Tower not as a treasured portal to 1 000 years of history, but a nuisance blocking his sunshine.

Don’t we Joburgers, generally, treat the Magaliesberg as an old sofa in the regional furniture?

Obviously, it can’t expect to be a major talking point, given all the vital questions facing us, like will Trump be invited to Harry and Meghan’s wedding. But it’s nowhere, isn’t it?

Vincent puts it somewhere, starting at the start, literally, with our quaint bergetjie being a hundredfold older than Everest. Funny, I’ve always taken the age-of-Earth thing as the height of irrelevance, but now I glow proprietorially at the stupendous rank of this mountain right in front of me.

Vincent introduces us to every tree, plant, snake, buck, insect, hill, koppie and blade of grass, and I glow brighter. To be in the place you’re learning about while you learn about the place you’re in doubles the clout.

Then the human bit, and degrees of barbarity. The world is thick in violent pasts but – courtesy of the late Dr Nthato Motlana – I’ve understood Tswanadom as an island of enlightened peace. Now, glimpsing the blood and torture of the Crocodile People splitting into four warring principalities, doubt descends.

Next, Mzilikazi, in spellings from Molokatse to Silkaat, with a reign of terror to make Shaka look like Florence Nightingale. Next, Boere with a new idea: don’t push conquered peoples into compulsory assimilation; they get permanent servitude. Next, kindly Albion presents invitations per sword and bullet to rejoice in the privilege of being owned by the Empire. Savagery was big.

Later, after Mzilikazi carved his retirement kingdom in Zimbabwe, he explained why he had to do the unspeakable things he did to the Tswana. In essence: they had to be in terror of us, or we’d be the dead ones.

Now, in 2018, facing the spreading idea that white rule was uniquely wicked, history’s refreshers come in handy. Forget it! Horribleness came with domination of every kind, and no one was exempt from the attempt to dominate whoever otherwise would dominate you.

No one at all can smugly say “my ancestors were nobler people than yours”. People weren’t noble; the human race came from primitiveness. Our job is to get it to civilisedness.

And this column’s job is to thank the Magaliesberg and its henchman Vincent for an opening of eyes. All this nature and history, plus dozens of mountains that you can actually walk up, and be back in time for tea. (The irreverent say “hills”, though only once they’re at a safe distance.)

Also to mention (again?) that a blood-soaked past has one upside: it’s exploitable in the present. A generation ahead, the Magaliesberg Moot will be an industry, living on its battlefield tours, generating incomes, battling traffic jams. It will need Son of Vincent. Or Daughter.