Mission

The MARA programme is concerned with redressing the history of the misunderstood former ‘Transkei’ region of Matatiele, where southern KwaZulu-Natal meets the north Eastern Cape. In recent years there have been protests in the streets of Matatiele because the town has been moved from KwaZulu and is now an Eastern Cape municipality. Such is the contested identity of a town where the majority of residents speak both fluent SeSotho and isiXhosa and where some still speak the fast disappearing dialect SePhuthi – the language of the BaPhuthi people. The region was first home, however, to San hunter-gatherers and their ancestors for thousands of years. These foragers experienced the arrival of farming communities – Bantu-speakers, Griqua and Colonists. The heritage of all the constituents of the Matatiele community is rich with the history of the interaction between these cultures yet has not been systematically surveyed or studied, largely because it was ignored by researchers during the apartheid era.

There is a striking lack of historical text relating to the settlement of this region by Bantu language-speakers, yet the little we have suggests that these incoming farmers had very complex relationships with the indigenous San hunter-gatherers (including co-operative elephant hunting). It appears that although iron age farmers settled the foothills of the northern Maloti-Drakensberg as much as 800 years ago, they did not settle the in the Matatiele region until the period of political instability after 1800. One such group, the BaPhuthi (originally part of the amaZizi) have an oral tradition that they were helped by the San during their migration from KwaZulu-Natal. This kind of knowledge is contested depending on the source of information, so, to complement the scarce texts the MARA programme aims to derive information from oral traditions as well as archaeological excavation and the study of rock paintings in the many sandstone caves of the southern Maloti-Drakensberg. The San rock art of the region is not just a historical document of the arrival of these incoming peoples, but a testament to how farmers, and their livestock, became incorporated into changing San society and religion, and how the San, in turn affected the society and religion of their neighbours.

This region was identified as under-researched in a doctoral study in 2005-2008. Brief fieldwork during a one-week visit led to the discovery of more than fifteen rock art shelters in previously unexplored valleys in the Maloti-Drakensberg of Matatiele. Some of these rock art sites contributed to the hypothesis that in the nineteenth-century this region was home to creolised ‘Bushman’ raiding bands of mixed cultures who made paintings of their religious beliefs in the sandstone shelters. The racial attitudes and categories of separation in the apartheid era (both governmental and academic) and the location of much of these creolised rock paintings in the former ‘Transkei’, meant that these mixed groups remained forgotten until well into the 2000s. This is but one example of a history that can be re-traced and redressed. The MARA programme intends to further investigate the phenomenon of raiding cultures in the nineteenth-century, but as part of a wider, and deeper, context of the heritage of all cultures in the region.