The beat of South Africa’s Bushveld pulses through the Limpopo and North West provinces. Surprisingly little known, the area offers travellers rich rewards, ranging from elephant-back safaris and encounters with the Big Five to historical treasures and phenominal lodges. The freedom from malaria also brings peace of mind. To shed some light on the remarkable region, we sent Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit in search of its people, beasts and legends.
 As the winter sun rises over the rocky ridges, plains and valleys of the South Africa’s northern frontier, Pam and Doug Cuff from the Cotswolds are riding their horses through the backlit morning dew. Here, there is no roar of the motorway, no rush hour or breakfast TV. Instead, there is the distant bark of a Waterberg baboon and the busy pecking of a crested barbet, that crazy-coloured bird that looks as if it was designed by a committee of eccentrics.
Across the region, travellers huddle under blankets and ponchos on the back of game drive vehicles as they head out from their lodges in search of the Big Five: lion, elephant, leopard, rhino and buffalo. Those who have been here before are after the Little Five: the lion ant, the elephant shrew, the leopard tortoise, the rhino beetle and the buffalo weaver.
On the banks of Kipling’s “great grey-green, greasy Limpopo”, visitors to the Mapungubwe National Park greet the dawn where goldsmiths and ivory traders once paid homage to a queen who ruled from the top of an awesome outcrop of rocks and sky-grasping baobab trees.
This is the tawny Bushveld, where wilderness and legend combine to form an unforgettable African travel experience.
Limpopo Province - Great North Road.
The journey begins in Johannesburg, as you set out on the Great North Road which, taken to its logical conclusion, would eventually lead you right into the bustling centre of Cairo. The smooth N1 highway now stands in place of the old trails cut by hunters in search of ivory 150 years ago.
Modimolle, formerly Nylstroom, is the largest town on fringes of the Waterberg area. The legend goes that in the late 1800s a religious group called the Jerusalemgangers arrived here and were convinced this was the source of the Nile River.
Today, Modimolle (‘Place of the Spirits’) is known for its RAMSAR-registered Nylsvlei Nature Reserve. The 16,000ha reserve lies on the Nyl floodplain and hosts the biggest variety of waterbirds in the southern hemisphere.
In a former life, the provincial capital of Pietersburg (now Polokwane) used to be a mining town called Smitsdorp, teeming with diggers and bars. In the early 1880s, the new mining commissioner for the Soutpansberg, George Munnik, arrived to take up his post. His office was on one end of a very long tin building, and at the other end was the local jail. Next to that was a little annex where a woman ‘from the Cape’ was confined, raving at all and sundry. She’d been arrested for trafficking in liquor. The woman had a heap of stones next to her, and the story goes that Munnik’s predecessor was chased off by some of those flying stones.
“Needless to say, I held no inspection there,” says George Munnik in his memoirs. Sensible fellow.
From Polokwane, adventures beckon in all directions. The forests of Magoebaskloof and the wilds of the Kruger National Park lie to the east, Botswana to the west, Zimbabwe to the north and the Limpopo Ivory Route bisects the city. Polokwane also has a very lively township route, where you can experience shebeen life, meet traditional healers, buy crafts and spend time in various villages.
Just before the South Africa-Zimbabwe border is the dry, hot baobab town of Musina, and it is from here that you head west to the site of an ancient civilisation.
Mapungubwe National Park
Jethro Moyo from Mopane Bush Lodge took us on the evening drive into the nearby Mapungubwe National Park, one of South Africa’s latest World Heritage Sites. Nothing can really prepare you for the intensity of the gnarled, dramatic landscape that lies in the valley below.
There was once an ancient kingdom in South Africa, ruled for seven decades from an impregnable hill near the confluence of the great Limpopo and Shashe Rivers.
Archaeologists have been carefully picking over the ruins for decades now, and they tell us the rule of the Kingdom of Mapungubwe lasted from 1220 to 1290 AD, just when Europe was struggling through the Dark Ages and when Genghis Khan was urging his Golden Horde across the steppes of Mongolia into the West.
The decline of Mapungubwe came shortly before the rise of the Great Zimbabwe empire of Monomotopa, leading many to believe in a consecutive link between the two civilisations.
Archaeologists have unearthed intriguing clues of global trade at Mapungubwe: ceramic remains from ancient China, glass beads from Egypt, and many kilograms of gold, possibly from India.
Twentieth-century discoveries at Mapungubwe sadly coincided with the Great Depression of the 1930s. Some say the best gold specimens were plundered, melted down and sold off as bullion. There are still rumours of ancient gold in private collections and on family mantelpieces, and of ceramic pots, strands of trade beads and other artefacts owned by treasure seekers.
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