In the far northern reaches of South Africa dwell sacred sites shrouded in secrecy that remind us of the ancient wisdom that we are deeply connected with the earth.
Here in the Soutpansberg, or Thava ya Muno (‘Mountain of Salt’ in TshiVenda), the mountains, rivers, waterfalls and plains tell stories of mysterious ancestral lineages and a little-known gentle forest-dwelling people: the vaVhangona.
Their descendants remain to this day the guardians of the sacred sites whose names ring magic upon the ears of both the ignorant and the wise: Thathe Vondo, Fundududzi and Phidi Phidi. These are the better known sites to outsiders: many remain secret and unrevealed to the untrained eye. For generations, the vaVhangona have protected these hallowed places – now recognised for their abundant and particular richness in biodiversity, their importance in local water cycles and their essential role in maintaining ecological integrity.
Strict taboos, specific rituals and ceremonies, and ancient stories govern the relationships between human and non-human society here, where different groups have vied for chieftaincy and control. The contemporary appearance of a coherent Venda culture forged under the apartheid homelands, or bantustan, system remains a composite of many peoples and competing interests.
Here in Venda in South Africa’s Limpopo province, mining, plantation forestry and commercial agriculture pose the greatest threat to the environment – which also fragment local cultural practices. Right now, the area is under extreme threat from the green-lighted Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone that will convert Soutpansberg and nearby Vhembe biosphere and their sacred sites into large-scale steel and coal mining operations.
Social scientists argue that as the local environment is incrementally – or sometimes suddenly – destroyed, so too are the cultural practices that are so significant to its conservation. Indeed, Western science has begun to acknowledge the importance of indigenous knowledge and indigenous peoples to maintaining ecological integrity. It has also begun to be recognised as a source of wisdom for industrial society that leads to the increasing sense of disconnection from nature and from self.
Ecopsychology, a branch of psychology, observes how human disconnectedness from nature and natural systems is the very driver of their destruction. And yet, as participants in an increasingly connected global society, exponentially mediated by digital technologies and LCD screens. It is our sense of connectedness between place and people – the stories, rituals and rites – that remind us that we belong to the land. It is this very sense of connection with the natural world that is increasingly understood as essential to the survival not only of nature, but human society – materially, psychologically and spiritually.
Amongst the Venda-speaking people of South Africa, a rich storytelling tradition and culture remain attached to the landscape and important to cultural identity, offering a view into what long-standing sense of connection between people and nature can look like.
The stories of Venda speak of the creation and evolution of the different aspects of the landscape occupied historically by the VhaVenda. Sacred sites are a part of the Venda landscape and culturescape. They are protected by specific clans who carry the secrets, stories, rituals and ceremonies connected to the sacred site in the care of nearly every village.
The stories and traditions that speak of the land and the ancestors tie these sacred sites together, maintaining connection between the human and the lands, the waters and the trees – much like the key ecological processes which operate among them. Here, places of ecological importance are also places of great cultural significance.
Amongst these significant sites is Thathe Vondo Sacred Forest, presided over by Chief Netshedzhive. He is amongst the “Vhatavhatsindi vha Tshidsivhe” – “the secret people of Tshidsivhe” and the descendents of the Vhangona. As hereditary guardian, he maintains strict control over access to the sacred forest, now approximately 4000ha in extent, though bounded by sterile plantations of pine trees originally planted by the South African Department of Forestry from the 1930s onwards.
Thathe Vondo Sacred Forest is an afromontane indigenous forest. The forest falls in the northern mist belt of the Soutpansberg Mountains and receives an average of 1500mm rainfall a year. When you enter the forest, a strange presence becomes apparent and a stillness falls over the land. There are no footpaths to be seen. The undergrowth appears untouched. Creepers climb up listing trees, and bird calls haunt one’s footsteps. Yellowwoods, ironwoods, bushwillows and cussonia trees predominate. Ferns clamber over fallen logs, and the red flash of the Knysna turaco catches the eye from time to time as the otherwise green and beautiful bird flits from tree to tree. Cryptocaria liebertiana – the forest quince or Munenze in Venda – grows in abundance here. The latin name alludes to the nut buried or hidden within the fruit, and it about this nut that a Venda poem celebrates for the oil that is derived from the forest quince and used to smear upon their bodies and their leathers.
Once upon a time, legend tells, there lived a mighty white lion in Thathe Vondo forest. The lion would chase herders and gatherers of firewood away. This lion, known as Nethathe, was said to be the reincarnation of the great chief Khosi NeThathe himself. The thick mane of hair falls over the lion’s eyes, and when he opens them, Nethathe beats his tail upon the ground and roars mightily. The ground shakes and the forest creatures tremble and scatter in fear, hiding in the branches of trees or holes in the ground. The only sound remaining is that of the wind rustling the leaves of the Munenze tree.
Khosi NeThathe was a magician, diviner, healer and herbalist who brought rain to the land and appeared in the form of the white lion. This rain, however, would not fall if the trees were cut. In the language of VhaVenda, his name comes from word “thatha” – “to chase away”. Nethathe was “the chaser”, the“owner of Thathe”. The forest is protected by the lightning bird, Ndzadzi, the lightning bird, and from time to time the python god of Lake Fundudzi takes refuge here. In addition, a clumsy and predatory half-spirit and half-human peoples live in the forest, and woe betide any who dare to remove but a twig or a feather from this holy land.
Powerful taboos and rules govern the forest here, handed down by generations of descendants of the earliest-known inhabitants of Venda, the vhaVangona people. Here at Thathe Vondo forest, not a leaf nor a feather may be removed, lest the spirits of the land hound you to your home and in your dreams.
Chief Nethathe, now the white lion of the forest, instructed his descendants for generations to come to bury their bones in the forest, and the chiefs remains to be interred in the cave where he stored his herbs and his charms. To this day, Kgosi Netshedzhive wears a special bead handed down from his forebears. Should anyone enter the forest, the bead begins to itch and he knows that there is something afoot amongst the trees. Those who enter the forest without his blessing face the risk of going mad or blind, conditions that can only be remedied with the ingestion of special herbs concocted with porridge.
The Netshedzhive family continue to bring the bones of their ancestors, and conduct rituals and ceremonies deep in the forest. Only the uncircumcised chiefs and members of the Tshdizivhe family are buried in Thathe Vondo.
The chief must be buried as soon as possible after his death. Throughout the night as the chief’s body is transported to the place of burial, the Tshikona dance is performed. Tshikona music is produced by a group of young men blowing on flutes traditionally made from the reeds of a particular stand of bamboo named Musununu in the Venda language, found northeast of Sibasa, at Tshaulu. The ceremony passes through the place where the enemy bathe themselves – Mutamba Zwira – where the party rests till the early morning before setting forth once more to the sacred forest. The Tshikona dance begins again, and continues until the burial, accompanied by feasting and drinking.
All other family members are buried in the village. After a year, the bones are brought in an arduous journey to the forest, and may not touch the ground. Near the entrance to the forest, the bones are hung in a specific tree, allowing the bearers to rest. They are then taken for burial amongst the ancient trees as witnesses.
Thathe Vondo is now just a remnant of what was once a vast but uncharted moist forest that spanned the Soutpansberg alongside indigenous grasslands. In spite of strong local taboos, the trees were cut. The South African government’s Department of Forestry began to plant pine trees here in the the 1930s and 1940s. In the process, large tracts of indigenous trees were cut down. Between 1928 and 1938 seven headmen and their people were made to leave what were declared Crown lands in the Soutpansberg. The Netshidzhives resisted. They set the plantations on fire, and uprooted seedlings. But the apartheid government paid no heed.
In 1939, when the South African Department of Forestry set out to remove indigenous forest to make way for pine plantations, the guardian of Thathe Vondo Sacred Forest of the Tshedzhive family, petitioned that the state leave the heart of the forest intact. His efforts bore fruit, and a relatively small hilltop forest remains today, surrounded by a barren landscape of bare pine plantations. Large poles are piled on the side of the road, as new seedlings are planted for the next generation of sterile rows of pinus radiatus.
The indigenous forest is situated on a mountaintop, and is the birthplace of the largest of Venda’s rivers, the Mutale River. The Mutale spring is found near the centre of the sacred forest. It begins as a humble stream, and heads towards Lake Fundudzi where it is swallowed up by the lake 10,5km away, to appear as a great river on the other side. It eventually forms a part of the Luvuvhu River catchment, a main tributary of the Limpopo River. Peat wetlands unique to the Mutale catchment play a crucial role in the health and quality of Lake Fundudzi’s water, and help to reduce siltation in the lake that is exacerbated by nearby agricultural practices and land degradation. Peat wetland such as found along the Mutale River, are extremely rare, and face mounting threats posed by commercial pine forestry, alien invasive infestations and infrastructure development. These pine plantations are especially damaging, because they do not allow water to infiltrate and exacerbate erosion and flooding, while at the same time consume much more water than indigenous ecosystems, leading to greatly reduced water flow in the Soutpansberg river.
The stories of these sacred sites speak of a deep cultural connection to the landscape, the forests and the waters, and recognise the interconnectedness and relationships between important ecological processes and features in the landscape that are essential to the water cycles and natural processes that local livelihoods within and beyond Venda depend on. They also recognise the interdependence of human society’s on natural processes and relationships between the human and non-human world.
Now, the land is threatened by the same government that was supposed liberate African people from the yoke of apartheid. Since 2018, gold and coal prospectors from the Mammba Metal Group – with the blessing of the current South African government. Not far away, to the north-east, relatives in the Vhembe biosphere are fighting against the destruction of vast baobab and miombo forests in the face of new coal mines. Local reports suggest that the company had drilled at nearby Lake Fundudzi without knowledge of the Tshivase royal family but with the approval of the state.
Yet, local cultural practices and long-standing traditions continue to protect the cloud forests of the Soutpansberg in the face of impending environmental exploitation. Local residents such as Living Legend, Nelson Tshimangadzo, who holds a profound knowledge of Venda culture and history, are looking towards ecotourism as an alternative pathway to the economic promises of mining and industrial agriculture. Mpaha guides inquisitive visitors through the rolling landscapes of grasslands and valleys of sub-tropical Afromontane forests tells the stories of how state forester Koekemoer tried to bulldoze his way into the forest. He instructs on the correct manner to greet the Lake (upside down, and throwing a stone between your legs). He shares a knowledge unsurpassed of Venda culture.
Mpaha’s tours support local cooks, dance troupes, and family homestays, and provide a much-needed income stream in an environment with limited – and often environmentally-deleterious – economic opportunities.
Could supporting locally-led ecotourism offer an alternative to the onslaught of the impending industrialisation of the Soutpansberg and surrounding Vhembe biosphere such as the large-scale coal and steel mining industry that is to accompany the development of the Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone? It is in our global interest to support local enterprises and ancestral guardians of treasured biomes and cultural knowledge if we are to keep alive the wisdom that takes care of our earth and nurtures the conditions for our health.
The Netshedzhive Clan’s capacity to withstand the bulldozers of the apartheid government – like Sampson to Goliath – gives a glimmer of hope that with concerted effort we can withstand profit-motivated sources of environmental destruction.
For more information about the Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone that spells disaster for the Vhembe ecosystems and culture, see:
https://livinglimpopo.org/mmsez
by Elizabeth Kruger
Elizabeth Kruger is connected to the Skukuza Science Leadership Initiative in South Africa, where she works in environmental education, and to Ecopsychology Africa. With a background that has been primarily academic, she is interested in expanding her communication practice to reach wider audiences. Driven by a deep love for sea turtles and a desire to contribute through writing and storytelling, Elizabeth joins Turtle Telling to explore new ways of communicating environmental knowledge, connect with others, and contribute to Ecoversities’ vision of re-imagining education through diverse voices and ways of learning.
Contact: dr.lizkruger@yahoo.com | IG: @greensoul.za
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