WISER and Wits Press Launch of UKhahlamba: Umlando wezintaba zoKhahlamba / History of the uKhahlamba Mountains (John Wright and Aron Mazel)
Speakers Carolyn Hamilton (UCT), Peter Sekibakiba Lekgoathi (Wits) and John Wright (Wits) will discuss the topic:
Rendering regional histories in isiNtu
The uKhahlamba mountains have been the home of many different groups of people for a very long time. Small groups of hunter-gatherers began living in rock shelters there at least 27 000 years ago. Their descendants were San people who still lived there as recently as a hundred years ago. About 600 years ago, groups of African farmers began building their villages near the foothills, and grazing their cattle into the mountains. From the 1840s, European settlers in the colony of Natal began laying out farms for sheep and cattle in the foothills of the mountains. They drove out the San, and brought the African farmers under their domination. In the twentieth century the settlers and their descendants began to use the land for purposes besides farming, especially for developing tourism and leisure activities, and supplying water for industry. Africans became labourers on the farms and in South Africa’s towns and cities.
UKhahlamba – an abbreviated version of Tracks in a Mountain Range (Wright and Mazel) – tells about the coming of these different peoples to the mountains, and describes the different ways of life that they established, sometimes peacefully, sometimes violently. The dual-language text is accessible to a wide range of readers and is richly illustrated in full colour.