Into The Thorns

Introduction

Malindidzimu. “Dwelling place of the benevolent spirits.”

Silozwane. Shumbashava. Njelele. Bambata Caves. Old names.

Old names, conjuring up hidden, misty scenes. Ancient rituals, cleansings, murders. All sorts of magic and divinings performed here over the centuries by the tribal spirit men.

The giant balancing boulders, purple now in the late evening, brood silently over the hidden bush-choked valleys, caves, and crevasses. The Matobo hills. Unspeakable happenings, disappearing slowly in the drifting shadows of time.

Here in south western Zimbabwe hundreds of thousands of acres of jumbled granite hills, known in southern Africa as “koppies”, sprawl in broken rugged splendour all the way from the Bulawayo – Johannesburg road in the east, to the Botswana border, 120 miles away to the west, where the hills melt away into the dry scrubland of Botswana’s semi desert.

Two thousand million years of erosion has removed six miles of earth to expose these fantastic formations. Some of the koppies are quite small – about 120 feet higher than the surrounding bush, but other giant hills rise up a thousand feet – sometimes more, often forming almost impenetrable ranges over 20 miles long. It is wild country. Long before the black tribes came down from the north about a thousand years ago, these hills, caves and valleys were home to the Bushmen – the small hunter-gatherer people who were the original occupants of so much of southern Africa. These lithe gold-brown nomads were gradually forced out by the ever-increasing northern blacks, until finally, over the centuries, they adapted to the western desert areas, covering what is now Botswana, Namibia, and southern Angola. Today small clans still exist in these areas, but it would be hard to find many Bushmen still existing in their ancient traditional ways.

But these original African aboriginal folk have left rich records of their passing. Hundreds of caves and other surfaces protected from the weather, still today, show beautiful accurate scenes of the hunt: dancing scenes, trance scenes and symbolic pictures of every description – all lovingly painted in amazing proportion. Some of these wonderful pictures have been reliably dated to over two thousand years old.

Today’s Bushmen who have known only the great thirst-lands have lost these skills with the painting. They’ve long since lost the verbal history of the early inhabitants of the mystic Matobo hills. But you can find a hidden cave still, up in a cool gorge far from prying eyes and you can sit there quietly, staring at the simple clean lines of a running kudu bristling with arrows, the hunters running behind, bows drawn and blood obo range. Small family groups allied with other groups. The weak were defeated by the strong. The Torwa dynasty weakened. Alliances crumbled.

Influx from as far away as Lesotho and Vendaland, in what is now South Africa, influenced and added to the colour and history in what is now south western Zimbabwe, and the Matobo hills were the spiritual centre for them all.

In the early 1800’s, far to the south, in what is now Zululand in South Africa, Shaka, King of the Zulus turned his attention to one of his subjects – Mzilikazi, leader of the Khumalo clan, who had become wealthy in status and in cattle. Mzilikazi and his people fled north – settling temporarily twice, before they moved into what is now south western Zimbabwe in 1837. This was the birth of the Amandebele nation, and with their warlike Zulu traditions they dominated and influenced the fractured tribes around them, amalgamating into a powerful force who, some fifty years later, would have to deal with a new threat – the threat of the white tribes. Once again massive strife and bloodshed amongst the people between the rivers. Gold, or rather, perceived gold, and millions of acres of vacant land enticed the hungry colonial powers to look toward the “unknown” country between the two great rivers, and once again the tribes fought. The strong dominated the weak. The weak found new friends and became strong. Nothing changed in the giant scheme of things.

The humans fought, lived, and died. They are still fighting. Today. Between the two rivers. But the haunting hymns of wind, playing gently through the ancient watching rocks, are the same gentle melodies that were listened to by the Bushmen so long ago.

And through these secret gorges and ancient wooded valleys another hunter pads silently along the winding trails. Oblivious to the madness of man and the unhappy relations the peoples have with one another. He was in these hills before the Bushman, and he knows the dappled valleys well. He is the hunter. The ultimate survivor. The Matobo leopard. Millions of acres of rocky wilderness have housed him, hidden him, and fed him through the centuries, and he is hunting there still.

I was ready for the charge and walked left footing leading at every step, my rifle up in the firing position ready to go. Sure enough, about four good paces up between the rocks I spotted a flattened area in the black soil. George bent down, looked closer at the ground, lay the back of his hand against the flattened patch and immediately backed off behind me, whispering “U kona – dusi.” I stood still for a full minute. Nothing. I crouched, looked down. There was fresh blood in the leaves. I felt the ground. It was warm. We had spooked this animal in the last few minutes. He was very much alive. I edged on to the top of the small outcrop, adrenalin singing through my veins. He wasn’t there. The tracks, no blood now, led down, and turned left.