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Mpumalanga - Middelburg |
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Close to the N4 national highway leading east from Johannesburg-Pretoria to the eastern highlands of Mpumalanga. A busy town of steel plants, factories and outlying coal mines in the 'smokestack belt' of South Africa's northern industrial heartland. The place started life as a Dutch Reformed church and nagmaal (Christian communion) centre for the Boer farmers of the wider region, in 1864. Initially it was named as 'Nazareth' but this, for unknown reasons, was soon changed to the more prosaic Middelburg since it lay about half way between the Transvaal capital Pretoria and the Voortrekker settlement at Lydenburg. Fairly recently the town was designated a growth point in terms of the National Physical Development Plan: the earth is rich in minerals; here, and around neighbouring Witbank, some75 million workable tons of coal lie just beneath the surface and the deposits are exploited, easily and with profit, by more than 20 collieries For all the industrialisation, however, the countryside around remains surprisingly attractive and unspoilt. Memorial Museum This is built on the site of one of the bigger concentration camps established by General H.H. Kitchener during the Anglo-Boer war of 1899-1902. More than 1,300 of its inmates died behind its barbed wire - about five percent of the 27,000 women and children internees (white ones, that is; African casualties went more or less uncounted) who succumbed countrywide to enteric disease, measles and other illnesses inflicted by the overcrowded and unhygienic conditions. Botshabelo Just to the north of town, this historic village (its name means 'place of refuge') was founded by Alexander Merensky of the Berlin Mission Society in 1865, and a number of its early buildings are being restored to form a museum complex. Among notable structures are the old parsonage and Fort Merensky, a rather appealing mix of German Gothic and Sotho stonework. Some of the descendants of the refugees who sought shelter at the mission still live in the next-door Ndebele village, a 'living museum' of brightly painted homesteads. The Ndebele, who are of Nguni (Zulu) origin, have evolved highly distinctive forms of art and architecture. The rural homesteads are usually largish, rectangular structures, thatched, surrounded by walled courtyards and decorated in eye-catching geometrically patterned murals. Some of the women still wear the bright blankets, beaded aprons and tight necklaces and anklets that, until quite recently, was the customary costume. Nearby is the Botshabelo Nature Reserve, home to zebra, wildebeest, a variety of antelope and to the rare Olifants River cycad plant.. Loskop Dam Game Reserve Some 45 kilometres north of Middelburg, the Loskop dam captures the flow of the Olifants River to create a spacious expanse of limpid water that serves as something of a mecca for anglers in quest of fat carp, yellowfish and kurper. It's also popular among picnickers, dinghy sailors and watersports enthusiasts. Game animals include white rhino, plains zebra, wildebeest, leopard, hyaena, jackal and an array of antelope, including eland, nyala and the stately sable. The local resort offers comfortable self-catering log-cabin accommodation. Witbank is on the N4 highway to the west; Ermelo lies to the south-east. |
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MIDDELBURG Western Cape
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