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LIFESTYLE

THE CAVE

OF DEATH

By Nicole Zerwick

round 1800 years ago, a new way of life
started for people living in Southern Africa.
This was the dawn of the agropastoralists.
People began settling in villages, cultivating
Acrops, tending livestock and producing
their own tools. Evidence has been found of agropastoral
life from Magaliesburg Valley north of Johannesburg up to
Broederstroom, west of Pretoria. One of these tribes, part
of the Sotho-Tswana people that dominated this area, were
known as the BaKwena – “those who venerate the crocodile”.

Their settled way of life was under threat by the early 19th
century. Drought, famine and competition for natural
resources caused the rise of political groups which, in turn,
led to the emergence of new dominant kingdoms such as hiding in a large dolomitic sinkhole near present day Irene.
the MaTebele – “people who come from the coast” – under
the leadership of their fearsome King Mzilikazi. A previous Ever resourceful, Mzilikazi’s warriors surrounded the tree with a
lieutenant of Zulu King Shaka, Mzilikazi not content to play huge fire and those poor souls that came out from the hole were
second fiddle, rebelled against Shaka and struck out on his own killed, the remainder dying of smoke inhalation. Their skeletons
in 1823. were discovered by settlers in the 1890’s.
The missionary, David Livingstone, said of Mzilikazi that he was Older Irene residents knew the sinkhole as the “Cave of Death”,
one of the most impressive leaders he had encountered on “Grootboom Cave” or the “Big Tree Hole”. They even remember
the African continent. Mzilikazi’s kingdom stretched from the playing in the Big Tree Hole as children! The sinkhole can still be
Vaal River in the south to the confluence of the Crocodile and viewed; It is on the left-hand side, a few hundred metres from
Limpopo Rivers in the north. He had three military strongholds: Main Road, on the road to the Agricultural Research Centre. The
Kungwinin at the foot of the Wonderboom mountains, hole has been closed in by a barbed-wire fence for quite some
Dinaneni north of Hartebeespoort Dam and Hlahlandlela near time now due to the dangerously unstable ground but the
Rustenburg populated with a mighty military force of 70 000 site is still easily accessible from the road and a granite plaque
people. At the time of Mzilikazi’s devastating expansion in the produced by The National Cultural History Museum of Greater
area the BaKwena people fled from their attackers and went into Pretoria Metropolitan Council marks the spot.

Sources: Helme, Nigel : Irene Lensen, Diana ; Dear Irene. Sahistory.org/people/king mzilikazi Sahistory.org/prehistory-pre-colonial-farmers-gauteng

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