Kweneng the ancient human settlement outside Kathorus.

In this second instalment of our series about the ancient human settlement of Kweneng, in the Suikerbosrand Valley, a 20-minute drive south-east of Kathorus, Professor Karim Sadr took Kathorus MAIL through a mental tour, supported by photographs, of what the settlement, with its estimated 10 000 Setswana-speaking inhabitants, was like.

Sadr, a Wits archaeology professor, is working on the site with a team of his young Wits University archaeology students. He describes the ancient Kweneng stone-walled complex as a fairly advanced human settlement, which he estimates dates back to as early as the 15th century. Sadr describes the Kweneng settlement as “an extensive aggregation of stone-walled ruins that represent a pre-colonial Batswana capital”.

“The northern sector of Kweneng contains structures built in an architectural style from the 17th and 18th centuries AD. Scattered around the fringes of the settlement are compounds which represent the oldest architectural style in this region and date to the 15th and 16th centuries.”

In his report, Sadr says the discovery of the Kweneng settlement will shed light not only on the birth of complex ancient urban society in the region but also in more distant times and places, where the evidence might be considerably less intact.

Sadr says the Voortrekker leader Louis Trichardt and his followers who were on their way to what is today the modern Maputo harbour may have passed through the foothills of the area later named Suikerbos. It derived its name from the sugarcane plantations that another trekker, Bronkhorst, found growing in the area.

Watch: Archeologists from the @WitsUniversity have uncovered a long lost & wealthy Tswana city in Suikerbosrand hills, about 60 km south of Johannesburg. This great city existed long before the arrival of colonisers & debunks myths relating to the history of African civilisation. pic.twitter.com/9U5AODDsth

— Nathi Mthethwa (@NathiMthethwaSA) January 30, 2019

He says despite the size of the settlement (10km by 2km) and its large population, there is no mention of Kweneng in historical documents.

“One would have expected somebody to have seen the ruins of these ancient stone-walled settlements, but no one seems to have bothered to write about them.

“One of the first European farmers in the area, Jan Marais, seems to have camped in one of the ruined stone-walled dwellings before he built his permanent homestead nearby. But to date, no mention is made of the ancient Batswana capital at the foot of the Suikerbosrand, a few kilometres south-east of Kathorus in any written records,” says Sadr.

In his interview with Kathorus MAIL, he says he is keen to meet and speak with community members around the Kathorus area who may shed some light on the Kweneng settlement.

“We are inviting residents of Kathorus as well as their families who may know of or have heard something from their great-grandparents about Kweneng to come forward and contact my team via Kathorus MAIL.”

The professor expressed his wish to have the area preserved as a heritage site. He believes there is a vast amount of information that can be unearthed from the many pockets of the stone structures that dot the sprawling complex.

Sadr believes Kweneng may have been an extension of a bigger grouping of Batswana stone-walled settlements that stretched from the East Rand right across the south of Gauteng into the North West Province, and even to the edge of the Kalahari.

Sadr says the ancient Kweneng settlement has been of archaeological interest to the fraternity from as far back as the 1960s. However, it was only recently, with the help of the latest Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) technology, that the actual size of the settlement was revealed.

Sadr believes Kweneng probably started with small, dispersed settlements dating back as early as the 15th century. Eventually, these developed into large a metropolis by the late 18th century.

Sadr thinks the demise of Kweneng may have been “sudden” and “violent”. He attributes this to the widespread Difaqane wars of the early 1800s in which smaller tribes were over-run and conquered. The marauding warriors of King Mzilikazi may have ravaged the settlement when they reached this area around 1823. It is, however, also possible that Kweneng settlers were sacked by Griqua or Korana raiders around the same period.

Historians from the University of Leiden in Holland will be investigating this question over the next few years.

Sadr acknowledges the Mapungubwe may be another crucial historical link in the rise of stone-walled cities like Kweneng. But for now, he says he will concentrate his research on Kweneng, south of Kathorus.