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Today I saw my name carved on a gravestone...
Since living in the Mpumalanga Highlands I've driven past Berg-En-Dal memorial more times than I can count on both my hands and feet. To my shame I've never stopped. Mostly I've been too focused on my destination rather than the journey.
One can't help noticing Berg-En-Dal. It's prominent on the right hand side of the road when travelling along the N4 / Maputo Corridor from Belfast to Machadodorp.
From the road the memorial has always seemed to me to be an unattractive one. But this was another lesson impressed home by the cliché 'don't judge by the cover' - because it's well worth exploring.
Perhaps I stopped there because my nerve ends are still raw, sensitive to the questions our nation has had to ask itself about xenophobia over the last eight weeks, about what it really means to be South African.
Perhaps - because from centuries our soil is soaked with blood and hatred - I possibly stopped there to unconsciously pay homage to those who had lost their lives there, no matter which side of the pitch they played on.
This stark, and sadly rather run-down Anglo Boer War memorial is dedicated to members of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek Polisie who were killed (on August 27, 1900) during the bitter six-day battle of Berg-En-Dal.
It has often been described as the last set battle (before entering the guerrilla war phase) of the South African War (1899–1902). The British, having already taken Pretoria, were adamant to get the Boer thorn out of their side forever (and get their battered pride intact again) and capture the then eastern Transvaal.
I was for most of the time the only visitor there, able to soak in the isolation and the peace, also to enjoy the magnificent winter-veldt views, for as far as I could see, over rolling 'berg' and 'dal'.
To my surprise, about 25m on the far side of the main memorial, I found a smallish and simple-in-contrast stone pyramid memorial as tall as me.
Called the Rifle Brigade Memorial, it's a replica of the original memorial which was demolished in 1970 to make way for the adjacent Berg-En-Dal one. Funded by the British War Graves Committee of the National Monuments Council and the South African Soldiers' Graves Association, I don't think that many know about it and I've never seen it mentioned.
Imagine my further surprise to find my name carved in shiny black granite among the other dead: Rifleman C. King of the 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade (dog tab number 2928) killed on 27 August 1900....
Although I'm a South African with equal amounts (give or take a pint) of Afrikaans and English blood, I – to quote Socrates – consider myself a citizen of the world ("not of Athens or Greece").
And having been a rifleman once before in my lifetime (with "C King" embroidered in black on dirty brown) I won't easily again be brainwashed into fighting in wars that are the idiotic constructs of often even more idiotic politicians.
The point to be made, way beyond politics (the regimes will come and go), is that our Highlands region is steeped in rich, deeply fascinating history. This is set against a magnificent 3-D geographical, geological, archaeological and botanical backdrop that is a treasure trove beyond imagination.
By taking an interest in our look-out points, in the concentration camp sites, the memorials and the early Stone Age circles, we'll resuscitate them from the neglect, the litter, even the crime opportunities that we're letting many subside into.
This is OUR heritage and we are its custodians.
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