GHAAP - Sonnets from the Northern Cape

Ghaap
Sonnets from the Northern Cape
by Michael Cope

Poetry

Rain
GHAAP
   Contents
   Notes
Scenes & Visions
Some Examples of
       Silence
for the time being
Crossing the Desert
back view
Other Poems
Song Lyrics
A Virtual Anthology
YouTube Poems
Cautionary Verses

@ Contact
© Copyright

Note

Since Jack Cope's interpretations of /Xam poetry appeared in the Penguin Book of South African Verse in 1968, there has been a strand of South African poetry in English based on the researches of Bleek and Lloyd into the /Xam language and folklore, and on more general ideas that we hold about the San people as former inhabitants of our country. This collection is not a part of that movement, except that it also reflects upon the gathering and hunting lifestyle for which humans evolved. The poems were inspired by contact with archaeological sites and stone artefacts in the Northern Cape, especially around the region known as the Ghaap Plateau (pronounced Gha-ap with a guttural gh).

The plateau, named for the ghaap plant (Hoodia) which is found there, lies between the Gariep (Great River or Orange) and Nu-Gariep (Vaal) rivers and the Kalahari desert. It is unusually rich in stone-age artefacts, and for this, as well as for climatological reasons, can make a strong claim to being the "cradle of humanity" or the region of much

of our evolution. It contains the site of the longest continuous human habitation, Wonderwerk Cave, which had been lived in for about 1.1 million years until 100 years ago. It is arguably the world's richest areas in Acheulian artefacts (1 400 000 - 400 000 BP), and there are untold billions of these, usually buried by a metre or so of red dust. Kathu Townlands alone contains an estimated two to 20 billion lithic artefacts though the extent of the site has never been mapped. The Ghaap area abounds in such sites. The tools are everywhere, even on the (arbitrary) hillside of the game lodge where we stayed.

The "master hand-axe" shown on the title page was found in a sinkhole at Kathu Pan. It is probably the oldest indisputably aesthetic human artefact (artwork), though many Acheulian tools were worked to symmetry well beyond their function. It is roughly the size of a man's open hand.

Canteen Koppie, on the banks of the Nu-Gariep, is the site of the first diamond mining in South Africa. It is also a major archaeological site, particularly rich in Acheulian artefacts, including the world's largest hand-axe (7,7,kg). It is estimated that there could be as many as 80 million big hand-axes at Canteen Koppie.

The human lifestyle that worked for millions of years has been obliterated during our lifetime. By comparison, industrial civilization is about 200 years old.

My great-grandfather, one EBJ Knox, owned a piece of the original Kimberley Mine. He later moved to the Witwatersrand and died during the Anglo-Boer War.

In investigating these and other matters of origin, the poems probe the traces of my own ancestors as well as those of humans everywhere. Seen with a longer view, all people are South Africans.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Julia Martin, whose initiative to research and write about the archaeology of the Northern Cape got this going, Duncan Miller, who alerted us to various sites, the helpful and erudite staff of the McGregor Museum in Kimberley, especially David Morris and Peter Beaumont, as well as all who read and advised, including Ingrid de Kok, Ken Barris and members of the UCTPoetryWeb.

Gus Ferguson gets my special thanks for having confidence in the sonnets and for being a careful, thoughtful and enthusiastic editor. Annari van der Merwe and Nelleke de Jager at Kwela were a pleasure to work with. Esias Bosch, a lifelong role model, gave me the beautiful drawing on the cover and Jo-Anne Friedlander did a great job of designing the interior.

Cape Town 2003, 2004, 2005