The fort.
© Robert I. Sadler, 2005
Although there is no consensus as to the actual spelling of the original name of this Northern Cape town, varying from Priskab to Prieschap, its meaning is unequivocally “The place of the lost she-goat”. According to the SA Pleknaamwoordeboek Deel 1, in Korana Qua language beris means she-goat while ga is dead or lost. Thus, Prieska.
Like most towns along the Orange River, Prieska was a ford across the river long before white settlers arrived. Only in 1878 was it proclaimed a municipality and gained status as a full-fledged town.
Situated on the south bank of the Orange River at the foot of the Doringberg and at the time not much more than a church and a collection of townhouses for the farmers of the district, Prieska played a minor role in the Anglo Boer War. In 1900 the little-known revolt by the Cape Afrikaners took place in and around Prieska and some skirmishes with the British troops resulted. The rebellion lasted until early April and spread throughout the north-western Cape, until a British force under Lord Kitchener’s supervision dispersed most of the Boers and their Cape sympathisers. They retreated to Transvaal.
Other highlights of the Boer War were:
- On the 13th of January 1900 New South Welshmen were attacked at Prieska by Boers.
- Captain Arthur Henry Uhthoff Tindal of the Welsh Regiment died of wounds at Kheis on the 29th of May 1900, aged 42. He was buried at Prieska.
- In March 1900 a skirmish took place at Houwater, Prieska, between British troops and Boer forces.
- Utilising the region’s tiger’s eye stones, the British built a fort on top of the Prieska Kopje overlooking the town. This is still a major tourist feature.
The graves of British soldiers who died in the war are maintained in the Memorial Garden.
In the area the succulent Pachypodium namaquanum (called the “halfmens” meaning half human as the tall plant vaguely resembles a human figure staring skywards), the quiver tree Aloe dichotoma (from the hollowed-out branches of which the Bushmen used to make quivers), as well as scores of succulents of the lithops family abound. Fine specimens of these plants can be found in the Prieska Koppie Nature Reserve and the Ria Huisamen Aloe Garden, explaining why the area from here to Vioolsdrif is often called the “Rock Garden Route”.
The Schumann Rock Collection featuring semi-precious stones and Qua stone implements, is housed at the Municipal offices. The Prieska Museum on Victoria Street treasures the town’s history with a display of household articles and early farm implements.
A must-see for visitors to Prieska is Wonderdraai, where the Orange River forges a horseshoe-shaped island, creating the illusion that the water flows uphill. Also recommended is a visit to Die Bos Nature Reserve with its indigenous flora and abundant birdlife. There are picnic spots and angling is allowed while the suspension bridges across the river might test one’s nerve.
Prieska has an interesting mining history. Copper and zinc was discovered in 1968 and the Prieska Copper Mines, owned by Anglovaal Mining Ltd, was established. It became one of the country’s major base-metal mines, one of the first to have a decline from surface, using trackless mining methods. Copper was the more valuable product, but tonnage-wise more zinc was produced and even that became less and less profitable, resulting in the mines’ closure in January 1996.
Koegas
Close neighbour to Prieska is Koegas, site of an asbestos mine with a history which reads like a multinational murder thriller.
As early as 1893 Cape Asbestos Company, or Cape PLC, started mining asbestos in Koegas. In the forties and fifties of the 1900’s production was at its peak and thousands of people were employed in the mines.
In 1968 Cape PLC was forced to close its British asbestos factory as a result of asbestos-related diseases. In South Africa, however, the industry proved just too lucrative to abandon and the government was asked to suppress information about the health risks involved. Only in 1979 was asbestos mining finally stopped.
Koegas has since become a focal point of a legal battle about the liability of international companies for their operations in developing countries. Thousands of ex-employees in the Northern Cape have sued Cape PLC for disabilities sustained as a result of the lethal asbestos dust.
People of Prieska
Any account of Prieska would not be complete without mention of its indigenous peoples. The ford was in previous times home to Qua and Bushmen, respectively of the Korana and !Xam tribes. Inevitably they intermingled and today many people in the Northern Cape claim to be descendant from them. One marked example of these are the Karretjiesmense (the Donkey Cart People), a dwindling tribe of semi-nomadic farm labourers.
The !Xam Bushmen until recently had a dubious claim to immortality by having casts of their forefathers displayed in a diorama at the South African Museum in Cape Town. This came about when during the first Korana War in the late 1860’s some Bushman from the northern Karoo and Great Bushmanland were captured and brought to the dreaded Breakwater Prison in Cape Town. Doctor Wilhelm Bleek, a Prussian linguist and his sister-in-law Lucy Lloyd were given permission to employ these prisoners in their studies of the what they phrased ‘Khoisan’ languages and culture. Years later they were traced by Dr Bleek’s daughter, Dorothea, to Prieska where they were employed as house servants and farm labourers. Because they were such excellent examples of their race, between 1908 and 1912 live casts were made of some of these Bushmen by James Drury of the Museum. At first the casts were only displayed to show what Bushman looked like (very much like stuffed animals) but later the idea of a diorama was conceived by the then Museum Ethnologist and the Director, Ms E.M. Shaw and Dr W. Crompton respectively. In 1959 the Museum’s technical staff started building the diorama, completing it the following year. It is based on a painting of a Bushman camp by S. Daniell as well as on the journals of J. Barrow and W. Somerville, who travelled the Karoo in the beginning of the nineteenth century.
In April 2001 the diorama was removed from its pride of place in the Museum, as it was considered non-PC to display people in this way.