Have you read it?

Just about a hundred and fifty years ago, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Orange River (also called Gariep) was the northern border of the Cape Province. Beyond lay uncharted country, untamed veld giving way to the great red dunes of the hostile Kalahari Desert.

The banks of the Gariep were the last refuge of remnants of the once numerous Korana tribe, Hottentot who had been hounded from their ancestral lands in the south by ever-encroaching white settlers. When these pioneers with their herds of livestock reached the river territory, conflict was inevitable.

This was Africa at its most vulnerable.

SAND is its story.

Three white people, defying their Church and society, settle on the edge of the Kalahari to escape censure. One young man is the girl’s husband, the other her lover.

One must die to secure their future.

SAND is their story.

Kora is the last hereditary chief of the Korana clans living along the Gariep. He has vowed to avenge his people’s lot, but knows that time is running out. The river bank which shelters them will shortly become their last stand against the British Colonial troops.

SAND is his story.

The origins of SAND

I grew up in Upington, chief town of what used to be the last stronghold of several Korana clans. At school the only reference made to these people was when the origin of the name given to one of the islands dotting the Orange River, Kanon Island, was explained.

During an uprising, the apocryphal story has it, the Korana chief Klaas Lukas was holed up on this island, which the British troops then bombarded with cannon fire. Resourceful if nothing else, Lukas supposedly packed a hollow log with gunpowder, pot shards, horseshoes and whatever he could lay his hands on, and lit the fuse. After the resultant and predictably disastrous explosion, the chief is then said to have inspired his wounded and bleeding men with the words, If it looks like this here, just think what it did to them!

It is truly regrettable that a whole tribe of indigenous people warranted no more than this “anecdote” in history lessons.

Requests at the local library for research material on the Korana tribe was recently met with a blank stare. When I persisted, I was referred to the town’s museum where indeed an imaginative and dutiful custodian had done his best with meagre resources. All credit to him.

Still, few would argue that the Korana are mostly extinct, even there where they made a last stand against the colonial troops. They fought two tatty wars, but in 1879 were vanquished and the remnants of the clans scattered into servitude.

Today one would be hard put to find a true descendant of these People of the Gariep.

SAND is published by
Groenheide Boeke
PO Box 508, Hartenbos 6520
South Africa