Thaba Bolayi Nature Reserve was formally know as Klein Bolayi.
Over the last years it is brought back to its official and registered name. Thaba Bolayi Private Nature Reserve.
Through all aspects of life runs the proverbial “golden thread”.
Thaba Bolayi (Klein Bolayi) has such a golden thread from its past, running through its present and to its future. Klein Bolayi (the “small magicians“) followed rituals to bring rain to the area that the settlers lived in.
History of more than 1500 years ago, was “lost” and buried under the soil only to be “rediscovered” many centuries later. It’s like a thread which stuck above ground, and suddenly someone saw it and started pulling on that thread.
The “yarn” proved to be much more than the obvious. As the thread was pulled from the ground, many collaborating facts and information started to fit in like a big puzzle.
When one puzzle piece had been turned to face up, it started giving colour to the bigger puzzle being put together. The picture emanating from the puzzle stretches across borders, centuries, continents, people/generations, places of interest and inheritance, traditions, practices and the discovery of the past and the future.
God said in the Bible that He hid treasures for the kings of this Earth to discover. Did He not hide the “golden thread” which is being discovered by this generation to unearth and take custodianship over?
Did God not say to man to go and fill the Earth? Is God not proud of His creation? Did He not place some element of mystery in His creation to allow people from different eras to discover?
The reader is encouraged to read the content with an open mind, without judgement, but with the mindset of rediscovery – “go and tell my people to come back to their roots“.
Chris Krüger
August 2022
Thaba Bolayi and its amazing history
The reserve is the home of the biggest concentration of Giant Baobabs in the world. Together with an early cavillation what goes back to 450AD. Thaba Bolayi was part of the Monomotapa Kingdom. Who settled on Thaba Bolayi Nature Reserve.
Thaba Bolayi Nature Reserve is full of magical and spiritual experiences.
Thaba Bolayi Nature Reserve has amazing viewpoint sites and several ancient historical sites.
It is a magical place and you feel and get a connection within a few hours.
This story began as one family’s experience of selling one farm, buying another farm, and ending up at the opening up of a route to entice the affected people on a spiritual, mental and physical journey. Many will see that the journey is about historical facts, spiritual experiences, and the reconnecting to some people’s roots – for some the roots were lost because their history was never recorded and got lost in translation between generations, while others’ history fills the gaps.
The vessels used to reveal the story are not necessarily important, but the story itself is the focus of what is being recorded. The history of the Monomotapa was pushed into the background for many reasons which will become more evident later. Finding one’s own share in this story will depend on one’s attitude and approach towards the information being revealed.
The history of the Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape dates back 210 million years ago when one of the earliest plant-eating dinosaurs, Plateosauravus (Euskelosaurus), was known to have lived in the area.
Thaba Bolayi is part of the Greater Mapungubwe and part of the UNESCO World Heritage Status. And protected landscape.
The Mapungubwe area became a focus of agricultural research in the 1920s through the efforts of the botanist Illtyd Buller Pole-Evans. Pole-Evans was instrumental in the creation of the Botanical Survey Advisory Committee, which was tasked with coordinating botanical research throughout the Union of South Africa. One of the network botanical and research stations set up by the Botanical Survey was situated in the Mapungubwe area. At the request of General Smuts, the government set aside a block of nine farms in this area as a preserve for wildlife and natural vegetation in 1918. A few years later this became known as the Dongola Botanical Reserve.
A short brief information about Mapungubwe National Park
Mapungubwe National Park is almost our neighbor and a stone trough away
Dr Pole-Evans set about expanding the Dongola Botanical Reserve. By the early 1940s, the reserve had grown to include 27 farms, including Greefswald, the property on which the Mapungubwe Hill is situated. Pole-Evans lobbied to have the reserve proclaimed as a national park, with the support of Prime Minister Jan Smuts. In 1944, the Minister of Lands, Andrew Conroy, proposed the formation of the Dongola Wildlife Sanctuary, which would include 124 farms, 86 of which were privately owned. This proposal was strongly opposed by the National Party, then the official opposition in Parliament and the National Parks Board of Trustees. In one of the longest running debates in the history of the South African Parliament, supporters argued that it was necessary to conserve the country’s natural assets, that the land set aside for the proposed reserve was unsuitable for agricultural purposes and that the area had a rich archaeology treasure which should be protected. Those opposed to the establishment of the reserve argued that it was unacceptable to alienate agricultural land for wildlife conservation, to expropriate private land or to evict people from land they had occupied for generations. The debate, which became known as the “Battle of Dongola”, resulted in the declaration of a much-reduced area as the Dongola Wildlife Sanctuary, after members of the ruling United Party voted in favour of the proposal. The National Party won the elections in 1948, and the sanctuary was abolished in 1949. Expropriated farms were returned to their original owners, farms owned by the State were allocated for resettlement and funds returned to donors.
With the park’s UNESCO World Heritage Status, a building has been constructed that houses a museum section with many of the artefacts uncovered in the park on display.