Sparkling with cultural legacy

MONKAGEDI GAOTLHOBOGWE
Staff Writer | Friday January 30, 2009 00:00

A local community junior secondary school, en route to the famous Pharing gorge, has yielded the famous 'lenao la ga matsieng'-a rare stone engraving of a man's foot on a hill. 

The footprint at Mathiba CJSS was discovered by a school teacher only in 2007 and there is still little publicity about the discovery.

One can still visit the famous royal house, which used to be inhabited by the tribe's much revered kgosi-kgolo, Kgosi Bathoen II. It sits on a hill looking down upon thousands of houses below.

A visitor to Kanye can still be shown what used to be the tribe's battlefield, where the regiments would meet with foreign fighters to defend the village.

Today the place known as Matlhabelanong, or battle field is alive with houses of different kinds, but the legend  about the place lives on. The battlefield covers an area of almost 2 km by 2km

There still remains a gap to be exploited, as the village has no tour guide to take a tourist through the magnificent battlefield, and narrate how the battles were fought in the olden days.

Being a village literally built on hills, Kanye also has another treasure-a hidden village on top of a secret hill.

This is  where it is said women and children used to live in hiding during times of war, while men were fighting at Matlhabelanong.

The  warriors would retreat from the battlefield strategically to go and feed at the hidden village called Pharing, and then go back to war according to our guides from the  Kanye museum.

Not far from the same place where the second village used to be, are the Pharing gorge, known as Kwa Dikgageng.

According to Kanye legend, this place of great beauty from where springs of water flows deep below, contains bodies of witches who were thrown into the gorge as punishment for their evil deeds, during the pre-colonial days.

Pharing still has   dilapidated stonewalls, forming an enclosure. It is well grown with trees one would hardly imagine to find traces of human habitation there. Going to Pharing is also a challenge, with lots of rocks acting as a stumbling block as one walks there.

The tribal parliament, Tomela, where Bangwaketse kgosi kgolo would meet with his counsellors to discuss development projects has since been refurbished to house Southern District Council chamber.

The scene of a colonial prison that used to be feared is still there, although the building is falling apart.

Except for a giant eucalyptus tree that stands in the middle of the old prison yard, nothing else catches the eye about this relic. It is often stinking with effluent flowing from nearby shops.

Kanye is a village of firsts, when it comes to development projects; it is also where the first running water in the country was seen.  It used to be revered as Mmasekou, where water was pumped to the villagers.

The country's first reservoir, Ledibela, built with rocks, is preserved for all to see, although the first standpipe has since given way to a modern bank. Ledibela still stands inside the current Southern District Council compound.