The sefala

Sandy Grant | Wednesday May 25, 2016 17:42

 

In Rakops I once found a medium sized egg like granary which was kept off the ground by crossed poles. 

Otherwise, I have to fall back on the remarkable German lady, Katesa Schlosser and her even more remarkable book, At the Edge of the Kalahari, for two references to traditional granaries.

During her 1959 visit to Kanye she remarked that,  ‘the only homestead which I had the chance to visit was the rondavel of Klaas.

The inside of Klaas’ rondavel was dominated by a huge globular clay granary for millet which was said to be empty’.  

Her other reference came at the end of her book with two photos of exposed traditional granaries at Melorane, a deserted Tswana village near Deerdepoort.

She described the granaries, in one caption, as being for millet and in the other, as ‘occupying nearly the whole inside of the dilapidated rondavel’.

And that is about the lot – until we come to Mochudi which does still possess some – the number is not known – of these very remarkable, personally owned structures.

Working backwards from those that are known, it is fairly safe to assume that all those that still exist are to be found within Mochudi’s historically core areas.

This would then mean that in all likelihood, those granaries were constructed in the years immediately following the establishment of the town in 1871.

 It is not known whether similar granaries were constructed by people in later years in the newer part of the town.

This seems improbable although there would have to be some compelling reason to explain why granaries were felt to be a necessity in one historical period and not in another.

One admittedly shaky explanation might be that the skills required to make these remarkable structures died out or simply became unavailable.

Another explanation though even more shaky could be that production so declined that there ceased to be any need for granaries. 

But Frau Schlosser’s explanation that the granaries that she saw were intended to store millet puzzles me no end.

Maybe I have been dozing all these years but I had been under the impression that millet is only rarely grown.  But millet may be a side issue.

Of much greater concern is the fate and future of these magnificent structures. It is fairly certain that none of them today are being regularly used.

 In fact, they may not have been used for a very long time.

Because they are very large and need to be protected from the weather they have to be contained within a building of some sort – as Schlosser explained.

But if a family owning such a granary wishes to modernise and extend their home, lelapa or homestead, as is happening all the time, the old sefala will be doomed. 

Nothing can be done to save it because the family has an absolute right to demolish whatever it happens to own, regardless of concerns about culture, heritage, historical documentation or whatever.

At least one has been demolished in recent years to make way for a shopping complex – and for one reason or another, the demolition of others is almost inevitable. There are still a few left.  But in a few years time, there may be none.