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The murderous, magnificent Karoo

Despite its grisly name, the Moordenaars Karoo in South Africa is the place to go if you’re into vast, empty landscapes and silence that makes your ears ring

You don’t end up on the plains of the Moordenaars Karoo by accident, you have to turn off the N1 with a purpose. What does it look like? Is the landscape as ominous as the name suggests? Is it the kind of place where a headless sheep shearer will hunt you down if you get a flat tyre on a dark winter’s night?

I’m about to find out. I’m travelling with photographer Ruvan Boshoff and before we tackle the dirt roads to Merweville and Sutherland, we stop at the filling station at Prince Albert Road. Unless we encounter that headless sheep shearer, our 280 km detour should deliver us back to the N1 at Laingsburg in three days’ time. Besides the filling station, Prince Albert Road has a small shop, a dilapidated train station and the North and South Ladies Bar (“under new management”). Bongile Toto sits in front of the bar with his concertina. He has spent the past three months teaching himself how to play and the instrument spits out the same mournful tune, over and over.

Bongile isn’t as melancholic as his music, however, and poses for a few photos. When Ruvan is done, we drive off and watch the national road receding in the rearview mirror.

A Karoo hideaway

According to my map, there’s a 43 km dirt road from Prince Albert Road to Merweville, but after 6 km of dust we strike a tar road that takes us all the way there. Either my map is way out of date, or the road was tarred recently.

At a construction camp 10 km before Merweville, I meet Niklaas Voster who sets me straight: “The road was tarred in 2006,” he says. “I should know — I was a member of the team that tarred it!”

Now Eskom is busy putting up power lines in the area and Niklaas is working as a security guard. He cycles every morning from Merweville on a borrowed bike with a DairyBelle crate behind the saddle. “It’s harsh out here,” he says. “Some mornings the ground is white with frost. It’s a Monday-to-Monday job.”

The first thing you see as you drive into the village of Merweville is the primary school and the imposing Dutch Reformed church. There’s also a bottle store that does home deliveries (by bicycle) and a filling station that’s closed on weekends.

The closest thing to a tourist attraction is The Englishman’s Grave just outside town, where Walter Oliphant Arnot (42) is buried. Arnot was an Australian who fought for the British during the Anglo-Boer War. He committed suicide in 1902 and left this message for his wife: “I swear before God, whom I am going to meet, that I am innocent.”

Scandalous! What could Arnot have been up to? The people in Merweville reckon a note found in his prayer book might hold the answer: “I was never in any concern with a Boer or Boer agent…” he wrote. Hmm.

The Stormers are playing the Bulls tonight and it’s crucial that I find a place to watch the game, but there’s no such thing as a sports bar in Merweville. Luckily, Johan and Mary-Ann van Heerden, managers of the Springbok Lodge, take pity on me and activate their DStv smart card.

Somewhere between the Stormers winning 20-17 and the sound of bicycle wheels singing along the street outside, Merweville steals my heart. When the church bell tolls the following morning to announce the communion service, I’m ready to lay down some cash and invest in property.

This has its own complications 
because the estate agent is probably in church. With hymns floating on the morning breeze, Ruvan and I roll on towards Sutherland under a clear, 
blue sky.

Anyone out there?

About 40 km beyond Merweville, the road starts to climb up the Nuweveld Mountains. It’s a wild ride up the pass, but from the top the view is pure Karoo: koppies, plains, farmsteads and the purple peaks of the Swartberg far away to the south. Maybe I should rather build a house right here.

Over the course of the next 28 km, I open and close eight farm gates. Only after the eighth gate do we turn towards Sutherland. In this town, on the Roggeveld Plateau, the business names alert you to the fact that there’s something special going on here besides the freezing winter temperatures: Andromeda Guesthouse, Halley sê kom eet Restaurant, The Galaxy Guesthouse… Yes, Sutherland — or Sidderland as the locals call it — is home to the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), the biggest of its kind in the southern hemisphere. I head out to look at the stars at the Sterland Caravan Park.

You have to book quite far in advance to go on a guided tour of the observatory (about 14 km east of Sutherland) where SALT is based or do a stargazing tour on site. A good alternative is an evening with star fundi Jurg Wagener, who does telescope sessions on his property on the outskirts of town.

First, Jurg turns the telescope towards Saturn. I put my eye to the glass and there it is, surrounded by its trademark rings. The image is so familiar, but I have to remind myself that it’s not just an image — I’m looking at the actual planet! Surreal stuff.

Next, Jurg shows me the craters on the moon, then Alpha Centauri (the brightest star in the southern constellation of Centaurus) and the Jewel Box star cluster, which shimmers red, white and blue.

I look up at the sky and think of Jodi Foster’s line in Contact: “The universe is a pretty big place… So if it’s just us… it seems like an awful waste of space.”

A sad history

Officially, you’re only in the Moordenaars Karoo once you’ve taken the Klein Roggeveld turn-off 16 km south of Sutherland. The dirt road undulates through the washed-out landscape. Now and then I spot a springbok or a flustered sheep in the emptiness. Other than that, nothing. No man, no murderer.

There are a few theories about the origin of the name. Firstly, the climate alternates between extreme heat and desperate cold — it can kill you. Ano-ther theory is that a group of murderers broke out of jail in Worcester and hid here for years.

Then there’s the grim story about a police officer called Van der Colf, who patrolled the area looking for stock thieves. Apparently he would tie his captives to his horse and make them walk to jail. In his book Timeless Karoo, Jonathan Deal writes: “When Van der Colf became bored, and perhaps a little drunk, he would release the prisoners to run away up a hill — and take potshots at them with his rifle, sometimes with deadly consequences.”

Deal also describes another series of violent events that could have given the Moordenaars Karoo its name. In the 1770s, there was a farm foreman who lived next to the Sak River (near pre-sent-day Williston), who shot Bushmen indiscriminately.

When the Bushmen retaliated and murdered the foreman, a commando was sent from the Cape to punish them. Many innocent Bushmen died in the revenge attack. After the commando returned home, Bushmen across the Great Karoo started to plunder farms and murder farmers. Another punitive commando was sent out. Revenge attack upon revenge attack followed and more and more Bushmen perished.

For every back road there’s an album that just sums up the feeling. As we crest the Komsberg Pass (1,721 m), Ruvan puts on Murder Ballads by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds…

And then came the flood

Driving on a dirt road is hypnotic. It’s like watching Test cricket or knitting a scarf. Somehow, time just disappears. My dusty reverie is broken when the road meets the Buffalo River. On 25 January 1981, after an unusual summer deluge, the Buffalo and Baviaans rivers came down in flood and washed away much of Laingsburg.

The numbers give only a glimpse of the devastation: More than 100 people died and more than 180 houses (including the old-age home) were swept away. The water flowed at 25 km/h, fast enough to overtake the people who tried to outrun the torrent.

We drive into Laingsburg in silence and pay a visit to the Flood Museum. Curator Francis van Wyk was the librarian in Laingsburg in 1981. She was 42 and spent that terrifying day on the roof of the rectory with her 14-year-old daughter and the family of the local dominee, Malan Jacobs. Jacobs himself perished when he and others tried to rescue the people from the old-age home. “I wasn’t really present, although I took note of what was happening,” Francis says. “I wasn’t emotional. 
We didn’t talk about the people who weren’t on that roof with us. But you can’t let tragedy break you down. That’s why we have this museum: not to mourn, but to remember.”

When I leave the museum, the clouds are heavy and dark. I wrap my scarf tighter before I get back in the car, thinking about something else Francis said: “Rain in the Karoo remains a wonderful sight. If you live here, you can’t be afraid of water.”

• Its My Life