The Tankwa Karoo

The Karoo is a semi desert in central South Africa, the Tankwa Karoo, is probably its most isolated and driest part. The Tankwa is an "impoverished” place- with nothing in the way of opulence. Flat and endless with distant mountains skirting its edges - there is a particular beauty about it. Each water hole, river or tree seems something miraculous. The people who survive here are equally amazing. There is a mix of the old Afrikaaner sheep farmers, the new farmers, chasing the current pot of gold scheme in hoodia, and the laborers or 'Colored" people.



So the word "Colored" in South Africa stems from the same bigotery and racism that it arose from in the US, but it has stayed-as a term to describe a group of people, mostly from the Cape, with Afrikaans, San, Bushmen, Hottentot and Malay blood.



Suffice it to say - it all started with the Dutch, landing in the Cape in 1652. The San living in the Cape were quickly 'enslaved' by the Dutch. Slaves from the Dutch East Indies and political prisoners were brought to the Cape and the 'Cape Colored" was born. The San, the Colored and the Bushmen, have been pushed around and marginilized by white and black.



Ou (Old) Dawie and his wife live in a 6' by 6' tin shack a few miles away from his sons and daughter who live in a concrete house on the farm where they work. Ou Dawie carries water to his shack by donkey cart-and travels several days on the back roads of the Tankwa to visit family in the mountains, by the same donkey cart.



He points to the west, the Cederberg Mountains, as his birth place. His family may have lived in this region for centuries. There are rock paintings scattered all over this area and west, in the Cederberg. Early missions were established in the Cederbeg in the 1700's.