South Africa Travels Blog

Rock paintings and engravings are found on every continent, but nowhere else in the world did the technique reach the high standard achieved in South Africa. In this country it is commonly known as Bushman art, but the correct term is San art.

The works are scattered over an area stretching from the Cape to the Zambezi, and from the east coast lowlands to Namibia.

Many examples of Bushman art have been discovered in the South African Northern Cape.

The most striking characteristics of Bushman art are boldness and simplicity of design, accurate draughtsmanship and limited use of colour, the latter due to the small number of pigments available to the artist. Engravings were ‘pecked’ into the rock with flint and similar hard implements.

Until recently it was impossible to assess their age with any great degree of accuracy, but in the early 1980 sengraved stone fragments were discovered in the ‘Wonderwerk Cave’ near Kuruman and positively identified as being thousands of years old.

San Bushman rock art - Perdekop Farm, North of Mossel Bay

Natural weathering and vandalism have unfortunately destroyed many of these records of the ancient Bushman’s way of life, but today much is being done to preserve the remaining priceless works of art.

This patchwork of dramatic contrasts and extremes reflect facets of Nature at her most implacable, as alien in places as a lunar landscape – stark, arid and marked by haphazard outcroppings of crags and giant rocks piled high.Across vast expanses of space and silence, the Northern Cape antelope abound, where spartan vegetation has adapted in ingenious ways to drought and blazing summer sunshine.

Northern Cape vegetation

The Northern Cape has unpredictable thunderstorms – startling sometimes in intensity – occasionally bringing solace to a thirsty land. And when they do, as if in reparation for patience and endurance, the plains and valleys are transformed into a mosaic of ephemeral spring flowers, gold and purple, pink and white, stretching into infinity. Namaqualand (an arid region of South Africa, extending along the west coast over 600 miles (970 km) and covering a total area of 170,000 square miles) in bloom is a breathtaking spectacle – and one of the wonders of the world.
The Northern Cape as a whole is fresh and unpolluted, with skies of brilliant burning clarity, embellished frequently with banks of iridescent clouds and sunsets bright as burnished copper. Distant mirages shimmer on roads flanked by telephone poles – at times the only evidence of man’s encroachment.

A high-flying wilderness plateau named the Karoo (a Hottentot word ‘land of thirst’) covers much of the southern region of the Northern Cape, while the Orange-Namaqua region comprises the lower orange River Valley, Bushmanland, Namaqualand and part of the Kalahari Desert.

In the northern most corner of the Northern Cape Province the borders meet with the Republic of Namibia, Botswana at its apex with the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park.