Writing the Ancestral River. Jacklyn Cock
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laziness.10
Many indigenous societies have such a non-dualistic view of nature and culture, with traditions of resource use that include spiritual attachment and knowledge that involves a conservation ethic. Among the Xhosa the link between the ‘natural’ and the ‘cultural’ is maintained by respect for the ancestors, and several informants believed that environmental damage is disrespectful to the ancestors. Many traditional cultural practices of the Xhosa make regular and highly controlled use of wild plants and animals. Research in one area reports that activities that brought them into ‘regular contact’ with nature, such as collecting firewood, hunting and being secluded in initiation schools, were important opportunities for spending time with nature.11 The forest was especially valued ‘as a place that bestows spiritual health and well-being (impila)’. One informant said, ‘sometimes I walk with my dog or hunt in the forest, or I just sit in a quiet place to forget my worries.’12
This appreciation contrasts with much of local people’s experience of environmental conservation authorities and practices intent on the exclusion of people and on the strict, legalistic control of natural resources. The outcome of this ‘fences and fines’ approach has been that – especially under apartheid and colonial rule – environmentalism was somewhat questioned, as it was concerned only with the protection of threatened plants, animals and wilderness areas, to the neglect of human needs. Furthermore, the dispossession of rural people to create protected areas illustrates the brutality involved. As Cocks writes, ‘approaches to conserving biodiversity that are based on cultural and religious values are often more sustainable than those based only on legislation or regulation’.13
Two Rockys
The water divinities are not the only magical creatures associated with the Kowie River. Unlike other parts of southern Africa, the river does not sustain owls that fish, but there are kingfishers, which are insectivorous, and air-breathing fish.
One of the first air-breathing fish to be described scientifically, Sandelia bainsii, the Eastern Cape Rocky, was from the Kowie River. These fish have accessory breathing organs so that they can breathe atmospheric air as we do, for where they lie there is often not enough oxygen in the water to use only their gills. According to Jim Cambray, the former Albany Museum director, in the last twenty years the numbers of this species have dwindled dramatically, and it is ‘almost extinct’.14 It is a true Eastern Cape resident. The genus was named after King Sandile (1820–78), who was the son of Ngqika, king of the Rharhabe section of the Xhosa nation in the Eastern Cape. The species name also honours the geologist Andrew Geddes Bain (1797–1864), who built many roads in the Eastern Cape and found some important fossils. The fish is endemic to several rivers in the Eastern Cape but was first described from the Kowie River. It likes quiet rocky habitats where it wedges itself between rocks or submerged logs and waits for prey items like crabs or small fishes to float or swim past. The fish features in a poster by Maggie Newman sponsored by the Albany Museum showing forty animal species, local vegetation and underwater life, so as to depict the interrelationships between animals and plants in the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems of the Kowie catchment area. The poster setting is a pool in the Blaauwkrantz Nature Reserve, an area set aside for the conservation of the Eastern Cape Rocky. Unfortunately, the aquatic weed Azolla now completely covers the pool’s surface, making it difficult for people to place gifts for the ancestors in the water. The pool is commonly known as kwatiki, after the small ‘tickey’ coin. According to Tony Dold, there was once a toll over the Blaauwkrantz bridge which charged a tickey to cross.
1. The source of the Kowie River is 70 km inland among the densely forested ravines in the hills surrounding Grahamstown. There is a capillary of streams and water points including the famous spring (umthombo) that flows constantly with sweet water (Photograph: Kate Rowntree).
2. The sacred pool at the confluence of the Kowie and Lushington rivers where tributes such as white beads or pumpkin seeds are sometimes floated in small reed baskets for the Abantu Bomlambo (People of the River) (Photograph: Candace Feit).
3. Initiates at the Lushington pool. The Abantu Bomlambo play a pivotal role in the calling, initiation and induction of Xhosa diviner-healers (amagqirha) (Photograph: Helen Bradford).
4. The Blaauwkrantz pool, at the foot of the Blaauwkrantz Gorge, is another spiritual place to connect with the water divinities, the Abantu Bomlambo, and access the ancestors. Unfortunately the pool’s surface is now covered by the aquatic weed Azolla (Photograph: Candace Feit).
5. Portrait believed to be of the Xhosa warrior, prophet and philosopher Makhanda/Makana/Nxele, who led his troops against the British army in the Battle of Grahamstown in 1819 (Painting by Frederick Timpson I’Ons, 1835. Albany Museum/Africa Media Online).
6. The Kowie River follows a ‘horseshoe bend’ between Port Alfred and Bathurst in the Waters Meeting Nature Reserve (so called because that is where the salt water from the Kowie River mouth meets the upstream fresh water) (Photograph: AAI).
7. Before human intervention, the estuary of the Kowie River consisted of a number of channels and sandbanks which were exposed by the retreating tide (Artist unknown, 1822. Cory Library/Africa Media Online).
8. In 1820 British officer Lieutenant John Biddulph sketched the Kowie River mouth while investigating the possibility of establishing a port there as part of the British colonial agenda. The mouth was partially closed by two sandbars, which meant extreme variations in the level of the water as the tides changed. He established that at the river mouth tides rose sufficiently to admit vessels of up to about 120 tons (Cory Library/ Rhodes University).
9. William Cock (1793–1876), the author’s great-great-grandfather seen here in 1864, was principally responsible for the development of the harbour at the mouth of the Kowie River, beginning in 1838 (Cock Family Archive).
10. William Cock was appointed to the Cape Legislative Council in 1847, where he worked to promote the expansion of the colony, which involved the dispossession of the Xhosa, and to secure the governor’s support for the harbour project. He is seen here (back right) with other members of the Council in 1864 (Cock Family Archive).
11. Under Cock’s direction a new mouth was cut for the river through the sand hills of the west bank. The river was canalised and the channel straightened and diverted to the western side of the estuary, producing a navigable stretch of about three-quarters of a mile inland (Date of photograph unknown. Western Cape Archives, AG 1443).
12. Sedimentation was a problem, so to keep the river mouth deep enough, two piers were built in the 1850s extending into the sea. The estuary was regularly dredged to allow the velocity of the tide to flush the mouth and keep the