From Iron Age to Nature
Reserve
South Africa was ravaged by war from the early 1820s when
Mzilikatsi swept across the Highveld, destroying or absorbing
communities.
We have no recorded evidence of how the Iron Age community on
Melville Koppies was affected, but it was almost certainly disrupted or
destroyed.
Then the pioneer trekkers arrived and clashed with
Mzilikatsi. They eventually drove him into what is now Zimbabwe. It is
likely that by the mid 1800s the small settlement on Melville Koppies
was abandoned. All that is left are the kraal walls and two iron
smelting furnaces, the later one - now vandalised - possibly still in
use in the early 1800s.
But by mid century there was a rudimentary Boer republic in
place, the previous black inhabitants were well on their way to
becoming non-persons, and in their place were white farmers, and quite
soon prospectors.
The suspicion that there was gold on the Witwatersrand went
back to the 1850s, but the prospectors were looking in the wrong
places. They expected the quartz veins to contain gold - which some
did, but not in payable quantities. It took until 1886 for the real
riches to be discovered, not in quartz at all, but in the band of
conglomerate which formed the main reef. Since then these rocks have
produced 40% of the gold ever mined in the world.
The Geldenhuys family graves in Hill Road
Emmarentia.
Photo: Maria Cabaco
There is one name in particular which is associated with the
Melville Koppies: Geldenhuys. The Geldenhuys family can trace their
roots back to Johan ton Gyldenhaus in Westphalia in 1567.
Lourens, or Laurens, Geldenhuys was a farmer who had trekked
from Swellendam, and from the 1870s was showing a lively interest in
gold prospecting. The family acquired several farms on the
Witwatersrand and did make a lot of money from gold discoveries on the
east rand.
They also bought the farm Braamfontein. Melville Koppies is
the last conserved remnant of that farm. Braamfontein gave them no luck
with gold, but in effect the Geldenhuys brothers owned what was to
become the affluent Northern suburbs of Johannesburg.
The story of The Geldenhuys family, their farms, and how the
Melville Koppies survived to become a Nature reserve is told by Richard
Hall in this article...
From Nature reserve to
Heritage Site: 50 years of conservation
On 1 May 2009 340 walkers came to the 50th
anniversary cross-Koppie hike. After 50 years the Melville Koppies is,
at 160 hectares, three times the size of the originally proclaimed
reserve.
Photo: Norman Baines
Once the area now called Melville Koppies Central was
proclaimed a Nature reserve there followed a long struggle to manage it
properly, to make it accessible to the public, and to fend off various
threats.
Richard Hall takes up the story...
into the 1970s.
And Wendy Carstens and Norman Baines bring
the account up to today on the conservation page.