HOENDERKOP

Most dorps have their own signature koppie. In Fouriesburg it is Hoenderkop, a great shell-like form watching over the settlement. Its Afrikaans name loosely suggests someone who has had too much to drink, traced to a tavern once standing at its base, while to the South Sotho it is Mokhlonedi, “the face that watches over”. Seen from the right direction, that face is clearly there in the stone.

The koppie also carries the memory of the Boer War. Fouriesburg briefly became the seat of the Orange Free State government, and the surrounding caves provided refuge for women fleeing British forces under the scorched earth campaign. The suffering that followed still lies heavily over this landscape.

When I photographed Hoenderkop, the weather came with full force. Lightning struck across the sky, wind drove dust and leaves through the fields, and then rain turned the ground to clay beneath my feet. Between downpours, bands of sunlight moved over the mielie fields, and for a moment everything became luminous. I stood there in awe, almost forgetting why I had come, except that the camera was already in my hands.