Karoo Heartland

Ouma Dora Jacobs

by admin | Karoo Legends

Ouma Dora Jacobs is one of Somerset East’s most fascinating historical figures. Believed to have lived to the remarkable age of 122, she was regarded as South Africa’s oldest person at the time of her death in January 2003, and was even considered by many to be the world’s oldest living person. Although her age could never be officially verified to Guinness World Records standards due to the lack of formal birth records from the late 1800s, her extraordinary life has become part of the town’s rich heritage.

Dora “Dotyi” Jacobs was born on the farm Paddafontein, in the district of Somerset East, to Lettie and Tukani Makalima. She was one of eight siblings. Dora never went to school and spent most of her life as a washerwoman on farms. Her abiding memories were of the rinderpest in 1896, when cattle died like flies, and the flu epidemic of 1918, when she saw the bodies of victims slumped at intervals along the dirt roads. She also remembered the arrival on the farm of the first motor car anyone in the district had ever seen. Dora’s life was one of hard work, combined with lots of friends, family, home-made music, dancing, laughter and storytelling. She never smoked or drank a drop of alcohol.

The only medication she remembered ever having was a home remedy called “versterkdruppels” (fortifying drops), and tablets for high blood pressure, which she began taking when she was about 100 years old. For the last 10 years of her life, she was blind.

Today, she is buried at the end of a short avenue on the side of the main building of the KwaNojoli Museum (formerly the Somerset East Museum). Here visitors can pay their respects and reflect on the incredible life of a woman whose story has become woven into the history of the town.

Athol Fugard

by admin | Karoo Legends

Few writers have captured the soul of South Africa quite like Athol Fugard, and few places left such a profound mark on his work as the Karoo Heartland. While he was born in Middelburg in the Eastern Cape on 11 June 1932, it was the tranquil village of Nieu-Bethesda, nestled beneath the towering Compassberg, that became one of his greatest sources of inspiration. Here, among the dusty streets, flowing water furrows and timeless Karoo landscapes, Fugard created some of the most memorable works of his celebrated career.

Already internationally renowned for powerful anti-apartheid plays such as Sizwe Banzi Is Dead (1972), Boesman and Lena (1969), and Master Harold and the Boys (1982), Fugard found in Nieu-Bethesda a place of reflection and creativity. He purchased a modest Karoo home in the village and spent many years writing and living there, drawn by its quiet atmosphere and remarkable characters.

His most famous local connection is undoubtedly The Road to Mecca (1985), a play inspired by the extraordinary life of outsider artist Helen Martins and her world-famous Owl House. Fascinated by her story and artistic vision, Fugard transformed her life into a moving theatrical work that introduced audiences around the globe to both Helen Martins and the unique spirit of Nieu-Bethesda. The success of the play played a significant role in placing the tiny Karoo village firmly on South Africa’s tourism map, with countless visitors arriving to experience the place that inspired both artist and playwright.

The Karoo itself became almost a character in Fugard’s writing. Its vast open spaces, silence and isolation provided the perfect backdrop for exploring themes of freedom, identity, loneliness and human resilience. The landscape’s simplicity allowed him to focus on the complexities of human relationships while grounding his stories in an unmistakably South African setting.

Several of his later works, including Valley Song and Coming Home, are also rooted in Nieu-Bethesda and reflect the people and rhythms of Karoo life. Through these plays, Fugard celebrated the dignity, humour and struggles of ordinary South Africans while paying tribute to the community that had become his second home.

Even after spending much of his later life abroad, Fugard maintained deep ties to the village. His home remained an important landmark for literary enthusiasts, and his affection for the Karoo never faded. He even expressed a wish to be buried in Nieu-Bethesda, reflecting the profound connection he felt to the landscape that had inspired so much of his work. Fugard’s final resting place has never been disclosed.

Today, visitors travelling through the Karoo Heartland can still sense the atmosphere that captivated one of South Africa’s greatest playwrights. A stroll through Nieu-Bethesda, a visit to the Owl House or simply sitting beneath the immense Karoo sky offers a glimpse into the world that shaped Athol Fugard’s imagination. His legacy lives on not only in theatres around the world but also in the quiet streets and enduring spirit of this remarkable corner of the Eastern Cape.

Athol Fugard passed away on 8 March 2025 in Stellenbosch at the age of age 92 years.

Olive Schreiner

by admin | Karoo Legends

Olive Schreiner (1855-1920) was many things in her lifetime. Among them a political activist, feminist and author of the world-renowned novel, The Story of an African Farm.

Olive, the ninth (of 12) child of missionaries Gottlob and Rebecca Schreiner, was born at the Wittenbergen Mission near Lady Grey close to the Lesotho border on March 24 1855. Three of Olive’s male siblings, Oliver, Emile and Albert, died young. She was named Olive Emilie Albertina after them.

At nine Olive’s younger sister, Ellie, just two, died. Ellie’s death made Olive a freethinker, rejecting formal religion for what we, today, would call agnosticism. Freethinkers were not that unusual in England then, but were usually at least in their 30s and 40s. Olive was an adolescent, she was a girl and she had almost no formal education. What was extraordinary was that her crisis of faith had occurred in a particularly closed culture, in which a system of theology co-terminus with family authority had not yet been challenged.

When Olive was just 10,her parents had to farm their children out to whoever would take them because they could not afford to look after them. Olive began a peripatetic existence, living with friends or family at Cradock, Barkly East, Hermon, Aliwal North, Dordrecht, New Rush (Kimberley) and Fraserburg.

Olive went to Cradock in 1867 when she was 12. Her brother Theo who was 23 and was headmaster of the local public school after teaching for four years in Grahamstown, was head of the household, with their sister Ettie (17) as housekeeper. In the following year their younger brother Will, then 11, joined them.

The house they lived in, one of the oldest dwellings still standing in Cradock, can be found at 9 Cross Street and has been turned into a museum. In the Schreiner House are Olive’s personal library, exhibitions depicting her life and those of her siblings and copies of all the books she wrote. The house contains antique furnishings, an exhibition on the life and work of Schreiner and her siblings, and a small but invaluable collection of books from Olive Schreiner’s and her husband Cronwright’s personal libraries.

The four remained together until 1870, when Theo and Will went to seek their fortune at the diamond fields. Ettie stayed in Cradock to run the small school; Olive, at the age of 15, left to become a governess first in the Colesberg area and then around Cradock, completing The Story of an African Farm at Gannahoek.

Schreiner then moved to England intending to study to become a nurse, which did not work out. Her fame and intellect gave her access to influential writers and thinkers though. She returned to South Africa in late 1889, aged 34, to reconnect with the Karoo because its dry climate was kind to her asthmatic condition, which began in her late teens and plagued her for most of her life.

Between 1890 and 1892 she lived in Matjiesfontein before moving back to Cradock. It was in Matjiesfontein that she wrote a series of essays published later as Thoughts on South Africa.

In 1894 Schreiner, aged 38, married Samuel (Con) Cronwright, a Cradock farmer eight years younger than her. He, unusually, added her surname to his. They lived briefly on his farm, Kranz Plaats, but moved to Kimberley because farming activities were said to have aggravated her asthma.

The couple were living in Berea, Johannesburg, in 1899, with war looming between the British and the Boer states. Schreiner wrote several anti-war pieces. During the war Schreiner moved to Wagernaarskraal (Beaufort West is the nearest town). Cronwright took up legal studies and opened an office in Hanover. Here, the Schreiners lived with Nkita their dog and a family of meerkats, which she took for walks on the veld.

Olive Schreiner died in a boarding house in Wynberg, Cape Town, aged 65 in December 1920. Her attachment to the district is evidenced by her desire to be buried on Buffelskop, south of Cradock, where in 1921 she was re-interred in a sarcophagus. In the grave with her, in separate coffins, are Nkita, Samuel and their unnamed daughter.

Excerpts from Story of an African feminist By Kevin Davie, published in Mail and Guardian, 20 April 2019.

Walter Battiss

by admin | Karoo Legends

Walter Battiss was one of South Africa’s most original and influential artists — a painter, printmaker, and thinker whose curiosity and imagination reshaped modern South African art.

Walter Whall Battiss was born on 6 January 1906 in Somerset East in 1906. His family rented the original two-storied English officers’ mess building and ran it as the Battiss Private Hotel between 1914 and 1917, when the recession which followed the First World War forced them to close and move to Koffiefontein. It was here that a young Battiss first became interested in archaeology and ancient rock art. In 1919, the Battiss family settled in Fauresmith where he completed his education, matriculating in 1923. In 1924 he became a clerk in the Magistrates Court in Rustenburg. His formal art studies started in 1929 at the Witwatersrand Technical College (drawing and painting), followed by the Johannesburg Training College (a Teacher’s Diploma) and etching lessons. Battiss continued his studies while working as a magistrate’s clerk, and finally obtained his bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at the University of South Africa at the age of 35.

A pioneer of abstract and expressionist art in South Africa, Battiss explored themes of myth, fantasy, and humanity through vivid colour, playful forms, and bold experimentation. His work reflected an ongoing dialogue between African traditions and contemporary art movements, positioning him as both a scholar and innovator.

Battiss visited Europe for the first time in 1938. The following year, he published his first book, The Amazing Bushman, the first of nine books published in his lifetime. In 1949 he befriended Picasso who would have an influence on his style. He visited Greece in 1966-1968 and the Seychelles in 1972, which inspired his creation of “Fook Island,” a whimsical imaginary world with its own language, maps, and culture — a testament to his boundless imagination and belief in creative freedom.

Today, Walter Battiss’s legacy lives on through the Walter Battiss Art Museum in Somerset East, housed in the building where he grew up. The museum celebrates his remarkable life and showcases a rich collection of his paintings, sketches, and personal artefacts, offering visitors a glimpse into the mind of one of South Africa’s true artistic visionaries. In 1981 when the museum opened, he brought a collection of over 70 of his oils, watercolours, and silkscreen prints; and many of the books he authored, and often printed himself. ​