Mpophomeni, a township just upstream of Midmar Dam, takes its name from the “po-pho-po-pho” sound of numerous waterfalls that drop down the steep hills, filling the Mgeni River which later drops over the famous Howick Falls.
It joins nearby Ixopo in having an onomatopoeic name - that one coming from the sound of cattle walking through a muddy marsh. And Lusikisiki, across the Eastern Cape border, named after the sound of the wind blowing through the reeds.
Just above Howick Falls, known in isiZulu as KwaNogqaza (Place of the Tall One), is the rubber factory which has over the years been the workplace of many Mpophomeni breadwinners. It's also where industrial action back in 1985 triggered on-going political violence in the township, which became such a significant part of that era in South African history.
Today this information is packaged into a township tourism experience flavoured with isiZulu poetry and dancing at residents' homes, visits to sangomas, homes and shebeens, as well as nights at B&Bs.
Just as Soweto has its Hector Pieterson memorial, Mpophomeni has its Wall of Reconciliation named after Nokulunga Gumede, an innocent five year-old girl who was run over and killed by a police armoured vehicle as she stood watching a protest in commemoration of the Sharpeville uprisings, on March 21, 1991.
Remembered alongside her are 120 people who known to have died in the violence.
“Both sides that had been fighting one another for years saw this and decided the violence had to end,” explains tour guide Sihle Zondi. “This little girl was innocent and had no political links.”
The one warring side was made up of township residents, aligned to the African National Congress, who backed workers from the rubber factory who were retrenched after going on strike. On the other side were those who backed people from tribal lands around Mpophomeni who filled their posts. And the State security machine fuelled the flames.
While all this fighting was going on, far away in Belgium, artist Marc Jambers monitored the gruesome events during the final years of apartheid on television and put together a sculpture that now stands in the township, having been shipped out from Europe.
It features old car parts used by protesters to barricade roads, the hands of little Nokulunga Gumede under a police vehicle. The bulk of the sculpture is coloured in red to represent flames but its top section, showing a tree that symbolises democracy, is green.
Those were dark days in Mpophomeni, which is on the other side of Midmar Dam from the famous spot at Tweedie where former president Nelson Mandela was captured by apartheid security forces on August 5, 1962.
Seventeen years into democracy the township is much improved, paved roads, street lights, a town library having been added during and since the 1990s. Under the surface, however, are the typical modern-day problems of unemployment, children orphaned by Aids, youth-headed households and a dated sewerage infrastructure too weak to support all 45,000 people.
Many people depend on either old age grants as well as those given to people who foster children and accessing them isn't always that easy. At the Zenzeleni Centre, on the tour itinerary, co-ordinator of the uMngeni Gender and Paralegal Centre, Lindela Ntombela, explains that recipients need help, especially to keep abreast of changes in the law regarding their pay-outs.
“Pensioners are notified of these changes but many elderly people are not highly literate and, what's more, the letters are in English. Plus, they don't understand things like deadlines.”
However, tidy gardens and homes as well as numerous vegetable gardens and home-based shops are evidence of enterprise amid contemporary hard times.
The place also had a history before the rubber factory strike.
A solid, stone farmhouse fringed by a veranda, built in 1880
with its design iconic to the early settler era in the Midlands, represents pre-township times, when today's Mpophomeni was Melrose Farm. Its last owner, faced with an order to part with it to make way for apartheid's social engineering, was so reluctant to do so he took his own life.
Plans are afoot to turn the house into a museum.
High up on a mountain above Mpophomeni, a church compound painted in white, glows in the sunshine. It's the local branch of the Shembe church, which blends Western Christianity with traditional African ancestral beliefs and follows the teachings of the prophet Shembe.
In its grounds is a tombstone honouring Shelembe, the founder of the sanctuary who after moving to Mpophomeni from the Karkloof Hills beyond Howick, followed the Shembe ways and earned a reputation for healing people through prayer and a recipe of humble ingredients: blessed water, soap and Vaseline.
Down in the valley below, at the entrance to the township, beside the R617, along which tourists travel to the Southern Drakensberg and its attractions - such as Sani Pass and Splashy Fen - Mpophomeni's tourism fraternity is busy building a tourism centre, scheduled for completion in September. It'll offer a restaurant, craft and fresh produce markets and live cultural shows.
“It'll be here not only to serve the interest of tourism in Mpophomeni but the entire region,” says Frank Mchunu, director of the Zulu Mpophomeni Tourism Experience - whose future office at the roadside is a perfect spot for monitoring tourist traffic.
“At weekends, during December, when there are cycling events (such as Sani2Sea) and when it snows.”
If You Go...
For further details, visit www.zmte.co Tel: 033-238-0288.
Mpophomeni is beside the R617, about 10km from the Underberg/Bulwer off ramp from the N3, between the Mooi River Toll and Pietermaritzburg.
Also in the area is the Nelson Mandela Capture Site beside the R103. It is well signposted and on the other side of Midmar Dam from Mpophomeni, off the Tweedie/Howick North off ramp from the N3. - Sapa