History
Three hundred million years of erosion. Over such a time span, just a tiny fraction of a millimetre cut into the land each year (0.00183 millimetres to be precise) results in a canyon that is 550 metres deep. The Fish River Canyon is also close to thirty kilometres wide and well over a hundred kilometres long. Yet its dimensions are awesome beyond the numbers. Standing on the canyon edge, its immensity is felt, not measured. No landscape in Namibia instils a more profound sense of time and space.
Over time, the raised landscape was levelled into a so-called peneplain by erosion. It was then covered by new layers of sediments of the Nama Group from 600 to 540 million years ago, when the area was inundated by an ocean after the breakup of Rodinia. Once the continents had been realigned as Gondwana, erosive forces began to cut into the now-exposed sedimentary layer, creating the upper canyon. These included glacial erosion during the Dwyka glaciation some 300 million years ago.
When Gondwana broke apart 120 million years ago, the gradient of the Fish River was increased by uplift and localised rifting. This significantly sped the rate of erosion, forcing the deep cut of the lower canyon into the underlying rocks of the Namaqua Metamorphic Complex. The distinct dolerite dykes that extend for up to 100 kilometres across the landscape here are evidence of the volcanic activity that was part of the original metamorphosis.
A wonderful Khoesan legend, that the canyon was created by a gargantuan, winding snake, is an apt analogy of the geological forces that moved this landscapes and carved out the canyon.
The vistas of /Ai-/Ais–Richtersveld can certainly make us feel small. Yet they also draw us into their geology and archaeology, into the enthralling web of evolution that includes our own genesis. The Orange River Basin is central to the history, and the modern social, political and economic fabric, of much of southern Africa – and certainly of Namibia. It has divulged significant insights into human ancestry and culture; it was the arena for ever-increasing conflicts in the shaping of nations. It delivered alluvial diamonds to Namibia and is vital to water supply, power generation and the economy of South Africa.
It’s postulated that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa between 300,000 and 500,000 years ago. The oldest currently known remains of our species, dated at 300,000 years old, were found in Morocco, displacing the idea of a single ‘cradle of mankind’ in East Africa. Hominid evolution in any case includes numerous other genera and species. The discovery of various significant hominid remains from the Orange River Basin and its fringes (at Taung, Florisbad, Sterkfontein, Rising Star, etc.) demonstrate the importance of the basin in our long history.
Tool use by hominids is documented for several million years. The oldest accurately dated stone tools known from Namibia were found close to the Orange River and pre-date our knowledge of Homo sapiens. More recent artefacts, from the time that humans were the only hominans left on Earth, have been found at many sites across the country.
Numerous rock art sites are known from /Ai-/Ais–Richtersveld, and one of the most stunning African art finds ever made comes from the Huns Mountains in the park. The archaeologist Wolfgang Wendt named the site Apollo 11, commemorating the space mission that landed man on the moon while he was excavating rock shards with the figure of an animal drawn onto it, later dated to around 30,000 years old. Since then, discoveries of much older ornamentation have been made in South Africa, but the Apollo 11 slab remains the oldest figurative art known from Africa.
The 2,000-year history of the Nama in Little Namaqualand, part of which became known as the Richtersveld in the mid-1800s, is affirmed by its World Heritage listing. The Khoekhoen tradition of transhumant pastoralism has remained largely intact here over this period. During the second half of the eighteenth century, increasing encroachment by Europeans on Khoekhoen land in the Cape caused many Namas to move across the Orange (known to them as the !Gariep, the Great River) and settle in Great Namaqualand.
At the same time, groups of mixed Khoekhoen and European descent in the Cape, who had taken up European clothing and customs, weapons and horses became known as the Oorlam. Some Oorlam clans, including the Afrikaners, Bondelswarts and Witboois, moved north into Great Namaqualand and with their superior equipment and a growing tradition of commando warfare and livestock raids came to dominate much of South West Africa prior to the arrival of German colonists. Over the following century a merger took place between Nama and Oorlam, punctuated by conflicts and alliances amongst them. The term, Oorlam, later fell into disuse; today only the title Nama is used in Namibia.
Jakobus Jansz Coetsé is widely cited as the first European to cross the !Gariep into Great Namaqualand and leave an account of his 1760 travels, yet there are historical records of a Boer trading expedition crossing the river as early as 1738. There was undoubtedly repeated unrecorded trade and travel into Great Namaqualand, and settlement by Europeans began here in the late eighteenth century. The official border of the Cape Colony was extended from the Cape Peninsula all the way to the Orange River in 1847. Four decades later, Germany declared South West Africa its colony – and soon changed the fate of local communities.
Nama leaders sold the first land to the Germans and entered into various treaties that cemented colonisation. Yet growing discontent over the next two decades led first to the Bondelswarts Uprising of 1903 (which coincided with the start of the Herero–German War) and then the full-blown Nama–German War. The latter was instigated by the Witboois in 1904 and joined by most other Nama groups. The renowned Nama leader, Hendrik Witbooi, died in battle in 1905, but a protracted guerrilla conflict between the Nama and the German Schutztruppe continued until 1907. Great Namaqualand was subsequently divided as farmland for Whites, with only small pockets remaining for the Nama. During the South African administration of the territory between 1915 and 1990, several Nama homelands were created, which remain the communal lands of the Nama today.
Over the years, the discovery of diamonds and the construction of large dams, agricultural projects and other infrastructure have made the Orange River Basin a central facet of the economy of both South Africa and Namibia. Yet the developments have also changed the hydrology and ecology of the !Gariep and its Namibian tributary, the Fish. Only a fraction of their former flow now reaches the ocean, and biodiversity has been badly affected.
In light of the Fish River Canyon’s evolution over several hundred million years, its conservation history of little more than half a century doesn’t seem particularly impressive. Here, as in so many other ways, the colossal nature of these landscapes shows up our own insignificance – but also our ability to destroy or protect. This world may be vast, but it exists in a delicate balance that needs careful management of human influences. The humble beginnings of isolated national monuments may have expanded into a transfrontier conservation area, yet the protection of its riches needs to be strengthened …
According to legend, the hot springs in the lower Fish River were discovered by a Nama shepherd in 1850. Human presence in the region goes back countless millennia and this was probably just a rediscovery linked to European record-keeping. It’s likely that the springs, with a temperature of around 60 degrees Celsius, have been known – and intermittently used – for a very long time. They became a base camp for German troops during their war against the Nama between 1903 and 1907, and soon after were used by South African troops during the South West Africa Campaign at the start of the First World War.
Most of the Hunsberge and the lower stretches of the Fish River, including the area around the hot springs, remained unoccupied state land during the widespread land reallocation of the colonial period. Interestingly, the area encompassing the most impressive part of the canyon had been allocated as a freehold farm by the early 1960s.
In 1962, the site known then as Klein Aiais (today’s /Ai-/Ais Hotsprings Spa) and the farm ‘Fish River Canyon 381’ were proclaimed as national monuments. A series of proclamations in 1968 included /Ai-/Ais Hot Springs (without a game park designation) and several other resort locations around the country. The protected area initially did not extend to the canyon – this was added a year later. Several freehold farms and the state land encompassing the Huns Mountains were incorporated in 1988, and more land was added in 2002 to arrive at the park’s present boundaries. /Ai-/Ais Hot Springs Game Park remains the official name of the park, even though the main attraction is the Fish River Canyon.
The Richtersveld National Park is much younger, declared in 1991. It is owned and jointly managed by the Richtersveld Community and South African National Parks. It took 18 years of negotiations between SANParks and the Nama to proclaim the park and create its management structures.
After the formalisation of the Richtersveld National Park, the vision of a transfrontier park could be pursued in earnest. Further years of consultations, this time across borders, led to the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the two countries in 2001. /Ai-/Ais–Richtersveld officially became Namibia’s first transfrontier park in 2003, when Presidents Sam Nujoma of Namibia and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa signed the treaty. A year later, a joint management board was appointed to oversee the running of the park.
The formation of the Richtersveld Community Conservancy was initiated around 2002 to strengthen the relationship between the South African communities and Richtersveld National Park, as well as to create a clear structure to manage of the cultural and environmental riches of the area adjoining the park. This later enabled the application for World Heritage status – the Richtersveld Cultural and Botanical Landscape was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007.
Also in 2007, the Sendelingsdrift Tourist Access Facility was opened. It includes customs and immigration offices on both sides of the river and a pontoon to ferry visitors between the two countries. With a valid passport, this allows easy crossing from one section of the park to the other.
Interestingly, the Orange River border between South Africa and Namibia remains disputed, more than a century after it was defined. Namibia claims that it lies in the middle of the river, while South Africa sees it on the northern bank. Numerous consultations have not settled the matter – which partly hinges on mineral resources. Diamonds were discovered along the lower Orange in 1957 and mining still continues on both sides of the river today, as well as at other sites in the vicinity.
In the course of human expansion and exploitation across the region, a lot of large wildlife disappeared from the area – long before the park’s proclamation. In historic times, elephant, rhinos, giraffe, buffalo, hippo and crocodile occurred along the Orange River and parts of the Fish River catchment, but were all locally extinct by the 1930s.
The huge catchment of the Fish, in a landscape that has some of the highest runoff yields in Namibia, results in occasional, powerful flash floods. These have repeatedly damaged the /Ai-/Ais Hotsprings Spa (in 1972, 1974, 1988, 2000 and 2006). The resort was first opened in 1971, yet little development other than Hobas Camp has taken place in the Namibian section of the transfrontier park, while an extensive network of four-by-four routes and campsites has been created in the Richtersveld National Park over the last two decades.
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