W
e discovered quite by
chance that we were
on the Maqoma Route,
in the car park at Fort
Armstrong. Actually,
‘car park’ was a bit of an exaggeration, just
like using the word ‘road’ to describe the goat
track we’d driven down to get to this remote
spot. Once a key outpost defending the Eastern
Cape’s old frontier at the foot of the scenic
Katberg, it’s now part of the Winterberg range
near the settlement of Balfour.
In the ring of rocks indicating where we
should park was a sign in a relaxed, prone
position. ‘Maqoma Route’ it read, describingthe route named after Maqoma, a great
warrior chief of the Xhosa, who put up strong
resistance to the colonial invaders. Looking
around the grand ring of the Winterberg
mountains on the northern horizon, I couldn’t
blame him for not wanting to give up this Eden.
I hadn’t known there was a heritage route
named after the great chief, and had just
tagged along for a fun outing with my friend
Dennis Walters. As a civil engineer, his interest
in military history centres around checking
out what the royal engineers managed to
accomplish in the field.
Fort Armstrong is a fine example of military
men battling with grassroots reality. A superblychosen site, atop a high peninsula surrounded
on three sides by a loop of the Kat River, it has
sweeping views of the surrounding landscape,
including the nearby R67 north of Fort Beaufort.
“It’s very strategic. The narrow neck of land
we drove down could be defended easily when
the Xhosa impis descended from the forests in
the Winterberg,” pointed out Dennis. “When Sir
George Napier [Governor of the Cape] visited it,
he told the commanding officer, ‘Why, Captain
Armstrong, you have got a little Gibralter here’.”
The thick stone walls were built in 1837
and replaced the early wattle and daub thatched
huts that characterised many of the early British
‘fortifications’. Apart from the lookout tower in
the south-east corner of the fort, little remains
of this feat of military engineering.
“Rebels from the Kat River settlement took
the fort in 1851 and occupied it for a month,”
said Dennis, who’d done his research before
setting out. “There were quite a few casualties
when the British retook it a month later, but their
howitzer shells demolished much of the fort.”
We left the settlement of nearby Balfour
and continued our adventure down a road
we’d been warned not to take. Dennis’ sedan
bounced from one pothole to the next as
we headed in the direction of Retief’s Post,
another of the Brits’ strategic fortifications,
and passed a sign announcing ‘Maqoma’s
Great Place’ in a lovely setting ringed by
a natural amphitheatre of mountains.
Just north of Mpofu Nature Reserve, we
toiled up a steep pass through the Winterberg
mountains to reach Retief’s Post, right besideABOVE: The new statue of Chief Maqoma faces the monument that Ciskei homeland leader Lennox Sebe erected
on Ntaba kaNdoda in 1981. BELOW LEFT: The striking statue of warrior Chief Jongumsobomvu Maqoma is the
creation of sculptor Mzi Makhalima. BELOW RIGHT: Fort Armstrong sits atop a strategic peninsula formed by
a loop in the Kat River north of Fort Beaufort.HERITAGE ◗ MAQOMA ROUTE