Local Area

History and geography of the Waterberg

Ditoro Game Lodge is in the Vaalwater area of the Waterberg biosphere reserve. This is a vast, ancient landscape which, except for pockets of human activity, remains unspoiled to this day.

The plateau that makes up the Waterberg can be described as an “inverted saucer” with a basin and a rim. The thick conglomerate and sandstone of the area is dated at one thousand nine hundred million years old. The escarpments on the southern, eastern and northern sides of the Waterberg plateau afford some of the most astonishing landscape views in Southern Africa.

Although the oldest rock art yet found in the area is only a thousand years old, Hominid remains and other archeological evidence show human activity in the Waterberg during the Middle Stone Age.

The first farmers are thought to have arrived in the area in the 11^th century. Iron Age pottery dating to the 11^th – 16th centuries has been found and there is much evidence of Nguni speakers living in villages on the hill tops near the Palala River (a boundary of Ditoro Game Lodge) during the Late Iron Age. The Pedi came to dominate the area in the 18^th century. People of European origins began to arrive in the 19^th century, but even by the early 20^th century still numbered fewer than 200 residents. Big game hunters from Britain fell in love with this part of the colony, taking their toll on the wildlife.

There are several reasons why the Waterberg remained “empty”:

Initially, of course, it was just too far and isolated for those travelling by waggon and only the hardiest made it this far into the interior. But the inhospitable terrain coupled with tsetse fly, mosquito and the associated fevers, especially in the northern parts of the Waterberg, made farming and permanent settlement a difficult enterprise.

Furthermore, the area lacked potential in terms of mining and forestry. Although there are rich deposits of iron ore, coal and platinum just beyond the borders of the Waterberg, there are no mineral deposits on the plateau itself and the area is wholly unsuitable for forestry and plantation type agriculture.

By the 1950s the more accessible parts of the Waterberg, nearer towns such as Vaalwater, had been divided up into small farms where mixed farming with livestock and crops was practiced. There was little game left on these farms, and hunters had to travel deep into the mountains for their subsistence, biltong or trophy hunts. In the 1970s the first farmers began to see their wildlife as having a monetary value. Game farmers began to buy up the smaller farms and combine them into bigger units suitable for game. Today these game farms consist of large tracts of land restored to their natural state.