Marginalized Knowledge: An Agenda for Indigenous Knowledge Development and Integration with Other Forms of Knowledge

The salt trade

Wilmsen (1989: 117) records the 19^th century traveller and ethnographer, C.H. Hahn mentioning the preparation of salt from saltpans in the area by Bushmen who transported them in the form of loaves to Ondongo to sell and Hahn wrote ‘so the salt trade was fully as important or even more important than that of copper’. Long distance footpaths used by the salt traders probably became the avenues for the dissemination of European goods and influences from the 18^th century onwards. Lidia Sciama (1998) alludes to the notes of the 15^th century Venetian traveller Alvise da Mosto who, in his journeys along the West African coast and up the Senegal and Gambia rivers, recorded that large quantities of salt were taken by Arab traders to various localities, especially Timbuktu and Mali. If after the trade in Mali was completed, any salt remained unsold it was taken further south by caravans on foot. She writes (1998: 11) ‘Da Mosto’s description of the way salt is paid or bartered for with gold is an interesting example of invisible trade’. Da Mosto heard of this custom from Arabs and experienced it himself. Small quantities of salt, or other goods, are left in places established by convention. The receiving party will place beside them the goods they are prepared to give in exchange, but if the quantities offered are not considered satisfactory the whole process is repeated and sometimes the exchange may fail. Da Mosto writes of the attempt by an Emperor of Mali to find out who the people were that conducted this trade by capturing a trader, who died in captivity a short while later rather than utter the secrets of the trade..

Salt making has been known from the archaeological record for many places in the Soutpansberg mountains close to the Limpopo river and most particularly from the archaeological site known as Die Eiland, near Tzaneen and the Lovedu capital. Die Eiland is known for its mineral baths (today the hot springs are a holiday resort) and there are many peat bogs containing salt nearby. Pottery finds for Die Eiland have been dated to as early as the 3^rd century AD. The salt making tradition was observed by Evers (1981) to continue at Sautini, near Die Eiland in much the same way in the 1960s as the archaeological tradition suggests it was carried on centuries before. At Sautini salt was produced by women only who came from surrounding villages, bringing food and utensils and never sleeping at the site. They began by making an offering of beer and food to the ancestral spirits at a ritually important place, here a dead marula tree (Sclerocarya caffra). The women made a filter out of mopane (Colospermum mopane) stakes and bark into which a grass and dried clay filter was placed. Salt was scraped from the ground together with clay and mixed with sand to help the filtering process. Fresh water was poured through the salty sand-clay mixture until the water passing through the filter was no longer salty.

Underneath the filter pots were placed to collect the brine which was filtered repeatedly until clean. The women then boiled the brine down, scraped out the salt and formed it into cakes which were lightly baked to harden them and make them easier to transport. Clay pots broke after a time as the salt penetrated the clay and at some salt making places quantities of soapstone or schist bowls have been found which Evers writes ‘were undoubtedly used for boiling brine and which would have lasted longer than pots’ (1981: 79). Oral tradition records an invisible trade in salt between Bushmen and Venda in the Soutpansberg mountains continuing as late as the 19^th century.^ix Significantly, the rock art of the Limpopo Flats while in manner of depiction and range of subject matter is ‘diagnostic of the San rock art tradition that is found throughout South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia ….is unique in its inclusion of more recognisable depictions of women than men’ (Hall and Smith, 2000: 39).