Zoutpansberg Skirmishes Route

About Zoutpansberg Skirmishes Route

The beautiful Soutpansberg or Zoutpansberg, meaning Salt Pan Mountain, is a range of gorgeous mountains in the Limpopo Valley, named after the salt pan on its western end. At its east end is the Matikwa Nature Reserve.

The Zoutpansberg Skirmishes Route is for avid history buffs, and anyone interested in how this set of mountains was involved in the Anglo Boer War. This particular war, which took place between 1899 and 1902, only affected the range of mountains during the third phase of the war, when Lord Kitchener implemented his 'scorched earth policy'. During this phase a series of concentration camps mushroomed, and special units of men who could 'shoot and ride', known as the Bushveldt Carbineers (most of them Australian), were sent out to fight what was left of the Boer Commandos on their own turf, with the intention of ending the war.

A typical Zoutpansberg Skirmishes Tour includes the graves of some of the Boers shot during this period, monuments of civilian victims, such as Reve Heese and the Zoutpansberg Commando at Vliegenpan. Interesting is the monument that remembers the 700 000 horses of the ABW in the garden of the Lalapanzi Hotel, a beautiful hotel that has been here since the mid 1940s.

Poeg Henning's farm is the site of another war grave of the Van Staden family, who met a similar death. The Sweetwaters Hotel features prominently on the tour as it was in one of these rooms that the infamous 'Bulala' Taylor of the Carbineers set up an office.

You can even do an extended tour that will include the Medingen Mission Station at Modjadje, and the Long Tom Monument at Haenertsburg. And if you can't physically do the tours, then a couple of the senior guides will give digital presentations.