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From ghosts to grape vineyards — The intriguing tapestry of five Northern Cape towns

From ghosts to grape vineyards — The intriguing tapestry of five Northern Cape towns
The Middelpos Trading Store, where the sweets are still sold in twisted newspaper cones. (Image: Chris Marais)
Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit
By Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit
5 Dec 2024
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Five small Karoo towns have humble beginnings with a rich and varied history.

Back in the late 1920s, while diamond fever was sweeping the northern reaches of the West Coast, a teacher called Pieter de Villiers was on another mission. 

He was building a farm school near the mouth of the Buffels River at a place called Kleinzee (Little Sea). One day, quite by chance, he kicked a diamond out from the ground.

And so Kleinzee Mine was born, with one Jack Carstens as the pit manager. He tells of the nights when “the crooks” would arrive at the diggings to steal the diamond gravel from under their noses. 

Mystery shell middens of Kleinzee, gathered here by ancient hands or constant tides. (Image: Chris Marais)



Waiting for better days: diamond diving boat at Kleinzee. (Image: Chris Marais)



His Namaqualander guards carried electric torches, their “wizard devices”. The guards thought you could immobilise a man if you shone your torch on him. He relates a conversation he once had with a guard called Jan, in A Fortune Through My Fingers. Jan tells Jack about some “crooks” he had found in the Main Area:

“I torched them and they didn’t fall over so I went quite close to them and then they ran away and I couldn’t catch them.”

Read more: Kleinzee Shipwreck Trail — South Africa’s Diamond Coast, where vessels fear to land

Other crooks who got away with Kleinzee diamonds had it easier. They didn’t have to endure any form of the rather quaint “Namaqua Torchlight” torture. 

In July of 1932, a consignment of 10,000 diamonds worth about 53,000 pounds was nicked from the Bitterfontein post office en route to Kimberley.

Noupoort Ghost


Noupoort used to be a trainspotters’ haunt back in the days of steam and really-rolling stock, when the old black steel Goliaths used to chug across the Karoo like smoking dinosaurs. Back in the 1920s, more than 85 trains came steaming through Noupoort daily. 

In 1966, diesel locomotives were first introduced. They were called the Red Starvation. Because they did not need a driver and fireman each, as did the steam locos, they cut down dramatically on overtime, and many families were transferred to other towns like Rosmead, near Middelburg Eastern Cape.

Noupoort also has a very rich Anglo-Boer War history, and possibly the finest British blockhouse in the southern hemisphere.

Once-rolling railway stock at Noupoort Station. (Image: Chris Marais)



Like most self-respecting Karoo towns, the Noupoort area has its own ghost story.

On a nearby farm, a little woman dressed in Victorian clothes was once spotted walking around pointing at the ground. Later on, stacks of coins wrapped in cloth were found where she pointed, shiny on the upside, rusty on the downside. 

Present-day Noupoort is perhaps most famous for being a centre for drug rehabilitation. 

Kakamas – Raging Cow


Kakamas is a Khoi term meaning “poor pasture” or “raging cow” or “brown”, depending on your source. However, the town of Kakamas in the upper Northern Cape snuggles into a fast-flowing Orange River and is today a place of vast table grape vineyards and lucerne fields.

In fact, if you overfly Kakamas, you will see how verdant it is, lying in a riverside strip of Irish green. And then just a few kilometres out either side of the Orange, you see scrub desert lands.

So the real story of Kakamas is all about water and how it feeds the people who live here.

At the turn of the 20th Century, farmers were given riverside plots if they reciprocated by building a system of irrigation canals and tunnels. A locally designed water wheel complex was built to bring the precious fluid to higher ground, and pretty soon the breakfast tables of England and Europe were bedecked with grapes and peaches from Kakamas.

Kakamas also falls on the axis of Bushmanland and the Kalahari, and its Khoi founder was a river pirate who later reformed and became a devout Christian. Klaas Lucas, one of the “river people”, also founded neighbouring Keimoes, which means “mouse nest” in Khoi.

One of the major attractions in the area lies northwards, in the form of the Augrabies Falls National Park. This, in Khoi, means “place of great noise” and it’s a very apt name, as the Gariep River narrows at one point and cuts through granite with great force and thunder. Augrabies is full of interesting trails, and the falls themselves must not be missed – just take care in the rainy season.

Loxton Sightings


To a swift-moving traveller passing by on the R63, the Upper Karoo village of Loxton is often just a retreating church spire in a rearview mirror.

Loxton, one of the most desirable villages in the Northern Cape Karoo. (Image: Chris Marais)



UFOlogists worth their salt will also remember Loxton as the place where, in 1975, a farmer saw four aliens in a “funny caravan” and reported that they were all “a bit on the slow side”.

But just pull over and turn in one day if you’re in the area, and you’ll be amazed. Loxton, the place you may never have heard of, is well-beloved by its locals and well favoured by seasoned Karoo overlanders.

They made a wonderful movie called Jakhalsdans out here in Loxton, and many of the people you might meet here were hired as extras. A famous Afrikaans crime novelist called Deon Meyer has a place here. He and a number of farmers’ wives have banded together to form the I Am Living Trust, which tries to better the lives of Loxton children.

The trust often calls on celebrities to lend a hand with fundraising. That’s why it’s not unusual to see a famous cabaret star like Antoinette Pienaar doing a charity show for the kids in the local church hall.

Weekenders love Loxton for its good heart, wide open spaces and sense of being a hideaway you’ll travel far to find. It used to be seen as a bit of an “old-age town” but has undergone a transformation in recent years. The value of simply sitting on your stoep and spending a long time watching a donkey clop his way down the main street has finally been recognised by the younger set.

Middelpos Sweeties


The road to Middelpos by way of Williston lies draped over the flowered hills like a dusty shoelace. At the journey’s end, on the other side of a brimming vlei where children play like watersprites, lies the tiny settlement of Middelpos — an oasis in a brown land.     

The Middelpos Trading Store, where the sweets are still sold in twisted newspaper cones. (Image: Chris Marais)



The late Britain-based actor, Sir Anthony Sher, had family roots that once sprouted in this place, the middle of nowhere, just east of the Tankwa Karoo. His kin were the Jewish Smouse, the wandering traders so well known and once beloved in the desert corners of South Africa.

At the Middelpos Trading Store, they still twist old pages from Die Huisgenoot magazine into cones and fill them with assorted sweets for the kids who come to buy with their jingling coins.

At supper over at the Middelpos Hotel, you may encounter the handsome Schatzi, an African Grey parrot whose trick is to mimic cellphones and talk in the voices of his two previous owners. And that SMS you think you just received? That’s old Schatzi having you on… DM



For more stories on the Karoo from Julienne du Toit and Chris Marais, try their Karoo Roads series of books, priced at R350 (landed) each.

The Karoo Quartet Special (Karoo Roads 1 – 4) consists of more than 60 Karoo stories and hundreds of black and white photographs. Priced at R960 (including taxes and courier in South Africa), this Heritage Collection can be ordered from [email protected]

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