In Search of Kaditshwene

Despite a profusion of documentary and oral evidence, the exact location of Kaditshwene, the early nineteenth-century capital of a major section of the Hurutshe, has remained in dispute. Oral traditions of the Hurutshe recorded by the ethnologist P.-L. Breutz in the 1950s invariably pointed to the present farm Bloemfontein 63 JP, about 25 km northeast of Zeerust in the North West Province, as the locality of Kaditshwene. Breutz, however, consistently rejected the claims of Hurutshe informants that their ancestors had built the numerous stone-walled complexes in the central part of the Marico District. Instead, he attributed the ruins to a 'mining and stone-building culture', possibly of Hamitic/Cushitic origin, that he believed had preceded the arrival of the first Tswana speakers in the region. This far-fetched notion was denounced by archaeologist Revil Mason, who provided ample historical proof of the stone-building prowess of the Tswana. Mason, however, dismissed the oral accounts of the Hurutshe regarding the location of their erstwhile capital in Central Marico and argued instead that a large stone-walled complex on the farm Vergenoegd 279 JP, approximately 10 km south of Zeerust, constituted the ruins of Kaditshwene. These opposing claims are evaluated in the light of evidence uncovered during a recent research project, which demonstrates that the stone ruins of the main complex of Kaditshwene lie on a hill on the boundary between the farms Kleinfontein (or Olifantspruit) 62 JP and Bloemfontein 63 JP, in the Enselsberg area. This article also highlights the methodological complexity of Late Iron Age research, which requires the investigation and integration of an array of sources, namely archaeological data, documentary evidence, oral traditions and place names.