Dwelling in Resistance: Baviaanskloof as Memory, Landscape and a Cape Rebel Skirmish

This article examines the tactical and symbolic use of the rugged landscape of the Baviaanskloof as a site of resistance (referring to the skirmish), a site of concealment (pointing to hiding away) and a site of memory (citing the enduring oral histories that preserve this event) during a minor skirmish between a group of Cape Rebels and the Willowmore District Mounted Troops (DMT), during the during the South African War (also known as the Anglo-Boer War), which took place between 1899 and 1902. Rather than treating geography as a passive backdrop, this research positions landscape as an active agent in shaping insurgent tactics, hiding and survival. Using interdisciplinary historical research and theoretical frameworks on memory, fate of place, and terrains of resistance, it interprets terrain as a lived, remembered, and contested space, showing how the mountainous interior of the Cape Colony, with the Baviaanskloof as an example, became a landscape of resistance. Drawing on the experience of a Cape Rebel, my maternal great-grandfather who served under Commandant Gideon Scheepers, the article demonstrates that resistance relied not only on ideas or military capability but on the ability to read and use terrain, as revealed through the skirmish at Vensterklip. In doing so, this article contributes to the orographical humanities and critical geographical histories of war and memory, employing orography to explore how mountains shaped the lived experience, mobility, and resistance of both Cape Rebels and Imperial forces during the South African War.