Die Hel; a lost valley & its people

Gamkaskloof, or 'Die Hel,' as it is also known, is a small section of the Swartberg Nature Reserve, a mountain catchment area of approximately 129 000 hectares. Die Hel can only be approached from Prince Albert or Oudtshoorn via the Swartberg Pass and was until the 1900s home to a small white community almost completely cut off from the rest of the world. How and why they moved there seems to be purely speculative, but they could have been part of the trekkers who moved away from British rule in the 1830's and accidentally stumbled upon this remote valley. Another possibility is that some cattle, sheep or goats wandered into the valley, the shepherd followed, looking for them; the discovery of the fertile, water-rich valley soon spread by word of mouth and consequently a small band of people settled there. A third view is that Gamkaskloof was inhabited by bushmen only for many years, but were driven out by renegade Sans under one Dawid Kiever, who allegedly brought up a white boy in the valley. What the exact relationship between the boy and Kiever was is not clear, but the youngster managed to escape over the hills to the nearest community and inform them of the lost valley of milk and honey.

The road to 'Die Hel' is narrow, more often than not the width of a single vehicle and winds along the valley and river bed along precarious bends and zigzags.

The name 'Gamka’ is derived from the Gamka River, which crosses through the bottom of the valley; while the name 'Gamka' means 'Lion' and was probably named this by the San (Bushmen). No one is sure where 'Die Hel' (The Hell) comes from, but one version is that Piet Botha, a livestock inspector of the 1940's, had to travel to Gamka Poort every two months and he usually gained access by a steep foot path called 'The Ladder'. He described these excursions as sheer 'Hell' and soon the name became common use among the locals (excluding those living in the valley.)

The inhabitants of this remote paradise did not take kindly to the name given to their home. In one instance the Receiver of Revenue sent a letter addressed to one of the Mosterts via 'The Hell, P.O. Prince Albert.' Mr. Mostert read the address a couple of times and then wrote neatly across the envelope: "First find out whether people in the Hell also pay income tax", and threw it back in the mailbox. In another instance, Mrs. Marais received a letter after an article was published about this remote valley and its people. The letter was also addressed to 'Die Hel' and although it looses a lot of force after translation from Afrikaans, her resentment is quite clear in her reply: "I'll get right to the point. No place like 'The Hell' exists. Gamkaskloof is part of God's creation like the whole universe. But it seems to us as if Gamkaskloof was discovered a few years ago and attached to the globe to act as bait for writers and journalists. If the so-called civilised people knew how much they hurt our feelings they would never use that term." Many might regard this as petty, but these people loved the valley with a passion, this was their home, their livelihood, their universe.

Cape Nature Conservation has managed to create accommodation facilities that suit the setting of the valley...here you can relax and get the feeling of how it must have been living isolated from the outside world.

Some journalists unfortunately sketched the Gamkasklowers as backvelders or hillbillies, and this no doubt did little to alleviate the suspicion that Outsiders were regarded with. Another one of the inhabitants was sitting on his stoep one day, minding his own business, when a vehicle full of tourists stopped in front of his house, inquiring the whereabouts of 'The Hell.' Without batting an eyelid Louis Nel pointed out to the group: "Mister, my Bible tells me that the road to Hell is wide and level and many people are upon it, and the road to heaven is narrow and rocky. Well, the road that is before you is narrow and rocky."

In 1841, the farm Gamka Poort (which includes the present day Gamka Poort Dam and Die Hel) was granted to one Petrus David Swanepoel. The then government surveyor remarked that the area was "bounded East, West, North and South by rocks, mountains, inaccessible, except along the bed of the river." If the community did move into the valley during the Great Trek, it means that they occupied Swanepoel's farm long before the grant was made. There is some debate about this, for some records state that Swanepoel already established himself and his family here in 1830, eleven years before the grant.

Seventy years later, in 1901, General Deneys Reitz accidentally stumbled upon the settlement and some of its occupants. Animosity between Afrikaner and Briton had not seized and now there was full-scale war between the two nations. Reitz was cut off from General Smuts' main army and he and his comrades made for the Swartberg to escape British troops. They could not use the Seven Weeks Poort Pass as it was heavily garrisoned by the enemy; there was no other alternative but to climb directly up the face of the mountain, a dangerous feat on this misty afternoon. When the mist lifted the Boers hoped to see the arid plains of the Karoo from their summit.

Johannes Mostert with his son Martiens and daughter-in-law Truitjie, whose child Annetjie Joubert (the last surviving Gamkasklower) is in her mother's arms.

One of the valley’s Cordier children had detected the Boer Scouts long before Reitz found the huts. On ascertaining that they spoke Dutch the child made his way through the mist, down the mountain with great stealth to inform his father of the visitors. That the child was able to do this undetected by the troops says a great deal of the Gamkasklower's bush craft, for the Boer scouts were world renowned for their own abilities in the bush and mountains. Due to their Dutch descent, the people of the lost valley had no sympathies for the British, and even here in virtual isolation, rumours of the Anglo-Boer War had filtered through to them.

Cordier, his children, family and friends and their descendants continued to live and die in peace and isolation in Die Hel for another sixty years, before an access road from Prince Albert was completed in 1962. This was after Dr. Otto du Plessis, the Administrator of the Cape Province, visited the valley in 1959 and promised to build such a road. It was designed by the engineer O' Reilly, and soon Kosie van Zyl of the Prince Albert Divisional Council commenced work with the assistance of a bulldozer and eight labourers, completing the work in just two years. Otto du Plessis was not to live long enough to see the completion, and in August 1962 the road bearing his name was opened and the ribbon cut by his widow Bernice.

Gamkaskloof's graveyard has a relatively high number of infant graves.

Although the road is untarred or paved, the road to hell (by good intentions) certainly is, and the access road that was built to make life easier for the inhabitants soon became the very reason people started leaving. Old timers died while the young were lured away to the bright lights and hot spots of nearby Prince Albert and beyond. In 1968 there were still 17 families left, most related to the other, comprising a total of about 100 people. The principal families were the Mosterts, Marais' and the Cordiers. Today there are probably less than fifteen people living in the valley, of which only Annetjie Joubert is a descendant of the original community.

This community lived in isolation for little more than a century, cut off from the mind-cluttering mundane strife and struggles of modern day life and were well on their way to develop a new nature-orientated culture, when they were stopped in their tracks. The destruction here was as complete and as deadly as if guns were used, but not a shot was fired. The death knell of the Gamkasklowers was a silent malignant cancer called civilisation, the road no longer led into 'Die Hel' but out of Gamkaskloof into conformity and oblivion, the dissolution of this once-isolated community is almost complete.

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