Herewith the first in our new series titled ‘Highways & Byways’, which seeks to provide another perspective on the fascinating and challenging region broadly referred to as the Karoo. All of this as part of our project for seeking to develop new models of rural communication.
The contested Karoo
We will soon review a wonderful new book called Contested Karoo. Edited by Cherryl Walker and Timm Hoffman, and published by UCT Press, it traces the ways in which the Karoo is being reconfigured as a new ‘resource frontier’, as well as the resultings tensions and contestations. A review of its forerunner, a photo book titled Cosmopolitan Karoo, appears elsewhere on this website. Indeed, the very area of the Karoo is also contested in terms of where it starts and ends, and where its margins and borders might be.
Ons Karoo en Kontrei
While we aim to join all those contests in good time, herewith, for openers, our favourite current portrayal of the Karoo: a colourful map created by the intrepid Adri Smit of the new website Ons Karoo en Kontrei (KNK for short), which speaks volumes in terms of interest, intrigue and fun in a range of languages.
The Forgotten Highway site, which we’ve followed since its inception, has its own roadmaps, which we mean to come to. The same goes for the impressive National Spatial Development Framework, which is still being developed.
We are also talking to Dr Doreen Atkinson, doyen of the Karoo Development Foundation (KDF) and administrator of its Forgotten Highways WhatsApp group, with a view to providing a regular update on current efforts to revitalise old highways and byways in the vast Karoo.
The KNK map of the Karoo
Meanwhile, herewith Adri’s Afrikaans-language version of the Karoo map on the KNK website, which is well worth more than the proverbial thousand words.
Printed versions of this map are available for purchase at some Karoo farmstalls, which are listed on the KNK site. But we’re sure Adri would gladly you post one, and you could write to her at adri@onsknk.co.za.
Readers are also welcome to provide us with their windows – in words and pictures — of this treasured part of the world.
Anyway, to open Adri’s map, click HERE.