There is a headline in the news today about vanishing rock art in our Eastern Cape: "A wealth of rock art paintings are in danger of disappearing altogether." For years, my family in the Eastern Cape told me that the valley held a secret, and only few would ever see it. It was six years before they finally offered to show me. A nephew and niece led the way. They said: “You are going to see treasure!” It was a magical, colourful ponorama, they said, painted by the Khoikhoi (an ancestral line of my wife). But when we got there (right) – one sees the distress on my niece's face – people had hacked it off the face of the cave. A small patch remained – not at all like rock art I had seen before, but painted in bright colours.
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