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Meshack Nkadimang, Product Owner
 


Hotel Kgalagadi

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In 1964 Meshack Nkadimang was growing up near Postmasburg in the Northern Cape when, one day, the bulldozers came.

A big iron-ore mine was being developed in the area and the people were told that they would have to go. “My father was a chief and he told his people that they should not leave. He said this was his land, their land, and that he would die there,” Meshack remembers.

Because of South Africa’s apartheid-era forced removals, places such as Johannesburg’s Sophiatown and Cape Town’s District Six are world famous, but in the remote, sparsely populated semi-desert areas of the Northern Cape, the eviction of Meshack Nkadimang’s community was barely noticed. Few, if any, people outside of Postmasburg ever knew about the pain suffered by his people and the brutal treatment handed out to Meshack and his father. “When they came to remove us, and my father refused to be moved, they beat him almost to death. I was a young man and I tried to defend him. All I had was my kettie [catapult]. It was only me and my father. Then they beat me too.”

The community Meshack had grown up in was dispersed and, most painfully, their ancestors summarily exhumed and their bodies dumped in a communal grave. Moved some 10km from their ancestral lands, Meshack and his people were, tragically, evicted again in 1977, eventually making their way to the village of Bathlaros outside the town of Kuruman.

Here, in 2004, a remarkable entrepreneur opened a quite unique hotel; the Hotel Kgalagadi. Unemployment is rife in Bathlaros and many of the local people have stories to tell of great suffering but, as Meshack says, you won’t find the slightest trace of bitterness in the village. What you will find, he says, is a community that is ultra-welcoming and which takes pride in the one-of-a-kind hotel that Meshack has designed and built in their midst. This community will welcome you into their homes, take you for a donkey-cart ride, and happily share a dop [drink] with you as the sun sets, in blazing shades of orange, red and pink, over their desert landscape.

Some 600km from Johannesburg, like Meshack’s hotel, the region around Kuruman is unique. The town is famed for Robert and Mary Moffat, missionaries who brought the Word of God to the edges of the West’s known world, whose son-in-law was the great explorer David Livingstone. The area’s other drawcard, the Eye of Kuruman, is one of the world’s most prolific natural fountains, producing more than 20 million litres of fresh water every day.

Since its opening, the Hotel Kgalagadi has become a tourist drawcard in its own right. Entirely designed by Meshack, the hotel has 23 rooms, including 10 chalets, 12 standard rooms (all airconditioned with TV sets, bar fridges and en-suite bathrooms) plus one executive room.

The restaurant, serving a blend of African and western cuisine, seats 66. There are conference facilities for up to 200. Hotel Kgalagadi even has its own cinema, seating 56.

As Meshack says, in the harsh, isolated environment that is the far Northern Cape, one has to work hard to eke out a living. He restores vintage cars, the hotel’s bar generates some income, as do his art and sculpture. “I’ve got so many businesses, I can’t count them all,” he laughs. One of the crafts he learnt (while working at Sun City) was that of artificial rock-making, a craft he has made extensive use of at the Hotel Kgalagadi. The swimming pool is fed from a waterfall cascading down rocks Meshack created himself, framed by banana trees he planted himself.

As much as the hotel is a testament to one man’s creative, entrepreneurial vision, it is also about the empowerment of a rural community. Eight people have permanent jobs at the Hotel Kgalagadi, while four are employed part-time. Then there are the people who earn money making things, as per Meshack’s example, fashioning things of beauty out of cast-off materials.
Meshack says he went into the Eteya judging process as an underdog and was amazed to emerge the Northern Cape Winner. “When you see how well appointed the guesthouses are in the big towns you feel a bit insecure, coming from the rural areas,” he says. “But becoming the finalist for the province has been wonderful. The people in my area are very excited. This has really empowered all of us.”
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