AT A RIVER FOUNTAIN in the valley, deep in the Cederberg, a mysterious animal roams. He is Waterbaas (“Water Boss”), Waterbul (“Water Bull”), a creature of the river. He wears a crown on his head, which he removes at night when he grazes in the grass around the water. For years, curious children living in the valley have ignored their parents’ warnings, venturing to the elusive fountain in search of the Waterbaas. Although he is rarely spotted, everyone knows about the water’s bouts of anger. Young girls have gone missing near the fountain; the ghost of a drowned horse appears there at night. Out of fear and respect for the water and its creatures, the children leave gifts: buttons, beads, clothing pins.
The Waterbaas is one of countless mythical creatures that have taken root in the Cederberg of South Africa. These creatures cling to the buchu and rooibos growing in the veld; their voices echo in rock art caves. Here, stories assume many forms. They are shape-shifters. They survive drought, fire, and colonization. They push and pull at the boundaries of how we view different life-forms. Stories are vessels for ecological knowledge. A story lives in every living thing; each folktale is a breathing body of its own.
I first heard about the Waterbaas when I was a child, living on a mountain kop in the central area of the Cederberg. I was haunted by the idea of a strange animal lurking in the dark of the river, even though our house was miles away from its dwelling place. On weekends, when we returned home after staying in the town’s school hostel, my brother and I rode our bicycles down the hill to the river, which flowed through the neighboring farm. While my brother swam, I’d sit on the sunbaked boulders, eyeing the reeds on the riverbank for any movement or perhaps a golden crown catching the light. I often mistook rocks bulging from the water for crocodiles, and bugs and birds landing on them for eyes peering at me.
The scariest water creatures I ever encountered were frogs. As a child, my mother had thrown a pebble at one in the river. The next day, a hailstorm destroyed a small fortune of my grandfather’s crops. Stories like this crawl through the mountains like vines. The otherworldliness of the Cederberg landscape is as much part of us as we are of it. My father, who was raised in the far-off Eastern Cape, arrived in the mountains quietly, and left even quieter. My mother and her sisters never stop talking, but they rarely speak about the present. They live entirely in the past. Many of my mother’s stories start, “Die ou mense het altyd vertel—The people of old used to say…”
The Cederberg’s stories are part of the cultural DNA of everyone who feels connected to this land. Storytelling is more than a way to pass time or entertain children. It is
