A town with a colourful history looks forward to a smoother future
Matatiele, a picturesque little town in the southern Drakensberg, on the border of the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and southern Lesotho, has a colourful history. In the 19th century it had a reputation as a home of cattle rustlers, horse thieves, gun runners and smugglers of all sorts, who wreaked havoc in neighbouring villages and then retreated into Matatiele’s mountains to evade revenge attacks. Today Matatiele — which means "the ducks that have fled" — is a small farming town supplying local villages, which has been in the news over its fight to be returned from the Eastern Cape to KwaZulu-Natal. That looks like a possibility now. Optimism was renewed after the African Independent Congress (AIC) — formed in Matatiele in 2005 with the specific aim of fighting for the town and surrounding areas to be reincorporated into KwaZulu-Natal from the Eastern Cape — agreed to use the votes it won during the local government elections in August to help the ANC govern many hung municipalitie...
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