Phalaborwa

Long before the modern town, the hills here were worked for metal. Communities on this stretch of the Olifants River mined and smelted copper and iron from at least the fourth century AD, and the archaeological remains of furnaces and terraced settlement on a hill just inside what is now the national park record an industry that traded metal across the lowveld. The name Phalaborwa comes from Sepedi and is usually explained as "better than the south", a claim about the district's warmth and mineral wealth.

Industrial mining came in the twentieth century. Geological survey of the Palabora igneous complex revealed a very large, low-grade copper orebody alongside phosphate and vermiculite, and from the 1950s a mining company and a state phosphate producer opened operations side by side. A town was planned and built for their workforces, with wide streets, schools and shopping centres on what had been thinly settled bushveld, and rail and road links were laid in to carry the ore out. The open pit grew into one of the largest excavations on the continent, around two kilometres across, and when the economic limits of open-pit mining were reached the company sank shafts and moved production underground in the 2000s.

The second thread is the national park. A gate on the town's eastern edge opened Kruger's central section to visitors arriving from the north-west, and Phalaborwa became a service town for the park as well as for the mine. Under apartheid much of what is now Limpopo was divided into homelands, and after 1994 the town and the townships of Namakgale and Lulekani were joined in the Ba-Phalaborwa municipality. Tourism now sits alongside mining as the town's second industry.

Phalaborwa is a company town that became a park town, and both identities show. The mine set the pattern of life for two generations: shift work, sports clubs, company housing and a strong trade-union tradition, with families who have worked underground or on the plant for decades. The park set the other rhythm, bringing guides, rangers, tour operators and a steady flow of visitors who stop for fuel, food and a bed either side of a game drive.

The district is Sepedi- and Xitsonga-speaking, and the Ba-Phalaborwa name recognises the communities whose ancestors mined and smelted here. Traditional leadership, church congregations and burial societies are strong in the townships and villages, and choral singing, gospel and, at celebrations, Tsonga dance and marimba music are part of community life. Afrikaans and English remain common in the town centre and at the mine.

Outdoor life fits around the heat. Golf is popular on the course laid out beside the park boundary, where antelope and warthog graze the fairways and the water hazards are treated with respect; fishing, cycling and bush walks fill the cooler hours; and braais and sport on television occupy the weekends. Wildlife in the streets is taken in stride, and residents are matter-of-fact about both the dust of the mine and the elephants a few kilometres away.

The Ba-Phalaborwa municipality takes in Namakgale, Lulekani and many villages as well as the town, and most of its people live outside the old planned centre. The daily commute brings workers in to the mine, the shops, the schools, the hospital and the park.

The economy still rests on the ground: copper, phosphate and vermiculite from the mines and processing plants, with the associated transport, engineering and contracting businesses. Tourism is the second pillar, supporting guesthouses, restaurants, guides and the airport, and government services provide much of the remaining formal employment. Mining has shed jobs over the years, unemployment in the townships is high, and there is a long-standing awareness that a town built on one orebody must eventually find another livelihood.

Days start early because of the heat: shops and offices open soon after dawn, the middle of the day is slow, and life returns to the streets in the late afternoon. Air quality and dust, water supply from the Olifants, electricity interruptions and the state of the roads are perennial local complaints. Elephants and hippos along the park boundary, and the poaching of rhino inside it, are recurring news close to home.

Eating here is lowveld eating, built around the braai. Wood or charcoal fires take boerewors, the coiled spiced sausage, steak, lamb chops and chicken, with pap, the stiff maize porridge, and chakalaka, a spiced vegetable relish, and a potjie, the cast-iron pot stew, for slower occasions. Shisa nyama butcheries in Namakgale grill meat bought at the counter and serve it with pap and salads, which is the town's most sociable way to eat.

Local specialities come from the bush and the fields. Mopane worms, the dried caterpillars of the emperor moth harvested from mopane trees across Limpopo, are eaten crisp as a snack or stewed with tomato and onion, and they are traded in large quantities in season. Morogo, cooked wild greens, goes with maize meal, and ting, a sour fermented porridge, is common on Sepedi tables. Biltong and droëwors, air-dried spiced meat, are made locally and sold everywhere.

Fruit is the other pleasure of a hot district. Irrigated farms along the Olifants and around Tzaneen to the west supply mangoes, bananas, oranges, avocados, litchis and macadamia nuts, sold from roadside stalls, and mango achar, a hot oily pickle, accompanies many meals. Marula trees grow wild in the surrounding bushveld, their fruit made into a traditional beer at the end of summer and used in the cream liqueur produced in the province, while rooibos tea and strong filter coffee are the everyday drinks.