Polokwane and the Bakone Malapa

The Bakone Malapa Open Air Museum, A Reconstructed Northern Sotho Homestead Where Iron Smelting, Pottery, Grain Storage And Building Are Demonstrated As Working Crafts Rather Than Displays On The Edge Of Limpopo'S Provincial Capital, Which Also Holds A Municipal Game Reserve Inside The City Limits And The Largest Collection Of Northern Sotho Material In The Country · Polokwane, Limpopo

This row is honest about what it is: Limpopo's provincial capital is a stop rather than a destination, and the reason to turn off the N1 is a museum on its southern edge. Bakone Malapa is a reconstructed Northern Sotho homestead where the crafts are worked rather than displayed - iron smelted in a clay furnace, pottery built by hand, grain stored the way it was stored, buildings made of what buildings were made of - with guides from the community who do the work while they explain it. That is a different proposition from a case of labelled objects, and it is the best introduction to Bapedi material culture anywhere. The city around it has a game reserve inside its own municipal boundary, which is unusual, a decent art museum and the biggest supermarkets for two hundred kilometres in any direction, which matters more than it sounds in a province whose other five rows in this set have no supermarket between them.

In the centre of Limpopo on the N1, 330 km north of Pretoria, Polokwane, Limpopo, South Africa

BAKONE MALAPA keeps daylight hours with a modest entry fee, generally closes on Sundays and sometimes a weekday, and the CRAFT DEMONSTRATIONS DEPEND ON WHO IS WORKING THAT DAY - telephone ahead if the smelting or the pottery is the reason you are coming, because museum hours and staffing here have been unreliable. The Polokwane Game Reserve on the city's southern edge keeps daylight gate hours with its own small fee and takes self-drive and walking visitors. The Polokwane Art Museum and the Hugh Exton photographic collection keep weekday hours. The city has fuel, large supermarkets, banks, a hospital and plenty of beds. It is 330 km north of Pretoria on the N1, an hour from Modjadji, and MALARIA-FREE at this altitude.

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