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I eventually got to see the Pierneef Namibia sites in September 2024. They are views of the small settlements of Okahandja and Karibib. You pass through these towns on the road from Windhoek to Swakopmund. I’ll say that again – pass through. When I told my Windhoek cousin I was going to Okahandja he said “Why are you going there, it’s a shithole.” And so we come to a great mystery – why did Pierneef choose to depict these dreary little dorps? This is Namibia for god’s sake – how about the Fish river canyon? The Spitzkoppe? The giant dunes of the Sossusvlei?

Pierneef’s station panel of Okahandja. Its a beautiful painting, but a fairytale that had little to do with what I saw: that impressive mountain was little more than a koppie. The surrounding trees were nothing like the ones in the painting.

Even given Pierneef’s penchant for idealisation, this is a bit of a stretch. You can trace the ridges of that koppie against the sky. Two small peaks on the left, a larger more rounded one on the right. This is the view, most definitely. And unlikely at the same time. The acacias were hopefully putting out bright green spring leaves. But it was a time of drought, and a lot of the vegetation seemed dead. Behind me was the edge of town, middle – class houses securely fenced off from no-man’s-land. I walked past a man wearing a nice hat, gathering bits of wood. Otherwise there was no one around. I didn’t feel an urge to settle in and do a drawing. I considered the koppie. I had the feeling that something might have gone down there in the 1904 – 08 war. And yes, the historian Marion Wallace speculates that Okahandja was the epicentre of the 1904 uprising of the Herero people. The war against the German invaders lasted four years, drawing in most of the indigenous groups with catastrophic consequences. Pierneef would have known some of that history. The fairytale landscape seems to airbrush out the uncomfortable past. Is Pierneef’s painting a sanitisation of a dark history? Difficult to say. The Station Panels were adverts for tourists, so…..

The ghosts of the past. Samuel Maherero. Hendrik Witbooi. The murderous teuton Lothar van Trothar. Heat, cattle, dust and blood. I decided to head off to the Erongo mountains to escape thinking about such matters. I turned to go, and noticed for the first time the giant, bent acacia behind me, bearing ancient witness and enclosed by a suburban wall.