It was the Moonshine Express, an old Ford F250, that stands out clearly in my mind from the hazy Sunday morning in September when we drove up the tailings heap of the tin mine in Uis. From the top, we had a grand vista of the small settlement, the massive bulk of the Brandberg Mountain towering over the landscape and the tin mine on the other side.
The old ‘Rough & Tough’ rally bakkie had so much character ingrained in its chassis, a surprising attribute that I soon discovered pervaded the settlement of Uis, which is still waiting to be upgraded to the status of ‘village’ or ‘town’.
Lying conveniently on the rock art route, with the famous ‘White Lady’ rock-painting drawing visitors from near and far, Uis had also attracted me over the years on my way from Brandberg and Twyfelfontein to Swakopmund. I wondered what stories the place held. I asked around and it didn’t take long before I was directed to Basil Calitz, owner of the Brandberg Rest Camp. “He’s a legend over here,” I was told.
An old motorbike on a raised signboard marked the spot as a hangout for travellers, bikers and overlanders, and I turned into the rest camp where Basil, living up to his well-earned reputation, started to recount his and Uis’s interesting tales, coloured by his great sense of humour.
“Let me tell you the story of Uis first,” he told me. The little village was built in 1960 by Iscor SA to mine tin, which had already been discovered in the 20s. In 1990 when Namibia gained its independence, the tin price was low and the mine closed. “Then, in 1997 one man bought this whole town,” he continued. “Albert Weitz bought it from Iscor to rehabilitate the land, but instead of demolishing it, decided to proclaim it.” The government kept twenty houses for themselves and he got to keep the rest, but no-one wanted to buy. He advertised in Europe and Europeans bought them for next to nothing. Germans, French, Italians, Swiss, Austrians, Belgians. “So, that’s why I say Uis stands for ‘United International Society’ – UIS,” he said with a mischievous glint in his eye.
Basil, third generation Namibian - born in Otjiwarongo, arrived in Uis in 2005 for a thatching job. By then he had dabbled in several professions, including engineering and drilling for water. He noticed that the old mine recreation club was empty and rundown, talked to the owner, bought it and decided to spend the rest of his life there.
At that time, there weren’t many people in Uis. Tourism was only beginning in Namibia. The Europeans would visit for three months of the year to soak up the sun and then leave. There were a few stone diggers and their families, who used to visit on weekends.
Basil started a business offering guided trips to the mountain, hiring two guides who had worked for Harald Pager, the man who documented the thousands of Brandberg rock paintings. Later on, the National Heritage Council and the Daureb mountain guides took over.
Uis began to grow, busloads of tourists started to arrive and travellers began to overnight. The Europeans gradually sold their property to locals.
In between recounting Uis’s history, proudly showing me the Series3 Landy that he’s building and explaining how the Brandberg Mountain formed at the geological map on the wall of the Old Prospectors pub/Koekepan restaurant, Basil mentioned some of the events they’ve hosted. These include the Land Rover festival, the Brandberg Backyard Ultramarathon, and the Rough & Tough rally where vehicles must be older than 1990 (now only sedans are allowed) and must not have cost more than N$35 000. And then there are the ongoing annual events, like Oktoberfest and the Lisama aircraft club get-togethers where thirty planes descend at Uis (‘International Airport’) for the weekend.
But we weren’t done with Uis’s tale. Back at the table, while Basil lit his pipe, he told me how in 2019 tin mining was resumed. The area was also found to hold deposits of tantalite and lithium. We had to break up our meeting then because he was off for a night out in the desert with friends. We made an arrangement to meet up again the next morning when he’d take me for a drive up the tailings heap of the mine for the best view of the surroundings.
He was true to his word and the next day we went off to appreciate the view with Paul and Melody Loots who were driving the Moonshine Express to keep alive the spirit of their late friend, Johan van der Westhuizen. The Brandberg Rest Camp had hosted the Rough & Tough rally for two years to raise money for cancer patients. The couple recounted their own Uis story. They had passed through on their desert journeys through Damaraland two years before and noticed that the supermarket was for sale and decided to buy it, making Uis, the ‘small laidback town where lots happens’, their new home.
The Uis stories were flowing. Church minister Zebedeus /Uiseb filled in some of the gaps. Born in Uis, growing up as a child of the mine, he left like many others when the mine closed to find greener pastures elsewhere. He returned in 2019 when Afritin, Andrada today, reopened the mine. He was the community liaison officer for the mine until August 2022 when he retired. “The Uis people, most subsistence farmers, are poor millionaires,” he said. “We are walking on a wealth of minerals.” He reminded me of the most well-known Uis story, when in the 70s twenty-six travellers from the North made a braai using the poisonous Euphorbia wood. Today the line of rocky graves lies next to the road.
I paid the graves a visit before returning to the Brandberg Rest Camp to meet one of the original stone-diggers, Lorri - Andries Lourens - Raaths (and his dog Foxie aka Vlermuis), who had visited Basil at the rest camp over the years, entertaining guests with his guitar and songs.
Lorri had come to Uis in 1984 from Spitzkoppe, where he was service manager of the granite mine. His grandfather also Lorri, (Lourens Marais) was a mineral prospector and his mother grew up in the bush, always digging for stones and diamonds and gold. As a small boy, Lorri was already interested in stones and was always asking him about them. In the years while he was doing field service mechanical work, his spare time was spent looking for stones and geological formations. “Wherever I was, I had my eyes on the ground.” He sought geologists, professors and old prospectors, and studied books on minerology and geochemistry.
He remembers that when the mine closed down, Uis was like a ghost town. In 1991, Bertus (Hamerkop) van Zyl, the head of security who oversaw the town, and himself were the only occupants in Uis. For Lorri it was an ideal prospecting base in the Brandberg region for him and his family. When Albert Weitz bought whole town and raised the rent, Lorri and family packed up and moved to the Gobobis mountains behind Brandberg, where they built a camp and stayed for six years. At that time there were no roads. Lorri made his own roads and dug a pit in Ugab riverbed close to camp for water. “There was nothing in the mountains, no wood and no water, but there were stones.”
While living there, the small mining association in Uis had problems with their mining plant and asked Lorri to have a look. He fixed the problem and they offered him a contract to fix and upgrade the plant. He rented a house in Uis again, eventually buying it, and stayed on.
The first stones Lorri mined were sold in Swakop and Windhoek. A selection was sent to a mineral show in Germany with a man Lorri met at the recreation club. Today, the amethyst crystals from the Gobobos area are the most expensive and the best quality in the whole world. Lorri taught the small miners over the years, introducing them to gemstones and the Gobobis area, where many of them are based today
His sons continue to mine and his daughter took over marketing. Lorri has now retired and is still playing the guitar and writing his own songs about Brandberg, Kaokoland and stone digging.
Leaving Uis and heading to the coast, I searched for his songs on SoundCloud before I lost signal and found his song ‘Rocks and Stones’, classified as country rock. The country tune and catchy lyrics stayed with me all the way to Swakop: “I’m a Namib cowboy and I’m digging stones; rocks and stones are in my bones.”
It was an apt ending to the fascinating and colourful tales of the small mining town of Uis, the United International Society of Namibia.