Kuboes is a small settlement in the eastern reaches of the Richtersveld, near the Ai Ais – Richtersveld Transfrontier Park in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa.
Kuboes falls within the Richtersveld Local Municipality and the Namakwa District Municipality.
The delightful village of Kuboes (also spelled Khubus or |obes) takes its name from a Khoikhoi term meaning ‘round fountain or spring’.
Kuboes sits in the shade of three mountains: The Kuboesberg, the Vandersterrberg, and the Ploegberg.
At midday in the desert heat, nothing stirs much in Kuboes. But venture out onto its streets at night and you see the various neighbourhoods at play.
There is music, children run in the streets and the ‘old folks’ visit each other. The nomadic shepherds often come in from the veld to socialise and there is much singing, because Kuboes is rightly proud of its local choir.
Kuboes was one of the first permanent settlements on the Richtersveld. The town grew around a Rhenish mission set up by revered Johan Hein, who began to preach to the nomadic population of the surrounding areas in 1844. A church was built in 1893, and eventually the itinerant population decided to set up in Kuboes itself.
A Rhenish Missionary Church was completed in Kuboes in 1893, and the village has become a significant Nama cultural centre. The local school is claimed to be the only school in the world that teaches the Nama language.
Much of the magic of Kuboes is actually getting there. Your route to Kuboes (and eventually the nearby Park) is to drive across from Alexander Bay along the Orange River.
En route, you will come across Cornell’s Kop, named after the luckless prospector Fred Cornell, who could never find a single diamond in these diamond-rich parts.
He did, however, leave the world a wonderful book called The Glamour of Prospecting, which is a great insight into a diamond hunter’s adventures along the Orange River nearly a century ago.