BOOK REVIEW: The Sacred Hills by Lucas Ledwaba Reviewed by Chepape Makgato

Lucas Ledwaba’s The Sacred Hills is a landmark debut in historical fiction, steeped in the politics of land, memory, and rural resistance in apartheid South Africa. Set in the winter of 1974, the novel follows the fate of the Rhwasha community as it faces imminent forced removal by the apartheid government to make way for a Whites Only holiday resort — an act of violence cloaked in conservationist language and carried out by state agents with impunity.

Photo Courtesy of Lucas Ledwaba 

At the heart of the novel is Lebone Gegana, a young villager arrested and tried in Pretoria for the murder of Jacobus Potgieter, an official from the Department of Nature and Conservation. Potgieter’s death, a consequence of the community’s resistance to dispossession, frames the novel’s central tension: what does it mean to defend one’s ancestral land when that defence is criminalised? Lebone becomes a symbolic figure standing trial not only for a single act, but for centuries of indigenous resistance.

From the outset, the brutality of apartheid is felt. Lebone’s father returns home from the gold mines of the Reef broken by disease — “the disease of returning miners” — a stark reminder of the economic extraction and bodily exploitation that sustained colonial wealth. Rasije, his mother, becomes a portrait of quiet resilience, tending to her dying husband and later standing strong as her son faces state prosecution.

Yet The Sacred Hills is far more than a courtroom drama or a political lament. It is a layered narrative of love and cultural dignity. The romance between Lebone and Morongwa, whose soprano voice leads the community in song during football matches, introduces tenderness and joy in the face of hardship. The Rhwasha Lions FC, and the village's shared pride in its sporting heroes, becomes a canvas for celebrating rural life — asserting that resistance can also take the form of joy, celebration, and cultural expression.

The novel is deeply rooted in MaNdebele traditions, with village elders like Nkhulu Rhalani providing spiritual guidance and political counsel. He must take the royal homestead into confidence on the eve of Lebone's trial, navigating the difficult terrain between ancestral law and settler legal systems.

Ledwaba also expands the novel’s temporal scope by referencing the 1854 Rhwasha Siege, when Voortrekker invaders forced villagers out of caves, cracking skulls with Martini-Henry rifles and smothering resistance with brute force. This historical memory, passed down through generations, is not a backdrop but a living reality — making it clear that the 1974 crisis is one chapter in a much longer story of invasion and resilience.

At the crux of this story is the fierce defence of ancestral land. One morning, Nkrosi Gegana, a proud descendant of Nkrosi Dlou Gegana, wakes to a decree in a yellow envelope delivered by a messenger from the Department of Native Affairs. The document informs him of the state's intention to seize their land. His anguish is summed up in a haunting line:
“How can our land, where the bones of our fathers and their fathers before them lie, be turned into a playground for whites?”

That cry — piercing, righteous, and unresolved — speaks for generations. The Sacred Hills becomes not just a novel, but a eulogy, a protest, and a sacred act of remembrance. It reminds us that land is more than soil and boundary; it is memory, bloodline, spirit, and belonging.

Ledwaba writes with a journalist’s insight, a poet’s rhythm, and a storyteller’s compassion. The Sacred Hills is a cry of all cries — echoing those who fought, died, and prayed to protect land that, in African cosmology, cannot truly be owned but must always be honoured. This novel is a timely contribution to South African literature on land theft and dispossession, compelling us to reckon not only with the past but with what we have yet to restore.

The Sacred Hills can be purchased by email or by order; R280, excluding courier costs.

Chepape Makgato is an independent visual artist, freelance arts writer and curator. He is a Chief Curator at William Humphreys Art Gallery. He is a deputy chairperson of the South African Museums Association Central (Free State and Northern Cape). He serves on the panel of Acquisition Committee of ArtBank South Africa. He has a Master's Degree in Fine Art from University of Witwatersrand and is currently a PhD candidate in Art and Music at UNISA. He is a Research Fellow in Faculty of Humanities at Sol Plaatje University.