Did You Know?
The Heliograph Buffelshoek African Hills site near Magaliesburg dates to 1899, the opening year of the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902). Heliographs were portable mirror-based instruments used to flash sunlight in Morse code over long distances, and both Boer and British forces employed them for communication across the rugged Magaliesberg range. The specific location at Buffelshoek, part of the African Hills area, would have served as a vantage point for relaying messages between command posts, given the strategic importance of the Magaliesburg region, which lay on routes between Pretoria and the western Transvaal battlefields. However, detailed records of this particular heliograph station are scarce, and much of the site's history is inferred from the general military use of such equipment in the area during 1899. The Magaliesberg itself was a significant theatre of operations, with skirmishes and blockhouse lines later in the war, but the heliograph station's exact role or operational period is not well documented in accessible historical sources.
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