Moyagabo Andrew Phaswana

The never-ending quest to know more

“I enjoy it most when I find a hominid bone. That’s exciting to me.”

Moyagabo Andrew Phaswana has worked as a fossil technician and excavator since 1999, mainly in the Cradle of Humankind but also at the Canteen Kopje archaeological site near Kimberley. The list of Cradle cave sites where he has worked is impressive, among them Drimolen, Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, Cooper’s, Motsetsi, Gladysvale, Fourie’s and Goldsmith’s.

And he never gets tired of discovering fossils, hominid or not, because “you are learning more and more”. Another of his favourite finds, he says, was of stone tools at the Swartkrans cave site.

Phaswana found his calling when the noted palaeontologist and geologist Dr André Keyser, who discovered Drimolen and several important hominid fossils, was looking for staff. He worked at Drimolen until 2006, excavating and cleaning fossils, when he was recruited to work at Swartkrans. But not for long.

“I was staying at Swartkrans when Professor Kathy Kuman and Dr Morris Sutton said they were looking for someone experienced to work at Sterkfontein,” he recalls. It was at Sterkfontein where he became a highly skilled fossil preparator and caster under the tutelage of another Sterkfontein legend, Professor Ron Clarke.

“Professor Ron Clarke played a big part for me to learn casting and to paint (casts), how to work before you cast and paint, and how to identify fossils. I learned a lot from Professor Clarke; he took time to teach us about many things. He taught me to be disciplined. Even now I’m learning,” he says.

Along with his colleague, Kgame Abel Molepolle, Phaswana identifies, cleans and prepares fossils – among them some of the most significant ever discovered – and recreates them exquisitely using resin and oil paints. The current Sterkfontein supervisor, Professor Dominic Stratford, considers the pair to be world-class in their field.

For Phaswana, Sterkfontein is clearly much more than a place to work. It’s a place where he can slake his thirst for knowledge.

“This place is very important because it guides me on where people come from – and what animals hominids ate,” he says. “The Sterkfontein Caves are special because we find more bones each and every day. And they are special bones.”