And now South Africa...

It's cold in Cape Town at this time of year. Like in San Francisco, where you are ambushed by sudden cold, you find yourself wondering if it is ever warm in Cape Town for long when clouds pour over Table Mountain, white horses race across a steely grey sea and a chill wind cuts through several layers of clothes. It is possible that I might be seduced on another trip by the glories of the garden route - on this occasion we decided to go north and east instead and finding warmer weather. Did I fall for the city like friends over the years who have upped sticks to go and live a potentially more comfortable life in or around Cape Town?  I did not. 

I loved my holiday there – my excuse this time a son who is at the University of the Western Cape for a year coaching rugby in a country where it is almost a religion - but I do not want to live there.  Simply, it is too complicated, too many layers upon layers of problems, too little security or, rather, being forced to live with too much, would drive me demented and I don’t want to think I need look over my shoulder when I walk to the nearest corner store or have to worry about breaking down in my car in the wrong place. Cape Town and the Western Cape feel like an archipelago; a series of islands; individual ones where a family lives behind high walls and security gates, fearful of what is beyond them; community islands always threatened by something outside or in the most frightening areas both within and without their borders.  Places like Mfuleni in the Cape Flats where individuals are as friendly as they amazingly continue to be to strangers all over the country in my experience and yet they live with appalling daily violence and always fear and mistrust, of those who also fear them and of the institutions like the police force who should be ready to help but do not. In a community centre there we were fed umnugushu, samp and beans, utterly delicious, and treated to a dance exhibition by children that put Strictly Come Dancing straight back in its box. The saddest thing we were told is that there are people who look back to the Apartheid days as a time of greater security in every area of life including jobs although the Western Cape as it happens has a lower unemployment rate than the rest of South Africa.


My son’s car seemed likely to break down at every junction but being a Volkswagen, however ancient, kept on trucking.  Broken windscreen, broken rear view mirror, a window winder for sharing, an indicator that went off like a cuckoo clock, steering like an old tank and dubious hill-climbing abilities – an altogether eccentric vehicle. If it was a house it would be described as characterful with heritage.
We drove to the Cathedral Peak Hotel in the Central Drakensberg, passing a string of Zulu villages, kraals thatched or with corrugated roofs, many painted in pastel colours, some adorned unexpectedly with plaster corinthian columns or other pointers to greater affluence than neighbouring dwellings. via a late afternoon visit to the Spionkop Nature Reserve, site of the Boer War battle of Spionkop where incompetence on the part of the British command led to the unnecessary slaughter of a large proportion of the British force then en route to relieve Ladysmith. Ladysmith now is a thriving town and on Heritage Day full of Zulu men and women in celebratory national dress.  

Outside Cape Town, beautiful Franschhoek and old Dutch Stellenbosch, surrounded by equally beautiful wineries and farms with wonderful white Dutch style houses, lovely gardens full of spectacular plants, where rich foreigners keep holiday houses enveloped in high level security, are delightful indeed but self-satisfied as well as slightly scared – semi-detached from the reality of the poverty of the Cape Flats townships on their doorsteps where the violence is all too terribly real. Western Cape society, and I don’t mean the cocktail party circuit, is compellingly fascinating and comprehensively difficult. Colour remains an issue where no one is the right colour everywhere for which we can blame everyone from the Boers to the British, all those mixes of ancestry who washed up on these shores by their own will or someone else's and especially Cecil Rhodes who I would like to blame for a very great deal.

What do I know?  I have never been to South Africa before and was there for 2 weeks, this is purely gut feeling, some conversations and a little observation. One thing for sure, if the new South Africa, and we need to give it much much more time before passing more than temporary judgement, works one day, the rainbow society will be the example for us all but there are peaks that are higher, more inaccessible and less hospitable by far than Table Mountain to be scaled before that happens. 

We stayed with friends in Franschhoek, initially in a rental house across the road which was charming and comfortable especially when we got to grips with the essential wood burning stove.  There is no getting away from the fact that I really hate being cold these days.  When we got to the Drakensberg area of KwaZuluNatal we discovered where the vast quantities of wood that must be burned in these stoves in the winter comes from with mile upon mile of forestry lining the main N3 highway from Durban. Not pretty but very important. I should think we burned several trees in 24 hours. Our friends’ vast and venerable stove heats their whole house although Cape folk, we were told, are hardy and more inclined to leave the door open in midwinter than light a fire. Must be the Voortrekker ancestry coming out.

We added our own personal insulation with every delicious lunch or dinner while we were in Franschhoek and Cape Town, eating phenomenally good fish in particular washed down with considerable quantities of equally excellent local wine, rosé for lunch as a pretence of not really drinking at all, why does one think that of rosé?  Red, white, local Castel lager, lovely restaurants, great food punctuating as much sightseeing as we could possibly fit into our days. Stellenbosch is undoubtedly charming, it has old university town written all over it, lovely shops, pretty buildings and a nice place to wander the streets – the District 6 Museum in Cape Town is a remarkable contrast. We are back to so many differences in one region, the Bo-Kaap, the Cape Malay quarter in Cape Town is another - it is not exclusively Muslim but with its mosques and splendidly bright painted houses in precipitous streets where women with covered heads gossip on the steps, it feels unique and very different to the main street that runs below with its high rise offices and hotels. 

Plants, shrubs and flowers, are a huge part of the South African experience, at this time of year every margin of road or field is filled with groves of Arum lilies, trees are flowering, the ubiquitous bottle brush tree in pinks and oranges as well as the usual red. Famous Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden, laid out on land that was originally purchased by Cecil Rhodes, is a treasure trove of indigenous plant life with too much to look at in one visit even so relatively early in the spring. The amazing ‘boomslang’ treetop walk is a splendid new addition to the garden for those who don’t mind heights.  Clivias grow of course in profusion in every passing municipal flower bed, proteas just everywhere and especially driving towards the Cape of Good Hope, one of the major highlights of our journey. 

We drove through the holiday areas for Cape Towners, past long, deserted beaches, wild coastline, a famous penguin colony that we somehow missed, old lighthouses and all the purveyors of summer essentials.  We ate breakfast from an old bakery in one or other small town centre on the coast where the takeaway counter involved an appetite whetting traverse through the barn like bakery itself . Then, just to stand there, in sun but also a howling gale, seabirds, cormorants surfing in on the wind to rocky nesting sites, vast waves crashing on the cliffs, a ship on the horizon, brought back every story of adventure, exploration and battle with the seas that any of us has ever read.  A couple of ostriches, possible escapees from an ostrich farm up the road added a somewhat surreal touch to the landscape but perhaps the place was once thick with ostriches – these ones seemed quite at home with their heads more or less in the sand and the wind in their feathers. 

Finally, the pilgrimage to Robben Island across that grey sea under the clouds to visit the relics of year upon year of incarceration and hard labour of men who were later seen to be the greatest and the best.  Standing there in Mandela's cell or the high walled yards it is hard to imagine how on earth they kept going and survived.  It is grim – in the beginning in all this cold place, they had only mats on the concrete floor to sleep on, only bars and high walls to look at aside from the terrible blinding glare of the lime quarry where they worked, terrible food, brutality – the beginning was years long and if bunks and better clothes in time alleviated physical discomfort somewhat, the walls and the bars were always there.  

I was thinking, listening to the catfight cries of Hadeda Ibises flying overhead that they must at least have been a sign of outside life, something beyond the walls.  As it is one gets the impression that the island now, as a museum, is something of a sanctuary for birds and wildlife, perhaps it always was whether or not anyone dared to notice.  Those prisoners who gathered seaweed from the rocks come cold or heat must have looked across the water towards Cape Town, the wide fringe of buildings nestling in the underskirts of the mountain and then perhaps tried not to think about distances in time or space.  We came back that day to sunshine on the wharf and lobster for lunch – contrast indeed. 

From Cape Town we flew up north and east to Durban and drove a hired 4x4 up the excellent N3 bypassing Pietermaritzburg and heading off to Underberg, Himeville and into the Drakensberg Park World Heritage Site to the Sani Pass Lodge, our first 2 night stop.  Roads are remarkable in S Africa and even the unmetalled ones we encountered further north when rather more lost than anyone reading the map would admit, were a good deal more drivable than in other parts of Africa.  The road up the Sani Pass and over the Lesotho border might not be the best example but the fact that it gets there at all corkscrewing all the way up to the high Lesotho plateau is quite a feat.  We were told that 2 things work in general really well in S Africa, the roads and the tax system - it's hard to know if that is an encouraging fact but the roads are a pleasure to drive on.
  

The Sani Pass Lodge looks out across a man made lake to a spectacular mountainscape beyond rough flatland where small groups of hartebeest and bushbuck graze with zebras, all more or less unconcerned with human proximity and occasional cars.  It was cold here too but the faithful wood burner combined with under floor heating to provide almost tropical conditions indoors and my adult sons cavorted as usual like small children in the veranda jacuzzis.There is fishing in a lake stocked with trout, flies sold in the small reception shop include the efficacious woolly buggers in black and brown and a Mrs Simpson to go with them. We ate delicious trout delivered to one of our cabins on the first night - it is more usual it seems here to self-cater but we were far from prepared in either supplies or intention for this eventuality and the Lodge staff stepped up bravely to provide dinner for us on both nights of our stay, breakfast too cooked in our own kitchen while the communal breakfast area was closed due to some vaguely specified domestic crisis.

The Lesotho drive to a high mountain desert, not dissimilar to Ladakh on first impression, was vertiginous and occasionally alarming but otherwise uneventful beyond a minor run in with the border post over lack of correct stamps on a new passport.  Needless to say we were permitted to pass although money in relatively small amounts changed hands in due course to no one's great surprise. Few birds again, not the expected vultures flying on high currents; a sunbird on a roadside shrub, a handful of small unidentified others in passing; donkeys, ponies, dogs and cats around the village of huts at the top and the highest pub in Africa for lunch.  The Basotho people sadly no longer wear their well known conical Lesotho straw hats although they can be bought as tourist souvenirs. They continue to wear gumboots, white for choice, and imported brightly coloured blankets that have become a national dress since the first was presented to King Moshoeshoe I in the 19th century. I'm not sure when the gumboot appeared in Lesotho, there must be story there to be told. The blankets, now possibly imported from China rather than manufactured in South Africa or earlier in Britain, have acquired huge significance with different patterns used by boys during circumcision rituals, to wrap babies, for brides, for dead bodies and so on.  Old patterns, bear names like Victoria or Sandringham and blankets of some sort are worn by anyone and everyone as sort of all weather, all purpose coverings.  I wouldn't have minded one myself against the wind cutting between the thatched huts in the rough village on top of the mountain.

We returned there on our reverse journey to visit the siege Museum, like so many of the small museums in S Africa, beautifully put together to give a picture of those involved in whatever momentous historical event.  The Apartheid museum near the scene of Nelson Mandela's capture at the bridge at Howick where we sadly failed visit the remarkable memorial to him made of iron posts is another such in this part of the world.  The Boer war is so short a time ago and history so concertinaed by the long lived like Mandela himself that the years from the siege of Ladysmith to Robben Island amount to little more than seconds in the history of the world and of South Africa. 

The hotel at Cathedral Peak takes one back to another world too - that of 50s and 60s family resort hotels with all the clock golf, bridge games, children's separate dining room and dark, leathery bars that, these days, lack only their habitual fug of smoke. The gardens are splendid, filled with flowering shrubs that attract a wealth of small birds, bee eaters and sunbirds among them. They are as tame as you please visiting bedroom balconies in search of crumbs. The crows are discouraged by the staff from joining in with tea and cakes served on a terrace mid-morning and afternoon - it's all a bit like a cruise ship. Beyond what is almost a village with its staff houses, golf club houses and proper place for every entertainment, stunning walks into the mountains on ancient Sani trails are additionally signposted by rock paintings thousands of years old.  They will not survive another decade let alone a millennium if all the local guides, like ours, after warning us of dire penalties for any damage, stab their surface constantly with the sticks they use as pointers. 

Onwards into real battlefield country, both of the Boer war and the earlier Zulu war with Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift our goals.  We stayed at Fugitive's Drift Lodge, almost as famous as those famous battle grounds these days as the home of the Rattray family. David Rattray became the greatest living expert on the Zulus and the Zulu war. Since his death it is still his voice on cd that introduces visitors to their history, the tale now taken up by his son Andrew who is clearly a chip off the same block and other highly informed guides who are all storytellers at heart.  Fugitives Drift Lodge both feels and is a family home where guests are privileged to stay - it is beautiful and unique, hidden away up its long drive, giraffes and gazelles grazing as you pass to find a satisfactorily familiar doggy greeting on arrival at the Lodge. The canine group includes Spud, a black labrador who quite typically lives to eat.

We all imagine we know the story of Rorke's Drift from the film Zulu, incorrectly needless to say.  We know far less about Isandlwana where a strangely sphinx shaped hill dominates the field of battle.  From the heights above, it is laid out like a relief map upon which the imagination runs riot led David Rattray's explanation of a tragic day.  Because we are inevitably on the side of the Zulus in yet another imperial land-grab adventure, the white cairns marking the graves of so many British soldiers affect the viewer less immediately than the death and glory at Rorke's Drift. That story, told in front of the two buildings that existed at the time and, notwithstanding newer structures and the trees since planted there, is, in the evening light, almost close enough to touch and the terrible revenge taken thereafter to break the Zulu nation at Ulundi, an unbearable thought.  The recently placed Zulu memorials at Isandlwana, the heroic necklace, at Rorke's Drift, the bronze leopard on a pile of Zulu shields, both with their nearby buffalo thorn trees to catch dead Zulu spirits and send them forward to whatever is next, contrast remarkably with British Victorian monuments that might as easily be seen in Glasgow or Calcutta.

We left Fugitive's Drift with regret, promising ourselves another visit and further exploration of the battlefields and headed for Durban via an unintended cross country detour.  We passed through scattered villages that felt more untouched by passing time, eventually, and just in time for the daily open hour, to the KwaCheetah breeding project in the Nambiti private game reserve. Breeding cheetahs in captivity has always been extraordinarily difficult and now, due to small gene pools, many males are infertile, reducing cheetah numbers to a perilous level for their survival, hard enough in any case in a shrinking habitat that is heavily poached. Cheetah bones are now a good enough substitute for tiger in Chinese medicine. The KwaCheetah project has had considerably greater breeding success in the 3 years of its existence than some older programmes and clearly Des and Elizke Gouws have something of a magic touch. Cheetahs who have been hand-reared are taught to hunt for themselves and will be released into the wild in most cases. A few, with other cats such as servals and true wild cats, who have suffered some injury or other before being rescued, may remain at the project to be ambassadors for their species. The project is threatened by funding difficulties, the Cheetah is so threatened that without projects of this sort it will become extinct in the next quarter century. Meanwhile visitors are allowed for an hour a day when the Cheetahs are indeed their own best ambassadors.