And so from the scorched valleys of the western Cape, I ended up after Christmas in the lush sub-tropical Transkei Wild Coast, to walk 61-km along the coast of Pondoland, home of the AmaPondo people.
I won’t lie to you, I was nervous. None of the stories I’d heard so far were positive. Two friends who had done the hike had been struck down with coma-inducing tick-bite fever. My brother – who is a confirmed racist – advised I carry a knife in my hiking socks to fend off hungry Xhosas. “They’re not what they used to be,” he said. And a colleague from TIME who spent the last elections reporting from the trading centre of the region, Mthatha, professed it to be one of the worst places in the country, a shame on the nation, and could not fathom why so many people thought this was a nice place to go on holiday. I packed an extra bottle of insect repellent and went anyway.
The journalist turned out to be closest to the truth. Mthatha has become one of the world’s great shit holes. The best business to be in – there are at least two on every street – is funeral parlours, a testament to the HIV/AIDS crisis crippling this country. The second best business is abortions. Peeling off lamposts, shop windows and dustbins are home-printed signs advertising safe same-day services by Dr Mark for just R250. A rival charges R300 for “Womb cleaning & blood detoxification, 100% safe and pain-free”.
But, Mthatha is not Pondoland, nor is it rural South Africa. It might be 1,300km from Cape Town and even further from any decent standard of living, but it is a city. The aim of my research is to get beyond urban voices, so I breathed a sigh of relief when the taxi drove past the last abortion poster and sped off down the R61 towards Port St Johns.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
Taking the plunge
Anyway, enough of the white guilt. Rather let me explain a bit more about how this Open Society media fellowship came about. During the 2009 SA elections, one headline in the international press caught my eye: “Will Zuma bring tribalism to South Africa?” (BBC online, 23 April 2009).
To my mind, at its worst it questioned whether Jacob Zuma, a former goatherd and proud African traditionalist who had emerged from a welter of corruption and rape charges to run for president, would lead South Africa into the Heart of Darkness. At best, it worried that Zuma's polygamy and fondness for dancing around in animals skins were an indication that the rest of his values were out of step with the ideals of democracy – political tolerance, the rule of law, gender equality, independence of institutions.
It got me wondering what life was like now in the old Transkei, Ciskei and Kwazulu, those parts of the country where tribal leadership had been the order of the day during the apartheid years? How had democracy changed the life and values of people who live so close to the land, in villages where there are still headmen and chiefs? Do they feel part of the progress or left behind? What parts of the new-found democracy do they value, and what parts do they wish had never landed on their doorstep? What has been lost and gained in the last 15 years?
We tend to take for granted that democracy is the holy grail of political rule. But are democratically elected councillors as effective as headmen and chiefs in metering justice and keeping the peace, and how are these two systems of government working together?
Around the same time I started sussing out the Mail & Guardian jobs page every week. I wanted to come home, but I didn’t just want to lie on the beach for a holiday, I wanted to make myself useful. When I spotted the Open Society fellowship offering funding for researchers to look into meanings of democracy in modern-day SA, I saw an opportunity to take part in a chapter of this country’s story. I’ve learnt to swim. Now it’s time to jump in at the deep end.
To my mind, at its worst it questioned whether Jacob Zuma, a former goatherd and proud African traditionalist who had emerged from a welter of corruption and rape charges to run for president, would lead South Africa into the Heart of Darkness. At best, it worried that Zuma's polygamy and fondness for dancing around in animals skins were an indication that the rest of his values were out of step with the ideals of democracy – political tolerance, the rule of law, gender equality, independence of institutions.
It got me wondering what life was like now in the old Transkei, Ciskei and Kwazulu, those parts of the country where tribal leadership had been the order of the day during the apartheid years? How had democracy changed the life and values of people who live so close to the land, in villages where there are still headmen and chiefs? Do they feel part of the progress or left behind? What parts of the new-found democracy do they value, and what parts do they wish had never landed on their doorstep? What has been lost and gained in the last 15 years?
We tend to take for granted that democracy is the holy grail of political rule. But are democratically elected councillors as effective as headmen and chiefs in metering justice and keeping the peace, and how are these two systems of government working together?
Around the same time I started sussing out the Mail & Guardian jobs page every week. I wanted to come home, but I didn’t just want to lie on the beach for a holiday, I wanted to make myself useful. When I spotted the Open Society fellowship offering funding for researchers to look into meanings of democracy in modern-day SA, I saw an opportunity to take part in a chapter of this country’s story. I’ve learnt to swim. Now it’s time to jump in at the deep end.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
The Larnies in the Lallies
The first person I met in Pondoland was the last person I expected to find there. Thea Lombard is a single, white, blonde 59-year-old Afrikaans woman. On paper she sounds like she should be running a nice bed and breakfast in Hermanus (and until five years ago, she did), but this is a woman who long since leapt off the page.
"I've nearly had about four head-on collisions here today," laughs Thea, as she steers us up the 1-km dirt track to her house. "I keep thinking this is my drive-way, but it's not, it's actually a road. My poor neighbours," she cackles again, hooting and waving at a neighbour who swerves and waves back.
Five years ago Thea sold up her life in the western Cape and bought a derelict old farm 10km outside Port St Johns. With the help of waifs and strays – who are drawn to her like moths to a flame, myself included – she has created a chill-out lodge/culinary haven called the Wild Coast Kitchen which blows your mind.
There are 11 rooms, and on arrival your pillows are scattered with "Transkei rose petals", ie. fresh marijuana leaves. The bar, lounge and dining room are in a huge thatched central house with glass walls overlooking a misty tropical valley with a river winding through it. Guests are invited to dine together each night and sample Thea's inventive dishes. On our first night she spent three hours nurturing wood coals, and then seared fillet steaks directly on the coals, shaking off hot embers before serving with a yoghurt-based sour lemon and garlic sauce. Truly divine.
We had a free day before the hike began, and Thea piled us into the back of her 4x4, with another wild waif she had just picked up in Port St Johns, stopped to buy four Transkei Dumpies (750ml bottles of Black Label) at the local shebeen, and bounced us down “the worst road in the Transkei” to the village of Umgazana, where she has her own holiday hideaway.
The idea that a white Afrikaans woman had her holiday cottage in the middle of the lallies (adapted from the Xhosa, a rural village) threw me. Most white folk in this country build electric fences to keep the swart gevaar (black danger) out. But it turned out she wasn’t the only one. Umgazana is full of little holiday cottages, right next door to thatched Pondo huts, where white families decamp for the December holidays. Supposedly the whiteys “bought” the land from the local chief years and years ago for a bottle of brandy and a bit of cash. Apartheid, it seemed, was a good idea for most of the year, but not at Christmas. How very Christian.
With democracy, however, these cottages are now on the endangered list. The government has declared it illegal to build within 1000m of the high-water mark, and has already burnt down similar cottages in other Wild Coast villages, only to feel the wrath of the local people. The whites, as it turns out, bring much-needed revenue to these small villages. They pay the ladies to clean and look after their children (nothing has changed there) and they buy their freshly picked mussels, crayfish, oysters etc.
Though it wasn’t always that way. I chatted with Sophelina Mbuzeni, 62, an Umgazana grandmother who cares for a brood of 15. I asked her how things had changed since the end of apartheid. “Things are better now. It used to be difficult to get close to white people. You used to go to their houses to sell them fish from the sea and they didn’t want you to come near them. They believed you were dirty and had lice. That attitude has changed," she said.
This attitude shift certainly made a difference for Thea. She bought her cottage from the whites themselves, a white wife to be exact, after her husband was found enjoying a bit of rumpy-pumpy with his black lady neighbour.
"I've nearly had about four head-on collisions here today," laughs Thea, as she steers us up the 1-km dirt track to her house. "I keep thinking this is my drive-way, but it's not, it's actually a road. My poor neighbours," she cackles again, hooting and waving at a neighbour who swerves and waves back.
Five years ago Thea sold up her life in the western Cape and bought a derelict old farm 10km outside Port St Johns. With the help of waifs and strays – who are drawn to her like moths to a flame, myself included – she has created a chill-out lodge/culinary haven called the Wild Coast Kitchen which blows your mind.
There are 11 rooms, and on arrival your pillows are scattered with "Transkei rose petals", ie. fresh marijuana leaves. The bar, lounge and dining room are in a huge thatched central house with glass walls overlooking a misty tropical valley with a river winding through it. Guests are invited to dine together each night and sample Thea's inventive dishes. On our first night she spent three hours nurturing wood coals, and then seared fillet steaks directly on the coals, shaking off hot embers before serving with a yoghurt-based sour lemon and garlic sauce. Truly divine.
We had a free day before the hike began, and Thea piled us into the back of her 4x4, with another wild waif she had just picked up in Port St Johns, stopped to buy four Transkei Dumpies (750ml bottles of Black Label) at the local shebeen, and bounced us down “the worst road in the Transkei” to the village of Umgazana, where she has her own holiday hideaway.
The idea that a white Afrikaans woman had her holiday cottage in the middle of the lallies (adapted from the Xhosa, a rural village) threw me. Most white folk in this country build electric fences to keep the swart gevaar (black danger) out. But it turned out she wasn’t the only one. Umgazana is full of little holiday cottages, right next door to thatched Pondo huts, where white families decamp for the December holidays. Supposedly the whiteys “bought” the land from the local chief years and years ago for a bottle of brandy and a bit of cash. Apartheid, it seemed, was a good idea for most of the year, but not at Christmas. How very Christian.
With democracy, however, these cottages are now on the endangered list. The government has declared it illegal to build within 1000m of the high-water mark, and has already burnt down similar cottages in other Wild Coast villages, only to feel the wrath of the local people. The whites, as it turns out, bring much-needed revenue to these small villages. They pay the ladies to clean and look after their children (nothing has changed there) and they buy their freshly picked mussels, crayfish, oysters etc.
Though it wasn’t always that way. I chatted with Sophelina Mbuzeni, 62, an Umgazana grandmother who cares for a brood of 15. I asked her how things had changed since the end of apartheid. “Things are better now. It used to be difficult to get close to white people. You used to go to their houses to sell them fish from the sea and they didn’t want you to come near them. They believed you were dirty and had lice. That attitude has changed," she said.
This attitude shift certainly made a difference for Thea. She bought her cottage from the whites themselves, a white wife to be exact, after her husband was found enjoying a bit of rumpy-pumpy with his black lady neighbour.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Learning to swim
“When I was a child growing up in the village, I didn’t even know we were oppressed. You saw that the white man came by in a fancy car and that the black man always drove an old broken car, but you thought that’s just the way it was meant to be. You called the white man Nkosi (boss) and his son Nkososana (little boss), and you lifted your hat when they went past. That was just the way it was. We enjoyed our lives. We didn’t see the oppression," says Jimmy Selani, South Africa's Best Emerging Guide of the Year 2004, and our guide for the first day of the hike. Usually Jimmy treads the whole 61km, but in December he puts his feet up and gives young guides a chance to make some money to pay towards their education.
His words take me back to the first time someone in Europe asked me what it was like to growing up under apartheid. No one had ever asked me before, and I didn’t know how to answer. What was it like? It was like ordinary everyday life. Like Jimmy, I didn’t see the oppression.
Black people rode on different buses because they lived in different places to us and those buses didn’t go to where I lived, so I didn’t ride on them. Black people had a different entrance to the shops because they ate different food to us and they sold that other food in the other part of the shop. It sounds impossibly naïve now, and it makes me cringe to admit it, and even makes me doubt my adult critical reasoning faculties, but that was just the way it was.
You were a child growing up in a country where the press was censored; where sanctions, for all their good, also made us isolated from international debate. In fairness, I have South Africa friends who also say to me “I can’t believe you didn’t know”. But they were privileged to be the children of professors and politically astute, educated people. My parents were economic refugees from the imploding hard industry of Yorkshire, crushed under the mighty fist of Mrs Thatcher. They’d got married at 19, had three children, and in 1982 when I was 5, after two years of being on the dole (a great shame in those days), my dad found a job making beer bottles in Olifantsfontein. We never had a black maid because my mother believed you must clean your own house. That’s how it’s done in Yorkshire and that’s how it was done in our Yorkshire bubble in Benoni.
A child’s life isn’t like anything other than the life it is. We’ve got so much to take in, in those early years, we have to take a lot at face value, otherwise we’d never get off the ground. I wish I could say I was a child of the struggle. I wish I’d been old enough to protest in the 1980s and wear defiant T-shirts. But I was busy learning to swim.
His words take me back to the first time someone in Europe asked me what it was like to growing up under apartheid. No one had ever asked me before, and I didn’t know how to answer. What was it like? It was like ordinary everyday life. Like Jimmy, I didn’t see the oppression.
Black people rode on different buses because they lived in different places to us and those buses didn’t go to where I lived, so I didn’t ride on them. Black people had a different entrance to the shops because they ate different food to us and they sold that other food in the other part of the shop. It sounds impossibly naïve now, and it makes me cringe to admit it, and even makes me doubt my adult critical reasoning faculties, but that was just the way it was.
You were a child growing up in a country where the press was censored; where sanctions, for all their good, also made us isolated from international debate. In fairness, I have South Africa friends who also say to me “I can’t believe you didn’t know”. But they were privileged to be the children of professors and politically astute, educated people. My parents were economic refugees from the imploding hard industry of Yorkshire, crushed under the mighty fist of Mrs Thatcher. They’d got married at 19, had three children, and in 1982 when I was 5, after two years of being on the dole (a great shame in those days), my dad found a job making beer bottles in Olifantsfontein. We never had a black maid because my mother believed you must clean your own house. That’s how it’s done in Yorkshire and that’s how it was done in our Yorkshire bubble in Benoni.
A child’s life isn’t like anything other than the life it is. We’ve got so much to take in, in those early years, we have to take a lot at face value, otherwise we’d never get off the ground. I wish I could say I was a child of the struggle. I wish I’d been old enough to protest in the 1980s and wear defiant T-shirts. But I was busy learning to swim.
Friday, January 8, 2010
A long walk to freedom
We shared our hiking party with four Afrikaners who initially eyed us with suspicion. They later confessed over some Transkei dumpies they’d been worried we’d label them racists because they’d hired two black local porters to help with their backpacks. All was forgiven when they realised we too were doing our bit to “boost the local economy”. With John, our porter, Tsepho, Mandla (Power) and our path finder Coach, we were 10 in all, following the beaches, goat trails and cliff-top paths that carve the way from Port St Johns to Coffee Bay.
That first day saw us cross the Umngazi River, alongside which Nelson Mandela and Graca Machel spent their honeymoon, and meander down long sandy beaches with only cows for company. It was New Year’s Eve, and as the day drew in, we arrived at our first VBA (village based accommodation), a roomy thatched hut with an inside toilet and shower, and an uninterrupted view of the Indian Ocean. In the world of VBAs, this was 5-star.
As we took off our boots and took in the view, our hostess and cook Linah, 29, offered us milky coffee and doorstops of white bread. We asked her how life had changed since 1994. “Now we have electricity and water, but other than that, nothing has changed. Life is good here. Look around, the people here are fat. If you have mielie meal you can get oysters or mussels or crayfish from the sea,” she said. Later that night we ate Linah’s African chicken surprise washed down with Black Labels from the local shebeen, and then joined some larnies from the lallies to sing Auld Lang Syne and bring in the bells.
The days thereafter melded together in a lazy blur of mangrove swamps and rickety row boats; cream soda green thatched huts and cartwheeling children; bungled attempts to learn Xhosa and haltering conversations in English; the cool of a sea breeze at the crest of a long hill.
I remember Mandla standing bare-chested on the edge of a green cliff-top, the wind whipping through his red T-shirt as he held it high above his head, framed against a brilliant blue sky.
I remember the young men in Burberry-style suits strutting down a crowded beach on January 2nd, showing off their status as recent entrants to manhood after surviving the Xhosa initiation ritual.
I remember our porters buying crayfish from local divers and cooking them fresh on an open fire. I felt like one of those jammy people you read about in foodie magazines who can conjure up exotic dishes in out-of-the-way places with the same way ease that I can fry an egg.
But most of all I remember the mama who stopped and welcomed me into the village of Hluleka. “Be free here. You are welcome. We have no crime here. Please, be free,” she said, enveloping my hands in hers as I reached the top of the last hill of the third day.
Ironic that the fight for freedom was won in the cities, but only out here, miles away from the safety of electric fences and 24-hour security guards, can you feel really free.
That first day saw us cross the Umngazi River, alongside which Nelson Mandela and Graca Machel spent their honeymoon, and meander down long sandy beaches with only cows for company. It was New Year’s Eve, and as the day drew in, we arrived at our first VBA (village based accommodation), a roomy thatched hut with an inside toilet and shower, and an uninterrupted view of the Indian Ocean. In the world of VBAs, this was 5-star.
As we took off our boots and took in the view, our hostess and cook Linah, 29, offered us milky coffee and doorstops of white bread. We asked her how life had changed since 1994. “Now we have electricity and water, but other than that, nothing has changed. Life is good here. Look around, the people here are fat. If you have mielie meal you can get oysters or mussels or crayfish from the sea,” she said. Later that night we ate Linah’s African chicken surprise washed down with Black Labels from the local shebeen, and then joined some larnies from the lallies to sing Auld Lang Syne and bring in the bells.
The days thereafter melded together in a lazy blur of mangrove swamps and rickety row boats; cream soda green thatched huts and cartwheeling children; bungled attempts to learn Xhosa and haltering conversations in English; the cool of a sea breeze at the crest of a long hill.
I remember Mandla standing bare-chested on the edge of a green cliff-top, the wind whipping through his red T-shirt as he held it high above his head, framed against a brilliant blue sky.
I remember the young men in Burberry-style suits strutting down a crowded beach on January 2nd, showing off their status as recent entrants to manhood after surviving the Xhosa initiation ritual.
I remember our porters buying crayfish from local divers and cooking them fresh on an open fire. I felt like one of those jammy people you read about in foodie magazines who can conjure up exotic dishes in out-of-the-way places with the same way ease that I can fry an egg.
But most of all I remember the mama who stopped and welcomed me into the village of Hluleka. “Be free here. You are welcome. We have no crime here. Please, be free,” she said, enveloping my hands in hers as I reached the top of the last hill of the third day.
Ironic that the fight for freedom was won in the cities, but only out here, miles away from the safety of electric fences and 24-hour security guards, can you feel really free.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
We'll always have Parys
Spent Christmas with my family on an olive farm in the Tulbagh valley in the Western Cape, about an hour and half’s drive from Cape Town. It’s a valley for vines, olives, fruit trees, and according to the sign that greets you on the other side of the windy Nuwe Kloof Pass: This Valley is For Jesus. Well, it was Christmas after all. It’s also one of those towns in South Africa that have blossomed under the back-to-the-countryside trend that has emerged here, and in Europe, over the past five or so years, hand in hand with the organic movement and the awakening of our environmental consciences.
In South Africa, though, I think this return to our roots has even more poignancy. There was a time not too long ago when we would have done – and did - anything to flee from these sleepy hinterland faming dorps (villages). People used to poke fun at places with names like Parys and Paternoster, perhaps because their Afrikaans names reminded us too much of the “Afrikaner” politics that we were only starting to become collectively ashamed of, and to collectively bare the blame.
And perhaps also because after years of sanctions and pariahdom, we were now finally allowed to rejoin the world community. Hell, why would you stay in Parys when you could go to Paris? And then we remembered why. Because of the undiluted stillness of the Karoo and the Free State and the Western Cape. Because at night, the giant clear skies shimmer and sparkle as brightly as when you jet over a world city. Because there's hundreds of beautiful solid old farmhouses with giant stoeps (balconies) begging for a lick of paint and an art gallery to be installed on their creaking wooden floors.
In Tulbagh there’s a sweet coffee shop/deli/boutique/gallery called Things I love. Unfortunately the knick-knacks for sale are way overpriced, but sitting on their balcony, overlooking the tree-lined Church Street, feels a bit like being at granny's – if your granny was very stylish and subscribed to Vogue, that is.
The other great thing about Tulbagh is that you can get there by train.
There aren’t too many weekend destinations accessible by rail, but you can jump on the MetroRail in central Cape Town, and be in Tulbagh 2 ½ hours later.
And what more can I tell you? It was your typical family Christmas where you spend half your time squabbling with your mother and the other half feeling guilty about it. Me and the rest of civilization. Enough said.
In South Africa, though, I think this return to our roots has even more poignancy. There was a time not too long ago when we would have done – and did - anything to flee from these sleepy hinterland faming dorps (villages). People used to poke fun at places with names like Parys and Paternoster, perhaps because their Afrikaans names reminded us too much of the “Afrikaner” politics that we were only starting to become collectively ashamed of, and to collectively bare the blame.
And perhaps also because after years of sanctions and pariahdom, we were now finally allowed to rejoin the world community. Hell, why would you stay in Parys when you could go to Paris? And then we remembered why. Because of the undiluted stillness of the Karoo and the Free State and the Western Cape. Because at night, the giant clear skies shimmer and sparkle as brightly as when you jet over a world city. Because there's hundreds of beautiful solid old farmhouses with giant stoeps (balconies) begging for a lick of paint and an art gallery to be installed on their creaking wooden floors.
In Tulbagh there’s a sweet coffee shop/deli/boutique/gallery called Things I love. Unfortunately the knick-knacks for sale are way overpriced, but sitting on their balcony, overlooking the tree-lined Church Street, feels a bit like being at granny's – if your granny was very stylish and subscribed to Vogue, that is.
The other great thing about Tulbagh is that you can get there by train.
There aren’t too many weekend destinations accessible by rail, but you can jump on the MetroRail in central Cape Town, and be in Tulbagh 2 ½ hours later.
And what more can I tell you? It was your typical family Christmas where you spend half your time squabbling with your mother and the other half feeling guilty about it. Me and the rest of civilization. Enough said.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Becoming African
It was 1995 when I first saw the Transkei. I say saw, because all I did was spy it through a car window. At speed. Doors locked. Windows wound. Don’t stop until you get to Umtata Shell Ultra City. It was the year after South Africa’s first democratic elections. Before then most Rhodes University students who lived in Durban used to make the long journey home via Bloemfontein, adding another 500km to their journey. Now our country was united, the border posts that separated the Republic of South Africa from the homeland of the Transkei were unmanned, and the unrest and bloodshed that had rocked the Transkei – of which I understood nothing – was over. We were free to travel through this unknown land. As long as we didn’t get out of the car.
As I drove with my then boyfriend back to his parent's Natal home, I felt like a child in an old-fashioned sweet shop, where the tasty treasures and pretty colours are stacked on top of each other, behind glass, way out of reach. The Transkei is not a flat land. Hills grow out of more hills. Smartie coloured thatched huts speckle downy green slopes. The road winds and curves and then when it forgets to bend, chances are you’re on a mountain plateau and any moment the world either side will drop away to reveal a deep valley. It was a world away from the brown brick block-like architecture favoured by the apartheid government, and to my 19-year-old eyes, it was as if someone had stolen my blindfold.
I’d love to tell you that this was when I was inspired to discover the heartlands of the country that raised me, but that would be a lie. Rather, my naïve, anxious 19-year-old self was relieved when we were spat out the other side, back to the safety of straight roads and neat rows of Natal. It took another 15 years and 40 countries before I got that itch.
It happened one wet evening in Glasgow. It was raining. Again. A grumbling, misery-packed cloud had blacked out the sun and we’d lit a fire in a rusty oil drum to keep warm. It wouldn’t have be so bad, but it was mid-summer’s eve and we’d invited everyone we knew over for a braai. Fortunately the Scots are never ones to let a downpour dampen their spirits, but for me it was the beginning of the end.
For ten years, like so many other restless souls, I’d been using the Queen’s sodden island and its Great British Pounds as a springboard from which to gorge myself on the world. I’d notched up adventures that one day might impress my grandchildren, but as the rain made a mockery of our summer party, I became restless in another way. Restless for roots. Warm roots. There was just one problem: the country that raised me wasn’t there any more.
It’s neat, dull, whites-only streets had been replaced with vibrant, colourful potholed roads and going back would mean facing up to a horrible truth: that as much as I like to believe I am the captain of my soul, I’m actually damaged goods. Like the rest of my generation, I was a child of a racist political system that raised me to have no knowledge or understanding of how the majority of my fellow South Africans lived, thought, felt, were. Racial segregation didn’t just mean black people couldn’t participate in white society. It meant white people couldn’t participate in black culture. It meant we were ignorant of the place we called home.
How could I crave to put down roots in South Africa, if I didn’t even know it? At best, that craving would be disingenuous. At worst, it would be a craving for the past. And so, with the help of a journalism fellowship from the Open Society Foundation, I set out to go back to the old Transkei, the land that raised Mandela and Sisulu and Tambo, and this time, get out of the car. Some might think I’d be better off going to the urban townships of Soweto or Khayelitsha, to find the pulse of modern South Africa. But I know enough to know that every black South African keeps one foot in the village, one foot in their heartland, and if you truly want to understand something, you need to go to the source.
As I drove with my then boyfriend back to his parent's Natal home, I felt like a child in an old-fashioned sweet shop, where the tasty treasures and pretty colours are stacked on top of each other, behind glass, way out of reach. The Transkei is not a flat land. Hills grow out of more hills. Smartie coloured thatched huts speckle downy green slopes. The road winds and curves and then when it forgets to bend, chances are you’re on a mountain plateau and any moment the world either side will drop away to reveal a deep valley. It was a world away from the brown brick block-like architecture favoured by the apartheid government, and to my 19-year-old eyes, it was as if someone had stolen my blindfold.
I’d love to tell you that this was when I was inspired to discover the heartlands of the country that raised me, but that would be a lie. Rather, my naïve, anxious 19-year-old self was relieved when we were spat out the other side, back to the safety of straight roads and neat rows of Natal. It took another 15 years and 40 countries before I got that itch.
It happened one wet evening in Glasgow. It was raining. Again. A grumbling, misery-packed cloud had blacked out the sun and we’d lit a fire in a rusty oil drum to keep warm. It wouldn’t have be so bad, but it was mid-summer’s eve and we’d invited everyone we knew over for a braai. Fortunately the Scots are never ones to let a downpour dampen their spirits, but for me it was the beginning of the end.
For ten years, like so many other restless souls, I’d been using the Queen’s sodden island and its Great British Pounds as a springboard from which to gorge myself on the world. I’d notched up adventures that one day might impress my grandchildren, but as the rain made a mockery of our summer party, I became restless in another way. Restless for roots. Warm roots. There was just one problem: the country that raised me wasn’t there any more.
It’s neat, dull, whites-only streets had been replaced with vibrant, colourful potholed roads and going back would mean facing up to a horrible truth: that as much as I like to believe I am the captain of my soul, I’m actually damaged goods. Like the rest of my generation, I was a child of a racist political system that raised me to have no knowledge or understanding of how the majority of my fellow South Africans lived, thought, felt, were. Racial segregation didn’t just mean black people couldn’t participate in white society. It meant white people couldn’t participate in black culture. It meant we were ignorant of the place we called home.
How could I crave to put down roots in South Africa, if I didn’t even know it? At best, that craving would be disingenuous. At worst, it would be a craving for the past. And so, with the help of a journalism fellowship from the Open Society Foundation, I set out to go back to the old Transkei, the land that raised Mandela and Sisulu and Tambo, and this time, get out of the car. Some might think I’d be better off going to the urban townships of Soweto or Khayelitsha, to find the pulse of modern South Africa. But I know enough to know that every black South African keeps one foot in the village, one foot in their heartland, and if you truly want to understand something, you need to go to the source.
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