The Age of Reason

Our esteemed editor’s mysterious hint that Dragonfly was soon to metamorphose into a seagull – a kind of Jonathan Livingstone – was a reference to our decision to go sailing or, as Martin Goulding calls it, to ‘suck off into the fun-set’.

I tip my skipper’s cap to those of our little community who have congratulated us on this new adventure and brought a tear of gratitude to my eye with little endearments like ‘I had a friend die at sea once’ and ‘you’re mad’.

Alan Leggitt assured me that it was a ‘middle age’ thing and offered to take me for a walk in the mountains so that he could share with me his lifelong observation of such things. This was the sweetest friendliness.

Intrigued, I consulted my trusty Oxford English Dictionary, which said merely that middle age was ‘the period between youth and old age, about 45 to 60’. This can’t be right; it sounds too arbitrary. If so, then my children are youths – although they’ve already produced four grandchildren and a half – and most of the Probus committee, and almost the entire walking club, are geriatric.

Contrary to Mrs Dragonfly’s assertions, I remember childhood. What was so exciting about it? In a word: potential. Kids see few limits to it. I wanted to be an astronaut, or a fireman, or a lawyer (thank God I got over that one), and so on. I changed my mind whenever I discovered something new.

What’s so bad about being old? I suspect that the answer would be ‘limitations’. He's too old or he can't do that any more. He used to be able to, but no more. There's no point starting a new career; he doesn't have time on his side. He's paid his dues and he didn't get what he expected. He doesn't like it, but that’s his lot in life.

Perhaps middle age is the time between these two states, a shift so slow, so incremental, we don't notice it. We start at one end and end up at the other.

Looked at with any objectivity, middle age ought rather to be a celebration of having the experience and freedom finally to begin growing, not declining. Alan and Muriel still look forward to tomorrow, I’m sure, but maybe others slide down the hill from youth to old age, instead of climbing it.

It is both sad and exciting, and we shall miss you and this mountain paradise, but, when we spot the seagulls, we shall think of you.

Fire on the Mountain

Hlongwane has been burning firebreaks for 30 years. Sixty years old, and he’s seen it all. It’s a chilly June morning at the top of Keartland’s Pass, and a phalanx of fire warriors straggles up with fire beaters, water-packs, and paint tins full of petrol and old mealie cobs. The sub-induna has the privilege of carrying Hlongwane’s backpack, complete with little wheels and a picture of ‘Mickey Mouse and his Friends’.

Hlongwane shouts at his friends all the time. This is the only way his orders can be heard above the roar of the furnace that precedes us as we make our slow way along the Sunset Trail. I think, also, that he finds it easiest to keep his rabble of arsonists in check under the cosh of his constant, booming voice. When he uses his walkie-talkie, he signs off with an ‘Out!’ that would scare the living daylights out of any fire-god who’d dare have impure intentions today.

Smoke billows in enormous clouds, and the heat sears at anywhere closer than throwing distance. Occasionally, the wind shifts and flames approach, like a swarm of bees that has seen something that bees like a lot. Hlongwane never hesitates: at the first sign of a contrary wind, he barks like a Baskerville hound, orange overalls run around like madmen, and the fire is out. A short breather, the wind dies down, and we’re off again.

Eventually, we reach the Matterhorn. Do yourself a favour one day and walk up to this point. The view is truly magnificent. The Little Berg drops vertiginously, hundreds of scary metres, and the whole of our little valley, all the houses, all the resorts, are spread out below.

We have no time to admire the vista; the fire is turning down to the north and we need to rush over the ridge like lemmings to stay ahead. If I had time to think, I’d be wetting myself, but we make it. When we reach the bottom, and the fire is out, my knees begin shaking – how they do this every year and never have any accidents or injuries is a mystery.

I look back up the mountain, seeing the neat firebreak all the way down. It is strangely and immensely satisfying to see. Hlongwane looks too, and then smiles at me. ‘How are you, Sir?’

‘I’m glad you’re old, Mickey,’ I say.

Leading the Way

John Shedden Dobie rode out from Estcourt on a cold winter’s morning in 1863 to visit David Gray’s farm, Cathkin. At first, there was the faint outline of a road, then the occasional wagon track, and, when he arrived in our valley, all trace of civilization disappeared and he became horribly lost.

It was hardly any better in 1900, when Churchill arrived on his horse in Winterton. Meandering trails, made over millennia, crisscrossed confusingly over the hills and grassland, but, like Winston, one might as well have been chasing chickens as find any purpose or destination in them.

After the union of South Africa, road-building started in earnest under the watchful eye of the British. By 1929, W Carter Robinson was sufficiently encouraged to build the Cathkin Park Hotel, which was later demolished and replaced by the Drakensberg Sun Hotel in 1987. (He was also the first person to climb Gatberg and the first honorary officer of our valley.)

Oom Hendrik Martens followed soon after, in 1930, when he built Champagne Castle Hotel.

It is significant that both were at the far end of accesses to our valley. Others benefited, and they developed along these routes, including Captain HC Whelan (El Mirador Hotel – later to become Champagne Sports Resort – in 1940), David Gray (the grandson, who built The Nest in 1940), and all the other resorts and private homes of today.

It was not farming or homesteaders, but tourism, which brought roads into our valley. Pigs, timber, and hermits aren’t especially fussy about the comfort of their travel, while people with little time and even more limited horsemanship demand somewhat greater accessibility.

We’ve given names to everything here, both natural and man-made: every mountain, river, waterfall, cave, and rock formation; every hiking trail, hotel, shop, and farm. They all have names, and yet we persist with ‘the R600’, ‘the D160’, and, even worse, the ‘S’ bend (it’s a ‘Z’).

In recognition of the pioneer hoteliers of this valley’s history, the least we could do is to go the way of all other municipalities and honour our veterans: Robinson Road and Martens Meander may be a good start.

Only when it was becoming dark and cold was Mr Dobie able to find Cathkin Farm; thanks to those who blazed our now-tarred trails, we can get lost in the mountains before breakfast.

What veiled form sits on that ebon throne?

When JRR Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, he drew inspiration from many places: Bilbo Baggins could have come straight out of Beowulf; Odin’s Draupnir was the magical golden ring that bound them all, shedding eight replicas of itself every ninth night; the Misty Mountains, by some accounts, were the Drakensberg Mountains; and the ancient Numenorean throne was Odin’s Hlidskialf, from where he could see everything that happened anywhere.

Through these connexions, all of us in this valley are linked with a history of story-telling stretching back as far as our imagination will take us.

I too have a high throne – although my name for it is the decidedly unromantic ‘Thor-seat’ – and my thoughts travel across the aeons and landscape of these peaks like Odin’s ravens, returning to me each evening; also like him, I have two hounds, but they tend to steer clear, mainly because of the smell.

Odin allowed his wife to sit here also, which might have been a mistake, if you ask me. Displaying a complete disrespect for the sanctity of such things, Mrs Dragonfly removed the Beano collection stacked reverently next to my throne and replaced it with those truly dreadful women’s magazines, forcing me to contemplate high heels with my denims next winter and to calculate whether my star sign is a lion or a rabbit or a flipping sparrow. One of these days, Odin and I shall have to have a little god-to-insect chat about it all.

What the goddesses of this valley fail to appreciate is that men judge other men by the quality of reading material in their littlest rooms. I expect to find computer journals next to Neil Crawford’s lavatory or sheet music piled on Fred Knowles’ cistern, and, when I don’t, it’s like discovering that hobbits and elves and wizards no longer wander Middle-earth.

Tolkien weaved magic from the threads of myth and legend, breathing life into his heroes and villains from the wellspring of our inherited fantasies. These survive still in the fastnesses of our high escarpment, in the spray of their streams and waterfalls, and in our secret places, where we relive these fables and make up new ones as we daydream on our thrones of power.

Damn! Here she is now, banging on the door.

‘Hurry up! How much longer are you going to be in there?’

The Old and the Dutiful

My brother visited us three years back. In the old country, he and I were raised in the West Country, with the slow-R accents, the gardening analogies, and a suspicion of anyone from the Forest of Dean. It was his first time in the Berg, and I don’t see him often, so I wanted him to enjoy it.

I suspect that we all like to portray our little valley in its best light, despite the dreadful other things for which our country is famous, and I was no exception. We’re like mothers, aren’t we, wiping their little brats’ noses and licking their wayward fringes flat before meeting the vicar, hoping he won’t notice that their offspring is actually the spawn of the devil.

Anyway, the weather was glorious, the dogs were on their best behaviour, and my brother’s girlfriend managed not to be bitten by a snake, which, given her paranoia of the untamed dark continent, was a major victory.

Sensing I was on a roll, I risked introducing them to the locals at Dragon Peaks’ Wednesday-night special. As we walked into the bar, my brother gaped.

‘I’ll be jiggered,’ he said. ‘It’s Emmerdale Farm!’

This comment hit home: soap operas – I can still hum the theme tune from The Archers – were the mainstay of our mum’s daily entertainment. He was right: in this corner, three old codgers talked about carpentry; at that table, the ladies were wondering whether potatoes were bad for pigs; and the Red Wine Brigade had arrived, waving bottles as if there had been a recent drought.

There were no green Wellington boots or Land Rovers, but hiking boots, shorts, and scruffy T-shirts were adequate to the analogy: big white men in big white bakkies; Ambridge-under-mount.

‘Yeah, I could write a daily 12-and-a-half-minute episode of this place,’ I conceded, ‘and never run out of ideas.’ As if to underscore this, as we poured our beers, I told him my embellished version of Elizabeth Klarer’s alien-abduction tale. In this account, two of the locals witness Akon’s ship landing by Breakfast Stream.

‘Who do you reckon made it, then?’ asked one. ‘Ooh, Massey-Ferguson, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said the other. ‘Well, tain’t much good, then. Look! It don’t cut the grass, it burns it.’

Peter Small interjected, wiping his hands on a towel, ‘but that’s a true story, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course it is.’

The Ties That Bind

It was a whirl of meetings and deadlines, a cacophony of fast cars and slow traffic, and a time of excessive life and poverty of living. In short, it was Jo’burg, a glorified mining town that never really came to terms with its short, ignoble history, and over which any veneer of respectability stretched too thinly to hide the cracks.

It has money, to be sure, but it takes its toll. I once calculated the price of residence – flashy wheels, expensive clothes, membership of exclusive clubs, all the paraphernalia that meet the approval of powerful friends and political allies – at half my take-home pay.

When I left to come here, I didn’t look back. I didn’t even look in my rear-view mirror until I’d reached Harrismith.

My favourite shop became Natal-Agri – merchant of gardening tools, plumbing essentials, and unfashionable but functional work clothes – and I became a regular, despite the manager frowning at my top-of-the-range SUV. When I turned native and bought myself a bakkie (white, of course), he was the first to notice.

‘Ja, nee, dis a mooi car, meneer!’ he said.

Six years later, dressed down to the valley’s yokel standard and free at last of any vestigial evidence of my previous life (clean shoes, tidy hair, a nervous squint), Mrs Dragonfly brought the memories vividly back one day when she rediscovered my tie collection. Over 200 of them: did I once really wear these? There were school ties, corporate ties, club ties, and the frivolous, colourful Friday ties I sported when the boss was away. Half of them still boasted the dribbling of long-forgotten lunches somewhere near where my sternum would have been.

I have kept two of them: the black one for funerals, and a blue-and-red nondescript one for weddings. Neither of these events features strongly in my diary and, besides, the dress code for valley funerals usually extends only as far as ‘iron your T-shirts, you slobs’.

The rest of them are destined for a new bedspread, a symbol of my sacrifice of the big smoke for a life of simpler pleasure. For reasons that now escape me, half my collection are bluish, so these will form the sky of the collage. The rest will create the Cathkin Peak skyline: so far, Sterkhorn consists of green dancing girls and Champagne Castle of yellow smiley faces, and I shall smile and dance every time my new quilt reminds me of the huge mine dump I left behind.

‘Oor ons ewige gebergtes…’

One thing leads to another, as they say, and my recent musings about the movie, 2012, led to a brainwave: if we are to become the last place standing above water in two years’ time, oughtn’t we to declare independence now?

This is not as odd as you may first think. After all, at 179 square kilometres, we’d not be the smallest country in the world. Granted, the likes of the Maldives (298) and Barbados (430) wouldn’t stand a snowball’s come the end of the world (and I shouldn’t mourn the demise of the Gaza Strip), but we should be a proud member of a club of small, mountainous refuges: San Marino (61), Liechtenstein (157), Andorra (453), and (flourish here) Cathkin Park.

We’d need a capital, of course, or at least a place to store the state vehicle (the tractor).

I was asleep for most of my school years, but I do remember something about Madrid being sited cleverly in the geometric centre of Spain. Try this at home (to brighten up an otherwise dull day, you understand): cut out a photocopied map of the valley, hang it at various angles, and mark a plumb-line for each. Where the lines intersect is the middle.

My, my, wouldn’t Jannie Vogelsang and Hennie de Kock be surprised?

Since a rugby team would be probably too much to ask, and the national dress has already been long established by Stuart Longmore, all we’d need then is a national anthem. I shall personally strangle anyone who comes up with ‘God Save Cathkin Park’ since, apparently, the credit already goes to Hollywood.

Bring 'n Brae

Am I alone in noticing a rise in the Scottish proportion of our valley’s population? Far be it from me to complain, mind you, especially since our editor is proudly Caledonian and I’ve seen how he savagely butchers a large sausage.

The Scots, bless their wee, pioneering natures, are but the latest in a long line of our valley’s colonizers. The Bushmen arrived 8000 years ago. They survived unforgiving weather and hard livelihoods from before Adam and Eve – they even escaped Shaka and Dingaan – but they came short from when the white man arrived.

Then, the first Voortrekker to venture into our valley was Gert Maritz, who set up his laager in June 1838 where Loskop stands today. Mr Opperman started farming in our valley soon after, but he moved to the Free State, probably in a bit of a huff, after the British annexed Natal.

Scottish settler David Gray arrived in 1855, buying Opperman’s Kraal from an Englishman called Charles Green, and it was then that the slow process of indigenization began.

He started by renaming the farm Cathkin, after Cathkin Braes (from this, Cathkin Peak was named). This is a park in southeast Glasgow close to his home town of Paisley, hence the derived name, Cathkin Park. It is the highest point in the city, with panoramic views across it. ‘Brae’ means ‘hill’ in Scotland, although the word was later South Africanized to mean ‘the burning of meat on fires while drinking copious amounts of beer’.

Later, the farm Cathkin was to become The Nest Hotel, but the Grays continued to farm and, more importantly, populate our valley. Today, David Gray’s ancestors have almost completed his original vision of a mini-Scotland under the African sun. Look at the picture, imagining him sans enormous beard, and there is an eerie resemblance to someone we all know and love.

Despite the name, Cathkin Braes is flat; the Highlands are far to the north. Rather, it is a moor, with a few trees and a golf course, and it is surrounded by Scots.

Which, to David Gray’s credit, and somewhat to my surprise, sums up our valley rather neatly, I think.

The Mayan Mountain Myth

We’ve had comets, asteroids, the spawn of the devil, and an exploding sun, so it was only a matter of time before we had the latest Hollywood effort starring John Cusack, 2012, which dramatizes the adventures when the world ends (again) on 21 December 2012, a date apparently predicted by ancient Mayans.

An all-destroying pole shift is waiting for us, one of thousands that have already taken place in the earth’s history. Our distant forebears calculated in advance the previous one, and they escaped. With less than three years to go before the next one, many are already plotting how they will pull off a similar stunt.

The good news is that, after the cataclysm, the only part of the earth still intact – indeed, above water – will be the Drakensberg Mountains. We’d be able to offer our guests a sea view – if the rest of the human race weren’t already mostly extinct, that is.

Hurray, you say, but wait. The bad news is that Mr Cusack and a few of his closest chums will survive, commandeer a boat, and set sail for our fair valley – but they will have no money to pay for accommodation, and they’re not going home.

If, like me, the idea of Americans taking over and civilizing our little community sends you all a-flutter, then you would agree that this just wouldn’t be cricket. Trouble is, our visitors’ boat will be one of the US Navy’s finest; not even Lily’s dogs would stand much chance against Howitzers.

Here’s my recommendation.

We appoint our most diplomatic representative (why does Dave Dowling leap to mind?) and send him to negotiate with President Obama. We tell him to insist that we appoint one of our own to oversee preparations. ‘After all,’ he could say, ‘we like Americans, blah, blah, but it is our valley.’

The president ponders this a moment, ignoring the nagging thought of Trojans and horses at the back of his mind, and says, ‘okay, but they must be competent, hard working, and, above all, as honest as the day is long. Hell, we don’t want this project to fail. Whom do you have in mind?’

‘Well,’ Dave continues, ‘it just so happens that our mayor and municipal manager are available.’

That should do the trick.

Is not this the carpenter?

Whatever expectations I had of retirement, I was wrong.

I left the city heady with dreams of rocking-chairs and pre-lunch beers. After a week, I was bored. After a month, I was worryingly close to brain death. Mrs Dragonfly had had enough. ‘You’ve moved from between my legs to under my feet,’ she said.

She’s all for honesty, that one.

I suspect my next step was what all men everywhere would do: I went to the pub. After some post-dinner whiskies, I discovered the comforting truth that, in a valley full of retired people, my inertia was familiar.

The old geezers blinked, mumbled encouragingly, and nodded in agreement. They’d all been goaded into new and hitherto undreamt-of hobbies. It didn’t really matter what, as long as they were out of the house, but carpentry seemed the way to go. Every one of them and his dog was an expert. Peak View Sawmills had seen them all – what stories the Grays could tell!

Besides, I thought, if it was good enough for Jesus’ dad (Joseph, not the other one), then who was I to argue? Apart from making really useful stuff, I could add a veneer of virtue to my reasons for buying all those wonderful tools.

The other great thing about woodwork was that I could start small (bird tables, shelves, walking-sticks), the failures could become objets d’art for the wife’s amusement (or, failing that, firewood), and I could work my way up (a double-storey house, for instance).

I’m not there yet, but, after three years, I’m no longer the worst carpenter in the valley. I have a chicken coop, two decks, and a ton of failures in the hearth to my name. I’m not at the level of Clive Parker, Graham Barry, or Roy Strydom, but nor am I plumbing the depths of the local league table. (I’m mentioning no names; even noms de plume are decipherable.)

If I were ever asked to talk about the afterlife, I could find a lesson in this.

My advice: when you arrive at the pearly gates and St Peter, Mohammed, or whoever asks you, get your hobby request in early, because it’s for sure that your wife will have no truck with clouds and harps. Take up something that will keep you occupied, and from under your wife’s feet, for ever.

Whatever expectations you have of heaven, you’re probably wrong.

Mrs Dragonfly

What’s a female Dragonfly?

Isn’t it a damselfly, my sweetness?

No, it’s not! Now get back to the kitchen!

Ouch!

Whatever it is, I’m it. As the more perceptive of you have probably realized by now, Dragonfly and I have swapped roles this month: he’s cooking supper and I’m writing this article. Call it an exercise in mutual appreciation, if you like, but the truth is that Dragonfly has chauvinistically ignored the female contribution to this valley for far too long, and I aim at rectifying this appalling neglect.

I’m sure I speak for all long-suffering wives out there when I say that the men of our little community – blinded by their carpentry, gardening, or whatever other projects of boring-old-fart-ness that retirement entails – ignore the little things that can destroy domestic harmony.

Take my kitchen, for example. I love my cooking space, and I keep it clean and shiny. I read books, soup packets, magazines, and even stock-cube boxes. I look high and low for any ingredient missing from my chef’s heaven, no matter how obscure.

A recent effort called for five millilitres of Sambal Oelek. After five weeks, I proudly brought home 100 milligrams of the obscure mixture, only to discover that the recipe was nowhere to be found.

Thus it is, ladies that (I’m sure you sympathize with my desperation) when my dearest, with a glint in his eye, offers to cook, I reach for the Sauvignon Blanc, but I smile, nod, and make small suggestions. After all, I have a whole bag of butternut in the pantry and the five kilograms of carrots he bought at Hillbillies yesterday.

William was very persuasive. He said they were full of testosterone…

My beloved tries to follow instructions, but he uses his own method. It’s a male thing, I suspect. I withdraw, my stomach tightening at the thought of my kitchen being abused by a stranger.

He also said that butternut’s the perfect laxative, my darling. There’s nothing like releasing four prisoners before lunch, what?

I sigh, and I listen to the clang of pots and pans. I smell the onions frying and hope he remembers the salt; I just know he’s going to add too much chilli.

After an eternity, dinner is ready. The table is set, the food is good, and, yes, the kitchen is clean. He has even set the table and lit a candle.

I know what it is: it’s a nymph. Hey, there’s a thought: where’s that little diaphanous nightie of yours?

Dulce et Decorum?

Our honorary-officer group occasionally takes time off from holding drunken meetings and counting vultures and gets down to serious work. Just the other day, we wandered through indigenous forest, arduously identifying trees.

As we were so employed, one of the chaps stopped and, in triumph, pointed at a tree, shouting, ‘Podocarpus latifolius!’

‘Are you all right, old chap?’ I said. ‘Have you been at the Harry Potter again?’

‘A real yellowwood, you can tell by the leaves’, he said, looking at me as if I were an imbecile.

While I’m conscious of the possibility of getting into seriously hot water with the Garden Club, let me make my point: what’s wrong with calling a real yellowwood a real yellowwood?

Botanists have not yet relinquished their Latin taxonomy. They argue that Latin is essential for communication between practitioners speaking different first languages. It is also important for classification. Inexplicably, lawyers claim the same thing, which is complete rubbish: they speak Latin because they love pretentiousness.

When the Normans invaded England in 1066, they established French as the language of court, destroying, almost overnight, the good work of Alfred the Great. English evolved anyway among the commoners, but the beau monde looked down at any upwardly mobile nob speaking anything but French.

More than three hundred years later, Henry IV was the first king since the Conquest to use English in all official communication, but it wasn’t until 1525 that a second powerful fetter on the language’s progress was finally broken, when William Tyndale translated the Bible from Latin into English. I know, I know, he was burned at the stake for his efforts (in my case, the bien pensants of the Garden Club may not consider that a bad idea).

Are all people who speak French or Latin either snobs or religious despots? Of course not, but I remain resolutely suspicious of attempts to use either when a perfectly good and intelligible English equivalent is available. It nearly always is.

Juliet told Romeo that ‘that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’. Whether we call it Solanum mauritianum or bugweed, it would stink as much.

For my part, ceteris paribus, I shall continue to tell parsley trees, starry rice-bushes, and horsewoods, not just by their leaves, but also by their wonderfully descriptive, English names: ‘tis the sweet and noble thing to do.

Excess Baggage

In one of her ‘green’ moods, Mrs Dragonfly decided last year that a compost heap was the way to go. As it turned out, it was a good idea, at least a million times better than the one about me helping with the washing-up, and not even on the same planet as the one involving a chicken, an axe, and me.

Not content with just our kitchen cuttings, she roped in the assistance of our guests, leaving a plastic tub in their cabins with the words ‘Organic Waste’. Before we knew it, we had a pile of rotting slime, putrefying happily in a smelly corner of the vegetable plot, and the weeds were looking healthier than ever.

Soon after, and not to be outdone, our Zulu domestic worker hit upon a commendable variation of the theme. Walking into the cabins one morning, we noticed not one, but two containers, one of which had, scrawled boldly on the side, Rubbish Candles Thank You.

‘For what?’ I wondered. ‘For putting them out of their sub-standard misery?’

My beloved’s reaction, in contrast, was one of indignation. ‘Do you know how much I pay for those candles?’ she asked.

Deeper investigation, however, revealed that, far from protesting that inanimate objects had feelings, too, or insulting our shopping habits, our enterprising maid had nothing more sinister in mind than sourcing some cheap (actually, free) floor polish for her home in Loskop.

Perhaps her ingenuity was infectious, because it wasn’t long before, like her, we began joining the dots and asking ourselves awkward environmental questions about the ‘rubbish’ we were throwing away.

Soon, we’d accumulated a shed-full of plastic tubs, but we’d run out of imagination. Did I really want to store my CD collection in them? We started buying our margarine in old-fashioned blocks, which was not only easier on landfill sites, but also considerably cheaper.

This was only the start. Berwin’s chicken was far more economical than the supermarket’s, as were the vegetables and milk at Hillbillies, and came with a fraction of the plastic packaging. Not only that, but we saved on the fuel to Ladysmith/Estcourt/Pietermaritzburg. Beer is far more sociable in quarts, not to mention less wasteful. We print on both sides of the paper. The list goes on.

It occurred to me that being aware of excess, and either eliminating it or recycling it, not only helped save the planet, it also saved us money. ‘Green’ need not mean ‘uneconomic’. This may be one good thing to emerge from the financial crisis, if we can hold on to the good habits when things improve.

My nearest and dearest continues to look for new ways of reducing our carbon footprint, bless her crusading heart, but I noticed her sharpening the axe again yesterday.

‘Oh dear,’ I thought. ‘Whose head this time?’

The Writing on the Wall

Next time someone spoils Happy Hour by talking of land claims, casually mention that the first people arrived in our valley 120 000 years ago. They stayed 46 000 years, until the eruption of Mount Toba in Sumatra all but wiped out mankind. They were the forebears, not only of Bushmen, but also of Europeans, Asians, and Africans. In the final analysis, we all have an ancestral entitlement to this land.

Bushman DNA parted ways with everyone else’s 10 000 years later, when humans began spreading so far from each other that they were not to meet again until recently. On their separate journeys through time and geography, they took with them a by-product of the volcanic catastrophe: a budding self-awareness. Jewellery, 70 000 years old, was found in a Western Cape cave, hinting at cave-paintings from 35 000 years ago in Europe and 27 000 years ago in Namibia being part of a common and much older artistic heritage.

Not only is this artwork astonishingly beautiful, it is a ritualized record of the dreams, revelations, and messages of the shaman. He was the conduit to a spirit world occupied by ancestors.

In Europe and Asia, pictures were replaced by the exquisite written language of the Book of the Dead, the Vedas, and later holy texts; shamans evolved into priests and the spirit world morphed into a realm of gods: über-ancestors.

Not so in Africa, where the Bushmen preserved the old ways, migrating to our province 20 000 years ago, and to our valley 6 000 years ago. Resources were plentiful, war was unnecessary, and the hunter-gatherer reproduced only at a rate that maintained numbers.

Conditions were harsh, so few of the paintings that survive in the Drakensberg are older than 2 000 years. The Bushmen made up for evanescence with sheer volume. Today, there are more cave-paintings here than at all other known sites around the world combined.

Bantu farmers arrived in AD 300, spreading from the coast. They bred rapidly and the Bushmen retreated to a diminishing territory below the escarpment, where eland roamed and crops could not be raised. Shaka Zulu in the 1820s and the white man in the 1840s then sealed the Bushman’s fate. The eland were hunted almost to extinction. Some Bushmen trekked west, where either they interbred or they were mercilessly destroyed, while others climbed into Lesotho, where they were safely absorbed. As far as we can tell, the last Bushman left in 1926, flushed out of his last hiding place at Eland Cave.

In this valley, a civilization thrived for millennia before Europeans evolved pale skin and blue eyes, and before the Bantu herded cattle. When Europe was an uninhabitable wasteland of ice, and Africa was a primitive place of heat and death, a small, gentle people with short lives and long memories dwelled among the forests, rivers, and mountains that we now ‘own’.

Our mountains are the cathedral of the Bushmen, where their scriptures are written on the walls. Where are their land claims?

Corrupt Revolutionaries and Parties

Did you notice the municipal by-election? It is now over, and my fifty bucks says that the IFP candidate’s promise of free KFC rounders to all who voted for him handed it him on a platter. The ANC might have fought a slightly less dishonest contest, but I suspect that a people of whom a decent proportion put their beds on bricks and stick banknotes on brides’ headdresses would always swing the other way.

This fills me with gloom. The ANC may not be the most inspirational of challengers, and its enduring legacy may be as the party who inherited a country and spent most of the loot on Mercedes Benzes, but the IFP quite simply causes the toes to curl.

It’s difficult to think too long and hard about the situation without steam hissing from my ears. The IFP has had the upper hand at Okhahlamba for a number of years and all they’ve managed to do is lurch from one crisis to another, to line several high-ranking officials’ pockets (and their families’), and to get through more managers than Jacob Zuma has wives.

The DA is hardly a more palatable choice, either. Outside the Champagne Castle Hotel, tied with bloudraad to a tree, a DA poster hung untouched since the 1999 general election. It recently fell off, a victim of the elements, tired of proclaiming that ‘the DA delivers’ under a picture of a smiling Tony Leon. We all know the truth: the DA is adept only at making enough of a nuisance of itself until its leaders get cushy jobs in far-flung paradises.

We shall have more of the same in next year’s municipal elections: more hollow promises, more T-shirts, and more greasy food.

Enough is enough, I say. In true Obama-esque lingo, let me say, ‘It’s time for change!’ Those of you looking for something completely different, for free braaivleis on Heritage Day, and for a mayor who rides in a bakkie (bodyguards on the back), you would look far and wide to find a better candidate than me.

My new offering, the Counter-Revolutionary Action Party, will soon be knocking on your door, canvassing your vote, and making wild pledges that will make you drool in anticipation.

When you see my posters, remember all I’ve said. Forget the ANC (African Naked Corruption), the IFP (In For Profit), and the DA (Dull Annoyance), and vote CRAP!

Of Leopards and Men

After seven years as the officer in charge of Monk’s Cowl, the valley gave Alan Howell a farewell that he would not easily forget.

It was the evening of 14 March. Paul and Sue Ross arrived for supper at the gate, which was locked, so Alan decided to walk from his house, down the unlit road, to open up for them. It was a cool evening. Gentle rain had fallen that afternoon and the moon was shrouded in cloud, but there was enough dim light to find his way. He had walked this road a thousand times.

As he approached the boom, he froze: not fifteen metres ahead, silhouetted against the spreading beam of the security light, was the shape of a very large cat. It, too, stopped, and the two were locked, eyeball to eyeball, for a couple of heartbeats that passed in super-slow motion.

Thump.

Alan’s brain processed information at a rate that would have made IBM’s eyes water. ‘Okay,’ he thought, ‘it can’t be a serval: too big, the ears aren’t pointed, and the tail’s too long. Crikey, it’s a leopard!’

Thump.

The leopard, meanwhile, was doing its own calculations. ‘Apple sauce,’ it thought.

As if in response, Alan’s next reflex was defence. He reached to his belt: just his penknife. In an instant, he was transported back six thousand years, clad in animal skins, alone, and thoroughly exposed. He looked around for a rock.

Thump.

The leopard, meanwhile, calling on inherited memories of its own, recognized the movement of Alan’s hand. ‘Sorry, but some other time, human,’ it thought, and took off at pace up the hill, and into the dark.

Thump… thump… thumpthumpthumpthumpthump…

Adrenalin pumping and not daring to look behind him, Alan ran to the gate. After opening, Paul said, ‘Geez, you look psyched up; I’ll race you back to the house.’ ‘No ways, Bru,’ said Alan. ‘Let me in, right now!’

It’s a great story – Alan will tell it to his grandchildren as they sit around the fire on cold Canadian evenings, reminiscing about his halcyon days in Africa – but it’s not new. The funniest Bushman painting is in a cave near Didima Gorge. It shows a Bushman running, stick-legs in typical sprinting pose, closely pursued by the gaping jaws of an enormous leopard. I came across it once with Graham Barry, who commented in his dry way, ‘this wasn’t a self-portrait.’

We’d known for a while that a leopard was around, but the gratitude Alan feels at having met it will be mixed with thankfulness that, unlike many ancient Bushmen before us, he lived to tell the tale.