Morning Birdsong and a Little Poetry

February 6, 2021 / stidyatkusane / 10 Comments

‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all

Emily Dickinson.

Does life hold any greater pleasure than lying in bed, soaking up the early morning melody of bird song? I tend to think not! With the dawn comes enchantment.

It was certainly one of my main reasons for wanting to quit city life and return to my rural roots.

Setting up home on Kusane Farm, overlooking the Karkloof, I had to, first, try and get to know all the local birds and familiarise myself with their repertoire of songs. The more I grew accustomed to their various calls, the more I began to feel a part of things.

Birds sing most in spring because that is usually when they are courting and nesting. Of course, they don’t only vocalise because they are trying to attract a mate. They also call to warn of predators, defend their territory and distinguish between friend or foe.

Most species have highly distinctive songs so this is often a good way of identifying them. Even within a particular species it can help as, for example, with all the dun-coloured Cisticolas who are otherwise often extremely difficult to tell apart.

Birds like to sing early in the morning because that is when sound travels best and furthest. To avoid interference they will often – but not always – sing from a perch above ground level. Sometimes there are a few false starts. A dove starts to coo, changes its mind and goes back to sleep. This is followed by a lull as the whole feathered choir shuffles to their seats, clear their throats and stretch their vocal chords.

And then the joyous symphony begins…

The listing habit has an old and honourable pedigree dating back to ancient Sumeria, so I take some pride in being able to add my little tally of bird calls to it. My list is short, incomplete and contains no rarities because I have confined it, for the most part, to the more common garden birds of my area.

For me, the most bewitching of all these calls belongs to the Southern BouBou, the male of which, can be seen here taking a shower under my garden spray. The resident female (also shown) is sweet to his sound, invariably answering it with a tune of her own.

My old, much-thumbed and annotated, copy of Roberts Birds of South Africa describes their voice this way: “A duet of ‘ko-ko’ replied by ‘kweet’ or ‘boo-boo’ replied to by ‘whee oo’; often reversed thus ‘too, whee’ answered by ‘boo-boo’” The alarm note a guttural ‘cha-chacha’ or ‘bizykizzkizz’”.

In other words, it is a rather long, idiosyncratic and complex love song…

Another regular member of my dawn chorus is the Cape Robin-Chat, seen here sitting in a Sneezewood tree (Ptaeroxylon obliquum) I planted when I first came up to Kusane.

Friendly and inquisitive, he may lack the grandmaster skills of his cousin, the White-browed Robin-Chat (formerly Heuglin’s Robin) – whose song is complex, subtle and piercingly beautiful – but he sings his little heart out and for that he gets full marks. He is also, invariably, the first bird up and the last to go to bed.

What William Blake observed about the English robin, could just as much apply to his free-spirited African equivalent:

“A Robin Red breast in a Cage

Puts all Heaven in a Rage.”

Number Three on my list is the Olive Thrush. Like the robin, he is one of the first birds to break the tension of waiting for sunrise, bursting in to song just before the first streaks of light appear in the East.

In a poem dedicated to this common garden bird, the Grahamstown poet, Harry Owen, describes it, rather beautifully, as an “Avian Buddha…hunched up in ruffled chestnut gentleness…”

His emotional and aesthetic reaction differs somewhat from that of the English poet, Ted Hughes, who wrote:

“Terrifying are the attent sleek thrushes on the lawn,

More coiled steel than living – a poised

Dark deadly eye…”

Cold killing machine or not – and he is an effective hunter as this photograph shows – I am still happy to wake up every morning to its uplifting, fluty call.

If I had to name the Joker in the Kusane pack, my vote would go to the Dark-capped Bulbul (formerly Black-eyed Bulbul) – or Toppie as it is more affectionately known.

One of the most common and widespread birds in South Africa, the fruit-loving Toppie is more to be admired for his persistence and effort than the quality of his singing – but he is unfailingly cheerful and upbeat and that makes him all the more loveable.

It would also take a very sneaky snake to slither by without a Toppie spotting it and notifying the universe!

As something of a nomad, a bird who comes and goes seemingly on whim, the Black-headed Oriole is an infrequent participant in the Kusane Farm Dawn Chorus.

Few birds, however, are so dramatically beautiful and it would take a very cold heart indeed not to thrill to its wonderfully liquid call. It is like listening to the bird-world equivalent of Mozart’s Magic Flute.

As one of the more charismatic bird species, the oriole has been co-opted in to the name and logo of various sports teams. In America, for example, there are the Baltimore Orioles. Closer to home, the Zulu name impofana has been given to the Eurasian Oriole because of the nick-name “Mpofana”of the Kaiser Chief’s Football Club. The name refers to the striking yellow and black colours worn by the teams’ players (see Zulu Bird Names and Bird Lore by Adrian Koopman).

Although it is a highly subjective question, I suspect most South Africans, if asked, would name the African Fish Eagle as the bird whose call best cptures the spirit of wild Africa.

While I, too, am always deeply moved by its haunting evocative, cry, I would, if forced to do so, choose a different bird as my favourite – the humble, common Cape Turtle Dove. Maybe it is a question of association as much as call. For me, the Turtle Doves familiar, comforting coo ( rendered, in English, as: “How’s father, how’s father” or, if your conscience is bothering you: “Work harder! Work harder!”,) carries all sorts of echoes and evoacations of a childhood spent amongst the beautiful Nyanga mountains and deep in my beloved bushveld.

With the possible exception of the Fiery-necked Nightjar it touches a depth in me no other bird does.

The English poet William Blake, who seems to have spent as much time conversing with Angels and Demons as ordinary mortals and knew a bit about these things, had something to say about doves in captivity as well:

“A Dove house fill’d with Doves & Pigeons

Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions.”

Although they stay mostly down in the valley, I think I can safely add cranes to my list because their sound drifts up to me as I sit on my verandah sipping my early morning cup of rooibos waiting for the sun to come up. With their elegant courtship rituals, fidelity and haunting calls, cranes have, since antiquity, exerted a peculiar hold on the human imagination.

Greek and Roman myths portrayed their dance as love of joy and a celebration of life and associated them with Apollo and Hephaestus. In Chinese myths, cranes were symbolically connected with the idea of immortality.

In South Africa, the Zulu King Shaka reputedly wore a single Blue Crane feather.

They are special. On the ground they are exceptionally regal, elegant in stature and stately in bearing. In flight, they are equally impressive, thrusting forward with powerful wing beats, their heads and necks fully extended in front of them.

In his book, The Birds of Heaven, the author Peter Matthiessen saw cranes as “striking metaphors for the vanishing wilderness of our once bountiful earth.”

We are very fortunate in that all three of South Africa’s resident cranes – the Blue, the Grey Crowned and the Wattled – occur on our door step. They are also shy and wary so I was quite lucky to get as close as I did to this pair of endangered Wattled Cranes without disturbing them.

My list would not be complete without a migrant although they only call in summer. The sound of the cuckoo’s call, for instance, is so familiar and so much part of our inherited sonic landscape that we mark our seasons by its appearance.

The most obvious of these, because he is so vocal and so well known, would be the Red-chested Cuckoo (the ubiquitous Piet-my Vrou) but since he tends to stay down on the river line I have opted for the Dideric Cuckoo instead. As his brood host is the weaver, of which we have many, he is the common cuckoo in our garden.

Perched on top of the uppermost branches of a dead pine, bill arrowed skywards, he cuts a conspicuous figure in his striking green and white tunic. Throwing his whole body into the effort, he trills out his clear, persistent ‘dee-dee-deederick‘. His female, if he has one, may choose to respond with a plaintive ‘deea deea deea‘.

*Diederic Cuckoo (right), plus Cape Sparrow*.

Like all cuckoos, it is very swift in flight. John Clare, who has been described as the “finest poet of Britain’s minor naturalists and the finest naturalist of Britain’s major poets” called it perfectly when he wrote:

‘The cuckoo, like a hawk in flight,

With narrow pointed wings

Whews over our heads – soon out of sight

And as she flies she sings…‘

Another bird whose call captures something of the presence, the spirit, the essence of the old Africa is, for me anyway, the Natal Spurfowl. Preferring thick cover, it more often than not remains invisible. It is just a loud, agitated, scoffing, scolding noise deep in the foliage.

Having scoped out the situation, my resident pair will sometimes explode out the bushes and streak across the lawn lawn, a fleeting chaos of orange bills, feathers and moving legs, heading for the thick bramble on the other side of the fence where they like to hide from the prying eyes of predators.

*Natal Spurfowl – a loud, agitated,scoffing, scolding noise*…

The Zulu name inkwali gives some indication of is call. To quote Roberts again: “The bird is more often to be heard at sunrise and sunset, sounding like ‘kwaali, kwaali, kwaali’ …” Newman’s gives a similar rendering: “The call is a harsh ‘kwali, KWALI, kwali‘; when alarmed utters a raucous cackling…”

Sasol gives a slightly different interpretation: “Raucous, screeching ‘krrkik-ik-ik”. They all agree on the main point though – they kick up quite a fuss…

I hesitated about including the Hadedah Ibis because its similarly deafening ‘ha-ha-da-da’ is not a song. It is is a din. A rioutos cacophony, far more effective as a wake-up call than any alarm clock, gong or bugle.

Having happily transplanted itself in to our cities and towns, it has become such an iconic bird, its familiar call so much part of our everyday lives, I decided in the end it would be a travesty to leave it out…

An unmistakeable, almost prehistoric-looking creature, the Hadedah’s name is, of course, onomatopeic; it’s a sort of phonetic reminder of its most obvious attribute – so extraordinary a noise as to be once heard and never forgotten. As they fly it seems to get louder and quicker and more excited, ending in a burst of dirty hilarity, as if one of them cracked an off-colour joke…

My former Witness colleague (and good friend), the poet Clive Lawrance, devoted three poems to the Hadedah in his wonderfully wry and whimsical little compendium, Butterflies & Blackjacks: Poems from A Maritzburg Garden (to which I contributed the illustrations).

He captured something of the birds unruly character and strange charm with these lines:

‘Every day three hadedas swoop

into my garden; they come

in turquoise-brown-metallic coats

that glow in the sun; or they come

bedraggled with drizzle; even, sometimes,

plastered with rain and muck;

but

always they come…’

The numerous members of our ever-expanding Village Weaver colony don’t so much sing as keep up an excited, incessant, day-long chatter between themselves, especially at nest building time. It is the male who builds the nest and he has to be fully on his game because his bride to be is a very exacting arbiter of what does and doesn’t constitute a highly desirable piece of real estate.

It is a taxing business, requiring considerable skill and mental acumen, and he has to work his tail feathers off to please his partner. If the nest fails to meet the female’s high standard, he will tear it down and start all over again.

Village Weaver in early nest-building stage.

As a result the drive-way up to the house is regularly strewn with discarded homes.

When we first came up to Kusane there was no resident Helmeted Guineafowl flock on the farm. We tried to rectify this by importing a batch of guineafowl chicks and raising them, with mixed results for they frequently fell victim to our local predators.

Besides being highly vocal – Roberts’ describes their clattering, machine gun-style of delivery as ‘a grating, rapidly stuttered “kekekekekek”’ – they are also very jittery birds. If suddenly disturbed or frightened by anything, real or imagined (it is often the latter), they all take to the air, their wings making a whooshing noise as they alternatively flap and sail, labour and glide either on to the top of the farm owners’ vegetable tunnel, the roof of the house or the topmost branches of the surrounding trees.

*An Impi of young Helmeted Guineafowl on the march*…

This habit of fleeing at the first hint of trouble has given rise to a Zulu proverb: Impangel’ enhle ngekhal’ igijima (a good guineafowl is one that calls while running) – meaning, to put it in Shakesperian terms, that discretion IS the better part of valour…

The Zulu name for guineafowl, impangele, was also given to one of Mzilikazi’s regiments because they wore its black and white spotted feathers and also, presumably, because of the active way this bird moves in packs through the undergrowth.*

Most people respond positively to all birdsong. Whole anthologies of poetry and prose have been devoted to the subject, celebrating it as some sort of natural miracle.

Alas, I can see nothing poetic or anywhere near miraculous about the incredibly noisy sideshow my two strutting, foolish roosters – Rowdy and Motley – with their Chauntecleer-size inflated egos, produce each morning.

Determined to shame each other – and all the other roosters in the district – in the high-decibel stakes, they like to do a short practice run around 0130am, just as I am getting in to my deepest sleep. Then, with military precision, at exactly 0430am, the floodgates open and they don’t close until late in the day.

As I bury my head under my pillow, desperately trying to shut out the racket, the voice of the poet Sir Charles Sidley (1639-1701) speaks down the centuries to me:

“Thou cursed Cock, with thy perpetual noise,

Mayst thou be capon* made, and lose thy Voice,

Or on a dunghill mayst thou spread thy blood,

And Vermin prey upon thy craven brood…”

But then I remember the lines from Robert Frost:

“The fault must partly have been in me.

The bird was not to blame for his key.

And of course there must be something wrong

In wanting to silence any song.”

(*A ‘capon’,for those not familiar with the word, is a castrated chicken fattened for eating)

REFERENCES:

Newman’s Birds of South Africa by Kenneth Newman (1983 edition, published by SAPPI)

Roberts Birds of South Africa by McLaghlan & Liversidge (1970 edition, published by Cape & Transvaal Printers Ltd)

Sasol Birds of Southern Africa (2011 edition, published by Struik Nature)

The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman (published by Penguin)

The Penguin Book of Animal Verse (1965 edition)

*Zulu Bird Names and Bird Lore by Adriaan Koopman (2019 edition, published by UKZN Press)

SPECIAL THANKS to Harry Owen and Clive Lawrance for allowing me to quote from their poems and my brother, Patrick, and his wife, Marie, for giving me my first bird book thus triggering off a life-long passion……

Birding With the Wild Bunch: Misadventures in Zululand

January 23, 2021 / stidyatkusane / 4 Comments

*Birding in iSamgaliso Wetland Park, Zululand*.

It is four ‘o’clock in the morning and I am lying in my tent in the Sugarloaf camp-site on the fringes of Lake St Lucia town. It is still dark. Although little stirs at this hour, it is not completely silent. In the distance, I can hear the waves crashing against the shores of the Indian Ocean. A sea breeze ruffles the leaves in the trees above me. Someone is snoring softly in one of the tents.

I am agog with anticipation. I know the dawn chorus is coming any moment soon but I am not sure when. I feel that same sense of hushed expectation I get when a concert is about to begin.

The first to start up is the Red-capped Robin-chat, one of the most melodious tune-smiths in the business. When he wants to show off his vocal virtuosity, he can elaborate and vary his tune for as long as he wants, throwing his whole body into the effort, song after song. Next, even deeper in the forest, I hear the amiable chortle of an Eastern Nicator. Him, I want to find (I don’t but I have got him before). Then, that other well-known songbird, the thrush (probably the Olive Thrush) chips in, followed by a whole cacophony of song.

As I think about dragging myself out of my sleeping bag, I try to identify some of these bird calls although I am not sure whether it is actually the bird I think it is singing or the robin mimicking their sound. Most species have very distinctive calls, but the robin is a master at impersonation. He can do pitch-perfect renditions of virtually every call from the Fish Eagle to the Fiery-necked Nightjar. He can even do convincing imitations of human sounds which is a lot to ask of a bird…

With streaks of light now appearing in the east, I unzip my tent and lookout. The world seems welcoming enough so I crawl out and stagger towards a kettle already boiling on the gas stove. Once my tea is made I pause to take in my surroundings. They are beautiful.

There is a rather long story behind how I got to be standing here with my mug of tea in hand amongst this greenery and the musical melody. Being in this camp-site was never part of our original plan. We had hoped to go to Ndumo, upon the Mozambique border. Chomping at the bit with impatience to get there, my one birding partner, Mark, a professional photographer, had booked the three of us (Ant, an ex-game ranger and all-round nice guy, is the other member) well ahead of time, signing on the dotted line and paying the requested fees.

Ken, a sports-writer based in Jo’burg and the fourth member of the team, had decided to delay booking because he was still waiting to hear what cricket assignments he had coming up. It is he who eventually discovers Ndumo is closed.

In yet another example of the bureaucratic ineptitude that cripples so many governmental bodies in South Africa, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife had simply not bothered to let any of those who had booked know about this closure. If Ken had not found out we would have merrily made the five and a half hour journey to Ndumo only to be turned back at the gate. Another friend of my mine was actually all packed and due to leave, with his family, the next day. Until I messaged, no one had notified him either.

His patience fraying, Mark tried to book us into Mkhuze but it is the same story. The camp-site is closed for “water reasons”. In the end, he settles for Sugarloaf and checks us in there. Ken and I are sceptical. When we go camping we like to get off the beaten track. A camp-site in suburbia is not our idea of wilderness. Mark is adamant about it so for the sake of group harmony we relent.

Which brings me back to how I am here.

As I take another sip of tea, I hear a strange whooshing sound. A largish bird alights in a wild fig tree near me. With its bright, green colours and upright crest, I recognise it immediately. It is a Livingstone’s Turaco, a ‘special’ of the area. It is a bird that only lives in a very narrow band of elevation and in South Africa is restricted to the thin coastal strip on the upper reaches of Zululand. It is very similar to the more well-known, Knysna Turaco, differing only in having a longer, more pointed, black-and-white-tipped (not white) crest.

I am pleased to be able to tick it off my list so early in the trip.

Still nursing my mug of tea, I concede that Mark may be right after all. Forests are great providers of solitude and he has managed to hide us all in a very secluded spot, away from where the majority of campers have erected their tents (and parked their boats). After the aridity of Mapungubwe and the heat of Kruger (where I have just been), this garden of delights feels like another country to me and a very agreeable one at that. I decide maybe it is advantageous to be open to the new and flexible in your thinking.

Once we have finished our mugs of tea, we set off to explore the iSamgaliso Wetland Park (formerly the Greater Lake St Lucia Wetland Park), South Africa’s largest estuarine system. Its centrepiece is a vast lake that stretches for 38 000 hectares and its rippling waters are home to an enormous population of hippos and crocodiles, as well as pelicans and flamingos. It has the distinction of being the first area in KwaZulu-Natal to be declared a World Heritage Site.

Ken is bubbling over with enthusiasm because he has heard, via the birding grapevine, that a Rufous-bellied Heron had been sighted at one of the small pans, just to the south of the lake. I have seen one once before, on the banks of the Zambezi at Mana Pool, but for the rest of the group, it will be a lifer. It is a bird that is seldom seen in South Africa. My copy of SASOL describes it as “fairly common resident in north Botswana; uncommon migrant and nomad elsewhere.”

I’m a bit of a nomad myself so I am as anxious as Ken to find it. We are in luck. Parked at the very first pan we come to, we see one fly out from the edge of the water and land on the vegetated matter on the other side. A few minutes later it is followed by another! There is not one, as was reported, but two! A pair!

It is always exciting to see some rare bird in a remote place that is not always easy to reach, so Ken is ecstatic, leaping into the air and high-fiving us all. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, it is very easy to quickly disseminate information these days so he also lets the Rare Bird Sighting bunch know.

For my part, my heart swells with pride because, as the birder who saw it first, it means I will get to drink red wine tonight out of the special silver goblet we reserve for Best Sighting of the Day! Ken and I take this solemn ritual very seriously but Mark does not share our religious devotion to it. He thinks he has a far superior, much more finely-made wine goblet, failing to understand it is not about the level of craftsmanship – it is about the historical, spiritual and symbolic associations the vessel has.

*The Silver Goblet. Pic courtesy of Ken Borland.*

Over the course of many years, we have toasted a long list of very fine and stately birds with that goblet…

We drive on, towards the massive, tree-covered dunes that stretch forever along the Zululand coast. The summer rains haven’t started properly yet but everywhere you look it is the same relentless green. In between the forest are open glades of wild parkland in which Zebra, Wildebeest, Giraffe and an assortment of buck roam. The deeper we get into the dune forest, the more the vegetation crowds to the road, In places flat wet dung raises its reassuring familiar smell, meaning that, although we cannot see them, elephant are definitely about. Having had my share of close shaves, I pray they are in good mood…

Near the top of the one high dune, there is a lookout point which provides an exhilarating view over the lake, shimmering under an amorphous sky. Buck and buffalo graze along its banks, a fish eagle’s call adds to the sense of mystery. Ken’s attention is, however, quickly diverted from this Eden-like scene by movement in a nearby tree. It is a White-eared Barbet, another species confined mostly to the Zululand coastal belt and regarded as a ‘special’ although they are quite common here.

We continue up the dune. Another hundred metres or so, we find ourselves staring not over the lake but the mighty Indian Ocean whose rollers are sweeping in endless procession on to the Mission Rocks below.

*Mission Rocks. Pic courtesy of Ant Williamson.*

Getting on to the surf-flecked rocks, the conchologist in Ken kicks in and he is soon wading around in the tidal pools looking for shells and sticking his fingers into places he ought not to. While he is doing this, Mark is giving an up-country fisherman advice on where to cast his line. Ant snaps the coastline from every conceivable angle with his camera, so he can give his young daughters some idea of where he has been.

I gaze out to the ocean and think about the U Boats that once cruised up and down these waters, attacking merchant shipping lanes off the South African and Mozambican coasts. In a now mostly forgotten episode of the Second World War, 75 Catalina Flying Boats of 10 Royal Airforce squadrons were based, among other places, at Lake St Lucia. They were used for spot and destroy operations along the South African coastline where 163 allied ships were lost to Japanese and German submarines.

On a previous visit, my brother, Patrick, and I had been shown a cellar under a house in the town where it was believed, a spy in the employ of the Germans, had sent radio messages to the submarines.

From here it is a short drive, through yet more forest, to Cape Vidal, a beautiful stretch of shoreline but with too many tourists doing dumb touristy things for my taste. I am not too put out when we turn around and head home.

That evening, Mark and Ant are keen to show us the Ski Club they have discovered the previous day, so we pile back into the car and head down to it. The setting can hardly be improved upon. Directly in front of the club deck is the estuary in which flamingos, in their gossiping hundreds, parade up and down like models on a watery cat-walk. The edges team with waders feeding avidly before night falls. On the other side of the estuary dune, the ocean drives at the shore without pity. Gulls and terns skim overhead eyeing the thundering waves for signs of edible sea life

I cannot imagine anything more conducive to relaxation than all this – the cold beer, the balmy African sky, the flamingo, the heady perfume of the sea, the companionship of those who are prosecuting with zeal and enthusiasm the same path of science as you.

Next morning we are up early again and on the road. I am hoping we will have some good sightings over the next few days. There is a good chance of that. Ken is possessed of the sort of doggedness that distinguishes any good birder and when you go with him you know you are in for the long haul. It is almost impossible for him to drive past some small, subsidiary road and not want to go down to see what might be lurking there. Ken would make a top-notch detective if he weren’t so mad about sport.

Our convoluted route takes us all the way back to the N2 freeway and then down to Charter’s Creek on the western shores of the lake. We find the camping facilities here are also shut because of the water situation even though there is a whacking great lake full of the liquid directly in front. Mark smells neglect and rank incompetence in the air.

He then gets out the skottle and makes a sumptuous breakfast fit for a king, near the jetty where some folk are fishing. Ken and I search for water-birds. Ant takes more photos for his daughters.

*Cooking breakfast at Charter’s Creek. Pic courtesy of Ant Williamson.*

Afterwards, we head off along a route that takes us down the western side of the estuarine system. Near the Dukuduku gate, lying in the grass, close to the road, is a magnificent old Waterbuck bull with one horn. He is all on his own. His surviving horn is long and whorled. If the others weren’t there to set me straight, I would have sworn I have found a unicorn.

Over the next few days, we explore this whole water-wonderland of river, streams, lakes, vleis, marshes, and oozing filament as it drains into the Indian Ocean. We drive over dunes, through grassland and more pristine forest. We follow a walkway which leads to a lookout point built high up in a gigantic, evergreen Cape Ash (Ekebergia capensis), looking out over an expanse of the swamp. We stand and look towards the spot where one of the Catalinas, that once hounded the Germans, crashed into the lake. Its fuselage still lies under the murky waters providing an object of interest for passing fish.

*View from lookout in massive Cape Ash tree. Dunes in distance*.

As we do all this our bird list mounts up – Bataleur, Forest Buzzard (immature) Crested Guineafowl, Spurwing Goose, Yellow-bellied Bulbul, Caspian Tern, Purple-banded Sunbird, Red-billed Oxpecker, Trumpeter Hornbill, Ringed Plover, Yellow-breasted Apalis and much more. The top sighting is, once again, reserved for me. Scoping the shores of a small pan I pick up several Collared Pratincoles. Once again I lick my lips in anticipation. The silver goblet is mine!

It is only on our last day, when we drive to Lake Bhangazi, that the animals come out in force.

We get up close and personal with two old buffalo. The buffalo is said to be the most aggressive animal in Africa and the way these two keep a beady eye on us makes me hope I will never have to put it to the test. Then we see White Rhino. Three of them. Their horns have been sawn off to try and deter poachers from killing them. Covered in black mud after a good wallow, they look like they have grown out of the soil itself. They also appear quite oblivious to the dark clouds hanging over the future of the species. I love Rhino although I have been chased, on more than one occasion, by their highly irritable and bad-tempered cousin, the Black Rhino.

We come upon several herds of fleet-footed Kudu, the male members of whom boast some of the finest horns I have ever seen.

Finally, just as we are about to abandon hope: elephant. I have witnessed elephant looming up through trees, lashing the air with their trunks, massive ears flared, angry as all hell, but these two look as peaceful as lambs as they doze in the midday sun, using a Water-berry tree (Syzygium cordatum. Zulu: umdoni) as a make-shift beach-umbrella. You never can tell, though, so I am glad they are not blocking our exit.

My trip ends on a birding high note. On the final morning, while Ken is performing his lengthy ablutions and Mark is packing his vehicle with military-style precision, I spot a bird creeping through the creepers where the Red-capped Robin-chat normally hangs out.

It is a robin but not the robin I expected – it is a Brown Scrub – Robin which I have only seen once before!

A happy camper, I start whistling (very badly) self-congratulatory robin tunes to myself as I exit the park…

Escape to the High Country: Travels in the Karoo

January 9, 2021 / stidyatkusane / 12 Comments

*Two High Plains Drifters: the author and Prof Goonie Marsh. Pic courtesy of Sally Scott*.

There is no risk of overstating it: 2020 was a horrible year. With levels of worry, anxiety and depression reaching a new high level mark, I finally realised emergency solutions were called for. After puzzling it over, I decided the best thing to do would be to try and end the year on a high note by escaping – if only briefly – from all the mania and talk surrounding Covid-19.

And so we took to the hills, heading up into one of the more remote and isolated areas of the country – the Great Karoo, which forms part of South Africa’s vast, high-lyng central plateau. Here, I hoped, I would be able to rid my mind of the ever-looming spectre of the pandemic and reboot my soul.

Officially, there were three of us on the expedition – myself, my artist sister, Sally Scott, and Professor Goonie Marsh, the former-head of the Department of Geology Department at Rhodes University and a very useful man to have around because of his extensive knowledge of all things Karoo. Also, he is very good company.

The route Goonie had plotted for us, took us through the tiny hamlet of Riebeek East where the famous Voortrekker leader Piet Retief once owned the farm, Mooimeisefontein. Retief would later go on to negotiate land deals for his people in what is now my home turf, KwaZulu Natal, before his unexpected assassination at the hands of King Dingaan of the Zulu.

There was another reason I wanted to check out Riebeek-East. An ancestor of mine, on my father’s mother’s side, Lt Colonel Richard Athol Nesbitt, had served here as a sub-inspector with the Frontier Armed and Mounted Police (FAMP) back in 1866. Besides a few drowsing cows lying on the side of the road, there was not much sign of life. Cruising down the town’s empty streets, I tried to visualise what it must have been like when the sub-inspector came riding into town, correct and erect in his policeman uniform, on top of his handsome horse. It must, I concluded, have felt like some sort of banishment because, even today, Riebeek-East feels cut off from the outside world.

This point notwithstanding, I found I was developing a bit of a kinship with Richard Athol. It was almost like he was along with us for the ride. On my way down to Grahamstown, where Sally lives, I had stopped for a breather at Fort Brown, on the Great Fish River, another nondescript outpost of Empire where he had served. This was not the only place where we were to dog each others shadows. In 1872 Nesbitt was promoted to Acting Inspector and despatched to the next town on our journey, the more substantial Somerset East, nestling under the massive bulwark of the Bosberg.

In 1878 the FAMP were militarised, as a unit of the Colonial Forces, and renamed Cape Mounted Riflemen (CMR). The unit would go on to play a prominent role in the numerous conflicts that broke out within the Cape Colony and around its borders, as a result of the Cape government’s expansionist policies. Later, Richard Athol would come out of retirement and – at the request of the Colonial Government – raise and command Nesbitt’s Horse which, in his own clipped words, “served in most of the principal events of the [Anglo-Boer) war, with Lord Robert’s march – Paardeburg, capture of Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, Pretoria and in clearing the colony of rebels.”

The Lt Col was obviously not one for uneccessary sentiment or wasting words…

1902 found him resident in Grahamstown. His military exploits are commemorated in the impressive monument which stands in front of the town’s old Methodist Church. An entire side-panel is devoted to those members of his unit who lost their lives in this bitter conflict.

We finally parted company with our ghost passenger somewhere up on the Bruintjeshooghte, just south of Somerset East. We were now travelling in less familiar territory. Ahead lay the vast Plains of Cambdeboo, immortalised by the author Eve Palmer in her classic book of the same name. You actually pass by the farm – Cranemere – where she grew up and lived and you can still see the same dam that provided them with their lifeblood – water.

The Plains of Cambdeboo from Bruinteshoogte, looking towards Graaff Reinet.

The small town of Pearston, where the great palaeontologist Dr Robert Broom once lived, is also on the road although, like many of these Karoo dorps, it now looks a little fly blown and past its best. Of Broom himself, more later.

Beyond that the world lay wide and empty around us until we finally got to Graaff Reinet – or the “gem of the Karoo” as it is sometimes called because of its neat, shaded streets and beautiful period houses – set in a mass of wild-looking hills with the Valley of Desolation to the west and, overlooking the town, the prominent landmark of Spandau Kop. Established in 1786, it is South Africa’s fourth oldest town and has its origins as a far flung frontier settlement on the very edges of the old Cape Colony.

Just outside of town, on the road to Murraysburg, there is a stark, simple monument to Gideon Scheepers, the Boer military leader who was court-martial-led and shot here on the 18^th June 1902, by the British authorities. It was – according to Goonie (who also has a solid grasp of the region’s history) – a severe punishment which turned him into an instant martyr for the Afrikaner cause. As opponents in the Anglo-Boer War, I wondered if Gideon and Richard Athol had ever crossed paths?

Beyond that, the road climbed steeply up the Oudeberg Pass. Before I knew it the Plains of Camdeboo were below us, then out of sight. At the turn-off, to Nieu-Bethesda we stopped for lunch on the side of the road, under one of those abrupt, flat-topped, mountains that rise out of the plains, like talismanic guardians, throughout the Karoo…

The Karoo is a land of sun, heat, and stillness although, as if to defy my expectations, a light drizzle began to fall as we unpacked our picnic basket on the tail-gate of the bakkie. The summers can be scorchingly hot, in winter the night temperatures regularly drop well below freezing point. Rainfall is erratic, drought common.

It was not always so. There was a time when ceaseless rains poured down upon this ancient land, leaving it covered with inland seas, lakes, and swamps. Millions of strange-looking reptiles and amphibians roamed around and then died here; in our era, their fossilised remains have made the Karoo world-famous for palaeontologists. This brings us back to that pioneer of the profession, Dr Robert Broom, who did so much to uncover their secrets.

As we drove deeper into the interior the hills became barer, even more silent. There was little sign of habitation although, every now and again there was the occasional windmill or wind pomp just to remind you that people lived here. The road wound on and on, empty and devoid of traffic, so much so that driving along it eventually became like a form of meditation.

Originally this vast area was occupied by the San, aboriginal hunters, small in size and few in number, who drifted with the seasons and the herds of game. Of these animals the springbok is, undoubtedly, the most emblematic of the Karoo, their bodies evolving, over time, to deal with the hardships of life in this arid country. Despite the devastation wreaked by the early white hunters, which saw this beautiful animal being exterminated over much of its range, the springbok population has begun to rise again, now that their commercial value has become appreciated.

Later, the San themselves were hunted down or driven into the swamps and deserts. In their place came trekkers, traders, missionaries, and explorers, who braved the fierce heat, moving with their wagons and animals into the harsh dry interior. With them, they bought their religion. Nearby Murraysburg, named to honour the Reverend Andrew Murray, was originally a church town resorting under the full control of the Dutch Reformed Church up until June 1949 when it was placed under the control of the local municipality.

Just beyond the spot where a large sign announced that we were leaving the East and entering the West Cape, we came to an imposing white-pillared gate with a sign “Oudeland” next to it. Here we swung right, driving down a dirt road dotted with caramel-brown rain puddles. In every distance, the plain was sparse and bare although we did pass the crumbling ruins of an old barn and kraal with the inevitable wind pomp standing like a sentinel behind it. Moving fast, the clouds cast a storm light across the buildings. I wanted to look for the species of lark that had these scrub-strewn grasslands all to themselves but with more rain threatening now wasn’t the time for it so we plugged on.

*Old barn and windmill. Pic taken after storm clouds had blown away*.

Cresting a rise, the farmhouse and outbuildings came in to view in a valley below where – Goonie explained – a sill of hard, erosion-resistant, dolerite had cut through the softer sedimentary rocks. A small, seasonal, stream ran through the middle of it. The main farm complex was situated on the one side amongst a mass of poplar, gum, and willow trees and fields of grazing merino sheep; the lush green colour of the lucerne pastures, in which they were feeding, contrasting sharply with the stark, elemental beauty of the semi-desert that surrounded them.

Our house lay on the opposite bank, just above a belt of prickly pears. As we drove into the fenced yard we were greeted by a brown horse and a small herd of multi-coloured springbok. Such colour morphs are extremely rare in the wild (in fact, they are so unusual they were venerated by the San) but these white, or leucistic, forms are mostly the result of selective breeding to meet the needs of hunters seeking exotic trophies. It is a practice that has caused some controversy because the genes which cause these colour variants are actually recessive and so could weaken the species.

I am not a hunter and I get no joy in taking life, so I was delighted to share the animals’ company just for its own sake, especially when – every now and again and for seemingly no particular reason – its various members started leaping in stiff-legged bounces known as “pronking”, in which all four hooves hit the ground at the same time. The small herd was, the owner’s wife explained, all orphans who had been hand-reared and loved to the point where they had become family pets. Each one had its own name. I was especially taken with the one very friendly individual who had one blue eye and one green.

The house itself was built in the usual airy Karoo style with white-washed walls and a wide verandah on which you could sit and gaze out over the distant lonely blue mountains. Inside the appliances were all modern although the stuffed head of a large buffalo bull, as well as that of a puzzled-looking Zebra, added a slightly incongruous touch.

I was up at daybreak. We were lucky that morning. Overnight, the rain clouds had all blown away. The sky above us was a strange intense blue, wind-cleaned, limitless, and crisscrossed with lazy scrawls of thin cloud. There was a lovely lyrical quality to the landscape, to my eyes, it all seemed intoxicatingly clean and remote. Although I am not from these parts, I felt totally at home in this indivisible, self-contained world.

In this sort of country, there is almost no shade or protection from the elements although our morning walk did take us up to a stony ridge in which there was an overhang with bushes growing at its mouth. On its walls, we were excited to discover several faded examples of San rock art. I had no way of knowing how old they were – possibly thousands of years?

From the cave entrance we looked down over a large dam which reflected the changing weather in the sky above. Water lines of geese and duck and dabchick cracked its surface. Such open stretches of water always come as a surprise in this thirst-land. For the birds it must indeed seem like manna from heaven..

Back on the path, Goonie came to an abrupt stop, pointed his walking stick in the direction of an exposed sheet of unsuspecting, layered, grey rock and declared: “That looks like just the spot for a fossil!”. Sure enough, when we went down to investigate, we found several tiny fragments of fractured fossilised bone. With my untrained eye I would never have suspected they were there and would have passed the site by without a sideways glance.

Just the spot for a fossil. Prof Goonie Marsh.

Leaving them undisturbed we continued down to the dam wall. From its top we stood, awed by the view, as the escarpment retreated away; each ridge exposing new gullies and rough broken ground and more valleys until finally reaching the horizon, where the pale ramparts of the distant range of mountains raised themselves. Then we walked on, feeling buoyant and light and energised. Sally, with her artists eye (as opposed to Goonie’s more scientific one) was struck by all the strange patterns and details in the landscape and regularly stopped to record them.

Later, when it got too hot for walking, Goonie and I climbed in to the circular reservoir around the back of the house and had a swim. It felt good, splashing around like I was a young boy again…

That evening we sat with our drinks out on the verandah. The earth was still in twilight shadow. In the distance massed, bulging, cumulonimbus clouds gathered above the mountain tops. As the sun sank so they changed shape, form and colour.

All felt well with the world. Far from the madding crowds, I finally began to get some sort of harmony between body and mind. Looking back over the journey, I also felt I had established another link with my past, learnt a little bit more about how I got to be who and where I am…

My sense of contentment did not last. Back in Grahamstown all the talk still centred on the pandemic and the overcrowded hospitals and the beach and liquor ban. I couldn’t help but feel a little deflated. The happy little bubble I had created for myself in the wilds of the Karoo suddenly seemed far away. That is the problem with fantasies – sooner or later they get punctured and you are back with harsh reality.

GALLERY:

Bracing for a Second Wave: Cartoons for November & December, 2020

December 31, 2020 / stidyatkusane / Leave a comment

According to the opposition Democratic Alliance, Msunduzi is far worse now than it was before it was placed under the “selective” and “ineffective administration, which served only to placate ratepayers rather than deal with the problems that had bought the city to its knees”. It is a view shared by many ordinary citizens who continue to voice their concerns over the ever-increasing signs of neglect and poor maintenance.

The Arctic is unravelling faster than anyone could have imagined just a few decades ago. Scientists have warned that the Greenland Ice Sheet, for example, is no longer growing. Instead of gaining new ice every year, it has begun to lose roughly 51billion metric tons annually, discharged into the ocean as melt-water and icebergs.

In the United States, President Donald Trump was condemned by opponents for firing the senior official who disputed his baseless claims of election fraud as the president pressed on with his his increasingly desperate battle to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. This despite the fact that officials declared 3 November’s contest between Trump and Biden the most secure US election ever.

Former President Jacob Zuma continued to duck and dive and do everything thing he could to avoid facing justice. Having briefly appeared before the state capture commission to hear whether his recusal application for commission chair Ray Zondo had been granted he disappeared, without being excused, during the tea break. The commission adjourned to reflect on what to do next.

There were mounting fears that Msunduzi could face a massive blackout if the municipality does not urgently deal with the persistent outages that have severely compromised the network. The City’s electricity problems was also strangling the local economy and some businesses were even considering leaving Pietermaritzburg for towns with more stable power supply.

South Africa has entered a second wave of Covid infections, breaching 6 000 new cases, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said in a special television broadcast. The peak age bracket is now between 16 and 19. “It’s believed to be due to a large number of parties involving young people drinking alcohol with no adherence to non-pharmaceutical interventions, wearing of no masks and social distancing and hand sanitising not taking place,” Mkhize said.

In an address to the nation, President Cyril Ramaphosa, announced a tightening of Covid-19 restrictions, including the closure of KZN beaches during the main days of the festive season. He attributed part of the cause of the second wave of infections to a lack of compliance with safety measure such as social distancing.

In the wake of a year dominated by Covid-19, being cautious is probably the best thing you could do over the festive period so I decided to make that the subject of my Christmas cartoon.

2020 was a truly terrible year and I think most people were glad to see the back of it – hence my New Year cartoon…

Into The Furnace: Adventures In Kruger

December 12, 2020 / stidyatkusane / 8 Comments

I am, by nature, a bit of a wanderer. Even though I live in one of the most beautiful parts of the country and am mostly satisfied with my lot every now and again my questing instinct begins to reassert itself and I feel obliged to follow where it leads me.

There are good reasons for this. By evolution we are hunters and gatherers. It is an underlying drive. It is part of that sense of excitement and privilege which comes from finding something special – be it a landscape, animal or bird.

Thus, when my sister asked me if I would like to join her on a trip through Mpumalanga and Limpopo Provinces there was no way I could say no…

With the Mapungubwe leg of our expedition behind us, we have now just passed through the Pafuri Gate and driven in to Kruger National Park. It is still dry season and what little grass there is has been grazed to the ground. Although we don’t see them, there are signs of elephant everywhere. Their droppings litter the road. Hundreds of tiny dung beetles are busy mining the excreta, turning it in to compact balls, often a lot bigger than themselves, and then rolling them away. Elsewhere, broken trees and branches lie strewn across the landscape. The closer we get to Pafuri and the Limpopo and Luvuvhu river, the worse the carnage gets.

Just over the Luvuvhu Bridge we turn left down the road that leads to Crook’s Corner where the borders of South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique meet. In the cool of the morning this route, with its lush riverine forest, is one of South Africa’s prime birding drives but because of the intense heat there is not much activity now.

We stop for lunch at the picnic area on the banks of the Luvuvhu. Sitting in the cooling shade of the massive, spreading, Nyala and Jackal-berry trees my thoughts drift back to the Battle of the Somme-like scenes I have just witnessed.

*Pafuri picnic site, Luvuvhu River*. My niece, Kelly.

Elephants have, of course, been destroying woodlands for thousands of years. In the process, they consume vast amounts of pods which they then deposit elsewhere so, in that sense, this is all part of a natural process of regeneration. The problem now, of course, is that the elephants movements have been restricted to certain protected areas and park which puts added pressure on the environment.

Kruger is probably big enough to absorb the damage but you do feel a solution needs to be found in some of the more worse hit areas. It is a controversial subject, of course, although there is one thing I am certain of. It is no good saying we mustn’t interfere with nature. We already have.

At Pafuri there is another factor which has led to the destruction of the riverine forest. If extreme weather still counts as natural, than the severe floods that have hit the area in recent years, uprooting or flattening hundreds of trees, overnight, changed much of the landscape. Again, it could be argued that this nature’s way of replenishing the precious top soil and allowing new plants to emerge, although such thoughts also, invariably, lead to the question of climate change.

What effect is it having? Will it have a significant impact on bird-life and mammals? Will they be able to adapt? These are questions which go around and around in my brain and end up nowhere, so I go back to munching my sandwich.

The subject of climate change still weighs heavily on my mind, later that day, as we sit on the verandah of our chalet at Mopani Camp, overlooking a dam studded with dead tree trunks. The temperatures are in the low-forties. I feel like I am drowning in the heat. Everywhere animals and birds lie spread-eagled in the shade. Even the usually noisy, hyper-active, Greater-eared Starlings sit panting in the shrubbery.

In this breathless air, the normal sounds of the bush have become eerily muted. The birds have stopped singing, the butterflies have grown lethargic and abandoned their search for nectar, the lizards cease scurrying, the hippos sink deeper in to their watery homes.

Even the coming of night fails to sooth it. As the sun sinks, the water of the dam turns the colour of cauldron flames. Along it edges, duck, geese, heron, egrets, cormorants, darter, stints and little waders stand motionless, frozen in the moment like figures in a painting. Suddenly a family of White-faced Fulvous Whistling Duck rise, in spumes of spray, and head off across the dam. Their rallying whistle is a sound like no other. Hearing it, the years flash back, through my childhood, to the days when I used to go out exploring with my brother, Pete, or went fishing with my Dad for bream in the farm dams.

On the edge of darkness, flocks of Red-billed Quelea come swirling through the evening sky in massive, rolling, waves, to their roosting spots in the trees along the water’s edge. Suddenly a much larger, darker form swoops out of nowhere at breath-taking speed and veers down towards them. Then – another. And another! Three Bat Hawk, each one the essence of distilled cunning, are out hunting. The Quelea immediately become vigilant and shoot up in another massive wave of movement. One bird is not so lucky. Having seized the tiny bird in it talons, the Bat Hawk wheels off victoriously. Still flying in synchronised formation, the rest of the Quelea continue with their evasive action before returning to their roosting spots, to live to fly another day.

There has been no let up in the temperature the next day. In fact, it has got worse.

Exhausted by the heat my sister elects to remain at home but the rest of us head off in the Isuzu bakkie along the Tshongololo Loop. We stop at the ford below the Pioneer dam. Scampering alongside it are a pair of Black Crake. They are normally the shyest of birds but these ones have grown so accustomed to the steady flow of traffic across the bridge that they barely give us a sideways glance.

In the shallows on the other side of the bridge there are some Spoonbill and a Great White Heron. A lone Yellow-billed Stork stands with his wings outstretched, gazing intently into the water. Like the Narcissus of legend, it seems to have fallen in love with its own reflection although I am not sure why because they are curious-looking birds. Or maybe it is just hoping to spear some fish…

A family of Cattle Egret stand amongst the rocks on the banks of the river. There are yawning hippo in the pool. Crocodile too.

Leaving the river behind us we find ourselves rapidly encircled by a sea of low Mopani scrub, just come out in leaf. Sitting in the front seat, I feel like I am on the bridge of a battleship pounding through waves of green. Suddenly, above this leafy expanse, I see a tall, dead branch protruding like a submarine’s periscope. On it sits a raptor. It takes a while for the different components of my brain to start working in unison before I finally figure out what it is – an Osprey. I go through various stages of disbelief. Really?! What is it doing out here in the boondocks? It is totally out of its normal habitat. Then I remember the Pioneer Dam is not all that far away. I take a photo of the bird even though it is just a speck in my viewfinder.

There are lots of Brown-hooded Kingfishers in the woodland. This kingfisher, like the Wooded, Striped and Pygmy Kingfishers, is an oddity of evolution in that it doesn’t actually fish or hang out near water but prefers to hunt for insects deeper inland.

Further on, we come to a rock kopje. Growing amongst its elephant hide-coloured boulders is a massive baobab, in which a colony of Red-billed Sparrow Weaver’s nest. The birds are agitated. We soon discover why. A rufous-form, Tawny Eagle sits on one of the branches, a study in regal elegance. I decide the whole scene will make a good painting so take another photograph. The eagle flies off and lands on top of a nearby dead tree.

*Baobab. A Tawny Eagle can just be seen on high branch to the left*.

We plough on through miles and miles of similar looking country before returning home later that day.

Eating breakfast on the verandah, the next morning, we are visited by two of the larger reptiles who seem to have made their homes amongst the tumble of rocks in front of our chalet – a Plated Lizard and a Water Monitor (or Leguuan) Then some butterflies flutter by. Among them, I recognise the Citrus Swallowtail, African Monarch, Blue Pansy. My brother-in-law says there don’t seem to be as many birds scrounging around the chalet as there was the last time he visited. He wonders if this is because lockdown had deprived them of their most reliable food source – the stuff discarded by humans – forcing them to move away?

*Citrus Swallowtail alighting on blue Plumbago.*..

After breakfast, we decide to brave the heat once more and head off along the Tropic of Capricorn loop road that takes you through yet more of the flat, savannah plains that stretch out as far as the eye can see, in every direction, As we drive through this familiar landscape, I feel that old sense of connection I always get when I am in Kruger. It is like I have become part of something much larger than myself but which somehow includes me. It is an almost spiritual – some might say, religious – connection with the bush.

On the road directly in front of us a large shadow silently steals so I direct my gaze upwards through the windscreen of the car. With its stubby tail and striking colours there is no mistaking a Bataleur. Later we will see one squatting on the ground. Parks, like this one, have become one of the last bastions for this majestic eagle.

A bit farther on we come to a place where a recent thunderstorm storm has flooded part of the plain, leaving an extended puddle of water in which are several small waders – White-fronted Plover, Kittlitz’s Plover, Marsh Sandpiper, Wood Sandpiper, Ruff. We drive on. Just around the corner, in the same open expanse of ground, I discover a flock of birds I had failed to find in Mapungubwe – the Chestnut-backed Sparrowlark (formerly Finchlark). Although there are plenty of trees they could fly to, they have chosen to seek refuge from the sun by huddling up in the shadow cast by a few stones. Just beyond them I spot one of my favourite songsters – the Rufous-naped Lark. A Black-chested Snake Eagle wings overhead.

The temperature rises by a degree, then another. It is nudging towards forty-five. As it does so everything begins to slacken: the restless searching for food, the browsing, the fluttering about. Buffalo, Wildebeest, Tsessebe, Kudu, Impala, Waterbuck lie idle in the torpid heat. Birds seek shelter in trees and under bushes, their beaks agape desperately tying to keep cool.

A car has drawn up on the side of the road up in front of us. We stop to see what its occupants are looking at. A shape suddenly comes in to view high up in a tree. There is a leopard drowsing in a fork between several branches, its tail twitching as if trying to fan itself.

We move on, leaving it in peace. Despite the heat, there is still game in plenty even if most of it is resting. As we drive, I search with hopeful eyes for lion or – even better – Wild Dog but other than the solitary leopard there doesn’t seem to be a predator for miles around. Nor do I see any vultures circling high in the sky, indicating a possible kill. (a good friend of mine, the bird artist Penny Meakin, will pass through this part of the world a few weeks later and have much better luck – she will see seven lion, several leopard, a pack of Wild Dog, a cheetah, plus a host of vultures squabbling over the carcase of a recently killed buffalo).

Undeterred, I keep scanning the sides of the road, picking up several birds as I do so – African Pipit, Wattled Starling, Double-banded Sandgrouse, Swainson’s Spurfowl, Brown-crowned Tchagra, Red-headed Finch, Red-breasted Swallow, Kori Bustard, Jacobin Cuckoo and, most special of all, a family of Ground Hornbill who regard us quizzically through long eye-lashes before ambling off.

Running roughly parallel to the distant Lebombo mountains is a long, thin, shallow depression where grass, reeds and rushes grow in course clumps, almost like moorland. Later in the season I can imagine it will be completely flooded bringing in scores of waterfowl but at the moment there are only a few pools of water. It looks like ideal lion – or even cheetah – country to me but still no luck.

By an old concrete reservoir, a herd of elephant queue patiently, waiting to take their turn to drink. There is no other animal in the wild that elicits quite the same emotions in me as an elephant. I love them but I fear them too. They are huge but delicate, powerful but surprisingly gentle. They can shatter the sky with their angry trumpeting and yet are also able to move through the bush as silently as ghosts…

Elephants travel in matriarchal groups, ordinarily the leader is the oldest cow. There are several new calves with this group. Yet again, I am struck by the strong sense of family the herd exhibits. You can feel the kinship, loyalty and respect for the matriarch. I wish human society was as well-ordered and peaceful. If elephants bear ill-will towards us it is hardly surprising for we have harried, tormented and hunted them for so long that the memories of man-inflicted terror must be ingrained deep inside their cavernous skulls.

A little further down the long vlei, the road abruptly veers right, heading up to the Shibavantsengele lookout point in the Lebombo range. We decide to go there. Stepping out the car is like stepping in to a furnace but the view makes it worthwhile. The Lebombo – which begin in Zululand and then stretch up through Swaziland to provide Kruger with its spine – are not particularly high at this point, but are still high enough to make you appreciate the enormity of the land, stretching away in to the blue distance and simmering in the thickening heat haze. There is a magic to this place. A spirit seems to haunt the air, ancient and impassive.

That evening, as I help myself to another generous glass of my brother-in-law’s very expensive single-malt whisky, I am aware of a changing of the guard. One set of living animals is going off to slumber, while another comes to life.

The surface of the dam turns a fiery gold again. The Quelea are returning to their roosts but although I search the skies with my binoculars I see no sign of the Bat Hawk. Maybe they have decided to do what Bat Hawks are supposed to do and gone off looking for bats (my brother-in-laws bat detector has picked up hundreds of their calls).

‘The next day we set off home, unaware that Kruger is saving up its best for last. As we are driving, my eagle-eyed sister spots a pair of ears protruding just above some low-lying scrub. For a while the ears remain where they are, then a magnificent female leopard slowly rises to her feet, stretches and ambles across the road directly in front of us. For a few minutes she stands in the middle of it, coolly observing us. Then, with a dismissive whisk of the tail, she strolls on.

She has performed her royal duty – provided us with a classic tourist photo-opportunity. Now we must buzz off.

We do…

No Room for Slippage: Cartoons for September and October, 2020

December 5, 2020 / stidyatkusane / Leave a comment

In the face of a fierce and vitriolic fightback by the agents of corruption in the ANC, President Cyril Ramaphosa appeared to achieve a tactical victory at a meeting of the NEC with members finally committing to act against comrades accused of corruption. He now faced the challenge, however, to give effect to the resolution, no easy task in a party riddled by factionalism and internal power plays.

The Democratic Part (DA) wrapped up its annual policy conference by adopting numerous policies, including one that said race was not a proxy of disadvantage when dealing with issues of redress. This was followed by reports that the party risked yet another exodus of senior members after opening investigations against several leaders with the intention of charging them, while others were planning to leave because they were disillusioned with the direction the official opposition has taken.

Six months after lockdown measures were imposed, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the country would move to lockdown level 1 from Monday September 21. He also announced that an Economic Rescue Plan was being fast-tracked which was only to be expected given the contraction in the economy and the fact that the country was, by his own admission, now effectively bankrupt…

According to various sources, South African National Treasury officials reluctantly complied with orders to find funds to bail out the state airline, fearing they may erode the nation’s fiscal credibility. Finance Minister Tito Mboweni had long argued that the government can’t continue funding the national carrier, putting him at odds with the top leadership of the ruling ANC and Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan, who insist it must keep flying,

The high profile sweep on officials and businesspeople implicated in the R255 Million Free State asbestos audit deal scandal was universally welcomed because there has been an overwhelming perception among the public that thievery, as the modus operandi of the tenderpreneurs, would remain unchecked. According to opposition parties, however, the arrests marked just the tip of the iceberg and further investigations were needed to bring all those involved to book.

Meanwhile, the Evangelical Alliance of South Africa said that the practices at the KwaSizabantu – which involved allegations of human rights abuses and money laundering – were damaging to the reputation of other churches…

Msunduzi administrator Scelo Duma described the SAP financial system as “the Achilles heal of Msunduzi”. The top-of-the-range software package, installed in 2016 to integrate the management of finances, had already cost the municipality over R251 Million and had continued to be plagued with problems.

South Africa wouldn’t be able to meet its finance ministry’s debt targets and it may be undesirable for it to attempt to do so at a time when the economy is being battered by the fallout from lockdown, according to an advisory panel appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa. In a more than 100-page document advising the government on an economic recovery programme that Ramaphosa was due to unveil the Presidential Economic Advisory Council said spending cuts would hold back growth and have adverse consequences.

The news that Health Minister Zweli Mkhize and his wife May have tested positive for Covid-19 was a reminder that people are still vulnerable despite the diminishing rate of infection in South Africa. It was especially sobering considering what is happening in the US and Europe where infection rates have begun to soar again as part of the ‘Second Wave’ of the pandemic.

Tabling his mid-term budget Finance Minister Tito Mboweni stressed the country was in trouble and that something needed to be done. Acknowledging that there was “no room for slippage” he promised to put a break on expenditure and rein in civil service salaries – something that would have to be seen to be believed, given that he lost his SAA arguments and had been forced to extend a R10,5billion lifeline to the bankrupt national airline.

When Two Troops Go To War: Adventures in Mapungubwe

November 24, 2020November 24, 2020 / stidyatkusane / 6 Comments

I am returning to one of my favourite places, after a gap of several years. It is where I love to go birdwatching although that is only one of its many attractions.

The tarred road we use to get there, as is the norm in Limpopo Province, is a nightmare to drive on and my brother-in-law is a study in intense concentration as he tries to navigate the countless gaping potholes. We bump along the section that runs along the southern base of the Soutspanberg, then crawl up, via Vivo, to All Days. Here we branch off right.

The fact that the journey ends up taking twice as long as it should have doesn’t dent my enthusiasm for we are headed to Mapungubwe. It is somewhere along here my grandmother also travelled, as a very young member of the Moodie Trek, on her way up to the then Southern Rhodesia. Unlike us, she travelled by ox-wagon, not in an air-conditioned Isuzu bakkie…

There is a stark minimalist, beauty to the landscape around here. The miles and miles of stunted mopani, the sudden, jagged outlines of ochre and strawberry-pink, rock outcrops and cliffs, the barrenness of the earth, all give it a slightly strange, almost mystical, atmosphere.

Returning to Mapungubwe is like a homecoming to me. Clambering out the car after the long drive, I stand, look and listen and let myself become part of the place again. Tshugulu Lodge, where we have booked in, is surrounded on all sides by towers of red, sandstone rock, eroded by the wind and rain and sun in to all sorts of weird, fantastical shapes.

We are thrilled to find we have it all to ourselves

On the first morning, I get up at 0530 and go outside with my mug of tea. My brother-in-law has, as usual, beaten me to it and is already sitting outside but my sister is still asleep in her room.

As I plop down in the chair next to him, he points to the soft, wet sand in front of us and says “We had a visitor during the night!”. I immediately see what he is talking about. The huge footpads of a solitary elephant lead from the lodge gate to the swimming pool and then head out again along a slightly different path. There has been much testimony as to the silence of elephants so I hadn’t heard a thing but my niece, Kelly, whose cottage was much closer, had listened to it siphoning up vast quantities of heavily chlorinated water.

It is a perfect African morning, a time when the world still belongs to the animals. Above us I can hear the European Bee-eaters calling as they soar and glide in the thermals. When the breeze blows I catch the smell of Wildebeest, grazing not far from the perimeter fence of the lodge. Somewhere in the unseen distance I can imagine carnivores finishing a kill before heading off to lie in the shade,

The rock cliffs, that hem us in like an old-fashioned castle wall, glow orange-red from the rays of the early morning sun. As I do a quick scan through my binoculars I see a snapshot of birds and other small creatures. Amongst the cracks and crevasses, the resident gang of Red-winged Starlings play hide-and-seek. In the shade of a Large-leafed Rock Fig which has sent its ghost-white roots burrowing down through the cracks and fissures, I hear the soft hooting of a Laughing Dove. Near it a skink, with brown stripes along its back, raises its head out of the rocks as if to smell for rain.

Down on the ground, not far from where we are sitting, a pair of Natal Francolin scurry past on some unknown errand. In the tree above us the beautiful Red-headed Weavers sway and dangle before flying off to bring back beak-load after beak-load of carefully selected twigs with which they construct their nests. Their pain-staking industry is more than matched by all the activity in the Lala Palm where a small colony of Lesser-masked Weavers have opted to build. They prefer to use grass and palm shards.

After a breakfast of fruit, muesli and yoghurt, we head off to the Eastern Section of Park. This arid area occupies a unique position in the country’s history for it was here that South Africa’s first important kingdom was established between 1200 and 1290 AD. Ruins left behind by Africa’s early civilizations are almost invariably found in hill country (Great Zimbabwe and Thulamela in Kruger are other obvious examples) and the Mapungubwe Hill site is no exception. From the summit of this steep-sided bute, its rulers would have been in a good position to keep an eye out out for enemy warriors, as well as greet traders coming up the Limpopo – for it is known they kept extensive links with the east, including the Chinese and Indians, the sails of whose ships were swept over to Africa on the winds of the monsoons.

We do not have time to visit the hill that marked the centre of their civilisation but from the top of the lookout site, at the confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe Rivers (where the borders of Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa meet), we can just make out its red ramparts rising out of the dusty earth. From here, the road, ostensibly for 4×4 usage only, takes us along the Limpopo River as far as Poacher’s Corner before branching off through yet more oddly-shaped hills and balancing rocks.

We return to the lodge, later that day, to find the local squirrel has taken advantage of our absence and made merry in the kitchen. Rusks have been chewed on, a bottle of honey lies open, its contents spewed all over the table and floor…

That evening, deciding to take advantage of the balmy summer light, we climb up one of the kopjes behind the lodge for sundowners. The view is astonishing. To our north, on the other side of the Limpopo, a massive storm is brewing. Soaring thunder heads rise above the plains casting the world beneath it in an unholy purplish light. There are bolts of jagged lightning, followed by the drum-like roll of thunder. You can feel the malevolence in the heavy air and smell the rain although it never actually reaches us.

There seems to be no limit to our vision. One our right side, a labyrinth of glowing, sun-burnished, bare rock, pock-marked and twisted and looking like it could be guarding the entrance to the underworld, stretches away from us. Somewhere, in the ultimate distance, land and sky merge. It feels like we have the universe all to ourself.

Anxious to transcript so great a mystery, I pull my camera out of its bag and start snapping. Then I just sit still for a long time watching the unfolding drama until eventually the fading light sweeps it all away…

That night I lie content beneath my mosquito net as the air conditioner – a novelty for me since I mostly camp on these adventures – drones away. Outside the crickets call.

I rise even earlier, the next morning, but it does no good. My brother-law-law has beaten me to the kettle again. He tells me we have had more visitors. These ones are much smaller than the formidable old behemoth who visited us the previous night. In the magic of twilight they had come flying out from their hidey-holes and roosting nooks.

They are bats.

Bats have always received a bad rap. Some time, back in history, perhaps around the period the when the church started persecuting perceived witches, they were turned in to creatures of ill-omen, along with crows, owls and – oddly enough – hares (it was thought that witches could shape-shift in to them). Later they came to be associated with vampires and Count Dracula and sharpened stakes and bundles of garlic. It is a label and an association they manifestly do not deserve for these nocturnal wanderers are marvels of evolutionary engineering..

I don’t know much about bats but my brother-in-law does. An Emeritus Professor, he is an expert on the subject. The reason he knows they have been active while we slept is because – like some Cold War spy – he has been secretly recording their chatter on two metal Bat Detectors he has attached to some trees. I listen raptly as he explains their workings. Because they mostly fly around at night bats can be difficult to identify but science – and technology – has found a way around that by tuning in to the ultrasonic sounds the bats emit.

My brother-in-law’s findings from this and subsequent recordings are, to my mind anyway, amazing, revealing a secret night-time world in which the bats are completely at home (see Acknowledgement below).

The bat puzzle solved, we next set out to explore our corner of the park, a lot of which is new to me.

The day is hot but bearable because the heat is mostly dry. Our route takes us through a badlands of arid hills and trees that are, for the most part, low and barren. In marked contrast, every now and again, we come across a baobab rising like some ancient monument, sometimes in the middle of nowhere, some times next to the stone face of a kopje.

This is good raptor country. In no time I have added Martial Eagle, Black Eagle, African Hawk Eagle, White-backed Vulture, Common Buzzard, Brown Snake-Eagle and Gabar Goshawk (black form) to my bird list. Plus a Kori Bustard and a Red-crested Korhaan. Later, we will see the male Korhaan performing its strange courtship ritual, flying straight up in to the air and then closing its wings and tumbling to the ground, as if shot, before gliding in to land.

After taking us through more rough, broken, terrain, the road starts winding down in to a rock-strewn valley which, in turn, opens up on to an immense plain, on the one edge of which lies the Limpopo. As you approach the river, the Mopani scrub abruptly gives way to a green line of tall trees – Nyala Berry, Jackal Berry, Natal Mahogany, Ana Trees, Apple Leaf.

I am a little taken back by the state of the Mazhou camp site which has altered much since I stayed there last. The electric fence that protects it no longer seems functional and everywhere there are scenes of devastation. I know who the culprits are. As in Kruger, elephant are presently destroying the acacia thorn (and many other species of tree) that also grow along the river bank at a rate regeneration can’t keep pace with. Those not knocked down have been stripped of their bark and are dying that way. In ten-years time I doubt if there will be many of these beautiful trees left to see.

One can only hope this is part of nature’s cycle although I am not convinced. In former times, elephants herds were scattered and nomadic which helped minimise the damage they cause; now their movements have been confined to restricted habitats, such as the one we are driving through. The results of this loss of freedom to wander at will are plain to see…

From the camp site we follow the river for a short distance, through the tall trees that provide favourite perches (and nests) for the vultures, before branching off to the Maloutswa Pan Hide.

As the main rains have still not arrived there is not much water in the pan. The mud that occupies the place where liquid should be is black and cracked and caked and pitted like the moon’s surface. Numerous hoof-marked tracks lead down through it.

Obviously fans of the formula that there is safety in numbers, we find an immense gathering of baboon squatting by the water side. It is the biggest troop I have ever seen. As we sit watching them, another, even larger, troop suddenly emerges out of the tree line.

As they draw closer to one another, I can scarcely believe my eyes or my ears. It is like a clash between two medieval armies. There is an immediate outbreak of barking and a hurling of wild manic howlings. This is followed by lots of jumping up and down, chest-thumping and angry gesticulating. The baboons are doing it, I soon realise, only for dramatic effect. It is a mock call-to-arms and does not signal the start of an all-out war.

Realising they are outnumbered, the troop already at the waterhole stages a strategic withdrawal, yelling parting taunts and trying desperately to preserve their dignity and not show any loss of face. They retreat to a position a hundred metres or so downstream where they sit down and mutter conspiratorially amongst themselves. For our part, we find it a rather an impressive performance and feel like clapping but the solitary, bored-looking, Spurwing Goose who was in the middle of the battlefield remains completely unmoved. He has obviously seen and heard it all countless times before…

On the way back from the pan my sister sees two Crowned Lapwing in an open patch of ground and then, a bit further down the road, says “Look – two more of them under that tree!”. Although, I am on the wrong side of the car to see them, a little bell goes off in my head. Maybe they are not plovers at all! I urge my brother-in-lay to stop and reverse back to them. I am very glad I do for it turns out to be a pair of Triple-banded Coursers which are extremely unusual in South Africa. I am even more amazed when I see they have two chicks. In Africa, all game birds suffer high rates of nesting loss. There open homes are highly vulnerable to a whole host of predators – caracal, serval, jackal, civet cat, genet cat mongoose, raptors, various egg-eating snakes.

The chicks are lucky to have survived so far.

Returning home we take a slight detour to Little Muck which lies on a ridge below which a seasonal stream bed runs. How it got its odd name I have not been able to ascertain but it is a good place to see elephant. There are also several San rock-painting sites in the area but I imagine you have to get permission to see them. There are more baobab standing here in heraldic silence, their branches covered in the sprawling nests of the Red-billed Sparrow Weaver. With the exception of those in more inaccessible positions, they too, have been badly gored, stripped and desecrated by the elephant. I suspect many of these ancient, symbolic trees won’t survive either.

Which would be sad because, standing under them, I felt overwhelmed by the age and might of this old continent and realised – yet again – what an important part of it they are…

GALLERY:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I am extremely grateful to my brother-in-law, Emeritus Professor Ric Bernard, for organising this trip and for his many kindnesses, information and assistance. To help me understand the world of bats better he also kindly prepared the following notes:

Studying bats is not easy because they are active at night and spend the days in often inaccessible places. They are hard to see in flight at night and almost impossible to identify even when they are seen. However, in the same way that birds can be identified based on their calls, so too can bats – with the same proviso that identification based on call alone is not always accurate. However, unlike birds where the call can be heard, the calls of bats are at a frequency that is far too high to be heard by us. This makes studying bats very different from studying birds. The ultrasonic calls of bats can be detected and recorded and on a recent trip to Mapungubwe and Mopani we used two Song Meter bat detectors to record the bats in the area. Over 6 nights, we recorded more than 16000 bat calls. Analysing these calls manually would be very time consuming and we used software to do this and to group calls into clusters. We were then able to examine the clusters and based on previous work to identify most of the calls.

The ultrasonic calls of bats are used to detect their prey and their surroundings (echolocation) and typically not to communicate with other bats. The call of each species is characterised by a particular frequency or range of frequencies and it is based on this that they can be identified. Calls fall into one of three groups, being Constant frequency (CF) where the call is relatively long and at a single frequency, Quasi Constant frequency (QCF) where the call is long and covers a very small range of frequencies, and Frequency Modulated (FM) where the call is shaped like a hockey stick and covers a range of frequencies from high to low at the bend of the hockey stick.

The CF bats are all horseshoe bats and we recorded six different constant frequency calls at 35, 47, 76, 81, 105 and 114 KHz (kilohertz). The likely species were the cape horseshoe bat, Geoffroy’s horseshoe bat, Darling’s horseshoe bat, Hildebrandt’s horseshoe bat, Lander’s horseshoe bat, Swinny’s horseshoe bat.

Amongst the FM bats, we identified the Cape serotine, long tailed serotine, banana bat, rusty pipistrelle, Natal long fingered bat, and Temminck’s myotis.

The vast majority of the recorded calls came from the QCF group. These are bats that often inhabit the roofs of houses and which SANParks are trying to attract into bat houses that we saw at both Mapungubwe and Mopani. The species included Midas free tailed bat, Angolan free tailed bat, Egyptian free tailed bat, Mauritian tomb bat, large eared giant mastiff bat and the little free tailed bat.

All of these bats fall within their known distribution ranges.

All the species are insectivores and will be feeding on both flying and sedentary insects.

I would also like to thank my sister, Penny, for the wonderful food and – along with her daughter, Kelly – being such good company.

Book Reviews

November 21, 2020 / stidyatkusane / 2 Comments

Since its first appearance in 1993, the SASOL Birds of Southern Africa has gained a reputation as one of South Africa’s best bird books, unsurpassed for its excellence as an all-round guide to identification. To my mind, its illustrations, which have been stripped down to exclude extraneous and distracting features of animation and context, are the most accurate and revealing of the current crop of field guides.

The revised 5^th Edition edition, contains some real advances on its predecessors in the series. Probably the most novel of these is the inclusion a “bird call” feature which enables you to access calls by scanning barcodes with a free downloadable call app. It also contains calendar bars depicting species’ occurrence and breeding periods.

Very much a team effort, the book now has six contributing authors with new input from Dominic Rollinson and Niall Perrins, both well-known for their birding expertise. In addition to this, it has more than 800 new illustrations, including all-new plates for raptors and seabirds

As one would expect of a field guide of this sort the accompanying text has been simplified and limited to the essential differentia but should be more than enough to help with immediate bird identification. For the full treatment you can always turn to the comprehensive reference work, Roberts Birds of South Africa.

If you want to plunge even deeper in to the subject of bird identification, than Birds of Southern Africa and their Tracks & Signs by Lee Gutteridge might be another worthwhile addition to your birding library.

Normally when one attempts to identify a bird in the field one starts with its physical appearance – its size, shape, patterning and colour. One also looks at their movement – how they hop, run or jump on the ground; how they move through bushes and trees; how they fly in the air; how they swim or dive in the water.

This book approaches the subject from a slightly different perspective, one that doesn’t even require the bird to be present – by teaching you to identify its spoor or tracks and its dropping, as well as picking up other little tell-tale signs.

It is a slightly unusual approach, granted, but it is yet another way of celebrating bird diversity and of expanding our own range of experience of the natural world.

Adding to its appeal, the book is handsomely produced with a bibliography and index, plus hundreds of colour illustrations depicting not only the spoor and droppings but the birds themselves.

With the world in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic hysteria and the economic climate as gloomy as the burning Msunduzi landfill site, getting out in to the country is the one thing we can still do which makes everything seem all right again. It is like a passport to a more ordered and contented world.

And perhaps no other creature better exemplifies this reassuring image of bucolic calmness than the humble butterfly.

I love birds, always have, but it is only since I moved up to the Karkloof area that I have begun to develop a deeper interest in these delicate but wonderfully self-contained insects, perhaps because there are so many of them active in our area at the moment, feeding on the spring and summer wild flowers. The more you watch and get to understand them the more wonderful they get.

South Africa is, indeed, singularly lucky in having over 671 species of butterfly which, as Steve Woodhall, the author of Field Guide to Butterflies of South Africa, points out, is an impressive number for a country outside the Tropics.

Anyone who, like me, wants to be able to identify and know more about them would do well to keep his handy field guide in close reach for it is a treasure trove of useful information.

First published in 2005 it has been fully revised and updated to reflect the most recent taxonomic changes. Taking full advantage of the rise in the use and quality of digital cameras, the book is also stuffed fill of beautiful images of butterflies in all their colourful variety.

For this edition a full two-thirds of the images have been replaced with new material showing both male and female forms – where they differ – as well as upper and undersides. The species accounts have also been comprehensively updated and expanded, covering identification, habits, flight periods, broods, typical habitat, distribution and larval food sources.

Like all the best field guides it is a book which inspires adventure, improvisation and the learning that comes from discovery. Since getting my copy I have managed to photograph and identify the Southern Gaudy Commodore, the African Blue Pansy, the Yellow Pansy, the Common Diadem, the Painted Lady, the Forest Swallowtail and the Green-banded Swallowtail.

Rife with similarly enticing names, Woodhall’s well organised guide brings home just how astonishingly refined and varied these creatures are. Hopefully it will, in this time of self-isolation and rampant gloom, reignite your own desire to escape in to the wild…

Book Reviews

October 23, 2020 / stidyatkusane / Leave a comment

Published by Tafelberg.

Tom Eaton is undoubtedly one of South Africa’s most witty and erudite commentators with a brand of humour that manages to be both razor-sharp and wryly tongue-in-cheek at the same time.

His latest collection, still fresh despite being mostly written before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, rails against current political shibboleths to entertaining and pointed effect. As is only to be expected, Eaton pulls no punches as he takes satirical swipes at a number of rather large and obvious targets – the ANC, Eskom, the SABC – but with his slightly skewed, off-centre approach he manages to illuminate this familiar territory with sharp flashes of novel insight..

Of course, no book about South Africa’s recent history would be complete without a dissection of the rotting cadaver of state capture that was the hallmark of Jacob Zuma’s time in office and Eaton duly obliges with a typically excellent, if typically depressing, essay on the man and the damage he inflicted on the country

In places, it is not at all a comfortable read. Eaton has a habit of shredding many of our common self-deceptions and irrational beliefs, as well as the sort of deluded wish-thinking that often characterises public debate. He includes, for example, a very thoughtful and balanced piece on the role of politics in sport in South Africa, arguing that it is naïve to think you can separate the two. In a chapter dealing with another vexed, contentious South Africa issue – the re-imposition of the death penalty – he puts forward a similarly persuasive argument, showing how we often allow our heated feelings on the subject to override common sense.

Eaton does not confine himself just to local matters. Elsewhere, he includes a perceptive essay on what is happening in the United States, a nation which seems to have been dumbed down to the extent where responsible and informed policy has largely ceased to exist under a regime that denies the reality of global warming and which has a president who advocates drinking bleach as a cure for Covid-19..

Eaton’s writing can be pithy. It can also be deadpan. Underpinning it all, though, is a deep vein of seriousness which forces you reconsider and look again at many of your own assumptions about the sort of society we live in. Or, as Eaton himself puts it, the book is “about trying to resist the knee-jerk responses that professional manipulators want us to have…”

Intelligent, well written and extremely funny, Is it Me or is Something Getting Hot in Here? is a terrific compendium of the incompetence and occasionally appalling behaviour of those in whom we have entrusted our vote. It also holds up a not always flattering mirror to ourselves…

Published by Bantam Press

With his blend of sardonic humour and noble integrity, Lee Childs’ laconic hero, Jack Reacher, is one of crime fictions most likeable and engaging characters.

In his latest outing we find him sitting on board a Greyhound bus, heading along the interstate highway, with no particular destination in mind. Across the aisle an old man sits asleep with a fat envelope of money hanging out of his pocket.

Reacher is not the only one who has spotted it. When the old man gets off, at the next stop, he is followed by another passenger with slicked-back, greasy, hair and a goatee beard. Naturally Reacher, his suspicions aroused, decides he better disembark as well, just in case the other guy has bad thoughts on his mind….

He has. Needless to say, by the time Reacher has finished with him he has good reason to regret ever harbouring them. While obviously grateful for Reacher’s intervention the old man is clearly reluctant to explain who the cash is intended for or to let him get further involved in his affairs.

This merely serves to pique Reacher’s interest further. Having insisted on accompanying the old man home, he eventually gets him to admit that he and his similarly elderly wife are the victims of an ugly extortion racket.

For a loner like Reacher who only becomes sociable when he meets good people in a jam, this goes against the grain and he immediately decides that the time has come to mete out his own particular brand of retributive justice against those who are making the old folks life a misery.

It takes Reacher little time to flush out the enemy but he also discovers he is vastly outnumbered. Despite finding himself caught up in the middle of a particularly vicious turf war, however, between two nasty rival gangs – the one Albanian, the other Ukrainian – he never seems to be in danger of losing his head.

Author, Lee Child, is a reliable performer and once again delivers an enjoyably familiar, violent, pacey, caper. The action sequences are handled with his customary elan while, at the same time, he convincingly manages to convey the sleazy, menacing, underbelly of modern city life.

The Small Town Hotel – a Vanishing Icon

October 10, 2020 / stidyatkusane / 5 Comments

Whatever happened to the small town hotel? When I was growing up they were all over the place. Now, they seem to have become an endangered species.

This is, of course, a rhetorical question and one which has an obvious answer. Their demise became inevitable once they started having to compete with all the cheaper bed and breakfasts and self-catering establishments that suddenly began springing up across the sub-continent like a contagious rash.

Others found themselves replaced by up-market, chain hotels or, because of a decline in bookings, were converted into slightly run-down-looking shops and boutiques. Or else they were simply knocked down to make way for something else.

Such is the nature of progress. I find it all rather sad because so many of those old hotels were architectural gems which gave the small towns both character and definition. Often they were the most distinctive buildings in them.

The ones, I remember, from my Rhodesian and Zimbabwe days, were invariably situated alongside the main road. Tall palms or blue-gums with peeling bark and rustling leaves cast pools of shadow over them.

Most had large wrap-around verandahs with arches and pillars and a few pot plants strategically scattered about to create the right ambience. Also an assortment of old wicker chairs and a few tables to put your drinks on. The roofs were steeply pitched and made of corrugated iron, often painted red or green. The outside walls were white.

Inside, the lounge would be equipped with a tired-looking, over-stuffed couch and a few mismatched, broken-backed chairs. Often there was a slightly strange smell – a weird combination of stale beer, frying odours from the kitchen and dust. Even the ancient looking fans that whirled from the ceiling above you couldn’t disperse it…

I was always scared of those fans. Too often, they looked like they could, at any moment, come spinning off their bearings, decapitating some unfortunate soul in the process.

The rooms, themselves, were not exactly posh. The furnishings were minimal, the curtains gauzy, the carpets threadbare. A few pictures, often reprints depicting snow-capped Alpine mountains, would hang on the wall while the beds, with their lumpy mattresses, would sag in the middle. If there was a wash basin in the room, the tap often leaked. More often than not there was no en-suite bath; you were obliged to use the communal one at the end of the passage.

The walls were like matchwood. Through them you could hear the radio or TV (if they were lucky enough to have such modern contrivances back then) being played next door or people murmuring in low but hard-edged voices. Upstairs it sometimes sounded like there were platoons of soldiers practising their drills in hob-nail boots on the wooden floor boards.

Their departure from the room would often be followed by a wall-shivering door slam..

Lying in bed, trying to get to sleep, you could hear engines throbbing, brakes screeching or cars thundering along outside. If you were near the railway line – again, many of these hotels were – your sleep would invariably be disturbed by the blast of a train horn as it came puffing grandly in to the station, before stopping with a loud squealing of brakes.

In the dining room, the food, served by turbaned waiters, although edible would hardly qualify as haute cuisine especially by today’s high culinary standards. Mostly, it was meat and two vegetables, over-cooked, a bit like the mush they dished up at boarding school

Invariably, the most well-frequented part of the hotel would be the bar. There were usually two kinds of these – the swanky cocktail bar which women (this was before the MeToo Movement) were allowed to frequent and men were expected to wear a tie; and the saloon bar which was Men Only.

The latter were spit n’ sawdust affairs and there was no real ‘dress code’ here except you had to wear long trousers after 6pm. If you wanted an insight into White Rhodesian “culture” this was the place to go. Easily identifiable were the regulars: a sad-eyed collection of red-nosed, old misfits staring gloomily in to their drinks. Most of them turned up as soon as the pub opened and stayed until it closed.

There wasn’t much talking, just a lot of guzzling. Having frequented the place for years most of them had exhausted their personal lives as conversational topics. Occasionally they would try some other subject.

Something like “Nice weather we’re having,” might be tried as an opening gambit.

“Yeah – very nice,” the grunted reply.

In stark contrast you would get the groups of young bucks, throwing darts and playing pool and yelling at each other about what a good time they were having.

In my early twenties I rather liked frequenting these bars although I was never one of the dancing on the tables sort. When I was based in Sinoia (now Chinoyi), working for the District Commissioners Office (my penance for letting the Government pay part of my varsity fees), I practically lived in the local bar.

There was not much else to do…

The Specks Hotel in Gatooma (now Kadoma) was another one I got to know during my Mines Department days and which perfectly fulfilled all my expectations of it.

Not that all of these small town hotels were tatty and down-at-heel and fallen- on- hard- times.

The Cecil Hotel in Umtali (now Mutare) was a rather grand old lady until it got taken over by the army, during the Rhodesian Bush War, and converted in to an HQ. So was the Midlands Hotel in Gwelo (now Gweru), another period hotel which stood directly opposite the Boggie Clock Tower, a rather strange edifice erected in the middle of Main Street for no other reason, it often seemed, than to confuse out-of-town motorists ( it was actually built in 1928 to commemorate Major William James Boggie, an early big-wig in the town).

Boggie Clock Tower with Midlands Hotel on right. Gwelo (now Gweru).

After independence there were suggestions the Boggie Clock be pulled down. I am not sure whether that was because of its unfortunate colonial associations or because it was a traffic hazard. As far I am aware, it is still there, still bamboozling out of town motorists.

For me the most stylish and grandiose of all these hotels was the Old Meikles Hotel in Salisbury. Some might quibble, here, as to whether it actually qualifies as a small town hotel but since Salisbury was still in its adolescent stage when the hotel was built, back in 1915, I am including it.

Overlooking the gardens of Cecil Square where the first British settlers raised the Union Jack, it was a study in Victorian elegance and old world charm. Again there was a wonderful old verandah in the front where you could collapse in to a comfy seat and sip your gin and tonics and watch the folk passing by. Inside it was pleasantly dim, high-ceilinged and paved with cool tiles.

On Saturday mornings it would be packed solid with wealthy tobacco farmers come to town. Often there would be a man tinkling away on the piano in the background of the lounge where the farmers had congregated, with another man playing the double bass next to him, partly concealed by a potted palm tree.

In what can only be counted as a resounding victory for the cultural philistines – and an unmitigated disaster for the rest of us – the Old Meikles was demolished in the mid-1970s and replaced by a functional, modern but utterly character-less structure.

Having grown up with it always being there, like a comforting blanket, I felt bereft. I was never able to look at Salisbury through the same eyes after that.

When I moved to South Africa in 1984 – the demolition of the Old Meikles was but one of my reasons for taking this step – I found the situation very much the same down here although here and there a few of the old hotels still survived.

There is still one in Howick, the town nearest to where I now live, whose doors continue to remain open although how well it is doing I have no idea. It is just around the corner from the Howick Falls so is, not too surprisingly, called the Falls Hotel.

Somerset East, where my sister Nicky and her husband, John, moved to, around 2009, has one on its main street named – you guessed it – the Somerset Hotel.

My pub-crawling days were long over when I came drifting in to town so I never actually went inside but I am sure it would meet all the criteria for a small town hotel. The outside certainly does except it is painted a garish yellow instead of my preferred white, a black mark in my eyes.

The one morning, when I was staying with my sister, an almighty hullabaloo suddenly erupted from outside it which had me thinking the end of the world was upon us. When we went out to investigate we found ourselves confronted by a scene that looked like something from the set of a Mad Max movie. The bikers had come to town.

There seemed to be hundreds of them hurtling up and down the main drag, revving their engines, spinning their wheels and kicking up huge clouds of blue smoke, hydrocarbons and testosterene in to the air. Others were leaning from the balcony upstairs, clutching their brandy and cokes and shouting boozy instructions.

Folk thronged the street, some still in their Sunday finery, others in filthy T shirts and shorts. Kids dodged in and out of the traffic. There was so much haze and noxious gas and so many people you could barely make out the Dutch Reformed Church down the road.

It all kind of made sense. If the first thing you need in a small town is a kerk for your prayers, a mart for selling food and a pub where you can commit the sort of sins that would warrant praying about, than Somerset East filled the bill.

It was a classic Southern African dorp with a marvellous old hotel…