The public’s faith in the ANC government’s ability to manage the Covid-19 crisis – initially high – began to fray as signs of disarray appeared within the party. The most striking example of this was over the cigarette sales ban. Having announced it would be lifted, President Cyril Ramaphosa was over-ruled, a few days, later by the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Nkosana Dlamini-Zuma, who insisted the ban would stay, leaving many wondering just who was in charge? With Finance Minister, Tito Mboweni, complaining publicly that the government was losing millions a month in lost revenue it could ill-afford as a result of the ban, some journalists and opposition parties went so far as to suggest that Dlamini-Zuma had connections to the illegal cigarette trade.
There was even speculation that the radicals within the ANC, led by Dlamini-Zuma and Ace Magashule, were using the pandemic as a pretext for pursuing power.
With public goodwill evaporating, as what started off as a health emergency increasingly turned in to a matter of law and order, many South Africans were anxious to hear what President Cyril Ramaphosa would have to say in his next address to the nation. In attempting to allay these fears, the clearly tired president said the Covid-19 lock-down had achieved its objectives so far, and had saved many lives, and as a result it was now possible to adopt a slightly more flexible approach depending on where high levels of infection occur.
He announced that the easing of restrictions would start at the end of May with the metropolitan areas of Gauteng, Cape Town and eThekwini the most likely to remain at Level 4.
More than 40 000 people were expected to die from the corona-virus in South Africa by November, one million will be effected and the country is unlikely to have enough ICU beds at the peak of the pandemic according to projections by Health Minister, Zweli Mkhize, and members of a Covid-19 Modelling Consortium. The briefing came after intense criticism about the apparent lack of transparency over the modelling and other Covid-19 data.
With the easing of restrictions on religious gatherings the government appeared to abandon all pretence it was following the science or acting rationally. It also showed it was remarkably susceptible to pressure groups with many people questioning the need for the continuing ban on cigarette sales or why churches should be allowed to open their doors to up to 500 people when other organisations – such as restaurants and hair salons – couldn’t?
In a scathing rebuke to a government that postures as democratic-minded and rights conscious, the Pretoria High Court ruled that the regulations enforced upon South Africans under Level 3 and 4 of the nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the Covid-19 corona-virus were “unconstitutional and invalid”. The court gave the government 14-days to amend the regulations that were still in play under Level 3.
In the wake of the global Black Lives Movement, triggered by the killing of George Floyd in the United States, a social media furore laid bare the experiences of black Africans at some of South Africa’s most celebrated private schools at the hands of both staff and pupils. The anti-racist account, “yousilenceweamplify” on Instagram, set up for past and current students at Herschel Girls High School in Cape Town quickly spread and prompted hash-tags denouncing racism from across the country, including Pietermaritzburg.
Without naming dates or specific security measures, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the grooming and personal care business will be allowed to open soon, along with sit-down restaurants, accommodation establishments, conference facilities, theatres, casinos, non-contact sport and contact sport (but only for training). He warned that as the country opens up the risk of infection “inevitable increases”.
This was followed by a warning from Finance Minister, Tito Mboweni, that South Africa was staring a debt crisis “in the eyes” as soon as 2024 if the country’s spending and economic outlook did not change dramatically.
An ashen-faced Finance Minister, Tito Mboweni, could offer no green shoots during his emergency budget presentation, warning instead that South Africa would record its worst economic performance since the Great Depression with a projected contraction of 7.2%.
Invoking the image of a hippo’s wide-open jaws – to symbolise the gap between income and expenditure – the finance minister said that closing this gap was the Herculean task South Africa faced…
When lockdown was first introduced in South Africa I went along with received opinion. I washed my hands thoroughly. I practiced social distancing. Realising I was in the at risk category, I only left the farm twice in the first seventy-eight days and when I did I wore a mask. I made sure I got in to town just as the shops were opening and didn’t spend any more time in them than I needed to.
In the same spirit, I tried to make lockdown a positive experience. Over the months I found different things to focus on. I developed interests I never had before. I re-established my connection with the living world.
Indeed, with hindsight, I think one of the most important things lock-down – and retirement for that matter – gave me was time to slow down and start noticing things. The sheer scale of the global catastrophe forced me in to a kind of retreat, a moment of reflection.
I began studying my immediate surroundings with an even greater interest.
For example: each day, since lockdown began, found me patrolling my garden forensically, in the manner of an East German border guard back in the Cold War era, except what I was on the look-out for was not defectors but butterflies. Instead of an assault rifle, I carried my old Canon.
As winter progressed so their numbers dwindled but every now and again I would come across one, fluttering along in all its flowery grace and fragile beauty. With every new butterfly I identified I felt a mounting sense of elation and achievement.
Steel-blue Ciliate Blue
Africa Grass Blue
Common Diadem
Forest Caper White.
Determined to remain upbeat, in spite of the grim trajectory the virus was taking, I deliberately limited my intake of news to what I deemed necessary for me to be able to produce my one topical weekly cartoon. It wasn’t always easy. At times the line between tragedy and farce grew very fine.
Like most people, I accepted the logic and rationale behind the initial lockdown but as the weeks stretched in to months I found my faith beginning to waiver. Having done its best to scare us in to staying indoors the ANC government began to flounder on some of its own draconian rules.
These included a ban on the sale of cigarettes and alcohol, both of which were based on a rather convoluted logic, as well as some sloppy and outdated science. Many of the other regulations – like what sort of clothes you could or couldn’t buy under Level 4 of the lockdown – were just plain nonsensical, verging on Kafka-like.
My suspicions that there was something both insidious and wrong with the handling of the pandemic was reinforced when the Judge in the High Court of Pretoria declared that many of the regulations failed the “rationality test” – and were also unconstitutional and invalid. Indeed, as the crisis dragged on, it became increasingly apparent that many of the government ministers were using the pandemic as a cover to pursue their own hidden agendas and conduct their own personal crusades – and that these often had very little to do with our health.
As so often happens in South Africa, ideology had trumped common sense…
Police Minister Bheki Cele and COGTA Minister Nkosana Dlamini-Zuma applying the screws…
Not that our problems were necessarily worse than anywhere else. The US, for example, was typically overconfident in its exceptional-ism and paid the price.
When the news seemed overwhelming, however, nature provided a balm. It became my escape. My therapy. My reminder of how much I have to be thankful for.
I am lucky to live in the country. In many ways my life carried on as it had before lockdown; there was no real adjustment required. I could still go for daily walks. There was my garden to work. My chickens to feed.
Nor was I all that bothered about being cut-off from the rest of society. As a cartoonist I am used to the solitary life. I have always worked from home so self-isolation is a habit for me.
I won’t pretend there weren’t things I missed – a cup of coffee with a friend, a simple hug, the freedom to drive where I liked.
By way of companions, I had the birds. There is not a day in my life that is not improved by seeing my resident pair of Boubous bouncing along or hearing the Cape Turtle Doves calling from the trees.
Resident male Southern Boubou, bouncing along...
The migrants were, of course, long gone. I missed them but we still had our regulars in my garden. Each morning I would wake up to the Cape Robin and the Olive Thrush singing outside my window. If I got up early enough I sometimes caught our skittish pair of Natal Francolin making a dash for it across my lawn.
With the breeding season over the weavers had lost their masks but still gathered on my food table every morning chattering away like excited schoolboys. They would be joined by the rock pigeons, doves and sparrows.
The South African lockdown officially started just as autumn was giving way to winter. I love winter. With the rains over everything begins to dry out and a smoky haze veils the sky, dulling the light and robbing the landscape of contrasts. Dust coats everything near the road, even the trees and houses.
Sunrise over the valley with pockets of mist.
There is a stark, minimalist beauty to the countryside at this time of the year. Sometimes Jack Frost comes calling overnight, leaving little patches of white icicles clenching the ground. On other occasions, a chill wind blows in the mornings and as I set off to take stock of the local state of nature the leaves that autumn stripped from the trees crunch and snap beneath my feet.
Across the valley thin sheets of mist hang suspended above the hollows. On the saddle path, the sun’s rays catch the dew drops hanging on the funnel spiders’ webs.
Funnel Spider webs.
You can smell the crisp, frosty, dryness in the air.
It is my favourite time of the year for walking. The icy cold appeals to the Spartan in me. I find it invigorating and oddly purifying. It sharpens my senses.
In the afternoon the light and temperatures fade early. By five-thirty the chickens have already put themselves to bed.
Sitting on my balcony, at twilight, sipping one of my hard-to-come-by-beers I could feel the breath of winter on my neck. It was cold. The soft evening skies at this time of year are beautiful though.
Below me I could sometimes hear the jackal calling as they set off on another night of hunting for food. In the moonlight the defoliated trees are silhouettes. The wind blowing up the rocky slopes rattle their branches.
There were other pleasures. Winter is also aloe season and with their beautiful orange-red flowers came the sunbirds (mostly Amethyst, Malachite and Greater Double- collared). It is also the time when the Wild Dagga (Leonotis leonorus) bushes flower, another sunbird favourite. I deliberately planted both species to try and seduce birds in to my garden and it has done the trick.
Malachite sunbird in aloe.
Winter is not all good. It can also be a time of violent drama. From where we are, safe in my sanctum overlooking the valley, you can often see huge fires sweeping across its floor, destroying countless creatures as it goes. I cannot imagine how many insects, reptiles and rodents must get enveloped and killed in the flames. This, in turn, impacts on the raptors that hunt them because it means less food. Winter can be hard on predator and prey alike.
Fire in the valley...
At such times the sun turns a pale yellow behind the plumes of smoke and the air is bitter with the smell of ash and burning debris.
This got me thinking about conservation, loss of biodiversity and what we are doing to the world. Thanks to agribusiness, agrochemicals, artificial fertilizer, farm mechanization and an intensification of arable farming much of our natural fauna and flora is being destroyed. Looking out over our urban landscapes, too, I see an ever-expanding mass of railway tracks, petrol stations, cement blocks, pylons and factories pumping effluent in to our streams and poison in to the air. And piles of plastic.
As a keen twitcher, I have noticed the steady decline of wildlife over the years. I grew up, for instance, with guineafowl abundant and all around; after harvesting, the fields were fill of them, pecking their way through the stubble in search of dropped mielie seeds. In the decades since there numbers seem to have grown less and less. It is like someone came along and removed them all.
Our resident guineafowl flock. We raised them from chicks.
It makes me very sad. And angry. Far too much of our wildlife is teetering on the edge of the ecological cliff.
Paralleling that has been the steady spread of invasive plants. Vast acreages have been given over to sterile pine, wattle and gum plantations inside which very little lives.
Nor is it confined to that. One of the biggest problems we face on Kusane is eradicating the bramble, an alien, invasive, species that creeps over the grasses and crawls over the plants. It is like a cancer and a nightmare to fight your way through because its thorns shred your legs.
Likewise bugweed. Our neighbour has a veritable forest of these and the seeds are picked up by the birds and dropped on our farm where they easily germinate and spread.
Invading our grasslands, all these plants reduce water run-off, and increase the severity of wildfires. It has been estimated that alien trees consume 5% of our scarce water and are a direct threat to almost half of the 1600 natural species listed in South Africa’s Red Data List.
Ruminating on this, I find my mind returning to lockdown. I can’t help but see the Covid-19 pandemic as a portent, an omen, a warning and a reminder of how much our economies, our livelihoods and our well-being depend on the health of nature. That seems to me to be our problem – we have become alienated from the natural world.
We need to re-learn that we are part of nature, not above it. Destroy it, in our blind pursuit of profit, and we destroy ourselves…
I will do my little bit to try and stop that. I am a tree man. To help make a greener world, I have opened up a new patch of ground, alongside Rubble Row, where I have already planted yet more indigenous species (Paperbark thorn, Tree Fuschia, Cheesewood, Ouhout). I know I won’t live long enough to see them mature but that is not the point. I am doing it for the next generation, a generation who face a far scarier future than ours did.
Part of my self-planted indigenous forest.
Lockdown has taught me other lessons. Being forced to stay at home made me realise that – as frugal as I like to think I am – I used to waste a lot of money on unnecessary shopping trips in to town.
It has also induced the waste not want not attitude of my parent’s generation. With the supermarket shelves rapidly emptying because of panic-buying I decided I needed to resurrect my vegetable garden. Luckily I have a source of manure both from our chickens and sheep, as well as the stables down the road. We also have our own compost heap.
There is something very comforting and rewarding about tending your own vegetables and eating the result. Growing your own food reminds you that you are part of a system and that everything we eat comes – in one way or another – out of the earth.
That is something we need to keep in mind long after lockdown ends. Or else we may face an even worse environmental and human catastrophe…
As part of my plan of self-improvement to fill in the days I was stuck in lock-down, I decided to develop a new interest – butterfly spotting.
I make no bones about it. When I fixate on something, I don’t like to let go. As a political cartoonist, Robert Mugabe, Jacob Zuma and Donald Trump have all, in turn, become objects for both my anger and relentless scorn.
The flip side to this is my obsessive quest to find beauty and it is here the butterflies come in.
I like to hunt things not because I have any desire to capture or kill them but because of the sense of discovery it brings. Through acquaintance and experience comes knowledge.
I don’t know enough about butterflies to know if my local patch is a particularly good spot for them or not but they are here and this is where we both play out the daily drama of our lives. Like astronauts in a spaceship we are fellow-travellers, co-habitants in this capsule we call Earth. My joy stems from the search, the exercise of a skill and the intense pleasure that comes finding out who I share my space with..
I always enjoy these field excursions. There is a comforting familiarity about this countryside. I have walked it many times. Over the years I have got to know all the landmarks and a lot of the wildlife.
I know this stretch of grasslands is home to a little group of Wailing Cisticolas and that, on misty mornings, the Black Crows like to call from the top of those three pines. That odd-shaped cluster of rocks is the playground for a family of cheery, chatty, Buff-streaked Chats.
Wailing Cisticola.
The Yellow Warblers prefer the boggy patch down by the river. Invariably there will be a wagtail or two there as well where the stream runs fastest over the rocks.
And that cluster of pines over there? That is where the Long-crested Eagle has its nest.
It is not just the birds. Oribi and reedbuck are sometimes to be seen in that valley on the other side of the fence. There is an old Bushbuck ram who sometimes emerges from our small indigenous forest.
I have also stumbled on several puff-adders, lying doggo on this path. Them, I give a wide berth.
I have not been specifically studying them for all that long but already I have discovered that a surprising number of butterflies live here too.
As I walk along the path they come flapping and gliding, undulating and all but loop-the-looping. They can be difficult to get near even when they have settled on the ground. I wonder whether they have some sort of in-built sonar system that alerts them to my presence or whether they just pick up the vibrations of my boots hitting the ground?
There is still a lot to learn. With birds you can refine your focus by what you know about their preferences and behaviour. With butterflies I don’t have that sort of accumulated knowledge and experience. I am coming in half blind. I have to slowly feel my way.
I have no ‘hit list’ of butterflies I expect to see (other than the one who inspired this piece). I will accept whatever comes along.
I am beginning to make some progress. I now recognise an assortment of garden specials like the Garden Inspector (Precis ceryne ceryne), the Garden Acraea (Acraea horta), the Rainforest Brown (Cassionyympha cassius) and the Polka Dot (Pardopsis punctatissima). On Rubble Row there are usually African Monarchs (Danaus chrysippus) and Yellow Pansies (Junonia hierta cebrene).
A bit further down the path – almost half-way to the river – there is a bank where the African Jokers (my spirit butterfly, I have decided) like to hangout. This is where I also recorded my first Bush Bronze (Cacyreus lingeus), a small but beautifully patterned butterfly.
Bush Bronze
Bush Bronze
African Joker
Betwixt and between are a whole assortment of other butterflies, large, medium and small. And mostly colourful. Many are as stunning as their names suggest…
By constantly checking my butterfly field book* to identify the ones I am unfamiliar with I am slowly beginning to learn more about their characteristics, behaviour and preferred habitat.
I have also discovered the Karkloof, where I live, is home to one of the rarest of them all – the Karkloof Blue (Orachrysops ariadne. Also known as the Karkloof Cupid).
It is so rare that when ESKOM threatened to run a line of massive electricity pylons through our pristine, beautiful, valley, a group of concerned local conservationists and farmers banded together and used its highly threatened status as one of their arguments to oppose the construction.
Indeed the Karkloof Blue is so rare, the Midland Meander Association have adopted it as their symbol and made saving it part of their mission statement.
Flipping a little further through the pages of my book I discovered it is not the only butterfly that takes its name from the area. There is also the Karkloof Charanx (Charaxes karkloof. Also known as the Karkloof Emperor) and the Karkloof Russet (Aloeides susanae. Also known as Susan’s Copper).
Now I am getting in to this butterfly thing, I must look out for them too.
I decided to devote my main focus, however, to tracking down the Karkloof Blue, transferring the same obsessions I normally employ when birding. Its flight period is March-April which cuts down my window of opportunity considerably.
Before setting out to look for it, though, I needed to know more about my quarry.
The Field Guide describes it as “Colonial in steep-sided grass gullies near Afromontane forest.” That sounded a bit like our part of the world. Especially the ‘colonial’ bit…
Wanting to find out more I turned, next, to the University of Google:
Endemic to the mist-belt grassland of KwaZulu-Natal, the Karkloof Blue is on the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species.
Extensive burning, alien encroachment and livestock have all led to its decline as its habitat has been systematically destroyed. With only only three known colonies, one of which is in the Karkloof, it is now regarded as an indicator species.
Fires and alien encroachment…
The statistics make grim reading: due to afforestation and cultivation at least 92% of the Mist-belt grassland has been transformed, with only 1% in good condition remaining.
It seems pretty obvious to me that the Karkloof Blue is not the only creatures whose habitat is being destroyed in these ways. I am sure countless other insects, reptiles and rodents are experiencing a similar fate and this, in turn, must be having a ripple effect on the birds and animals that prey on them.
It is worrying. I suppose it all comes down to that spaceship analogy I used earlier on. We need to realise we only have limited resources and the more we destroy or pollute them, the more we threaten our own future survival.
As sad and distressing as I find this, I intend to persist in my efforts to track down the Karkloof Blue. So far, I have come across a few blue butterflies that come close but don’t quite fit the bill. There is the African Grass (or Sooty) Blue (Zizzeeria knysna), the Common Zebra Blue (Leptotes pirithous pirithous) and the Pea Blue (Lampides boeticus).
Pea Blue
African Grass Blue
Common Zebra Blue
But no Karkloof Blue.
With winter fast approaching and its flight period closing down, I decided to postpone my search until next season. Then, I intend to look harder, thinking about the best likely habitat and hoping for that lucky break and familiar surge of excitement that comes from finding something new.
I can feel it. I can sense it. I know it is out there somewhere in the rolling green ocean of grass, just waiting to be found.
It is the lure of the rare. The Karkloof Blue has become my Moby Dick. My White (Blue?) Whale.
African Monarch
Citrus Swallowtail
Common Diadem
Pioneer Caper White
Steel-blue Ciliate Blue
Yellow Pansy
Dark Blue Pansy
Forest Caper White
Garden Inspector
*Field Guide to the Butterflies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (published by Struik Nature).
Back in the days before
the Internet, Facebook, Twitter and cellphones with cameras, one of
the few things you could do, as a hip young thing, was immerse
yourself in music or, more particularly, rock ‘n roll.
The music of the time certainly influenced the way I looked at and felt about life. At boarding school it provided a tremendous mental and emotional release from the strict discipline and conservative family values which the authorities, in the paternalistic form of the Rhodesian Front Government, seemed so determined to ram down my throat.
It was an age when music was still seen as a catalyst for political and social change. At university I tried to fob myself off as a member of the counter-culture revolution, rejecting the materialism of my parents generation. I let it all hang out and felt groovy and grew my hair long, just like my music idols did, although, truth to tell, I was way too well-mannered to ever practice free love and too scared to take drugs.
Trying to fob myself off as a member of the counter-culture movement…
These days that spirit of youthful rebellion, that was a defining feature of my generation, seems to have all but petered out partly, I imagine, because the modern youth no longer faces the prospect of military conscription.
Likewise, most of the groups I listened to back then have long since disintegrated or disappeared off the scene (the Rolling Stones proving the one stubborn exception) but there are three singer/songwriters who have stuck with me along my life journey and provided a continuing link in my ongoing love affair with rock music – Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. That chain has gone through periods of strength and weakness with albums of unquestionable brilliance being mixed up with the occasional dud.
The Future of Rock ‘n Roll…
Of the three artists, Springsteen was undoubtedly the late arrival although it’s hard to believe that it has been almost thirty years since rock critic Jon Landau penned the portentous lines: “Last Thursday, at the Harvard Square theatre, I saw my rock ‘n’ roll past flash before my eyes. And I saw something else: I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time”.- a eulogy the Boss has spent the rest of his life trying to live down
Besides their obvious musical genius, Dylan, Young and Springsteen shared certain other common characteristics. All three have made a career out of defying people’s expectations, constantly seeking to evade the mantle their fans had placed on them.
Starting out as an
acolyte of Woody Guthrie, Dylan famously scandalised members of the
folk music scene with his decision to go electric, prompting outraged
shouts of “Judas” from the audience. Springsteen, whose
ground-breaking Born To Run had come out in the shadow of the Vietnam
war, found himself being deserted in droves by his overwhelmingly
liberal fan base with the release of Born in the USA an album many,
mistakenly, saw as a paean to the policies of Ronald Reagan.
Another trait the
three share is that all they have all enjoyed late period career
revivals. Freer than ever before and liberated from the constraints
of labels and packaging, it seemed like they were finally able to
just relax and rediscover their mojo.
For his part Dylan displayed an astonishing return to form with 1997’s Time Out Of Mind and then, just to show this was no fluke, followed it up in 2001 with Love and Theft, an album which confirmed his renaissance, establishing a tighter sound and a looser attitude
A return to form…
With his craggy face and unkempt hair, Neil Young nowadays looks more like a weather-beaten farmer than a musician but that does not mean he has lost his edge or his ability to read the mood of the times. Both Springsteen and Young beat their much younger counterparts to the finish line with the release of their devastating post -9/11 albums (The Rising – Springsteen; Living with War – Young) which reflected a mounting alarm with the direction George W Bush was taking America. Young followed this up with his Freedom of Speech Tour – along side former band mates Crosby, Stills and Nash – staged during the US 2006 mid-term elections. Consisting mostly of anti-war songs, from Buffalo Springfield oldies such as For What Its Worth and CSNY’s era-defining Ohio, their tour received a mixed reaction with enthusiastic reviews being counterbalanced with scornful appraisals of the “ageing hippies” attempts to rouse America into antiwar protest.
Continuing on his lonesome way…
No matter. Young, who,
somewhat to his own bemusement, had been one of the inspirations
behind the whole “grunge” movement just shrugged it off and
continued on his lonesome, iconoclastic, way.
At this stage of my
life it seems unlikely I’ll ever get to realise my ambition of seeing
either Dylan or Young perform live but I did manage to catch
Springsteen when he visited South Africa. It was all I had hoped for
and more. For a few glorious – if rain-drenched – hours I, too,
felt young again.
In the same week it was announced that South Africa was in recession, King Zwelithini tried to lever support for a vanity project of his. Claiming, somewhat dubiously, to have the support of Britain’s Prince Charles, Zwelithini announced at the opening of the KZN Legislature that he wanted a dam – not just any old dam but the biggest and longest in Africa.
What he didn’t explain was how he expected it to be funded given the cash-strapped state of the country’s economy and the burgeoning national debt.
The World Health Organisation declared Covid-19 a global pandemic as the virus, unknown to world health officials three-months ago, rapidly spread to more than 120 000 people across the world. The growing crisis saw the rand crash through R17/$ and South African shares plummet as scenes of market mayhem played out across the globe.
In the midst of this carnage, Eskom chose to announce it was once again implementing Stage Four load-shedding putting the already ailing South African economy under even greater strain.
With Italy seeing 475 deaths in one day – the highest daily toll in one country throughout the entire pandemic – World Health Organisation head Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned Africa “to prepare for the worst and prepare today”.
His views were backed up by Professor Saloshini Naidoo, the head of public health at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, who said she could not emphasise enough the importance of behaviour change to prevent a wide scale and unprecedented spread of the virus in South Africa.
“These next two weeks are vitally important for people to adhere to the president’s recommendations and ensure that there is little to no contact with others so we can flatten the curve,” she warned.
Following the example of numerous other countries around the world, South Africa went in to full lock-down at midnight, 26th March. The drastic measures, aimed at slowing the spread of the Covid-19 virus, included a complete prohibition on non-essential movement, a ban on liquor sales, a closure of public spaces, community halls and religious premises, all under penalty of prosecution.
The first week of the Covid-19 lock-down saw many South Africans already beginning to feel the pinch, with many of the self-employed fast running out of cash. Their anxiety levels were not eased by the warning from Health Minister, Zweli Mkhize, that they must not expect the increase in cases and deaths to slow immediately as a result of people staying at home. He added that the lock-down may need to be extended.
With the rate of infection from the Covid-19 soaring to unprecedented levels in the United States, President Donald Trump continued to bluster, misspeak and ad-lib his way through the crisis. Having earlier clung to a narrative of normality (It is a Democrat “hoax”, it is just a flu), he had been obliged to make an embarrassing U-Turn and now sought to transfer the blame for the pandemic elsewhere. He found another convenient scapegoat in the form of the World Health Organisation who he sharply criticised for being too focused on China and issuing bad advice during the outbreak.
While President Cyril Ramaphosa’s – and his Health Minister, Zweli Mkhize’s – political capital soared over their handling of the Covid-19 crisis in South Africa, the same could not be said of his grand-standing, thuggish, Police Minister, Bheki Cele. With many reports of police brutality emerging, he was criticised for, among other things, allowing his personal obsession with alcohol to lead to unconstitutional and criminal action by security force members.
In an address to the nation, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the gradual easing of Covid-19 lock-down restrictions from the beginning of May although public gatherings and movements would still be highly restricted and some parts of the country would remain in hard lock-down. The easing of restrictions meant the country would move from its current strict Level 5 lock-down to a slightly relaxed Level 4.
If she had lived my mother would have turned a hundred this year. To mark this milestone, I decided to write this tribute to her…
My mother in her youth.
When in doubt have a cup of tea…Pic courtesy of Sally Scott.
My mother was one of life’s naturally good people; someone who managed to combine intelligence and kindness with an innate graciousness. Although she lived by clear standards of morality, she eschewed the judgemental; throughout her long and not always easy life, she remained a devoted mother and constant wife.
Born at Cassington in Oxfordshire on the 15th April, 1920, her father, Sydney Ralph Bridgen (who had married Helen Perkins), a veteran of the WW1 trenches, taught at the local school.
Helen & Sydney Bridgen.
He would later
assume the headship at King Sorbonne in Hampshire and then, in 1928,
Herstmonceux. It was in this idyllic, semi-rural setting that my
mother spent most of her formative years.
She had a happy, if sheltered, childhood. Her family – which included her two sisters (Barbara and Marguerite) and brother (Harry) – was close and supportive. From her father she inherited a love of the English country side and also his creative genes.
Barbara and Monica Bridgen.
Marguerite, Barbara, Monica, Harry, Sydney and Helen Bridgen.
She was especially interested in English, History and Art and showed real talent in these subjects. Her father encouraged her literary efforts. One of her poems, To a Seagull, appeared in CornhillMagazine in July, 1936, its then editor, Lord Gorell, commenting that “for one of your age your lines show very considerable promise”. Another poem, Sussex Downs, which she wrote and illustrated when she was only thirteen was published in the Daily Mail.
Monica Bridgen, 1934.
She excelled in art. Her drawings were really wonderful, so delicate and full of life and yet also extraordinarily confident for someone who had only just turned seventeen and often appeared unsure of herself. She won several Royal Drawing Awards.
Marguerite by Monica Bridgen (later Stidolph).
Barbara by Monica Bridgen (later Stidolph)
My mother was
particularly close to her brother Harry who, at the outbreak of the
Second World War, would join the RAF. It was Harry who arrived home
on pass, one weekend, with a group of his air-force colleagues.
Amongst them was a young RAF officer from Southern Rhodesia, Reginald Neville Stidolph. He was handsome and full of charm and in outlook and background very different from the few young men the shy, young, English rose had met. The attraction seems to have been instant and mutual. Putting on a posh accent my father’s first words were “Introduce me….please!”
R.N.Stidolph as a young airman, Fairy Swordfish.
Wing Commander R.N.Stidolph, DFC.
They were married on
the 10th July, 1940, in Herstmonceux. Progress in the
romance was curtailed when, on the 22nd August, my father
flew back to Alexandria in Egypt where he was stationed. He would not
return until March, 1943, two and a half years later.
Such was the
schizoid life of a bomber pilot trying to conduct a relationship
during a war.
Nine months after they got married my eldest brother, Patrick Alan, was born. In my mother’s version of the story he arrived by candle-light at Monk’s Rest, the long time Bridgen home in Herstmonceux, as German planes dropped incendiary bombs all around the village.
Monica Stidolph with Patrick. 1941.
A second son, Andrew
Paul Rosslyn, would also be born during the course of the war.
At the end of the war, my father was keen to get back to Africa and so, for my mother, there had to be a parting, sad like all farewells. Leaving the only world she had known she climbed on board the Carnavon Castle with her two young sons and set sail for Cape Town – and a new life.
My mother and unknown child, leaving England.
I have often wondered what she must have felt as she stood on the deck, watching the coast of England sinking in to the ship’s wake. No doubt there must have been a sense of expectation and adventure, mingled with the inevitable regret. I imagine she must have been nervous about the new challenges which faced her, whether she was equal to them only time would tell.
How my mother, Monica Stidolph, imagined Africa would be…
My mother’s first home was in the suburb of Parktown, in Salisbury, near to the airport where my father was now working as a pilot for Central African Airways. It was here my brother Peter and I were born although I have little recollection of the place.
Monica Stidolph with her four boys – Paul, Patrick, Anthony and Peter. Parktown.
Having settled in to
her new home my mother set about doing what was expected of a woman
in her position back then. Forsaking her artistic interests she
devoted her life to motherhood and keeping a tidy house.
For his part, my father – who had always hankered after having a place in the country – decided to scout out what smallholdings were available within a reasonable distance of Salisbury. In the end he brought one, about thirty acres, in Umwindsidale, just off the Enterprise road.
The only building on the property was a long rectangular room made of mud and grass and local poles which had a corrugated-iron roof and a floor of beaten earth. It was here we all lived, cheek by jowl, while my father set about building a new home which he loosely modelled on the traditional Cape Dutch style of house.
Our original house.
My mother with puff addder she shot with my father’s RAF-issue revolver.
My main memory of
the property is the view which was spectacular. Immediately below our
front verandah was a long, wide valley, extensively cultivated, along
whose edges the Umwindsi River flowed, its path marked by an outline
of dark green. Beyond this fertile plain stretched a further
succession of hills and valleys, blue and hazy, each one becoming
successively paler, in turn, as they rose to meet the sky.
When I was nine or
thereabouts my father decided the time had finally come to go the
whole hog and buy a proper farm. A natural optimist, once he had
chosen a course of action he was not one to be easily diverted from
it. More cautious by nature, my mother, I think, had her reservations
but eventually succumbed to the idea and allowed herself to be swept
along by my father’s enthusiasm.
I was away at boarding school at REPS, in the Matopos hills, when my father set out in search of his dream property. As it turned out he settled for the first one he laid his eyes on. Situated at the end of the Nyanga range the farm was, indeed, very beautiful although whether it would prove suitable for agriculture was a question which still had to be answered.
Consisting of five separate farms – Wheatlands, Barrydale, Groenfontein, Ellenvale and Witte Kopjes – it was in the shape of an inverted ‘L’ with its two northern-most beacons being situated on the top of Mount Nyangui (my father decided to apply this name to the whole farm) and Muchena respectively.
Nyangui (“The Place of Shouting”) mountain with baobab and old lands. Picture courtesy of Patrick Stidolph.
The rest of the farm
was low-lying with a long strip of red land, held between two rivers:
the Mwenje and the Pendeke. To the west and north lay the Zimbiti
Tribal Trust Land, on the eastern side it was flanked by the Nyangui
Forest Reserve.
It was also the
last white, commercial farm, in the district, and some distance from
the nearest rail head. Beyond it lay even more broken country with
yet more hills covered in ancient terraces and fortifications,
stretching down to the Ruenya River. Very few whites ever visited
this part of the world although there were two Catholic missions –
Elim and Avila.
On the other side of
the Ruenya was Makaha – literally meaning “Wild Country”. It
certainly was. A gold belt in this area had drawn some early
prospectors, including the German, Carl Peters, whose name you
forever find cropping up all over Africa. He claimed them for
Germany as the Kaiser Wilhelm Goldfields in 1892. The name was used
for the whole area until the war with Germany broke out in 1915, when
it was hastily dropped.
This, then, was our new home. If Southern Rhodesia was little more than a distant outpost of the British Empire, we occupied a very remote corner of that outpost.
For my mother, surveying the farm for the first time, it must have seemed a long way from the small English village she had left behind; the enormous view down the sun-drenched valley with the mountains running alongside, the tall, billowing clouds, the emptiness, the sense of space.
There was much to do. The farm hadn’t been worked for years so there were lands to stump and clear, furrows to dig, paddocks to fence off. While the land was being cleared, a house of sorts was built, using mud and local rock, next to the small stream which had a waterfall with a pool below. Upstream from that was a wide reed bed in which a family of wild pig and a large python lived.
View towards Muchena mountain. Pic coutesy of Patrick Stidolh.
Preparing the lands. Pic courtesy of Patrick Stidolph.
When
my father bought the farm he had great plans for it. He wanted to
make good. He visualised a future in which the farm would prosper to
the point where it could one day be divided up and each portion left
to one
of
his sons to run in turn.
The
reality turned out somewhat different for reasons which were not
altogether his fault.
Although situated in a beautiful part of Rhodesia, it was not good agricultural country. The soils were mostly poor, the rainfall patchy and unreliable. We were also very far from the markets. My father had little capital to start with and soon found himself indebted to the Land bank.
Inspecting the cattle. Anthony, Monica, Reg and Peter Stidolph.
The
time would come when he would be forced to take stock. We were far
from prosperous. Going through the bank statements and farm books it
became obvious to my father that there was no way we could get out of
the slough we were in, if we continued as we were.
He
needed to find more money. The most obvious way to do this was for
him to return to his old job as a pilot.
And
so the next eight-years or so my father all but disappeared out of
lives, working, at first, in the Persian Gulf and then, later, the
Sudan and Sierra Leone.
In his absence my mother was left to cope with the running the farm, as well as raising six (later seven) children, as best she could. Even though it must have seemed miles away from the world she imagined when she first came out to Africa, it was a struggle she faced courageously.
With her children away at boarding school, it was an isolated life. Her only neighbours, Old Man Mienie and his wife, lived about 10km away. Visitors were few and far between – the occasional animal health inspector come to check the cattle, the odd policeman on patrol. Sometimes our relations, the MacKenzie’s, would motor up from Salisbury for a visit.
There was no electricity so my mother had to rely on candles and paraffin lamps (and later gas) for lighting. Our water was pumped up to a tank on the hill behind our house by a hydraulic ram that fed off a furrow. In the early days she had to boil it in a drum on an outside fire and it was here she did her cooking too.
Mum’s kitchen.
Building a house, circa 1958.
When
we started out we could not afford a tractor so had to rely on oxen
to pull the single furrow plough. It was a slow, laborious process
and because we could not afford too much labour either, us children
were also expected to muck in.
The
weather was changeable. In the dry season bush fires were a constant
threat. Hot, dry winds seemed to suck all the goodness out of
everything. Drought could ruin the crops and enfeeble the cattle to
the point where they gave up hope and died.
You
never could predict when the rains would arrive and when they
did you could never tell what they would do. Sometimes
the storms moved in narrow swaths, drenching one part of the farm but
completely missing the next.
It
was very easy to think that there was indeed, some capricious mind
behind it all, a mind that took a certain impish delight in seeing
your moods oscillate between hope and despair..
Despite having no
background in agriculture my mother battled on as best she could. The
farm consumed her life. Just when it seemed it was finally about to
start paying for itself a new, more ominous, threat loomed on the
horizon: the outbreak of the Rhodesian Bush War in the early1970s.
When my mother was
eventually forced to leave Nyangui because of the deteriorating
security situation she floundered and then recovered but, deep down,
I sensed her life had been irreparably altered. It was like a light
had switched off inside her and she was never quite able to regain
her old enthusiasm.
Thereafter she accepted whatever hand fate chose to deal her with an almost Buddha-like stoicism. Nevertheless, I think she was happy enough in Francistown where she moved to join my father who was flying for WENELA and then later Bowmont, the small farm they purchased near Kadoma.
Some years after my my father died she married our next door neighbour, Jim Hastings, a small-worker who set up a three-stamp mill on the property to crush for gold. When Zimbabwe started to go through a rather tumultous patch in its history, it was decided they should both move on to my brother Peter’s tobacco farm, Sangalolo, in Karoi.
When his farm was seized during Robert Mugabe’s violent and chaotic land grab we arranged for her to come down South Africa to live with my sister, Penny, and her husband , Ric, in Grahamstown. All three of my sisters lived in the area and I was able to come down on regular visits from Pietermaritzburg, so she was loved and well cared for.
Her final years were peaceful and happy. After the hard life and sacrifices she had made it was the least she deserved.
My mother in old age with Henry the cat.
When I think of my
mother the qualities which stand out for me are her honesty, her
integrity, her decency and her quiet strength. She played the hand
she had been given, she was never one to complain about her lot.
Despite having led a life mostly cut-off from normal society, she
showed no sign of being lonely; on the contrary she seemed to derive
a certain comfort from the solitude.
Like many married women of that generation, her life involved compromises which left her talents unfulfilled. I have always thought it sad that she gave up on her art at such an early age. It is one of the reasons I felt compelled to persist with my own efforts. I wanted to live the life she could have had.
Although she remained reticent on the subject, I don’t think she had many regrets about this sacrifice. Her children came first. She was certainly proud of us. “I didn’t produce a single dud,” she liked to say towards the end of her life.
That we turned out
the way we did was largely due to her.
My hope is that as she lay dying, with her three loving daughters by her side, she got an inkling of how much we appreciated what she had sacrificed for us and how much she would be missed…
MORE EXAMPLES OF MONICA BRIDGEN’S ARTWORK:
The following drawings were mostly done when my mother was only seventeen..
My father R.N.Stidolph.
My father, R.N.Stidolph
My mother’s sisters, Marguerite (above) and Barbara.
My father, R.N.Stidolph.
POEMS OF MONICA BRIDGEN:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Many thanks to my brother, Patrick, for researching our family tree and to my mother, Monica, whose own memoirs I drew on for this tribute.
Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
Vladimir Nabokov.
A host of butterflies. I took this pic near Barberton, Mpumalanga.
It is 7.30 am and I am taking my usual nosey wander down the path that leads from my house to the Kusane river. It is a beautiful, balmy, sun-filled, day. Suddenly a butterfly – or rather a butterfly and its passenger – alights on a plant just to my right.
In the past I would have just cast a cursory glance in their direction and then proceeded on my way.
This time I stop, grab my old Canon out of its bag and start snapping away. The reason for this is that I have recently been given a field guide to the butterflies of South Africa* to review and suddenly I have become enamoured with the subject.
I circle around the butterfly, trying to get closer and closer, angling in for the perfect shot. I have no idea what the butterfly is but as soon as I get home I will get out the book and try and identify it, looking for its most distinctive features (as a political cartoonist I have had a lot of experience in this – it is what I do when a new president or other public figure appears). I will also look at the butterflies habits and distribution, hunting for those tell-tale clues that might aid me in my search.
African Monarch (Danaus chrysippus), Kusane Farm.
Then I will add it to my list.
As an artist my approach to nature has always been more sentimental than scientific. I am attracted by the lyrical rather than the factual. I look for beauty and seek solace in my natural surroundings. I love the intense intimacy you can develop with your local landscape over time.
All of which makes it strange that I have neglected – although not completely ignored – butterflies for so long because if anything inspires a sense of wonder in nature they do.
I am determined to remedy this. I have probably left it rather late in life to ever become anything like an expert but you have to start somewhere. And, because it is so open, Kusane Farm seems a good place to begin. Also, I live here.
A Pirate Butterfly (Catacroptera cloanthe cloanthe) about to take off. Note small beetles. Kusane.
In spring and summer we get lots of wild flowers coming up in the mist-belt grasslands, especially after a burn. That serves as a magnet for the nectar-loving insect.
It is 7.30 am again and I am back on the familiar path hoping to carry on where I left off before. Around me the swallows are diving and swooping with quick forward thrusts. There is a strong impression of activity and movement everywhere.
I home in on a butterfly which has landed in a cluster of flowers.
As I approach it, it glides off, stalls, hovers and drops down on to another flower with closed wings. Out comes its long, thin, tube-like proboscis and inserting it in to the flower it proceeds to feed. Once it has sated itself, off it goes in search of the next flower.
Everywhere I look there are other butterflies doing the same.
Their flight paths seem wildly erratic, they keep making continual adjustments to their speed, direction and angle of flight. Unlike most birds or bees, you don’t get that sense they know where they are going.
And yet they obviously do.
Sometimes – as happens in the annual migration of the Brown-veined White Butterfly (Belenois aurota) which takes place at midsummer each year – they come floating by in straggly groups for days on end. There are thousands and thousands of them in seemingly endless flight. I was amazed to read, in my guide, that this particular species originate in the dry Karoo and Kalahari where they gather in their millions and take to the sky heading in a southerly to easterly direction up through the East Cape and Kwa Zulu – Natal to the Mozambique coastline.
Brown-veined White (aka Pioneer Caper White)…
…on mid-summer migration. Kusane.
That is a long way to fly for something so fragile and small.
What makes this mass migration even more astonishing is that the butterflies need precisely timed stopovers for feeding – which means they need to find flowers growing at regular intervals.
This can’t be easy since to fuel this epic marathon they probably have to harvest hundreds of flowers a day.
The other question which kept whizzing around my brain, as I stood watching them zig-zagging their way across the farm, was this – how can a creature with such a pin-size brain navigate and keep track of its position?! I must confess I have no explanation. As happens everywhere in nature, there still are many unanswered questions, which intrigue amateurs at least as much as scientists.
My butterfly list, so far, is not very long and includes no rarities, just your common varieties (although back in 2018, when I was in Marakele, I did see a Kransberg Widow, a very rare and beautiful butterfly which briefly appears during November and early-December and only occurs on this particular mountain. Unfortunately, I did not get a photograph of it).
I hope to rectify that.
To an outsider this making of lists probably seems like a strange passion, one bordering on obsession. Almost a perversion. They may be right. I don’t care. For me it is all part of the thrill of the chase.
As a long-standing twitcher, I have experienced the sense of excitement and privilege which comes from finding something special (a Pel’s Fishing Owl, Narina Trogon, African Broadbill, Rudd’s Apalis, Southern Banded Snake Eagle, Palm-nut Vulture, a pale, female, morph form of the Eurasian Honey Buzzard – to name a few). That thrill grows even stronger when you come across what we interpret as a “rarity” or a “vagrant” (my list is probably topped by the Gull-billed Tern which I got at Nyamithi Pan in Ndumo Game Reserve in Zululand).
Already I am picking up some valuable tips and learning some important life-lessons as I pursue my quarry and record my sightings.
I have discovered, for example, that while we humans may abhor them in our gardens, butterflies simply love weeds. The irritating black jack, which you find so annoying because it sticks to your clothes when you brush past it, seems to be a particular favourite of theirs.
Garden Acraea (Acraea horta) on blackjack flower, Kusane.
This in turn has caused a major rethink on my part. Suddenly I am far more reluctant to pull these bothersome plants out of my flower garden and toss them to the chickens to turn in to mulch. They fulfil a role. They feed the butterflies who I want to attract to my garden. I want the butterflies to look upon my home as their home.
With climate change already taking its toll, one wonders what will happen to the humble, unassuming, butterfly in the future? Will they be able to evolve or adjust their behaviour?
Rising temperatures, associated with climate change, have already begun to change birds schedules. Many have started moving south.
When I first arrived in KwaZulu-Natal, for example, it was unusual to see the Wooly-necked Stork south of the Zululand parks. An uncommon resident they were regarded as a wetland species associated with lagoons, ponds and rivers. In recent years they have started showing up in increasing numbers in cities such as Pietermaritzburg and Durban, in a sense swapping one habitat for another.
A Wooly-necked Stork in Pietermaritzburg suburbia, ignoring metal imposters. Picture courtesy of Mark Wing.
Some plants are also making this latitudinal shift.
I would imagine the same is happening to butterflies although I don’t know enough about them to be sure. Assuming that tree and flower-blossoming times are also changing it seems likely though.
What I do know for certain, is that I hope they will always be around. If the ancient Greek Goddess, Gaea – the first deity to be born after Chaos, the gaping emptiness – is seen as the personification of the earth and the Mother of Everything Beautiful, then the unassuming butterfly must, surely, be one of her most potent and miraculous symbols?
GALLERY:
Herewith a selection of photographs, showing some of the butterflies in our area:
African Blue Pansy, Kusane
Angled Grass Yellow, Kusane.
Common Zebra Blue, Kusane
Dark Blue Pansy, Kusane.
Forest Swallowtail (aka Bush Kite), Karkloof Forest.
Narrow Green-banded Swallowtail, Kusane
Painted Lady, Kusane
Pea Blue, kusane.
Pirate, Kusane
Polka Dot, Kusane
Rainforest Brown, Kusane.
Garden Inspector, Kusane.
Southern Gaudy Commodore, Kusane.
Vine Leaf Vagrant, Kusane.
Yellow Pansy, Kusane
.
* Field Guide to Butterflies of South Africa by Steve Woodhall (published by Struik Nature).
Having grown up and lived in it for most of my youth it is where I always felt most settled and where my heart belonged. No other environment has affected me the way it did nor created the same feeling of mystical bond. Recalling that early period of my life never fails to excite the deepest nostalgia.
It is the romantic in me, I guess.
The true bushveld has a spirit, ancient and impassive. It is a spirit which lives on; I know it, I feel it. It lives on despite the ripple of human effects. It lives on despite our attempts to tame and domesticate it. It lives on despite our plans to commercialise and exploit it and turn it to profit. It lives on despite the encroachment of farms and cities…
Typical bushveld country, South Kruger.
Even when I am not in it, I can still imagine it: the dust, the heat, the dryness. It is a place of extremes. In the bushveld the sun is brighter, the full moon seems bigger than anywhere else.
Its summer storms are a wonder to behold. The high, piled, whipped cream clouds. The gradual darkening to an intense blue. The sudden ragged bolts of lightning.
And then the rain drumming down and getting soaked up by the parched ground. There is no smell on earth quite like the liberated scents of dust, grass and vegetation released after the first bushveld storm of the season.
Summer storm in the bushveld.
Immediately you feel a new energy, a new hope. A quickening of the blood. A rising excitement.
Everything suddenly seems to come alive. The buck start leaping and cavorting, the birds become a flutter of activity, twittering and chirping in the trees.
In next to no time the grass starts sending up new green shoots, the trees break out in bud.
And such trees! What can be more African then the Baobabs, Kiaats, Mopani, Leadwood, Tamboti, Marula, Jackalberry, Nyala trees, Sausage trees, Acacias, Bushwillow, Silver Cluster-leaf, Sycamore Figs and all the other, seemingly infinite, variety trees you associate with it.
These feelings did not diminish when I moved from Zimbabwe to South Africa. Although I elected to live far from the bushveld, in Pietermaritzburg, in KwaZulu-Natal, my heart still lay to the North. On my birding trips you would invariably find me heading up towards the crocodile-infested, fever tree-lined, pans of Ndumo, the broken, granite country around the Crocodile River in Mpumalanga, the enormous sun-drenched plains of Kruger, the red cliffs of Mapungubwe and the mopani-covered Limpopo Valley.
When I wanted to get even further away there was the Matobo Hills, Kariba, Mana Pools, Mangwe and Gona-re-Zhou in Zimbabwe, on the other side of the border.
My kind of country: Gona-re-Zhou, Zimbabwe.
Although I had done the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands Meander many times, I had never really thought about living there. For me it was just a green, pretty, tranquil, place to escape to when I needed a break from the bedlam and noisy confusion of city life. I liked sticking my nose in to its arts studios. I liked sampling the fare at its numerous food outlets, pubs and restaurants. I enjoyed soaking up the slightly bucolic, Surrey-in-Africa, atmosphere.
That all changed when my friends, William and Karen, bought Kusane Farm in the Curry’s Post area, on a hill overlooking the Karkloof Valley, and asked me if I would like to come and live on it.
Having reached an age where I felt my life needed a change of direction I duly motored up to check it out.
Like William and Karen I loved Kusane from first sight. Staring over the valley below I just stopped and whispered “Oh boy!” softly to myself. It had just rained and everything about the day was lovely. The pleasing tidiness of the fields below. The tree-clad slopes of the Karkloof Hills stretching along the one side of it and, near the centre of valley, the oddly leonine shape of Loskop hill thrusting itself out of the earth. The Kusane river – from which the farm took its name – passing through a belt of trees and then snaking its way in a series of bends across the wide plain towards the edge of an escarpment.
View over Karkloof Valley after rain.
There was a freshness in the air, an exhilarating quality to the light. The grass underfoot was soft and green and moist with life.
It was clear I had found a place set apart; one which also had its own special isolation of spirit. Relocating to it became, in its own paradoxical way, a kind of homecoming.
I was surprised by my reaction because anything less like my beloved bushveld in Southern Africa would be hard to find.
Curry’s Post is mostly mist-belt grassland with pockets of remnant indigenous forest (or at least it was until the timber companies discovered its potential and despoiled the countryside by planting miles and miles of sterile fir trees).
In summer the mist comes drifting in most evenings, reducing visibility and creating as slightly unreal radiance as it gets hit by the dying embers of the sun.
Unreal radiance: Karkloof Valley.
As the winter cold fronts move through they often bring mist too. From my upstairs balcony I watch it with curiosity as it rolls closer, like a grey wave, until it suddenly enfolds me in a blanket of cold damp.
It is strangely disorienting but also oddly comforting, even as it obliterates all the familiar visual landmarks that surround me and provide me with a frame of reference.
In the end, I did not have to consult any crystal-gazers or soothsayers of some kind to find out why I so quickly fell under its spell. It was my sister, Penny (who is, admittedly, a soothsayer of sorts), who pointed out the obvious.
“It is wired in to your DNA,” she explained.
Originally of Viking descent, my Scottish ancestors, the Moodies, had dwelt for centuries among the heather and bleak, rain-swept hills of the Isle of Hoy on the Orkney Islands. Another branch came from Ireland, the original ‘Misty Isles’. Such scenes would have been familiar to both. Accustomed to the mist and rain, they, too, would have felt quite at home here.
I have always been very proud of my Norsemen roots although I fear that something must have gone wrong with me because although I may have inherited the complexion and hair, I completely lack the marauding temperament! On the contrary, I am a very friendly, peaceful, law-abiding sort of chap, quite happy to let my neighbours keep what is rightfully theirs.
In this respect, maybe I take after my mother’s side of the family.
I do like to roam though. One of the pleasures of being in the autumn of my years is that I am now a man of (limited) independent means, beholden to no one.
I get to decide when I want to be active and when I want to be passive. Should I dig a hole and plant a tree, or just sit and look at a tree?
Or should I be both active and passive and go for a walk? It on these daily ambles that I get to delight in my new found sense of freedom.
Walking in the mist with Minki and Whisky.
I especially like walking in the mist. Something about the half gloom brings out an ancient instinct, a memory buried deep in the back of my brain. There is a healing magic about such weather, it is very evocative of the mysteries, it induces a feeling of solitude in me. It is like having the whole universe to myself.
The Kusane, after which the farm is named, is a small stream but has a waterfall and pool further up, closer to its source. To get to it you follow the path that runs along the ridge that forms the backbone of the farm. Near its highest point is a bald expanse of rock, Lizard Rock, which on a sunny day offers a clear 360-degree view but that window closes down altogether when the mist drifts in. I often like to pause and sit here, alone with my thoughts.
From the top of the ridge the path zig-zags its way down from the one end of the valley all the way to the other. As it winds along you can hear the river but you cannot see it.
The route down to the Kusane River.
Sometimes, if I am lucky, the vague shape of a reedbuck will emerge out of the dripping greyness. Momentarily startled, we will both stand and stare at each other before it bounds away, out of sight.
Reedbuck in the mist, Kusane Farm.
Other times I will hear the strange whooshing sound of a gaggle of Spurwing geese winging overhead.
Spurwing Geese, Karkloof Valley.
The half light can play tricks with your eyes. Even the rocks can take on the appearance of something living: a crouched lion, a sleeping hippo or some sort of dragon-creature, the fissures on the surface of the stone becoming its hide.
At the path’s lowest point you reach a river crossing near where the old pump-house used to be.
Once I get here, I like to sit on the river bank and listen to the sounds: the conversation between rock and flowing water; the plaintiff call of the Longclaw as it rises high in the air; the thin beleaguered cries of the plovers flying overhead and the wind whispering in the grass.
To the ancient folk such sounds carried meaning. I like to think they still do, it is just that our busy, modern minds have forgotten how to hear.
For some reason our local black crows become more vocal on these grey, overcast days. They, too, speak a language which comes from a remote, mysterious time. Their raucous yet eerie sound-shifts, echoing through the swirling mist, conjures up both the natural and the supernatural, magic and wizardry.
You can understand why they were associated with the dark arts in traditional European folklore.
In Zulu society, too, crows and ravens are seen as an omen of misfortune and death (although in New Mexico, as I discovered, the native Americans believe the exact opposite. They see them as bearers of good tidings).
White-necked Raven.
Crows are also, arguably the world’s smartest bird so perhaps it is a little unfair to cast them in such terms. Maybe our irrational fears and prejudices say more about our own morbid thought patterns and preoccupations than it does those of these maligned and often misunderstood birds?
The Black Cuckoo, a summer visitor to our parts, is another wisp of a figure, barely glimpsed but often heard. His mournful call ‘hoo hooee’ is sometimes rendered as “I am so siiiiick!” With climate change casting its grim spectre over our lives, it is a sound which, for me at least, seems to capture some mystical truth about the state of the natural world.
Sitting in the grey gloom I find myself imagining something else – what if one day there were no birdsong at all? What if, in our hard-nosed materialism and clumsy efforts to dominate the planet, we drove all the other species to the edge of extinction?
I do not think I could live in a world where their beautiful cacophony of sounds exist only in memory.
For me there is an important truth to be acknowledged here. While the misty landscape invariably infuses me with a sense of well-being, this feeling is, at times, tinged with a touch of melancholy. I am only too aware that what I am enjoying offers only a temporary escape from the troubles of the rest of the world, lying just over the hill. Yet, in a strange way, this awareness only sharpens one sense of momentary pleasure. It makes you enjoy it all the more because you realise how transitory it is.
And so, as I continue to totter along the straight, stony, path to old age and beyond I intend to keep glorying in the mist.
As the Australian bush-fires continued to rage across large tracts of the continent – by early January an estimated 5 million hectares had been destroyed (as opposed to 906 000 hectares in the Amazon fires) – its governments initial tepid response and refusal to acknowledge the true extent of the crisis attracted widespread criticism. Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s own inability to utter the words “climate change” without breaking in to a cold sweat also showed a woeful reluctance to engage with the issues presented.
In the same week that it was reported that the two big KZ-N municipalities, Msunduzi and uMgungdlovu, were muscling up against each other to become a regional metro, Pietermaritzburg was visited by two ANC heavyweights, Zweli Mkhize and Blade Nzimande. They were both blunt in their assessment. The city is filthy, it stinks and its leadership is useless.
Eskom continued to be in the news for all the wrong reasons with the embattled power utility now saying that if it is not granted the substantial tariff increases it wants from March, its finances might collapse, triggering a national crisis, as both the state’s credit ratings and consumers’ well being would suffer. Responding to this, Melanie Veness, CEO of the Pietermaritzburg and Midlands Chamber of Business, warned that the proposed increases would be the final nail in the coffin for local businesses and would lead to retrenchments and a greater strain on the already struggling business sector.
Under pressure from detractors and enemies both inside and outside government and the ANC, Public Enterprises Minister, Pravin Gordhan, said he was following a mandate given to him by President Cyril Ramaphosa and that he must be left alone to complete the task he was given. With load-shedding costing the country between R59billion and R118billion in 2019, one can only hope he succeeds with his Eskom turnaround strategy.
After several years of acrimonious debate, the United Kingdom officially left the European Union on the 31st January, 2020. The country’s exit will undoubtedly prove to be British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson’s, biggest victory. At the same time it is very much a leap in to the dark and whatever happens in the coming stages of the Brexit process things look set to get more, not less, tricky.
The University of KwaZulu-Natal shut its doors after a week of violent protests which saw several buildings set alight on both the Pietermaritzburg and Durban campuses. Condemning, the incidents, the Minister of Higher Education, Blade Nzimande, said “These attacks look like well-orchestrated acts of sabotage and criminality meant to undermine and reverse the already achieved milestones reached with the South African Union of Students.”
Ignoring the loutish behaviour of Julius Malema and the EFF, President Cyril Ramaphosa implored South Africans to “…not allow fear to stand in our way” in his annual State of the Nation Address (SONA) to Parliament. While his national call to action contained some positive announcements, the fear remains that with state finances in dire straits, the economy all but ground to a halt and state companies floundering, the president will allow himself to remain captured by party dogma and constrained by indecision.
Former President, Jacob Zuma, continued to use every trick in the book to avoid his day of reckoning in court, charged with corruption. Having presented a sick note to excuse his absence – it was rejected by Judge Dhaya Pillay of the Supreme Court because the dates appeared to have been altered – Zuma then went on to accuse the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) of employing Apartheid-era tactics against him.
He also insisted that these were not deliberate delaying tactics on his part…
A proposal to cut the state’s wage bill by R160,2 billion over the next three years as Treasury warns of ever-rising debt repayments, was one of the key announcements of the 2020 budget, presented by Finance Minister, Tito Mboweni. The move was immediately opposed by the Public Services Union (PSA) who vowed to fight any threat to freeze public servants’ salary increases.
With the Rhodesian Bush War intensifying and many whites leaving the country because they saw no future for themselves, it was probably not the wisest of times to be considering such an investment – some might even have called it foolhardy – but my father was never one to doubt his own judgement and went ahead anyway.
He had recently come
in to some money, as a result of finally selling our long abandoned
Nyanga ranch to the new (and destined to be short- lived)
Zimbabwe-Rhodesia Government who wanted it for resettlement.
With the proceeds my
father bought a 1500 acre property adjoining my brother Paul’s
cattle ranch in the Battlefields area (so named because many of the
old gold mines and farms in the area had been named after famous
battles) in the Rhodesian Midlands.
Situated in a
marginal rainfall area about halfway between the towns of KweKwe and
Kadoma the farm consisted mostly of mixed mopani woodland. Although
there were some crops grown in the area (mainly cotton and wheat),
usually where there was irrigation available to supplement the
unreliable rainfall, this was mostly cattle country.
The ranches tended
to be large, each one separated from its neighbour by miles and miles
of rough, ribbed, ungoverned country. If I stood on top of the low
range of hills that ran immediately behind the old homestead I could
see no other sign of human settlement in all directions other than
the cooling towers of the Umniati Power Station which protruded above
the tree line and the electricity pylons that marched like an army of
ungainly giants alongside the main Salisbury-Bulawayo Road.
There was already a house built on the farm, simple but comfortable in the old settler style. It consisting of whitewashed brick with a corrugated iron roof, big, bare rooms and a wide veranda which jutted forward over what remained of a lawn.
Bowmont house with vlei.
It had been built
on a small shoulder of land, in front of which was a vlei that
sometimes flooded in the rainy season but for the most part consisted
of a series of potholes caked with cracked mud. On the other side of
this stood a thin belt of thorn trees and beyond that a fenced
enclosure that had once been a cultivated field but was now slowly
being reclaimed by the bush.
Although my first
loyalty will always be to the Nyanga farm, where I grew up, Bowmont
came to exert a similar hold over me; it had the same haunting and
mysterious familiarity although, on the surface, its attractions were
a whole lot less obvious.
On the Inyanga farm
our horizons had been ringed by mountains and no matter where you
stood you were more or less guaranteed a great view. On Bowmont once
you left the Big Vlei, the trees closed in around you and your vision
became restricted to a few hundred metres on every side.
Whereas I had fallen
for the Inyanga landscape almost on sight, Bowmont revealed its
beauty in a more subtle, slower way.
Having bought the farm, my parents had to decide what to do with it. In her usual quiet, methodical way my mother immediately set about creating a garden, one that would provide a bright, colourful oasis in the middle of the dry veldt.
The house when we first arrived.
The house after my mother had created a garden.
For his part my father decided that Bowmont was good sheep farming country. Unfortunately he could never persuade the sheep themselves to accept this fact. For some reason they didn’t like the area at all and despite my father best efforts to convince them otherwise they persisted in growing thin and dying with a monotonous regularity.
It soon became more
than obvious that we would be hard-pressed to earn a living this way.
In a letter to my English cousin, Rebecca, I noted somewhat despairingly: “August is our cruellest month: the nights are still cold but the days are hot and we are pestered by an angry dry wind that blows dust into everything and slowly frazzles out the landscape. The grass turns harsh and tough and stubbly and in between the soil is dry and cracked, the blood sucked out of it; waiting to get whipped up along with the dead leaves and other winter-time debris and carried away by the meandering dust-devils. It is also the month when the sheep driven on by visions of green begin to stray and get preyed on by the equally hungry jackal…”
Our sheep herder.
My nephew has a go at being a sheep herder…
The advent of the
rains – which could happen any time between October and December –
always marked the turning point of the year. For weeks beforehand I
would find myself anxiously panning the skies for the first tell-tale
signs that they were on their way. Normally there would be a few
false starts before the day would come when the dark storm clouds
would start banking over head and the air became charged and tense
and then suddenly you would hear the first big, shiny drops falling
and hissing as they hit the sun-parched ground.
Living in a dry
country, there was no nicer sound than lying in my bed at night
listening to the rain drumming down on the corrugated iron roof while
the old mango tree outside my bedroom window heaved and swung and the
thunder rolled along the line of kopjes.
At his stage of my
life I was – in between my numerous army call-ups – six weeks in,
two months out – employed at the Mining Commissioner’s office in
Gwelo. Built somewhat optimistically in 1896 as a Stock Exchange the
building which housed our offices had that air of beguiling
shabbiness one so often associates with government departments –
especially those banished to the sub-regions. The work itself was of
a fairly dull and routine nature – issuing prospectors’ licences,
registering mining claims and trying to sort out disputes between
farmers and miners over land rights. Most weekends I would jump into
my battered old Datsun 1200 and together with my border collie,
Bruce, head off to Bowmont.
In the meantime the
war ground inexorably on towards its inevitable conclusion. The
advent of majority rule finally gave me the excuse I needed to quit
my government job and to move to the farm to help out my father who
was becoming increasingly ill.
He eventually died in Harare on the 3rd February, 1983. After his death and with my mother now working during the weekdays at a boarding school just outside Chegutu I lived alone in the farm. During the holidays I would be joined by my young sister, Nicola, who was a boarder at Queen Elizabeth in Harare.
The solitude suited
me. During the preceding years, my double life as as part-time
civilian, part-time soldier had taken its toll. After seven years of
fighting for a cause I had never really believed in I had found
myself consumed by an increasing sense of futility.
When the war
finally ended, I had left the army with a feeling of moral blankness
but now I had plenty of time on my hands to think about my
experiences and get back in touch my feelings.
Just being there and going for long tramps with the dogs through the bush was a therapy of sorts, a way of clearing the cobwebs out of my mind. I enjoyed fixing up the farm which when we had taken it over had been in a fairly dilapidated state. I planted lots of fruit trees and grape vines; I fenced off paddocks and built drinking troughs for the sheep. I even started making my own wines which, although they were unlikely to win any awards, were at least drinkable.
Cooling off in the trough…
I particularly liked
the early mornings before the heat tired and numbed one and sapped
out all your energy. I also loved sitting on the veranda in the
evenings drinking gin-and tonics and listening to the comforting
“kuk-cooo-kuks” (“Work harder, work harder”) of the Cape
Turtle Doves while the francolin called from Kwali Corner and the
guinea fowl clinked softly in the old lands. Sometimes, especially in
summer, I would sit out there with my feet propped up on the veranda
wall until way after dark, gazing at the large yellow moon as it rose
above the tree line and listening to the jackal calling and the
insects shrilling in the encircling gloom.
Two large tributaries of the Zambezi – the Umniati (corrupted from sanyati meaning “many buffalo in the area”) and the Umsweswe (derived from the onomatopoeic word sweswe – meaning “the sound of dragging feet”) – flowed through the area.
The Umniati River.
The Umsweswe River with my nephew, Alex.
The former provided the southern boundary of my brother Paul’s next door property, Thetis. It provided a favourite walk. When I was not working the land, it was to here I often headed, a shotgun slung over my shoulder just in case of I was not sure what. I just felt comfortable with it. A hangover from the war, I suppose.
I would pick my way
along the river’s bank, my senses alert to any sounds, my eyes peeled
for a flicker of movement. Although there were no longer any menacing
buffalo to worry about, the countryside still had a wild and
uncultivated look.
There was other game about. I often saw kudu, and every now and again a male warthog would come trotting out in to the open with an impudent air, followed, shortly, afterwards by the rest of the family. Despite the shotgun, I was never interested in shooting at anything. The war had cured me of that.
Exploring the bush. Brother Paul and myself.
On some days I took
a rod with me but although there were plenty of promising looking
pools to fish in I never caught much. That was not really the
purpose. I was content just to sit on the hot rocks, listening to the
birds and watching the shreds of cloud drifting overhead
As happy as I
thought I was it became increasingly apparent to me that I could not
carry on indefinitely like this, that this was only a temporary
stopping- off point.
I began to wonder
what on earth I was going to do with the rest of my life. As much as
I enjoyed the outdoors I didn’t really feel I was cut out to be a
farmer; even if I had the farm was too small to be economical and I
had no capital of my own to invest in it.
I had no idea what
other form of employment lay open to me. Neither my qualifications
nor my inclination fitted me for the few jobs on offer.
Indeed, I was no
longer even sure if an independent Zimbabwe was the place for me. I
was beginning to feel that I had come to the end of this particular
road. My innate restlessness also played a part, a taste for change
and new adventures, a fresh start in a place where I was not bogged
down by memories.
The time had come
for me to move on. But to where?
It was my sister,
Sally, who suggested a way out of my predicament. After the war had
ended she and her husband had emigrated to South Africa, settling
first in Phalaborwa and then, later, Durban.
I had always been an
inveterate scribbler, filling the margins of my exercise books at
both school and university with drawings when I should have been
listening to what the person in front of the blackboard was saying.
It probably explains why so many of my exam results were not as good
as they could have been.
Remembering this and
believing in my talent – at that stage she had far more faith in it
than I did – Sally set me up with a couple of interviews in Durban.
So, at the end of 1983, I drove down to South Africa, feeling very
sceptical about whether anybody would actually want to employ me.
Much to my surprise
they did. In fact, I was offered a job by the first person who
interviewed me – the MD of Scope Magazine.
That settled the
matter. There could be no more dragging of feet. A new chapter of my
life had begun.
The day before I left Bowmont for good, I set out for my last walk along the farm boundary fence, trying to memorise all the sights and scenes and take in all the scents and feelings in the hope I could carry them away with me. After that I went back to the old house, packed up my few possessions in to the boot of my car and early next morning set off down the familiar dusty road that crosses the railway track by the old Battlefields General Dealer store.
Then I branched off down the tar towards the border, desperately trying to keep the lid down on all my choked-up emotions as I did.
Stidy's Eye 