The Constitutional Court sentenced former president Jacob Zuma to 15 months imprisonment for defying its order to appear before the Zondo Commission to give evidence on state capture. In its judgement, the ConCourt gave police minister Bheki Cele three days to arrest Zuma should he fail to hand himself over to the police within five days.
Jacob Zuma finally surrendered himself to police less than an hour before midnight on Wednesday 7th July after a night of high drama during which a phalanx of heavily-armed police units was on its way to arrest him at his Nkandla home. The disgraced former president, who oversaw a decade of state capture and decline, spent his first night at the Estcourt prison after high-stakes-cat-and-mouse negotiations with the police.
In a week that marked the darkest point in South African history since independence, large parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng found themselves at the mercy of marauding gangs of looters, ostensibly protesting the imprisonment of former president Jacob Zuma. Extremely tardy in their response, the security cluster ministers would continue to insist the situation was being contained despite numerous lives being lost and billions of rands worth of property destroyed. President Cyril Ramaphosa, would, to his credit, later admit the Government had been caught unprepared.
While fire-fighters, private security companies and local communities joined forces to try and protect the towns and cities, the ANC government was slammed for failing to be more visible on the ground while the country was gripped by riots and looting that brought the economy to its knees. Its slow and poor response was later blamed on budget cuts, poor intelligence and rifts between the security cluster ministers. Visiting the Liberty Midlands Mall in the aftermath of the wave of unrest, Police Minister Bheki Cele belatedly acknowledged the extent of the damage and warned that the country was “not out of the woods” even if it appeared on the surface that life was returning to normal.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s assurance, to the nation, that his government would “leave no stone unturned” in its efforts to bring the anarchy that played out across parts of the country to an end seemed unlikely to convince a sceptical public, long inured to the ANC’s empty promises. This was especially so as most of the prime instigators behind the unrest came from within the party itself and the ANC had always shown a marked reluctance to deal with its wrongdoers.
Msunduzi Municipality warned that it might not be able to assist businesses that were affected by the unrest. With some of its commercial customers having had their businesses looted and destroyed, the municipality was also unlikely to collect the revenues it had estimated at the start of the 2021/22 financial year and this could also severely impact its ability to deliver services – already under strain as a result of the ongoing Covid pandemic.
Appearing before the State Capture Enquiry President Cyril Ramaphosa spent much time trying to avoid directly implicating ANC members in state capture. He did, however, admit that ANC factionalism had debilitated its ability to fight corruption because it led to people having “vested interests in maintaining certain activities.”
Following reports that KwaZulu-Natal schools had emerged as the biggest contributor to the rapid increase in Covid-19 cases in the province, there were calls for the closure of those most badly hit. According to KZN Premier Sihle Zikalala, more than 120 schools had reported clusters in their school settings and more than 800 teachers and learners had been affected. Learners made up 95% of the number, while educators accounted for the remaining 5%.
The Msunduzi Municipality Council agreed to sponsor Maritzburg United FC to the tune of R9 Million for the next three years despite warnings from opposition parties that it could not afford the expenditure. Questioning where the council’s priorities lay, the Msunduzi Association of Residents, Ratepayers and Civics (MARRC) said they would be seeking legal advice.
To say we have had little to cheer about over the last few years would be an understatement. As a political cartoonist, whose jobs involves trawling through the daily news headlines looking for somebody or something to lampoon, I can safely vouch for this. Faced with the endless litany of woes – climate change, Covid-19, lockdown, a collapsing economy, state capture, rampant crime, decaying municipalities, crumbling infrastructure and corrupt, venal, and singularly inept politicians – it is often very difficult to see the funny side of it all.
In my doubting mind, it sometimes feels like I will never escape the dark shadows closing in on me on all sides.
But there is hope even if it is fleeting and ephemeral. A country mouse at heart, I continue to search for and find solace in nature and simple delights. Don’t get me wrong! I am well aware that my love affair with the wilderness may not be reciprocated and that it includes a degree of anthropomorphism, the great bogey of science.
That doesn’t stop it from having meaning for me. I see no need to expunge these feelings from my interaction with nature.
I don’t have to go far to look for this alternative world. Since I moved up to Kusane Farm and started planting lots of indigenous trees and bushes and flowering shrubs – my contribution to saving the planet– I have gathered a flourishing population of birds and other wildlife in my garden.
Every morning the Village Weavers gather in noisy, scraggly groups at the bird feeder. They are, in turn, joined by several varieties of sparrow, pigeons and doves. Plus, in summer, the very tiresome, testosterone-loaded male Pin-tailed Whydah who makes a nuisance of himself by trying to drive all the other birds away from the food table – just so he can claim it for his wife (in winter he loses his beautiful plumage and his stroppy attitude and becomes a submissive little nobody you barely notice).
Cape Sparrow
Grey-headed Sparrow.
Pin-tailed Whydah in breeding plumage
As part of my daily routine, I also put out a little grated cheese on a rock that brings in the Red-winged Starlings, the Cape Robin, the Cape Wagtail, the Southern Boubous, the Black-capped Bulbul, the Olive Thrush and the Speckled Mousebirds. In winter, I sometimes add a little Jungle Oats porridge to go along with it, just to warm them up.
Darked-capped Bulbul demanding food..
Southern Boubou (male)
Cape Robin
Red-winged Starling (female) breakfasting on Cheddar cheese and Jungle Oats…
The news about the easy pickings has swiftly spread and other birds have started pulling into my roadhouse. A much-welcomed newcomer has been the Sombre Greenbul. Its name is something of a mystery to me for its call (described by SASOL Birds of Southern Africa as “a piercing ‘weeeewee’, followed by a liquid chortle…”) is one of the most cheerful you will hear. Colour-wise it is perhaps a little on the drab side but no more so than a host of other dull-coloured birds. Preferring to call from deep within the canopy of a tree, it is a bird you hear more often than see.
It has been joined in recent months by a Dusky Flycatcher, a tiny bird with the typical flycatcher behaviour of making short dashes up into a cloud of gnats or other flying insects before returning to its favourite perch. Endearingly happy little characters they can, over time, become quite tame.
Dusky Flycatcher
The large corrugated-iron barn I live in has also provided the right sort of habitat for a host of other birds to call home. In the cold weather, the Rock Pigeons like to sit and warm themselves on the pipes that lead to the solar panel and geyser on the roof (they also nest in the rafters). Wagtails strut past them, tails endlessly bobbing. The sparrows make a home in all the nooks and crannies. In summer our resident pair of Greater-striped Swallows like to sit on the railings and twitter away, especially just before they are about to undertake their perilous journey North.
Rock Pigeon on balcony
Greater-striped Swallow on balcony
For the last three seasons, I have also had an Amethyst Sunbird nesting on the Air Plant which hangs on my balcony. I feel a distinct sense of triumph that it has elected to live and raise its family with me. I like to think of it as a blessing from the gods, a portent of happiness (that’s me getting all anthropomorphic again!)
Amethyst Sunbird chick
Chick being fed by male parent
The beautiful Malachite Sunbird is the other common sunbird in my garden, especially in winter when the aloes I planted are in bloom. This dashing, shiny bird often chooses to sit on some prominent point from where it twitters happily away while keeping a sharp eye out for any rival male which it will quickly chase off.
Malachite Sunbird (female)
Malachite Sunbird (male) in breeding plumage
My birding is not, of course, confined to the garden. I have several particular patches of ground I like to visit regularly throughout the year.
Today, I elect to head down the familiar route that takes me through our front gate and past the house with the gumtrees and horde of barking dogs. At the next gate, I come to, just past the cattle crush and sorting pens, I take an abrupt left turn down Nicholson Highway. Despite the name we have bestowed on it, is not a highway, just a nondescript, muddy, farm road that leads through a large, cow-inhabited, rectangular field to a slightly better maintained road on the other side.
Going for a stroll down Nicholson Highway.
The big field slopes upward, South to North, from the old stone wall built by the Italian POWs during WW2 for purposes unknown – other than giving them something to do, I suppose. At the top of it, one has a breathtaking view over the entire Karkloof Valley with its regularised grid of big fields, forests and dams. The very distinctive, leonine-shaped Loskop and the purple-tinged Karkloof hills provide a suitably dramatic backdrop to this ever pleasing vista.
The Field, looking South with mist drifting in.
Looking North over Karkloof Valley.
There are subtle changes here, every day and every season. Close your eyes in summer and you could almost imagine you are in Ireland because of all the vibrant greens, low scudding clouds and mysterious mists. In winter, when the fields are covered in stubble and the colours are more subdued, there is a stark, minimalist beauty to the landscape.
As I enter the field, via Nicholson Highway, I scan the grass with my binoculars. A bird flies up calling, a plaintive, drawn-out ‘wheeee…’ It is the appropriately named Wailing Cisticola. A little further on I see another Cisticola. A smaller one with a slightly fanned-out tail. It is known as the Zitting (formerly Fantailed) Cisticola because – you guessed it – of the ‘zit’ it makes at the crest of each undulation during its display flight…
Zitting Cisticola
Wailing Cisticola
It is open country here and – I suspect because the cattle who sometimes graze here provide good manure – the grass is longer and more luxuriant than our wiry, unpalatable, stuff next door. Because of this, it has become a haven for grass-loving species. They like it because it has ground cover and it has food.
My alternate name for Nicholson Highway is Longclaw Lane because this is very much their kind of country (the Yellow-throated is our common Longclaw). The bird’s plaintive, fugitive call, as it lifts into the sky, always sets my veins a-tingle. Likewise, several varieties of the Pipit have staked their claim along the road. I have seen both African and Plain-backed on many occasions.
Yellow-throated Longclaw
African Pipit
Happy to be out in the sun, I stand still a moment taking in the sounds. On the edge of the field, amongst the bramble, I hear the raucous screeching of a pair of Natal Francolin, followed by a clattering of branches as a flock of Rameron Pigeon take off, heading to their daily feeding grounds. Further up, on the crest of the ridge, the Black Crows squabble and exchange insults in the line of fir trees where they like to roost. Next, I look up and see two Blacksmith Plovers calling as they fly overhead. Elsewhere, swallows and swifts and martins zoom around imaginary corners in pursuit of meals you and I can’t see. Closer to the ground, a party of widow birds, all piping excitedly in chorus, follow each other around in small, swooping circles.
Today, the cross-sky traffic includes a raptor gliding in the thermals. South Africa has a wide variety of raptors. Each of these raptors are charismatic in their way. The common one, where I live – the bird I am looking at now – is the Long-crested Eagle. It is so named because of its stylish, protruding headgear. You often hear this eagle’s high-pitched call before you see it, high above. The sky is not the only place it likes to be. People may complain about the unsightly poles that run along our country roads (especially where the cut wires now hang unused and useless) but some birds love them. The Long-crested is one such bird. The Jackal Buzzard another. The poles provide a much-favoured Observation Point from which to scan the surrounding countryside for food.
Jackal Buzzard
Long-crested Eagle
Widely but locally dispersed across South Africa, the Secretary Bird makes the odd stop-over in the field. Taking its name from the long, quill-like, feathers protruding from its head, the Secretary bird is, in fact, an eagle with very long legs. It puts these legs to good use. My battered old copy of Roberts Birds of South Africa describes this succinctly: “After landing runs for some distance with wings outstretched. Snakes are attacked with violent blows from the feet while the wings are held outspread as a shield. Great care is taken to make certain the snake is dead before it is swallowed, whole if it is small...”
Secretary Bird
In the past, the field has yielded some other surprises. Bustards are very shy and wary, so it is a privilege to encounter them anywhere in the wild. You can imagine my excitement, then, when I came across not one but THREE Denham’s Bustard, feeding in the upper end of the field. The Denham’s is the second-largest bustard in South Africa (prime honours go to the Kori Bustard, the largest flying bird in the world) and is listed as NEAR THREATENED.
Cranes are equally rare across the world so I also consider myself lucky to have seen all three of the South African species (the Wattled, the Grey-crowned and the Blue), at various times, here. They are special. Stately, regal and a little otherworldly, their elegant courtship rituals are one of the great wildlife spectacles.
Grey-crowned Crane
Wattled Crane
Having made a mental count of all the birds I have seen so far, I continue down the winding road until it comes to a T Junction. On the opposite side, in a paddock, a couple of horses are being put through their paces at the local riding academy. Another noisy dog lives here too. A big black one. We didn’t hit it off when we first met so I prefer to avoid it.
I accordingly turn and follow the fence line down to a farm dam (and away from the big, black dog). The grease-gleen of the early morning sunlight glitters romantically on its water, as three dabchicks create patterned artworks as they swim away from me towards the far shore. A large White-breasted Cormorant lifts itself out of the water and flaps noisily off. The Blacksmith Plovers, I saw earlier, are now patrolling the edge of the water. As soon as they see me they give their characteristic loud, ringing, metallic ‘tink, tink, tink’ alarm call, from which they derive their name.
Dabchicks
Blacksmith Plover
They don’t seem to want me around either. They are not alone in their antipathy.
On the far side, partly concealed in the long grass, a pair of male reedbuck follow my movements with worried eyes. An uninvited intruder in their private domain, not wanting to scare them, I high tail it along the dam wall, hoping they won’t take fright. They retreat a little further up the inlet but don’t runoff.
There is another panoramic view from the wall, one that shows more dams and more fields full of hay bales and groups of contented cows grazing on the sloping hillside you look across to. In winter frost often clenches the ground below the wall, the relentless summer rain can turn it into a muddy quagmire in which animals get stuck.
Frost below dam
Once over the wall, I follow the now faded path that leads back to our side of the field. The path used to lead to a farm shebeen on the next door property but that was closed down for security reasons.
Although now cropped low, the grass is still plentiful at this end of the field. At certain times of the year, there are eruptions of flowers amongst it which draw the insects in. Bees and flower-visiting wasps buzz about. Butterflies too. For three days, two-years ago, this area was alive with flickering wings as the annual midsummer migration of the thousands upon thousands of Brown-veined White Butterfly (also known as Pioneer Caper White) took place.
Brown-veined White Butterflies…
The distance these tiny creatures cover on this epic trek (depending on climatic conditions their numbers vary each year. This year it didn’t seem to happen or, if it did, I missed it) are mind-boggling. Starting on the cold shores of the South-west Cape, they fly as far as sub-tropical Mozambique.
Walking along the fire break that leads back home I keep my eyes peeled. I have seen Serval here twice before, returning home from a night out hunting. I don’t see one today but it doesn’t bother me. The fact they are so seldom spotted only adds to their mystery and allure.
For the rest, I am happy to just be wandering along this path, enjoying this small moment of fleeting time. Out here I can get a kind of feeling of belonging and recognition, a level of engagement, a sense of purpose, an appreciation of beauty that has absolutely nothing to do with the latest news stories or the world beyond these hills.
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…
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.
If there is one thing lockdown has done it is to force us to redraw the parameters of our lives. Suddenly, everything has shifted, the familiar signposts have been removed, the old sense of continuity has gone. Instead, I am faced with the difficulty of navigating differences over such issues as the wearing of masks, social distancing, how much contact to have with others and whether I can risk eating out?
In short, every decision I make is weighted in moral ambiguity. Cast adrift from my usual moorings, I find myself torn between the need to stay safe and a desire to escape.
It is not the being alone that bothers me so much as having my freedom taken away from me. I have always been happy to embrace solitude provided it was on my terms. With lockdown that has all changed. Now it is being imposed by decree from above with the government taking increasing control over things and placing limits on our movements
While I can understand the need for some of them, being bogged down in this murky mire of regulations has bought out all my anti-authoritarian tendencies, as well as my fear of being trapped. Suddenly it is like I am back at boarding school where all the rules are designed with the naughty boys in mind. For example: because there are quite a few delinquent drinkers in south Africa, a blanket ban is imposed on alcohol sales which means all of us are collectively punished irrespective of own behaviour.
With the pandemic shrinking our horizons, my fear is finding myself confined to a cramped, parochial lifestyle. I worry about sliding in to passivity.
I have always lived a fairly nomadic life, ready to hit the road whenever I have felt that familiar build up of stress and anxiety, like a smoldering fire, inside me. I think this restlessness can be attributed, in part, to a childhood spent among the beautiful Nyanga mountains and a deep-rooted urge to retrieve that part of myself in a far-off place. Also, I like to feel I still have some control over my life. That I am able to exercise my skill in being free.
As lockdown progresses I have found myself fantasising about trips I want to make, as well as recalling some of the ones I have made in the past. I play them over and over again in my imagination, remembering bits I had forgotten.
I pour over my old AA maps planning possible new routes. I formulate plans which will probably never come to fruit. I look at photographs of trips I have made in the past. Because of the circumstance I now find myself in, their memory suddenly seems more precious than ever. There is a sadness too. In some cases the pristine places the photographs have captured are disappearing. Others I will never see again.
It is hard to pick a favourite journey but, if forced to do so, I would probably settle for the Great South African Traverse, I undertook in September, 2003, with my birding partner, Ken, just because of the sheer diversity of countryside we passed through.
Umhlanga Rocks, Indian Ocean. Pic courtesy of Mark Wing.
Alexander Bay, Atlantic Ocean. Note old diamond workings.
Wanting to do it by the book, we started off by dipping our feet in to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, at Umhlanga Rocks, and then drove across the breadth of South Africa and did the same in the freezing Atlantic, at Alexander Bay. Along the way we stopped at Vaalbos National Park near Kimberley and also at the Augrabies Falls.
Augrabies Gorge.
Vaalbos (near Kimberly).
I had never been to the Northern Cape before but the first thing that struck me about it was how straight and long and empty the roads are. Much of the landscape between Kakamas and Springbok is flat and featureless too but the N17 does take you through Pofadder which is a place I have always wanted to visit because of its quintessential South African name. There is not much to the town apart from all the huge communal nests of Sociable Weavers on either sides of it but I did buy a lump of rose quartz, in the local café, just to prove I had been there. I still have it.
Sociable Weavers nest near Pofadder.
The further west we drove the drier the countryside became and the fewer trees there were until, finally, we entered a landscape that consisted mostly of stones. This was the Richtersveld, South Africa’s only true desert – or rather mountain desert.
Wedged right up in the north-western most corner of the country along the border with Namibia it is a wondrous place, a truly mystical landscape of moulded, multi-coloured, rock and drifting sand. The sky is a strange intense blue, limitless and criss-crossed with lazy scrawls of thin, vaporous, cloud.
Richtersveld scenes.
For our first few days we camped at Pokkiespram on the Orange River. It is an enchanting spot with the water idling languidly past while the mountains on either side rise up to naked peaks of rock.
Pokkiespram, Richtersveld.
Next on our itinerary was Kokerboomkloof. The road to it was marked on our map as 4X4 only but we decided to risk it in our small blue Ford sedan, heading up through the Helskloofpas – the name should have tipped us off as to what we could expect – in to Tatasberg mountains. We were probably foolish. It is not the sort of country you want to break down in because there is no water, no communications and you never know when the next traveller might chance along.
Also, our spare tyre had a puncture.
The road snaked its way between colossal boulders, around cliffs, ravines and barren gullies until, finally, on the other side, we found ourselves looking out across a vast, pale, plain, that appeared devoid of all vegetation. Along its horizon stretched another range, perhaps even higher that the one we had just crossed. Certainly the peaks seemed steeper and more pronounced and as desolate and devoid of life as anything we had seen. I was obviously not the only one to find them scary and intimidating. Consulting the map, I discovered some early cartographer had named them Mount Terror.
Mt Terror, Richtersveld.
The road skirted the edge of the plain before winding its way up a rock-strewn kloof amongst which grew the strange-looking Kokerbooms – or Quiver Tree – that had given the place its name. Because of all the twists and turns and the numerous humps which, for some reason, had been put across the road our progress continued to be heartbreakingly slow. When we finally reached the top I felt a mixture of relief and exhilaration and was only too happy to stand there, absorbing the silence and sense of solitude.
With its dead, dry, moonscape setting, Kokerboomkloof is as about as far as you can get away from the cooped-up space of the cities. When the night closed in around us, I really did begin to comprehend my own insignificance in the vast scheme of things. Curled up in our sleeping bags under an enormous star-studded sky, you could hear no sound other than the occasional gust of wind blowing from nowhere to nowhere.
Kokerboomkloof, Richtersveld. Note Quiver Trees.
Kokerboomkloof, Richtersveld.
Another journey I would rank high in my hierarchy of ones to be remembered is the trip I made with my sisters and their kids, across the arid, thorny badlands of the Great Karoo and then down the West Coast to the mountain wilderness of the Cedarsberg.
Pakhuis Pass, Cedarberg.
Cedarberg.
Once a vast lake, the Karoo is now a place of extremes, hard and waterless. The early Trekboers who settled here – and those who followed – had of necessity to be tough for it is a harsh, unforgiving part of the world.
Typical Karoo homestead.
The white population has thinned out over the years, as the younger generations has drifted off to the cities. Many of the old farmhouses stand abandoned, there presence demarcated by a few ancient gumtrees, the skeletal remains of a windmill and the rusty wrecks of cars.
This particular trip was to have a spiritual dimension to it. My sister, who was then working on her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology, was keen to visit the Doring River, hoping to find out about the local belief systems, especially those pertaining to water. I volunteered to join her, driving on the dusty road that crosses the Pakhuis pass and then descends through ever drier country down to the river.
On the road to Doring River.
Strangely enough, there was a donkey dutifully waiting for us when we arrived on its banks, like he had been ordained as our designated guide. As soon as we got out the bakkie it turned, as if signaling us to follow, and proceeded to lead us down a hoof-pocked track, past fleeting pools that reflected the blue sky above until we came to one large, reed-lined one where it stopped. This, my sister decided, must be the spot.
Leaving her to make contact with the mythical giant snake and the mermaids that might inhabit its depths, I set off to explore the surrounding sun-blasted, cave- riddled cliffs.
On a knoll overlooking the river I came across one that had several faded San paintings on its wall.
Sitting in this ancient cave where, a few hundred-years ago, members of a vanished race of hunter-gatherers also hunched up I could feel the great stillness of this African landscape seeping in to me. A sense of place is often bound up with the history of the people who once lived there so it was saddening to think of the areas former occupants who had been hunted down or driven to even harsher climes.
In a continent the size of Africa you would have expected there would be space for all.
The Little (or Klein) Karoo, which falls mostly on the eastern side of the imposing Swartberg – and which I am much more familiar with – has a similar lonely, sparse, windswept feel. Like its larger neighbour, it is a haunting landscape of low trees, flat plains and ranges of lavender and purple mountains.
Red Hills near Swartberg.
Buffleshoek, Little Karoo.
Back in the times when the Karoo was mostly lake and swamp, millions of reptiles lived and died here leaving their fossilised remains behind in the shale to give the palaeontologists lots to argue about much later. The Karoo is manna to such scientists.
Although I am not from these parts I have always felt a strong connection with this parched and ancient land too. It fills some unarticulated need in my soul.
I get a similar feeing whenever I visit the Langeberg, in the Western Cape, although, in this case, it could be imprinted in my DNA since my Orkney Island ancestors settled here back in 1817 and their descendants still farm the land.
The Richtersveld, Boesmanland, the Hantam Karoo, the Plains of Camdeboo, the Valley of Desolation, the Suurveld, the Langeberg – all have lodged themselves inside me. There is one other place, though, that has prior claim to my heart – the Bushveld. Each time I go there it is like a nostalgic journey in to my past.
Opinions differ as to where it actually begins. Some say it is where you start seeing Marula trees. Others, a particular bird (in my case it’s the White-crested Helmet-shrike). Mostly, it is just an instinctive, gut thing.
Valley of Desolation.
Plains of Camdeboo.
Karoo scenes.
Langeberg, Western Cape.
Marakele, where I also went with my friend Ken, certainly feels like it is in it. The park falls in part of the Waterberg and is dominated by the pyramid-shaped Kransberg. An interesting fact about this mountain is that the architect Gerard Moerdijk, who had a farm nearby, is said to have based the Voortrekker Monument on it. There is also a butterfly that occurs only on this mountain.
You can actually drive to the summit via a narrow, twisting road, the views from which are superb. It is a road you need to go carefully on. We had the harrowing experience of being chased down it, in reverse gear, by an enraged elephant bull. How we didn’t end up, a crumpled wreck, at the bottom of the valley I shall never know.
View from top of Kransberg, Marakele.
Waterberg, Marakele.
When I go seeking the Bushveld, my favourite escape route is, however, the Great North Road although we usually skip the freeway and take the old main road. This way you don’t miss out on the old platteland towns.
If you branch off at Polokwane on to the R521 you follow roughly the same route the Pioneer Column took on its way up to what would become Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). When you reach Vivo, my advice is to take a left turn at the crossroad, taking the road that leads to one of South Africa’s hidden gems, the Blouberg Nature Reserve. If you love plants as well as birds this is the place to for not only do its step mountain slopes contain the biggest colony of nesting Cape Vultures in the country but also probably the widest variety of trees for a reserve of its comparative size.
Blouberg. Vulture colony cliffs. South side of mountain..
Blouberg from North side.
Here, as much as anywhere, you feel you are in the true heart of the Bushveld.
Rejoining the R521 we then usually head north through Alldays to Mapungubwe where an isolated stone-working community once lived amongst the red sandstone cliffs that border the Limpopo river. Their civilisation was linked to trade routes that stretched all the way to the Indian Ocean and beyond. Mapungubwe is now a game reserve but driving through the hot, dry, strangely eroded countryside you still get a fleeting sense of its former inhabitants ghostly presence.
Mapungubwe scene. Painting by author.
There are many tall, beautifu,l trees along the Limpopo as well, but move a few hundred yards inland and they are replaced by miles and miles of scrubby mopani, that accompany you eastwards all the way to Pafuri and beyond.
But the Kruger, the rest of Limpopo province and Mpumalanga, where I also often go, are a story in themselves, a tale for another time…
Sentenced to no more travel for the duration, it often feels those journeys were undertaken by someone else; or perhaps it is my life in some parallel universe. Longing for beautiful scenery (not that there is anything wrong with the view from my balcony) but unable to take a holiday because of Covid-19, I am forced to do the next best thing. I delve in to my collection of travel books.
I gain a lot of comfort from them. The older I get, the more it occurs to me that I am not going to to be around forever. I no longer have the time to visit a fraction of the places on my bucket list. This is my way of short-circuiting that. Reading about other peoples travels and adventures, is a fun way to live vicariously through them by snooping on journeys you are probably never going to be able to make.
Plus it is a lot cheaper and you don’t have to worry about leaving any carbon footprint…
If there is one thing the Covid-19 pandemic has bought in to sharp contrast it is the deep divisions within society. Whereas some, have grown weary in the face of the protracted lockdown and adapted a devil-may-care attitude towards it, others have continued to shy away away from any form of social contact, concerned the virus is still raging.
Like many people, I have, at times, found myself perplexed by the ANC governments handling of the crisis. Some of its more stringent rules and regulations, for example, seem to have very little to do with logic or rationality or protecting our health. By the same token I can understand the need for caution and am reluctant to take any unnecessary risks which might expose me to Covid-19.
In part this stems from hard experience. Because of my compromised immune system (in my case damaged lungs) I have suffered from three bouts of pneumonia in the past. The first was so debilitating there were times when I wondered whether I was going to make it through.
It was, without doubt, the most frightening experience of my life and cured me of any appetite for misplaced displays of false bravado.
Which has meant that I have spent most of my lockdown time incarcerated alone at home. It is not something that has bothered me too much. There is solace to be found in solitude.
One of the few things I have missed, though, is my weekly trip to the Karkloof Farmer’s market. For me it has become a regular Saturday morning ritual.
Normally, I like to rise early and set off across the valley when it is still flooded in a honey-tinted light. No matter the time of the year, it is invariably beautiful then, with the sun’s rays lancing the plain in shafts, creating long shadows behind the rocks and trees.
The air is fresh, too, with a tingling, clean smell and the grass seems to dance as the wind ruffles through it. On the other side of the valley, the Karkloof hills rise up blue and purple and mauve and pink against the soft, early morning sky.
Sometimes, if I am really lucky, I might even get to see some cranes.
Wattled Crane, Karkloof.
Once inside the large, metal-framed hall, my first order of business is to visit the coffee stand. The lady who works behind the till knows me so well I don’t even need to give her my order – one Americano with hot milk. I then take my cup of steaming coffee out to the verandah where I sit and watch the dairy cows grazing in the pasture below.
My next port of call is the artisan bread stall and then the Greytown cheese maker whose mature Boerekaas cheese I love. After that I might buy a steak for my evening braai.
The final and – by far – most important part of the ritual involves browsing through Huddy’s second hand book stall, in the far corner of the hall. Over the years it has proved to be a veritable treasure trove for me and I have uncovered many gems.
I have always loved the war poets, especially Wilfred Owen, so was thrilled to pick up an excellent biography on him by Jon Stallworthy, as well as one on Siegfried Sassoon written by John Stuart Roberts.
In similar vein, I was also able to obtain John Garth’s Tolkien and the Great War.
All three books are meticulously researched and exceptionally well written, describing, in detail, not only Sassoon, Owen and Tolkien’s experiences in the trenches of the first world war but showing how each, in turn, tried come to terms with the horrors they had seen.
While, obviously, not the most cheering of subjects to read about at a time when we are faced with our own insistent drums of doom they do serve as a reminder that troubles are constant, a given in life.
Perhaps because my father worked there, I have always been fascinated by the legend of “Arabia” and in tracing its development in the successive stories of the explorers who helped to create it.
Although these early travellers were, for the most part, men, one of the exceptions to the rule was the indefatigable Gertrude Bell. Wanting to find out more about what drove this exceptional woman, I was very pleased to be able procure a copy of Janet Wallach’s Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell.
A woman of fierce intelligence and focus- she was the first woman to graduate from Oxford with a history degree – her bold expeditions deep in to the Arabian desert led to a passion for the Middle East that lasted to the end of her life (she is buried in Baghdad). Her sensitivity towards its people and their culture set her apart from many of her era. Finding an ally and kindred spirit in TE Lawrence, of Lawrence of Arabia fame, she would go on to play an instrumental role in the creation of the modern state of Iraq.
When I was going through my Kenya colonial history phase, it was at Huddy’s I found Elspeth Huxley’s marvelously evocative The Flame Trees of Thika, The Mottled Lizard, Out in the Midday Sun and Nellie: Letters from Africa; as well as James Fox’s White Mischief and Beryl Markham’s superb West with the Night, which Ernest Hemingway bluntly described as a “bloody, wonderful book.”
When this endless source of good books dried up because of lockdown, I was forced to fall back on my own resources. I decided now might be a good time as any to give my private library a revisit.
I began by dipping in to the four-edition Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell because I felt that if anybody could help me make sense of our confused and unsettling times it was him.
I discovered Orwell at a relatively early age and he has remained a strong, if not always comforting, presence in my life ever since. With his unflinching honesty and clear, precise, prose style he has, over the years, proved an incomparable guide for me.
As a young man, Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War and subsequently wrote about it in Homage to Catalonia. The experience left deep emotional scars but also provided him with a valuable insight in to two of the major social dislocations of the Twentieth Century – in the shape of the former Soviet Union and the former Third Reich who, in supporting the opposing sides in the civil war, fought what has been called a “world war by proxy”.
Orwell’s fear of the dangers posed by autocratic leaders and absolutist governments would later find expression in the two books for which he is most famously remembered.
In his allegorical fable, Animal Farm, he showed just how easily those who have toppled a repressive regime can take on its trapping and habits. Having lived through a couple of revolutions myself, this is something I have got to see, first hand, in both Zimbabwe under ZANU-PF and in South Africa under the ANC.
There are other interesting parallels with today. Decades before “political correctness” and “cancel culture” became recognisable concepts, Orwell battled to get his trenchant masterpiece published because it was so obviously aimed at the Soviet Union who had been Britain’s ally during the second world war.
Orwell’s bullying boar, Napoleon, was transparently Stalin; his intellectual idealist rival, Snowball, obviously Trotsky. The prophet of revolution, Old Major, was a compound Marx and Lenin.
His usual publisher, Victor Gollancz rejected the book, as did Faber and Faber whose then director was no other than TS Eliot. Jonathan Cape also turned it down because he thought it unduly offensive to make the Bolsheviks pigs. Orwell responded by writing “balls” in the margin of the rejection letter.
The book was eventually published by Secker in August, 1945.
In his last, chilling, work, 1984, Orwell offered a similarly scary scenario, opening a horrific vista in to a suffocating world of party tyranny and non-stop surveillance.
Orwell’s writings would, in turn, influence a new generation of writers who picked up his torch of idealist humanitarianism. Amongst these is Margaret Atwood whose own books – such as Oryx and Crake, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Year of the Flood – have offered fictional excursions in to a nightmare world that could be just around the corner.
The warning signs are certainly there. It is not news that something is badly wrong with America, to say nothing of what is going on in both China and Putin’s Russia.
Indeed, with state surveillance back with a vengeance and fake news everywhere, I often find myself wondering what Orwell would have made of our times and how he would have reacted to the likes of Donald Trump, a man whose greed, small-mindedness, lack of empathy for the sufferings of others, promiscuous lying and abuse of language, encapsulates so many of the vices he warned us against.
Before sitting down to write both Animal Farm and 1984, Orwell obviously posed himself the question – what happens if we continue down the road we are already on? At a time when the dumbness of the many plays in to the hands of the scheming few it is perhaps something we ought to be asking ourselves now…
Having reacquainted myself with Orwell, I decided I might as well go the whole hog and read some Atwood too, so got out my copy of Curious Pursuits, a collection of her essays and journalism from 1970 to 2005.
Despite Atwood’s own dystopian visions of our future, her writing in this book is full of humour, charm and telling detail. A common theme in many of her essays is how women negotiate society’s obstacles.
Not too surprisingly, the book also includes an essay on Orwell in which Atwood acknowledges the debt she owes to the author and talks about the influence he had on her own writing.
Also, of great interest to me, was her Introduction to ‘Roughing it in the Bush‘ by Susanna Moodie because Moodie was married to a distant ancestor of mine.
Atwood is obviously an admirer, having also brought out The Journals of Susanna Moodie (first published in 1970), regarded by many as her most fully realised volume of poetry.
Hoping that it, too, might reveal some concealed truths about our topsy-turvy times, I also dug out my copy of Lewis Carroll’s epic nonsense poem, The Hunting of the Snark,
For some reason, I have always found it more accessible and much funnier than Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland books.
For those unfamiliar with the poem, it describes the adventures of nine tradesmen (all of whose professions begin with the letter ‘B’) and a beaver who embark on a quest to capture a “Snark”. There search is not made any easier by the fact that none of them actually knows what a Snark is although there is a worry it could be a “Boojum”, an equally mysterious creature which can “suddenly and softly vanish you away”.
The Improbable Crew.
The Beaver and the Butcher. Both illustrations by Ralph Steadman.
Their method of luring the Snark out of its hiding place is eccentric, to say the least:
“They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railways share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap”.
Making a hard task even more difficult is the fact that the map they are using to look for the Snark is completely blank…
The Hunting of the Snark was originally illustrated by Henry Holiday. Again, I must confess, I prefer the more recent, 1976 ,Ralph Steadman drawings because his wonderfully warped, ink-splattered style seems custom-designed for Carroll’s off-the-wall, phantasmagorical tale..
Another odd fact about the poem is that Carroll reputedly wrote it backwards, writing the last sentence first.
There have been numerous theories as to what it all actually means. Some see the voyage as a search for truth and meaning; others think it is about the pursuit of happiness (a view Carroll, himself, apparantly favoured). There is another view that it deals with our existential angst.
This last theory ties in with my interpretation of the poem – that what they are desperately seeking is a cure for Covid-19.
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…
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.
Stidy's Eye 