Ruins of Great Zimbabwe, June 21,
2016
It’s 8 pm under a nearly-full
moon here in the deserted campground of the Great Zimbabwe ruins. This is a World Heritage site, the most
spectacular old stone ruins in sub-Saharan Africa, and there were fewer than twenty
visitors today. Tourism in Zimbabwe is
truly dying. It’s a good place to
reflect on the transient glory of worldly power and fame (both 600 years ago
and today in Zimbabwe!) and to catch up on my blog after a few weeks away.
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| Nice rock strata at Bridal Veil Falls, near Sabie |
My previous blog post ended with
Terri and I driving Stanley back into South Africa after two wonderful weeks in
Mozambique. It was May 27
th
and we were hoping to make it all the way from Chidenguele to the Blyde River
Canyon in one long day of driving. We
tanked up with diesel on the South African side of the border and went into a
supermarket to stock up on food. As is
frequently the case in South African supermarkets, shoppers have to leave any
large bags they are carrying at the security desk on the way in. I left my camera bag and found Terri perusing
the fruit and veggie selection. We got
so engrossed in selecting avocados that when we left the store, laden with
groceries, I completely forgot that I had entered with my camera bag. We loaded the fridge and the larder and drove
off, first west on the N4 and then turning north near Nelspruit to head into
the hills. We made good time and we were
congratulating ourselves on having saved a day of travel by taking the route we
did, rather than retracing our path through Limpopo and Kruger parks.
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| Blyde River Canyon morning light |
The road climbed higher and higher, passing
through pine plantations that cloaked the hills in alien rows of imported
greenery. As we got to the top of a long
climb, we looked down into the deep valley of the Sabie River and I decided
that it warranted a picture. I pulled
over, looked into the back seat and saw empty space where my camera should have
been. A wave of panic swept over me: what had happened to my beloved camera
gear? After a few seconds, I remembered
that I had not picked it up from the supermarket security guard 160 kilometres
back down the road. I was completely
stricken with the thought that the camera, the lenses, the filters and
everything else in the bag was gone for good.
We looked up the telephone number of the Lebombo Supermarket on our
phones and I called. The manager
answered the phone and said that the camera bag was still there and that he
would put it in his office for safe-keeping until I came back for it.
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| Pretty waterfall |
I was relieved, but also furious
at myself for making such a stupid mistake.
I had stopped on the right side of the road (since that was the side
with the viewpoint) and as I pulled Stanley around in a U-turn, my distraction
and my anger at myself made me forget for a moment that I was in a country
where people drive on the left. The road
was empty as I turned, so there was no visual cue of traffic to remind me, and
I started to head back down the road on the right side of the road. Almost immediately two cars appeared around a
bend, headed straight towards me, and my instinct didn’t tell me that I was on
the wrong side of the road, or at least not right away. Rather than immediately moving left to avoid
them, I pulled onto the right shoulder to let them past, wondering why they
were driving on the wrong side of the road.
Then it struck me that it was me who was on the wrong side! I had already stomped on the brakes, and
luckily I hadn’t gotten going very fast yet.
The first car swung out to avoid me, but the second car put on the
brakes and gently skidded into Stanley.
By the time the collision happened, Stanley was more or less stationary,
and the other car wasn’t going too fast.
It was still fast enough to cause real damage to the vehicles, but not
so fast that anyone got hurt. It was a
minor miracle, but it was also completely terrifying, as Terri and I realized
how disastrous the accident could have been.
We were both in a state of mild shock for the two hours it took for the
police and tow trucks to come. The other
vehicle, a fairly new Toyota Hi-Lux, had a very badly crumpled front right
fender and was undriveable. Stanley, on
the other hand, got off pretty lightly:
the front right corner got a bit dented, making it hard to open the
driver’s door, but otherwise it was fully driveable. Even the headlights and indicators
worked. The bodywork looked pretty ugly, though, so we definitely wanted to get it fixed. Terri took the wheel once we had
the OK to leave the accident scene, and we crawled downhill into the nearest
town, Sabie, and found a small campground for the night, the Sabie River
campground. It was a sombre night around
the braai that night, as we came to terms with the accident and what a few
seconds of distraction and emotional upset could have resulted in.
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| Sunset shadows at Blyde River Canyon |
As the other driver said to us,
“Look, it was an accident. Nobody got
hurt, we both have insurance, it could have been much worse.” This was true, but we now faced the reality
of a serious delay to our travel plans as we waited for our car insurance to go
through the process of repairing the car.
It turned out to be exactly two weeks of waiting, first for the
insurance company to approve the claim, and then for the repairs to get
done. Saturday, May 28th we
called Santam, our insurer, and they found a Santam-approved garage in the
small town of Sabie. We dropped by and
found them working on a Saturday (even though they were officially closed on
Saturdays, they frequently caught up on any backlogs on Saturday morning). They took a preliminary look at the car and
told us to come back on Monday morning for an official assessment.
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| Terri riding her bike around Marlothi Park |
We then backtracked 160
kilometres to the Mozambican border to pick up my camera; miraculously it was
still there, safe and sound. We had
decided to take advantage of the trip to see the southwest corner of Kruger
National Park; we had skipped it the first time around, and hence hadn’t seen
many of the white rhinos for which Kruger is one of the biggest remaining
refuges. We drove from the border back
to a strange little suburban development called Marloth Park, where (mostly
retired) South Africans buy a lot, build a house and live in the middle of a
well-stocked game reserve right against the southern border of Kruger National
Park. There is a well-run little
campground, Marlothi Safari Park, in the middle of this subdivision, and we
spent the night there as all of Kruger’s campgrounds (other than Punda Maria)
were fully booked that Saturday night.
Marlothi proved to be a great place to stay, as we could ride our
folding bicycles around to go birdwatching on the banks of the Crocodile River,
right on the boundary of Kruger.
Bushbucks came through the campsite at night, and impala and kudu
strolled through the yards of the houses in the nearby subdivision. We had a long chat with our neighbours, a
retired couple from near Johannesburg who told us that they had moved out from
the city to a rural area in the Magaliesberg after a home invasion by armed men
who held a gun to their young grandson’s head to convince them to hand over
everything of value. It is remarkable
how many South Africans have truly harrowing stories of brushes with
violence.
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| Lindy showed Terri how to tie a doekie around her head in Sabie |
The next morning we set off for
Kruger, and had a day's wonderful driving through the park, as related at the end of
my previous Kruger blog post. We drove
out the Numbi Gate, thinking sombre thoughts about the war on rhinos and about our own near-brush with mortality, and headed back to Sabie, where this
time we took up residence in the huge, well-run Merry Pebbles Resort campground.
We were there for four days,
waiting for Santam to send an assessor to look at the car. As we waited we went hiking in the hills,
rode our bikes around town, went on afternoon runs and tried to take advantage
of the enforced delay to take care of pending business. We bought an electric oven/stove to
supplement our cooking options and bought a fancy new mattress to give us a
better night’s sleep. We read a lot and
spent a lot of time on the phone with Santam and with the garage, trying to
speed the process along. Finally on
Thursday, after the assessor’s visit, we packed up Stanley and drove north to
Blyde River Canyon, an hour’s drive away in an impossibly scenic location.
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| Bourke's Luck Potholes |
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| Neat scenery at Bourke's Luck Potholes |
On Monday, June 6
th we
drove back to Sabie, stopping to see the sights along the way such as Bourke’s
Luck Potholes (very pretty), Berlin Falls (OK), God’s Window (over-rated) and
Mac Mac Falls (quite pretty). We checked into indoor digs (the very pleasant
Sabie Self-Catering Apartments, run by the friendly and efficient Annelise),
unloaded much of our gear from Stanley and dropped Stanley off on Tuesday
morning at the garage. We spent the next
five days in an agony of impatience, phoning the garage, dropping by, hoping that
we could leave the next day. It was a
bit like Groundhog Day.
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| The team that got Stanley back on the road in Sabie |
Finally, though,
after some stern words by Terri to the garage owner, we were promised that the
repairs would be done by Saturday at noon, and they were as good as their word. At precisely noon I picked Stanley up, paid
our deductible (about US$ 230) and drove off.
We loaded all of our gear back into Stanley and headed north, trying to
outrun a cold front that was bringing wind, storms and general nastiness to the
Highveld.
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| Terri with friendly French overlanders at Merry Pebbles |
After a night in the industrial
town of Polokwane, we drove north, right to the three-way corner of South
Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe, where the small Mapungubwe National Park is
located. We spent a couple of nights
camped there, enjoying the rocky landscape, birds and game.
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| Crested barbet, Mapungubwe |
Mapungubwe is a UNESCO World Heritage Site
for historical reasons; the first big empire in Southern Africa, a forerunner
of Great Zimbabwe, was centred on Mapungubwe.
We tried to visit the ruins, but they were only accessible through a
fairly expensive tour. We stopped by the
museum, but the power was out and we would not have been able to see anything
inside the museum, so we gave it up and went for a game drive instead, spotting
the first elands of our trip. The
campground was tiny (only 10 sites) but idyllic, and we spent the next day
visiting a bird hide (quite rich in water birds) and doing another game drive,
during the course of which we saw a kori bustard, the largest flying bird in
the world, stalking along the ground in search of snakes to eat. We really enjoyed Mapungubwe and were
somewhat sad to leave it behind the next morning, but we were keen to move onto
our next country……Zimbabwe!
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| Spoonbills flying in Mapungubwe |
An hour and
a half of driving and we were at the chaos of the Beitbridge border crossing,
ready to enter the unknown.
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| Kori bustard, Mapungubwe |
As we won’t be back to South
Africa for a few months, it seems like a good time for a few thoughts on the
country. We only saw a tiny corner in
the northwest of the country for a few weeks, but it was enough exposure to
form a first impression. We talked to a
lot of South Africans, both whites (the majority of tourists that we ran into
in Kruger) and non-whites (the majority of the population, but not the majority
of people that we ended up talking to) and they all had strong opinions on the
state of the country. Few of them were
positive; there was a lot of “the country is going to hell in a handbasket”
sentiment, and while this sort of idea always tends to be a bit exaggerated,
from the point of view of the white Afrikaner you can certainly understand
this. Almost everyone we talked to had a
horror story or two to share about violence:
people being held up at gunpoint, sometimes in their own homes, being
carjacked, of relatives being murdered.
South Africa has a horrific problem with violent crime, dwarfed only by
the free-fire zones of Central and South American cities.
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| Big views at Blyde River Canyon |
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| Berlin Falls |
This fear of violence leads to
white suburbs being collections of tiny fortresses, with houses surrounded by
razor wire-topped fences, protected by CCTV cameras, security guards,
armed-response units, guard dogs and guns.
Ironically, the people most at risk of violent crime are the people
living in poor shantytowns like those in the Cape Flats, the most violent urban
area in Africa. Until South Africa gets
a grip on violent crime, it will continue to be a country gripped by fear.
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| Lovely waterfalls and pool on the Lourie Trail, Blyde River Canyon |
Lots of people of all races
lamented government corruption and perceived ineptitude. The upcoming municipal elections in August
are viewed as a chance for people to vote against the ANC and to give them a
much-needed kick in the pants. Any
political party that has dominated a country for 22 years gets complacent and
attracts self-interested individuals, and the ANC is no exception. As I write this, riots are gripping Pretoria
over the ANC’s choice of mayoral candidate, as various factions in the ANC
battle it out on the streets, with shops owned by Zimbabwean, Rwandan, Zambian,
Ugandan and other African businessmen the first target for mob violence and
looting. Sergeant, the security guard at a caravan park we stayed at, gave us
an interesting insight into public opinion one night around the campfire. He is a black South African in a fairly
low-paying job who has no time for the ANC.
He supports the Democratic Alliance (DA), the traditionally white
liberal opposition party that is attracting a great deal of support these
days.
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| Along the Lourie Trail |
He had nothing but scorn for the
corruption in the ANC, and for the many splinter groups that have split off
from the ANC. He said he could never
vote for anyone who had been part of the ANC.
If the ANC is losing the vote of young black South Africans, it could be
in trouble. Recent opinion polls show
the DA actually leading the ANC in many of the big cities; the DA already runs
Cape Town, but Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, East London and other metropolises
seem to be in play after decades of being gimmes for the ANC. It will be interesting to see how the
election plays out, and whether the ANC peacefully surrenders power if it loses
in these places. The corruption scandals
engulfing Jacob Zuma, particularly the surreal stories of the Gupta family’s
extraordinary influence over the president, make the ANC very vulnerable
electorally. What many South Africans
fear is that Zuma is another Robert Mugabe in the making, willing to go to any
lengths to maintain his hold on power no matter what the cost to the country
is.
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| Fiery Acraea butterfly |
With violence a daily menace,
politics a mess and the economy doing poorly, and with many whites wondering
what future their children will have in the country, many of the South African
whites we talked to were keen to emigrate, or for their children to do so. New Zealand seems to be a popular
destination; as soon as Terri revealed herself to be a Kiwi, people would tell
us that they wanted to move there, were in the process of moving there, or had
relatives who had already gone there. Black
and Coloured South Africans told us that even with programs in place to empower
non-white South Africans, with unemployment high and education very much
below-par for many non-whites, they saw little prospects of their childrens’
lot in life being any better than their own.
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| Aloe flowers at Mac Mac Falls |
I was surprised to hear some black South Africans lamenting the end of
the apartheid era, not because they had any love lost for the racist laws of
the time, but because at the time it was much easier to get jobs. Unemployment is high in South Africa,
especially now with the downturn in the mining sector and the drought that has
plagued all of southern Africa this past year.
We saw a lot of fairly down-and-out people on the streets, particularly
panhandling in supermarket parking lots and at busy intersections. A surprising number of them were whites,
particularly in Sabie, where the closing of big timber mills has thrown a lot
of people out of work. On our last day
in Sabie, as we restocked Stanley’s refrigerator, at least five white people
approached us in the parking lot looking for handouts.
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| Tree roots |
South Africa still has a lot
going for it. It has a well-developed
economy with industry, service sector companies, agriculture and mining that
would be the envy of any other country in sub-Saharan Africa. Its roads, schools, banks, newspapers and
sprawling suburbs could be taken from Australia, New Zealand or Canada. Its companies dominate the commercial sectors
of neighbouring countries. The average
South African is materially better off than the average Zimbabwean, Zambian,
Tanzanian or Nigerian. The problem is
that the averaging process obscures the yawning gap between the mostly-white
haves and the mostly black have-nots. The
inequality, the violence and the sense of a diminished future that so many
people in the country feel all bode poorly for the future. South Africa is a country whose future could
go in so many different ways. If they
emulate Botswana, turning mineral wealth into a broad-based middle class
society, it could be a shining light for the rest of the continent. If they emulate Zimbabwe (as many South
Africans fear), it could be disastrous.
I will stay tuned to see which way it goes.
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| Happy campers at Blyde River Canyon |
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| Blyde River sundowners |
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