Where memories drain away...

Ntlangano forms part of a very extensive wilderness system, the latter occupying much of the area between Mthatha and KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The Tsitsa drainage area starts northwest of Maclear; the Tina, Mzimvubu and Mzintlava – all of which converge close to the Tina-Tsitsa confluence – drains the entire area stretching well past Kokstad and Matatiele on the east. In other words, most of the southeast escarpment boundary with Lesotho ultimately drains into the Mzimvubu through Port St John’s.

These four great rivers develop into deeply incised river valleys that converge between Flagstaff, Lusikisiki, Libode, Tsolo, Qumbu and Ntabankulu. Despite the preponderance of villages on the ridges above these valleys, much of the area is remote, inaccessible wilderness. It invites a sense of mystery and the unexplored. It stands to reason that this area contains a vast biome of interesting, often endemic, plant life. It is a biological point of attraction.

The first picture in the sequence shows Tsitsa Falls. The one below is indicative of the terrain. Much of the river is crowded-in with inaccessible cliff-face, which generally drops around 600m.

The valley floor is repeatedly restricted by cliff-face, and the river is too deep to cross. The surrounding vegetation – dominated by Euphorbia and thorny thicket – is too dense and unforgiving to allow ready bypasses, even should the gradient permit for that.

Down here there’s an eerie coastal feel – lots of white sand, smooth rocks, and an almost coastal vegetation feel. Almost. There’s still an abundance of Euphorbia and assorted thorn bush. The path meets the very occasional homestead – clearly people who have defied the old betterment resettlement and moved back to ancestral homes (in the process compromising access to infrastructure such as roads, clinics, schools, taxis).

Above is the Tina river, and below is the gentler Tina valley. This area generally drops around 600m as well. The Ntlangano valley has long been an outlaw area, and there are historical accounts (around 90 years ago) of youths returning from the mines and being a law unto themselves in the valley. Stock theft repeatedly thrived in this dense, difficult to penetrate landscape.

Flood 2 Fun

This is a small tributary of the Tina river in the Ntlangano area of the Eastern Cape. (See previous entry for more details.) We had earlier driven through this river en route to the Tina Falls, but were cut-off for a few hours on our return after a severe thunderstorm. The river had swollen massively for a short while, but by the time these kids had entered, it was already receding. Out of sight (in front) was a minor waterfall, and at the time of the picture above the current was still far too strong to venture close to it.

By the time this picture was taken, the kid in the foreground was risking the current just above the little waterfall. Notice his intense concentration in the next picture.

Its a while later, and activity is generally far more relaxed. In the final picture kids have ventured onto the minor waterfall. Beyond was a far more serious waterfall that would still have swept away all-and-sundry.

Class and the Loss of Innocence - Mzansi's post-liberation landscape

South Africa's rural areas will increasingly become central to political contestation. The country is urbanising rapidly, and the ruling party has a stronger urban legacy. Yet rural support is becoming the foundation of the ANC's continued electoral dominance.

The past week confronted me with the stark reality that many comrades from the past, who backed Mzansi's (South Africa's) ANC during the Eighties and into the post-1994 era, had abandoned the ANC for opposition parties, despite the (to me) obvious fact that a radical internal power and leadership transformation within the ruling party would sweep it back into power with a massive mandate.

Despite strong misgivings about the endemic levels of corruption, instances of poor governance, inverted racism and erosion of a human rights culture, I had little hesitation in re-affirming my support for the ANC.

Most of these comrades, from an earlier period in my life, had drifted virtually completely or at least partially out of my social universe, as I settled in a rural area, and most of them remained behind in urban middle class communities, career-building, and friendship circles. By contrast, I mixed more-and-more with people on the periphery of access to resources,  to Information technology, to jobs, to decent education and health, to basic infrastructure, and to power. My reference group also slowly became younger, and I became far more caught-up in the aspirations, value-systems and alienation of a post-liberation age set. 

South African politics have come through 2 distinct period: 

1. Firstly, nebulous notions of feel-good nation-building rainbow-people characterisation - the Mandela era. It was an essential step in pacifying a tense, diverse 'nation', and creating the breathing space to, first, take command of the political and state apparatuses; and, secondly, etsablish the framework for a vastly different developmental state, It was characterised by sound bytes such as the 1994 elections and inaugaration; the rugby World Cup and soccer African Nations championships; strong human rights statements around Nigeria and our own new constitutional order; and the virtual deification of Mandela. it briefly seemed to continue into the Mbeki era, with the latter's I am an African speech, and the intellectual and institution-building emphasis on the African Renaissance.
   
   
2. Secondly, the establishment of a technocratic and centralised state; with a mixed track record in lean, mean efficiency (the fiscus) and structures inviting of corruption and poor capacity (most local government bodies). This state co-incided with rapid establishment of an often poorly capacitated middle class (affirmative action; fast-tracking) and a parasitical new capitalist strata, that included luminaries of the political struggle era, and often focussed on rapid capital accumulation through deal-making at the expense of expanding capital (black economic empowerment, crony capitalism, deal-making through influence and position).

The new era unfolding, signalled through Mzansi's (South Africa's) bitter politics of the last few years, has culminated in the election to power of Jacob Zuma and a very diverse set of class ineterests backing that ascendancy. Common to this class alliance is, hitherto, exclusion from the benefits, spoils and active participation in a growing economy.

We've already seen the emergence of divisions far more bitter than what unfolded at Polokwane: suffice to refer to the ANC Women's League and Youth League elections. There is a diversity of capitalist and aspiring capitalist elements vying for hegemony in policy implementation with the leftwing agendas of the trade union movement and the South African Communist Party. The left dictated the intellectual discourse of the pre-liberation period, and it senses the return of that power.

Time has moved on. The current context revolves around the re-definition of state-sponsored accumulation - to me its a straight struggle between the politics of greed (but a new pack, sidelined by the Mbeki era) and the politics of development. In each case there's dense layering: the left incorporates a spectrum from pushing for social contract politics, favourable to the poor and the working classes (with room for expansive capital accumulation), to conservative posturing for expanded social welfare hand-outs (complete with latent conservatism in basic human rights issues or complete disregard for environmnetal and other costs). The latter discourse, seldom articulated intellectually, runs rampant in the rural government institutions and rural support base that consolidated so massively behind the ANC in the elections.

I should have little surprise that comrades from the past abandoned the ANC, in a realistic assessment of their own realities - the issues that confront them, the value systems, the practical impacts on their lives. These are friends and comrades that embraced vibrant urban living-styles, with an intellectual and human rights discourse at odds (or more precisely out of synchronised priority) with developmental realities in the rural areas. (Apartheid was an all-embracing glue that papered over fundamental cracks of the past: for example, the co-habitation of marxist feminism, conservative womens' rights discourses, and practically marginalised but intellectually noisy radical feminist streams.)

Perhaps more disturbing are the comrades from the present, rural or township in origin, that wryly observes the potential for Zanufication: the slow diffusion of urban support for the ANC, and the tightening of a rural compact. The ANC consolidates its rural base - ANC for Life; My vision, My future. Given the media's obsessive pre-occupation with individual leadership - its all about Zuma (its actually very little about Zuma); there should be little surprise that there was hardly a murmur of disapproval of this fundamental break with ANC culture. The ANC historically did not embrace the cult of the personality; it kept Mandela's power vigorously in check (and Mandela himself gave vigorous leadership in that regard, from devolving so much power - monetary policy, defence and intelligence policy, party leadership - to Mbeki in particular (but also selectively to others: Manual, Mboweni), to again-and-again deferring in speeches to the collective 'my people' as the force for decision-making and leadership).

My people was at once shorthand for the struggle (and the general population that experienced the brunt of the impact), and comrades in the struggle, in the movement for liberation. 

Ultimately, Mbeki went because of a rupture with and a reaction to his highly centralised, neo-authoritarian style. Yet Zuma ushers in the new era with 'my vision; my party'.

The Polokwane contestation continues in a new form, and this time it is fundamentally defined by class, if not ideologically presented as such. I saw a comment, from a historical supporter of the ANC that voted for the opposition, celebrating the liberating impact of the decision and the perceived political maturity thereof. I beg to differ. Your class context matures and re-shapes you. It can be a digression. It can be a false liberation. It must be a recognised reality, or we shall harvest bitter fruits of conflict.

Why Zuma does not matter - South Africa's elections, 2009

As South Africa goes to the polls on 22 April 2009, there is an obsessive pre-occupation with the unique personalities of Jacob Zuma and Julius Malema. Yet Polokwane was essentially a mass thrust by branch-based rank-and-file, through democratic means, to rid the ANC of an unpopular leader, perceived to be authoritarian, unresponsive to civil society, deeply flawed in policy direction around AIDS and the content of economic change. That process culminated in a much more vigorous National Executive that prioritises democratic debate and robust analysis.

Mbeki’s legacy, once the emotions dissipate, will show that he was an icon of the liberation struggle, and the driver of essential technocratic institutionalisation and modernisation. Zuma and Malema matter little. Malema is a gadfly, a devil’s advocate, void of the responsibility to govern.

Zuma is the preferred agent, based on his proven negotiations skills, and on his ability to withstand intolerable pressure, to provide the necessary analytical and leadership space to effectively address the issues below – issues that matter, and should matter, to the South African electorate.

The key electoral issue is not whether Zuma is corrupt or not (we’ll never know for sure – it is only the media that fabricated a so-called ‘generally corrupt relationship between Shaik and Zuma’, not the supposed author of this statement, the trial Judge, as he was quick to correct both the media and the not-so-very-god-like Constitutional Court; a prosecution proves nothing until there’s a conviction or acquittal).

The key issue is whether the ruling party key policy documents, approved by the very same overwhelming democratic thrust that changed the leadership, and guarded by the extensive and by no stretch of the imagination homogenous National Executive, will translate into effective leadership on the key issues that face us as a society caught-up in global duress and local opportunity.

If anyone doubts the vigorous independence of thinking within the ruling party, then how do you defend the sharply opposite viewpoints expressed – on the one hand - by the President of the country, Deputy-President of the ANC, and clearly one of the most powerful leaders over the last 15 years (Motlanthe); and – on the other hand – the head of the ANC election campaign (and self-proclaimed maker and breaker of the Mbeki Presidency, and again maker of the Zuma Presidency) and former ANC Youth League leader (Mabula), over Mabula’s scathing attack on Mbeki.

Economic Growth

Productive societies do things differently, and do that better than others. As a country, we need to embrace new products. Historically, we travel an Internationally-defined path, from Agriculture to Industry to Services. Service productivity is, today, explosively defined by growth in Information technologies, products and services. The food and resource crises necessitate that we re-define our base technologies and products. It is a path to failure to embrace the mechanistic, massively industrialized, environmentally degrading practices of Europe and America. It is also a path to failure to embrace the knowledge-defying environmentally-destructive short-term impact realities of much of the developing world.

I want to know that we will have in place a Government that can look at new and alternative agricultural and industrial processes, that studies dynamic high-impact growth economies such as China, India and Brazil (and forge active links with them), yet learns from the vigorous environmental debates in the failing economies of the western military-industrial states, and embraces the modern knowledge-expanding technologies of these same states – states caught in globally-impactful contradictions, but full of both the negative and positive.

I understand full well that we have a ruling party that made economic decisions that allowed our economy to be one of the most resilient of the G20 economies in the face of global crisis, and that is basing its stimulus response on durable infrastructure, not bailing out greed-blinded banking or auto sectors. I’m aware that we face our own overwhelming set of contradictions, contracting industries and above all else employment and social welfare time-bombs. I want to know that we can change course based on the strengths of the past 15 years. To that, the ruling party stands committed. What claim to fame has COPE or the DA?

Agricultural productivity

South Africa faces a potential loss in food productivity of up to 50% over the next 70 years, as a direct consequence of climate change.

I want to know that as we face increasing demand for irrigated agriculture and more productive output, we’re not trading that for higher salinization of soil, destruction of soil macrostructure and fertility, and erosion, leading to desertification. We need a governing party that is seriously committed to developing our natural land potential in rural areas such as Transkei, and that comprehend that mainstream agro-industry models cannot work (as a combination of topography, market access, market culture, land tenure, information & knowledge access, historical practices and emerging environmental realities), and that we need to learn from societies successfully engaging alternate models. Only the ANC currently enjoys those societal linkages and potential for networking. Our middle-class parties are simply out of their depth, and this issue is way too critical to entrust to adventurers.

Military spending

Despite the obsessive media mongering around the supposed arms scandal, this country spends much less on military expenditure as a percentage of Government expenditure than the UK, France, Australia, Argentina, Canada, Namibia or Egypt. We spend vastly less, as a percentage, than the USA, Russia or China. Such expenditure is ultimately destructive of genuinely productive and sustainable economic growth.

I want to see that our military spending helps to control conflicts that impact destructively on global stability and localised human rights (where localised populations cannot escape poverty as a direct result of such conflicts), in disaster management, and in resource protection, such as our (and our neighbours’) vulnerable coastlines.

To that effect, I believe we have a Government that strives for relative balance, relative quality of military expenditure.

Human rights

I never ever again want to see xenophobic violence rampant as we recently witnessed. I was deeply distressed by the absent reaction of our African renaissance leader (Mbeki), and I do not trust the DA or COPE leadership to put in place macro-framework policies that will minimise this potential. I am more trusting – not convinced, just more trusting – of the exile history and greater warmth and affinity (and skill in negotiations, as witnessed in central Africa and particularly KZN) displayed by Jacob Zuma; or the on-site emotional response by Winnie Mandela.

I accept the need to step carefully around Zimbabwe. We cannot – cannot – afford a social and economic implosion on our border. I take heart from the fact that strong components of the current leadership – COSATU, the SACP in particular – have been in the forefront of condemning Mugabe’s excesses. That will ensure a more balanced tempering of our vital strategic and security interests in dealing with the Zimbabwean issue.

The Dalai Lama – with a chequered history of insurrection and flight – is of very little consequence in the far more overwhelming human rights needs of fighting poverty, unemployment, and atrocious health & educational disparities. If those needs can be better met through partnership with China, so be it in assessing our self-interest to dictate that we take unpopular decisions. It is not satisfactory. Perhaps at this time we have to reconcile ourselves with a democratic system that allows for vigorous disapproval – even from a minister – but ultimate subjugation to global political considerations.

Legal and Constitutional order

The legal challenges around the Zuma case has resulted in an extremely dynamic and vigorous self-examination, by different courts, commissions, prosecutorial authorities and public institutions, including those established as part of our constitutional order. That strengthens the establishment of a democratic and constitutional state, and the evolution of a law-driven society. If you cannot see or accept that, you are merely reflecting your emotional entrapment in a preferred outcome, shaped by media trial, shaped by the class interests of the past and their enthusiastic parasitical emerging black capital collaborators. I – and most South Africans – do not care for your blinkered interpretation of justice - it looks suspiciously like the narrow group-justice so preferred before 1994.

The debate will continue, not with any semblance of relevance through the populist calls to override judicial independence and try-by-political-demand, but through the Constitutional Court addressing the conflicting Nicholson and Supreme Court judgments, and the NPA de-politicising, transforming and professionalising itself.

I will not trust a party (COPE) that selected its leadership through undemocratic means, in order to avoid internal conflict, to protect the main pillar of post-1994 democracy – our constitutional order. The ANC, by contrast, enjoyed an extraordinarily intense, if very bitter, democratic contest for leadership. COPE’s founders could not accept the verdict of that democratic contestation. Nor can the DA accept that the ANC has, for 10 years, not had the reason to use its two-thirds majority to change the constitution simply because it actually played the overwhelming lead role in establishing that constitution. COPE and the DA exhibit imbecile populism around these issues – and I am expected to embrace their infantile and convoluted latent totalitarianism.

Corruption and crime

The ANC’s Strategy and Tactics outline the base analysis that underpins policy development. I simply do not see any analysis remotely as sophisticated emerging from either the DA or COPE. That does not mean there’s not been a failure in policy. That also does not negate the reality that a party with 70% electoral support attracts corrupt opportunism. It will be a defining challenge for the incoming administration – and that is why addressing it is a core pillar of the ANC’s election manifesto.

I am not really interested in South Africans from the diaspora screaming blue murder around corruption, when they readily chirp about what a lovely country the demonstrably corrupt and reactionary Berlusconi’s Italy is. Yes, it’s white and western. Good for your sense of self-righteousness. Come and address the problem; bring solutions. In case you didn’t notice, corruption is out in the open because of the media freedoms protected by the current constitutional order. We no longer have National Party ministers using state helicopters, away from media scrutiny, for demented hunting trips in vassal territory. And crime is no longer bottled-up (through a murderous police state) in the townships, where your parents and their politicians never gave a hoot about it, as it didn’t impact on their lives.

That doesn’t mean it must be anything but smashed. It does mean that populist and inhumane calls for capital punishment and police state methodology, and reflective of the more reactionary ways of past societies globally and locally, is not going to be on the agenda. And I trust the ANC a damn lot more to guard against base instinct vulgar politics.

The rural poor

Above all else, the middle classes – insulated in their dynamic growth and very opulent lifestyles, allowed so unabatedly the past 10 years in particular – do not have the (seeming) personal need or integrity or Dutch / Scandinavian-style social contract mentality to calculate the cost and enormity of Apartheid’s legacy around issues of health, education and security. I understand that these issues represent failure in state policy. I believe that a change in leadership in a political movement clearly rooted in the rural poor is more likely to address these issues than a change to COPE or the DA’s leadership, living in gated communities with gated mind-sets. The ANC branch rank-and-file that swept Zuma into power do not live such lives.

I live – and have for 22 years now - in a township that has slowly transformed from rural peri-urban village to loxion, complete with devastating decline in crime indices, health (AIDS and TB), food security, and cultural values and attitudes of youth; added to the long-established environmental degradation, atrocious educational standards, poor infrastructure. I have witnessed some developmental delivery (atrociously implemented and maintained water systems, poorly thought-through electricity connectivity, sub-standard housing – lacking imaginative pro-active urban planning considerations). I have also witnessed a rise in (general) income levels, a greatly expanded social welfare net, and a rapid decline in fear associated with the past disrespect for basic human rights. I’ve witnessed the development of political tolerance and an eradication of the supremacist value systems that accompanied first colonialism and then apartheid.

In this area, as in the rural hinterlands of South Africa, none of us want to witness the latent-arrogance of an urban elite in dictating our spatial, economic and political development. It was completely the norm for more than a hundred years, epitomised in the stupid racism of forcing black people, by threat of fines and physical abuse, off the pavements of Mthatha, or charging them labour or money to cross expropriated ancestral land. That urban and cultural elitism has slowly crept-back, in the form of dramatically skewed economic growth, through the consequences of the Mbeki-era growth models, and declining respect for human rights and democratic debate. It no longer has an automatic white face. That does not make it less ugly.

In these areas we will, in overwhelming numbers, assume that the middle-class and urban leadership (and membership) of the DA and COPE will increase such elitism and disdain. We don’t accept the limited delivery of the past 10 years. We demand change in course. That is exactly what Polokwane concluded, and the ANC will change course, based on its own lessons learnt. We don’t want the strengths and successes of the past 15 years abandoned.

Change has a strong foundation. We have a legal and constitutional order that is globally one of the finest. We are renewing infrastructure both within the context of the World Cup and of our own development priorities, on an uninterrupted scale, basically not compromised by the global melt-down. We did not defer our economic policies to the rampant greed that destroyed western banking systems.

ANC forever?

Only in the dreams of the living dead, incapable of learning lessons, and in the populist electoral rabble-rousing of the day. Liberation movements, great parties and great agendas stultify and fail. Politics by definition attract those tending towards corrupt greed and grandiose delusional power. I see more reason to vote ANC in 2009 than to support the charlatans and faith healers of COPE and the DA. But that will quickly change if I see increasingly poor environmental and energy management; more enthusiastic aping of western dehumanisation and its coke culture; a retreat of hard-fought progressive societal advances such as gay rights or the abolition of capital punishment; or declining economic growth.

I live in a massively better society than Apartheid South Africa. We do not engage in genocidal adventures in other countries. The standards are set. That is what must determine political support, not nebulous hatred of an individual. Zuma does not matter. The policy driver and its mechanisms matter – the internal political democracy, the constitutional order, and state capacity to deliver.

It helps to have a relatively sound economic track-record in a global context.

Soccer and composite rural entertainment

Cultural activities are being seriously degraded across South Africa as a component of a tourism industry dominated by values derived from European settlement. Despite the emergence of a significant black leisure market, much product packaging remains tailored to American, European and white South African tastes and value systems.

These pictures were taken at a soccer tournament held to launch a business development venture in a deep rural part of the Wild Coast (Cwebe village). The tournament guaranteed attendance of large numbers of villagers, and allowed an assortment of cultural groups to showcase traditional dancing.

What makes these pictures unique is that the activities were directed at local residents, without the trappings and compromises involved in the tourism industry. More pictures will be released in subsequent postings. The event took place in a particularly picturesque valley, surrounded by village dwellings and indigenous forest, with the sea clearly visible close by.

While older participants naturally organised their performances in synchrony with their experience of traditional activities and dress, organisers of the youth groups are dedicated and highly committed crafters of traditional culture, operating without financial or logistical support.

Succulent groundcovers: Plectranthus species

Here are two tough Plectranthus groundcovers that prefer dry conditions.

Plectranthus spicatus typically grows predominantly in the sun on cliff-faces, with fairly shallow soils and high wind exposure. It will cover an embankment very rapidly, and is another plant that will colonise downwards on a tightly-packed retainer wall, albeit more slowly than Crassula multicava (see previous posting). Whereas C.multicava is more likely to spread via the tiny seedlings that form as the flower dries-up, P. spicatus will root from dislodged pieces - which provides the clue to rapid cover, if you have the time to do it manually.

I love its bright green, serrated (dentate) texture. It is very hardy to drought, but gets damaged by fairly light frost (it should recover in Spring, unless the frost is severe). It has a long flowering period (Autumn to early Spring), and the flowers provide curious interest at times, but on the whole it detracts from a particularly spectacular foliage. It handles much more (dry) shade than commonly assumed.

Plectranthus lucidus is typical coastal dune vegetation undergrowth. Mthatha's climate is extremely hot in summer, but with lots of cloud. Wet summers can give the area a very sub-tropical feel (but with much less humidity). A dry summer, as we're currently experiencing, has more of a harsh karoo-like or thicket feel to it, but with much more cloud. Winters are crisp (warm-to-hot at midday; below freezing at dawn), dry and sunny. This Plectranthus does extremely well here under dry shade, and does not mind the fine clays typical of the area. It spreads fairly slowly, and needs protection from frost (solid tree cover will do). It is a delicate plant in size and appearance (tough in practice), with fine texture and bright foliage. It is a great plant for contrasting alternate repetitions. I'm currently using it to some effect with a Crassula species that I received from Ryder Nash of Simply Indigenous. Unfortunately, discussions with botanists and long searches through hundreds of Crassulas have failed to yield a name. I now call it Crassula sp. 'Ryder'. I'll do a separate posting on it.

Succulent groundcovers: Crassula species

I work with several indigenous Crassula species, including the more shrub-like form plants (and great, albeit different, bonsai material) C. ovata and C. arborescens. I personally enjoy the weird leaf form and spectacular flowers of C. perfoliata, and find that C. pellucida combines well with trailing Arctotis species.

However, it is to C. multicava and C. spathulata that I turn for tough Crassula groundcovers in the shade.

Crassula multicava is pictured here underneath Plectranthus ecklonii, during late winter (when the Plectranthus is in poor shape and fairly open). It spread itself, via seeding, down the very hostile retainer wall. It is a relatively moist area, and this Crassula does enjoy some degree of moisture. However, there's a gap as wide as the blade of a knife behind each of those retainer blocks - not much more than dust settles there. Once roots grow away, they should find a bit of soil in the blocks. The aspect is also tricky - north-facing; hot sun most of the day, most of summer; virtually no sun in winter (tall surrounding walls cut the sun). The picture was taken a year after planting the Crassula on top only. It is now 2 years since the picture, and the wall is densely covered - but nutrient deficiency is starting to show, as there's a yellowing of the leaves, particular where the sun is more persistent. I definitely prefer this Crassula in the shade.

Crassula spathulata has a very similar flower, for a much longer period, and at a different time than C. multicava. I do not rate the flower, though, finding that it gives an untidy appearance. This is a Crassula that I prefer for its leaves. It handles hot sun with less scorching, and looks better in dry locations than C.multicava. It has exceptionally beautiful texture and gloss, particularly in the shade. And that is my preferred location: dry shade.

Time

Time is to be; as we drift through unknown dreams of primitive form in dark, warm wombs.

Time arrives like the dream-like smiles of dawn's first golden etching on the very grand rock of ages.

Time burps with endless mindless energy as insights accumulate alongside impatient friendships.

Time becomes cyclical as lessons are re-learned and existence becomes a drag on timelessness.

Time shift into dusk as insights deepens and new energies abound; as understanding becomes emotionally dense and personally secure; as light takes intriguing shape and form.

Time disappears as golden clouds turn dark and ominous; as failure confronts; as time shifts out.

Time becomes endless as myths provide comfort and ancestors real.

Time heals as cycles repeat; as lives become distant and then non-existent.

To what extent do you live now?

Where time is the cuddle of a puppy; the infectuous happiness of a young bundle of child; or the impossible serenity of a life lived in the now?

Where time is the note you tap on a keyboard, with a lingering smile to guide the knowledge of a mind alive; active, creative.

Perhaps you live in your memories?

Memories play tricks as happiness dominate and sad notes drift into the mist. Memories etch bitter as old despairs erupt in decay. Memories become shifting sands as closeness make way for distance. Memories get stuck in old forms and old notes, in old values and old confusions. Memories confuse foundations for living rooms, where cold winds batter truths.

In your dreams?

Psychedelic distortions litter the chambers that are visited night after night, but never known. Dreams build hope, but where is the structure of the now? Dreams become repetitive, in new forms, but then plastic, as cynicism forces the resignation of mind.

Time is a memory in horror of dreams deferred. Time is a dream in defiance of memories diffused. Time is the Now and the Now is Time; but the best time is the time of play. To play is to live; to be new; and play is an option in all: anytime.

Do you live in your memories; do you live in your dreams; to what extent do you live in the Now?

Framed by mud

Dawn arising, Cwebe village, South Africa.

Integrating livestock into nursery operations

My approach to both landscaping and propagation is heavily informed by a 20 year long engagement with the concepts and principles of Permaculture - I like the idea of multi-functional, integrated and intrinsically healthy localised ecosystems. Therefore the integration of livestock into my propagation processes was merely a matter of planning and time, not of debate.

I've finally been able to do just that. The garden - serving as home and motherstock nursery - is surrounded by a hedge of Dovyalis caffra (Kei Apple), and backed (closer to the fence) by a mixture of Acacia tortilis, A. karroo, A. robusta, A. sieberiana, a large diversity of Aloes, Scutia myrtina, Tecoma capensis and Asparagus falcatus. The purpose of this security hedge is 5-fold: specifically it must prevent local youth from raiding my large number of fruit trees (a very practical problem in South Africa's rural villages); generally it must serve the colloquially described purpose of being a 'Stop Nonsense'; it must provide wind protection as well as be a privacy screen; and finally it must create a suitable habitat for chickens, ducks and geese to scratch around underneath or have some protection from the elements. This hedge is now maturing, and serving its multiple purposes. Alongside the hedge is a path, right around the garden, which in turn is separated from the yard as a whole with a tall fence. Immediately adjacent to the fence are a large variety of indigenous trees, shrubs and ground covers - these serve as the propagation mother stock to the landscaping business.

I've introduced 2 batches of chickens. Twenty layers will mature and provide me with eggs for a minimum of 1 year; at which point a second batch will come into production, and the first batch will slowly be culled, in keeping with actual production rate. But more interesting is the introduction of broilers. Fifty broilers get introduced to one of 3 camps every 6 weeks. The camps are mulched heavily with (freely available) sawdust. At 6 weeks, 30 of the broilers are sold off at R60 each in the village where I stay (R20 below the market value). This is a return of R1,800 (for 30 chickens) against total expenditure of R1,700 (for all 50 chickens) on all food, vaccine, heating & lighting (parafine lamps for 3 weeks) and equipments (waterers and feeders), but excluding labour. Labour is a fairly incidental component in the daily routine of one of the nursery employees. The remaining 20 broilers get eaten over a six week period by all on the yard, including the propagation nursery staff. Virtually free protein, if all goes well. The food starts out as the usual broiler starter and finisher mixes, and then graduates to a hormone and medicine free mix of grains, leucaena and lucerne; so that these elements - drenched in every chicken bought in urban supermarkets and restaurants - can largely be eliminated.

But I'm yet to get to the primary reason why I grow chickens. It is to make compost. I have ample access to sawdust about 7km from site (transportation and labour being the only costs); but manure - particularly quality manure - is a major headache. The chickens solve that for me (to be supplemented in due time by rabbit, goat and other manures), and the result is that I can produce 68 cubic metre of compost a year, using both the layers and broilers.

But there are more benefits. The blood, legs, innards and bone (all cooked), form part of my cats' and dogs' diet (in 20 years of breeding and keeping Jack Russels and Golden Retrievers I am yet to have a problem from feeding chicken bones - broiler bones are too soft, and mature chickens' bones simply need to be screened: no thin, sharp bones). The feathers go into special compost mixes for special plants. The hedge gets fertilised from the natural rainfall-driven nutrient leaching process, and the garden as a whole benefits from the selective and planned release of older layers into a garden sub-divided into camps.

The whole process outlined above does have the downside of keeping me locked into a battery system of sorts - endless replacement of day-olds, endless bags of dubious feed. I'd like to move away from pre-mixed broiler feed (and largely feed my layers natural grains and greens). However, the nursery is a commercial concern with intense input needs, and a base requirement for cost efficiency. Modern broilers are large birds within 6 weeks. I'd have to switch to a combination of very hardy local birds, bred out to combinations of both larger (for meat) and smaller, more efficient lines. I'd also have to produce a very substantive part of the diet cost-efficiently on a small space, with delicate management requirements. That's my aim. For now, I've re-introduced livestock into my overall system.

In short, this is illustrative of the Permaculture approach at its best - great multiplicity of benefits, and minimisation of labour; and self-sustainability as goal and eventual reality. It takes time and effort to set-up; once done, its a pretty smooth process. Of course, it doesn't deal with the ethics and morality of a carnivorous diet. As a former fruitarian, I've long come to grips - for myself at least - that I'm part of a species of chimpanzee (the third chimpanzee, Homo sapiens) that have not quite evolved away from meat - yet.

Aliens and the little monster

I didn't like roses. They're overdone; they're soft as aphids; and they require far too much care. Then I learnt to eat rose petals in salads (the old types are much better); found a use for rose hips (in health teas); and saw the most stunning security fence imaginable around high-value fruit farms close to Cape Town (endless lines of rambling roses, completely covering the original razor wire fences, next to the highway).

And really, roses are not that soft. Select for hardiness and plant in a large hole with masses of compost - and you've got pretty carefree rose gardening ahead of you. You only do indigenous? Need an excuse? Make it part of your vegetable garden - not too many vegetables are indigenous anyhow! Besides, they'll draw aphids away from your more valuable veggie crops.

Finally - if you've got a healthy mixed garden and don't use chemicals, you may well see the lovely surprise pictured here: a reed frog!

Its a hip-hop migration through the sandstone of Afrika...

"How we see a thing – even with our eyes – is very much dependent on where we stand in relationship to it."

To some very close friends, hip-hop merely meant the flash bling gangsta rap of Hollywood and a self-defined American underclass. It was being violently replicated in the gangster infested Cape Flats of Cape Town - and seemed little else but imitation rap, with a vile eye for sexist objectification and crude, venomous drivel. Look at the bling car with the distorted jukebox coming by and see a rapist, a pathetic violent excuse for a human.

I had a different take. I didn't like the Cape Coloured hip hop explosion - I didn't like the Afrikaans vernacular with its unsmooth sharpness - but embraced rap. I heard the melodic rhythm, the underlying beauty and above all the freedom to define: "I am. Fuck you." Of course it was a confrontation with power, with being defined - and it might have been mindless (but it might also have been yet another small, essential, moment of definition of place in the journey to enact the symbolic phenomenon that is Obama). At about the same time I started immersing myself in both house and the more pulsating and intriguing trance genres.

As a South African, I am exposed to deep house as the dominant (black) youth beat; and to trance as an extremely challenging and fast-evolving niche beat with significant (white) middle-class consumer appeal. But South African hip hop has become mainstream; its moved out of its coloured origins, and straddles both African ikasi (township) and multi-cultural middle-class worlds. I personally love hip hop; its as potentially challenging in its sophistication as trance, as melodic as the best that generations of black Americans have given the world; and its integration with poetry, with dancing, with explosive variations of leisure (from skateboarding to graffiti) has both revitalised music into a global showcase of fun, and re-connected with the much older African traditions of theater, oral history, music, symbolism, event and defining of community.

Local hip hop came off age - to me - with Hip Hop Pantsula's Omang Reloaded. Here was this lali kasi (village township) boy with the smooth Setswana rap, the new sound, the local RRROOTS, and the post-liberation attitude - loxion (township) life reloaded, a new vibe defined, music that moved the soul, the mind and the body. At-ti-tude; where you been? Suddenly the Cape Town Old Skool became more relevant - where could you find a finer technician and creator of turntablism than DJ Ready? And here's a brother that really understands - and builds upon - the roots of hip hop culture.

South African Hip hop is quietly present rather than visible in the flow of tackling social issues: be it gangsterism, AIDS, unemployment or the virile wave of Xenophobia that swept Mzantsi (South Africa) during 2008. Music is a powerful transmitter of what's cool and what's not; and many hip hop artists were quick to condemn the xenophobia. (Unlike the media; the political powers-that-be; and Street Joe.)

DJ Nifty: "All you psychotic xenophobic sociopathic suckers this goes out to you / all you wannabes / who feel like men after raping women / after killing pregnant women after attacking children after setting men alight / we have no respect for you / you're the reason why the world is moving backwards instead of moving forwards". (Hype sessions; It's dat heat; CD accompanying SA's only dedicated hip-hop magazine.)

If early South African hip hop was built on a fusion of alienated apartheid-era lyrics and channeling of angry energy into breakbeat dancing; the contemporary reality is a fascinating emergence of new styles and cultures. Township hip hop is about performance - the music, reciting of lyrics, expression of real and perceived African clothing and hair styles. Above all its local; its rooted in the loxion experience, and its very real in its emotion, its enthusiasm. There's a contradictory embracing of the African diaspora (seen in clothing and hair styles; much of it fused with the side-stream rastafarian culture, that's finding hip-hop an emracing environment of content-driven soul music). There's a strong identification with the symbolism of American consumerism - Nike's a uniform, a social statement - Just Do It. Don't sneer from your middle-class command of analytic and cynical overview - what do you really know about the need to project yourself as Someone in a sea of poverty?

Six years ago I worked on a tourism programme setting-up horse trails. I drove a (newish) Land Rover Defender, had long dreads and walked barefeet - I had no need to impress anyone with suits and all the pretences that come with being Mr or Mrs Fake. I quickly experienced - and thoroughly enjoyed - the arrogant power that came with alighting from that Land Rover, barefeet, dreaded, very casual clothing, as Mr and Mrs Fake stared (and then quickly averted their eyes) with disbelief from their lesser cars, poorer existence; uptight lifestyle, clothes and uncool minds. That's the Nike phenomenon. It makes you rise above the semblance of your despair.

The middle class kids live their hip hop lives very Americanised, but they're cool too; far more immersed in the sideshows (cycling, skate boarding, graffiti, break dancing and emceeing; with a full repertoire of Wardrobe America and - of course - the accent). The rap's in English, but don't dish it. These kids freely cross Mzantsi's lingering racial boxes.

Globally, hip hop's a remarkably dynamic fusion-driver: note Wyclef's ground breaking collaborations with artists as diverse as Youssou N'dour and Kenny Rogers (or his Shout Out respect to Pink Floyd; Wish You Were Here to a hip hop beat). Or the very visionary Quincy Jones' 1989 collaboration with rappers.

To the township rappers there's an urgent need to break free - that's not their world, and the first priority is to rap vernacular. Hip hop's about the issues, the life, the environment that you live - so you can't adopt the Alien Other's voice. To break out of the domination of the colonizer's language is to break through the self-perpetuating hopelessness of living a life of fantastical dreams - you want to be the other in the movies, the high-security townhouses of the middle class, the articulator with a smooth English accent, Italian suit, lusted-for 7-series...

Its to regain your own mental universe; that's the greatest strength of hip-hop - and it happens to a great beat.

"Colonialism imposed its control of the social production of wealth through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship. But its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonized, the control, through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world. Economic and political control can never be complete or effective without mental control. To control a people’s culture is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship to others.

For colonialism this involved two aspects of the same process: the destruction or the deliberate undervaluing of a people’s culture, their art, dances, religions, history, geography, education, orature and literature, and the conscious elevation of the language of the colonizer. The domination of a people’s language by the languages of the colonizing nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonized."

To Mlungisi - DJ Jeff: thanx 4 showing me that music makes cool now. Finally, here's a Shout Out to my older friends - do not freeze your sense of discovery, of awe, in the loneliness of the past. There are no friends in memories; no life in the comfort zones of the past. Use that as a base, but do not render that your world. The Now - full of warmth and real people - will become incomprehensible.

Both quotes above are from Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. (1986) Decolonising the Mind

Peace & Chill

Mbanyana estuary, Cwebe Nature Reserve, Wild Coast, Eastern Cape, South Africa. The Nature Reserve belongs to the rural communities of Dwesa and Cwebe, comprising Gcalekha (Xhosa), amaBomvana and Mfengu people.

Drainage & natural adaptation - a plant for every niche

This Crassula ovata variation from the Mbashe area (where the very rare and endemic Aloe Reynoldsii grows) illustrates the basic evolutionary principle that where there is a niche, a species will adapt and thrive.

As a landscaper, I initially struggled with the concept of good drainage for water lovers - I mean, how do you expect to provide drainage in a swampy, wet environment? Observing plants in a natural environment quickly brought the answer - just look at plants rooted in gritty, compost loam on a seasonal waterfall. Indeed, there is good drainage - the water is constantly moving over the rocky substrate, and air is being pumped through the root system.

Sajonisi: Defying the power of Globalism

Port St John's is an incestuous hell-hole amidst outrageous beauty - Paradise and the Venomous Beast of Failure; Sajonisi; town of myth-making and former home to an Apartheid bantustan's torturers and Rhodesian renegades.

It is a playground to people as diverse as former SABC Board chairperson Eddie Funde, musician Thandiswa Mazwai, and the tens of thousands of township and village youth that descends onto its main beach over New Year.

It is a dump of a town, with open sewerage the norm, corrupt traffic officers, grossly incompetent police, greedy and power-crazed local government representatives, severely restrained health services and saturation crime.

It is also a place of incredibly laid-back chilling, soulful forests, extraordinarily strange characters - from the Mpondo man that hauls out his penis for a public piss and tells the nearby (female) doctor that he's got to 'release his shlong' to Rasta Dave who discovered the loveliness of the township maidens as a youth (and stayed, training as a herbalist, becoming a loved legend all around the rural areas). In-between all the chronic alcoholics and permanently doped-out drop-outs (for this is South Africa's Marijuana Paradise, too) you'll find Ben fornicating on the beach (and amplifying his already rich theatre of myth-making) or the Mayor and Municipal Manager competing for balance behind their impossibly huge stomachs. Its a place with rolling hills, dead-drop cliff-faces, misty beach vistas, picturesque villages, a township on perhaps the most valuable piece of coastal real estate inhabited by the working (and not-so-working) classes and two splendid mountains servicing as the gateway to Port St John's.

It is undoubtedly one of the most scenic places in South Africa, yet so fettered with institutional, social and infrastructural failure that it will continue to defy attempts to turn it into yet another over-priced soulless tourist destination.

It is a gateway to mad, mad beauty - for those who seek jazz in the bowels of a rat. It is Sajonisi, village town outside the globe.

Sangomas, blue sirens and castles on the beach

Last night I dreamt that I was being visited by a
whole bunch of white sangomas (traditional healers in the Mpondo culture of the South African Wild Coast). Now this was odd, as white sangomas represent a controversial rarity; most sangomas are black; and I know quite a few.

This visit was at my old family home, where I grew-up, in a Southern Cape coastal town, where Sangomas were unknown during my childhood.

The one Sangoma that stood out in my dream was grey, older, very dignified. The other was very smooth, handsome, younger - named Kay, which struck me as a woman's name. Both looked very natural, very normal (as far as Sangomas may look normal). Chris - the one white sangoma that I do know - was present - talking too much shit as usual, and wasted my only bag of skunk.

Now my closest friend is a twasa (an initiate into the ancestral world). He was present in the dream, but gave me no information or advance warning about this visit. At some point we went off to Knutzi for an ancestral ceremony, a strange little coastal hamlet where several houses were built as castles. I was keen to dispose of my notebook, as the house was being left open.
Chris wanted to organise screaming blue police sirens to light the beach. I was quite irritated by this. The whole scene looked very clean, almost roman. I was aware, vaguely, of the presence of another twasa friend, MamThembu, and a few Sangoma friends, notably Thobela iTongo.

On waking, I felt very relaxed. I rarely remember dreams, so I wrote this dream down immediately.

Image of Bhele by Philasande Mahlakatha

Into another world

The Rock that lures you into Deep Pools of Ancestral transition. The top picture shows a rock on the Mbanyana estuary, Cwebe, where people are believed to be lured to a transition from the present to the next world. The second picture was taken on the coastal route from Mbanyana to Nkanya, Wild Coast, South Africa.

Impatiens flanaganiae

I found these growing on boulder screes amidst (or often dominating) clivias, scadoxis and cycads, in my all-time favourite ravine; a place of rare beauty where I've returned up to 6 times a year for the past 20 years. Dangerous, inaccessible and unknown - its had a persistent pull on me unmatched by any other place of great natural beauty that I've enjoyed. This Impatiens is considered rare; it grows in shade typically on sandstone; has large tubers (used in traditional medicine); and it flowers endlessly through late Spring and Summer.

Mayhem is in the Eye of the tripped-out beholder: New Year's eve, Port St John's

Image credit: Psytrip by psion005
Created 2006 using Apophysis and posted to the Artist's DeviantArt page - click on Psytrip for link

Surrounded by tens of thousands of increasingly drunk revellers on the main beach, Port St Johns, Wild Coast. 2am, 1 January 2009. Thousands in the water; floodlights creating a surreal mass crowd scene, silhouetted further out, invisible against the embankments. Tripped out of my skull, it's a very Hunter S Thompson spectacle.

The road is dense with people. The beach is dense. Vuyani's is packed - and the source of the house music flooding over the beach. I snatch a close-up look at the DJ - shirtless, perspiring, pulsating in rhythm to the music and the crowd; its happening. I've missed - very deliberately - this party for the preceding years that I've lived in Transkei. I had a brief look at it, a few years ago, on the 2nd of January; saw nothing but mayhem, broken glass, bloody bodies, extraordinarily drunk people, and soldiers with automated guns and unfriendly faces. Not very trip friendly. Add into the equation the notorious inability to move vehicles in-and-out of Second Beach around this time. Seemed like a party to miss by all means. I knew all the kids went there, from Mthatha and countless rural villages. The same scene replicates itself at Mtentu, Cwebe and numerous other coastal hamlets. East London has a version of it, apparently 100 000 strong; but the mayhem is a fraction as rich.

Now I find myself in the eye of the mayhem, and I do not have the luxury to figure it all out. Its incredibly beautiful, and I'm drawn to the interplay between endless and endlessly hyped-up human bodies, the sea, the beach, the floodlights, the music, the underlying tension.

I had planned, first, my first New Year Vortex party in ages; then looked inwards at a resumption of the dre anthrax ghoul Ncise parties. Everybody I mix with seemed to pull in different, indeterminate directions. Finally, I thought, a small intimate party with 3 or 4 very close friends. But by the morning of the 31st I had bought into the promised land at Port St John's: there was to be a serious commercial house party at the soccer stadium in PSJ, with a tantalizing trance party as back-up at Amapondo Backpackers. Now Dave mentioned the House party. Rasta Dave is not to be trusted. First, he's called 'Rasta', yet has had a cheesekop for at least a decade. Second, the last New Year party he organised left Fiks and myself negotiating payment terms with the owners while still tripping off our brackets. Third, he tried hard to burn my house down during a party. Fourth, he's an artist, a herbalist, a real lunatic, and above all he's Dave. Which means real trouble. But then Phila confirmed the party and mentioned the trance back-up. (Some 24 hours later I told Phila to get the hell out of my car so that I can regain my sanity. Enough said.)

So here I am, having finally accepted that my car was going to be parked on the road (with very drunk, speeding lunatics part of the equation); that there IS no house party in town; that Amapondo has some weird rock DJ playing music that has more-or-less decayed in the deeper reaches of my mind. I finally popped some candy, with two of my weirder friends, at around midnight. Earlier I'd taken a walk onto Second beach, and was astonished at the peacefulness and chilled-out serenity of the massive crowd. So by now I knew this was where I wanted to spend my time.

The drive down was interesting. We went through a roadblock that did a double-check (different officers, about a 100m apart) on the licence disk, lights, tyres, drivers' licence, driver sobriety and general road worthiness. Thizo was the driver, handled it all very well, and joked non-stop with the cops about their newly established taxi rank (hundreds of taxis had been pulled off and grounded). It was raining at this point (on the coastal escarpment), and large numbers of dejected hikers were walking towards PSJ (still about 60km away).

Once at the beach, Thizo and Mavus - who stayed sober and straight throughout the festivities - promptly pitched tent in the busiest spot close to the water. This was to be a reference point for us. The night unfolded as an endless wandering between the beach and the backpackers; between different crowd scenes and different music. The (mostly foreign) patrons of the backpackers had generally made-up their minds that they were not to venture into the chaos unfolding below them. Not all was good. I remember, at one point, seeing bodies flying, blood, violence; but sidestepped it all gingerly. You don't pay too much attention to such incidents in a crowded space like that. Despite the fact that there must have been many tens of thousands of people, not a cop nor a soldier nor an ambulance was in sight, except at the checkpoints on the road. The faces, bodies were extraordinary. The energy, the eyes, the silhouettes. There were many small dramas, but came dawn the scene unfolding was one of exceptional beauty and detail. The night was bizarre - strangely relaxed, yet on full alert amidst massive drunkenness.

Getting out was trying. We made an initial attempt at around 6am; but turned back. At 9am we tried again, and had a 2 hour crawl up the supposedly one-way mountain route (cars coming in came on the normal coastal road). Five trucks blocked us for some time, and then painstakingly reversed up the hill. As I stopped next to the last police checkpoint, I asked if my clutch plate was smelling exceptionally burnt, but was re-assured that every clutch plate had the same noxious smell about it.

We tried to get back in later, but it was impossible. It started raining, but the crowds kept pouring in. Sleep wasn't a possibility. We had no contact with Thizo and Mavus - the cellular network was ridicolously overloaded. I'll spare you the details of further proceedings.

Yesterday Phila questioned our sanity for walking around with bulging daypacks - which included money and cell phones - amidst all the mayhem. She related how as she tried to meet up with the others, she met an acquantaince from the clinic, who told her the dead body count at the clinic was 37. Thirty seven. 3pm, 1 January 2009. It didn't warrant a reference in the regional newspaper - which only mocked the fact that East London's zero tolerance policy to public drinking was contradicted by the endless broken glass bottles on the beach.

Phila isn't interested in a repeat celebration next year. Nor is Thizo - he enjoyed the night, and wanted to stay the following night, despite the rain, but bemoaned the fact that, in general, women were dirty and ugly. What did he expect of open-air mayhem? Its the same at a Cape Town trance party. If you want sensuous style, hit the urban clubs.

I do, though, remember one couple, very stylish and beautiful, dancing to enigmatic house pumping out of a car system. As I alluded earlier, there were many fascinating, contradictory, stimulating side-shows. I want to go back - despite the 37 bodies (which must have increased substantially). Back to Mthatha, the cops were hard at work. Not a single intoxicated motorist was going to proceed - after all, accidents get media exposure.

Footnote: I carried my camera on me all night, but failed to take a single pic. Which is one of the reasons I must go back!

Breasts of the White Woman

Zanthoxylum capense, or umLungumabele - breast of a white woman - in isiXhosa; viewed on the Nqabara estuary, Eastern Cape. Known as amaBelentombi in Zulu (breasts of a girl). One wonders what it was called in isiXhosa prior to the appearance of the first ship-wrecked whites; and you're left intrigued by the rather disproportionate structure of the breast!

Shading the precipise

This magnificent shade tree, with its bright-green foliage, is rooted just below the lip of a 100m cliff-face.

Lost yet again

Three of us departed for Gwaxentaba on Christmas Day, passing hundreds of mostly very drunk people, including young kids sipping merrily from Quart bottles. We stopped briefly at Bra Moves' (briskly trading) tavern to stock-up on milk stout. It came as a relief that the drunken mayhem along the road was absent at the much more traditional rural village of Gwaxentaba.

We proceeded down the cliff-face into Magwa, pitched tent and got the fire going. I went up the ravine before sunset and discovered a perfect camp site, allowing for emergency evacuation in the eventuality of sudden flooding. This came as a surprise after 23 years of simply noticing (and using) one realistic camping option. Our intent was to hike 5 hours to Hili village, on the coast, the next day and return before sunset.

We did so, bare feet, shorts and t-shirt; at a very brisk pace, through forest and up-and-down the intermediate valleys. We hugged the escarpment, which is really just a geological fault that threw-up the sandstone features so well known to Wild Coast lovers (Waterfall Bluff, Cathedral Rock, Frazer and Magwa Falls). Its an exceptionally beautiful walk - one of the most beautiful that I've known in my life. Much of this area is depopulating, as is evident on the accompanying picture. The result is that many paths are being reclaimed by the forest. Along the way I learned that a direct route (that I really loved in the past) between Hili and Magwa had become usable again - this was to turn out to be bitter misinformation.

At Mbotyi, where we first hit the sea, we had a quick shebeen stop. On to Hili, and a swim (despite the now tentative drizzle). Ample time to get back. We took the direct route, and spent nearly 4 hours (midway to Magwa) battling the forest, searching for the path. Eventually we accepted that it had truly been reclaimed by the forest (a point confirmed by Hili residents), and were swiftly overcome by darkness and strong driving rain, as we turned back to Hili in search of an overnight stop.

I knew people in Hili, but it was pitch dark, and we had to look for help at a homestead, where the elders ordered their very recalcitrant son to show us the way. His reluctance quickly made sense: he was dead drunk and it was all a matter of time before he had a spectacular somersault off the path.

Closer to the sea the wind became a freezing cold factor (we had no back-up clothing); and once at the house that we were looking for we desperately embraced offered blankets. Sleep was good, and food and hot milky tea gave us respite. The next morning it was back into our wet, cold shorts and t-shirts, and the (now dreaded) 5 hour wet walk to Magwa. To add insult to injury we took a wrong turn and over-shot up the cliff-face (and then back down, into Magwa - food, dry clothes, pack camp - and back up the cliff-face). We learned here that it had only started raining around Magwa an hour earlier.

Mandozi - one of my 2 fellow hikers - had a lovely orientation outing two weeks before starting life as a soldier in the South African National Defence Force. Yet again, I've been sorely tested in the wondrous inhabited wilderness that forms the deep rural forests of Mpondoland.

The Hard Rock of Times

This rock formation is on the Nqabara river, inland from Dwesa Nature Reserve on the South African Wild Coast, in the vicinity of Mpume.

Metallic in appearance, Nqabara River, approximately 10km inland from the coast. What's happening? Everybody's hard at work cracking Macadamia nuts after a horse ride!

Small beauty

Lichens, fungi and insects thrive with wild abandon (and all the rapid predation of a humid sub-tropical climate) in the forests where I play, study, draw my inspiration and ultimately seek new plant elements of aesthetic abandon to introduce into landscaping.

Let me holler, majita, so politely, Voetsek...

Obviously - and oblivious to mundane mediocrity - this is a wicked blog. The writer was given the name Dre Anthrax Ghoul by a respectable acid head called Grumblings that went to work for the Beast in Seattle. Yes, he sold his soul for family, money and fear. Call it the Selfish Gene ad nausea.

It was further popularised by an archaeologist called Mad Van that works for a most obscure bunch of people whose once illustrious history inspired the hip-hop icon called Zulu Nation.
Joining them as Chief Psycho warrior and Propagandist was the Steege, who has become a modern Strandloper. That all happened countless decades ago.

This globblog will grow from within a very trippy garden, inspired by some very trippy friends, all more-or-less midway between (and an hour's drive from) that astonishingly beautiful, very contradictory natural space called the Wild Coast, and the escarpment that gives rise to Lesotho. Its a place where I'll dump many a party tale (hazy and wired), some imagery of the beautiful environment that captivated me long ago, and the occasional angry tweet about some power-crazed ape that thinks politics is the modern breeding ground for reproduction.

You'd be foolish to ever take anything too seriously. Its all a bit tongue in cheek, really. Besides, I'm still growing up. Hola majita.

And its an Up Yours to Fakebook.

Image taken from eviltongue2.blogspot.com