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.

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.

Framed by mud

Dawn arising, Cwebe village, South Africa.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Metal - structure in beauty

Taken at Mtentu, Wild Coast, South Africa. An Australian company won the right to extract heavy minerals (for example titanium) from this area, but strong community opposition is ensuring that the only extracted minerals remain the rusty artwork which was long ago shipwrecked here. Mtentu is located within the Mpondoland Centre of Endemism, a botanical wonderland.

Where ships die horses wander

The community-owned and managed Amadiba Horse & Hiking trail traverses the coast from Mzamba to Mtentu.

Plants for spiritual and physical well-being

Dlamini (see accompanying picture, at his home in Mtambalala) is a traditional Healer specialising in plant medicine. Not all traditional Healers focus intently on the medicinal qualities of plants (although all are trained in the medicinal use of plants). Some concentrate more on the spiritual, psychological, ancestral or magical realms. Dlamini vociferously identifies and cultivates plants in which he sees potential. Any plant grower drawing from the rich indigenous stock of the Wild Coast (or South Africa in general) cannot help but notice the intense variation of plants, from trees to ground covers and bulbs, with a medicinal (or sometimes spiritual) application in rural society. Urban specialists have increasingly turned to these plants for mainstream researching of potential modern applications in curative and preventative medicine.

Mpondoland Centre of Endemism

Much of my inspiration for growing (and landscaping with) indigenous plants comes from 20 years of wanderings around the cliff-faces, valleys, ravines, gorges, forests, coast and grassland of the Wild Coast, particularly eastern Mpondoland - home to exceptional endemism. The accompanying picture is from a gorge where I've noted intense quantities of Plectranthus, Clivia, Hypoxis, Scadoxis, and Impatience under one of the richest sub-tropical forest canopies imaginable.