Shorelines

by Chris Marais

  “I have undertaken a thing of which I now entertain certain doubts, but I am determined to carry it through.”

  A month later, when the starving begins in earnest, King Sarhili says:

  “I have been a great fool in listening to lies. I am no longer a chief.”

  The Xhosa nation begins to starve in their many thousands. Their kraals stand empty and they begin to filter into settlements such as Grahamstown and King William’s Town. People die in the streets where they fall.

  We finished our rest on the Gxara River and prepared to continue the windy trek up the beach. I suddenly remembered Sir George Grey and his wife, Lucy.

  According to history, Grey might not have had a direct hand in the cattle killing, but the results played very much into his ‘social engineering’ hands. He now had the tottering Xhosa nation where he wanted it: squarely behind the begging bowl. He could dispense food relief to whomever he wanted. He could send Xhosas all over the country, where their labour was gratefully and cheaply used on farms, in factories and in homes.

  But Sir George Grey’s comeuppance is his wife, Lady Lucy Grey, and her dalliances. He is recalled to London and, upon his arrival, the new Home Secretary sends the Grey family right back to Cape Town. Sir George gets another turn at the wheel of governance.

  I have Jeff Peires to thank for the basic detail of what follows.

  They’re in the ship headed south again. Lady Lucy, the naughty girl, sends a note of assignation to one Admiral Henry Keppel, a fellow passenger she rather fancies.

  “Unlock the door between our two cabins and I will come to you in the night,” she urges the admiral.

  Unfortunately, Sir George intercepts the note. He loses it entirely with Lucy, forces the ship to dock at Rio and has her kicked off at the docks. It is not generally known if Lady Lucy falls in with the party set down at the Copacabana. But she doesn’t see George for 36 years.

  On the verge of insanity, he returns to the Cape. Instead of another bout of social manipulation (perhaps turn the Boers into vegan-liberals or something) he is so caught up with the Lady Lucy affair that he can do nothing but drink, curse her name and look for ‘victim sympathy’ in Cape Town society. The irony is delicious. Try as one might, it’s hard to picture what is left of the Xhosa nation shedding a single tear of pity for the plight of Sir George.

  By the end of 1858, the Xhosa population of British Kaffraria (the Eastern Cape border lands) had dwindled from 105 000 to fewer than 26 000. Huge swathes of former Xhosa territory, including their spiritual stronghold, the Amatola Mountains, were given over to the white settler communities. In fact, many Xhosa ended up working for these settlers on land their clans had once owned.

  But I wasn’t there at the time, and I still had so much to read and learn about the whole Eastern Cape frontier. It was no use pointing fingers in hindsight at anyone. Except, maybe, at the players in the Lucy Grey scandal.

  On we walked, The Lost Patrol, until we came to a spot where some cows lay on the beach, looking utterly stoned. I photographed them and the pictures came out all Kubrick and soft-focus, because I’d forgotten to clean the coastal fog off my lens first. But the hotel was in sight, my legs were sore and the backpack was eating at my shoulders. I had been taking special care not to wobble onto the rocks we had trudged over.

  There was only one mud puddle in the dirt road leading up to Trennery’s Hotel. Somehow, I managed to slip gracelessly into it, sinking to my knees in the black muck.

  “I just love hiking,” I gasped at Jules, who stood over me with a smile on her wicked face. “But you know what I love even more? When the hiking’s over …”

  Chapter 27: Trennery’s to Umngazi River

  Bay of Beans

  The beach below Trennery’s Hotel smells like the best bits of childhood: sea perfume tangled in the morning scents of wild plants, mingled with a hint of sunscreen. We walk, Jules and I, to stretch the muscles stiff from yesterday’s hike. Carefree children play on the sand, nannies in attendance, and Trennery’s itself resembles a slightly skew Victorian village. Staff in their starched uniforms rush about on errands to the kitchen, the laundry, the stock rooms, the bar and the dining hall.

  Despite the almost tangible happiness around us, our thoughts still wander up the Gxara River to the heart of the cattle killing. We know that the Wild Coast is famous for its fishing spots. We have seen the convoys of stubbly white men in their muscle cars bristling with fishing rods, travelling invulnerable through the interior, intent on casting and reeling, casting and reeling. With perhaps a beer or two thrown in. This is the classic Wild Coast experience. Men in corporate offices tug at their collars and dream of this moment. Ties off, sandals on. Boys on the road. Fish on the line and firewood stacked at the ready. Cool box in ‘lurk’ mode. Bugger the weather.

  “Now let me get this right,” I say to my wife. “Part of the prophecy was that cattle would emerge from the sea and there would be feasting.”

  “Yes,” she answers. “But of course it never happened and instead everyone starved.”

  And yet, with the Agulhas current zipping along in the neighbourhood, the sea was literally brimming with fish. Later, she quoted to me from Noel Mostert’s Frontiers:

  “The Xhosa stood in awe of the sea, had a great dread of venturing upon it, and a horror of eating fish … For many centuries they had watched the distant sails of passing Indiamen, and often succoured the survivors from wrecks. But they never ventured upon the sea. The Xhosa may be unique among the world’s coastal-living peoples in never having cast line or net into the teeming seas that bound them in.”

  And at mid-year, these waters abound with sardines (The Greatest Shoal on Earth is a particularly popular catch phrase to describe this phenomenon) heading north to Durban in their tens of millions, pursued by birds, sharks, dolphins, orcas and the odd humpback whale. They often swim very close to shore, and all one has to do to secure a season’s worth of dried fish is go out there and load up.

  “Their salvation did in fact lie in the sea.” I was slowly working this one out. “Just not in the form of cattle and Russians.”

  And so, with our immaculate 20/20 historical hindsight, we continued down the beach and up to breakfast. Where, it seemed, a mistake had been made. As we walked up to our table, the other egg-and-baconeers looked up in awe and wonder. Hmm. What’s this?

  A large wire statuette of a hiker had been placed on our table. No no, we wanted to tell everyone. We just did the Wild Coast Lite walk from Morgan’s Bay. You’ve got us confused with fit people. Besides, I fell in the only mud puddle for kilometres around. No glory here.

  Trennery’s was old, founded in 1926. The hotel booklet advised:

  “Golfers are asked to give right of way to the aeroplanes landing or taking off from the air strip – cattle should be allowed to play through.”

  One of the brochures of yore said:

  “The nearest station is Butterworth (35 miles), where cars can be hired from Messrs Moore and Taylor. Or visitors can go three times a week by post car as far as Kentani, where the hotel lorry will meet them by arrangement.”

  We were to be picked up by someone from the Morgan Bay Hotel so that we could return and fetch our beloved bakkie. But first I had to track down the Lord Lucan of Trennery’s, the Scarlet Pimpernel of Qolora Mouth – manager Don Wewege. I was hoping he was related to my friend Alfie Wewege from Port Nolloth, but he wouldn’t stand still long enough for me to ask him.

  For more than a day, we kept ambling after Don, who looked like everyone’s favourite uncle in a hurry, as he amiably avoided us by veering this way and that across the hotel grounds.

  “Can’t see you now, awfully busy. Staff to be paid, church to be built,” and off he’d go. Not keen for media attention. At sunset, we strategically parked ourselves outside the bar. Don came scooting past.

  “Well, work is finally done,” he announced to no one in particular.

  “Then come and have a beer with us,” we en
ticed in unison.

  He glanced with alarm at us and increased his passing speed.

  “No, no. Must see a man about a golf course.” So we buttonholed his wife, Yolande, after breakfast instead, and we all made nice until our lift, in the form of Libby Norton, arrived in a Renault baker’s van.

  Libby, a pleasant Zimbabwean woman, drove like a dervish over the gravel roads back to Morgan’s Bay. Seeing our slumped shoulders and slightly trip-worn mien, she decided to cheer us up.

  She pulled out a motivational tape: Christian preacher Joyce Meyer and her Attitudes of the Mind: Change your Outlook; Change your Life!

  I’m not usually swayed by canned motivational talks, but after 53 straight days on the rowdy road this rather homey-sounding, American go-to-it granny hit the spot. As we bumped along on the dirt, I caught snatches of life being the journey, God being long-suffering, someone having Captain Haddock Eyes over someone else’s fur coat and people who drove around with misleading bumper stickers. It all sounded good to me.

  But even better still was the sight of our unstolen dusty bakkie parked outside the Morgan Bay Hotel where we’d left it the day before. We loaded up and hit the road to Coffee Bay.

  Butterworth and Dutywa looked like post-Apocalyptic rubbish tips, but out in the old Transkei rural lands things began to perk up.

  Although the countryside, cut open into yawning dongas by generations of cattle hooves, sleds and footpaths, was bleeding topsoil, life out here seemed a damned sight better than in the towns. This is where miners’ money had been sent since the day gold and diamonds were found in South Africa. But the mines were closing, and the miners were coming home – to what? With what?

  Still. Every hillside was dotted with thatched rondavels in colours of pink, sea green, pale blue, apricot and white. There were small patches of crops, herds of cattle and a constant stream of people on the road. We drove past a tiny settlement called Kwaaiman (Angry Man), where there had been shootings of tourists. It seemed a likely ambush spot, but the bad guys were having a day off and we passed safely by.

  About 20 km from Coffee Bay, everything suddenly relaxed. People finally returned our tentative waves and we wound our way down into the village with more hope and cheer than before. At the Ocean View Hotel reception, a lovely young woman called Khwezi (which means morning star) took us up to the honeymoon suite, overlooking the deck bar, the pool and the sea. I had me a stiff whisky and fell over on the superb brass bed. Jules was already fast asleep.

  Later at the bar, we watched England thrashing Oz at one-day cricket. Pre-supper snacks were plates of delicious oysters. Dinner was a seafood medley. A squad of upcountry boys (fishing, my ass) were being hit on for complimentary tucker and beer by a hardened bunch of lean and hungry backpacker girls from London. The English were winning on all fronts.

  The play-play fishermen partied until late. Down at the beach, cars were parked, hip-hop music was turned up and Coffee Bay had itself a bit of a celebration for some reason. We heard nothing. The pounding surf swallowed all sound, up there in the honeymoon suite. We slept like babies. Good ones.

  I was up with the sun, taking photographs of the hotel and surrounds. I returned to fetch Jules for breakfast and, out of habit, scrabbled about for the keys to the Isuzu. Nothing. Panic time.

  “I know what I’ve done. I left them in the car this morning when I went to take out the tripod,” I confessed to Jules. “I’m sorry. I’m losing it. The trip has been … too long.”

  I ran downstairs and met my new hero, a security guard called Nkosinathi Sigonya, who had noticed the keys dangling from the driver’s door, locked the vehicle and was waiting for the dumb driver to appear. Right there, this journey could have gone pear-shaped as the Isuzu disappeared in a puff of dust into the Transkei for its date with a chop-shop in the bush. I left Nkosinathi with cash in his hands and a smile on his face.

  After breakfast, Ocean View owner Peter Challis took us for a drive in his 4x4 to the top of a hill, the site of an old golf course. Pointing out to sea, he said:

  “On a clear day, you can see Perth and all the South African doctors and dentists. What’s that sound? Can you hear them crying to come back?”

  We asked Peter about Wild Coast tourism and community involvement. All the hotels, it seemed, were white-owned, but were situated on tribal ground. It appeared that the European Union had invested more than R80 million in various projects to encourage local part-ownership, the refurbishing of the properties and development of various tourism assets. There had been successes and there had been failures. But no one was giving up yet. Folks around here had seen whites arriving over the past few centuries in the guise of traders, missionaries, colonists and soldiers. All tried to sell them some concept that usually ended up with Xhosas being shafted. There was deep history. And long memory.

  If tourism failed up here, then mining would win. It was that simple. A northern stretch of the Wild Coast was particularly rich in ilmenite and a massive Australian prospecting company was waiting in the wings. Pitting the long-term benefits of tourism against the short-term profits of mining is like putting a duck into a dog-fight. Even before the first round is announced, you know who’s going to win, right? Well, maybe.

  The only victorious duck we’d ever heard of was up in St Lucia, the home of yet more ilmenite. Maybe there was hope.

  Our next tour of Coffee Bay was with 19-year-old Joseph Vulindlela of the Bomvana tribe. This tribe was famous for being one of the few along the coast to welcome and feed the survivors of the Grosvenor in the late 18th century.

  “And if I am found to be suitable, I will be a chief one day,” Joseph said calmly. Such a teenager.

  We walked to a hilltop village called Rhini. Children and chickens ran rings around the huts. Did they grow mealies?

  “Big time. We’re just starting to plough now that the rains have come.”

  Joseph, who was just a year away from completing his schooling, still had to go through his manhood rites. Was he looking forward to the ritual?

  “Big time. Well, a bit. I think there will be pain.”

  His father had been a gold miner, but Joseph said his own future lay in tourism. We spoke about football.

  “I am an Orlando Pirates supporter,” he said. “Whenever there’s a match, we walk up the road to a man who has a television set in his hut.”

  Why was there a tyre on the apex of every hut, encrusted with broken glass?

  “That’s to keep the owls away. Owls bring bad luck, bad spirits. Witchdoctors send them.”

  There were so many questions we wanted to put to Joseph, and he seemed nonchalantly happy to answer them all honestly. Why, we asked, pointing at a wooden sled-wagon in a kraal nearby, were they not using wheels?

  “That’s because when a wagon with wheels comes down a steep hill, it can roll into the oxen pulling it,” he said. “This can’t happen with a sled.”

  Did he surf, we wanted to know.

  “I tried it once and I fell off the board,” he laughed. “I stopped surfing. But I did teach myself to swim in the river.”

  Joseph took us to the local shebeen. I peered inside, my eyes squinting into the sudden darkness, where half-a-dozen dead-eyed people sat clutching their traditional iJuba beer. Even I (not famous for being picky about my drinking spots) would not venture into that little hellhole.

  We asked him about crime.

  “There is crime in Coffee Bay, but it is mostly without guns. Just things stolen from houses at night. Sometimes from tourists on the beach.

  “In December, people come from inland to rob the tourists; they wave knives in their faces to frighten them,” he said in a matter-of-fact manner. We may as well have been asking about fruit picking. And did they grow dagga around here?

  “Oh, big time,” he laughed.

  We packed and said our goodbyes.

  “Cheerio, then,” said Peter Challis. “Just lay off our potholes and our pigs.”

  That afternoon we hid out in
a rather beautiful chalet at the Umngazi River Bungalows near Port St Johns. A biblical storm broke, fierce gusts of wind beat at the mock bananas, squalls dumped rain buckets and the electricity supply became erratic. No matter. We were safe with an interesting chunk of Gorgonzola, a bottle of good red and a pack of cards. In fact, for a few hours, we were the Untouchables. Such is the power of truly stinky cheese.

  We spent two full days at this fine old resort, which was ‘family holiday’ in its true form. Every morning, teams of jovial nannies would arrive and take the kids off the parents’ hands for the day. By now we’d realised that the backbone of Wild Coast-hotel tourism came in the form of the classic Transkei nanny and her good nature.

  The local river ranger and guide, Vincent Mtambeki, took us to meet some of the villagers in the area. We drove to Sicambeni, which also lay on the top of a hill overlooking the river. We stopped at a homestead and met two sisters, each of whom had a baby girl.

  Nolukhanyiso Jim, 18, and her 24-year-old sister, Thabisa, lived together in a hut. As rural huts go, this one was well appointed: four beds, dressing table, cupboard, radio and light bulb running off a pre-paid electricity system and linoleum on the cowdung floor.

  The fathers?

  “They’re not around,” said Thabisa out of the corner of her mouth, because her daughter Athini was poking around in the other corner.

  How did they live?

  “Social grants for having the babies.”

  Vincent, who was translating, indicated that it would be impolite to ask if they had had the babies specifically for the government money. We asked them what they did for fun. Did they ever visit Port St Johns?

  “Not so much. We listen to the radio.”

  As usual, we grilled our guide about the crime along the Wild Coast. We had to get this information from the ground.

  “Those working on the coast are not the ones committing the crimes,” he said. “They get their work from tourism. It’s the people from inland. That’s why we keep a very close eye on the outsiders. The headmen are now stepping in and identifying the criminals.”