Skimming the 29th Parallel

I went for a drive along the 29th Parallel with a group of friends, partially retracing a journey made by former Natal Witness writer, David Robbins, two decades earlier.

Twenty years ago, Natal Witness writer David Robbins, set out on a journey which began in Mtunzini on the shores of the Indian Ocean and ended in Port Nolloth on the western edge of Southern Africa. Robbins chronicled his journey in a book called The 29th Parallel, which, although a work of non-fiction, was written with all the narrative intensity of a novel.

I wasn’t aware of Robbins book when I first agreed to travel with three friends along this 29th line of latitude, which, like so many human constructs, is both imaginary and real. And unlike Robbins, who set out to explore notions of whiteness in Africa, I had no game plan. I was simply keen for a road trip, jumping at the chance to escape the city and explore the small towns of South Africa and the tarmac that binds them together.

Only a few days before we departed did I find out that our travels were to be based on Robbins’ book. And given that we had only four days to cover as much road as possible, we weren’t going to retrace Robbins’ entire journey, only a section of it. So, sadly, we were barely going to make it two thirds of the way to the icy Atlantic.

We would also be doing the journey in reverse, driving solidly for a day and then turning around and slowly returning home, zigzagging along the parallel.

We drove out of Durban in the waking light, the almost full moon having just set. We followed the smoothly engineered curves of the N3 until we reached Harrismith from where we turned westward. From there, we drove through the heart of the Free State. Through Bloemfontein, Bethlehem, Kimberly, and on into the Northern Cape, stopping only for lunch, to refill the car and for the occasional photo opportunity.

Our race came to a halt, however, when we drove through the small town of Boshoff in the Northern Cape. Set against the arid scrub-land which surrounds it, Boshoff is a tiny town of idiosyncratic houses and gardens fleshed with greenery. But apart from the constant attention needed to maintain such a verdant affront on the dust, what impressed us most was the diversity of design, a happy counterpoint to the generic uniformity of the cluster houses that have become South Africa’s architectural currency. Boshoff was made all the more charming by the presence of what looked seemed to be a market garden on the main road, sprouting a small abundance of vegetables on a plot the size of two or three of the houses adjacent to it.

In Griqua Town, a long drive from anywhere and the next stop after Boshoff, there was no abundance of vegetables. In fact there were hardly any vegetables at all and there didn’t seem to be an abundance of anything. But it suggests something fundamental about our society that even when fresh produce is hard to find, a wide range of liquor is readily available. We grabbed some six-packs from a bottle store for a night in the bush at Witsands and were about to head for the Tigers Eye bar (semi-precious stones constitute the core of Griqua Town’s economy) when one of our party – the driver – pointed out that it would be prudent to get to our accommodation before the gates closed.

Before we left, I went into the local Pep store and brought myself a pair of cheap sunglasses to counter the road’s glare. As I was making my purchase, I spotted a handsome, extravagantly dressed young man who would not have looked out of place in the gay districts of London or New York. “How is it to live in Griqua Town?” I asked across the checkout counter, expecting perhaps complaints about small town life. “It’s magnificent,” he said with a proud sashay of his head. I’m pretty sure that he wasn’t being ironic, but I struggled to discern how life in the arid, dusty isolation of Griqua Town could be magnificent for such a flamboyant young man.

Part of me would rather not tell of the beauty of Witsands. And therein lies the central conflict inherent in travel writing – that in telling too many people about a place, it becomes ruined by over-visitation. But Witsands, on the South Eastern edge of the Kalahari, is so far away from anywhere that I think it’s safe to describe the beauty of the dune we clambered up to reach a view of the setting sun.

We arrived at the gates of the Witsands Resort just minutes before they shut, quickly located our relatively luxurious accommodation (complete with air-conditioning) and headed off for the dunes in a dying light that will always keep a place in my memories.

At the top of the dune, it looked like another planet. The white sand turned golden by the orange sun, a series of sand bunkers stretching into the endless horizon. I lay on the fine, powdery sand and watched the sun set behind a clump of brittle desert grass as the sand washed over my body. So relentlessly beautiful and also so far away from Eden.

We drove back to our quarters in a landscape almost metallically luminous in the moments next to nightfall, buck springing their way across the veld, occasionally following the motion of the car, their animal perfectness nudging against my soul with three quarters of my body out the window.

The next morning when we drove back through Griqua Town, filling up the car and taking a coffee-break, there was no water in the town. The town pump had broken and the water in our coffee came from a local bore-hole. And again I found myself questioning the magnificence if not the vague charm of this parched, dehydrated town. And I couldn’t help but think that perhaps the magnificence about which the well-dressed young man was talking might be the magnificence of – finally – some degree of self-determination for the local Griqua community.

Departing once more from Griqwa Town, we saw the river for the first time, a swathe of blue slicing its way across the countryside bleeding out it greenery wherever it went. In his book Robbins tells us that the San people thought that this river, the Orange River which flows into the Vaal, was the mother of all rivers, and, as Robbins also says, it’s easy to see why. In the perpetual dryness and heat of the Northern Cape, this bounteous green does indeed look like the source of all life.

The Vaal reaches an apotheosis of greenness in the small and intriguing town of Douglas where we would sleep that night. Water is in such abundance in Douglas that in the local shopping centre – the horse shoe configuration around a large parking lot that most small towns have instead of malls – a fine mist is continually sprayed from under the eaves around the entire length of the building, even after most of the shops have closed. I found myself contemplating the San and their maternal river and what they might have thought of all this. And if only dust were the currency, the Platteland would be rich.

We had brunch in Douglas at a fantastic little restaurant called Die Koffie Pit which put most urban eateries to shame and which also doubled as a seller of Christian paraphernalia. The owner, who worked in the back with her staff, would have made Christ proud with her warmth, humility and desire to help. (I asked her if she could fill our water bottles for us and she returned five minutes later, the bottles filled with ice and water).

From Douglas, we headed for the so-small-it-barely-exists town of Plooysberg near Drie Koppe Eiland, in search of images that had been engraved into a dried up riverbed by the ancient people of the region. We struggled a little to find it, stopping at a farm along the way and encountering a wizened old man with not too many of his teeth left. He spoke only Afrikaans and none of us are too good with die taal but after a while he worked out what we wanted. “Aah, die tekens,” he said, with a click of understanding on his face, and then proceeded to direct us. When he said “die tekens”, it was like a moment from a cheap thriller, the word teken meaning both drawing and religious sign.

We eventually found our way to die tekens with the help of Ben du Plessis, the farmer whose family has for generations owned the land which bears the ancient engravings. A rough-but-gentle and thoroughly generous soul, du Plessis led us down to the river and then gave us a small guided tour of the engravings. We followed him along the banks of the Orange River, my feet burning on the hot rocks and pierced by tiny thorns. He pointed out the abstract drawings, but being a farmer he was more interested in the detailed renderings of the animals.

I watched him with a layer of irony as he traced his walking stick along the paths of the engravings. And I thought of all the conservators who would baulk at him doing so and would enthusiastically turn this into a world heritage site, complete with a tourist office and forms and permits and brochures. And I thought – selfishly – how we could never have had those moments of joy and relaxation on the rocks, had we been surrounded by snap-happy tourists, even as we were being snap-happy ourselves.

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With the burning heat of the day, our attention moved to the water which still flows adjacent to the carved rocks, and which collects in a dam built by the farmer’s family in the mid 1980s, before overflowing onto smooth, algae-covered rocks, swirling into a small pool and continuing on its long and wayward journey to the sea. We drank a couple of warm beers, played in the water and before we knew it the sun was once more setting.

We returned to Douglas that night, partly because I had left my shoes at Die Koffie Pit, partly because it was the closest place to Plooysberg and partly, I suspect, because we wanted to have another wonderful breakfast. But there was no room at the inn that night. This was apparently due to the fact that many of the bed-and-breakfasts in town – and there are many for such a small town – are now being occupied by visitors who have come to stay semi-permanently. After a few phone calls courtesy of a local hotel-manager, we managed to find some accommodation in a self-catering spot a few kilometres out of town. And the less said about Vakansie Oord the better. Suffice to say that self-catering didn’t include so much as a sharp knife, let alone a kettle or a fridge, but it did include a braai and the hottest, most airless rooms money can buy.

The next day, the river kept us company for most the day, intermittently disappearing and reappearing, taking us past Ficksberg and Fouriesberg and onto our final destination of Clarens. After a long drive through the faded gold of the free state, this lush, green valley was truly a piece of Eden and I was reminded of the hostess at Die Koffie Pit, who, when we told her that we were going to Clarens, said warmly “O ja! That’s my valley.”

We arrived at dusk and set about finding accommodation for the night, immediately falling into what seemed like love with the quaintness and hamletness of it all. Clarens at dusk looks like a 21st century version of a burgeoning 19th century American mining village as seen through the eyes of JG Ballard. We found a generous stone cottage called Sweetie Pie, complete with all the fixtures you might want after four days of driving through dust. We phoned the number on the gate and Sweetie Pie was ours for the night. But not for the following night – Friday – when hordes of Jo’burgers would arrive in the town, booking it out as they do every weekend.

We found dinner at a place called Friends which I’m certain was named after the TV show. We were still loving Clarens, despite the buffeting dust storm that covered us in a thin film of brown and which forced us to move inside when our food arrived – in the Free State there is dust even in Eden. We ate our food and moved to the bar where we proceeded to get very drunk, free from the strictures of having to drive, Clarens being small enough to comfortably walk around. Having befriended the locals, we headed off to a venue called the View Site, where we had been told there was a party happening.

When a couple of us arrived at the View Site, it was almost empty. And the handful of inhabitants didn’t exactly make us feel comfortable. It felt like white South Africa circa 1985 mixed with a good dose of America’s Deep South. Aggression oozing onto the bar counter, racial epithets flying, even the local hippy boy from Friends telling me about how he lived with the bushman for five months and how it’s a scientific fact that black people have different receptors in their brain to white people which makes them incapable of handling alcohol. My friend and I looked at each other speechless.

Downing our drinks, we left, finding the rest of our party at the bar next door, which was free from racial epithets and aggression but still felt a whole lot like a David Lynch movie set in the Deep South. I hovered between the bar, the pool table and the parking light outside, where I found myself comfortingly dwarfed by the majesty of the mighty Maluti Mountains.

The evening continued and I could probably write a novel about its events, but suffice to say that in the rift between our initial infatuation with Clarens and the night’s event, something soured a little – perhaps a sense of complicity, perhaps an unavoidable sense of whiteness.

The next morning we walked around what turned out to be a shopping paradise for those of the arts-and-craftsy persuasion, complete with espresso bars, restaurants and a particularly good book store. And it’s easy to see how Clarens, with its quaintly constructed notions of authenticity, would appeal to those who live in the shadows of the Jo’burg malls.

Clarens is situated right on the edge of Golden Gate and it was through that gorgeous expanse of rock that we passed on our way home, stopping briefly for a roughly constructed picnic and a cigarette, before making a rain-swept and mist-enshrouded beeline home to the lushness and safety of KwaZulu-Natal.

Having completed our journey, I set about reading Robbins’ book. Twenty years later, it’s a compelling read, possibly even more so now than when it was first written. It allows us, with its careful juxtaposition of the objective and the personal, to see how much South Africa has changed, and how much it hasn’t. It is filled with prophesies from ordinary South African citizens, many of which have come true, and many of which haven’t. But one of the book’s central premises – that it is difficult to explore our national reality in our cluttered cities – remains true. In the small towns of South Africa and the vast, mostly unpopulated spaces in between, things are somehow clearer and starker.

Another thing which weighed on our minds intermittently was something which almost certainly wasn’t as much of a concern for Robbins, who, although writing after the energy crisis of the 1970s, was nonetheless writing before the term carbon footprint had been coined. I love the road – it is one of my greatest loves – but it has become tainted by the very thing that gave it its existence. Cars have become the enemy of the planet and the road trip now has a price on its head. And I dream of the solar-powered electric car that would give the road back its beauty and freedom.

But that is really a whole different story, a whole chapter in a history that has yet to happen. And I know that I will almost certainly sin once more against the planet and travel again along this line, both imaginary and real.