jenifer's african adventure Summer, 1999

After a 24 hour trip I stagger out of the plane to find Diana and dogs waiting for me at East London's airport. We pile my stuff into the car and head out to Cove Rock. I'm half asleep but am transfixed by everyone's barefeet.

Cove Rock is a set from Out of Africa. Diana lives in a Dutch colonial farm house sitting on a bluff overlooking the Indian Ocean of South Africa. I gaze down a grassy hillside spotted with flattop acacia trees - the classic African sunset silhouette - to the sea below. The beach is wide, covered with huge dunes and wild as far as the eye can see. Was this also the set for The Endless Summer? The waves must roll in for half a mile before hitting the shore. The quiet roar of the sea in the distance lulls me to sleep.

There are horses, chickens, guinea fowl, a dead ostrich in the barn but no cattle left. Once an Afrikaner cattle farm, it is 'in transition' to seaside "places to let". No condos and no wet T-shirt contests yet only signs in the sand stating "No washing of clothes" .

East London is the nearest town - a dry, dusty place full of auto related businesses. This is the Third World at its least charming. Mercedes is one of the few transnationals in South Africa; KFC is another. Others have stayed away out of fear, even though they left in the last days of apartheid, they haven't come back. South Africa is suffering 30% unemployment, 50% in some locales, and lost 500,000 jobs in the last five years.

Many people on the flight over were families made up of parents with South African accents and kids with American. Escapees from the new South Africa. The official reason is the poor state of the educational system in South Africa. The actual reason might be that many integrated schools have one or two white kids. Anyway they are back for summer vacation. It's winter here, though. I am in a world where everything is reversed. June 21st is winter solstice. You drive on the left and even the water swirls down the drain clockwise as opposed to up there, where it goes counter-clockwise.

The first thing that strikes me about the people here is their gentle manner. Of course, I had just left New York. This is Xhosa (cos-a) country. "C" said with a click deep in the back of the throat, the peculiarity of the Xhosa language made famous by Miriam Makeba. Nelson Mandela is also Xhosa and his childhood home is not far from here in the Transkei, meaning across the River Kei. You hear about the crime in south Africa - Capetown now has more murder per capita than New York - and then you encounter these people with their sweet ways.

The dynamic of politics in South Africa is understood in the States mainly as a white-black thing, but South Africa actually is a multi-cultural society. Xhosa is only one of eleven official languages. Beside the English speaking, who are largely descended from the 1820 Settlers and the Afrikaner speaking descendants of the Dutch and Huguenot immigrants, there are numerous other African languages, Xhosa and Zulu being only the most prominent.

In addition to languages there are ethnic groups. One of whom, the "Cape Coloureds" - not to be understood in the American sense of the work - are descendants of the Malay brought in to work as slaves on the sugar plantations as well as those of mixed white-black heritage or of Indian heritage. Coloured and black, pronounced blek to rhyme with trek by the Afrikaner, are as separate as black and white. Of the black nations, Xhosa and Zulu are the most predominant and have an on-going rivalry. A East London "Daily Dispatch" headline says that Thabo mBeki (the new President), "names his dream team" for his Cabinet. It does not include Chief Buthelezi of kwaZulu Natal. Inside his domain Buthelezi is chief, King Mango Zuleteni is king, and the kingdom of the Zulu only a part of the democracy of South Africa. The chief who would be minister isn't, at least not in this government, preferring to be premier of kwaZulu rather than a minister in the new government.

Politics, it seems, is always making strange bed-fellows. The Cape Coloureds, who are Afrikaner speaking have teamed up with the conservative Afrikaners of the new National Party and attempted to force a coalition with the opposition in the Cape and kwaZulu in order to challenge the lefty politics of the ANC - the African National Congress- who won close to 65% of the vote. In this five year-old democracy 90% of the people vote. What do the current re-alignments mean? Will South African society break down into a black versus the rest of society? Africans are 80% of the population with white making up approximately 15% and "coloured" the rest. Or does the vote express economic class? "Indian No Friend of the African" reads one headline to an editorial in the "Cape Argus". Indians are the traditional merchant class here and not beloved by the poor.

Rainbow Nation it may be on slick TV spots heralding the country's new found identity but resentment a plenty lurks not all too far beneath the surface.

End of an Era/ Birth of a Nation ?

Madiba, the 'great father', has stepped down. The era of Nelson Mandela is now over. On June 16th Thabo mBeki is inaugurated President of South Africa. One-hundred, twenty thousand South Africans attend, many of whom get there by foot. There are forty-five dignitaries, including thirty heads of state, twenty-seven of whom are from Africa. Of the foreigners there, Moamar Ghadafi and Yasser Arafat are mentioned by name. A special feature on the evening news shows Ghadafi visiting Soweto to commemorate the children who died in the uprising of 1976. The lost generation they are called here. Yesterday, June 16th, is also Youth Day, named in their honor.

The crowd is first addressed by a traditional African Sangoma, then a Scottish rabbi, a Hindi religious leader, a Muslim iman, and finally an Anglican priest. Is the line in order of importance? I don't know.

The ceremony is simple. Mandela and mBeki seated on the stage, each with his own praise singer. mBeki's sings the praises of his leader first and sits down. Mandela's praise-singer starts but cannot finish, overcome as he is by emotion, he throws himself into someone's arms and leaves the stage. I feel vaguely embarrassed. It is hard, no impossible, for me as an American to understand that depth of feeling about a political leader.

Mandela speaks little, waving and beaming that extraordinary smile. Isabel tells me of a story that Mandela is a Chinese sage who has been reborn to save this corner of the world. In this life, he is descended from the aristocracy of the Xhosa. Born, as it were, to the office. In prison on Robben Island, Mandela made a point of not letting the guards hurry him. Instead he would walk deliberately at his normal pace. It is important, he taught, to maintain one's sense of dignity. Surrender that and you have lost everything.

Mandela, the lion of Africa, has that same gentle quality I see in these people. In a the world of global politicians, his is the only open face I see. He is a leader.

What will the future hold for South Africa? And which one am I in? Isabel is watching either Seinfeld or Oprah while Longman, who works the farm, saves for cattle for his old age. He and his wife, Julia can also watch Oprah in their cement hut. What can they possibly make of Oprah? Pokoloki, his daughter, is learning to write Xhosa and English in the Latin alphabet. Here on the farm, Afrikaner and Xhosa play together, although the white kids are more forward, more sure of themselves, at least in talking to the woman with the strange accent.

The Girls

I have entered a world in upheaval. How do they cope. "We drink." is the answer. And they do. Everyday for lunch and dinner, and then some. I do remember one breakfast without booze, but that was when we were up at seven. I suspect there was a lot of drinking before but probably for different reasons. The image of the slightly soused colonial living off the fat of the land and the sweat of another's brow comes to mind. Now I think it keeps away the fear.

First come the economic strains. The rand is very depreciated, six to the dollar. Interest rates, which were as high as 25% in the past year, were dropped yesterday from 19% to 18%.

Elizabeth, who lives down the road, just had her house re-possessed by the bank. They took 110,000R or less than twenty-thousand US dollars for a three bedroom house by the sea. Europeans are buying up the Cape. At these rates is it any wonder?

The problem was not unemployment but work with no pay. Elizabeth was involved in one of the new ventures - a teaching institute in which she taught indigenous sewing and dress design. The funding dried up. She's been drunk for days now it seems.

"I'll go to Malawi. I like the Third World," she says. Malawi is the site of another proposed sewing factory. "She's been leaving for Malawi for at least a year," Jane says of Elizabeth's solution. Jane has no patience with these 'fragile females'. This is after all, a macho society, at least the white part is.

There are times I think I'm in the deep South. I suppose, literally speaking, this is the deepest of Souths. Gwyneth, who lives across the courtyard on the farm, is also quite upset with Elizabeth. Seems Elizabeth threw herself at Gwyneth's husband.

"But then she gets so bloody pissed," Gwyneth offers by way of explanation. At the time Diana, Gwyneth and I had been at the table drinking for at least three hours.

My lightweight status draws comment.

"You know how friggin' fixated we are on our health in the States." I need to beg out. Fact is I can't keep up. Damn Yankee!

We are three hours into lunch at Jane's when Elizabeth arrives. Stories are being swapped. She tells of being on a plane in Scotland when they had to de-plane due to the fog and spend the night in a hotel. The next morning they are back on the bus and on the way to the plane when the busdriver gets up, leaves his seat, and walks down the aisle. He addresses the passengers. "It's all a bloody illusion," he tells them.

It is so fascinating because this is a colonial society jumping into the millennium. There is no way to make a direct analogy between the end of apartheid and the civil right era in the U.S., as though they are just catching up. Here the cultures were separate. No melting of cultures ever took place like that in the States that produced slang, southern cookin', and jazz. Even English and Afrikaner lived in their separate worlds. Gwyneth, who is English-speaking, is married to an Afrikaner. His parents opposed the marriage, preferring him to marry a "buddameiser".

Having said that I have to concede that Afrikans is a language based on Dutch, French, Portuguese, Malay and Xhosa. A 'kitchen language' is how my aristocratic English friend describes it. It is also a possible reason that Afrikaner is so desperate to hang on in south Africa. The English speaking can always disappear into the English speaking world, where will the Afrikaner go?

In American TV land all white people in South Africans live in twenty room mansions with pools, but the Afrikaner is more likely to be the working class stiff. Like drinking, chain-smoking is not politically incorrect here. I increasingly get the feeling the Afrikaner feel he has had to defend 'his country' from black and English alike.

The English, who are more likely to have the pools, were always the traditional liberals but many of them are now voting with the New Democratic Party and against the African National Congress and its social democratic policies.

Housing for everyone was a policy of the first five years of the ANC's rule. In those years, the government provided electricity for 3 million and built 800,000 new homes for people in rural villages. There is also a program that will loan a family 15,000R ($2500) to build a core house, two rooms and a kitchen and bath. How they supervise I don't know as there is no social security number system or anything like it.

A Trip to the Interior

The colors of Africa are green and gold. Like the Everglades, the bushveld erupts into fire. The roads are paved but have no verges (shoulders) and driving require concentration. They are crowded, too, and not with cars but with goats and long-horn cattle and people, standing in the middle of the road thumb hanging out.

The interior is a dry place. Not quite the savanna which is flat and grassy, this country is hard like Utah or Nevada. It is bushveld. Very few trees and lots of brittle, scraggly bush circled by deep purple mountains.

Hogsback is a mountain site of "one hundred occupied sites" where Diana's brother lives with his wife and two little girls. They live on Dimwiddie Lane on a compound they've named Wilderland from the Hobbit. When we step out of the car the air is cool and damp. A little bit of England sitting atop the African bush. There is a 'proper English garden' full of lavender and a rondavel his wife uses for aromatherapy treatments and four geese. We have come with an Irish wolfhound who is greeted by a screeching samango monkey in the tree limb overhead.

Caroline is withdrawn and seems agitated. I wonder if our visit was not desired. But it isn't that. The evening before an 81 year old Anglican priest and former medical doctor has been murdered in her rondavel not far from their homesite. She had had warning earlier in the year when she was accosted in her home and tied to the toilet in the bathroom. But she made it clear that she had spent her life in Africa and didn't scare easy.

That night I lie awake in our rondavel, a circular white washed mud hut, and stare up at the thatch listening to the plane overhead. How easily the sound penetrates the room. I think about the dead minister whose last name was the same as mine. The TV had been left on when she was killed and nothing stolen so apparently desperation for bucks was not the motivation. It seems that whoever did the deed was able to slice through the thatch and enter her house that way. I sleep lightly and wake up dreaming of a lion paw grabbing my shoulder from behind while a Zulu warrior looks on.

When we return to the farm I discover my American Express checks have been stolen from the bedroom. The doors were left open all weekend. "There is no where in Africa I feel safer than here," Isabel answers when I question her judgment. Later that afternoon Diana hears on the radio that a Mr. Maeir has been murdered in the Transkei delivering medical supplies. The news comes not long after she finishes making the arrangement for me to travel with the Maeirs next door to the Transkei. We settle down for evening drinks but she disappears not long after I turn in. I wake up in the middle of the night and find the top of the Dutch doors creaking uneasily in the wind. It is dead quiet except for the soft blowing of the wind. I'm of a mind to wake her up and give her hell when I see that the whiskey bottle has been almost drained. Isabel is soundly asleep in the warm security of a drunken stupor. The macho belligerence of those who live in a sea of resentment, needs lots of propping up. I pull in the top of the doors and go back to bed.

Reality Bites

Next morning's headline is about the shooting up of the police station in Tsolo, an hour and a half up the road. One policeman is killed and two injured. We also learn that it is another Mr. Maeir who has been killed but the trip is canceled in any case. The local news media don't pick up the Hogsback murder story until two days after the fact. The national news media by contrast seems very on top of things.

News production is as slick as anything on CBS. TV in South Africa is only a little more than 20 years old. The reason given to me by the Embassy was not that the Afrikaner government banned it but that there were technological limitations not explained.

The news is broadcast in English, Afrikans, Xhosa and Zulu on the three main channels of the government owned SABC 1,2 and 3. Three is the most progressive with African oriented news - no mention of the royal wedding of Edward and Sophie.

That night's lead story was the three thousand weekly deaths from AIDS in Zimbabwe. Last year three hundred thousand deaths left six hundred thousand orphans in that country. Following that is a piece on Capetown, which is moving into first place in the child sex industry leaving Thailand in its wake. Two thousand children live in the streets in Capetown, a quarter of whom are in the trade I learn.

Along with this is the media glitz side of SA. This country has more publications per capita than any other. Last night I lay around and perused CityLife, Country Life, Style, Fair Lady, Femina and You, my favorite. Best reads in You were "You Stole My Sperm" (Bill's dear Monica letter?) and "Cannibal Eats His Girlfriend for Lunch." I also read a story about a very posh Capetown yupppie who sees a Sangoma (pron. San GOO mah) to tidy up her life problems. A sangoma is a black lady who practices white magic. Prices are reasonable and the lady in the story seemed satisfied with the results. Unusual in this age of the dissatisfied customer.

TV, sitting as it does at the center of human consciousness in our electronic age, is nowhere more Now than in the "New South Africa". That it has even less to do with real life there than here in the States seems somehow apt. Besides loads of American TV including Oprah, Seinfeld, Friends, Dharma and Greg, Frasier and the Bold and Beautiful, there are game shows in all the languages mentioned earlier, and a new South African produced soap called Izindinga where blacks, coloureds and white mix in casual familiarity as they don't out here in reality. Hipper than thou black/white couples host trendy music shows and the only white couple I noticed were a pleasantly stodgy pair discussing watering needs of plants in the interior. In a world where image is king, South Africa has arrived in a multi-culti Nirvanah of yuppie splendor.

Lungbasa

Amazingly enough we run out of gas again. This time we're on the road to visit a Xhosa reporter on the Daily Dispatch who is at the Queenstown office. An Afrikaner engineer is the only one to stop and he takes us into town for petrol and back out to feed the beast. It cost him easily an hour and a half of his time. I suggest cokes all around but he accepts one for himself but declines for 'his boys'.

MkHululu (Titi) meets us and takes us on a tour of a township. How do I describe a township? We use the phrase 'abject poverty' to describe Third World poverty. The archaic definition of the word abject is "thrown down or cast aside". The people who live in townships and places like them all over the world are those who have been discarded.

A township is an endless stretch of 10 by 15 foot cement huts without adornment laid out in straight lines not more than five feet from each other. No grass, no gardens, no porches. The monotony is broken by some which, are ingeniously thrown together with dried timber found by the road or built of corrugated tin. It is incomprehensible to me that people can live like this. It's winter in the interior and I have thrown on a sweatshirt on top of a T-shirt. But I notice that people in the township wear jackets, wool hats and thick sweaters. They must be used to heat I think. Winter is all of two months here and today the sun is brilliant with daytime temps in the 60s Fahrenheit and 40s at night. I cannot imagine the summer heat here where temperatures climb well over 100 Fahrenheit.

In the old days of apartheid booze was illegal in the townships. This gave birth to the shabeen. The shabeen has something of the speakeasy about it. You buy not by the glass but by the bottle. You can purchase a glass if you wish. I buy a pint of Old Buck gin for my young buck, Jane buys a point of Dewars.

In Queenstown we do lunch at Spurs, the largest of South Africa's fast food chains, with the important difference that you can have a drink in one. Jane addresses TiTi as My Bway, a term of endearment not derision in this culture. "What do you think of Jane?" Titi asks me when she has gone to the loo.

"I like her she's funny, down to earth."

"Yes, that is true. That is why she is my friend. I could always talk to Jane." Titi says. But most white people here, they still don't trust us."

"Jane and I wouldn't have been safe in Lungbasa by ourselves, would we?" I ask him. "No, you would probably have been robbed and stabbed.

And, as a black man if I had been sitting here by myself and I had had two drinks the way I have had with you and Jane, they would ask me to leave now. No, they don't want a black man in their restaurant."

Later that afternoon when we go to the car repair to pick up the car, Titi grabs my hand and grasps it in his as we walk into the front office. White clerks without exception avert their gaze and tend to paperwork. His moment of defiance is lost. All this is in the "New South Africa'.

Full Moon over Addo

I arrive late at night after losing an hour and half of drive time to another police check. There must have been another murder. After turning onto the dirt road my VW Chico stalls out. "You're not going alone, are you?" The question echoes in my head as I pump the gas. I broke out in a cold seat looking at the reality at that moment. White woman, alone in a rented car, with the incomprehensible accent as a final giveaway. Then the ignition catches.

The ever present sound of Africa is of the quiet vastness. At Cove Rock I fell asleep to the roar of the sea. Here I awake to the sound of wild jackals. Afternoon light is white and brilliant. Day and night there is the smell of smoke, either of a veld fire or a braee (barbecue).

Addo is a posh suburb of a game park with paved roads and carefully placed thatched rondavels. Braee fires are going in back of most of them. It's a popular holiday spot for families. The foreigners all seem to be Germans as they do all over this country.

I spend the morning hiking through the scrubbiest and driest of bushveld in long pants and shirt sleeves to protect from the two inch spikes of the thorn trees. A game warden catches me heading for the bush and insists on accompanying me. This terrain is empty of people but African ants build themelves condos three feet high and more. You have to walk around them on the trail. I see kudu and duiker tracks but no wild game. I see springbok and Nike tracks but no wild game. I find the skeleton of a kudu but still no wild game. A beautiful white and blue falcom peculiar to this part of the world flies by but still no elelphant.

We part company and I'm heading back in my Chico to change and cool off when I finally spot one. I do brake for elephants. This is a baby elephant about the same size as the Chico and ambling along slowly. Then his brother or sister appeared. Then what I guessed to be the mother. They couldn't have been more than 30 feet from the car. Then a herd of 25-30 runs - gallops- skips by - what's the verb to used to describe an elephant in a sprint.

I watch young males wrapping their trunks around each other as they wrestle. Females protecting their cubs. Cubs at every stage of growth nursing or hiding themselves behind their mothers. Elephants splashing themselves and drinking. Elephants at play. Elephants in conference. Elephant being elephants.

Hapoor's Story

This is the story of one of those elephants. Hapoor was the pack's leader at Addo for 24 years. Named after the "hap" or nick in his ear left by a hunter's rifle, Hapoor never got over his distrust of humans. He was a good leader and during his tenure the pack increased from 20 to 50 elephants. He sired most of the cales born during his reign from 1944 to 1968. In May of 1959 a young bull, Bellvue, challenged him for his throne. Hapoor easily emerged the victor and Bellevue paid for his impudence with his life.

There was one other. Some years later in 1966, Ouma, an old cow was darted with a sedative by the wardens in order to be treated for an abscess. As the drug took affect Hapoor and another cow tried to keep Ouma on her feet. They were unsuccessful. When she finally succumbed to the drug, Hapoor stabbed her four times with his tusk between the ear and the eye, exactly as a hunter would have aimed, and three times behind the ear. All the strokes were apparently aimed at the brain.

Frustration, mercy killing or what, we can only guess. We are slowly enclosing them in our world without really knowing what goes on in theirs let alone what goes on in their minds.

On The Road Again

Next morning after an English 'breakkie' and another drive through the game preserve where I spot more kudu, warthogs, vervet monkeys and mongoose by the dozen and the ever-present ostrich, I head for the coast.*

I pass the township outside of Port Elizabeth, the biggest I've seen, miles of cement under sun. I wonder to myself why the indigenous people don't live in villages of rondavels on hillsides in the interior instead of in these brutally hot, cement concentration camps. The answer I find out later is that the Afrikaner government actually moved black and coloured living inside white cities and forced them into these townships. They were then required to use an internal passport to move from these designated areas. At that time there was no private ownership of the houses within them. Now the house can be bought and the land leased from the government for 99 years. Why would anyone buy these hovels?

As I move down the coast I am drifting back into the 90's. I spend the night at Cape St. Francis, a coastal town of mahogany-colored thatched, white stucco mansions. This is South Africa's answer to Boca Raton. There is a Seven-Eleven and a house that calls itself Hakuna Matata after the theme song in "The Lion King". Dinner is butter fish and Sauvignon Blanc from the Capetown wineries for eight dollars American. I pay the usual $25 for bed and breakfast with a window overlooking the sea. It's a steal for us with the exchange rate so much in our favor.

Even the elephant park had been very affordable. Prince Charles does it for $350 a night. Jenifer does it for $40 a night at Addo, a National game park, with the elephants thrown in for free.

One thing is unfailing in this country and that is the hospitality. South Africans of all shades and tongues are gracious with an old world Colonial charm. The country hopes to earn part of its income in the future from eco-tourism. Given the virginal beauty of its beaches it should happen naturally if the crime doesn't scare people away. Tsisikamma, where the Storms River comes down to the sea, comes next on the tour. Great deep gorges, wild sea and more flora in a 30 kilometer stretch along this 'Garden Route' than in the entire Northern Hemisphere. Words can ill express. Check it our for yourself.

I head out of Tsisikamma at dusk and drive into a forest fire. I live on the East Coast so this is my first forest fire and I am raring to go but am held up by the authorities, who relent and let us through in two hours. Night has fallen and on either side of the road into the black are smoldering embers and small fires. I think of Caesar's men on campaign settling down for the night in the German forest, each encampment marked by a fire. I drive by a hill covered in flame. The sight is more awesome and beautiful than frightening. The fascination of fire. Then it occurs to me that people die in forest fires and I step on the gas.

About the Crime

"Gangland Residents in terror after killing";

"Rape suspects in court escape";,p> "Outcry as body of missing Khayelitsha teenager is found near Macassar"

"G-force man in court over killing"

"Bail bid for Valencia suspects delayed"

"Veronique: police nab Tafelsig shack man"

"Vandals turn school ambitions to ashes"

The above mentioned headlines appeared on pages one and two of the July 6, 1999 issue of the "Cape Argus".

In the editorial section of the paper on the same date an editorial in favor of gun control informs us that "Groote Schuur Hospital (where Christian Barnard did his first heart transplant) Staff Face an Intolerable Workload Treating about a Thousand Patients a Month For Gunshot Wounds". It goes on to say that the former head of the hospital has quit to go overseas for better pay and working conditions. Christian Barnard, for those interested is, of course, retired, but keeps his youthful good looks receiving some sort of oxygen treatment for the blood in a Swiss institute. As far as I know he still has his own heart.

Statistics released by the Institute of Race Relations show that there were 24,875 murders reported in South Africa last year, up 7.3 per cent in the last four years. Coming from the United States that has, heretofore, been the world leader in crime stats, I have to admit the statistics are appalling. They compare to 20,000 homicides in the United States last year, which has six times the population.

Rape statistics for the same period are 49,280 rapes. The four year hike is over 16%. A woman doctor in Capetown who works with rape victims contends that the official numbers are misleading as rape is an extremely under-reported crime. In her estimation the actual number could be 15 times higher.

Robbery with aggravated circumstances clocked in at 88,319, a 26.7% increase from the previous year. People are pulled out of their cars at stoplights in Jo'burg. One editorial recommended stationing the army on street corners to combat the crime. To quote Botswana's Minister of Commerce, "Before they used to take my car and leave me. Now they take my car and shoot me."

The obvious question would be is it all black and white crime. The robbery is largely because it is the white population who have the cars, VCRs and pools and the black who walk around barefoot. Tourists and foreign businessmen are a favorite target. Rape runs the gamut from black on black, colored on coloured and anyone on white. A fourteen year old girl was gang raped, stabbed repeatedly and had her throat cut in Mitchell's Plain, a Capetown township, the week I was there. That same weekend the bodies of two other teenage girls were discovered in the area.

The violence also struck close to home. Isabel's mother lives in a retirement where an 80 year was raped and murdered not far from her doorstep. At the time she sent Isabel a story of a young girl who had survived a vicious rape in Isabel's childhood neighborhood in Capetown.

I know I never really felt safe except on busy thoroughfares in broad sunlight. I was constantly aware of being a white female in a country of black peole who had until a few years ago been treated as pariahs. The feeling of being the one in the minority, the one isolated was intense. The threat was never out of my mind and kept me glancing over my shoulder.

"Addressing violence against women in SA is an essential aspect of AIDS prevention," according to Dr. Shereen Usdin, the project manager of the Soul City television and radio drama dealing with the subject. The official statistic is that there are four million HIV positive in South Africa. In a survey by the Human Services Research Council 43 percent of the women in Capetown had been victims of rape or assault.

Ms Tshabalala-Msimang, the Minister of Health, said in explaining the horrifying statistics, "The conditions that allow it to flourish include unequal power relations between men and women, a societal culture that condones the use of force to resolve disputes, poverty, mental health problems and a relatively ineffective justice system that is not sufficiently responsive to victim's needs."

The violence here has a gruesome quality. Nine members of one family were murdered in gang warfare in Capetown. A man was bailed out of jail in order to be murdered by his foes in a northern province. I am sure I could never fully explain it but I would also guess its roots lie in the violence of the past.

The Prophet Makes a Thrilling Debut

It was 1856. The English and Xhosa were finally confronting each other face to face. Although each group had known about the other, the English were making their sweep across the southern part of the continent and taking Xhosa land.

Nongqawusa, a 15 year old daughter of a seer told others of her visions. At night she was visited by the spirits of her ancestors. They told her that the dead would rise from their graves and, riding immortal cattle, would drive the English before them into the sea. But first the Xhosa destroy their grain and slaughter their cattle. Once they had done so, a great day would dawn, and a blood red sun would rise in the East, travel halfway across the sky, only to return to the East. It was by this sign that they would know they time had come and they would be saved. And so thousands of cattle were killed. The great day never came and 100,000 Xhosa starved to death and the English finished their sweep.

The by now world-famous Grahamstown Arts Festival, brought The Prophet, a dramatic re-telling of this painful ending to Xhosa dominion in South Africa, to the stage. The festival is an annual event held each summer in the colonial town of Grahamstown. The play, complete with members of the audience going into trance as the story progresses, attempts to re-create the emotional climate in which that fateful decision was made more than a century ago.

There are many things about this story that trouble modern day Xhosa. One commonly held suspicion is that the British were influential in planting the seeds of the 'prophecy' in the young girl's mind. Another troubling aspect of the story is the immense role this young girl played in the history of her people. Playwright Brett Bailey talks about re-staging this famous story not to so much to re-open old wounds as to come to terms with the past. He is fascinated, for instance, in what happened to the families of the members of the cast at the time, and how that has played into their lives in the present.

Take Me Where the Sun Is Shining

"We don't hate these people." The speaker was Michael, my Afrikaner host at a B&B in Outshoorn in the Klein Karoo, the little Karoo, or sheep grazing country in the interior.

Whatever else may be said about the Afrikaner culture of South Africa, it is certain that they have a deep attachment to the land.

"It's not a matter of education," he said, countering my assertion that a democracy can work if there is equal access to education. "Our cultures are too different."

Democracy won't work here. Sixty-five percent of the indigenous people live in the bush. You say education is the answer, but who is going to pay for it? The West imposed this on us, maybe they should pay for it. As it is, 20% of the people in this country are productive in the economy. Where is the money going to come from to educate the other 80%?"

Much as I disliked his philosophy of race relations, I had to concede he had a point there. The Western powers, rather than aiding South Africa, seems to be continuing to punish the country for its racist past. High interest rates and minimal foreign investment have been economically disastrous. While I was there Britain and the IMF decided to sell part of their gold reserves depressig the price globally and increasing the already stagerring unemployment statistics. South Africa also absorbs a lot of immigrants from the middle of the continent where things are even worse. All of this helps to exacerbate the country's tenuous economic condition.

"My gardener, for instance, has 18 children. How can he support them? And the corruption in the government is terrible. The hospitals are falling apart. We had one of the finest medical systems in the world before but now the doctors and nurses are leaving to work overseas because they're not getting paid. The white people in this country built the infrastructure, and the black man was receiving better medical attention then than his now under his own government." Again it has become clear that running a medical system with decreasing government income as the more moneyed classes, white and Indian, flee, is increasingly difficult.

"The Afrikaner had to make his own way in this country. The English ran the government for a century and a half and owned all the businesses. There was prejudice against us. And now there are no jobs for whites. My daughter who is a certified teacher cannot to find a job because she is white."

I asked if he or his children would leave.

"I can't answer for my children but I wouldn't blame them if they did. I will stay. I have always worked and this is a good country. You can always make money if you work."

He contined, "I had a dinner here for journalists from your country. A black American journalist agreed with me to this extent. He said that American blacks are Westernized while blacks in this country are African. If you stay here for six months or a year, you'll see what I am saying is true."

Rather than argue, it seemed wiser to let him have his say. But sadly, simunye, or 'we are one', that is a theme of so many television promotions of better race relations, seemed again conspicuously absent.

Tavern of the Seas

Next stop was Capetown. This 'tavern of the seas' original purpose was to grow fresh vegetables and fruits for the sea weary adventurers and merchants on their way to the 'glorious East." Built around the edges of the famous Table Mountain, a perfectly flat topped mountain in the city center, Capetown occupies a dramatic setting at the end of the African continent. Narrow roads snake along the rocky coast hundreds of feet above the glittering sea below. They carry you down to the southernmost tip of Africa, Cape Point. Cape Point is supposed to be the place where the two oceans, the Atlantic and the Indian meet, but it looks like one vast expanse of sea to me. I spend one of my last afternoons in South Africa on Robben Island where Mandela served most of the 27 year sentence in prison for political activism.

At his trial in 1962 he said, "I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunity. It is an ideal which I hope to live and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

Robben Island, in the Atlantic Ocean within sight of Capetown, was once a leper colony where 10,000 lepers perished. It served as the dumping ground for the chronically ill and the mentally disturbed in the last century. The last to escape did so in 1690.

Lionel Davis, a political prisoner from 1963 to 1971, was our tour guide. He described his experiences there. By the late 1980's prisoners were publishing a paper and had formed a choral group. But the early days were quite different. In the early 60's, prisoners slept on the cement floors with only a thin mat and three blankets. Showers were cold and the grub simple, mostly boiled maize.

Mandela's stiff knees are the product of the time he spent 'harvesting' seaweed on the rocky shore as part of his forced labor. Constant slipping and falling resulted in permanent damage. The limestone pit was the other place prisoners worked. Summer temperatures in the pit soared past 100 degrees F. The dust produced a form of white lung disease and the glare in the white stone was permanently damaging to eyesight.

The extreme segregation of South Africa under Afrikaner government continued even in prison. The Cape can get severe winter storms, and though not frigid, it gets very cold, windy and wet. To work in this weather coloured and Asian prisoners were issued shorts, hats and shirts to sit on the rocky shore and crush rocks. Those who were classified as Bantu (black) were given the same thing but with no underwear, socks or hats for the same duty.

A quota of a half a drum per day per prisoner was set, and if not met, was punished by denying food rations the following day. Talking while working was also punished by withholding of food rations the following day.

Only family members were allowed to visit - and they had to submit an application six months previous to the visit. The visit itself, if you were lucky enough to be granted one, was 30 minutes long and the family member had to be at least 60 years old. The conversation had to be in a language understandable to the guards and politics as a topic was not allowed. The only other communication allowed was a letter of 500 words once every six months.

Political prisoners were mixed in with criminal prisoners in order to intimidate them. What happened instead was that many of the criminal prisoners became politicized.

But the story of Robben Island, Lionel Davis insisted, was not just of the harsh conditions but of the transformation of a jail that became the eventual transformation of a country.

It was in conversations at night in a cell built for fifty and occupied by eighty, that stories were told, ideas discussed, languages learned. As Mr. Davis put it, "We got to know one another." It was in those late night talks that the revolution was conceived. Davis himself was a member of the National Liberation Party, and was initially opposed to the less violent approach of the ANC.

The first change that came of the prisoners' grievance was when prisoners were allowed to study in 1966. Many criminal prisoners became literate while serving their sentences. Some even left with several University degrees. Changes came slowly and one by one. In 1967 prisoners were first allowed to play games, in 1973 hot showers were introduced and by 1979 fresh water to drink was provided.

Mandela was so Gandhian in his approach that the prisoners even helped one of the guards to study so that he could get a promotion.

"Those times went down hard and bitter," say the lyrics of song. But lead by the unique political genius of Nelson Mandela, South Africa came through that desert and established a democracy. Now Nelson Mandela is 81 years old and the Democratic Republic of South Africa is only 5. But in some ways South Africa makes me think of a beautiful woman with a past who can't seem to shake off her memories. The country was first settled 350 years ago. It has a history.

You can see that history in each of the people and how they are with each other. Separated for so many years, they need, as Lionel Davis said, to "get to know each other." Having lived so long in roles either assumed or assigned, they don't seem to have moved beyond those roles. I was stunned that so many South African blacks cast their eyes down when I spoke to them. Years of habit, I guess, bur so strangely haunting at the end of this century.

"God, can they sing," I remember Jill saying. Introduced to choral singing by Europeans, Africans made it their own. The revolution seems almost to have been driven by the voice of the people as it swept across the country like wind sweeping over the grasses. In so much of the music you hear the yearning and pain of the people but also the will.

In the plane I looked back at Capetown as it receded in the distance and thought of the words of a song sung by Vicky Sampson, African dream.

Sometimes alone in the evening
I look outside my window
At the shadows in the night

I hear the sound of distant crying
The darkness multiplying and weary hearts denied
All I feel is my heart beating
Beating like a drum
Beating with confusion
All I hear are the voices telling me to go
But I can never run

Cause in my African dream, there is a new tomorrow
My African dream is a dream that we can follow

When the night begins to fall
I listen for your call,
I listen for your heartbeat
I know my dream is just a dream
And not a false illusion
A shadow in the night

All I want is for our hearts to be beating
Just as one
To silence the confusion
Then the pain and illusion will disappear again
And we will rise

And can't you see
My whole sad illusion
My African dream
Is an end to the confusion