Dark Continent
My Black Arse
Dark Continent
My Black Arse
by bus, boksie, matola … from Cape to Cairo
SIHLE KHUMALO
The author is indebted to Wikipedia for much of the information contained in the ‘Father of the Nation’ boxes at the start of each chapter in this book.
Some names of persons encountered on this trip have been altered for their protection.
Published by Umuzi
P.O. Box 1144, Cape Town 8000
[email protected]
an imprint of
Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd,
Company Reg No 1966/003153/07
80 McKenzie Street, Cape Town 8001
Copyright © Sihle Khumalo 2007
Sihle Khumalo hereby asserts his right to be
identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.
First edition, first printing 2007
Second printing 2007
Third printing 2007
Fourth printing 2008
Fifth printing 2008
Sixth printing 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4152-0036-0 (Print)
ISBN: 978-1-4152-0293-7 (ePub)
ISBN: 978-1-4152-0294-4 (Pdf)
Cover and text design by mr design
Cover image based on an old etching from David and Charles Livingstone’s
Zambesi Expedition, 1865, and a photograph supplied by Sihle Khumalo
For Nonkululeko ‘Lulu’ Khumalo (née Matiwane) –
the wind beneath my wings
Contents
The rest of Africa is calling
Nujoma’s Namibia
Kaunda’s Zambia
Banda’s Malawi
Nyerere’s Tanzania
Kenyatta’s Kenya
Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia
Fatherless Sudan
Nasser’s Egypt
Looking back
The rest of Africa is calling
It is said that, when Colonel Ewart S Grogan wanted to marry the woman of his dreams, the father of the bride-to-be thought Grogan was not man enough. ‘Will travelling from Cape to Cairo make me man enough to marry your daughter?’ the colonel-to-be asked.
The rest, as they say, is history. Ewart S Grogan became the first European to undertake the Cape to Cairo – on foot. It took the 22-year-old Cambridge undergraduate three years. He arrived in Cairo in the year 1900 and returned to London to marry his loved one.
More recently, Peter Moore, author of Swahili for the Broken Hearted, did the Cape to Cairo because he had been dumped by the Girl Next Door (GND). Legend has it that Dr Livingstone explored Africa for 33 years because he wanted to escape from his wife, Mary, the daughter of the missionary Robert Moffat.
For me, however, things could not have been better on the love front. I did not have to prove myself to a future father-in-law or to cure a broken heart or to get away from a wife. I had been engaged for six months to the woman of my dreams and we had a 16-month-old baby. (It’s a black thing: darkies have a baby first and only then get engaged or married.) But I – like Mike Copeland, author of Cape to Cairo and one of the most recent followers in the footsteps of Colonel Grogan – wanted to do the trip to celebrate something. Mike was celebrating his 50th birthday; I wanted to celebrate having turned 30.
As expected, not everyone thought it was a great idea. For instance, my future father-in-law’s response was: ‘I always thought you were a psychopath but now, over and above that, I think you are a serial killer.’ To this day I am not sure what doing the Cape to Cairo has to do with being a serial killer, but I have learned the wisdom of agreeing with my now-for-real father-in-law.
My dream of travelling up Africa started when I was a young boy and learned about an imperialist named Cecil John Rhodes who wanted to link Cape Town and Cairo through railway infrastructure. From that moment on I was obsessed with the idea of travelling from the Cape to Cairo. My occasional travels through southern Africa in my twenties further ignited my childhood dream of ‘conquering’ Africa.
Six months before my 30th birthday, I began to seriously consider resigning from the company for which I had been working for almost ten years. In retrospect I can see that I started working, relatively speaking, at too young an age. I think that, for a boy who was raised by a single mother in the rural areas, things happened too quickly for me.
From Grade 1 (in township schools we called it u-festiya – ‘first year’) until my last year at a tertiary institution I was always the youngest in my class, notwithstanding the fact that after matric (Grade 12) I spent a whole year loitering at home because my mother could not afford to send me to Natal Technikon, in Durban. I joined the corporate world at 20 and already had my own car and apartment by the sea by the age of 22 (no sea views, though); at 24, I was a middle manager. Two local return air tickets per annum were part of my package, as well as a 75 per cent discount on an international flight every five years. My other perks included a car and cellphone allowance, and the usual fringe benefits associated with a large progressive company.
By resigning I would be giving up all of this and, as if that were not enough, I would have no form of income for approximately one year, which was the time I had allocated for travelling and for attempting to write a book based on my travels.
I knew that if I did not do the Cape to Cairo trip when I was 30, I would not do it at all. Even as a young boy I had felt that 32 was the right age to get married, especially if you are a male. So I was working towards getting officially settled round about that time. Therefore it made perfect sense, to me at least, to do all the ‘stupid’ things I could before legally giving my woman a chain and padlock.
In his book When Everything You Ever Wanted Is Not Enough, Harold Kushner talks about something called the imposter phenomenon – having everything you’ve ever dreamt of yet being bored with life because you have nothing to look forward to. Although I was indeed at times bored with life, I was not exactly suffering from the imposter phenomenon. I was, rather, at a point in my life where money on its own was no longer enough of a motivator. I wanted to do something more fulfilling and meaningful with my life than just accumulating material things and having a big fat bank balance. I did not have loads of money, mind you, but if you, like me, grew up just below the poverty line, middle class looks and feels like you have arrived.
A month before my birthday, I took the plunge and resigned. A few days later there were rumours going around at work that I had won the Lotto. Understandably so, since people normally resign because they are either venturing into business or migrating to greener pastures. Hence, most people did not understand how I could leave a good job in such a good company with such good colleagues to ‘do something so stupid and dangerous’.
What they did not know was that I was leaving the corporate world and normal life because I was sick and tired of
routine
being stuck in the comfort zone
being stuck in a rut
being stuck in traffic every morning and every afternoon
driving on the same road to the same office every weekday to do pretty much the same thing
dealing with the same things daily, weekly, monthly, yearly
sweating the small stuff
trying to solve imaginary problems
being a manager
dealing with systems, guidelines, policies and procedures
attending meetings, workshops and conferences
sending reports to Head Office
worrying about how to make more money
looking at life from a strictly financial perspective
worrying about tomorrow and the day after and the day after
being a statistic
being in limbo
wasting golden opportunities
wasting God’s precious time and my own
voting in all the general elections but, somehow, still feeling oppressed
sleeping with beautiful women and thinking that would make me happy
drinking beer and watching soccer on TV every weekend
being bored with life and doing nothing about it
not living the life I suspected I was meant to live
feeling life was passing me by
feeling like I was missing out on something
In short: enduring the pain of a dying soul crying out to be free.
Instead I wanted to:
take the bull by the horns
give life my all
give life my best shot
live in the present
find myself
find peace of mind
be who I wanted to be
do the things I genuinely wanted to do
do challenging and out-of-this-world things
create my own beautiful, yet simple, life
live my own life, in my own way, on my own terms
leave a difficult act to follow when I die
In short: be me – just me, nobody else but me.
As much as I knew that from a financial perspective it was almost impossible to live without some type of income, I did not want to carry on doing things I didn’t want to do. I wanted to wake up in the morning – for at least a year – and not have to worry about deadlines to meet, reports to submit and meetings to attend. I wanted a break from it all, where I could live a life with no responsibilities and worries. I wanted to, as the Indians in Durban say, ‘Do my own thing and carry on – one time.’
I’m still not sure how people work for years, especially in the corporate world, without taking a proper break. Let’s face it, even when you are on leave you are constantly thinking about work. After ten years of corporate bullshit, I wanted to take a breather or, as we say in Zulu, bengifuna ukukhokh’umoya.
Not least among my reasons for taking myself on the Cape to Cairo was a burning desire to see with my own eyes the present state of Africa – a bit like Paul Theroux, who did the trip in reverse overland and then wrote Dark Star Safari. This motive, which seems political but was in fact deeply personal, inspired the brief ‘Father of the Nation’ note at the beginning of each chapter in this book – i.e., for each country I travelled through.
The Father of the Nation of the country I come from, South Africa, is none other than Nelson Mandela, the man who spent 27 years in incarceration because of his convictions and came out of prison with no recriminations. Ironically, when he became the first democratically elected president of the Republic of South Africa in 1994, he was more willing to forgive and let bygones be bygones than many black South Africans who had suffered much less. He led from the front as far as nation-building and creating a racially-inclusive society are concerned, and he is one of the best leaders this planet has seen in recent times. With someone like that from whom to learn a few lessons in humanity, I thought I could handle whatever the rest of Africa could throw at me.
On my first weekend as an unemployed person, I felt an excruciating pain while playing soccer, just above my right heel. Suddenly, I could not even walk, leave alone finish the game. The following day my doctor referred me to an orthopaedic surgeon.
After examining my foot and asking me a few basic questions, the man told me the bad news: ‘Mr Khumalo, you have snapped your Achilles tendon. You have to undergo an operation and will have your leg in a cast for six to eight weeks.’ When I told him about my travel plans he, without thinking twice, said, ‘Cancel the trip. You will damage your tendon further and it might never fully recover.’
He gave me a day to decide – operation or not?
For me, there was really nothing to decide. I had given up my job and there was no way I was going to cancel or even postpone the trip. An option, he told me when I saw him again, was to wear a built-up shoe to help the tendon heal naturally. That sounded more reasonable and I was referred to another specialist to help me obtain the orthopaedic shoe.
The second surgeon suggested that my shoe be elevated by four centimetres and that a centimetre be taken off every week so that, under normal circumstances, I would be wearing normal shoes after just four weeks. I was soon in high spirits again. However, when I went to see the second surgeon for the second time he discovered that my tendon was healing more slowly than anticipated. It was going to take two months, if not more, for it to heal completely.
When I had two centimetres still left on the shoe I realised that the whole process was taking far too long for my liking and decided that I would start the journey with an elevated shoe. My official version for the specialist was that I was going on a two-week trip. He said it was fine but it was important that I see him as soon as possible after my return.
Just in case, I made sure I had good travel insurance, and – armed with five vaccinations from the travel doctor – I was more than ready to paint Africa red.
But it was not the end of being tried and tested. Two days before I left, two completely unrelated events almost made me cancel my trip.
The first was the bombing at the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheik in Egypt, in which more than 88 people were killed, mostly tourists. According to the route I had planned (you don’t have an itinerary when you do a trip like this), I would be going through this Red Sea resort on my way to Cairo.
The second was a burglary. While my fiancée and I were asleep, an unknown person (persons?) broke into my car and stole the sound system. It is amazing that they left untouched five bottles of whisky in the boot, which were going to be consumed the following day at my bon voyage party. What made me really scared, though, was the well-known fact that criminals do their homework very well before breaking in. It was clear to me that some person(s) had been monitoring our movements.
What was even more worrying for me was what would happen if our monitor(s) continued to monitor us and, realising that I had left, tried something more sinister than breaking into the car while my fiancée was alone with our daughter. White people in our country tend to think that they are the prime targets of crime. Not so. South African criminals must be one of the most non-racist sectors of our society. As long as you have what the criminal wants, he does not care about your colour. That is why, contrary to popular belief, more criminal activities actually take place in the townships than in the suburbs. That’s just how it is.
Angry as I was that my sound system had been stolen, I could not let such a small event in the bigger scheme of things deter me from going on a once-in-a-lifetime expedition. I resigned myself to the fact that as long as unemployment remained high and the majority of people in our country continue to live below the poverty line thugs would have an excuse to take my state-of-the-art sound system from the parking area of a secure residential complex without asking my permission. Despite some reservations – even after a boisterous bon voyage party at my brother’s place in Westville where family members and close friends bid me uhambo oluhle – it was all systems go.
My plan was to take an early flight from Durban to Cape Town, pick up a car and drive to the southernmost tip of the continent, Cape Agulhas, to start the journey there. The following morning I would drive back to Cape Town in time to catch a bus to Windhoek, Namibia.
It seemed like a reasonable plan.
On the appointed day, 25 July 2005, my fiancée and I woke up very early in order to make it to the airport on time. I kissed my 17-month-old daughter goodbye, making sure that I did not wake her up. She looked so peaceful, i
nnocent and vulnerable. I knew it would be months before I saw her again and at that moment I felt like a selfish and irresponsible father. But there was no turning back. With a wave of the hand to u-Anti (the nanny), I was off.
On our way to the airport, the situation was, somehow, tense. My fiancée had been feeling very unsafe after the car break-in and, on top of that, she was very concerned about my safety in other African countries. While preparing for the trip, I had planned that on our way to the airport I would play two classic hits full blast: ‘Africa’ by Toto and ‘Africa’ by Salif Keita. Like me, both had the continent on their mind. With the car’s sound system gone, my plan came to nothing. We drove down the N2 in deathly silence.
At the airport, there was a small glitch: employees of the national airline were on strike and most SAA flights departing from Durban were cancelled. I had seen on the news the previous night that there was a strike on and thought that, at worst, flights would be delayed but not cancelled indefinitely, as now appeared to be the case. Using another airline was not an alternative because all flights were already fully booked.
Since I had booked a ticket on the Cape Town–Namibia bus for the following day, it was imperative that I got to Cape Town without much further ado. While other passengers were cursing and shouting at the airline’s senior managers, who were at pains to try to explain and to apologise for the inconvenience caused, I reasoned that the logical thing to do was to take a bus.
My fiancée and I left a chaotic and packed airport terminal and rushed to Durban station to see if there was still a bus leaving for Cape Town that morning. With people who live in the southern part of Durban motoring to work on a Monday morning, traffic had started to accumulate on the M4 freeway (recently renamed Inkosi Albert Luthuli Highway after Chief Luthuli, once president of the African National Congress and the first African to receive the Nobel Prize). It took us 30 minutes to negotiate the traffic on Luthuli Highway and arrive at Durban station.
Once there, I was very relieved to be able to book a seat and purchase a bus ticket. Which meant that, instead of a two-hour flight, I was going to spend 22 hours travelling by road to Cape Town. I knew that the Cape to Cairo was not always going to be easy, but I had not anticipated that getting to the starting point was going to be this difficult.
Dark Continent my Black Arse Page 1