Are We There Yet?

by David Smiedt

  The rain queens’ powers faded with age and the first few obligingly took their final bow with a poisonous cocktail extracted from the brain and spinal cord of a crocodile. After which their decaying bodies were stored for weeks and water poured over them to create a rain-making potion. As you do.

  Practically every chief in the southern half of the continent, including those with an insatiable lust for conquest such as supreme Zulu warrior Shaka, attempted to ingratiate themselves with the early Modjadjis. In times of drought, caravans of gifts were sent up to her village, also called Modjadji. This seat of power undoubtedly appeared all the more mystical thanks to the fact that it is a climatic anomaly. Set on dry slopes above a drier plain, it squeezes enough rain from the clouds blown off the Indian Ocean to maintain a predictable fertility in the midst of barren surroundings.

  Interviews with the Rain Queen, which cost around $50 a pop with a further $50 fee tacked on for photographs, could apparently be arranged via a tourist office in Tzaneen. Despite my enthusiasm for a brush with royalty, I took the long way into town through the cool silence of the pine forests of Magoebaskloof which soared towards swathes of cyan sky like tent poles supporting a white-flecked canopy.

  The conifer canyons were eventually usurped by mango and peach farms where the trees clung to steep-sided hills and drooped under the weight of pendulous purple fruit.

  Tzaneen itself was equally picturesque. Located along a latitude that lent the entire town the kind of lush tropical lustre resorts frequently sport, it gleefully gave the conventional notion of grid town planning the old chuck you farlie by cuddling into the jade hills from which it rose.

  At the best of times, wandering into the local tourist office in Tzaneen and requesting an audience with the local regal climate controller was tantamount to tapping a Swiss guard on the puffy shoulder and asking whether JPII was in. What made my timing even worse was that the Lobedu were apparently between queens.

  When Modjadji V died of renal failure in 2001, the royal family was faced with a succession crisis the likes of which it had never seen. Only two days earlier her daughter Princess Maria Modjadji had also passed away, with the next in line being twenty-three-year-old grand-daughter Makobo Modjadji. Unseasonable rains fell hard and heavy for days.

  It was only after three years of intense tutelage that Queen Modjadji VI’s coronation date was announced – roughly a month away from my requested interview date, rendering said chat all but impossible. I was, however, welcome to drive to the royal compound nearby.

  The Rain Queen’s home was fifty kilometres away down single-lane tracks that skirted the banks of the Molototsi River and climbed into foreboding hills cloaked in vegetation so dark it looked black from a distance. Asphalt yielded to red dust as the road meandered by villages of mud huts topped with corrugated-iron roofs. The sound of my approaching vehicle prompted scatterings of scuff-kneed children who would wave cheerily then put out their hands for coins, yet did little to deter the goats who would blithely wander into the road, oblivious to the fact that I could turn them rapidly into cashmere.

  The entrance to the compound was marked by one of those council-built blocks that could be anything from a public toilet to a library. I was told to follow a path up the hill to an information centre. Here the previous queen’s coronation throne – a high-backed wooden affair emblazoned with a bush-pig carving – was displayed along with the leopard skin that signified her divine position.

  “Any chance of meeting the queen-in-training?” I asked after rousing the woman on duty from a deep desk-draped slumber. She gave me that “I’m afraid not, son” look most frequently seen on parents’ faces in response to the question “Is Scamp coming back from dog heaven?” then added I might be interested in wandering around the village.

  It was much like any other rural South African shtetl: some brick bungalows, a handful of thatch-crowned ronda-vels, a series of baked-earth pathways, outcrops of flourishing corn and citrus trees, and locals who grinned as they threw a “Kunjani baba?” – the local equivalent “Howyagoin mate?” – my way. What set it apart, however, were two rows of wooden staves that formed a columned walkway to the royal compound.

  I was about to enter the square from which a power was wielded that brought Africa’s fiercest warriors barefoot and on bended knee, clapping their hands in deference and toting gifts so lavish that the Modjadji’s domain became known as Lo Bedu, the land of offerings. For a zenith of mysticism, it was thoroughly underwhelming – not least for the fact that most of the villagers seemed to be crowded into an adjoining building watching the local version of Big Brother.

  I struck up a conversation with a teenager in a New York Yankees baseball cap who’d come out for a smoke break and my day brightened dramatically when he offered to introduce me to the lady herself. “You must take a gift,” he added. “R100 will do fine.”

  Just as I was retrieving the note from my wallet, an older woman popped her head around a door and unleashed a tirade of venom on my would-be guide that sent him slouching off to the opposite side of the square.

  “That boy is a tsotsi [thief],” she bellowed, apparently as angry at me for falling for his ruse as she was at him for attempting it. “Besides, Her Royal Highness isn’t here. She’s gone to the dentist in Pretoria.”

  Brilliant.

  Before 1996, when a decision was taken to make the Rain Queen more accessible – mostly in the interests of tourism – she was seldom, if ever, seen in public. Even when protocol was relaxed sufficiently to allow the queen to attend important functions, she could still never mingle with guests, no matter how exalted. If the function was in a university hall, for example, she would sit it out in an adjacent building with no more than one or two members of the royal circle to keep her company. Guests would be informed that the queen was present, but they’d never see her.

  Still, I shouldn’t hold it against Modjadji VI as she had some mighty sandals to fill. Her battleaxe of a predecessor was a formidable figure and everyone from staunchly racist former prime minister PW Botha to Nobel Prize winner FW de Klerk dropped by the kraal to pay their respects.

  When Nelson Mandela expressed his desire for some quality time, she not only kept him waiting but apparently demanded a new Lexus and a four-wheel drive as part of the deal. When she eventually relented, he was permitted to address her through an intermediary and could only speak when spoken to. The relationship eventually thawed in the face of the famed Madiba charm, but it was conducted by her rules until the day she died.

  With the Rain Queen mystique set to turbo wane, I started off down the mountain in a light drizzle that seemed scheduled to mock my impudence.

  Few regions of South Africa can rival this area when it comes to tribal mysticism and my next destination was the heartland of the Lemba tribe, who proudly regard themselves as the Black Jews of South Africa. Intrigued, I had set up an interview with a tribal elder and was directed to the small house a few kilometres out of town.

  Arriving at her immaculate single-storey brick house, I was warmly greeted by Dolly Ratsebe, a fifty-something widow who was glad of some daytime company since both of her children were now studying – accountancy and medicine – at universities in Durban and Pretoria.

  She greeted me with “Shalom”, followed by hot cups of tea and pound cake, then proceeded to convince me that we were of the same stock. According to their oral tradition, the 70,000-strong Lemba migrated from Judea to southern Africa between 2000 and 3000 years ago. Culturally, the similarities are evident. For a start, all Lemba males are circumcised. Unlike many other tribes, the Lemba refuse to intermarry and refer to outsiders as wasenshi (the gentiles). They do not eat pork, fish without scales or any creature prohibited by kosher law. They also never mix milk and meat in accordance with Jewish custom. Furthermore, they will only eat animals ritually slaughtered, and non-Lemba women wishing to marry into the tribe undergo a strict conversion process.

  This was all information that Dolly clea
rly enjoyed sharing but felt compelled to interr upt with questions as to whether or not I was married, the kind of living that could be made through journalism, whether or not my partner was planning to take up what she described as “the way of the chosen people” and perhaps – most tellingly – how frequently I contacted my own mother during this trip to reassure her of my safety. It was as if she was constantly a syllable away from telling me to take a jacket in case.

  Until recently the Lemba’s claims of Semitic ancestry have been treated with a fair degree of scepticism, but recent DNA testing has strengthened their case. Analysis carried out in South Africa and Britain has found that Lemba males display an unusually high incidence of a particular Y chromosome, the Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH), which is frequently found among Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, the two primary groups that emigrated from biblical Judea into the wider world. Although CMH is also found in other Middle Eastern populations, the incidence of this chromosome among Lemba men is 8.8 per cent – similar to that found among Jewish men in general.

  Hanging out with Dolly was like taking tea with a long-lost aunt, and burdened by both regret and four slices of cake, I eventually hoisted myself from the armchair and took my leave. As she walked me to my car, Dolly asked how my Hebrew was. I tried to make light of the question by replying that it was on a par with my Lemba, but she was having none of it. Instead, she fixed me with a glance of unspoken disappointment.

  The Lemba are not the only remarkable tribe in the region. Over the hill is a sacred lake whose waters are plied by a vengeful python god. The surrounding forest is an ancient chieftain burial ground guarded by a ferocious white lion.

  The region is called Venda, which translates as Pleasant Land. It is the traditional home of the VhaVenda people, whose culture incorporates such a phalanx of spirits, gods and lesser sprites that it makes the ancient Egyptians look like dedicated monotheists. So deeply entrenched in water is their belief system that the VhaVenda will not eat any aquatic animal for fear that the rivers will run dry. Perhaps their most revered spiritual rite is the annual ceremony in which a child of the chief is chosen to place an offering on a rock in the sacred lake. A vine is tied to the child and if the offering fails to be accepted by the gods, malevolent water spirits known as zwidutane will cut the cord and the child will disappear into the opaque depths. If, however, the offering is accepted, the child walks on water. Sound familiar?

  Evil aquatic nymphs aside, the lake is also known to be teeming with crocodiles the length of minibuses. According to the VhaVenda people, the forest that bounds this body of water is also home to the phoenix-like Ndadzi that soars on thunderous wings, carries rain in its beak and shoots lightning bolts from its eyes.

  The ancient nature of the land, its inhabitants and their practices imbue the home of Modjadji, the Lemba and the VhaVenda with a spirituality that transcends religion. It simply feels sacred: a sense heightened by the hospitality, kindness and joyful nature of people who live in valleys of infinite charm under bountiful skies.

  My lingering had thrown the itinerary into chaos and I had a daunting number of kilometres to cover before reaching my overnight accommodation at the Blyde River Canyon. Shortly after crossing a bridge over the swift and dark Olifants River, I caught my first sight of the muscular Drakensberg mountain range. So named by the early settlers for its resemblance to the ridges on a dragon’s back, it stretches down most of the nation’s eastern flank for 320 kilometres and marks the swooping border of the vast inland plateau that occupies the bulk of South Africa’s land mass. Millennia of erosion have etched bands of phosphorous yellow and terracotta into the flat-topped peaks so that they resemble massive slices of multilayered cake.

  Moments after passing through the JG Strydom tunnel, I pulled over by a roadside market for a few horrendously cliched sun-setting-over-the-peaks shots. Here I was accosted by a woman brandishing a patently fake $20 greenback who asked if I would exchange it for the local currency. When I refused, she reached into the car, grabbed my can of cola and promptly drained it before my disbelieving eyes.

  Through dusky light setting the valleys which plunged away from the roadside into picturesque relief, I made my way to a hotel complex perched on the edge of the world’s third-largest canyon. I had stayed in a dormitory here during a school excursion and was mildly delighted to see that the place had hardly changed. It consisted of two dozen or so cottages made from rough-hewn stone topped by pyramids of slate tile. The resort also boasted a free-form pool, trampoline, minigolf course and a host of other charmingly nostalgic embellishments – here it was forever 1975.

  Upon checking in, I was told that the resort prided itself on its dinner buffet and so once again I found myself in a restaurant where the staff significantly outnumbered the guests. And once again, the candle on my table was promptly lit to illuminate my solitude. For R70 (around AU$16) I was presented with a team of half-a-dozen impeccably uniformed chefs invading my tastebuds with ten starters, a handful of salads, a selection of stews, several curries and a dessert tray that was duly wobbled over the table when I could no longer rise from the chair under my own steam.

  I slept the sleep of the supremely satisfied and mildly bloated.

  * *

  I’d been told that, on a clear day, dawn over the canyon was a sight one would treasure henceforth. I awoke to a pea-souper which offered all the visibility of draping a white sheet over one’s head. When it cleared, the sun had risen high enough to burn away the fog and I drove the kilometre from my room to the lookout point.

  Following a sign along a rocky pathway overhung with foliage, I made my way towards the lookout, pausing only for a minor coronary as a troupe of baboons screeched then scattered as I approached. Please believe me when I tell you that a fully grown male shares the dimensions and attitude of a psychotic Rottweiler.

  I couldn’t believe that I had been to a place of such magnificence before but could hardly remember it. Twenty-six kilometres long and higher than Sydney’s Centrepoint Tower with the Harbour Bridge jammed onto its pinnacle, the canyon messes with your eyes, brain and ears as you struggle to comprehend the sheer scale and vacuum-packed silence of the panorama. The focal point of the canyon is a trio of conical peaks known as the Three Rondawels, which resemble enormous newly sharpened pencils. These are wrapped in a thick swathe of navy in the form of the Treur River which created the whole shebang through millions of years of erosion and empties into a glistening dam. It is a view so spectacular that you have to remind yourself to breathe.

  The only other vista which had prompted such an awestruck reaction in me was the Grand Canyon, and although Blyde River Canyon was admittedly more intimate in terms of dimension, I wasn’t viewing it from behind a wire fence jammed elbow to elbow with oooohing Nikon-toters.

  So vast, humbling and beautiful was the scene before me that I wished I had someone to exchange gobsmacked exclamations or reverential silences with. Viewed through a pair of binoculars thoughtfully chained to a post, the sheer quartzite cliff faces lost the velvet smoothness imparted by distance. Fissures the length and breadth of football fields had been hacked into the sedimentary rock formations like knife wounds, while a softer shale strata led into the wooded inclined slopes at their base. With the sun still rising, the arid north-facing rock walls morphed in colour from ground cinnamon to deep honey. Those that faced south, however, wore an evergreen coat whose tails trailed into dozens of valleys that crisscrossed the canyon.

  Beneath a pair of martial eagles making what the musical theatre fraternity would term “lazy circles in the sky”, I returned to the car and set out for my next destination: a geological curiosity known as the Bourke’s Luck Potholes. These potholes are in fact a series of cascades, whirlpools and rapids, the result of the strong-flowing Treur River slamming into solid rock formations at its confluence with the Blyde. Through millions of years the water-borne sand and rocks caught in these strata indentations have scoured smoothsided, perfectly cylindrical holes from
the riverbed. It looks as if the area has been shaped with a butter knife, resulting in a Martian landscape of rich ochre and tumbling white water.

  The experience was somewhat dampened by the final entry in the visitors’ book. Peter and Petra – suspicious names to begin with, and hailing from the UK and Germany respectively – described their visit as “marginally interesting”. Honestly, some people deserve to be bitch-slapped into next Tuesday.

  The road between the potholes and the town of Graskop could have starred in innumerable television commercials where a young couple in a convertible, flushed with the excitement of an imminent shagfest, tool down languidly curved stretches of tarmac.

  Thick rafts of leopard trees emblazoned with sulphur-yellow flowers stood sentinel in dense patches, while the odd stream drew one’s eye like the first broken capillary on a young alcoholic’s face. A few kilometres later the road climbed to a spot known as the Devil’s Office. Pine plantations sprung up around me as a cold fog banished the sunshine through which I had driven for most of the morning. At times the precipitous road bent sharply, leaving nothing but an edge and an infinite grey murk, the fog was foreboding enough without it momentarily clearing to reveal sheer drops and I could have done without the curtains of thick cloud that blew across the tarmac reducing visibility to such a degree that I wondered whether I had just set a record for contracting glaucoma.

  Eventually the road plateaued, the seething maw receded and the swirling fog gave way to leaden, pregnant skies. Located conveniently close the Devil’s Office was God’s Window. One of the most famed lookouts in South Africa, it is framed by a deep cleavage of rocks that hang like tied-back curtains before a valley. On a clear day it must have spectacular. It wasn’t and it wasn’t.

  The road to Graskop hugged the lip of the canyon then arced its way through the mustard plains after which Graskop is named and onto Pilgrim’s Rest, a restored mining village that is not so much a town nowadays but a glorified tourist bus stop. It’s essentially a single street flanked by corrugated-iron stores laden with scented candles, packets of fool’s gold and the saving grace of locally produced fudge that’s richer than Bill Gates with a winning lottery ticket.