A Rhino in my Garden

by Conita Walker

  That church service in 1951 registered, as on a seismograph, the escalating stirrings of black anger at the oppression of the majority of South Africans by the minority. My father, and by extension his family, had once again been drawn into someone else’s war.

  His next posting was further north, in the land of the legendary Rain Queen, Modjadji, the matrilineal ruler of the Lobedu people. It was amusing to me that the little house a Lutheran minister was allocated as a base from which to befriend and serve both black and white – to do God’s work – was in the tiny village of Duiwelskloof (Devil’s Gorge).

  My father’s linguistic abilities, which had served him so well in Lobethal in Sekhukhuneland and in northern Germany, now smoothed his way with Modjadji and they got on very well. It was no surprise at all to our family that they should have developed a mutually respectful friendship which allowed them to share so much of their very different cultures. His work among lesser mortals, both black and white – Sesotho, German, Afrikaans and English – also prospered. His children grew up accepting the ease with which he moved among cultures as normal. We were expected to do the same. It was normal too, but less easy to accept, being sent off to boarding school.

  I wonder now about the distress my parents might have hidden from us as they said goodbye. Wartime had cemented such a close bond, it must have been as difficult for them as it was for me. I now recall not just the encouraging words and little moral precepts my father tried to instil in me as we prepared to leave, I remember also the way he said it. A man who had already experienced so much, looking into the eyes of his daughter who had yet to meet her own allocation of life lessons. The words were the good and sensible wisdoms that all parents try to impart to their children at such times. As a parent myself now I understand that behind the words there was more.

  I didn’t enjoy school. I don’t recall that I excelled particularly at anything. But I was a trier. Whatever was on offer in addition to the academic studies, I was there on the starting line. Athletics, basketball, drama, music, religious studies. The report cards I took back to Duiwelskloof paint the picture of an earnest child, gamely trying her best: I was praised for full attendance and diligence.

  During mid-term breaks my report cards were of far less interest to me than what was going on at the mission station. In addition to their normal work, my parents provided a home base for young German missionaries who were sent there for a year’s study of the Sotho language and culture. My father revelled in this work. The big enclosed verandah became the venue for the most interesting debates, especially some years later when he was asked to oversee the translation of the Bible into North-Sotho. For a child those gatherings were a multi-lingual, multi-coloured, multi-cultural feast.

  The much-vaunted Rainbow Nation of later years already existed right there in Duiwelskloof, among the teacups and my mother’s hand-embroidered trousseau-linen. But not in many other places. I certainly didn’t see much of it at school, or out of it. Age-old resentments and entitlements were fracturing South Africa along the fault-lines of race: black against white, white against black. With every passing year the country moved closer to what seemed like the inevitable outcome of so much fear and hatred: civil war. In 1980, sadly, that was the image of South Africa that my father took to his grave.

  When Clive and I first came to the Waterberg, racial tensions and the government’s strategies for dealing with them came uncomfortably close. The fact that Clive was taking black as well as white children into a wilderness area, they said, ostensibly to teach them about the natural environment, had to mean just one thing: he was collaborating with the Black Resistance. The wilderness school had to be a cover for his activities as a spy or an arms smuggler or something else equally treasonous.

  I got upset. Clive didn’t. The hounding and interrogation by the security police meant as little to him as the unwelcoming attitude of some Waterberg neighbours for whom he was “that damned Englishman”. Those neighbours have long since become close friends and allies, and on that Wednesday 27 April 1994, as I drove out through the gates of the reserve, it was the turn of the South African nation as a whole to change course.

  At every polling station voters lined up in the longest, happiest, most optimistic queues this country had ever seen. More than the length of the queues, it is the degree of hope that has stayed with me. It was a new beginning. We honestly believed, I think, all of us, that the dark days of personal lives mangled in the machinery of politics would be behind us.

  In 1994, however, it was the actual length of the queue at the polling station that was uppermost in my mind. I wrestled with a mathematical calculation: so many minutes per person filing to and through the Vaalwater school hall, multiplied by so many people still waiting to get to the front. Whichever way I tried it, it didn’t come out at anything that would appease a hungry baby animal waiting for her foster mother 80 kilometres away.

  There was a shout and a message was relayed along the queue: Mrs Walker was wanted on the phone. It was Clive. Something was wrong with Mothlo. She seemed weak and listless and was staggering and falling around in the heat of the day. She hadn’t eaten. She was obviously dehydrated but refused to take her water or milk and if anyone tried to approach closely enough to hose her down, her distress would instantly become aggressive.

  A dear, compassionate woman who’d probably been in that voting queue since much earlier that morning and was now virtually at the front, pulled me in. I cast my vote and rushed off.

  Clive was waiting in the driveway. He had no patience with my desire to first change into work clothes, but hurried me up to the enclosures where Rosina was waiting. She held out Mothlo’s bottles, and then gestured to everyone else to back away.

  Mothlo struggled to get up. I was appalled at the drastic change in the happy, healthy animal I had said goodbye to just a few hours earlier. I knelt down. As I put my arms around her chubby neck she managed a weak grunt. She snuggled up against me, the one person she trusted absolutely. While I whispered and grunted my version of hippo language close to her face, she took her bottle of water and then her bottle of milk and allowed herself to be gentled into a more comfortable state.

  There was no mystery to her behaviour. She’d bonded to me as her mother. In order to survive, that was exactly what she had had to do initially. But it was clear that we’d have to begin immediately to teach her to accept, as Bwana did, my assistants as surrogates. This was the moment for Fred.

  Fred Baloyi was Rosina’s husband, considerably older than his wife and also of a very different calibre. They both lived in the staff quarters at Doornleegte, but on his off-days Fred would disappear to Sun City. In the Pilanesberg in Gauteng Province there is a famous pleasure resort, a playground for gamblers and glitterati, named Sun City. This was not the one patronised by our Fred. Lapalala’s version, although it promised pleasures which were no less addictive than gambling and strip-shows, was merely the staff compound up on the plateau, named for the fact that the morning sun struck that area before it reached the old compound (Dark City) down in the Palala valley.

  One Sunday afternoon Fred was cycling home from Sun City with a blood-alcohol level which must have been off the charts. This was not all that unusual, Fred being extremely partial to Sun City’s potent home-brewed beer. On this occasion though it ended badly.

  When the rangers returned from their weekend leave they found Fred lying halfway down the very steep descent into the valley. His bicycle was gone – it was later discovered in the ravine next to the road. Fred had gone head-first into rock-hard gravel. He had evidently been unconscious for some time. He was rushed to the nearest hospital, Modimolle (then Nylstroom), 120 kilometres away. It was two months before he could return to Doornleegte and it was clear that many responsibilities would now be beyond his capacity.

  Fred helped out in the garden and with Bwana, but it was with Mothlo that he came into his own. She needed a fair amount of patient persuading, but once she understood that I wa
sn’t abandoning her, she found in Fred an indulgent companion. His leisurely gait – as much an indication of his temperament as his age – allowed the two of them to stay comfortably close, promenading under their outsize umbrella or enjoying Fred’s smoke breaks. These he would take in the shade under a tree or our garden umbrella, while Mothlo joined in the mood with her head on his outstretched legs.

  This suited her perfectly. Hippo calves stay close to their mothers. In the water they maintain bodily contact by lying on the mother’s ample back or floating against her belly. Mothlo, programmed for such closeness, made sure that she stayed with Fred when he took care of his only other responsibility, pumping the water. No matter how tired or sleepy she was, she would follow on his heels: 100 metres to the pump, 100 metres back. And then both of them would again retire to the shade for a well-deserved rest.

  In Mothlo’s case, as in Bwana’s, human foster parents could only be a temporary solution. I’d heard enough cautionary tales of hand-reared wild animals, including hippo, who start out cute and grow up to become not only a nuisance but a danger, with tragic outcomes for all concerned. I was determined to begin preparing her for re-wilding as soon as possible.

  FIVE

  Palala

  THE DOORNLEEGTE FLOODPLAIN was always a good place to spot game. Impala, zebra, blue wildebeest, kudu, duiker, nyala, warthog, giraffe, vervet monkeys and on 1 September 1994, hippo. One small baby hippo. One small recalcitrant baby hippo.

  “Get in,” I said. “Go on, it’s water. You like water. So get in.”

  I cajoled, I pleaded, I commanded. The rock pool was mere inches away but it might as well have been kilometres for all the interest Mothlo had in it. I tried pushing. She was as solid and immovable as the black rock on which we were standing. I leant down and with rapidly chilling hands scooped water over her, informing her that she liked it and would like it even better if she were to get in.

  She was having none of it. She’d been happy to join me on the stroll from her enclosure up at the house. She’d paid perfunctory attention to everything over which I enthused – the glossy starlings, the little family of wattled plovers, the flock of blue waxbills, dung beetles working their way through the ample supply of animal droppings. My joyful exclamations at arriving at the river caused her to look at me, not the river. The pool with its smooth rocky sides that so delighted me got a blank, uncomprehending stare.

  Lead by example. I got in. I splashed and shivered and yodelled, and submerged as much of myself as I could bear to in the frigid water. It was only when she noticed that I was getting a bit further away from her than she liked that she took the plunge. Figuratively speaking, that is – it was by no means an enthusiastic leap into the unknown. She loved her pool at Doornleegte, but didn’t seem to make the connection until the moment her whole fat little body was actually in the water, and then suddenly, instantly, she was a hippo in her natural environment. She dived and bobbed and rolled, disappeared here and popped up there, bumped and sprayed at me and then it was head-first down and out of sight again to appear a few seconds later on my other side.

  I laughed and cried and hugged her in that freezing Palala.

  As I sat, teeth chattering, drying off on the shiny black rocks, I did what all mothers do: I dreamt ahead. When my eldest son tried to turn the pages of a book when he was barely six months old, it seemed to me that his nature and gifts would one day take him in an academic direction. That is exactly what happened. My younger son seemed to have an engineering bent. He would sit with the disassembled parts of a toy and with the utmost patience and concentration put the whole thing together perfectly. Twenty-five to 30 years later, he was a wildlife manager, working to understand and fix the parts of disassembled, broken ecosystems.

  In Mothlo’s behaviour that day I could so easily see the potential for her life as a free wild animal, something I desperately wanted for both my orphans. Bwana was already exhibiting the behaviours he’d need as a re-wilded black rhino living as he was meant to among Lapalala’s rocks and thickets. Mothlo could be accepted by a resident pod and live out her days in the waters and on the banks of the Palala.

  It would most likely be the Palala, I thought, rather than the Blocklands where she was born, given the location of Doornleegte. Her re-introduction would start right here – the rock pool was ideal. Close enough to the house, secluded enough although it meant a scramble through dense riverine vegetation to get there, and safe enough surrounded by its high, water-smoothed rock walls. When she was ready, she’d venture further up- or downstream, where there were plenty of other pools to explore. Protected within the Lapalala Wilderness Reserve there were 88 kilometres of this river.

  The Palala gets its name from “Lephalale”, the North-Sotho word for “barrier”. It’s an apt name. Its meandering course, incised deep into the Palala Plateau, created access challenges for pioneers and sculpted a dramatic landscape. There are dark gorges, hemmed in by sandstone cliffs with overhangs where indigenous peoples sheltered and left their paintings – elephant, rhino, red hartebeest, shamanic trance states and finally the covered wagons of the next wave of Waterberg inhabitants. There are white-water rapids through broken basalt sheets and boulders with exposed conglomerate layers. There are wide, placid stretches, secluded pools covered in waterlilies, sandy beaches where crocodiles lie basking in the sun.

  Dale Parker used to tell Clive that the river had to be their most important focus and he was proven right. Today, almost unique in Southern Africa, the Palala’s waters are pure. It shelters 34 species of indigenous fish, two of them endangered. In its riverine vegetation – an ecosystem which is itself rare and endangered – you’ll find a dazzling collection of wildlife that includes a veritable Red Data showcase: African python, narina trogon, little bittern, pygmy goose, bat-hawk, white-breasted cuckoo-shrike, African finfoot, pennant-winged nightjar, white-backed night heron.

  And we so nearly lost it all. Right at the beginning, in Lapalala’s infancy, a threat had been stewing all around us without us being any the wiser until one day Clive was called on the radio. A helicopter had landed at the reserve entrance gates. On board was a delegation from the Department of Water Affairs. They were conducting investigations in connection with a proposed dam site. As a courtesy they were requesting access in order to examine the upper reaches of the Palala. It was a red flag in front of a very annoyed bull – Clive flatly refused.

  It was 1983. Lapalala was as yet barely more than a cosseted dream shared by Dale and Clive. It consisted of only the first two farms. Our wilderness school was also still no more than an intention. Clive had hardly begun with the long process of natural restoration in which he believed so passionately, and now there was a bunch of officious civil servants wanting to ruin it all. He phoned Dale, got the expected echo of his own outrage, and set about investigating the matter – Know Thine Enemy. The first thing he discovered was that he had already broken the law by refusing to allow the Water Affairs investigation. I got a fright. This was the Nationalist government – I didn’t want my husband to land in their cross-hairs. But Clive was spoiling for a fight, because the second thing he had discovered was the planned location of “that damned dam”. The western wall would be on Landmanslust, the second half, with Dubbelwater being the first, of Lapalala. Clive had motivated the purchase of Landmanslust to Dale because of the biodiverse integrity of that tract of land. It was pristine wilderness. He referred to it as “the Empty Quarter”. Put a dam there and it was all over.

  They needed a strategy beyond obdurate resistance. The planned eastern wall of the dam would be on Moerdyk, a farm on the opposite side of the river. Dale wanted to know who owned it, but without Clive letting on who was showing an interest. The moment a potential seller discovered that the enquiry came from a wealthy businessman the price was guaranteed to skyrocket. Clive contacted the owner, Isabel Vorster. She was not averse to the idea of selling her land, but she was not going to give it away. She rejected Dale’s offer to pur
chase. A strategic pause, and a second offer was on the table. Rejected. Clive was biting his nails because as far as the opposition was concerned, the clock was ticking. The opposition was not only Water Affairs, they were backed by the surrounding Waterberg farmers. But not for nothing had Clive been a game ranger – he knew a spoor when he saw one. He followed it through rumours and gossip, old correspondence and newspaper cuttings, and his suspicions were confirmed. This push for a dam in the area was not new. Every time a national election loomed and the ruling party wanted to make sure of the Waterberg vote, they resurrected the promise of a dam to serve the Waterberg’s agricultural and community needs. The farmers were all for it and not thrilled to find Clive in their way. He was threatened with civil action. I was in a complete state by this time and preached caution, but without any hope of being attended to since Dale and Clive had stated quite openly that the dam-builders would first have to bury them both in concrete before they’d give up the fight.

  They weren’t joking. There was one dreadful day when I was sure Clive would get himself arrested. In a militant mood he drove to Pretoria, confronted the Deputy-Director of Water Affairs in his office and informed him that he had a fight on his hands. It would be a fight in the courts and in the media. Especially in the media since, as the director of the Endangered Wildlife Trust, he intended to hold up to public scrutiny this unconscionable plan to destroy a sensitive natural area in order to make political gain out of the construction of what was nothing more than an “election dam”.

  Instead of calling the police, the Deputy Director actually listened, Clive said, because he was reluctant to risk the bad publicity. Besides, he knew he was on shaky ground. That Moerdyk site had not had an ecological survey done, or an environmental impact assessment. It was, moreover, only one of five possible sites for the dam, and not the most appropriate one to serve the needs of the community most in need of the water. This plan had neither science nor sense behind it.