Ubuntu Read online

  When the track levelled at the bottom, we said goodbye to the Israeli boys. They would do some minor repairs to their bikes before riding to Cape Town. As like-minded souls, as motorcycle travellers, we embraced and repeated that we hoped to meet again, as they too would be heading north to Zimbabwe after Cape Town.

  After the rain, snow and ice in the mountains, the Transkei coast, only 280 kilometres away, was a beacon of sun, sand and cold beer. The smooth tarmac wound through farmland and pine forests but by late afternoon we’d reached the Transkei border and the tarmac gave way to dirt and potholes.

  The Transkei was one of ten homelands set up in 1959 by the white-ruled South African government to keep the black majority segregated along tribal lines – and, allegedly, to foil any chance of a national revolt. The homelands were self-governing, but were not recognised outside of South Africa. I rode past thatched huts with small crops of maize and a few scrawny goats. It was a poor substitute for the land the local people had once owned across the border – land purchased, according to many reports, at below market value by white farmers after the traditional owners had been forcibly removed by the South African government.

  As daylight faded, the last of the Easter traffic sped past after a weekend on the coast. Drivers gave no room to pass as they honked their horns and passengers in the back of pickups waved angry fists at us. Clouds of dust all but obscured the narrow dirt road that wound down to the ocean and Port St Johns. I had only my dim six-volt headlight to guide me, and I hoped Dan could see the road as I followed the red glow of his tail-light through the darkness and the dust that swirled around us. When I’d bought the TT, I’d decided not to have the stator coil and wiring changed to twelve volts to give me a brighter headlight as I had figured I wouldn’t be riding at night, when the risk of an accident increased ten-fold or more. It was a foolish decision that did not allow for circumstances such as the one we now found ourselves in.

  Exhausted, we rode into the campsite at Port St Johns around ten p.m. As we took off our helmets, a shadowy figure approached from the darkness.

  ‘Bloody hell! You two are fucking lucky you weren’t fucking killed. Don’t you know the blacks are on the rampage after some crazy white bastard shot one of their leaders?’ bellowed the figure. He was a tall, thin white man with a long face, close-cropped ginger beard and an unmistakably Australian accent. He wore board shorts, a singlet and thongs, and carried a bottle of beer in each hand. He told us that Chris Hani, the leader of the South African Communist Party and a fiercely outspoken leader of the anti-apartheid movement, had been shot two days ago. This was the first we’d heard of it.

  ‘The road was a little crazy,’ I replied, still dazed from our near-death ride.

  ‘Here, get this into ya. I’m Kirk,’ he said and handed us the beers. I took a few swigs, the cold beer washing away the dust stuck in my throat, and as we set up the tent, Kirk told us his story.

  Kirk was the campsite manager and looked about fortyish. He’d come to South Africa as a backpacker some years earlier, but had got no further than the sleepy fishing village of Port St Johns with its beach and life under palm trees, sunshine and blue skies. The campsite was his home and he earned a modest living from it, while meeting an assortment of interesting people from all over the world.

  ‘Don’t leave anything in ya tent. If ya not watching, the fuckers will take everything. Sleeping bags, mattresses, towels, the lot. Especially those fucking boots, they’ll have ’em for sure,’ he said, pointing to our feet. ‘But ya can’t blame ’em. There’s no fucking jobs. Unemployment is over seventy per cent in the Transkei. There’s a locker in the kitchen for ya stuff during the day.’

  On this ride to Cape Town, we had found ourselves in the heart of a rapidly changing political landscape as the oppressive apartheid regime was ending in South Africa. The black majority had lived with racial segregation since 1948, when it had been implemented by the all-white Afrikaner National Party. Black people were segregated from white people in all areas of life – marriage, relationships, education, healthcare, jobs, land ownership.

  We left Port St Johns two days later and while we were refuelling, an elderly African man ambled over from the shadows of a leafy tree where he’d been watching us.

  ‘Two white men were killed here last night. Don’t stop anywhere on your way out of Transkei. Just get out quick,’ he warned and then moved away just as quietly as he had appeared.

  We did not linger to ask questions and without a backward glance got on our bikes and did not stop until our tyres touched the smooth tarmac leading to East London and on to Cape Town. The highway was quiet, and I felt a naive sense of security until we stopped to refuel late that afternoon. The petrol attendant, a middle-aged white man in grease-stained overalls, warned that the road to Grahamstown was closed due to rioting, with petrol bombs and stones being thrown at passing vehicles.

  ‘Just keep off the road today. They’re all going crazy. The blacks take their hatred out on any white who happens to be around,’ said the attendant casually, as though he’d seen it all before.

  ‘You can’t really blame them. People can only take so much,’ I replied.

  Over the past two days, sheltered in Port St Johns, we’d been oblivious to the chaos that had ignited following Hani’s assassination. Once word of his murder spread, its impact was felt by the entire nation and rioting erupted all over South Africa, particularly on this day, the official day of Hani’s mourning. Right-wing Polish immigrant Janusz Waluś was later charged with his murder, and Clive Derby-Lewis, a South African Conservative Party MP, was arrested for supplying the pistol. Both men received life in prison.

  The riots, prompted by Hani’s assassination, were the catalyst to end apartheid. The political parties agreed to talks, and democratic elections were held a year later. But even after just a few weeks in South Africa, I had heard many racist comments from white South Africans who spoke in bitter tones about those who threatened their sovereignty. The inequality ran so deep it was cultural, and I wondered whether this great racial divide would ever end.

  We took the attendant’s advice and found a hostel not far from the seafront in East London. It was comfortable and clean and there was space for our motorcycles in the foyer, but it was not friendly. The African woman at reception gave us a stern look filled with intense dislike. I wanted to show my sympathy for her pain, and the pain of millions of South Africans, but I could only manage a quietly spoken ‘sorry’. She seemed to understand and told us that the following day the curfew would be lifted and it would be safe to continue our travels.

  That evening, in the hostel’s lounge, we watched news footage of rioting; of angry people in the major cities and towns all over South Africa. People who had lost faith that the oppression they had endured for the past forty-five years would soon be over. We phoned our parents and told them we were safe, because the news, in those last days of apartheid, was insisting to the world that South Africa was about to self-destruct in a bloodbath fuelled by racial tension.

  We rode to Cape Town on sweeping bends, twists and turns, as the smooth tarmac hugged the coast. Despite this surely being one of the world’s best motorcycling roads, with wild surf on one side and steep mountains on the other, the experience was lost on me as I realised we were also riding through an area populated by people who hated us based purely on our skin colour.

  After seeing the sights of Cape Town, gorging on fish and chips, and climbing Table Mountain, which stood majestic and all-powerful above the city, we were eager to return to Durban to collect our spares and ride north into Zimbabwe. South Africa was too expensive for my meagre travel budget, and while Cape Town existed at a magical location at the end of Africa, it was a city of contrasts where the hunger and squalor of the shantytowns existed on the fringe of the gluttony and opulence that radiated from its centre. Despite few dogs being kept as pets, I was told the biggest selling item in the shantytown stores was canned dog food, while in Cape Town’s
supermarkets, it was boerewors (a coil of thick spicy meat sausage).

  From Cape Town, the ride north took us through the twists and turns of the Swartberg Pass, a gravel road that climbed through a dry mountain range of sharp rocks and steep cliffs to an elevation of nearly 1600 metres. It gave us spectacular views over mountains and valleys, until the pass dropped to the barren plains of the Great Karoo and we followed a straight black line of tarmac into the interior towards Kimberley.

  In the distance, sun glinted off metal and as the speck grew bigger, we knew it was a motorcycle. A moment later, a BMW R100GS with metal panniers pulled up where we had stopped to await its approach. It carried two riders wearing matching red, grey and black leathers. They looked out of place in Africa, as if they’d taken a wrong exit off an autobahn. They removed their silver full-faced helmets and the man, tall and gorgeously handsome with broad shoulders, reached into a side pocket of a bag and pulled out a tin of Castle beer.

  ‘South Africa, it is wonderful place,’ he crooned as he brushed matted strands of blond hair out of ice-blue eyes. He took a swig of the beer and then told us their story. He and his girlfriend were on their way to Cape Town after riding down through Africa, a journey of ten months. Travelling via West Africa to Cameroon, they’d chosen to avoid Zaire and instead had flown with their bike from Yaoundé to Nairobi.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘It is not possible. Zaire is very expensive. One litre of fuel is more than one US dollar and only available on black market,’ he said. ‘There is no law. It could be civil war at any moment. We skip it.’

  ‘You should do the same,’ his girlfriend added. ‘Even in West Africa, the food is terrible, the officials are corrupt, and all the time is donnez cadeau, donnez Bic. Ah, I am glad we in South Africa. Here we have hot shower and good hotel.’ She was stunningly beautiful, an Amazonian woman, her breasts straining at the zip of her leather jacket. Her golden-blonde hair hung in a thick plait down her back. ‘The best thing to do is take the ship to Europe from Mombasa. After South Africa, we go this way back to Germany,’ she told us.

  ‘How much money did you spend?’ I asked them both, not deterred from travelling all the way through.

  ‘Nearly twenty-thousand US,’ replied the gorgeous man as he crunched his empty beer can, tossing it on the ground and reaching for another.

  ‘Twenty-thousand dollars!’ I squealed.

  Dan and I both looked at each other. Neither of us had that much money. We’d been told South Africa was one of the most expensive countries and we had both been looking forward to the lower prices further north.

  ‘Well, good luck. We go to Cape Town,’ said the man and beamed a brilliant smile from his unshaven face before sculling his beer.

  As we watched them ride away on the long line of black tarmac, I thought of the word ubuntu, which I had heard from a young African woman at the hostel in Cape Town. She was athletic and strong, with short black dreadlocks. I was in the dining room early one morning, eating toast and reading my guidebook, when she sat down opposite with a mug of tea and a stack of peanut butter sandwiches.

  ‘White woman, why you travel Africa?’ she boomed. Her voice demanded my attention, as if it were the voice of one who rallies others to fight, and I thought she may have something to do with the anti-apartheid movement.

  ‘I felt drawn here,’ I replied. ‘There is a kind of humanness to Africa that we don’t have in the West.’ My reply seemed inadequate and incomprehensible, even to me.

  ‘Ubuntu,’ she’d smiled knowingly, her face changing from steely anger to serene understanding in an instant. ‘You will find the way of ubuntu as you travel Africa. The African people will help you. This is ubuntu. This is what we want the whites to understand. We can help each other and together we can make South Africa great. But it is very difficult.’

  I later read that ubuntu also means the universal bond that connects all of humanity as one.

  As I watched the Germans disappear, I understood they had not found ubuntu. Not because it was not shown to them, but because they had not opened their eyes, minds and hearts to it.

  *

  Ever since arriving in Africa we hadn’t planned where we’d stay each night, because something invariably turned up. Dan and I never shared these thoughts, but we silently agreed to leave the progression of our day to fate. Things always worked out. Our unlikely encounters with good fortune always amazed me and each morning before we headed off into the next adventure, I’d say a silent prayer of gratitude for what would come our way.

  It was cold and dark by the time we reached Kimberley and came across the Halfway House, one of its famous old hotels. The kitchen was closed so we chewed on biltong (strips of dried meat) sold as bar snacks as we played pool and drank our winnings in beer. In the early hours we ended up sleeping on the floor of a hotel room at the invitation of a quietly spoken white South African businessman who we’d taken turns to defeat at pool. He was on his way to Cape Town and understood we had a long journey ahead on limited funds.

  As a former mine worker, I could not leave Kimberley without a visit to the Big Hole. We stood at the lookout for a bird’s-eye view into its cavernous depths, which had been excavated by pick and shovel; it was reportedly the largest mine in the world dug by hand. Over 14 million carats of diamonds had been taken out of this 1.6-kilometre-wide, 215-metre-deep mine – the bottom forty metres were now filled with ground water. The Kimberley Mine Museum, laid out as a historical township near the Big Hole, was filled with mining memorabilia. I stared at an enlarged photograph of thousands of men swarming into, over and out of the huge open pit criss-crossed with lengths of wood and rope to give support. The men, from tribes all over southern Africa, worked feverishly for payment from their labour and for the reward of finding a diamond if they handed it in to the overseer – or even more if they smuggled it out to sell to an illicit buyer. Even though working conditions were harsh and thousands of men died from disease, the mine helped make many dreams come true, just as mining had done for me. These men knew living their life was far more valuable than the pursuit of more. Most only stayed long enough to earn enough money to secure their financial future: enough to purchase a gun (for hunting and a symbol of power), a few cattle and to pay a bride price.

  I, too, had only stayed in mining long enough to secure my financial future. I’d bought a house, the rent now paying off the last of the mortgage while I travelled. I’d only bought it because my work colleagues had insisted that the meaning of life was a mortgage and I hadn’t known any better. I was grateful for the financial reward from my well-paying job, but I was even more grateful for the opportunity that had come in the form of an idea that I believed in, and grateful that I had trusted in it enough to take that first step before I wasted too many more precious years.

  3

  THE TRAVELLERS’ TRAIL

  ZIMBABWE TO TANZANIA

  As we rode through dry woodland on a straight stretch of tarmac to Victoria Falls, a bug the size of a small rodent splattered across my visor as a blob of yellow and black ooze. We’d crossed into Zimbabwe two days earlier, having collected the spare parts and tyres we’d stored at the home of a friend of a friend on Durban’s outskirts. We posted our tyres by air-freight to Nairobi, and sent our spares by rail to Harare.

  I was lost in thought about the travellers we’d meet at Victoria Falls that evening when the first flying beetle hit me. With a gloved hand, I carefully wiped away its remains, trying not to smudge my visor as I swerved to avoid impact with another bug. Victoria Falls is one of those places where travellers congregate, and I had especially hoped we’d meet other motorcycle riders. I craved the easy laughs and the sense of togetherness I’d felt with the Danish couple on the ride to Perth, and with the three dark-haired Israeli boys at the top of the Sani Pass. We all shared the same sense of freedom, as well as the hardships that came with motorcycle travel. When I was with these people, I felt happy, confident and so sure of myself. Even the te
nsion between Dan and me seemed diminished. Most motorcycle travellers in Africa begin their ride in Europe, travelling south through either Tunisia or Egypt, and I looked forward to hearing their tales of adventure and advice for the road ahead. The past two weeks on the road with Dan had been the loneliest so far and now, more than ever, I needed the company of like-minded souls.

  While Dan and I had reached a kind of unspoken mutual understanding and travelled together rather well with regards to day-to-day decisions, we still had no words to share. No thoughts, churned up by the hours spent on the road, to discuss. Through habit, I had grown to accept the uncomfortable aura between us. Each morning, I was always keen to pack and be on the road, as it was only then that I could relax and lose myself in the freedom of riding my motorcycle as the miles slipped away beneath its tyres.

  I continued to wonder why we both endured the tension. I could not answer for Dan; but for me, even though I tried to convince myself otherwise, I knew his constant disregard had slowly peeled away my self-confidence to the point that I now lacked the courage to move away from the negativity. So I endured it, not unlike a wife may endure years in a loveless marriage. Her life may not be so bad, may even be comfortable, and she is afraid of the unknown, of the uncertainty of finding happiness or being worse off than she already is, so she stays. This was how I felt, and while Dan and I were not married, not even in a relationship – indeed, not even in a friendship – it seemed I continued our travel partnership for the same reasons. I knew this tension would eat away at us until we could endure it no more and we would finally find relief and go our separate ways. It was not a matter of if, but when. My greatest fear was that when the inevitable happened, I would not be capable of travelling alone. Each day, as this moment grew closer, so too did my fear of its imminent approach. I was consumed by a sense of dread. I hated this feeling, as it subsumed the strong, determined young woman who’d got the idea to ride a motorcycle through Africa and believed in it as though nothing but death would stop her. Now, during those hours on the road, cocooned inside my helmet, I imagined all the bad things that could happen as though they already had.