Our plane taxied in Johannesburg International Airport, South Africa, as the midday sun pummelled the earth. My father, mother and I had left Tunis 24 hours earlier, flown through the futuristic, chaotic and enormous Dubai airport, and were now close to reuniting our little nuclear family. It had been the longest separation in our history: ten months. We were to end it the farthest any of us had ever been from home.
Seattle is nearly on the other side of the world from South Africa (exact opposite is near the French Southern and Arctic Lands islands, due south from Madagascar). We came here because brother Ben had been living and working in the Republic of South Africa since March, first for the RSA Human Rights Commission, but currently for a bed and breakfast as a cook.
Greeting us at the airport was Marion Schaer and her daughter Jo. Rebecca and Dillon Snell, my mother’s parents, had hosted Marion during her study abroad year in the states. She’d spent more time on Sunnybrook Farm, Gran and Dillon’s homestead in Boerne, Texas, than either Ben or I. The warm embraces, the heart-felt words, and the kindness to come was a rare gift most sweet. I had met Marion once before, during my fifth birthday party, where we donned jungle animal masks and romped through the slight bamboo clump in our backyard in Cheverly, Maryland. Now, we were close to the real beasts.
My family settled into Marion and her husband Paul’s wondrous home in Jo’burg quickly. With a view atop the city, gardens and a pool, it was a slice of heaven as we awaited our first hot Christmas. The festivities were slightly changed in the Southern Hemisphere, but the general caloric glut and familial warmth is universal. So was the Christmas movie tradition: Avatar 3D blew us young and old boys away. No hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps here, though we did sample all of the beers of region, a luxurious smorgasbord compared to the hegemony of Celtia in Tunisia.
Our family was instantly absorbed into our new Jo’burg relatives. Everyone knew of Ben and Sam’s African adventure, and we were treated to advice, tales and good equipment over the holidays. For Christmas, Ben and I were gifted by Paul’s brother Peter and Mariette a handful of zip-ties, a car-charging spot light, and a shovel.
“You’ll be using that a lot,” Peter said with a wink.
I played electric guitar for the family’s carolling outing, and Paul and Marion’s youngest son Tom plucked a Cold Play standard on his violin. We ate heartily, of rusk and braai, gazpacho and rocket salad, and laughed steadily.
I was prepared for the holidays: prepared for the relaxation, prepared for food beyond tuna, tomatoes and french bread. But I was not prepared for the political and social impact of South Africa. Indeed, my time here has reinvigorated my inner radical while refining it’s foci. South Africa’s legacy, the great confrontation and dismantling of evil, has lessons for us all.
The system of apartheid rivaled the reich of the Nazis, although nothing can compare to the concentration camps and the fuhrer’s war machine. From 1948 to 1994, a group of men rule South Africa who proclaimed divine mandate and racial superiority. It elevated a minority beyond the law and categorically dehumanized the majority into poverty, illness and death. The government saw themselves as the chosen race beset on all sides by the inequities of evil, namely the blacks and coloreds they were economically dependent upon. The government was extremely repressive: it’s agents racially defined people with hair thickness and skin darkness tests, forcibly relocated destitutes to ghettos, murdered thousands, and jailed more.
The tyranny and overthrow of the apartheid regime is well-documented. The long march of Nelson Mandela, the commission of Desmond Tutu and the tragedy of Steve Biko are stories known the world over. But the greater story of how these and other men and women transfigured the atrocity post-apartheid into equality is not adequately told. I consider it’s power a marvel of civilization.
The Apartheid Museum in Jo’burg portrays the apartheid regime and struggle not only with accuracy, depth and creativity, but without hate. In contrast, there is very little positive voice given to the losers of the American Civil War, even though many grey coats fought not for slavery or institutional racism. The concept of revenge, so ingrained in us, is devoid in the Apartheid Museum. This was a conscious decision of the revolution of Madiba and the African National Congress: we need everyone to make our country work, and we won’t continue the cycle of hatred. They forgave.
The ideas of truth, reconciliation and justice are not slogans here (although some would argue they are becoming so) but pillars of society. To look through the eyes of your enemy and heal their wounds after the war is the embrace of South Africa. The power of this conviction will fill your veins with humility. It did mine time and time again.
South Africa today is far from perfect. Many of the emancipated are now emaciated and live in corrugated tin ghettos called townships. The most famous of these is Soweto, a town generated by the need for cheap labour in the colonial mines. It was a hotbed of recruitment and activity in the struggle against apartheid. Now, many of its back alleys are de facto no-go zones, especially dangerous for whites but not a safe place for anyone. Ann and Gary, my parents, and I rented bicycles on the edge of the township and with a Sowetan guide, a dreaded and funny man named Oliver, we pedalled through its desolation.
We rode in the middle of the day and the middle of a weeklong New Year’s festivity: heavy public drinking. Sprawled across lawns, parked under trees and peering out from brick and steel homes, groups of people guzzled from brown bags and milk cartons.
“It’s Boxing Day,” Oliver said, jokingly justifying the day’s inebriation.
He stopped our bike posse outside a steel shack and beckoned us inside it’s musty darkness. Seated above the dirt floor on wooden slats were seven or eight men and women, roughly in their mid-forties. The group changed frequently as Oliver told us the story of the male hostel system, which were basically heavily oppressed work camps. Exploitation and degradation stories were told amongst draughts of sorghum lager and a fermented yogurt drink. After examining a crushed milk carton on the ground, I realized they weren’t filled with milk but rather government-regulated, weak beer.
We hopped back on our bikes and rode through more of Soweto. Sometimes we would pass a nice neighbourhood, with white picket fences, garages, cars and kept houses. But mostly, we wheeled through ruins and patch-jobs. Broken machines, cans, and glass littered the ground. Rusted chassis without windows, tires or seats lay prone. The people were cheerful to us, the guide and his company were neighbourhood boys done and doing good, but the pallor of poverty and destitution rustled behind their smiles. It reminded me of New Orleans seven months after Hurricane Katrina.
Further on, we stopped near a housing project for a snack. As we ate grilled pieces of a freshly butchered cow’s head, which was bleeding on ground near us, Oliver explained the houses had been promised in 1994 but were only now near completion. I fell into a daze that day, overcome with grief and disgust at the injustice. What can possibly be done? Soweto is now in my mind as the example of extreme poverty, with the 9th Ward in New Orleans and the edges of the desert in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco nearby. These places are far more reflective of modernity than Dubai, Tunis or Johannesburg.
Soweto and the apartheid system reflect further history: they are both the culmination of historical forces in South Africa. Spreading from Cape Town, South Africa was colonized by the Dutch East India Company. This corporation was at first charged with servicing ships to South East Asia as a waypoint between the resource extraction of the Dutch East Indies and the markets of Europe and beyond. With time, settlers, missionaries and soldiers expanded the European reach along the coast and into the hinterland. Natives were coerced, enslaved or killed along the way. The Pathfinders by Peter Becker tells the tales of this early expansion and European exploration of South Africa: the odysseys of David Livingstone, the first contacts with the Hottentots, the Fish River tribes and the boertrekkers.
The Dutch who came to settle South Africa, who braved the arid Karoo and the Kalahari wasteland came to be known as the Boer people. Boers developed their own language called Afrikaans from Dutch with a mix of English, German and African. After the British Empire invaded and conquered Cape Town and KwaZulu-Natal, the west and east of South Africa respectively, they discriminated and repressed the Boers with taxes and regulations.
The Boers fiercely resisted. They also moved, and their migrations further into the veldt brought them increased contact with native tribes, notably the Zulu. Their fight for survival between the Africans and English pressed the Boer into extremities of hardship, xenophobia and violence. Following a fortuitous victory against the Zulu at Blood River, they began to believe their cause warded by God Almighty. With a “mad, magnificent priest” and a special covenant with God, the Boers slaughtered the Africans and humiliated the British, earning them their own state within the British system. Territory carved from the lands of the Africans.
Despite their pigmentation, Boers had generations of blood and toil in Africa, and were in essence, Africans themselves. Or maybe, as African as General George Armstrong Custer was American. Their anti-colonial struggle reads sympathetically until one considers their effect on the tribes.
The most powerful and iconic of the African tribes is the Zulu. This is the famous, emblematic Africans of legend. The leather shields, the feathers wrapped on arms and legs, the horned crowns and long spears. The hordes descending the plain. The incomprehensible ululations of war-making. The mythical King Shaka. To the West, Zulu means Africa.
We drove into KwaZulu, the land of the Zulu, from Jo’burg at the dawn of the new year. The road was lush and dotted with small farms and communities. The sky was blue, the view so expansive that grey and white clouds could be seen in their meteorological glory, stretching and curving with the wind and pressure. We chewed free-range kudu biltong, South African jerky made from a relation to the gazelle, and stopped for chocolate-dipped ice cream. We were here hunting history. We did this because of who my father is.
Gary Bruce McNeil, reverend, community organizer, election winner, Texan, Democrat, cat-hater and beer-lover is, above all else, a historian. The catacombs of his mind, the appetite of his literary hunger, and the breadth of his knowledge is legendary and inspiring. After working at Village Books for a year and half, I had once lamented to my father the sheer amount of good books: it was simply too much to read.
Shaking his head in admonishment, eyes slightly crazed, with no lack of anger, he said, “But you can sure as hell try!”
Thus we climbed the ridge rippling with green near the town of Dundee towards Fugitives’ Drift. The camp lies between two important battlefields in the Anglo-Zulu War, or as the Zulu call it “the spat with the British.” My dad had pushed for the long range, immersive history lesson, and like the Underground Tour in Seattle, Gettysburg, and the Kasserine Pass, we followed.
Fortune shined on us for our three days at Fugitives’ Drift. We had no idea what we were stumbling into, but our clan will tell you that what we found changed us. Perched there in the green hills is an institution dedicated to the history of the Anglo-Zulu War and the battles of Isandlawana and Rourke’s Drift.
Passing down oral history from both the Zulu and the British, the lodge started by the late, great David Rattray, has mastered the art of storytelling. Their guides walk the battlefields for hours, explaining in dramatic detail the rush of men and the mistakes and heroics of the battles. They recount poems from soldiers, Zulu quotes and stories, regimental movements, individual acts of bravery and descendant’s perspectives. Respect is given to both sides, to all men who fought on those two days in 1879. It is an awe-inspiring story I will try to share.
In the middle of the 19th century, the British Empire had its eyes on the entirety of South Africa, the Boers and Zulu be damned. The land fell between its crown jewel of India and London, but this wasn’t reason enough. There was compressed carbon in the ground, their sharpness and brightness collectively worth billions as jewellery and tools. Diamonds brought about British desire to fold the southern tip of Africa into its empire.
Disraeli was in charge of the British government at the time, and his imperialistic and expansionist policies pushed ambition in officers abroad. In South Africa, Lord Chelmsford and the British forces in Pietermaritzburg eyed the kingdom of Zulu with fear and lust. Chelmsford’s remoteness was his power: no oversight gave the commander an open hand. The British manufactured reasons to deliver an ultimatum to the Zulu: change everything you are or prepare for war.
This ultimatum was proclaimed without approval of the British government, and it demanded the undoable. The Zulu were threatened with war if they did not reconfigure their entire society - stop ritualistic wars, manhood ceremonies, capital punishment, and polygamy - instantly. Xetshiwaio, the Zulu King, refused, but issued orders to his people not to stray from their borders and not to provoke the British. Conversely, the redcoats prepared for war and headed towards the border in Natal, keen to smash the Zulus and any threat for their diamonds and land.
The forces led by Chelmsford camped near the hillock of Isandlawana January 21, 1879. Chelmsford left the next day to search for and destroy the Zulu army, which had been spotted across a valley. He split his army, leaving an inexperienced Lt. Colonel named Henry Pulliene in charge of 922 white soldiers, 350 supporting staff and 840 black auxiliary troops. Pulliene’s forces were spread against a thin line, wrapped between two hills and precariously perched on a slight elevation whose edge hid troop movements close to camp.
They were unaware of the main Zulu army approaching on the other side of a ridge: 40,000 warriors who regularly ran a hundred miles a day. The British stumbled upon the Zulu before they had time to completely surround the redcoats, but it quickly adapted and stampeded the camp at Isandlawana. The British quickly realized in horror what was descending upon them: the dreaded Horns of the Buffalo.
Famous for its awesome power, the British had previously thought this tactic could not be pulled off on such a massive scale. But it was.
Two columns, or horns, of five thousand troops swung around to the east and west while the head, a frontal assault group of fifteen thousands, charged up the middle. Fifteen thousand more lay in wait behind the head. Made up mostly of the old and inexperienced, the body waited in anticipation while shouting war chants to bolster their comrades in arms.
This battle became the biggest defeat in British military history. It shocked a nation and helped dethrone Disraeli and moved the Empire towards a less bellicose colonial pose.
“Who were the Zulu and why are we fighting them?” asked the British public. “Why are our boys dying for Zulu land?”
But the Zulu did not record the battle as thus. This was a great Zulu victory, if snatched before total defeat and subjugation by later British assaults. The hero for them is an old chief named Mkosanamfogwana, who rallied his people against the ferocious cannon and bullets of the British. During the first attack, the Zulu were nearly repelled by gunpowder. The shots of the modern rifles were laying waste to the main force, and some warriors were beginning to retreat. But Mkosanamfogwana would not allow this. He strode before his men, turned his back to the British, and shouted.
“Hey you over there, don’t you dare run away. Xetshiwaio [the Zulu king] never told you to run away,” he said. Moments later, a bullet blew half of his face off. Instantly, his sacrifice rallied the Zulus, who rushed the British line with war clubs and spears called assegai.
They butchered the British just as the moon eclipsed the sun on the 22nd of January, 1879. The Day of the Dead Moon is an ominous sign for the Zulu, but on that day, the sun set above the British Empire.
Today, Isandlawana is peppered with piles of white stones. The cairns represent ten or so British bodies. From a distance, sheep seem to be grazing in the plain. We heard the story of Isandlwana under the canopy of broad acacia tree. Later, with the words of our guide Rob throbbing in our ears, we walked between the white stones. Quietly, we climbed the hillock where the last British fought and died.
Chelmsford returned and camped amongst the slaughter, the mobile Zulu gone. The horror those redcoats must have felt, walking on a field of gore recently their comrades. In the distance, they saw fire on a mountain, compounding their fear. The fire was a hospital at Rourke’s Drift, where an entirely different story was being told.
Rourke’s Drift was an amazing success of 140 redcoats over 4,000 Zulu warriors in the dead of night. Zulu, which introduced Michael Cane to the silver screen, is an inaccurate version of the story, but it depicts well the mythical status of the battle. Immediately, the defeat at Isandlawana swept through the empire. The questions and alarm it raised were not enough to save the Zulu, however. The British, perhaps seeking to mask the defeat, latched onto the stunning victory following the far larger battle.
Fought between an old church and a warehouse on a small farmstead through the night following Isandlawana, the tale of Rourke’s Drift is harrowing and fantastic. More Victoria Crosses, the equivalent of a Medal of Honor, were given out for the battle than any other single action in British military history. It was an important recruiting story for the British army afterwards and is still used as an example of the stalwart Union Jack against the forces of darkness.
The Zulu, however, don’t acknowledge the British victory: Rourke’s Drift is told as a tale of not following of one’s king or just desserts. Defeat follows disobedience. The Zulu king Xetshawaio had ordered his commanders to stay inside his kingdom and not attack a fortified position. A small contingent of the right horn of the buffalo disobeyed both directives and opened themselves up for defeat at Rourke’s Drift. This side force of the right horn was also starving from the march to Isandlawana, suffering from heavy losses in their officer corp, and desperate for community status: without washing their spears in blood, these Zulu males could not marry.
Pushed by an ambitious chief, societal pressure to wash their spears, and fuelled by witchdoctor’s concoctions of hallucinogenic mushrooms and dagga or marijuana these warriors charged red-eyed and haphazardly into the British guns and fortifications of biscuit tins and meal sacks. The burning of the hospital, which Chelmsford could see from Isandlawana, was originally an offensive tactic to smoke out the redcoats. However, it lit the Zulu troop movements, exposing them to the British guns and nullifying the power of nocturnal surprise attacks. Nearly all the Zulu died during the night’s battle and a dumbfounded group of British survivors went down in history.
The Zulu were eventually subjugated by the British. Now they are the recognized indigenous leaders of eastern South Africa, mirroring the Xhosa in the west. Their language is learned by white, black and colored students in all schools, and their language, written in Roman script, is across signs and billboards. Their descendant is now the President of the Republic of South Africa. Their history, under the direction of the post-independence reconciliation and equality movement, and through the hard work of storytellers and historians like David Rattray at Fugitives’ Drift, is now given its due. Still, the British descendants are much better off than the grandchildren of the victorious forces at Isandlawana.
After a bittersweet parting from Paul and Marion’s family in Jo’burg, we flew to Port Elizabeth. Disembarking from the back of the plane, we fought heady winds towards our baggage and the pride of Ben and my current lives. With a rumble, our 1984 Toyota Land Cruiser barked to life and roared out of the lot. Loading the bags, we collectively praised the steel beast from its wool seats and musty odour to its sheer bulk and quirky condition. I fumbled with the radio as Ben gunned the engine. With a blast of guitar and diesel, we hit the road to All Along the Watchtower, Hendrix-style, smiles wide and heads bumping.
The coastal drive took us for the first time to the Indian Ocean, and we casually headed towards Addo Elephant Park for New Years. Settling into a relaxing, nearly empty bed and breakfast, we kicked up our heels and read by the pool of Boers, Zulu and English in this land. We forayed twice into Addo, once guided, and saw a group of five lions, numerous warthogs, zebras, kudu, water buffalo and foxes. But the namesake of the park blew us all away.
Parking the cruiser at a watering hole on our second day, we watched 33 elephants splashing, playing with, and moving around each other. We spotted a large grey lumbering towards us in the distance, and we manoeuvred between it and the water. It passed six feet away from our car, its enormous weight thudding quietly as its tree trunk sized legs plodded along. The brown irises, the long lashes, the floppy ears, the thick hides and ivory tusks astounded. These creatures completely dwarfed all the cars except the tour trucks. Later, we passed one on the road, its small tail a polite crease in the gigantic backside.
The elephants’ power is palpable at close distances. Without a doubt, we were at their mercy, even knowing the horrid backstory of the human-elephant relationship. The calmness of the animals belies a wisdom, however anthropocentric this is, hard to deny in such proximity. Something deep inside stirs in the presence of elephants.
Thus we began 2010, bathed in the history and nature of the southern tip of Africa. Leaving Addo, we headed west towards Ben’s new home in the natural harbor and lagoon of Knysna. The geography of the coast there looks like two boxer’s fists raised side by side. In between the Heads, the Indian Ocean streams through rocky crags infamous for shipwrecks and catastrophe. Inside their embrace, calm waters lap around a lagoon and a few well-developed islands. Near the shore is a small, bustling town centered around tourism and an old timber industry. Mitchell’s brewery, which we toured and have amply sampled, is based here and ships its beer all around the country. We entered the beautiful town full of trees and flowers, and instantly Ben became happier, more relaxed. He had spent the last five months here as a cook and handyman, making omelettes, muffins and meuseli or granola every morning, and now he was home.
We pulled into Bamboo midday, and were drinking magheritas within minutes. The guest house is made by its staff and owners Jaynie and Gordon. It is a magical places of raised boardwalks leading through beautiful trees, flowers, bushes and plants. Each room is tucked in its own forest enclave. The cats chase the clouds of birds roosting in the branches, and three rambunctious, loveable dogs named Maddie, Forest and Roxy swagger over the grounds, intent on mischievously warming everyone’s heart. Immediately, our little family from Seattle fell in love. Jaynie and Gordon have built a celestial island, and they have been unmatched in their kindness and generosity towards my family, especially my little big brother.
We laughed and told tales for a week straight. We took a boat out into the lagoon and swam in the frigid waters. We tried to save a wayward penguin. We hiked to mountain waterfalls. We cooked splendid meals on the porch of Bamboo, candlelit evenings of wine, epics and jokes. It was a happy time of family new and old, earned and inherited, in a land very, very far away. And now, I call it home.