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| Dawn Patrol |
It was seven in the
morning and by chance, my birthday, so I had expected to be having a lay in
with my wife, Rosemary. Instead I was looking into the eyes of a matriarch
African elephant at about half a trunk’s length distance and she (not Rosemary)
seemed intent on sniffing at my neck. We had been on a game drive in thick bush
since five o’clock and had stopped for a flask of coffee fortified with the
local milky Amarula liqueur, which is similar to Baileys. The elephants
appeared from the trees in single file like the Dawn Patrol in Disney’s version
of the Jungle Book. Our ranger, Sipu, had reversed the open Land Cruiser to
clear their path but had come up against a boulder so they came rather closer
than intended. It did not feel threatening as the elephants’ posture was
clearly relaxed; the younger ones commenced tussling with each other while the
adults trashed the surrounding trees and browsed on their thorny leaves. After
a few minutes, they ambled off and magically disappeared into the bush again.
We were staying at
Amakhosi Lodge, an excellent five-star establishment within a vast private game
reserve. It has eight “villas” and we were initially disappointed to be
allocated number eight which was a fair trek from the restaurant and reception
area but turned out to be the honeymoon suite with its own “Do Not Disturb”
gate and private plunge pool on the veranda. We were ten days into a tour which
had been dogged by electrical storms. During our first night at Amakhosi, the
lightning knocked out the air conditioning and wall sockets in our suite. When
the alarm wakes you at four o’clock and covered in perspiration, you fumble
sleepily through the mosquito net in the darkness for the alarm clock and a
bedside light switch which doesn’t work anymore, it is not the best start to
the day. The coffee, elephants and breakfast make it all worthwhile.
The number and type of
animals on South African game reserves are regulated according to their area
and type of vegetation. The reserve may cover several thousand acres but it is
ultimately enclosed by fences nine feet high, so the only large animals which
can range freely across the area are leopards. Amakhosi has more elephants than
they should, but it is not permitted to sell them (transporting them would also
be difficult) or cull them. In a humane attempt to control the numbers, a local
vet calculates a suitable dose of contraceptive which is darted into selected
females and lasts for twelve months. The land here is forest, unlike the open
plains that I had previously seen in Kenya, so spotting animals can be more
difficult but encounters are frequent and sometimes very close.
We had already booked a
holiday in Italy when a brochure arrived from Titan Tours which including a new
tour of “Battlefields of KwaZulu-Natal”. Having limited interest in battles, I
put it to one side until Rosemary inserted it between my eyes and computer
screen. She has the patience to read itineraries properly. The attractions were
its unusual mixture of history, native culture, scenery and animal watching, so
the children’s inheritance had to be raided. The party size is limited to
fourteen; there were thirteen of us of whom only two were battlefield tour
veterans. The eighteen seater bus was a little “cosy”, but we later realised
that a larger vehicle would not have been able to access some of the places we
visited.
After arriving from an
overnight flight to Johannesburg, we drove out past the Marikana chrome and
platinum mines where strikers were fired on by police in 2014. I was impressed
by the high standard of the national highways, many of which are toll roads
developed to support the football World Cup in 2010. They are four lane roads
with modern, clean service areas and are extensively regulated by average speed
cameras and traffic police. In two places, like all commercial vehicles, we had
to pull off the road to drive slowly over automated weighbridges which have
removed from the roads unsafely overloaded vehicles from countries to the
north.
First port of call was
Kedar Lodge set on land which was once the farm of Paul Kruger, the last Boer
President who had declared war on the British Empire in October 1899. The owner
of the Lodge is claimed to have the most extensive collection of Boer War
memorabilia in the country and one has to believe that. The public areas of the
lodge are covered in armaments, uniforms, photos, documents and cases of
smaller items from the war. A talk was arranged with Major Pennyfather, an
elderly historian who laid out the reasons for the war and gave details of some
of the more interesting artefacts at Kedar. The lodge offers air conditioned
huts and excellent food. Thanks to President Zuma wrecking the currency, a
bottle of beer in the bar cost just under £1 which increased the country’s
attraction.
Within the lodge grounds
were numerous life size bronze and steel statues of personalities associated
with the war including Gandhi, who led a first aid detachment, and Cecil
Rhodes. In view of the controversy in Britain, it was interesting to note the
prominence of Rhodes’ statue and the descriptions of his life which were
mounted behind it. Our tour manager confirmed that many South Africans have a
balanced view of Rhodes as an unscrupulous, imperial manipulator who caused a
lot of trouble whilst lining his own pockets but was also a man of vision,
planning a railway from the Cape to Cairo, who eventually left his wealth for
good causes. The description given of him behind his statue erred on the kind
side. It claimed correctly that his man, Dr Jamieson, had treated Zulu King
Lobengula, but neglected to mention the allegations that he had addicted him to
morphine in the process, allowing a degree of leverage over the mining
concession that was then negotiated.
A small game reserve
around the lodge has no large predators, so we were able to take a walk amongst
the termite mounds to irritate the antelopes. After a pleasant minor game drive
next morning, we visited Kruger’s original farm buildings. His first house
still stands with its floor of mud and cow dung. There are a few artefacts from
his time including a completely hairless old lion skin, his first game kill. A
photo shows him sitting in a meeting at the end of his cabinet table with his
feet resting on the bible. It is claimed to be the only book he ever read and
he consulted its teachings in all his decisions. His two subsequent houses,
still quite modest in scale stand nearby along with a chapel come schoolroom
where he arranged for all comers to receive an education. The corrugated chapel
roof was interesting as too few sheets had been ordered from Europe and took
weeks to arrive before the error was discovered. They solved the problem by
visibly stretching out the corrugations slightly to increase the sheets’ width.
The next morning, we
were due to move on but delayed breakfast slightly as a horde of camera
flashing Chinese had appeared, occupied all the tables and swept the buffet
bare. The staff were struggling to replace things fast enough.
We reached our next
stop, Spion Kop Lodge, in a sudden violent hailstorm which slowed our bus to a
crawl. South Africa was suffering a severe drought but it seemed a pretty wet
one to us. The first thing we noticed was a memorial seat to the Hillsborough
disaster- British football kops take their name from this place. Our room was
in the building which had been Winston Churchill’s billet as a young lieutenant
in the Boer War and had been preserved, externally at least, in the same style.
The Lodge’s owner, Ray Heron, had studied A Level history in his youth under
the British Empire and found little of the Boer War in his syllabus, so he
joined a local history group. He had been able to meet a few old men from an
earlier generation who had witnessed the Battle of Spion Kop and gave
first-hand accounts. He led our visit to the battle site and clearly had a real
feel for his subject. The battle had been fought in an effort to relieve the
siege of Ladysmith where Baden Powell had led a bold defence but it turned into
a disaster for both British and Boers.
On Alice Hill, we stood
where British General Redvers-Buller had watched through binoculars as his men
were being slaughtered four miles away across the valley. We then visited the
Kop which had been taken by the British in a night attack which had then left
the troops exposed, in hot sun on a small, barren rock, under shell and bullet
fire from an adjacent peak where, as the sun rose in their eyes, the soldiers
could not even see the enemy snipers. It was not possible to dig trenches in
the rock. The Boers had previously dynamited some shallow depressions for their
defenders which the British captured by bayonet charges. After the battle those
depressions were turned into mass graves, mostly for unnamed soldiers. The army
issued wool weave tunics with first aid kits built in to their breast pockets
containing a paper showing their only identification. In the heat, the tunics
had to be abandoned. As night fell, the Boers withdrew, fearing that their
artillery was in danger of capture and the British withdrew due to their losses.
The Boer War was
described as the last of the “civilised” wars; there was no fighting on Sundays
and both sides were allowed to recover casualties the day after a battle. One
officer was identified as he was about to be placed in an unmarked grave when Churchill
saw him and recognised him as a school friend. Standing there amongst the
memorials was an evocative and emotional experience.
We unwound with another
short game drive before departing towards the Drakensberg Mountains. Their name
translates as Dragon’s Back in Afrikaans but they are known as the Wall of
Spears in Zulu. They rise to over 11,000 feet and the approaching view was
spectacular. The Cathedral Peak hotel complex was excellent and there were
numerous marked walking trails in the surrounding mountains.
When we awoke next
morning, the weather had caught up with us again and the peaks were lost in
cloud. A planned visit to a raptor and reptile sanctuary was cancelled because
the eagles could not fly without thermals, so we decided on a “short” walk on a
trail labelled as Ashlea’s Amble. It was said to take twenty minutes.
An hour later, having
crossed three streams and helped (make that hauled) Rosemary up some of the
inclines where rough steps had been dug into the slope, we decided we were off
track on a different trail. A further forty-five minutes brought us back to the
hotel, passing a grazing antelope next to the track which seemed quite
unperturbed by our presence. The planned afternoon walk was cancelled due to
the danger of lightning strikes so we visited a small centre with exhibits of
the San people. They were Stone Age hunter gatherers who moved down the south
east coastal area as the Sahara advanced and they left cave art of animals such
as the eland which they both hunted and worshipped. It seems that the last of
them died early in the twentieth century and they interbred with the later
Bantu population, passing on their features of high cheekbones. Nelson Mandela
was believed to have some San blood in his veins.
We passed hundreds of
modern Zulu settlements which typically consist of three or four single room
square, breeze block buildings with flat roofs set apart from a small privy.
Amongst them there were frequently two or three round, usually mud walled
buildings with thatched or occasionally corrugated conical roofs. I assumed
these to be store rooms but was wrong. One is a spirit house where the
ancestors’ spirits dwell and the others are dower houses. The head man of the
family lives in the largest of the square blocks; his wives occupy the smaller
ones with their children.
The circular buildings
are built for Granny and are shaped to protect her from a mythical creature
called the tokoloshe. He is a small, hairy, brown coloured creature who likes
to lurk in dark corners from where he spreads malevolence and misfortune – I
had a boss like that but we called him Roger. The round houses have no dark
corners for the creature to hide. Some Grannies have their beds raised on
bricks to prevent him from biting their toes. When a Granny dies, it is not
uncommon for her hut to be left to decay naturally and she may be buried
beneath its dirt floor.
The next port of call
was Durban where we stayed on the twelfth floor of a twenty-one storey edifice
overlooking the broad sea front. It was a fine hotel but it, along with the
city, felt a bit sterile after our previous lodgings. After a showery city tour
and visit to the botanical gardens, we were happy to move on to Shakaland.
Shakaland was originally
set up as a film set for a 1982 TV series and movie called Shaka Zulu so we
were sceptical, expecting a Disney World Zulu experience. Our tour manager,
Doug Hawkins, turned out to be a qualified guide who had written a book on Zulu
culture and history. He assured us that the clan we were visiting were real and
lived in huts on site. They certainly seemed authentic and demonstrated their
traditional skills and dances with enthusiasm. The young “warriors” were
certainly competing with each other in assegai throwing and the high kicking,
stamping dances where they kicked so hard they fell over backwards. The
drumming and stamping made the ground shake. One instrument in particular was
interesting. It had a cylindrical drum case with a cowhide stretched across one
end, its centre pierced by and fixed to, the end of a wooden rod about a
centimetre in diameter. It was played by inserting the hands into the open end
of the drum case and stroking the internal rod as if milking a cow to produce a
sort of rhythmic wail.
One of the Zulu
demonstrations was of beer production. Maize and a millet-like grain are ground
up and boiled in water which is strained off after cooling by squeezing out
through a woven rush mat. The murky liquid, wort to a modern brewer, is then
left to ferment naturally for two or three days in the heat. The spent grains
are thrown to the chickens who cluster round as the straining operation takes
place. A ladle of beer was passed round after the dancing but most people just
sniffed it politely. Small beer was widely drunk in Britain in earlier times
because, having been boiled and containing alcohol as an inhibiter of
micro-organisms, it was safer to drink than water. On that logic, being
reluctant to pass up free alcohol, I took a swig. It tasted quite pleasant but
more like cider than beer with no ill effects.
Shaka was the
illegitimate son of a clan leader called Dingiswayo and was subject to bullying
treatment by his half-brothers as he tried to defend his mother’s name. He left
to join an inferior clan which paid tribute to his father and became a warrior
there, rising to be a general. He introduced formal military tactics to them
and realised that the traditional assegai throwing spear had limitations. If
one missed, the spear could be returned, sharp end first. Accordingly, he had a
short stabbing spear forged, its Zulu name ikiwa being the equivalent of
‘squelch’, based on the sound it made when inserted and retracted. After
Dingiswayo’s death, Shaka returned with his troops and took over as chief,
naming the clan Zulu. He remained chief, conquering other clans and
incorporating them into his empire until he was eventually murdered by one of
his half-brothers. The Zulu were thus founded and raised as a warrior race with
a formal army structure. Regiments had their own leaders and were distinguished
by the patterns and colours of their shields. Young warriors, on the wings of
horn shaped battle formations, had brown shields while the more mature fighters
had lighter colour shields and fought in the centre of the formation.
We stayed overnight in
comfortable thatched huts and awoke surrounded by horned cows and chickens.
After breakfast, we moved on via a two-hour cruise on the St. Lucia estuary
which is rich in bird life, crocodiles and hippos. The water is brackish, with
mangrove swamps along part of the banks. Hippos do not swim, but rather bounce
along on the mud, coming onto land only at night to avoid sunburn. They browse
vegetation and move through the local town, smashing garden fences and
devouring the plants. It put my own annoying badger incursion problems into
perspective and made a pleasant break on the way to the aforementioned
elephants and wildlife of Amakhosi.
Our final stop was
Isandlwana Lodge, built into the rocks of a mountain from which, in 1879, the
Zulu general commanded his 24,000 troops as they slaughtered and disembowelled
most of the British 24th Regiment of foot. He had completely outmanoeuvred Lord
Chelmsford, the British commander by diversionary tactics, leading him off into
the hills with half his forces then attacking his base camp. Chelmsford had
been warned by friendly Boers that the Zulu were superior to the other natives
that he had encountered. He ordered the commanders of his three invading
columns to make a defensive laager of wagons and build ramparts whenever they
camped but then disregarded his own orders at Isandlwana. Adding to that he
left in command Brevet Lt. Colonel Pulleine, a talented staff officer with no
combat experience, as he marched off to where he thought his enemy was.
Many errors were made as
the battle commenced, including not striking the tents by kicking out their
centre poles. That was standard military policy as it prevented the enemy from
hiding behind the tents and signalled to the telescopes of any relief force
that the camp was under attack. One of the few errors that Chelmsford did not
make when eating his breakfast in the hills was to send a naval officer with
his telescope to check their rear. The officer reported that the tents still
stood, so no serious attack was imminent. The ensuing battle had
everything, including a partial solar eclipse at its height. Our historian
guide was Colonel Rob Gerrard who first gave a military-style briefing on the
Lodge’s terrace overlooking the battlefield. He described the key terrain
features, dead ground, tall grass and marsh areas, along with the disposition
of forces on both sides. The lodge walls behind us were covered in photographs
of the participants and Victorian era paintings of the battle.
Descending to the
battlefield, the experience was more affecting than Spion Kop had been. The
battle’s progress, with the detailed actions and heroic last stands of
individuals whose photos we could recall, was outlined blow by blow. “Colonel
Durnford made his last stand here. He had only one usable arm so raised his
sword as his remaining men rallied around him. His grave and theirs, is just
over there.” It made the hair stand on end as we moved amongst the cairns
marking the graves of around 1,800 souls.
Towards the end of the
battle, two young Lieutenants Melvill and Coghill gained posthumous Victoria
Crosses when they were ordered to retreat on horseback with the Queen’s
colours. They fought through the Zulus, but could not take the track back to
Rorke’s drift as it was blocked by four thousand warriors. They were pursued
over a hill to another river crossing, now known as Fugitives’ Drift, where
they rode into the Buffalo River which was in full spate and they were swept
away over rapids to land, still clutching the colours onto Coffin Rock along
with a third fleeing officer. The colours were eventually swept away as they
staggered, wounded to the far bank where the third officer climbed the hill and
located three run away horses. As he urged his exhausted comrades on, they were
hacked down by local Zulus out for revenge against the British. Their graves
stand out on the hillside where they fell. A cavalry patrol later
recovered the colours when they spotted the pole amongst the riverside
boulders.
We eventually moved on
to Rorke’s drift, famously portrayed in the film Zulu which made Michael Caine
a star despite him lacking the whiskers of the real heroes. The film was not
made on the battle site but was largely accurate allowing for artistic licence.
I recalled the film showing the hospital building being defended and escape
holes being made through its walls from one room to another. I was never clear
where the patients came from, or why they had to break through the walls. The
original building was burnt during the battle, but a replacement has been built
on its site with the same layout and it serves as a small museum.
The hospital had been
the accommodation block for Rorke’s trading post and after his death by suicide
(he was an alcoholic who ran out of gin), it was taken over by missionaries who
created a chapel there. The army requisitioned the site to take wounded soldiers
from a minor early action. A local Zulu clan chief had committed crimes against
the British and Chelmsford had detached some of his local troops to attack his
kraal in revenge as he wished to test their mettle. They were backed by a few
regular troops and when the clan made a last stand in caves, the regulars had
to finish them off at close quarters, resulting in some casualties.
The hospital building
must have been built originally as a store, because it had several small rooms
around the outside walls, most with no windows and each accessible only through
an exterior door. There were no interior doors so as the defences were
prepared, a volunteer soldier was placed in each room behind the barricaded
outer door to protect the patients.
Unlike in the film,
there was no debate between the officers as to who should take command. Lt.
Chard had been placed in charge by Major Spalding, the detachment commander who
had departed in search of a company which was overdue. Chard had gone forward
to Isandlwana to clarify his orders and returned to Rorke’s Drift by wagon to
warn them that Zulus had been observed locally. Given the choice to fight or
flee, impeded by the wounded, they decided to make their famous stand which
resulted in the award of eleven VCs.
The attacking Zulus were
disobeying the orders of their king, Cetshwayo who wanted the British driven
from his land in a decisive manner so that he could negotiate a settlement of
their dispute and he had ordered no incursions to be made across the Buffalo River
into British territory. The attackers consisted of a regiment of 4,000 men who
had blocked the line of retreat from Isandlwana where they had seen and heard
the battle but taken no part. Their blood was up and rather than have them
rampage, their commander led them in an organised assault. At both
Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift there are memorials to the Zulu dead in addition
to the British soldiers’ graves. The Zulu removed their dead for burial at home
and their numbers are uncertain.
We made our way back to
the airport via a coffee stop in Ladysmith whose name has an interesting
origin. In the 1812 Peninsular War against Napoleon, Wellington had laid siege
to the Spanish town of Badajoz which he eventually shelled. When the town fell,
two fourteen-year-old Spanish girls who were known to one of Wellington’s
officers made their way to his headquarters where, in a scene reminiscent of
Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels, they met a smart officer decked out in the
green uniform of the Rifles. He fell for one of the girls, Juana Maria, and
within three months, they were married. His name was Harry Smith and she
followed him throughout the war, combing the field after each battle in case he
was wounded. He was eventually knighted and became a Provincial governor in
South Africa. Harrismith was named after him although he was never very
popular, unlike his wife in whose honour, Ladysmith was named.
First published in VISA 128 and 129 (August - October 2016)
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