A Tale of Blood, Death and a Missing Treasure

Dispatch no. 7 

5 May 2000

Well, here we are still. The world was supposed to have ended (again), on Friday the 5^th of May, but it seemed that the doomsday prophets had gotten things wrong again.

I wonder whether they are disappointed. All those planets perfectly lined up, combining their gravitational pull in a vicious conspiracy, aimed at dragging our continents into the sea, or making the earth wobble – and then nothing happened. At least, I hear they’ll have another chance in two years’ time when it is said that the planets will pulling the same trick again.

The old coat of arms of South Africa. 

Our national celebration of international communist day on May, 1^st, caused far more excitement than the planets did, and on the previous Friday, our so-called “Freedom Day” was celebrated with most enthusiasm of all. The old South African coat of arms was officially thrown out, and replaced with a cryptic ethnic design that didn’t draw too many favourable comments, it seems. Our old motto used to be “Ex unitate vires” – unity is strength. Now it is something, written in an old bushman language that became extinct more than a hundred years ago. Nobody can read it, because bushmen have sounds that are represented by unusual symbols that nobody knows how to pronounce. The new coat of arms was officially unveiled and bolted onto the walls of the Union Buildings, which is to South Africa what the White House is to America. And then, a night or two later, some law students were caught, trying to steal the brass coat of arms. One can only shake one’s head in wonder...

The new coat of arms of South Africa, bearing a motto which nobody can pronounce.

At the moment, the second covering of snow for the season seems to be melting off the Drakensberg mountains. A second thunder storm erupted, and destroyed the telephone infrastructure a second time, thus taking care of internet communications and the like, yet again. Rain in winter is almost unknown in our hothouse environment, and here it has happened twice in ten days! As before though, the telephone company has really taken its time fixing things. There’s nothing I can do about it, I’m afraid.

The news from Zimbabwe is still pretty much the same. President Mugabe has finally made it clear that one way or another, he is going to disown 50% of the white farms despite all protests. Meanwhile, the United Nations and Great Britain is continuing making plans and arrangements to evacuate all the white people from Zimbabwe, as far as is possible. According to reports, they are even making plans for making a real emergency military evacuation if this should prove necessary. President Mugabe has publically said, however, that he will give all assistance to “get the whites out of the country.” The consulate in Harare has been overwhelmed by applications from white citizens of Zimbabwe for travel documents and foreign citizenships – mostly for England. Mugabe is still blaming the whites in his country for nearly everything that has gone wrong in so far. The farmers have also been heavily criticized for not having planted any winter crops, and it still looks as if severe food shortages and possibly famine might lie ahead for the country. Their economy is now really in tatters, and with Zimbabwe’s 15,000 soldiers still fighting in the Congo, the drain on their remaining reserves must be enormous.

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

The new elections should take place by next month, it seems, and the ruling party is taking every more desperate steps to try and cling to power. Even though the farm invasions have been ordered to a halt by the president, they are still continuing. Meanwhile a report has been made public, in which an old Zimbabwe government official is named as being the master brain behind the land-grabbing. This same man is a known mass-murder from the time of the Rhodesian bush war. In South Africa, President Thabo Mbeki has continued to remain silent about the situation of lawlessness in his neighbouring country. Even a lot of the traditionally very liberal, heavily left-wing media and organizations have now firmly concluded that Mr. Mbeki is approving what is happened in South Africa’s neighbouring state, although he might not be entirely happy at all the fuss that has resulted from it.

One of the things that the Zimbabwean crisis has brought, is a yet further devaluation of the Rand. It now stands at the lowest level in many years, and the stock market is still very depressed as foreign investors have been selling off South African money reserves, to a large degree in reaction to president Mbeki’s continued silence and obvious approval. South Africa’s minister of agriculture and land affairs has this week declared that the same thing will definitely not happen in South Africa, but she added that any disowning of land will be “to the advantage of all the country’s citizens...” 

President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa.

The history of Zimbabwe is an interesting one. A very bloody one too. President Mugabe accuses Great Britain of having “stolen the land” from the Zimbabweans. In a way, this is actually quite true, but in a rather surprising manner. In a way, Zimbabwe was “stolen” by only one Englishman, and Great Britain became the receiver of a “stolen gift.” Yes, many people know that Great Britain only accepted the rule over Zimbabwe under great protest. Here’s how it happened:

What we know today as Zimbabwe, was originally populated by primitive Bushmen, and much later still, small numbers of other very primitive black races – of whom only the smallest numbers are still to be found. Some of these ancient races would include the very primitive Batonkas or even the mysterious two-toed tribe of the Zambezi. This is an amazing people who have the distinction of having the most unique feet in the world. Due to a genetic peculiarity, this tribe has a big tendency to have “ostrich feet” – Y-shaped feet with only two massive, long toes in front. One big and long one, and one smaller. Even today, they are a shy and rarely-seen tribe, who speak a difficult and ancient language, and who are noted for being extremely fast runners. But all of that is another story entirely...

After these primitive tribes came the Mashona people, who displaces the original inhabitants and settled in greater numbers. They were a relatively peaceful nation that survived off the land and raised a few crops. They have always been relatively non-violent as a people. For many decades peace prevailed, but then came the early 1800's. Far off in the green hills of Natal, in present-day South Africa, a military dictator by the name of Shaka, king of the Zulu, suddenly rose to become the most feared ruler in the history of sub-Saharan Africa. Shaka Zulu would later be called the “Black Napoleon of Africa.”

Shaka, king of the Zulu who murdered more people than any other in the history of sub-equatorial Africa.

Under his rule, Shaka violently conquered and united many different Nguni races, and called them collectively the “amaZulu” – or people of heaven. The story of Shaka Zulu is incredibly fascinating, and many books have been written about his life. Many people have also seen the television series that was made about his life. What the TV series didn’t really properly show, was how Shake had gone berserk after the death of his beloved mother. His rule had always been characterized by the most brutal of wars, and the most cruel of killings and murders. All done on a staggering scale. During his reign, Zululand flowed with blood continuously. After his mother, Nandi’s death, however, Shaka swept out across the South African highveld, sending his armies across the barren plains like black waves of death that consumed everything in its path. In an effort to make all of Southern Africa grieve along with him, he eventually murdered innumerable multitudes of his own people – not even mentioning most of the neighbouring tribes which he completely wiped off the face of the map, or displaced to distant geographical regions to this very day. The numbers are estimated in the hundreds of thousands, and indeed, have even been estimated to have been in excess of a million people.

Mzilikazi - king of the Matabele and conqueror of the Mashona.

During this background, the groundwork for today’s Zimbabwe was laid. It all began when Mzilikazi, one of Shaka’s great generals and tribal chiefs, rebelled against him and refused to pay Shaka his war booty, rather daring him to come and fetch what Shaka considered to be his. This truly must rank as one of the dumbest moves in history. Shaka move out against Mzilikazi with the ferocity of a wounded buffalo. Mzilikazi, however, must have realized his mistake, and very wisely concluded that his only safety lay in running as far as his legs could carry him. Knowing Shaka, Mzilikazi realized that hell was truly about to descend on him, so he took his cattle, and ran for his life. Mzilikazi fled helter-skelter all across the country, with Shaka’s impis hot on his heels all the time. Yet, instead of simply running away, Mzilikazi killed everything in his way. He slaughtered all and any tribes he encountered, swallowing up whom he could, and adding them to his ranks.

Shaka’s men eventually stopped the chase, but Mzilikazi only stopped running when he eventually reached the land of the Mashona. Until then, his flight had been marked with colossal rivers of blood, but when he reached the land of the Mashona, he slaughtered them most brutally in awesome numbers. This Mzilikazi became the undisputed ruler of Mashonaland, and his people became known as the Matabele people – the rulers of the land of Zimbabwe. After Mzilikazi’s death, his son, Lobengula became king. “Fat king Lob” as the British called him, wasn’t as effective a king as his father, though, and his weaknesses soon manifested themselves.

Then came the late eighteen hundreds, and gold was discovered in Zimbabwe. Far off in South Africa, a young man by the name of Cecil John Rhodes sat dreaming many a day as he watched his workers toil to take out the diamonds from his new diamond claims on the Kimberley diamond diggings. He had come from a humble background, but he had illustrious dreams. It was to combine all of Africa under British rule, and then add the whole of the Middle-East, combine it with Britain’s other colonies such as Australia, India and Canada, and many of the Far East island regions. After that, his plan called for “the recovery of the United States,” and when all of that was completed and the English-speaking world was united, he planned on ruling the world, together with Germany in what he called his “Pax Teutonica” – and have world peace for ever more.

Cecil John Rhodes - the man "who dreamed in continents."

Diamonds soon made Rhodes one of the richest men in the world, and his money and determination also made him the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and thus an immensely powerful man. But Rhodes needed more money still. What he needed was to control the world’s monetary system, and for that to happen, he needed to control the world’s gold supply. He was already in the process of gaining control over much of the world’s biggest new gold find at Johannesburg, (and ultimately he helped to start the Boer War in order to get it) but he needed more. This was when his eyes fell on present-day Zimbabwe.

King Lobengula of the Matabele - possessor of a calabash of diamonds.

Of course, there was another reason too. For years, old king Lobengula of Zimbabwe, had been sending his subjects to go and work at Rhodes’ diamond mines in Kimberley. All his workers were instructed to steal and bring back the biggest and best diamonds they could find, for their king’s treasure chest. In those days, it was reported by men who claimed to have seen it with their own eyes, that Lobengula possessed a very large pot full of the most wonderful gems in the world. By the most popular estimates, Lobengula’s treasure was valued at over ten million pounds sterling. Certainly one of the biggest private fortunes in the world at that time.

Rhodes meant to have Mashonaland, as well as Lobengula’s diamonds, if he was going to rule the world, and he made his plans accordingly. It took several years for everything to work out, but in the end, what Rhodes did was something wonderfully amazing. He actually managed to bamboozle some of the most noted, and most important British public and political figures into financing a tremendously daring scheme for stealing Mashonaland from under old “king Lob.”

The battle at Shangani, during the First Matabele War.

Through methods of blackmail, murder, treason and large-scale trickery, and by even turning Lobengula into a morphine-addict, he managed to obtain from Lobengula the sole right to mine all minerals in Mashonaland. Then he raised a private army, funded by British tax-payers’ money (amazingly), and sent them marching in. Lobengula was driven back and bullied for two or three years, and finally, when he could take it no more, Rhodes forced a war. The battles were short and tremendously bloody. Before Rhodes’ trained army and his Maxim machine guns, Lobengula’s proud and once blood-thirsty army was mown down like wheat stalks, and within a matter of days it was destroyed completely for all practical purposes.

The rest was easy. Lobengula fled into exile, and died of syphilis and a broken heart and spirit. His body was sealed into an unknown cave by his most trusty lieutenants, and so were his diamonds. Nobody has ever found the treasure of king Lobengula, and to this day people are searching for what must surely still be one of the biggest lost treasures the world has ever known. The really funny part is that the British government initially wanted absolutely nothing to do with Mashonaland. But Rhodes eventually forced the gift so hard into its hands, that the British Empire could simply not refuse the enormous gift. Rhodes became one of only two men in modern times, who had a country named after them. The other was Simon de Bolivar of Bolivia.

And this is how “Rhodesia” became a British colony for more than seven decades after. We all know how it ended: Finally, under communist instigation and with communist aid and backing, the black tribes of Zimbabwe revolted against British rule and after a long and very bitter civil war which only ended 20 years ago. The white colonists who had settled in Rhodesia since the 1890's, and had built up and worked the land, had to buy back the land they occupied from the new government, or were legally allowed to keep what they had. And today, just over a 100 years later, they are being blamed for all that ever went wrong in that country’s troubled past, and are being robbed of what they had inherited from their ancestors. Land which had originally been stolen hundreds of years ago, and whose original owners are now extinct as a people.

Of Mzilikazi’s enormous murder-campaigns, and the extermination of the original landowners, the Bushmen, nothing is said. History shows that Mugabe’s people have been just as much land-grabbers as anybody else that they’re accusing. It is just one of those amazing facts of history that stand glowing in its enormity, yet which goes unnoticed by the world. It is a weird and wonderful tale that Mugabe doesn’t like being told. It isn’t hard to figure out why...

Cecil John Rhodes making peace with the Matabele at the end of the Second Matabele War.

And with that, all that is left to be said is that this week hasn’t brought much action with it. In Botswana a young safari guide was killed by an elephant. He was guiding an elephant safari (where excited tourists do game viewing from the backs of tame elephants in a national park), when he was suddenly charged by an enraged elephant. He fired three warning shots, and was then promptly trampled to mush. Strange, because he has known and worked with elephants for years, having made wildlife films in the past. I guess it was a mistake that killed him, more than anything else, though. Assuming that he had been armed with a big game calibre rifle, it would seem that he had fired all his rounds at the elephant, and when he realized it wasn’t just a mock-charge, it was too late: he had no more rounds to kill the beast with. A tragic mistake... Which reminds me, I’ve only got about three brain cells still left awake right now, and it is perhaps a good time to head for bed at this hour. An early start waits tomorrow, and much needs to be done. I still planned on saying something about the Rain Queen and the Elephant highways, but I guess that will have to wait for another time.

Have a wonderful week, try to avoid buying “stolen” property, and always remember never to fire your last shot as a warning shot!

Herman

The Great Zimbabwe Ruins.

Picture:

This picture was taken of the Ruins of Great Zimbabwe. President Mugabe maintains that it had been built by his tribe (the Shonas), but this is such a glaring piece of wishful thinking that nobody even bothers to comment about it. These ruins are very much older, and some archaeologists believe that they had originally been built by the ancient Phoenicians. Similar ruins are scattered all over Zimbabwe. There is, however, an even stranger explanation that is offered these days – the possibility that the mysterious ruins had been built by the so-called “Black Jews of Africa.” The story is a long and complicated one which I can’t tell now, but suffice to say that it is now believed that hundreds of years ago a southern migration of Jews from ancient Israel, had eventually reached as far as Zimbabwe. These Jews, is supposed to have eventually completely mixed into the black nations of Africa. Recently, though, some high-tech genetic mapping has been done, and according to a big study conducted from South Africa, it has been determined that a specific part of the people of Zimbabwe have very definite genetic connections to the Jews of ancient Israel. They reckon there can be no doubt whatsoever that the “Black Jews” had real Jews in their ancestry. Another odd fact is that these “Black Jews” still have many traditional “Jewish” religious rituals, practices and beliefs, despite not having had contact with Israel and the Jewish religion for hundreds of years. The great ruins of Zimbabwe have in the past been believed to have been one of the probable spots where the legendary “Ophir” from biblical times, might have been. The place where King Solomon received his gold from, via his men who sailed with the ancient Phoenicians. Indeed, Cecil John Rhodes believed this very adamantly. Interesting thought. Although many golden artefacts have been unearthed under these ruins, the ancient gold mines there have never yielded very much gold at all. These ruins are awesome to behold, though. Walking through them is an amazing experience – one that mere words cannot describe...

Image credits: Wikipedia.

Elephants, Dog-biscuits,

and other tales of the far side

28 April 2000

The sky towards Leydsdorp

In Africa, information-age technology maintains at best a shaky position. Our country operates on a curious mixture of space-age equipment, superimposed on a reasonable ancient infrastructure. Out in the country regions, such as where I live, fax and internet communication works – but only so-so.

When you get a little bit of lightning, such as we've had for an hour or two a day ago, something inevitable gets fried somewhere. It then takes the technicians a long time to get round to soldering coat-hangers into the gaps, patching things with paper clips clearing wasp nests out of transformer boxes, or do whatever it is they do to make the system work again. That mild little storm had the phones down for six days. As I’ve said before: In Africa, things get fixed SLOWLY.

The general failing of infrastructure in South Africa is something which has been very evident these last few days. I took a visitor to go and see the tiny little town of Leydsdorp this week. The place became famous for a short while back in 1896, when gold was discovered between the sun-baked and dry, but beautiful hills surrounding it. In those days it was a real little hell-hole. Inspired by newspaper reports that made Leydsdorp sound like a gold-studded Hawaii, waves of starry-eyed diggers streamed towards this unknown spot. All the unlucky ones who hadn't struck it rich at Ballarat and Bendigo in Australia, or in California, or Pilgrimsrest – or even those who had arrived too late in Johannesburg – thought that perhaps this would be their big break.

But when they finally reached the searing hot little spot of bushveld it was usually just in time to be buried there. Most of them would have been travelling through the unhealthy bushveld for two weeks already - precisely the incubation period necessary for malaria. And so many a good digger’s remains were buried in the gold-studded earth that they had dreamed of mining.

Today, as far as the visitor can see, Leydsdorp consists exactly of one old hotel and two houses. Across the main street, a herd of jersey cows craze in idyllic peace, while big, friendly Rhodesian ridgeback dogs greet the thirsty traveller with wagging tail. Old president Paul Kruger’s holiday home still stands, although it is now a place that even cockroaches would blush to call home. A few scattered old coco-pans are the only reminders of a great gold-rush of yesteryear.

The hotel still looks exactly the same. Old game trophies against the walls in the dining room, pressed steel ceilings, honky-tonk piano, and thick mirrors in the bar, of which the silver is peeling. It is as if time had stopped in Leydsdorp a long, long time ago. And the same seems to be the case with its infrastructure. It is surprising, really, seeing how many roads lead to Leydsdorp. Nevertheless, it was a bit of a shock to see some really tall grass growing in what used to be a pretty nice gravel road leading to this small little town. The depressed grader that had listlessly scraped across a mile or so must have broken down, because that’s all that it managed to grade of that entire road – one measly mile.

To make matters worse I came to a stretch of road, nearly halfway between Leydsdorp and the next place, which is so insignificant that it doesn’t even have a name, only to find that I had to turn around. During the floods, deep ruts had been pressed into the surface by passing trucks. These subsequently dried and became rock-hard, and so deep that I just couldn’t drive across them anymore.

There were no warning signs such as: “Warning! Road impassable, 20km ahead, except for four wheel drive vehicles. Proceed with caution.” So that was the extent of what had been planned as a scenic drive past Leydsdorp and through the Harmony block. Maybe some official will forget to steal money from the Leydsdorp road fund one day, and then the roads might be fixed. Leydsdorp will wait for better times. It has plenty of time. In fact, time is all that Leydsdorp has a lot of anyway.

And that's where I had to turn around...

So why did the elephant cross the road? 

But speaking about bad roads, I had to go and see a guy and his wife that owns some land nearby. They manage a famous game lodge in the western Transvaal, and only come down to their property here once in a blue moon. His wife told me that during the past floods she had to drive to their nearest town, Zeerust, early one morning. Unfortunately she happened to run into a cow-herd of elephants that was standing in the road. The problem was that these jumbos happened to be in the same kind of mood as fifty Hell’s Angels who had just come from a pot-bar to find that all their motorcycles had been ticketed and impounded. Faced by several tons of bad attitude, she wisely decided to beat a hasty retreat, only to find her small car’s escape being blocked by some big bull elephants. But being a child of the bush, she knew how to handle bull elephants.

She got out of her car and shouted her best collection of obscenities and insults to the big, lumbering beasts, and was rewarded by their hasty withdrawal. In order to get around the cow-herd, however, Ronelle had to take a little dirt-track detour. After a mile or two, her little car got stuck in the mud, and she had to walk back a long way through the bush – alone and unarmed, and as fate would have it – walking all the way on a selection of some really large lion-tracks! All in a day’s work for her, I guess. But she was honest enough to tell of how her walk did inspire her to some serious philosophical reflection on the meaning of life, and about how well she’d fared in it so far...

Oh, the elephants also make me think of what happened next door to us. The southern part of our Balule reserve, has an international tourist lodge called Motslabetsi. Bordering them is a large game ranch, by the name of Tsukudu. Now, Tsukudu and their neighbours never liked each other much. It appeared to be the usual kind of country bitterness that seems to go a long way back and in which seems as if time is making matters worse. Tsukudu also has a famous game lodge, and they’re quite expensive. One of the unique features of this lodge is that visitors can go for an early-morning walk with a small group of tame elephants and lions, and an armed ranger.

The idea is to feel wild and free, and a little daring. You get to take pictures of dangerous critters from close-by, without the fear of being turned into a wildlife snack. At the end of the walk, you then have a champagne breakfast in the bush, after which they drive you home.

Well, this week someone left a gate open at Motslabetsi’s southern boundary, and their one big elephant wandered off to go and visit the neighbour’s lodge for a change in routine. Tsukudu’s people reacted with alarm, followed the tracks, and then promptly came to the conclusion that the bad people at Tsukudu had stolen their elephant. So they raced off in blind fury and a cloud of indignation, to go and open a case of elephant-theft with the police at Hoedspruit – much to the surprise of the officer in charge who had to process the complaint. I’m not sure how the misunderstanding eventually got cleared up, but it seemed that in the end the matter was resolved quite amicably. The manager of Tsukudu was invited over to come and reclaim his Loxodonta africana. But reclaiming an elephant isn’t always as simple as it sounds. The manager had to walk back, all the while throwing dog-biscuits across his shoulder for the massive beast to pick up. He actually had to lure his elephant home! And so one small man and one giant mammal at his heels walked the dusty roads back to Tsukudu, and yet another interesting little bush drama came to an end, much to the amusement of us locals.

Actually, the man and his wife who are lodge managers told me something else I never knew. Apparently our general area is supposed to be rather known for UFO sightings. They said they woke up last year in the middle of the night from a tremendously bright light that was shining through their tent. They rushed outside, to find the entire landscape lit much brighter than even the full moon could. They couldn’t see the source of the light, but it remained burning for about fifteen seconds before it went out and all became dark again. Never heard a sound. It seems that some people across the river at the Mica mine had also previously seen such strange signs and wonders. It makes one wonder a lot. Some things are just too odd to explain. But I have resolved that if ever I had the opportunity, I’d try very hard to be the first man to capture an alien. Don’t know what to do with it, though. Perhaps just tickle it until it screams, and then let it go. I’ll decide when I get one.

The lodge managers also told me a tragic story of a family that had been murdered by black tribes during the Boer War, on the land which they had recently bought in the north-western Transvaal. When afterwards, and old black man came searching through the rubble, he discovered a little four-year old boy who was still alive. He took the little boy with him across the Limpopo to his home in Bechuanaland (today’s Botswana), and raised him as his own. When the boy was eighteen years old, he took him back to the Transvaal, and finally managed to locate his real father, who had been on commando at the time of the murders.

Although the boy joined his father, they said he never forgot the family that had raised him, and for years afterwards, he used to return to his tribe in Botswana, to look after the old man who had raised him. An ironic little tale, and one which has probably never been recorded in print before. One can only wonder at the drama that lay obscured beyond the lack of historical details behind this little story. Actually, one of the local ranchers in their area also nearly lost their two year old little daughter last year. She wandered alone through the bush for nearly three days before they found her. How during all this time, she had escaped being eaten by lions, wild dogs, leopards or any other amount of critters that would have liked to have eaten her, is perhaps nothing less than a miracle.

In Zimbabwe things are still fairly bad. Britain’s Robin Cook at least had the good old-fashioned British honour and common-sense to reject the pay-off scheme that Mugaba and president Mbeki had tried to extort from the UK. The one where Britain, Europe and America would have been paying compensation for Mugabe’s land-grabbing adventures. I guess Mugabe’s government must be in pretty dire straits because he is now having his army capture wild African grey parrots and exporting them to Europe in his military planes. They sell for about R7,000 each, so it isn’t bad business at all. Especially considering that they cost nothing to produce.

The squatters are still maintaining their presence on farms, and a few more have meanwhile been invaded as well. The ruling Zanu PF party is violently intimidating its opposition party, and are promising a civil war if they should be out-voted. For the time-being there seems to be a kind of a truce, though. The farmers and the squatter leaders are having discussions, and things seem to be stale-mate for now. Zimbabwe’s farmers have boycotted the big annual tobacco sale this week. Where tobacco sales bring in 40% of the country’s foreign income, they only sold about 10% of the usual volume this year. Mugabe and his men are furious about this, the squatters are foaming at the mouth at being called “squatters” and not “war-veterans,” a South African journalist has been picked as the man who was supposed to have planted the bomb at Mugabe’s opposition’s newspaper building, and so it goes on. Trouble and drama in the land of the north.

Oh, and an enterprising South African organization is hard at work raising funds for the protection of domestic animals on the invaded farms. They say the squatters are beating the dogs and livestock of farmers to death with sticks. The Farmers Union has meanwhile also announced that the land-invasion has been orchestrated by Mugabe’s feared Central Intelligence Organization. Apparently some of his Stasi-trained agents are even after some of his opposition that live in exile in Europe at the moment. Well, so much for African democracy...

Even here in South Africa, more calls for similar land-grabbing has been heard this week. In the meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s problems have contributed to make our currency nose-dive further, and upset the stock market quite a bit. Zimbabwe’s billion dollar a year tourist industry is now virtually completely dead, and safaris are also being cancelled by foreign hunters. Anyone who is looking for a really cheap safari or adventure holiday in Zimbabwe – now is the chance!

Back on the home front, a couple of 65 was killed near Tshipese in our province, this week, and another farmer and his wife has been killed near Tzaneen, one of our two biggest towns. Near Pretoria, a 24-year old paramedic that was assisting a woman giving birth next to the road, was also shot and killed. His heart has just been transplanted into an old man, and at least his death has made the life of another possible. His young ambulance driver was also shot, and is still fighting for his life in ICU. Nothing was stolen. Apparently they had been killed because they were white.

As usual, my neighbour always has news to tell. His latest contribution for this week is about another HIV case. He was doing a caesarean operation on Wednesday, when the young trainee-doctor that was assisting him, pulled back a flap of skin with her hands instead of with an instrument as it is supposed to be done. In the process she jabbed her hand into the needle if my friend’s syringe. Unfortunately the patient turned out to be HIV positive... So there you go again. More hell for yet another poor young doctor, forced to work in the miserable state hospitals for two years before she can get a medical license from the state...

Yesterday my friend had to drive to one of the other big state hospitals in Bushbuck ridge, hoping to borrow some equipment for their hospital. He says their anaesthesia machine is already a museum-piece, but its all they’ve got. He now has to purchase some new machines, but the situation is interesting. While the State allocates funds for the purchasing of two or three machines this year, there won’t be any funds for consumables. So you’ve got to buy a machine that doesn’t need filters, disposable containers, bags and things that break. Pretty tough in today’s world to find a machine like that. But the government knows best. That’s why we voted for it, after all.

He also had an interesting incident when he had to give anaesthesia to an enormously overweight woman. They use a metal object that looks a bit like a big shoe-horn, called a laryngoscope, to keep the patients from swallowing their tongues and to keep their air-passages open. Somehow, the laryngoscope got stuck in a gap between the woman’s front teeth during a pretty critical moment, and they all first had a good sweat, and then a good laugh after he managed to get the tool out without breaking her teeth. (I’m told that the Cuban doctors working in our state hospitals are pretty good at breaking front teeth in this manner – supposedly not at all an uncommon occurrence.

Well, perhaps it is good that we don’t realize what happens to us when they put us to sleep. His superintendent also forced him to sew up the lips of a drunken man whose mouth had been smashed by a brick - without anaesthesia! The superintendant is a doctor from the Congo who is in charge of this hospital, simply because he wouldn’t allowed to practise anywhere else. He also happens not to like drunks. So my friend had to first cut open the man’s swollen lips with a scalpel and then sew them up, without the comfort of local anaesthetic - something which is tough on both doctor and his squirming patient. Yes, some of these African doctors can be a harsh in their approach. Perhaps medicine in the Congo is practiced differently than over here.

It takes a special breed to become a bush doctor, and I pity my poor friend. The conditions are depressing. In the housing compound where my neighbour lives when he is working at the hospital, one of the fellow-doctors is a man who keeps goats in his yard and in his house. Also, my neighbour’s house maid is continually stealing his coffee, tea, sugar and other household articles. Furthermore, she’s also brewing marula beer when he is not at home, using the high-tech plastic containers that he has bought for the storage of his equipment. He complains a lot, but he regards himself as a child of Africa. An adventurer and a sportsman who heals people for a living, and who will continue doing it for as long as it is possible. It takes all kinds, I guess.

Have a good week you all and next time you’re caught in a traffic jam, be thankful you’re only boxed in by cars and not elephants!