Oom Louis Kok (centre) celebrated his 85th birthday with family in Philippolis. In front is his sister, Kobie Gouws, and in the background on the left her husband, Felix.

The rites of family time
If you’re in the southern Free State town of Luckhoff after lunch on a Sunday, you’ll be lucky to see more than five people on the street. I drive past the primary school (motto: Aim High), the NG church (which has an IN and OUT gate, maybe for the Nice and the Naughty) and the General Dealer (where you can buy tyres and ladies’ shoes).

I’m heading to Philippolis and I’m taking every little detour – like the Bosrand-road – I possibly can because the area is so beautiful right now. I wish I had a busload of tourists that I could pile out every now and then so that they could feel the ground under their feet, smell the rain in the distance and just look, breathe and take it all in.

But I’m alone on the Bosrand-road, except for some lethargic sheep dozing in their woollen blankets, the odd crow and the thunder clouds up there, rumbling like passing elephants.

In Philippolis I need to fill up, but the pumps are closed until 4pm so I have half an hour to kill. Here, too, it looks like most people are on siesta. I notice an Indraf Kafee. It looks just like the one in Van Wyksvlei and Vosburg and Britstown – all three towns I have passed through during the previous few days.

At number 70 Voortrekker Street there’s action: the stoep is full of people. It’s oom Louis Kok’s 85th birthday and his family has come from far and wide to be with him. They invite me in for coffee and cookies. Talk is about the good old days when meat was cheap and one shilling was a lot of pocket money. The old people are talking, the grandchildren are listening.

The summer’s good rains are a hot topic and they also reminisce about the great flood of 1988. Tannie Kobie Gouws, oom Louis’s sister, tells the grandchildren what Augrabies looked like that year. Oom Louis remembers flying over the falls in a helicopter. He uses his hands and his eyebrows to show how big, how wide, how amazing it was. In 1988 even Philippolis was cut off from the outside world, he says. Food supplies had to be brought in by military helicopters.

“And again in nineteen hundred and five,” tannie Kobie adds pensively.

“1905? No man, you must mean 2005?” oom Louis says and tannie Kobie blushes about her mistake.

Oom Louis’s cell phone starts ringing and he looks at it as if it’s a limpet mine he’s supposed to defuse within 30 seconds.

“The green button!” tannie Kobie shouts.

“I’m trying, but it isn’t working!”

Later, I drive out of town with a smile on my face. What will I remember from my afternoon in Philippolis? Not the AWB flag the guy at the garage showed me in his bar next door (“Are you a member?” I asked. “I was,” he answered). No, I’ll remember the people of number 70 Voortrekker Street.

Family time is a precious and fragile thing. You never know how long you’ll have it. You don’t know whether your grandfather will live to 75, just like you don’t know whether you and your brother will remain friends all through life. It’s good to think about this next time you’re all sitting in the shade sharing casual talk and coffee and rusks. Have another rusk (and break one in two to share amongst the dogs) and smile when grandpa tells that same story for the umpteenth time.

After a night at the Gariep Dam – which was indeed overflowing – I continue on to Smithfield. There’s a place called ‘Breipaal’ marked on my map and I want to see what it looks like.

Giant mushroom clouds have been building up all morning and now I drive in under their billowing skirts. Sometimes the thunder is soft and distant like comfy couches falling off a truck but then – crack! – it’s a glass table and sliding doors all smashing together. Soon it’s pouring, but the storm passes over quickly.

When I reach Breipaal I see it’s just a farm – a very pretty farm. There are dilapidated buildings close to the road that seem to indicate it once had a shop or two. These days you don’t just drive up to a farmhouse uninvited. Gates and fences all over the country have signs adorned with the silhouettes of machine guns, snarling dogs and skulls and crossbones, warning what might happen should you trespass.

It’s one of the realities of today, with stock theft and farm murders grabbing the headlines in regional newspapers on a weekly basis. Farming is not just about living close to nature anymore, but also about ways to preserve that privilege.

At Smithfield I luck out. The Pigout Restaurant has excellent coffee and food. There are even oysters for R12, 50 each, just 50 c more than what they cost in Cape Town.

As I drive out of Smithfield though, it’s clear that the town isn’t doing as well as the oysters might suggest. There are people sitting around everywhere – on the kerb, on low walls, on any surface worth sitting on. That means one thing: plenty of unemployment.

It’s less obvious when you drive through sparsely populated areas like the Great Karoo, but from here, through the Eastern Cape and into KwaZulu Natal, unemployment and poverty become far more visible.

But there’s always someone who gives you hope. Like Itumeleng Phooko, barely 21, but already with her own hairdresser business. I give her a ride to her house in Rouxville – or at least to the township, Roleleathunya, which means “dusty place” in Sotho. She’s busy saving up to go and study further and one day, she tells me, she wants to live in Durban.

The gravel road between Tsitsa Falls and Tina Falls in the Eastern Cape.

The also-ran province comes good
I cross over into the Eastern Cape at Aliwal North. “It is illegal to buy chameleons,” a big board proclaims. Apparently dwarf chameleons unique to this area have been sold at the roadside in recent years.

The R58 from Aliwal past Lady Grey and Barkly East to Elliot is easily one of the most scenic drives in the country. There are beautiful farms, the homesteads hidden amidst poplar groves and sandstone cliffs and buttresses. You cross nameless passes and clear rivers like the Kraai and the Karringmelk. But there are very few picnic sites or viewpoints for the casual motorist to pull off and appreciate the splendour.

I often wonder about who makes this call. Who decides how many picnic spots to build next to a new road? Does it cost much extra? Who chooses which trees to plant?

Compare the R58’s lack of picnic spots to the N9 between Colesberg and Middelburg. There they’ve got picnic sites at every third combo of windmill and haggard prickly pear bush.

From Elliot I drive to Ugie and then to Maclear, where I turn south through the old Transkei towards the N2. The green hills bulge all the way to the horizon, colourful houses strewn over them like hundreds-and-thousands on a cake.

Arriving at the N2, I turn left towards Kokstad. Just as I cross the Tsitsa River I spot a sign that says “Tsitsa Falls Lodge”. I’ve always wondered exactly where these falls are, so I turn in. Even though my map shows no road at all, it’s tar – a thin, Bovril-layer of tar which is usually the result of a politician having promised people a road and then, when it came to delivering, cut corners and built it cheaply.

13 km later it becomes gravel and I drive up a steep aloe-covered koppie. A ravine opens up on my left and what a sight: The Tsitsa Falls! If this was the Lowveld there’d be two buses full of tourists, cameras cocked at half-arm’s length, cash at the ready for a curio. But it isn’t, it’s an old homeland and there isn’t even a proper viewpoint, never mind a curio seller.

I drive down to the lodge, which is right next to the falls. From the top it looked pretty, but now I can see that they’re still busy building. The safari tents are standing on their platforms, but the reception area is still under construction. Bongi Ngqongwa welcomes me and says sure, I can stay the night, but there’s no running water yet, so no flush toilets or showers.
I’ve got my camping mattress, so I pay R60 and pick a safari tent. The view from the small stoep is excellent, down into the ravine with the falls thundering to my right.

Just before sunset another guest arrives. Graham Roebuck is from East London and he and his team are busy putting up the electricity network in the area. He tells me that the local municipality is “quite jacked” and that the lodge is one of their initiatives.

Graham, Bongi and I walk to the top of the waterfall to go take a bath. I lie down on my back, digging into the sand with my elbows so that the current can’t take me. The water is lukewarm, but after a boiling day it’s refreshing. A crow flies past overhead, mocking me, but I stick out my tongue and it guffaws off, out of sight.

With my ears underwater, all I can see are the brown waves of the river for about 100 m in front of me – then it tumbles out of sight into the ravine. Euphorbias and cycads cling to the steep slopes and on the opposite bank I see cattle being spurred on homewards. It’s a ritual almost as old as the T-bone steak. The evening star twinkles to life at about the exact same moment that the nearby settlement’s lights come on – thanks to Graham and his team and the jacked municipality.

Tsitsa Falls is as close to paradise as you will get. If they don’t finish the lodge it will be a tragedy, because this place deserves to be appreciated by more people.

Mlangeni Sakhile (second from left) and his karate class, Shelly Beach, south coast of KwaZulu-Natal.

In the name of Bruce Lee
I don’t know the KwaZulu-Natal south coast at all. I take the N2 and drive straight into Port Shepstone, promptly getting lost and eventually finding myself in Shelly Beach.

Everything here looks radically different from where I was just five days ago in the Karoo. Van Wyksvlei and Shelly Beach are two different planets. Here at the coast the subtropical green sprawl seems to be strangling houses at the throat, reaching over walls and across roads. And there’s so much more stuff: more people, more cars, security gates, high walls and shopping centres. In Van Wyksvlei it’s hot and everyone wishes they could win the R70 million Lotto Powerball. At night people sing sad, drunken funeral songs that drift towards you on the otherwise silent air.

In Shelley Beach it’s overcast and I get the feeling that the town is still in recovery mode after the summer holiday crush.
The dress code is different too. It’s totally fine to walk around with your beach shirt open all the way down to the last button, mid-morning on a weekday, as if you’ve got a million rand in the bank. Personalized number plates also tell a story: GLORY ZN, SOUTIE 1 ZN, RAVE ZN and the visiting THE KING GP.

I find a bed at a B&B next to the sea and at sunset I stroll down to the Sonny Evans Small Craft Harbour. Stray cats are being fed from a fish and chips packet. A lightie arrives on a fifty, but there’s no-one to show off to, so he mopes off with a half-hearted wheelie.

The harbour itself is deserted is deserted except for the ninjas. Yes, ninjas. Well, OK, guys in karate outfits. They’re practicing in the parking lot, swivelling kicks at chins, mock-punching, blocking… It’s like I’ve walked into a scene from an old Bruce Lee movie.

Two guys bow to one another respectfully, arms at their sides.

“Who’s the sensei around here?” I ask them.

“I am,” says the one with the brown belt. Mlangeni Sakhile shakes my hand. “We do Shotokan karate,” he explains, “we come here once every three weeks to practice by the sea – usually we just train in the township.”

The others gather around too. One has just bought a PS You Make Me Happy chocolate. I take a photo of them in their open-air dojo: Mlangeni, Ndovela, Jonie, Bhalulu, Nduduzo, Themba and Zulu. It’s getting dark and they have to go back home.

“Do you take the taxi?” I ask.

“No,” says Mlangeni. “We jog. It’s just fifteen kilometres.”
Off they go, jogging in formation, sensei at the front. Most of them don’t even have shoes. Bruce Lee would have been proud.

Sibusisu and Vusi Ngcobo of Busker’s Vibration perform throughout the day at the Howick Falls viewpoint in KwaZulu-Natal.

Where things happen
Just north of Hibberdene I impulsively turn off the old tar road (the R102) into the interior. It’s like flipping a scene-switch. The big holiday houses, cabanas and dads taking their kids down to the beach with Christmas kites are all gone.

This is what we talk about in South Africa when we talk about a “rural area”; an old homeland, an area where mostly black people live, where communities sprawl and road maps mean nothing.

The “platteland” is something different. The platteland is somewhere near Beaufort West, more desolate, sparsely populated and with the promise of a quaint farm stall on the horizon.

Whatever you want to call it, this area I’m driving through now never makes it onto the average vacationer’s list of must-see places. It’s a real pity, although it’s understandable as there are no caravan parks or coffee shops as we know them – and it can be unsafe, especially if you get lost, which you will (and I do within minutes).

It’s beautiful, with sugar cane fields, mielies and natural forest jostling for space amidst the homesteads; wild rivers and hordes of school children dressed in light blue in one area and maroon just a few kilometres further. I kind of expect to bump into Johnny Clegg at any moment, jamming at the crossroads.

The people I meet are teachers, clinic nurses and someone who works for the Salvation Army – it’s amazing what you find out once you start talking to people.

What you see, smell and feel in an area like this gives you equilibrium when you return to your comfort zone later, complaining about the price of property while sipping a latte. Or when you’re stuck in traffic and you lower your head onto the steering wheel – this place is the opposite of that place.

You also get an idea of how enormous the government’s task is when it comes to service delivery. Yes, your garbage must be removed from your suburban home once a week, but out here, between uMzinto and nowhere, such concerns are small fry.

And further inland, north of Angus Buchan-country, past Greytown, past Keate’s Drift where saggy bakkies billow blue smoke as they trudge uphill towards Pomeroy, the concerns are simpler too. Is there running water close to your house? Do you flick a switch and a light comes on?
It’s superfluous to say that South Africa is a land of contrasts – we know it. But the great thing is that it’s also full of pleasant surprises.

Two days earlier I stopped in Kokstad for brunch. I found a great place called Cassandra’s, which is at the first petrol station on your left as you enter the town from Mthatha (I’m giving you this exact description so that you don’t waste your time, as I did, by driving through the rest of the town for 30 minutes trying to find a place that looks good. Cassandra’s is all you need, despite deceptive appearances from the outside).

There was an Afrikaans couple sitting in the corner of the restaurant – the man ordered steak. When they had finished and paid their bill, the man turned around at the door. He demanded from the (black) waitress that he see the chef. Oh no, I thought, this doesn’t look good. The waitress fetched the chef from the kitchen – also a black, middle-aged woman.
I could see she looked nervous; here before her stood a big white man, the archetypal “boer”. I think she was expecting exactly what I was – that he was going to scold her for some mistake regarding the food. But we were both wrong.

“Here,” the man said, handing her R10. “Thank you very much for that steak, you cooked it perfectly, I can’t remember when last I had such a good steak. I know the waiters usually get all the tips, so I wanted to give it to you personally. Thank you.”

I could’ve given that man a hug.