Shorelines (36 page)

His musical tastes stretch no further forward than 1977, encompassing the work of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Crosby Stills Nash & Young and Cat Stevens.

That’s Andrew Zaloumis, who never thought that one day he’d be the CEO of a complicated social and geographical patchwork of land that takes up almost a third of the entire KwaZulu-Natal coastline.

“He came out of the bush at Bhanga Nek with long hair, a beard and leather sandals, looking like Jesus,” one of his colleagues told us. “I had serious doubts about him then. But he’s accomplished so much. Andrew thinks on his feet.”

Andrew and his team had to consolidate 16 separate parcels of land into one park and prepare it for linkage with wilderness areas in Swaziland and Mozambique.

In 1999, the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park was listed as South Africa’s first World Heritage Site. But while it had been designated a natural treasure of great importance, the Park was still very much a work in progress, something the UNESCO committee found refreshingly unconventional.

Pristine areas usually get the World Heritage nod. Here, on the other hand, was a place so riddled with alien pine trees that Australian delegates to the 2003 World Parks Convention in Durban teasingly referred to it as “That Swiss Alpine World Heritage Site”. Given the chance, those Aussies would probably have staged a mock cheese fondue on the eastern shores just to drive the point home.

By 2005, six million pines had been chopped down – with more than 7 000-ha of plantations still awaiting clearance. One of the greats of South African conservation, Dr Ian Player (brother of golfer Gary Player), said a circle of his life had now been completed – he was witness to the 1953 forced removals to make way for these ‘soldier trees’. There was another poignant circle being closed: Andrew was helping to shape the country’s great new national park that his late father Nolly, along with Dr Player and many others, had helped to save from mining.

The water-thirsty pines were barely out of the ground and their stumps burnt before marshlands began to reappear. Water-dependent species such as reedbuck, waterbuck and saddle-billed stork were extending their ranges as the pines vanished and the wetland-dappled coastal grasslands returned. A family of hippo came to enquire about real estate in the area – and were accommodated in a reconstituted lakelet.

This vast 380 000-ha expanse of lake, islands and estuary not only incorporated an astonishing variety of habitats but was home to nearly half-a-million local inhabitants as well. Zaloumis & Co had to think out of the box and help provide a living for as many as possible. The dune-mining option would probably always hang like the Sword of Damocles over what bigwigs in the World Heritage Centre called “a clear example of the new style of protected area management”.

But already there were more tangible benefits than the recuperation of coastlands. Ecologically sensitive roads were linking isolated communities to markets, medical centres and schools. Lake St Lucia was malaria-free for the first time in human memory. The last elephant in the St Lucia system had been shot in 1916. In 2001, they were brought back to the eastern shores.

Previously, the St Lucia complex was known to few holiday-makers. It was the diver’s den, the fisherman’s friend and a place where senior policemen could have a burnt meat ball. Now, because of its World Heritage status, it had an international profile. Community-shared tourism was the way to go, and luxury lodges and backpacker camps stood shoulder to shoulder at carefully selected sites.

Not only could you fish and dive, but there were turtles and dolphins and whales to be watched, dune forests and beaches and rock pools to explore, and birds, big game and belly safaris to experience. Suddenly the whole St Lucia thing had blossomed into dozens of new possibilities. Different kinds of tourists – both local and international – were arriving.

With each new inspiration came a spurt of job opportunities for the local people. Jules and I were going to visit some of those who lived along the KwaJobe Road to share in their recent good fortune.

Bronwyn James, who came to pick us up in her double-cab 4x4 for the KwaJobe drive, was as tall as her title: head of the Social Economic and Environmental Unit (SEED), operating under the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park Authority.

The road towards Mtubatuba was a strip mall of tropical fruit, sweet with the smell of pineapple. Bronwyn told us about the Mr Price deal.

“Mr Price [a popular retailer] has placed 120 000 rands’ worth of craft orders over two months,” she said. “There are already 400 women creating baskets and mats, and this will probably increase the number of people employed and boost earnings for this area.”

Each group of about a dozen women produced products specific to the area, using available materials such as reeds, ilala palm fronds and sisal. The magical ilala palm also made a very potent, high-energy wine that gave a spring to the local step – and one helluva hangover to outsiders such as myself.

We were on our way to meet Mr Majindi ‘Weekend’ Gumede and his many wives, who had banded into a highly productive cottage-industry unit. On the way we stopped at a small river to watch the women driving fish into their reed baskets. They waved back.

Carefully avoiding cattle and goats as they drank from rainwater puddles along the KwaJobe Road, we reached a small village in a clearing of trees where curious children peered out from behind huts.

A large bare-chested man with white hair and a beard greeted me from where he sat in his doorway, watching the Zulu rain drop down in a gentle drizzle. This was Weekend Gumede, husband to 10 wives, father of 62 children. He was currently ill, we were told. I asked permission to take a photograph of him, he nodded and we turned to the women under the trees.

The women had arranged themselves and their goods in a photo-friendly semicircle. We were all seated on chairs in front of them and were handed umbrellas. But then the rain simply bucketed down and we all decamped to someone’s bedroom, where the handwritten sign on the back of the wooden door read:

“I love Christian No 1.”

When craft training began for the people of St Lucia in 2000, Bongi Gumede stepped forward, secured the orders and recruited the rest of her family into the project. She was still the money administrator. Did lots of it get handed over to Weekend, we wanted to know. This was greeted with raucous laughter. Perish the thought.

“We don’t give the money to him,” she said. “But we do show him how much we’re making. And then sometimes we buy him something nice.”

The lives of these women – and of their children – had changed immensely since they’d started earning money from their crafts. Suddenly, school fees and clothes and groceries could be paid for.

“It was difficult to earn money before,” they said. “We used to cultivate mealies and vegetables and we made traditional beer to sell in the villages nearby. But we got far less money than now. Also, many of our children did not go to school.”

Not one of the Gumede wives had had a formal education. Before ‘the change’, their children would also have dropped out of the system early. Now all those of school-going age were being educated. Most of the working mothers now had cellphones, fridges and wardrobes, as well as beds and blankets. Power came from car batteries. Outages? What outages? KwaJobe would survive.

Gugu Gumede was particularly proud of her new goat.

“You must keep a goat, for just in case,” she said. “You can always sell the kids.”

Sisters. Doing it for themselves. I walked over and said goodbye to Mr Majindi ‘Weekend’ Gumede, the luckiest guy in Zululand.

The imperturbable Molly Zaloumis and her granddaughter Georgina took their chances with us in the Isuzu. Andrew, Tracy and their son Emmanuel (“E-Man”) led the way in their 4x4. Jules and Georgina had a competition to see who could keep Smarties unmelted in their mouths the longest.

The homesteads thinned out and the trees grew taller. The sand was ever-present. At one point, our gallant
bakkie
hesitated in deep sand and sank, wheels spinning. Andrew showed me how to deflate tyres, activate difflock, keep one wheel on the grass and get through. He’d been here before.

We drove over a beautiful iron bridge that spanned tea-coloured waters and clattered with the weight of our vehicles. This was where an erstwhile Environment Minister (Valli Moosa) had been controversially photographed skinny-dipping years before. I personally thought all Environment Ministers could do with more skinny-dipping and less office-ministering. But that’s just me.

Andrew Zaloumis looked down longingly at the water. Today, however, it was very shallow and not swimmable. It still brought back memories for him.

“Once, I was coming out of here and had to be hidden from the cops,” he said, speaking for once about his work up here during the apartheid era. “Just as the driver was covering me with a blanket at the back of the vehicle, an old Tsonga couple came up and asked for a lift. They climbed in at the back.

“At some stage, however, the couple realised there was something under the blanket. They thought the car was bewitched and leapt out, yelling.”

We pulled up at Hlalanathi Camp, which had a splendid view of Kosi Bay’s third lake, which was then turning pewter in the soft afternoon light. Amos Ngubane and his wife Maria welcomed us.

Amos Ngubane had assisted the late activist and sociologist David Webster in his work up here from 1984 until 1989, when he was gunned down by apartheid cops in Troyeville, Jo’burg.

“I was in his house that day. I heard the shot outside,” said Amos. “My grief was great.”

That night at dinner, Andrew told us about the social problems of Manguzi.

“In years gone by, there were only a few dozen people living around here,” he said. “Now there are more than 20 000, many of them retrenched miners. Others are immigrants from Mozambique. There’s a lot of people-pressure on a smallish piece of environmentally sensitive land.”

Early the next morning, Jules and I discovered the delights of a cold-water bucket shower, had breakfast with the Zaloumis family and were picked up by Dr Scotty Kyle for a day on Kosi Bay.

I had no trouble calling Scotty Kyle ‘The Laird of the Bay’. The doughty Scotsman (definitely not ‘dour’) had been here for more than a quarter of a century, keeping a watchful eye on the natural assets of Kosi Bay in his role as resource ecologist for the area.

We climbed aboard his flat-bottomed sleigh-boat called
Poch Mahon
(a Celtic blessing, he cryptically assured us) and rode through choppy waters towards the fish traps.

“Fish traps have been here for centuries,” Scotty said loudly above the din of the outboard motor. “Portuguese-shipwreck survivors noticed them 500 years ago – but they probably go back to prehistoric times.”

The famous fish traps of Kosi Bay had continued in the same successful, sustainable manner until the mid-1990s, when the first waves of retrenched gold miners came back home.

“The number of fish traps trebled in four years,” said Scotty. “And in this case, human efficiency became nature’s enemy. The new guys started using nylon to tie the saplings together, closing the gaps and making them more efficient. Which meant that the fingerlings were caught and could not escape to breed and grow big.”

It had taken Scotty Kyle many years of quiet negotiation with the local
indunas
to get most of them to return to the old sustainable methods, using rope made from the fibres of wild-banana stems.

We chugged up to where a well-built, older man was busy with his traps and his spears. I wanted photographs.

“Maybe, maybe,” said the 72-year-old Amon Mkhize. “But, you know, there is nothing for nothing.”

We settled on a photo fee of R50 and I jumped into the unexpectedly deep water, hoisting my rather expensive Canon 20D camera above my head just in time. With Amon’s grinning face looming out of Kosi Bay in front of his old-style fish traps, me dancing in the warm waters, and Jules and Scotty bobbing about nearby in the boat, a good time was happening all around.

Amon Mkhize used to work in Jo’burg on the gold mines, for the very company with which our friend Michael O (the Prince of the Tidal Pool) had been associated. The small world was spinning in on itself.

“But I was lucky,” he said. “I retired way back in 1985 – before they could push me.”

He caught king fish, rock salmon and crabs for the pot. Whatever was left over he sold to others. Why did he not use nylon in his traps?

“I use what my grandfather used,” he said. “I don’t like nylon. It doesn’t let the small fish escape.”

Scotty beamed.

A big ski-boat loaded with beer bellies surged up behind us like Goldfinger on the rampage against James Bond in a skiff. It prudently slowed down when Scotty’s official Parks Board epaulettes made an appearance.

“I once collided with one of those ski-boats in a channel,” said Scotty. “It ended up with a blonde in a bikini upside down in the boat, the skipper leaping off it to save the beers and me dangling over the side in the water, still holding the steering wheel.”

And then we went off to Scotty’s house on the hill to meet his wife Diane and a pear-shaped mongoose called Mungus. Scotty met Diane in Etosha when he was a game ranger in the mid-1970s. His courtship methods were simple. At night, he’d mingle with tourists, dressed in a kilt and occasionally playing the bagpipes. He had two pick-up lines, Diane remembered:

“Would you like to see the rhinos?” or “Have you seen any anthrax carcasses today?”

She fell in love with him anyway.

Scotty showed us all his snakes, while I sort of hung about in the background. One of them was a gaboon viper, one of the deadliest you could find. There were also eight baby vipers, saved from a sand dune about to be mined.

“Unfortunately, one of them died,” said Scotty Kyle. “It bit itself by mistake.”

Jules and I spent our last night of the
Shorelines
trip at the Turtle Shack at Bhanga Neck with Andrew and his family. The sea roared in our ears, the cast and fetch of the waves rocked us to sleep.