A Trip to South Africa

After two successful book launches — one in the Wiltshire village where I live and another at Andrew Edmunds in Soho — I filmed myself reading a couple of poems and posted them on my Facebook author page before flying to South Africa for my annual visit.

I grew up in Johannesburg in the 1950s. It has changed enormously since then, in many ways for the better, though the continuing poverty, corruption and crime remain troubling.

Yet South Africa is still magnificent. Racial tension, remarkably, feels less present than one might expect. The mountains, animals and flowers; the vast wonder of the Bushveld; the warmth and exuberant bazzaz of Africa — all of it feels intensely alive. When I return to the deep peace of Wiltshire, everyone seems half asleep.

The highlights of my visit began with a walk in mountain grassland: orchids and lilies scattered among the long stems, butterflies everywhere, each one seemingly unique.

Then a walk through forest teeming with wildlife. I am no longer allowed to do this alone, ever since I was growled at by a leopard.

It was a huge noise

a gentle almost purring

     a susurration

Broad and low

  between the stream and me

     A domed noise

            that could have gently

crept

to infinity

Lordly, unafraid

   safely they slept

      the two the camera caught

        on a cold midnight

          a month ago

            side by side

              crossing the stream

                in the dull cold

                 of winter midnight

            before the promised spring

Lovers they looked, side by side

In the dark

as they gently walked

their temerous way

Quiet it was but so broad,

Yellow in its purring - or was it snoring

            Two great spotted cats

            lords of the forest

            sound asleep……. long after dawn

            sleeping off their lordly feasting

While I walked quietly

(but not too quietly

Just calm and normal) through the crackling leaves

arming myself as well as I could

            with a sheaf knife in one hand and a stun gun in the other

            Remembering how,

                        in Jock of the Bushveld

                        someone killed a leopard with his knife

                        stabbing

                                    quickly, feverishly

                                    at its throat

And so I passed

as normal as I could

But quickened my pace

            as that noise so huge in the early forest

                        turned to a whisper

After that came a five-hundred-mile drive along difficult roads to the staggering Drakensberg, glimpsed through mist and cloud: three thousand feet of sheer basalt rising above rolling grassland.

Finally Johannesburg. The corner shop where we once bought sweets after school now feels like Dubai: pavement cafés filled with people from across Africa and beyond — elegant Somalis, smiling Zulus, and still a few elderly English colonial types.

While there, I went to see a new film by the world-renowned South African artist William Kentridge, whom I knew when we were young and I was running a small gallery in Notting Hill.

Like mine, the roots of his art lie in the apartheid years. His father, a leading lawyer, was involved in the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre. As a teenager, Kentridge saw the stark legal photographs of bodies lying on pavements; those images haunt much of his work.

I had hoped to contact him because I own a videotape I bought from him long ago which has since become one of his most celebrated works. I would like to donate it to a botanical charity I support, committed to conservation and education in Africa.

It was a quiet pleasure to sit in the gallery with a handful of art students watching his atmospheric film. When I left, I wrote a note to him and gave it to the gallerist.