South Africa, Zimbabwe

Sep 6, 1977: Johannesburg, South Africa.  (first page of diary unreadable). Ley was a perfect host to us, driving us wherever we wanted, filling us with uncountable bottles of good African wine, playing music for us every  evening - a really great guy, and a godsend to us travelers. Didn’t get to know Jo and Heidi nearly as well, but I liked them both as intelligent, outspoken, liberated folks. Jo is a bit scary at first, but you get used to her; Mike is a great talker/storyteller, and even even if you’ve heard the stories before, it’s fun to listen to him explaining the details and nuances of a relationship, lingering over the observations of insignificant items we non-artists pass right over.

We took a tour to a gold mine one day  -  hell of an experience, but in a different sense than that intended by our South African hosts. They were as eager to show us how much good they were doing for “the blacks“, but it came out very patronizing, as if they were talking about the care and feeding of so many draft animals. Nicole almost freaked from the constant stream of innuendo, half smiles, deprecating gestures, all pointing to the tremendous gap between white and black in the minds of the whites. Nicole thought the Afrikaans who were our tour guides look like mafia hitmen. One obvious observation: none of the blacks ever smiled, or looked us in the eyes. We hadn’t seen that before in Africa.

We went about 1500 m down a gold mine, but some gold mines go over 5000 m - the deepest mines in the world.  Some facts:

• Each ton of rock brought up yields about 6 grams of gold, worth about $25.

• The rock is ground up, mixed with water, and then passed over corduroy cloth, which is periodically washed for the gold that collects on it; a modern version of Jason’s “golden fleece“, when ancient miners used sheep wool to catch the gold.  

• 53% of the gold is retrieved this way, been treated further with mercury to absorb the gold, then boiling off the mercury. 

• The rest of the gold is retrieved by dissolving with cyanide, filtering off the worthless sludge, treating the solution with hydrochloric acid to dissolve the impurities, and then distilling of the cyanide. Whew!  

We watched one gold bar being poured - 34 kg, 80,000 Rands in value. The mine we visited produces about two bars a week, and it is a smallish mine.

Dances one day  - Took some photos, but as usual, the dancing was (to our eyes and ears) pretty dull stuff, except for some of the kids.

The Sterkfontein Caves, just outside Johannesburg, were a treat, especially because we were in the company of Mike (a former geologist, I think) and John Ferguson, I visitor from Canberra where he is Australia’s chief geologist. We had great fun sniffing around the fields, picking up bones, rocks, seeds that popped in our mouths, and anything else we thought might puzzle John. These caves yielded some of the earliest and most important human remains, and are the only caves where Homo habilis and Homo Neanderthal remains were found together, suggesting the former were hunting the latter.

South Africa is superficially very American, with Wimpy bars, hamburgers, hot dogs, drive-ins, main street towns, high-rise apartments; if different, it is because people are better off in South Africa, so that every home looks luxurious, every car is a Mercedes, etc.; and because things aren’t crowded (yet). All the country's nicer facilities are only available to about 4 million whites, including an incredible road system set up mainly for the armed forces, all kinds of great self-help rondavels and bungalows and camping sites at ridiculously low prices, and Johannesburg, with more stores than San Francisco, serving 1/10 the population.

Ley gave us a demo of his thermograph one evening, checking Nicole’s breasts to the joy of all us men, and taking a picture of her face  - spooky, ghoul-like.  Will write Irv to find out if he’s interested, because Ley wants to expand to the states.

Enjoyed the Pretoria zoo immensely, and then began 3-4 tough days of hitching in the East Transvaal, a lovely wooded section of South Africa with waterfalls, canyons, old western towns, and steeped in the history of the Trekkers passage through 100 years ago. Blew about $50 renting a car for a visit Kruger National Park. Tame animals, lots of kudu,  and enormous numbers of people. Very discouraging to hit upon something and then have a dozen cars come up behind you to check out what you found. Give me the other parks anytime.

September 7, 1977. Zimbabwe ruins, Rhodesia. Happy birthday, Sam! 35 years old today, you old bastard. Halfway through your life, 2/3 through the good years. … being mortal is a real drag.

Went in convoy today with a nice Rhodesian couple returning from a vacation in Natal their car unfortunately slipped a disc 15 miles short of Fort Victoria, but that’s life with the internal combustion machine. Signs of military activity everywhere - soldiers with automatic rifles, citizens packing pistols and machine guns, roadblocks, combat fatigues, the works. The missionary who gave us a lift to Zimbabwe, said the hotel was robbed by terrorists two days ago, but no one was hurt. I think the less time we spend in Rhodesia, the safer we will be. Too bad, because it’s a lovely, friendly place, and I have the feeling that whites here have a lot more on the ball than the Africa further south. The wife of the driver, while complaining of foreign interference, still admitted that the Rhodesian whites had made a lot of mistakes, and were behind the times in bringing equal rights to the black blacks - an admission we never heard from the hard-core Afrikaners.

What to say about South Africa? We were surprised and delighted to meet a group of bright, progressive whites, as eager to change and as appalled by their country as any western liberal.  But they are such a tiny minority! They all seem to know each other, and their numbers dwindle as more and more leave the country, or get deported, or get thrown in jail. Veryan told us that 80% of her school chums had been put out of commission by the African police since she graduated. She herself has given up hope of being anything useful to the South African blacks, especially now that they have become so polarized that they reject any contact with whites, and wants only to leave for some more peaceful part of the world.  Gery, her husband, doesn’t really know what he wants - he says he’d like to spend his time in the swamps, but I think he’s being unrealistic.

Re-reading Hemingway, the Green Hills of Africa, a joy comparing notes with him. It all rings true.