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- South African authors - Non-fiction - |
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Somewhere over the Rainbow: Travels in South Africa |
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 Somewhere over the Rainbow:Travels in South Africa by Gavin Bell Little, Brown 314 pages, 2000 ISBN 0316853593 Reviewed by Faith Leslie - South Africa Gavin Bell has written an interesting and well-researched book which should appeal to anyone with an interest in South Africa. His emphasis on optimism that the "exuberant assortment of races and tribes would work out a modus vivendi, on the grounds that the crooks and the crazies were vastly outnumbered by decent people determined to rub along with each other .... because there was no other way" is encouraging. Gavin Bell's style is easy but perceptive, and his reporting on various situations in the country is just. He is able to see both sides of the picture. His travels are almost comprehensive but to be fair, the time it would take to go to every part of the country would be excessive. He debunks the popular image of Baden-Powell when visiting Mafeking and quotes from a source of the time that "On Christmas Day 1899 leading citizens joined Baden-Powell for a sumptious dinner at Reisle's Hotel" while the local magistrate wrote "that he was distressed by hungry natives leaning on his garden wall, staring at him and pleading for food." The author finds that racism is still a factor, although not active in many cases. He is disappointed when visiting the Rain Queen of the Lobedu in the foothills of the Drakensberg Mountains to find that modernity has invaded the Rain Queen's domain, and according to a big friendly Venda woman whom he asked about spiritual customs: "It is not like before... nobody would go to that forest but now everybody goes." The mystique has vanished, and perhaps that is the price of entering the modern world. This time round, he managed to see wildlife and visited old battle sites of the Zulu wars against the British. In his epilogue, the author mentions the distressing story of John Rubython, to whom his book is dedicated. Rubython, a skilled photographer whose work "memorably exposed the lunacy of apartheid" was killed by one of the township urchins whose cause he had championed. He concludes that John Rubython "would have shaken his head at yet another senseless death, then he would have found something positive to restore his faith in humanity, and continued riding hopefully on South Africa's emotional roller-coaster. Along with millions of others with nowhere else to go." An excellent book to enlighten and update anyone who would like to visit this country. -- Gavin Bell is a Scots journalist who spent five years in South Africa before the first democratic election. He returned to investigate the changes in Archbishop Tutu's "Rainbow Nation". He says: "In five years in South Africa, I had not been to a game reserve; for all the dramatic events I had witnessed, I had never seen a lion in the wild." His friends in London asked why South Africa had not been engulfed in civil war but in an "emotional roller-coaster, swinging between hope and despair." He determined to look for the essence of the country and set out on his travels. |
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