Digby Reflects on a Return to Rhodesia – Matopos

RETURN TO RHODESIA: 1. MATOPOS
Anne and I returned to Rhodesia in 1978 at the climax of the war for independence. We hadn’t realised how much the situation had deteriorated, though this was wilful ignorance. We went to the Matopos, our favourite national park. The tourist office had given us old pamphlets, inexplicably unrevised.
Granite hills make the Matopos into hallowed land – kopjes of alternating vertical slabs or gigantic marbles in the foreground. Behind, crenellated ridges standing against the sky and, heaving into view, a massive brown-orange dome, Shambushabe. The zebra and the warthogs were more plentiful than we remembered. And they were not alone. The realisation came slowly that the whole of the reserve was teeming with game. Right by the side of the road, calmly eyeing us, stood an impossibly handsome sable antelope; at first it deigned only to lift its noble head as we idled towards it, and then it wheeled and loped off into the bush and turned into shadow. Soon another outlined its shiny self against the trees. I’d seen just one before, in the old days, and that was at late dusk, in the headlights.
A herd of impala was disturbed; the dainty creatures became demented as I wound down my window for a photograph, and they leapt heavenwards, each one outdoing the other as they bounded away, weaving a pattern in the dusty air, surmounting trees, sailing into the sky. These antelope we could identify immediately, and eland. But other less singular creatures, and smaller, brought themselves out for inspection. A klipspringer, possibly? Something resembling a duiker.
There were no cars. The dirt road to Mjelele Dam was blocked by a makeshift barrier of logs. I did fleetingly wonder about landmines, for the past ten years a peril on unmetalled tracks. But there was enough to see along the main tarmac route.
As we entered the car park for World’s View a canopied truck was rocking from side to side as it traversed a furrow and ground to a halt in front of us. An African soldier climbed down from the cab, threw a disconcerted glance in our direction, failed to return our wave, stepped smartly to the back. He shouted a few phrases into the interior, where his charges slouched with their weapons between their knees, and returned to the cab. The truck revved up, crashed a gear and lurched off again, out of the car park, on its portentous way.
We visited the graves of Cecil John Rhodes and Leander Starr Jameson and gazed up at a monument to a Last Stand of 34 soldiers. Resurrection plants. A lizard – twitch, gone. Back in the car park a trio of women had materialised, spread out before them lacework for sale, a pale echo from the ’fifties boom years.
Maleme Dam was our next target. Deserted, but we could hear the hoarse barking of a troop of baboons echoing against the enclosing hills. We continued, puttering across the dam wall, washing our tyres in the spill, and left the car so that we could lie on a flat rock. So many baboons. What do leopards sound like? Way, way up in the crown of heaven black dots swam and pinpricked and faded. Suddenly like a cannonball a black eagle dropped into the grass near to us, drama and death in the wild. Thirty-odd years in Rhodesia and never seen anything like that before.
And on their our journey to Bulawayo, following the circular route, we passed the casually balanced rocks that were known as “Rhodes in his Chair”. Even in the heat of the day we could see game, in the thickets. A Peugeot 403 pickup came by at thirty miles an hour, an elderly white couple on board. The sun reflected off its windscreen and the occupants disappeared in a flash of light, weird trick.
We dined with friends and they were aghast at our crass stupidity. Surely we knew the Matopos was closed, overrun by terrorists. But we took from it a message of hope. We had been on a privileged trip back to the 1890s. If our intrusive species keeps out of the way, Paradise might return.
And as for my prescription for saving the world, well, you’ll have to wait for that.
Meanwhile, in Sydney, a month later, the news: “It is reported that while driving in the Matopos area south of Bulawayo an elderly white couple, Mr and Mrs Frederick Gorber, have been killed by insurgents, who also set alight the trading store nearby.”
We should have known the danger, of course, even though it had been too painful for me to read more than the headline news. As we approached Salisbury (Harare) Airport the Viscount lost height rapidly and banked. I peered at the ground. This was Biggles stuff! Musasas or munhondos and clumps of alien bluegums rising up towards me. Another sharp turn and the rapid descent continued and a yelp from the tyres and we were on the runway. No one had warned me of this, but hell! I could work it out all right: a regular flight path over the bush would have been a boon to the insurgents and their SAM missiles.
By the grid-plan centre of Salisbury ungainly khaki military vehicles droned by; some huddled together at likely corners. Reaching Barbour’s, I had to stand in line while everyone’s bags were searched (my own bulging anorak pockets escaped attention); it was a weary routine, in itself, but it contributed to an atmosphere of, not exactly tension, but perhaps of calculated circumspection. Life in interesting times. Within Barbour’s a dowdy air prevailed, no energy spare for displays, but the store was well enough stocked. And back in the street a dogged spirit, people damn well going about their business, but with little spark or chatter. There were some soldiers about, armed.
Some things the same, some so very different.