En route

 

The east lights up in beautiful pastel shades. It is 6:30am. I have been on the road for an hour and in the meantime I have covered the route that thousands of athletes ran last week, from Durban to Pietermaritzburg. Respect.

Meanwhile, it is completely light. I drive through rolling countryside. It is cold. A thick mist hangs in the valleys. The road is busy. Trucks and holidaymakers. This is a long weekend and the winter school holidays have started. Tomorrow is Youth Day. It commemorates the 1976 police massacre of SOWETO schoolchildren protesting against Afrikaans as the language of instruction.

On the radio, I hear a report on the first session of parliament after the 29 May elections. For the first time since 1994, the ANC did not have an absolute majority. This caused a lot of unrest: how would a coalition be formed? But there will not be a coalition. The ANC invited all parties to form a government of national unity. The new parliament re-elected the incumbent president Ramaphosa. A sigh of relief passes through the radio broadcast.

The rental car plods up the heights. I get closer and closer to the Drakensberg Mountains. The road curves around Lesotho in a wide bend. There they are. Greyish-yellow grassy slopes, rocky brownish red ridges contrasting brightly against the bright blue sky. A little further on, endless grasslands with a table mountain here and there. I know the towns that are my anchor points from here on. The landscape wraps its arms around me. It is as familiar as the smell of the water during my first shower here when I got off the plane, or Rob Byrne's voice on SAFM when he reads out the traffic information, or the taste of biltong and Mrs Ball's chutney chips.

I'm far from settled and have been living out of my suitcase for months, but I'm not quite en route either. I'm somehow coming home.

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