World's View

July 1981 and it is a cool, cloudless start to a beautiful day in Bulawayo, the town of the wide open streets where a cart hauled by sixteen Cape bullocks can be turned in the main street. I had been given a car for the long weekend to drive from the asbestos mine at Mashaba to the provincial capital Bulawayo and get my work permit extended. It is a five-hour drive from Mashaba to Bulawayo; so setting off on a Thursday gave me a few days to explore the veldt.

I was brought up in the fifties and sixties, my schoolteachers were 1920s and 30s vintage. Perhaps that accounts for them feeding me with Kipling, W H Davies, the First World War poets and so on. That combined with my love of Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia resulted in my having a strong interest in Cecil Rhodes, he of the British South African Company and the fabulous Cape to Cairo railway. Anyway, Cecil John Rhodes, at his own request, was buried at World’s View in the Matopos Hills to the southeast of Bulawayo, now a National Park. I headed out of the city for the hills and hopefully a glimpse of some African big game. The road was paved for the first half hour or so but then gave way to a single strip of bitumen before becoming a red dirt road proper.

A small, wizened man stood at attention outside his tiny gatehouse at the Park’s entrance. He had probably heard my car approaching up the valley. “Good morning, Bwana,” he greeted me, “welcome to Matopos.” He invited me to sign the visitors’ book and offered me a seat at his desk inside the office. I couldn’t help noticing that the last visitor had been here two weeks earlier, no wonder he awaited my arrival so keenly. I paid the small entrance fee to the park and continued on my journey.

I parked the little Datsun at the top of the winding road leading to World’s View. It was very still and quiet, brooding, neither birdsong nor rustling of leaves in the wind, no motor cars or other sounds of the city.

All around the boulders of exfoliating granite stood like sentinels on guard at the tomb of some ancient, revered warrior. I stepped out of the car and gazed at these strange boulders that perched upon other boulders as if to see further into the infinite horizon. They are such a common sight that the stones are depicted on the national bank notes. Alone I climbed the last few hundred metres over the crazy skarn to the plateau at the top of the Matopos Hills, the final approach to World’s View, a site I had longed to visit since, as a child, I read of the heroic deeds of Cecil John Rhodes in Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia (1921 Edition).

There at the peak, for 360 degrees around the circle, I could see forever, east to Mozambique and the Indian Ocean, West to Botswana, Namibia and the Atlantic, North to the distant terminus of Rhodes’ envisioned railway at Cairo and south to the Cape and Antarctica. Truly World’s View was a most apposite appellation for this splendid vista.

Cecil John’s tomb itself is excavated out of the solid granite at the very peak known to the Karanga people as Marindidzimu ('the haunt of the ancestral spirits'). The huge brass plate states simply:

“Here Lie The Remains of Cecil John Rhodes”

I stood for, perhaps, 10 minutes, or maybe it was an hour, soaking in the grandeur of the scene and thinking of Lord Alton’s words: 'He lies buried on the mountain, the lizards crawling over a massive stone lacking any cross or religious symbol. A haunted, sinister pagan place.' Indeed.

There are times when one feels a supernatural power, such as when one knows absolutely that one is being watched. I heard nothing, for no sound was made. I sensed no movement, for nothing moved but I knew I was being watched. I turned to look towards the track that led back to my Datsun. Then I saw them.

A gang? A herd? A troupe, yes that’s the collective noun. A troupe of baboons. Perhaps twenty of them. Mothers with babies hanging from their bellies and clinging to their backs. In the background standing menacingly in the middle of my escape route, the male, the big ugly, evil-looking dominant male with great yellow, bared fangs. I instantly became a Christian and commenced the Lord’s Prayer – aloud lest He should doubt my piety.

For those of you who might think that baboons are cuddly, benevolent primates, I must confound that misapprehension. They are big, grumpy and dangerous. My position was perilous in the extreme. A troupe of twenty has no fear, it is easily a match for a single human; especially a terrified human. Indeed they are known to attack lion when in such numbers.

What was I to do? I had no weapon. True there were lots of small granite rocks around but as I stooped to pick one up, I had a vision of the creatures mimicking me and each of them grabbing a rock to hurl back at me. This was a very potent vision and I quickly forgot the idea.

The events of the next few moments can scarcely be believed but I swear it happened. The proof being that I am here to tell the story today.

A crested African Snake Eagle swooped down from the heavens and came perilously close to a tiny baby baboon that had strayed from its mother. To this day, I don’t know if the bird was attacking the baboon or had spied a nearby snake – there were certainly many snakes in the vicinity. Whatever the truth of it, the entire troupe ran to the rescue of its young relative. My prayer was answered and I began to move cautiously toward the car. The eagle swooped again. The baby, knowing no better, struck out at the bird. It seemed like a scene from The Jungle Book where the pugilists were cartoon characters.

By now I had covered half the distance back to my Datsun in a tip-toeing, watchful manner. But suddenly the terrible animals were otherwise engaged and I broke into a full gallop. I stumbled and crashed through the low bushes, bounded from granite boulder to granite boulder with all the grace of a mule in a mud swamp. The car presently came into view as I began to believe I was going to make it safely to the sanctuary of my little vehicle.

I opened the door and flew in to the driver’s seat, slammed the door and gave thanks to the Almighty for delivering me from the infidels of the bush. Breathless, with tattered jeans and bleeding arms and cheeks I gave thanks with a passion unknown to me.

I looked up the escarpment to the crest of the plateau and there they were: the troupe that was so nearly my Nemesis. They looked down at me (literally and figuratively!). Some even beat their chests. It reminded me of that final scene at the Battle of Rorkes Drift in the film Zulu. Were they saluting me as the Zulu Impis had praised Stanley Baker, Michael Caine and the South Wales Borderers?

Or were they laughing at a silly Welsh boy who had had the fright of his life?

© Chris Skelding 2003