South Africa's extraordinary plants

Michael - Alternate Thursdays 

Southern Africa is renowned for its wildlife, the Big Five - lion, leopard, rhino, elephant and buffalo - not to mention a variety of antelope, zebra, wildebeest, cheetah, African hunting dogs, and, of course, hippo. And those are just the large mammals. Then there are all the birds and other fascinating creatures.

However, the region is also rich in extraordinary plants. Cape Fynbos, restricted to a relatively small area along the coast of the Western and Eastern Cape, is one of the world's six floral kingdoms (yes, one of only six) with nearly ten thousand species. These include the proteas that are symbolic of  South Africa (including the cricket teams). 

There are many different species, and many easily crosspollinate producing a suite of completely different varieties.

South Africa's national flower - King Protea

In the coastal forest areas, there are wonderful trees, tree ferns, and cycads.

Knysna forest, near where I live

Knysna forest walk

If you move away from the winter rainfall area into the arid regions of the Karoo, the Kalahari, and the Namib deserts, you meet a new team of fascinating plants.

One of the strangest is the Welwitschia of the Namib. This plant has a genus all to itself. It grows from the sand and never develops more than two leaves. The leaves appear as a scraggly mass of pieces because they are torn by the wind, but they come from just two nodes, and unlike other plants, the leaves continue to grow throughout the plant's life. It seems a pretty hopeless survival strategy, but the plants are believed to live for thousands of years in the least hospitable conditions imaginable.

Yes. Two leaves. Really.

In other areas you find a profusion of different succulent species, cleverly adapted to their environments. This is the Stapelia. A beautiful flower opens giving off a putrid scent reminiscent of rotting meat. There aren't many bees in the desert, but there are plenty of flies...

It seems to work...

Then there are the lithops. Not only are they fat and fleshy to store what moisture they can find, but they're  disguised as stones. In A Carrion Death, Kubu describes how he was taught to see what was hidden by his Bushman school friend who took him into the desert and showed him that in an apparently barren area of sand, there were plants like stones, trapdoor spiders, and other fascinating things camouflaged from his sight. After that he looked below the superficial and that stood him in good stead as a detective.

Stones or Lithops?

Lithops flowering

It seems that whenever something is unusual, people want it. They don't want it where it lives and where they can appreciate its fit with its environment, they want it in their homes. To look at. As a talking point. To own. I'm not sure why that is...

Policeman inspecting seized boxes of Conophytums
New York Times

So now there is a new target for the poaching and smuggling trade - southern African succulents. They are protected, but stolen from their desert homes, stacked in cardboard boxes and sent off to locations around the world. They are not endangered. Yet. Sadly, they grow slowly, so attractive specimens take many years to grow from seeds. It's much cheaper and quicker to dig them up and smuggle them away. 

Head further north and you arrive in the low country, the "bushveld", where you're likely to meet the Big Five. Now you can meet a profusion of interesting and beautiful trees and other strange plants such as the Impala lily.

Impala lily in flower

When it's in flower, it's remarkable. But not for snacking. Like all Pachipodia the plant is quite poisonous and the milky sap can affect the heart.

A large specimen of the baobab tree

On the other hand, the amazing baobab tree provides edible fruit and medicinal products. This one is almost ridiculously huge. They are even adapted to living with elephants. In the dry season, elephants often rip bark off trees and eat it. In most species of tree, the sap flows up from the roots under the bark and if the tree is "ring barked" - bark removed all the way around the truck - the tree dies. The baobab has sap flow through the pulpy interior of the trunk and can withstand considerable elephant damage.

This one is taking a lot of strain
Photo: Daily Maverick

Everywhere in the country you can find varieties of aloe - again offering medicinal properties and lovely sprays of flowers growing from the stem with its fleshy leaves.

Aloe arborescens

Back to the Cape, when the rains come to the west coast, carpets of different varieties of local daisies and other flowers suddenly appear as if by magic. The seeds have been waiting, perhaps the whole year, for the moisture to germinate and they do so all at once.

This is just scratching the surface. A day at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden is a much better introduction. Over 7,000 species are represented there, all indigenous to South Africa. In fact, Kirstenbosch was the first botanical garden in the world to have that mission. And if you pick the day well, there may be an open air concert to enjoy with a picnic in the evening...

No, South Africa isn't just about the Big Five. We haven't even mentioned the wine yet...

Why we went backwards

Stanley - Thursday

Two days ago, our seventh Detective Kubu mystery hit the bookshelves in North America. It is called Facets of Death. What sets it apart from the other six is that it is a prequel.

The first Kubu novel was A Carrion Death which was set contemporaneously with its publication in 2008. Each successive book followed the same pattern. After our detour to the stand-alone thriller Dead of Night outside North America (Shoot the Bastards in North America), we wanted to return to Kubu and decided to return to his professional roots.

When we started writing A Carrion Death, we didn’t plan that Kubu would be the protagonist. As novice novelists, we heeded the the advice of the experts, who said we should write about what we knew. So, as academics ourselves, we planned that a brilliant young ecologist would discover a body that had been left in the desert for hyenas to devour and go on to solve the mystery. 

However, it was obvious to our young professor that it was no accident that the body was lying naked on the Kalahari sands. It was a case of murder, so the police had to be called in. So, with much amusement, we sent a detective, David Bengu, from the CID headquarters in Gaborone into the Kalahari in his Land Rover. Let's make him big, we said. Very big! So David Bengu became David 'Kubu' Bengu. His nickname means hippopotamus in the Setswana language. Ho ho ho, we laughed and had another glass of wine.

It's a long drive in unfavourable condition from Gaborone to where the body had been found in the middle of the Kalahari Desert, so we had to find things for Kubu to do.

First, he provisioned himself with sandwiches and something to drink (non-alcoholic because he was driving and on duty). After all, big people have to eat a lot. Then, he brought along some cassette tapes of some of his favourite operas. Ho ho ho! A Botswana detective who loves opera! Giggle! And then he sang along with them - in his only-sing-along-when-no-one-is-around baritone. Clink! Another toast.

We were really enjoying this character we were developing.

He also had time to muse about how a Bushman school friend had shown him how to see clues of things hidden in the desert, such as the stone-like Lithops plants and the trapdoor spiders. Aha, we said. That was the spark that made Kubu want to become a detective. He would train himself to look beyond the obvious.

It can be really difficult to find Lithops.

Trapdoor spiders build their homes in the ground.

Trapdoor spider

 By the time this larger-than-life character had visited the scene of the crime and interviewed the men who had found the body, he made it clear to us that he had to be the main character. That came as a complete surprise. We thought we were in charge of the story.

Fortunately for us, it turned out that Kubu was a major attraction for readers. Marilyn Stasio in the New York Times summed up the matter succinctly in her review of the book: “Readers may be lured to Africa by the landscape, but it takes a great character like Kubu to win our loyalty.” 

We were delighted that Kubu won readers’ loyalty, but the fact remained that he was unplanned. 

How well did we actually know him? 

He was smart and good at solving problems. Unlike many detectives in police procedurals, he was happily married and sober almost all of the time. Of course, during the series his character developed, his relationships with his wife, parents, and colleagues deepened, and he became more solid, more three-dimensional. There were clues about his childhood in the books—things that had come up as we went along. 

We knew he had loving, traditional, but Christian parents, and that their minister had arranged a scholarship for him at an excellent private school in Gaborone. We knew of his Bushman friend. We knew he loved to do puzzles with his father. We knew where he’d met his wife. But there was nothing that explained how he’d gone from school to being the star detective in the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department. It was not just a hole in his background, but, in a way, a gap in his character.

Diamonds have always been one of Botswana’s most important exports and allowed the newly independent country to flourish. The two richest diamond mines in the world are there, owned by a joint venture between the government and the diamond giant De Beers. The fact that the country was almost totally reliant on diamonds for its success made us wonder about the impact of a massive heist. Could it shake the country’s financial foundation?

Second largest uncut diamond ever was found in Botswana a few years ago.
It is 1109 carats and named Lesedi La Rona (Our Light). 

 We decided to address both the issue of Kubu’s early role in the CID and a robbery at the height of the diamond boom by writing a prequel to the series—a Kubu mystery that starts the day he joins the CID as a new detective straight out of university without ever having to be a constable on the beat. 

Immediately things started to take shape. Kubu’s first case is a minor matter concerning a few suitcases going missing at Gaborone airport. Yet it’s a challenging puzzle, and he loves it. However, the other detectives, who have come up in the CID the hard way, have no time for him. He has to struggle to find a place for himself. Sometimes his new boss, Assistant Superintendent Mabaku (who will later become director of the CID), seems disappointed in him. Then, a massive diamond robbery takes place and suddenly everything changes. Everyone is thrown into the case, even the raw detective in his first week on the job.

As we wrote the prequel, we were delighted to watch Kubu develop, having insights, but also making the mistakes that only experience can avoid. He earns respect, but also opprobrium. And as Mabaku comes to appreciate his talents, Kubu becomes more and more central to the case. Eventually, they deduce who the mastermind behind the robbery actually is, but they have no strong evidence. Now they have to find some way to catch him, and Kubu and Mabaku both find their careers on the line—in Kubu’s case, before his career has even begun. 

By the end of the book, Kubu has learned a lot about being in the CID and how to interact with his colleagues and his superiors. He has also fallen in love with a wonderful women, and sees some hope that his feelings are reciprocated. 

Writing Facets of Death was a journey of exploration for us. We learnt a lot about how Kubu became the CID’s best detective and about who he is as a person. We know him better now. 

It was fifteen years between putting fingers to keys for A Carrion Death and for Facets of Death. We enjoyed writing the prequel just as much as the debut - perhaps with just a little less wine. We hope readers will enjoy the young Kubu’s journey also.

The surprise of deserts

Michael and I have just returned from a trip to the Kalahari desert, where we had research to do for the Detective Kubu mystery that we are currently writing.  (It is still without title.)

Ever since I visited a desert for the first time, over forty years ago, I have been fascinated by them and the things, flora and fauna, that live in there.  A trip to a desert is always the time for a surprise. 

In fact, our Detective Kubu would never have become a detective had his childhood friend, the Bushman Khumanego, not taken him into the Kalahari and exposed the hidden worlds that live there.  The following excerpt from A CARRION DEATH tells that story.

Kubu owed the Bushmen a debt of gratitude.  His childhood Bushman friend, Khumanego, had shown him how the desert was alive, not dead as he had thought.  He remembered vividly how in one school holiday Khumanego had taken him sweltering kilometres into the arid landscape and drawn a circle in the sand a few metres in diameter.

“What do you see?” Khumanego had asked him.

“Sand, stones, and some dry grass.  That’s all,” he had replied.

Khumanego shook his head gently.  “Black men!” he chided.  “Look again.”

“I see sand and stones, some small and others a little bigger.  Also some dry grass.”

An hour later the world had changed for Kubu.  Khumanego had shown him how to look beyond the obvious, how to explore below the surface, to notice what no one else would see.  In that small circle thrived a teeming world - ants, plants that looked like stones (lithops, he found out later), beetles, and spiders.  He loved the lithops – desert plants cunningly disguised as rocks, almost impossible to distinguish from the real things.  They blended into their surroundings, pretending to be what they were not. 

The trapdoor spider also impressed him.  When he looked carefully at the sand, almost imperceptible traces of activity clustered around one area.  On his knees, Khumanego pointed to the barely visible crescent in the sand.  He gestured to Kubu to pick up a twig and pry the trapdoor open.  Kubu complied, nervous of what he would find.  The open trapdoor revealed a tunnel, the size and length of a pencil, made from grains of sand and some substance holding them together.  Khumanego tapped the tube.  A small white spider scurried out and stopped on the hot sand.

“This spider,” Khumanego whispered, “knows the desert.  He digs a hole and makes walls of sand with his web.  He makes his home under the sand where it is not so hot.  He listens and listens, and when he hears footsteps on the sand, he opens the door, jumps out, catches his meal, and brings it back to his home – appearing and disappearing before the insect knows what is happening.  Very clever spider.  You don’t know that he is there, but he is very dangerous.”

Kubu thought that the spider and the lithops survived in the same way – avoiding attention by blending into the background.

It was the experience of seeing so much when there was so little to see that had the greatest impact.  Khumanego had taught him to open his eyes and see what was in front of him.  “Black people don’t see,” Khumanego had said.  “White people don’t want to.”  Kubu returned home that afternoon and vowed he would never be blind again.  From that day, Kubu had trained himself to be observant, to see what others did not and to look beyond the obvious. 

[As an aside, I am not known for my green thumb.  When I first saw lithops, I recognized their potential.  So I smuggled some into the States, planted them on a bed of stones in my home in Illinois, and proudly showed them off to my friends, who were suitably impressed.  When the lithops inevitably joined all my previous plants in flora heaven, I continued to display the planter of stones, and my friends continued to be impressed.]

Southern Africa has two deserts: the Kalahari, covering much of Botswana and stretching into northern South Africa and eastern Namibia; and the Namib, which covers most of western Namibia, along the Atlantic Ocean.  I’ve been fortunate to visit both in the last month.

In general, these two deserts are quite different.  The Kalahari comprises vast areas of sand, low scrub, and a few trees, whereas the Namib often fits the more traditional view of deserts, with even sparser vegetation and sand, sand, and more sand.

Kalahari

Kalahari

Sossusvlei dunes in the Namib

If you want to drive in the Namib, you'd better know how!

The oryx (gemsbok) needs little water to survive.

The single purpose of our trip was to visit a village in the central Kalahari called New Xade, near to which a Bushman called Kabbo, in our sixth novel, was found dead on the side of the road.  An autopsy revealed three surprising things: he was probably well over a hundred years old, closer to one hundred and fifty; his internal organs were the same as a man of forty; and third, a bullet was lodged in an abdominal muscle, but there was no entry wound.

We wanted to visit the area to ensure what we wrote about where Kabbo lived and roamed was accurate.  And we wanted to see if we could find what Kabbo had been eating that made him live so long.

We were also eager to visit New Xade because it is the focal point of a great deal of antagonism between the Bushmen and the Botswana government.  The government argues that it has a constitutional requirement to provide education and healthcare to all of the citizens of Botswana, but it is impossible to do this if the Bushmen maintain their nomadic lifestyle.  So it resettled many Bushmen from their traditional areas around the village of Xade in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve to the village of New Xade, seventy kilometers to the west.  New Xade, the government claims, provides the required schooling and healthcare, and is a far better place to be in contrast with roaming the desert, not knowing where or when food and water would be found.

Initially, we drove the five hours from Johannesburg to Gaborone, where we spent the night.  Then we took the paved, Trans-Kalahari Highway for seven hours, avoiding the cows, donkey, horses, goats and sheep that favour the firm footing afforded by a paved surface and the lush grass that grows at its edge to the safer pastures away from the road.  Obviously some drivers were not nimble in avoiding animals, as we saw cattle carcasses and a few abandoned vehicles.  Eventually we reached Ghanzi, not far from the Namibian border, and over-nighted there.  Finally, the next day, we drove the 100 kilometres on a white, calcite sand road to New Xade.

Donkeys are better

This probably hit a cow at night

Fortunately the ostriches preferred the bush.

The road to New Xade

And true to form, the desert provided some surprises.

First, instead of being dry, parched, and inhospitable, the Kalahari was green and lush as far as the eye could see, with grass growing tall on the side of the road and fields of yellow flowers adorning the landscape.  In many places, pools of water lay next to the road, extending back into the bush.  We were told that the area had received two-thirds of its annual rainfall in two days the previous week – over 200 mm (8 inches) in thirty-six hours.  Villages had been flooded; and rivers flowed that were normally sandy courses meandering through the scrub.

The Kalahari desert!

Kalahari desert 2

Flooded village

Suddenly there were flowers

New Xade was also a surprise, but not a pleasant one.  To call it a dump would be paying it a compliment.  The only things that may have been working were the school – but we couldn’t really tell, as it was school holidays – and the clinic.  But all the other buildings of substance stood empty and derelict.  Most of the homes were in poor repair, and people were sitting around doing nothing (alcoholism is reputed to be rife).  We saw no shops, and the bill-boarded craft shop didn’t look as though it had been opened in ages.  The government may have met its constitutional requirement, but it doesn’t seem to be interested in the welfare of the people it has moved there.  Michael and I were both bummed out - and sad, very sad, at what we'd seen.

New Xade craft shop - looked unused

New Xade pedestrian

New Xade children at play

New Xade residence

Top-of-the-line New Xade residence

Another top-of-the-line New Xade residence - there were only a few

Not top-of-the-lineNew Xade residence

Another not top-of-the-line New Xade residence

Traffic warning

Overall, our research trip was a success, even though we didn’t find Kabbo’s secret plant.  We learned something new; we didn’t hit an animal on the road; and we saw the Kalahari in a once-in-our-lifetime finery.

Stan - Thursday