Shorelines Read Online Free

a mandatory stop at the SA–Namibia border post to signal the official start of our Shorelines adventure. The full stop on the trip would come months later, when we were in sight of the SA–Mozambique customs offices north of Kosi Bay.
    Near dawn, we were at Beauvallon, a lush Alexkor farm. I went over to the fence to photograph a couple of male ostriches that boomed at me like plumed lions. We saw a sign that read: Grootderm Handelaar.
    Jules was oddly fascinated by this nowhere spot. “How would you like to work in a shop called Large Intestine Retailers?”
    The ostrich tried to eat my 18-125mm lens. When I wouldn’t let him he flounced off in the direction of some girl ostriches and began writhing and thrumming his neck in pleasure in front of one of them, fluttering his black and white wings like a feathered Folies dancer somewhere in the Pigalle district of Paris, where the red lights mean ‘go’.
    The object of his desire, meanwhile, looked like a drab, grey feather duster pecking absentmindedly at the ground.
    “Come play,” he said to her in ostrich-mime.
    “I’m busy trying to eat this stone,” she replied in same.
    “Let’s make love,” he persisted, whirling in his fandango, a blur of wings and lascivious looks. How could she resist?
    “Naah.” No nookie for Mr Fabulous today. We thanked them for the show and continued to Brandkaros, a huge citrus farm and tourist camping site on the river. The heady aroma of orange blossoms hit us.
    “It smells just like happiness,” beamed my wife.
    Driving on, we saw reckless 4x4 tracks heading over the delicate terrain. Then we passed ruined landscapes where the mining companies had had their way. It struck us that these post-Apocalyptic heaps of tailings would be perfect 4x4 playgrounds. If the muscle-car brigade went there instead, the vulnerable succulent deserts of southern Africa would be eternally grateful.
    We arrived at Cornell’s Kop along the Sendelingsdrif road to the Ai-Ais/Richtersveld Transfrontier Park. I was thrilled to see something named after our Fred at last. The hill is ringed with rather exquisite false quiver trees, some of the last of their kind left in the world. Somewhere around here is a deep hole allegedly connected to the Gariep River, through which the Big Snake occasionally meanders. The monster, often spotted at the Augrabies Falls in times gone by, is said to rule the river. I do not possess a fondness for snakes, so I wasn’t keen to find this hole.
    We’d strayed inland to flesh out the facts behind an astounding land claim that promised to shake the foundations of the South African mining world. The Richtersveld community of nearly 5 000 souls, mostly diamond workers and roaming herders, had claimed 85 000 hectares of mainly coastal land in the Northern Cape that had been taken from them in the 1920s when diamonds were discovered. The claim area included the Alexkor fields. The claimants not only wanted the land returned to them, but also more than US$200 million for diamonds extracted over the eight decades of the mine’s existence.
    A 75-year-old Nama elder, Oom Gert Domroch, stood up in the Land Claims Court in Cape Town and, through an interpreter, said:
    “Among our people, there is nothing like this taking away of land. You may not take away someone else’s thing. You have to ask. I remember it as it was told to me by the old people. There was no discussion, no negotiation. It was simply taken away.”
    “What should be done to put this right?” asked the community’s attorney Henk Smit.
    “I think the person who took a thing from you must put it back,” the old man replied. In October 2003 the Constitutional Court declared that the Richtersvelders had a right to restitution and compensation. At the time of writing this book, the claim was still unresolved. To outsiders, it seemed the government was playing a waiting game of ‘Who’s Got The Deepest Legal Pockets’ with the claimants.
    “We will not