Are We There Yet? (11 page)

As enchanted as I had been by the immaculate garden section, I much preferred the nature trail which was marked out with rough-hewn stone slabs from which sprung petite purple and white buds. Ducking and weaving the velvet bushwillows that overhung the pathway, I felt as though I was inspecting the estate of a reclusive tycoon who'd let the grounds dwindle to a vegetative state as he did the same. Descending through knotty trees covered by chocolate bark speckled with mint-green moss, I made my way into a small valley where the trunks grew thicker, the leaves became more expansive and the sound of running water burbled in a glade unseen.

It was like walking through Disney's
Jungle Book
and as the path brought a ten-metre high waterfall into view, I half expected to see Baloo gambolling about beneath it singing “The Bare Necessities”. Ensconced in a blanket of banana trees with leaves you could wrap a child in and ferns whose tendrils spoke of chameleon tongues, the falls emptied into a shallow pool rendered amber by stray dollops of sunlight. Lusher than Robert Downey Jr the day before checking into Betty Ford, it instantly leapt to the top of my list of places I'd like to buried.

It turned out that the locals viewed it more as a location for beginnings than endings. Declarations of undying love accompanied by princess-cut diamonds were apparently almost a daily event on these sylvan banks and many couples chose to take their vows at a nearby thatched pavilion. A fact attested to by a noticeboard from which taffeta brides and mulleted grooms beamed.

Beyond the pond was a whitewashed tearoom and a series of paved terraces sporting wooden chairs and tables. At least half-a-dozen were occupied by near Mrs feverishly consulting bloated lever arch files as they planned their weddings. The others were taken up by women of a certain age who it seemed gathered here regularly for Devonshire teas and the character assassination of anyone who couldn't attend.

Amid eavesdropped gems such as “Well, if Merle won't wear an off-the-shoulder dress, she can't be a bridesmaid” and “Poor Vera, she honestly thinks hormone replacement therapy will stop her husband sleeping with the maid”, I gorged on gossip, Earl Grey and buttery scones.

With insistences to the waitress such as, “Don't you take her money, dear; you know it's Tuesday, Gladys, and I always pay on Tuesday” wafting over the marigolds, I reluctantly left the gardens to drive a couple of hours west to the high court of the Sun King.

Sun City was the brainchild of Sol Kerzner, the fiercely ambitious and freakishly shrewd son of Russian migrants, who grew up in a tough Johannesburg suburb where he worked in his parents' milk bar. Already a hospitality magnate with a string of luxe properties and a Miss South Africa trophy wife, he exploited the policies of the apartheid government to launch an empire which at last count spanned thirty casinos across the Caribbean, southern Africa and the Indian Ocean islands.

The idea was ingeniously simple: legally provide moneyed South Africans with all the illicit pleasures banned by the straitlaced Calvinist regime. These irresistible temples of sin would only succeed if they were located reasonably close to white population centres. Enter Bophutotswana, the nominally independent homeland established by the South African government, which functioned under its own malleable constitution and was less than three hours drive from Johannesburg.

Sun City wasn't the first of Kerzner's casinos to blossom under this strategy, it merely expanded the cornucopia of forbidden delights. Aside from gambling, there were Vegas-style revues called Extravaganzas where showgirls shimmied in extravagant headdresses and not much else. For those who preferred their titillation bluer and lived in a society where
Playboy
was banned, there were strip shows and soft-core porn films. So novel was the concept that I recall groups of my parents' contemporaries lined up outside the Sun City cinemas to catch a late-night flesh flick.

Second to gaming, Sun City's prime attraction was musical entertainment. Offering enough cash to anaesthetise many an artistic conscience, Kerzner secured a string of international talent to play his venue. Which wasn't technically in South Africa and therefore dubiously rationalised as in no way condoning apartheid. Thus it came to pass that audiences – which comprised 99.9 per cent white South Africans – starved of internationally recognised live acts would stampede out of Johannesburg to the resort. Between 1979 and 1986 I saw Frank Sinatra, Liza Minnelli, Jack Jones, Ben Vereen, Elton John, Queen, Rod Stewart and The Village People (the last with my mother as a birthday gift – for me).

I had fond memories of the four separate hotels, two golf courses, acres of swimming pools and composite paradise gardens that made up the Sun City sprawl. In our first genuine taste of independence, my mates and I, aged sixteen or thereabouts, would pile into buses at the central Johannesburg railway station for the three-hour journey through the serene Magaliesberg mountain range and the town of Rustenburg to the rock concert venue.

Aside from the fact that I wasn't trying to look down the top of the girl seated in front of me, the current journey was much as I remembered it. Sun City, however, was not.

The monorail that took excited punters from the mammoth car park to the hotel was no longer in operation, leaving a suspended superfluous iron ribbon above proceedings. The lobby which was once an octagon of futuristic hedonism had been papered over in an Indiana Jones theme in which cardboard macaws held spotlights in their beaks, lurid artificial three-metre leaves were affixed to the walls and a rope bridge dangled above a waterfall which gushed over a precipice of gold coins and oversize gambling chips. The once exclusive black and chrome salon privé had dated no better and the gold fabric and chandeliers that had been added in a half-hearted attempt to drag the space into this millennium only resulted in a look that Imelda Marcos might have favoured for a guest toilet.

Although casinos are now legal in South Africa, 25,000 visitors a day still come to Sun City, whose most recent addition is the Lost City, a mythical African utopia that has supposedly been rediscovered. One of the world's few six-star hotel, it is a cornucopia of domed towers, vaulted archways and bronze big-cat fountains. All of which overlook a mosaic of swimming pools, cascades, lakes, streams and a man-made beach complete with waves and waterslides that require the surgical retrieval of one's Speedos. According to the PR blurb, it's the kind of place that doesn't have an entrance, but a “grand porte chochere”. As opposed to those modest porte chocheres you're always running into.

The Lost City is approached via the Bridge of Time which is flanked by tusked sculptured elephants, presided over by a huge carved leopard resting on a pillared pergola, and which shakes every hour on the hour as a reminder of the volcanic eruption that reduced the Lost City to ruins so many centuries ago.

The interior confirmed my suspicions that the Lost City was not my cup of twee. Beneath a twenty-five-metre frescoed dome in the Baroque style, zebra-print furniture sat atop a floor made of 300,000 fragments of polished marble and granite in thirty-eight shades. Animal motifs abounded with jade monkeys adorning a pillar, lions rendered in semiprecious stones featuring in wall mosaics and a life-size bronze elephant dominating the courtyard. His name was Shawu, which I believe is an ancient Sotho term for “horribly ostentatious”.

The odd thing was that everywhere my eye wandered it was greeted by elegant craftsmanship – an intricately carved balustrade, a delicate mosaic border on a marble floor, a blurred detail in a woven rug depicting a cheetah in full flight – but instead of these touches complementing one another, it was rather a case of gauche almighty.

I made my way back across the Bridge of Time, pausing to look out over the golf course where thirty-five Nile crocodiles are the water hazard at hole thirteen. Then it was on through the gaming hall where row upon row of blinking, whirring machines were being fed by row upon row of equally automated but rather less animated punters, some of whom had children curled up at their feet. It was a timely reality check on just how the Sun King's palace came to be, and, like they say, casinos aren't built on winners. The high-octane glamour with which Sun City once beckoned me had faded to a tawdry facsimile of its former self. I was glad I'd come but felt the same way about leaving. Besides, my next destination was to prove equally surreal. As you would expect from a mineral springs resort where the majority of clientele can soak for hours yet appear no more wrinkled than when they were dry.

Chapter 5

Soak Opera

The road to Warmbaths is bounded by a parched landscape that can only aspire to undulation. Were it not for the odd clump of lugubrious acacia trees bearing thorns like drag-queen nails, I could have been driving across a nutmeg-dusted pancake. Beneath a gargantuan liquid sky across which flat-bottomed clouds lumbered, the fringes of the tarmac liquefied in the heat and yellow lines were rendered serpentine by the wheels of semitrailers.

It was at this point that I first encountered the curse of rural travel in South Africa: Jacaranda FM, which billed itself as “the soothing alternative”. This turned out to be a blatant lie on both counts as a Bryan Adams lunch hour was as serene as vigorous sandpapering of the scrotum and no other station seemed to broadcast on either the AM or FM frequencies in the area.

Throughout the 60s and 70s, Warmbaths had been a resort where couples could spend what would later become known as quality time. Unfortunately, as was the case with my own parents, the tensions leading to the need for such an interlude were not often left at home. As a result, the chalets frequently resounded to the airing of grievances rather than the rhythmic beat of headboard against gyprock.

The Warmbaths resort is spread around a series of shallow free-form pools fed by thermal springs which ejaculate a staggering 22,000 litres per hour from hideous chrome and perspex fountains mounted on granite blocks. Having clearly seen better days, the main accommodation block was being half-heartedly refurbished. The process was being carried out in the manner of a middle-aged divorcee who buys a wardrobe of low-cut tops so prospective paramours won't immediately notice her crow's legs. But try as I might, I couldn't ignore the carpet layer who had decided to take a break from his duties and curl up for a nap by the lift doors.

It also seemed that a kleptomaniac convention had been through the previous week and I was accompanied to my lodgings by a porter who skipped over the recumbent tradesman and proceeded to read out an inventory of the room's contents. He paused after each item so that I could acknowledge the presence of the two bath towels, one drinking glass, duo of pillows and so on. Once he had completed the extensive list, I was informed that the process would be repeated before checking out to ensure that no items had “vanished”.

When I asked where the remote control for the TV was, he said that a R100 deposit was required.

At every turn, evidence mounted that I had checked into the modern-day equivalent of one of those Victorian sanato-riums where one might secrete a three-eared cousin born out of wedlock. The resort guide which I mistakenly assumed was to inform visitors of the varied spa delights on offer was instead a chilling catalogue of the dangers lurking in the mineral-rich waters.

Those with heart conditions were forbidden from a certain pool; another was unsuitable for anyone over sixty, and one was described as having the potential “to cause respiratory problems for children after twenty minutes …” Clearly believing that young guests and parents alike would flout this warning with cavalier contempt, the management saw fit to end the sentence with “and possible death”.

Suitably enthused I slipped into my boardies and made my way to the spa complex which had once been the resort's pièce de résistance but was now, as the French say, monumentally crappy. It was arranged around a large indoor pool beneath a two-storey ceiling made up of the white prefab panels most frequently found in government offices and sheltered accommodation. Aside from the fact that several of these were missing, affording a view of rust-weeping pipes, the atmosphere was made all the more clinical by walls covered in fluted concrete. The top floor, which was once given over to treatment rooms that resounded with the cracks of stubborn vertebrae, shiatsu-triggered groans of delight and the yelps that provide the soundtrack to the art of waxing now lay dormant. Outside each of these locked cubicles stood dusty receptacles which resembled oversized cricketers' boxes. Once attached to humidifiers, guests awaiting their 3pm back, sack and crack depilation would shove their faces into these contraptions for a shot of sinus-stripping eucalyptus.

Despite being hemmed by cracked tiles and festooned with posters either prohibiting jumping or once again informing patrons in graphic terms of the dangers that accompany soaking for more than twenty minutes at a time, the pool was an inviting prospect. Pale blue and quilted with patches of sunshine from prodigiously placed skylights, it was dominated by a dozen jets arranged in a circle which shot water five metres towards the ceiling. Here they were met by a suspended abstract chrome sculpture that looked as if it might have been scavenged from a bin outside the Alessi factory.

Dotted around the place on creaky chaises longues was an equally creaky handful of octogenarians in load-bearing one-pieces and Nancy Reagan memorial hairdos. They were accompanied by likeable sun-withered husbands in faded Speedos who felt compelled to greet you no matter how many times your paths crossed during the day. These salutations would inevitably start out with a crisp “Morning” before moving into the activity-focused realm, as in “Off for a dip are we?”, and settling on a game-show host wink with the inevitable cheek-cluck noise.

After a stint in the main pool I made my way to the hydro spa which was decked out in lurid orange tiles and acres of that wood panelling the Bradys had on the side of their car. At 37°C and possessing a mineral cocktail said to open a can of whupass on rheumatism, it lulled me into the kind of drowsy stupor that required two hours of prostrate recovery on a sun lounge by a fragrant jasmine hedge.

At that point a curious turn of events occurred. Perhaps it was the combination of dehydration and a midday beer but the place began to grow on me. Yes, it was faded and tatty. Yes, there was a likelihood that somewhere in the depths of the complex lay a fully equipped S&M dungeon where guests could be flagellated senseless under the pretext of therapy. However, despite its numerous faults, the place had an air of relaxed egalitarianism about it that must have approximated a Black Sea resort circa 1975.

For children on school holidays it surely offered the self-contained universe that characterise many of my fondest vacation memories. When substantially occupied, it was the kind of place where you could assemble a gang of prepubescent contemporaries quick time. A place where it felt like the summers were endless. A place where first kisses and lines like “Mary told me to tell you that you're dropped” were doled out in equal measure. Decrepit as it was, there was also a sense of sedate innocence about it.

This bonhomie was heightened by the fact that those whose budget would not stretch to a room could camp on a verdant stretch of lawn by the tennis courts. Had a spa with exclusive access to this multitude of natural springs been located in close proximity to Sydney, Stuttgart or Sante Fe, it would have been the A-list playground of twerps called Serge and Anastasia who program their enema appointments into Palm Pilots and address staff as “honey”.

After dinner at the on-site rib restaurant – that's my kind of health spa – I retired to my room to sample the local televisual fare.

Television only arrived in South Africa in 1976 and for its first two decades was entirely government controlled. Until then, radio had been the primary entertainment medium and we used to rush home to crowd around the stereo for shows like “Squad Cars” and “Jet Jungle” – a superhero powered by oats. Like everything else in the country at the time, the radio stations were divided by race. Those for Englishspeaking whites played pop music of the Chris De Burgh and Bread ilk. Those for Afrikaners had their own country music which still does big business, while the black population had to share a series of stations where air time was divided across half-a-dozen or so languages.

Many of the most popular programs, however, appeared across the radio spectrum in several tongues. Fleeting attempts to make these shows more multicultural were abandoned after participants with the most basic of educations were asked to answer questions in what was obviously their second language. The incident which prompted this retreat – and stakes out the shadowy ground between urban myth and “my brother heard it live” – took place on a show called
Check Your Mate,
where couples found out how well they really knew one another. “Where is the strangest place you've ever made love to your wife?” was the question posed to a man, who replied with something along the lines of, “In the carpark outside a casino”. After responding with a lame “talk about a winning hand” single entendre, the host then instructed the man's wife to be escorted out of the sound-proof booth and asked, “Where is the strangest place your husband has ever made love to you?” After taking a moment to consider her options, she replied, “In the bottom”.

Television confined our radio listening to the car and even though broadcasts in its nascent years were limited to two hours in the evening and two in the morning, the box provided us with a variety of entertainment we could barely fathom. Previously, yearnings for talking pictures meant a trip to either the local cinema or film shop. Most everyone we knew owned a small projector and reels of film in metal canisters would be lugged home with feverish anticipation on movie nights. After a few such evenings were marred by the choice of a pastel green wall as the projection surface, thus rendering all the stars slightly bilious, my dad soon mastered the art of stringing up white linen bed sheets.

Irrespective of what was happening between the sheets on screen, these nights were invariably filled with romance as Mum and Dad snuggled on the couch beneath a flickering beam of light, only to be disturbed when the celluloid snagged and snapped, causing us kids to glare at my father as if he had purposely misfed the projector. Sometimes there was even a fair whack of drama. The most notable of these instances was when a young maid named Maria who was new to the city and had recently begun working for us (everyone under our roof was always invited to movie night) was confronted with her first moving image. Seated beside me on the couch, she looked at the sheet not three metres away from her to see a steam train barrelling in her direction with a trail of gun-toting cowboys in pursuit. With a wide-eyed squeal of fear, she was over the sofa like an Olympic hurdler and halfway down the block before my dad caught up with her.

When our first TV – an enormous Telefunken with faux mahogany panelling – was delivered, the projector was unceremoniously relegated to a musty cupboard in the storeroom. As difficult as this may be to believe, my family and I actually watched the test pattern for a good hour after the set was initially tuned. The excitement during the build-up to the first broadcast was palpable in schoolyards, offices and beauty salons across the land.

And what was the first show we ever saw? It was a tutorial on how to tune in your TV. As we elbowed one another in glee, it didn't dawn on us that what we were in fact viewing was the quintessence of redundancy. We were viewing and that was all that mattered.

Aside from the restrictions placed on news services by a state-run broadcasting authority, the insidious presence of the apartheid regime manifested itself in myriad small-screen ways. Until a pair of dedicated channels was introduced in the early 1980s, the only black people you saw on TV were playing servants, rioting over something or other on the 6pm bulletin or dazzling spectators on the soccer field.

Even the notion of racial equality was a no-no. For example, I recall watching the simpering host of a show called
Pop Shop
announce the “Ebony & Ivory” video with the words, “Who'd have thought you could write a song about the keys of a piano?”

Things have come a long way and the racial make-up of South Africa is now reflected on television. From cap-toothed presenters, product-hocking guests and collagen-friendly soapie stars to dreadlocked game-show hosts and sexy weatherwomen, most everyone is black, multilingual and working it Oprah-style.

The ads also now feature groups of upwardly mobile black women perving on waiters at cafes with oh-so-hilarious orders for coffee – “Hot, dark and strong – like my men”. As opposed to sweet, white and weak perhaps.

The saving grace of the block of advertising I saw was the most heart-warmingly honest slogan I have ever encountered from a public utility. “Travel South African Rail,” went the pitch. “It's a pleasant experience.” Not great. Not marvellous. Just the best you could hope for.

South African television is mercifully behind the times in that its definition of current affairs has not yet been broadened to include the secret filming of compo cheats, extensively tattooed bickering neighbours and exposés of what really goes into your margarine. That evening's episode of a show called
Carte Blanche
had me scrambling for my notebook as it chronicled a rural hospital crisis that would depose any First World government.

So traumatic are the working conditions in overcrowded, under-resourced South African hospitals that staff would rather be unemployed than face what awaits them over the course of a shift. Rural health authorities argue that the infrastructure has crumbled in the wake of apartheid's demise, leading to such a lack of training that nurses do not have the diagnostic skills to prioritise between chest pains and haemorrhoids, a maintenance program so underfunded that gastrointestinal wards have no working toilets, and compromises such as “a drunk radiologist is better than none at all”.

Definition of a crisis? When a black doctor working in a far-flung location stares wearily down the barrel of a camera and says, “I'm glad the old system is gone but I saved more patients' lives under it”. The show ended with the shattering tale of a young family who had gone to visit their father after a minor operation to find him dead in bed with a still-hot meal by his side.

After passing the room inspection the next morning, as well as a brief pat-down to ensure I hadn't secreted a tumbler in an orifice, I made my way to reception to check out.