HERE AND THERE: Fire on the mountain

We were half an hour from Knysna, said to be one of the world’s top 100 destinations along South Africa’s famous Garden route that follows the coast from Port Elizabeth to Cape Town. We had left Port Alfred, also known as the “heart of the sunshine coast “saying a fond goodbye to the residential marina, a lavish estate of manmade waterways and arching bridges with houses backing on to private jetties in a lattice work of looping streets and canals. The South African sky ensconces as you travel the routes of this beautiful country, curving to welcome your approach with sedate hills and valleys and sweeping plains set with rocky outcrops.

This was the fourth day of our family holiday and we had been playing CD requests along the drive. My daughter Oyinkan asked for Asa. As we crested a hill that brought us within sight of Knysna the strains of Asa’s hit song Fire on the Mountain burst into the background. Even with the wound up windows we could smell the smoke and sense the ashy grittiness in the atmosphere. Ahead in the distance billows of grey smoke were issuing from a hillside. There was indeed fire on the mountain.

Closer to the town we saw signs advising us of a water emergency and urging all and sundry to be careful with the use of water. Months of dry hot weather had turned the bush into kindle ready for a spark. The fire had begun that morning and the two helicopters overhead represented the initial skirmish to put out the hillside blaze from overhead by dousing it before it became a danger to the residents dotted around the base.

At the waterside restaurant later that evening where we headed for supper, the fire was the starting point of conversation. Through the floor to ceiling glass walls we could look right across the bay up the hill to the ring of molten orange and red glowing like a fiery giant necklace in the night darkness. It was a beautiful sight, but fearful too. People remarked on how quickly it had spread up that hill, tracing a curving path upwards, like a piece of tinsel furled around a Christmas tree. Would the fire burn itself out before it started coming downhill and threatening residents at the base?

Nobody was on the run, yet. In fact, more were expected. December is the climax of the holiday season in South Africa and the high point of the summer. Schools begin their long vacations in the first week of the month, some even earlier, and the country quite literally closes down for six weeks as rich and poor in the big urban centres head out to join family, commune at their ancestral homelands or to relax and make merry at holiday homes and resorts along the coast.

Likewise in Nigeria cities all over the country would find themselves emptied of sojourners from elsewhere come December, all heading home for “Moss”, luggage bursting at the seams, buses swaying with cargo and knitted brows battling with the arithmetic of making the money go round. That pattern now is threatened by factors that reveal a further crumbling of the features that defined our lifestyle, as one more bastion of tradition falls under the weight of our inability to deal methodically with our problems.

We do figuratively, have a fire on the mountain with a ring of flames around the seat of the presidency that is a lot hotter than the physical fire that was creeping round that distant hill in Knysna. Emergency operations had already got into gear by the afternoon of the day the fire started. By the following morning though that fire had blown out and the cool morning air gave way to bright blue skies and clear dry air. No smoke, no ash, all gone.

Meanwhile back at our figurative fire there is no sign that the flames have been scotched, only that we are back again at the brinksmanship that characterises many of our national crises. Lies and subterfuge replace action. Rules are discountenanced for reasons that are simply unfathomable. Are we waiting for some sign in the night sky, an 'other' world manifestation of the powers that guide our reasoning, one that only says live for today because we have absolutely no concrete concept of tomorrow and how we want to get there.