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Outside Magazine, June 2004

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Technicolor Darkness (cont.)


	Tangerine dream: Gustav van Rensburg climbing at Waterval Boven (Jimmy Chin)

IN A COUNTRY BLESSED with rock, it seemed odd that I met so few black kids climbing. Though soccer, cricket, and rugby are hugely popular among black South Africans, there are few incentives to get township youth on a rope. As in America, climbing is still a white middle-class hobby. Ed blames apartheid for killing the love of the outdoors in black culture—that and the fact that a pair of rock shoes costs more than some people earn in a month. But in an unlikely place, I meet an exception.

East of Johannesburg is Waterval Boven, South Africa's premier sport-climbing area, where the rust-red cliffs along the Elands River draw an international crowd. With 13 churches, three pubs, and 12,000 people, Boven is two towns—one white, one black. No barrier divides them, but the transition between gardened avenues and ramshackle Swazi township is stark. I rent a room at the Roc 'n Rope hostel, which the owner, a 30-year-old Afrikaner named Gustav van Rensburg, and his French wife, Alex, 33, run as a climbing school. When we head to Boven's crashing waterfall the next day, Gustav brings a police guard.

Crime became an issue for South African climbers three years ago, after a spate of holdups at the Wave Cave, a popular crag in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Boven is 500 miles from Natal, but Gustav was worried about photographer Jimmy Chin's cameras. Recently, a

In a country so blessed with rock, it seemed odd that I met so few African kids climbing. Ed blames Apartheid for killing black culture's love of the outdoors—that and the price of rock shoes.

township tough wielding a machete had threatened to cut a rappelling climber's rope unless he handed over money. The climber slid down; the would-be thief ran off.

Several days later, on a climb called Rude Bushman, my partner is a dreadlocked 25-year-old Swazi named Thulani Mazibuko. Thulani's name means "silence," but once we start climbing, he opens up. He tells me he was just another township kid looking at a bleak future until he took a climbing class from Gustav. Seeing his talent—he's climbed 5.12—Gustav gave him a teaching job. Thulani now rents a room at Gustav and Alex's place.

Thulani moves easily between the township and the van Rensburgs' house, aloof but not above the loiterers outside the Like Father Like Son liquor store. His ambitions are straightforward: move from Boven someday, go to school, find higher-paying work. But he's in no hurry to leave.

"Township guys think it's strange that I live with white people; they call me a white man," he says. "But I don't care."

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