Culture and nature in the Valley of a Thousand Hills - a tough guide to 'other' spaces

Abstract

One small spot of theory for the road With the promise of a comfortable airconditioned ride encompassing breathtaking views, Zulu culture, nature reserves, crocodiles and snakes, commercial guides offer visitors half-day tours to the Valley of a Thousand Hills in South Africa. Through providing an unsettling alternative narrative to the same route, this guide bypasses bare-breasted Zulu maidens, warriors, diviners and lethal reptiles on display. Instead, it briefly dwells on other places offering less packaged insight into the relationship between culture and nature in post-colonial, post-apartheid South Africa. To appreciate the significance of the traffic on the margin between sites of alternate social ordering, as well as between nature and culture, the road is adhered to closely as a conduit shown to have shaped views of the landscape called the Valley of a Thousand Hills. This is all seen through the windows of a conceptual vehicle test-driven for African conditions - Michel Foucault's increasingly popular heterotopia. By taking it on the Old Main Road between Pietermaritzburg and Durban, whilst keeping an eye on the past, the complex globally interwoven heterotopology of South Africa is revealed, and a view that subverts the popular tourist perspective of the landscape is provided. This paper is a culmination of a personal oral tradition of taking journalists and visiting academics for a drive whilst discussing the local situation during the last decade. The focus has varied with the interests of the guided, and the guide has always made fresh discoveries along the route. The invariable goal, however, is to subvert the usual gloss which welcomes us as follows: Wending inland from the outskirts of Durban, to Cato Ridge, this fascinating tourist route is all about rolling hills, valleys, gorges,

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