In February 1990, years before I became a dual South African-Australian citizen, I spent a week blissfully off-grid in Kruger National Park. There was no radio signal, so I couldn’t tune in to my colleagues’ news broadcasts.
On the drive back to Johannesburg I saw the headline poster propped outside a roadside cafe: Nelson Mandela had been released after 27 years in jail.
The only consolation for my ignorance of the most pivotal moment in South Africa’s history was the memory of the divine wilderness I’d been visiting at the time.
At dawn, my now-husband and I had listened to the haunting call of an African fish eagle.
At sunset, we watched elephants gathering to drink. We saw a pack of 40 endangered, famously elusive African wild dogs sunning themselves in broad daylight, as though reclaiming their territory.
These embattled creatures were living free – the perfect analogy for the events unfolding in our country.
Three years…