Albie stands on mountain beacon

IN ALBIE’S WORDS: I'm standing on Maclear Beacon. I would have been about 11 or 12. In 1946 my mother married for a second time, Norman Edwards. We'll see a picture of him later, and I'll speak about him bit more later.

Through him, I would have climbed Table Mountain, and this is the highest point on the mountain. At the back, you can see the top of Devil's Peak. And having climbed the mountain, it was quite easy to climb up to the top of the beacon. It’s near the front of the table and not too far from the walk up Platteklip Gorge.

The mountain became very important for me, over many years. So, if this is 1946, right up to 1966 when I left for exile, I would regularly climb. Norman had separated from my mom, they divorced. I had a group of friends, and we would meet at Kloof Nek corner and decide where to walk from there. And even when it was raining, we would go on the Contour Path and find a cave. In those days you could make a fire on the mountain. Towards the end of the walk, you would look for spaces with firewood and little streams of water with a wonderful, special mountain taste.

There were two Mountain Club huts, so the whites had a stone double story building with sleeping bunks and a tap with water from the reservoir. I think also they had electric lights. And then a little bit down the slope was the open club with a corrugated iron roof. No bunks that I remember; no water; no electricity; but filled with people with energy, joy and laughter. It was one of the few public spaces where you could meet and associate and where people from all communities could meet, associate and enjoy life. There was even a competition between the best of the coloured rock climbers and the best of the white rock climbers. The best white climber would open up a new and dangerous climb, and a week later Neville Garret, the best climber from the coloured community, would repeat it. Then the next week, Neville would open up a new climb, and a week later the white climber would follow him. The competition became intense. They would climb without ropes, climb down, and do it at night, until we stopped them. I’ve often thought of a film being made about it.

During the days of hardest repression, the mountain was my refuge. When my movements were severely restricted by banning orders, I would commit a criminal offence if I moved out of the white areas of Cape Town. But I was restricted to paradise. I could swim at the beach and climb the mountain. And if the security police were following me, they would have to get ropes and climb up Woody Buttress.

There was one horrible part. I would look down from the top of the mountain and see all the beautiful white suburbs with lovely views overlooking the sea, and then, in the distance were the Cape Flats and the townships. I'd feel an anger and rage at the visual injustice. I began to hate the beauty of Cape Town. Something terrible happens when you hate beauty. I was hating beauty. Could I ever enjoy beauty again?

When I came back from exile in 1990, I was determined that on the first day I would go up Table Mountain. I didn't know, now after the bomb and I’m older, if I could do it. A team of people from the ANC were waiting to escort me up. And we walked up from Constantia Nek, over the top, past the reservoirs. It was a misty day, but after 24 years I remembered the way. I’d done it so often. And then a strange, totally surprising thing happened, something I’d totally forgotten about. It was feeling the stinging from the prickly little bushes I'm walking through scratching my shins, so subliminal, so evocative. A thing you don't even notice exactly, but it came through very, very, very powerfully. I came down Kasteelspoort and walked along the Pipe Track to Kloof Nek corner and felt triumphant. I was reconnecting with Cape Town, glimpsing the possibilities of being able to love its beauty.

What was amusing was that Dullah Omar had arranged a meeting to meet the returning exile, and I was, like, two or three hours late, and he was furious. For him, the meeting was much more important than my mountain walk. I was never rude to Dullah, but if I had been, I would have given him the finger, because I'd been dreaming for 24 years about my day back! Meanwhile, I wrote at the time that I had believed that when freedom came there’d be no more meetings. Was I wrong! Was I wrong!