Chitchat

Winning letter

There is always hope

Magnificent! Soul-stirring – the most exceptional cover photograph yet.

I’m talking about the windmill on the cover of the Autumn 2020 issue of Platteland. It made me buy the magazine there and then. After all, does a windmill not sing, with every turn of the blades, “My heart belongs to the platteland?” It evokes such nostalgia!

Thank you to Chrismari van der Westhuizen for her compelling photo essay “Waiting for rain”. Her photographs and words seem both to capture and alleviate the grief and powerlessness. It is strangely beautiful but also frightful. Glowing with colour yet painful. Appalling too… that dead sheep. So heart-rending that it picks at your soul. You feel short of breath, even, and it is not only because of the dust. You gasp for air and feel the grit between your teeth. There is something surreal about the weak springbok, the bare veld, the harsh sun. How does an animal survive where no tree or tuft of grass exists? How do man and beast summon the strength to keep struggling through this hellish drought?

You start searching for any signs of rain. Weather lore. Did the tortoise cross the road? See, the devil’s thorn is flowering. An agama has looked up at the sky. Harbingers of rain… You