Once peopled by white males, expeditions to the wild places south of us are increasingly taking on black and female adventurers, writes Charl de Villiers
No island, no matter how remote, is immune to South Africa’s “rainbow revolution”.
The administrators of the South African National Antarctic Programme (Sanap) have just fielded the first black woman for a year-long tour of duty at a weather station on British-held Gough Island in the South Atlantic.
She is 23-year-old Kgaugelo Maria Rampedi, born in a rural village east of Pretoria and a trained assistant weather observer with the South African Weather Bureau.
How does one make sense of a woman like Rampedi, who has turned her back – albeit temporarily – on the security of a close circle of friends, a warm relationship with her parents and a society ostensibly tipped in favour of the up-and-coming, determined and educated black woman?
She is currently on a mountainous, stormy island 14km long and no wider than 6km, one that crams into its tight confines the enchanted, terrible worlds of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Joseph Conrad’s Typhoon.
To understand her, something has to be said of Gough. Both are extraordinary in their own right.
For better or worse, it is said, no-one comes off Gough unscathed: it is one of those obscure, wild, untouched places that define the edge of our society.
Situated roughly midway between Cape Town and the Falkland Islands, Gough lies just inside the Roaring Forties – a 10 band of climatic fury perched on the shoulders of the aptly named Furious Fifties and Screaming Sixties, wind and sea zones named by hardened, experienced sailors.
Gough is directly exposed to the line of advance of frontal weather systems moving northwards and eastwards across the Southern Ocean and South Atlantic.
Add its remoteness and crazed topography to tearing winds, 3,1m of rainfall a year, the odd snowfall and a mean daily temperature of 11,7C, and it is understandable that Gough has no history of permanent settlement. Apart from the weather station, there have been sporadic invasions by 19th- century sealers, diamond-hunters and the odd scientific expedition.
The island was discovered by a Portuguese seaman, Goncalo Alvarez, around 1505. Named for an English captain who, 226 years later, mischarted its position 400 nautical miles to the east, Gough Island’s only resident reminder of its original discoverer is the title of the pub at the weather station. Moves are afoot, however, to rename its second highest peak Goncalo Alvarez.
Although the island is a British possession, South Africa has maintained a meteorological presence there since 1956. Situated in a deep, coastal valley named The Glen, the hut taken over by the South Africans had belonged to the privately organised Gough Island Scientific Survey, which had stayed on the island in the summer of 1955/6.
The record of this expedition of young British scientists, Islands in the Sea by (now Sir) Martin Holdgate (London, 1958), is still the classic text about Gough.
Easy reading, it details the adventures of mapping the island and cataloguing Gough’s rocks and animal and plant life.
Of volcanic origin, like the Tristan da Cunha group 223 nautical miles to the north-west, Gough Island lies to the east of one the Western Hemisphere’s greatest oceanic mountain ranges – the trans- equatorial, mid-Atlantic ridge.
While its highest summit is only 910m, the topography of Gough Island is convulsive: towering cliffs fall steeply into the sea and the few plateaus that exist are deeply incised by canyon-like gullies. The remnants of lava flows and volcanic dykes remind us that the island was formed by a series of titanic upheavals starting some 2,55-million years ago.
While less forbidding than its sub- Antarctic cousins, Gough is a walker’s nightmare. Ankle-twisting tussock grass, shoulder-high giant ferns and a contorted, woody shrub called Phylica dominate the coastal terrace and foothills. The surface of Gough Island’s peaks, valleys and ridges is invariably moss, always sodden and ready to peel away with the slightest pressure.
Gough Island is characterised by a highly specialised, delicately balanced and fragile ecology. And as is common to extreme environments, the island’s limited biological diversity is complemented by huge populations of animals where they occur.
Two species of seals are the only naturally occurring mammals that breed on the island. Sub-Antarctic fur seals, Arctocephalus tropicalis, are the most prolific of the two, the other being the Southern Elephant Seal, Mirounga leonina.
Dr Marthan Bester, a University of Pretoria zoologist who – barring short visits during relief voyages – has spent more than five years living on sub-Antarctic islands to study seals, says at least 85% of the world’s population of some 310 000 sub-antarctic fur seals is found on Gough.
Altogether 54 species of bird have been recorded at Gough, of which two are endemic: the Gough Bunting, Rowettia goughensis, and Gough Moorhen, Gallinula comeri. The latter is flightless and ecologists conjecture that this may be an adaptation to the high winds that blast the island.
Little is known about the ecological importance of both species, which are listed as rare in the World Conservation Union’s (IUCN) Red Data Book.
The most prolific bird species are the so- called burrowing seabirds or “nightbirds” – there are tens of thousands of breeding pairs of petrels, prions and shearwaters. These birds haunt Gough after dark with their eerie warbling, cooing, whistling, hooting and the most disturbing sound of all – a cry like that of a newborn infant.
The only human activity permitted on and around Gough is the South African weather station at Transvaal Bay, manned year round by a six-member team, and limited fishing for lobster by an approved concession- holder.
Gough and its 12-nautical-mile marine zone is managed as a nature reserve under the highest category of protection afforded by the IUCN. The United Nations’ World Heritage Convention in 1995 made Gough a World Heritage Site – the only cool- temperate island south of the equator to be honoured in this way.
Partly in support of the World Heritage Site nomination, and partly to ensure more formal protection against potential environmental disturbances, a management plan was drafted for Gough Island and accepted by the government of Tristan da Cunha in 1993.
Much of the work on this plan was carried out by conservation biologists linked to the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology. UCT and the University of Pretoria have also supplied conservation officers for the annual environmental inspection of the meteorological base and its surrounds.
Gough Island is managed in terms of a zoning system. The logistics zone around the weather station is the most disturbed environment on the island and the only one where year-round occupation is allowed. All of the remaining portions of the Gough Island Nature Reserve are designated conservation zones. This means that access may only be by foot, helicopter or small boats, with permission from the administrator.
And Rampedi? Initially trained as a human resources manager, Rampedi’s last job was working part-time as a burger bar assistant at MacDonalds in Pretoria.
In May, she was chosen by the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism to be trained as an assistant weather observer by the South African Weather Bureau. The department runs South Africa’s two island bases in the South Atlantic and southern Indian Ocean, as well as the flagship Antarctic base, Sanae IV.
On September 3 last year, Rampedi left Cape Town with five team members to sail to Gough Island – more than 1 620 nautical miles to the south-west – as the 44th South African expedition to go there. On October 3 she joined her teammates in waving farewell to the SA Agulhas as it steamed away – only due to return a year later.
Expeditioning used to be very much a white, men-only affair and, barring the odd “coloured” member, was to stay so until the 1990s.
Black workers were sometimes included on construction and maintenance teams, such as the group of Department of Public Works artisans who spent four Antarctic summers building the new, state-of-the-art Sanae IV base, completed in early 1997. Thanks to the impetus of accelerated reform after the 1994 elections, black weather observers and scientific field assistants are joining expeditions to Gough and Marion islands in growing numbers.
In the austral summer of 1996/7, a diesel mechanic named Boasa Tladi became the first African male to be sent south for a 14- month, over-wintering stint in Antarctica.
Changes in Sanap have largely centred on reshuffling the complexion of male expeditioners; women until recently were still complaining about a “glass ceiling”.
Sources in the South African Antarctic and weather programme say they find it exceedingly difficult to attract suitably qualified black applicants.
“Black specialists in senior positions don’t want to go south, while younger people are often simply not qualified for the job. The long distances and extended absence from home also seem to be a major deterrent,” a well-placed source said.
Gender reforms may be a late item on the Sanap agenda, but they have arrived with a vengeance.
It was only in 1996/7 that a woman, medical doctor Aithnie Rowse, made it on to a wintering South African Antarctic expedition.
Her comment at the time? “Why has it taken so long? The British have been fielding women in Antarctica for years.”
A trenchant statement, but soon to be overtaken by events. Two women – another physician and a physicist – were on the same expedition as Tladi; weather observer Sarien Lategan pioneered women’s involvement on Gough Island in 1997/8; and no fewer than half of Kgaugelo’s six-member team are women – including the Gough 44 leader, trauma nurse Anke Kotze.
The 13 members of the 1998/9 meteorological, scientific and technical team on Marion Island are also being led by a woman, nursing sister Antoinette Lombard.
Asked what she plans to make out of the year at Gough Island, Rampedi thinks long and hard while chewing her lip and staring out at sea.
“As long as my work is OK, I’ll be fine. What better chance can one have to get to know yourself?”