"Two friends and I paddled 1 400 kilometres down the lower reaches of the Orange. Here the Great River, as it was known before the coming of the Europeans, spawns a thin green line through arid South Africa: the Karoo, the Kalahari, Bushmanland, Namaqualand and the Richtersveld. I conceived of our journey as an exploration of landscape, of the austere and surreal desert valleys, gorges, plains and mountains that border the river. The book took a course of its own, though, became and inquiry into the people shaped by this landscape - pastoralists, outlaws, fugitives from justice and injustice - frontier people, people at the borderline of European and African traditions." The author
Borderline is a travelogue, but a travelogue with a difference. William Dicey takes the reader on a fascinating journey down the Orange River, a journey interwoven with historical detail from the places he visits and the history of South Africa as a whole. Augmented by his own photographs and an abundance of other visual material, the book becomes a document of discovery (in many ways reminiscent of the work of W.G. Sebald), much like the source material that Dicey himself quotes from – the first European explorers of the South African interior. But unlike these early documents of journeys into the unknown, and their depictions of outlandish animals and men, Dicey’s travelogue is a document that touches the very fabric of history.
Deriving much of its energy from the frontier days of the Cape Colony and from the people who populated that frontier: the San, the Nama, the Griqua, the Basters, and the coloured people into whom they have merged, Dicey investigates the waves of human occupation and the subsequent fallout as the indigenous people and then the Basters and Griquas were moved off their land around the Orange. This is in fact the story of the river, how it has shaped and in turn been shaped by South African history.
William Dicey’s own inimitable style, coupled with his bold investigations into South Africa’s often forgotten history and his obvious love of the harsh country he travels through make this a compelling read.
This is history at its most accessible and personal. Dicey’s writing is fresh and his story is as much of the people he meets as of the history itself.