Regiments of Red-coated Sentinels

Everywhere you go along the southern edges of the Karoo, a slow-blooming colour splash straddles the Western Cape and Eastern Cape, brightening every north-facing hillside with colonies of ferocious thorn-lined leaves, upright and motionless against winter’s icy winds.

They stand proud in the early morning mist, like regiments of red-coated foot soldiers waiting for the call to charge.

So war-ready do they look that there are records of British soldiers shooting them to pieces where they stood in silhouette on ridges surrounding Grahamstown (recently renamed Makhanda) and along the Great Fish River. They were, according to legend, mistaken for red-blanketed Xhosa forces.

“In fact,” says Basil Mills, a fount of knowledge on wild things, Eastern Cape Frontier War battles and more, and based with the National English Literary Museum in Makhanda, “the amaXhosa have legends about the aloe warriors that