Provides glimpse into paradise
RMS St Helena, the mailship that is the island’s only link with the outside world, calling every three weeks. In May, the RMS, as the islanders refer to the ship, was laid up in dry dock for two voyages, leaving them cut off from the outside world, leaving other islanders stranded in Cape Town and unable to get home.
The St Helena Government had to step in and charter a flight to get those islanders home.
Not everyone has been happy about the new flights, some bemoan the impending loss of the island’s culture built up over 500 years; a melange of English settlers, freed African slaves, Malay and Chinese, all speaking a unique patois of English that can sound as incomprehensible as West African Pidgin delivered in an accent that seems to veer from the Caribbean to the other side of New Zealand.
The majority, though, are overjoyed. Everything comes by boat; people: supplies, even a replacement for a broken part on a boat engine – and that takes three weeks to arrive, another six if it’s the wrong part. The bigger issue is the economy, or lack of one.
St Helena has no industry worth the name, no agriculture, no manufacturing. There’s fishing but it’s mostly artisanal.
The lack of access has bedevilled every attempt to start anything. The island costs the British government £53 million (just shy of a billion rand) in social grants and aid every year to maintain.
The new air service, it is hoped, will address that, but most importantly kickstart a tourism industry, allowing visitors to experience what is truly a unique and spectacular offering, combining heritage and flora and fauna.
The diving is among the best in the world, the landscape is breathtaking, by turns moody and misty, or sunny and spectacular, there are hikes to delight beginners and challenge the experienced, flora and fauna that enchanted Charles Darwin; and, then there’s the heritage.
In many ways, St Helena was Britain’s version of Robben Island; used to banish the unwanted, starting with Napoleon Bonaparte after he was finally defeated at Waterloo in 1815. He arrived on the island shortly afterwards and died six years later. He was entombed on the island, but was later disinterred and reburied in Paris.
Napoleon was followed by Zulu king Dinuzulu ka Cetshwayo, whose father defeated the British at Isandlwana. Dinuzulu fought against the British annexation of the Zululand coast and was sent to St Helena for seven years in 1890.
He would later be jailed again for the Bambatha rebellion, but that would be in South Africa.
The British then exiled 6 000 Boer