Injisuthi security

Hi Gollum

Waiting for homearanyas reply here. As the route down the ridge above the hut fro the CP saddle is a mission. I am wondering if they have not created a 'higher' contour path fro Judge, towards corner and round to intersect the ridge G E does show faint banding in places higher than contour.
Re the lantern train, I have serious doubts that these guys use any form of artificial lght.
[A] they live and move very efficiently in the dark at home.
this kind of light will completely blow their element of stealth.
I suspect it may have been a deliberate or delayed late walk in by Backpackers or MCSA guys, as they often use the two huts.

Keen to hear what he says to serioustribes ??

i was hiking with gollum on that trip, and reckon it was very unlikely to be other hikers, as we saw the same train of lights the following night from up the Trojan wall, going in the same direction, towards Judges Pass. and they were all about 50-100m from each other. seemed very strange that hikers would walk like this. we counted between 15-20 of these lights. also, they were yellow in colour, not the cold-white of LED headlights. seemed very suspicious.

I have been wondering why the Centenary hut area might be a strategically useful location for smuggling activity. I'm thinking that the main reason is that there is a jeep track which runs pretty much all the way from Centenary hut to the trout hatchery on the Bushmans river. The jeep track can be gained just 1.5km from centenary over easy ground and the same track reaches the tar road at the hatchery about 8km down valley of the main Giants Castle camp. The track is easy walking in the dark and, importantly, I reckon this is a very, very quiet area. Compare, for example, with Mnweni where the valleys are very populated. That in itself is not a problem, except that given enough smuggling, I can imagine a situation where some of the kraals would want a payoff. Meeting no one on the jeep track leads to no such issues.

If the authorities were so inclined, it would not be difficult to intercept a train of 20 smugglers going down that jeep track. A phone call from the ridge near Centenary would give about 5 hours of lead time. That said, its hard to imagine that the guards at Giant Castle entrance don't notice.

More difficult to pin down but also probably relevant to the chosen smuggling routes are the politics from the road-head onwards in KZN. There are a number of possible dynamics here. On the one hand, I would expect that the smugglers can't let any general pattern of behaviour become too obvious on the roads leading out of the mountains. The more obvious and regular the car traffic, the more risky and expensive the route will be. On the other hand, there are probably safe houses in the foothills and paid off officials which make the route secure, at least for a time.

Paths that lead out from the escarpment directly to tourist camps, e.g. Giants and Langalibalele are undesribale - which explains why the Ndedema Valley, for example, and now Corner/Judge are becoming popular.

@plouw

Thanks for the observation re lighting colour and spacing between. I would have to agree that Hikers would stick close at night, particularly a large party (being that these are generally club organised) including the fact that you observed this movement twice. A cheap torch/globe combination would cast a warm lantern like glow.
This is definitely easy ground out, although the corner pass route is a big ?mark. That is anything but, particularly with a bulky 30/40 kg bag.
Observations that we have made is that these guys appear to post a lookout on the top. Most of the movement in Lesotho, and also down the relevant pass, appears to be done in daylight. After sitting it out, movement in KZN then seems to take place towards dusk, and into the night.
Obviously this is to [a]avoid detection, be better able to duck if ambushed by the authorities. This might also have something to do with the spacing they maintain, as I have seen similar spacings in Ndedema and at Keith Bush.
Without doubt safe houses exist within the communities they move down to.
Hopefully we can steer the interest of relevant parties here.

What have observations been as to LITTER and FIREPLACES along this route?

The spacing is no doubt an evasion tactic. If there were an attempt to round up the train, they could bombshell in multiple directions much more easily if spread out. The disadvantage, from the smugglers perspective, is that the spacing and the yellow lights mark them out as easily identifiable. Too large a group for hikers, too spread out for a hiking party, too yellow a light, walking too late in the evening for most. This makes then vulnerable to any attempt to quell the smuggling - if there were any such attempt that is.

Over the last 10 years I have been doing trips into the central Sahara (southern Algeria & Libya and N Niger). When we first went there, we occasionally came across smuggling traffic. Cigs into Libya/Algeria from the south and fuel in the opposite direction. Then, after a few years, we noticed that some convoys that travelled past were 100 cars strong - all with rear lights removed. This in a vast area where you'd see no other cars over up to 8 days of driving. Like the smugglers in the Berg, tourists were largely ignored by the smugglers as they had more important things to focus on. Also, like the Berg I suspect, local authorities were paid off and were party to it all. It seemed like it was something we'd just have to put up with and there was never any serious attempt by any authorities to deal with it. In fact settlements centrered on the smuggling traffic grew up in the middle of the desert - complete with schools and clinics (see G E at 21 deg 11 min 18 sec N and 1 deg 2 minutes and 30 sec E for one example of a settlement less than 100m across the Algerian border in far northern Mali). Now, in 2010, the smuggling has gone on to include hundreds of tons of cocaine with individual shipments larger than the GDP of the countries they pass through. A year or so back a 727 with 8 to 10 tons of cocain landed in Mali in the desert. The smugglers torched the plane - presumably because a 727 isn't worth the bother of refueling. Now these gangs have also earned about 100 miliion dollars through kidnapping. Currently there are 5 French nationals being held in NE Mali. Now I don't for a moment expect that the Berg will go this way. It is a different place, with a different history. But there are some parallels, I think. One parallel is that we should expect smuggling to escalate. The profits distort the local economy in a way that makes other livelihoods seem worthless and that too encourages discontent. Whereas the guys watching over animals in Lesotho might have been content in the past, they are now accelerated into a new world of relative riches. Other crime follows. From what I have seen these kinds of activities seldom have happy endings. In the case of the Sahara, the small community of westerners who travelled there sat around, posting the occasional comment on forums, hoping things would calm down. They never did. And now, with all the kidnapping, tourists don't go there anymore.

Bingo Mnt-tiska!

Perfect example as to why a head in the sand attitude gets people buried.
And while I am sure that the activities will not escalate to those funding terrorism and armed conflict, they still impact on lives and environments.
One story, such as the recent Cathedral debate, can chase a dozen or more tourists away.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" E. Burke

I'm pretty sure the guards are keeping this undercover as they must be getting a cut.

After our mentioned trip, we asked the lady at the Injisuthi office about these sightings, she seemed truly very confused, but the male guard standing at the gate had this mischievous grin on his face telling us its nothing.

who would the right people be to inform when spotting smugglers or such activity?
it feels like the authorities just dont give a damn!