** SECURITY WARNING** Our recent ordeal in The Berg, 15 April 2024

We have recently returned home from an amazing 13-day DGT adventure. Unfortunately, we fell victim to a horrifying event on the mountain, and I feel it is important to make other hikers aware of what happened to us. The least I want to do is to cause negative publicity to a place as exceptional as the Drakensberg, BUT I realise that I do have a responsibility to warn other hikers, with the hope that they don't end up in the same traumatic situation as we were: 
On Thursday, 11 April 2024, our group of 5 ladies, 2 guides and 6 porters started the DGT from Sentinel Car Park. On night 4, Sunday the 14th of April, we set up camp at Tlanyaku River late afternoon. Approximately an hour before we reached camp, we encountered a shepherd on the top of the hill, as we were crossing a river, who was shouting, angrily waving his arms around and throwing rocks. He almost appeared like he was 'ticking', and all we could make of it was that we was trying to heard his sheep before the rain started. In hindsight, we are thinking that this shepherd might have had something to do with the attack that followed later and that he called for the police & soldiers.
As we arrived at camp, it started raining and there was lightning and thunder, so we all had a very early night. At 1:42 am (15 April), I heard what I thought sounded like a gunshot, followed by an orange flare that went over our tents. My initial thought was that someone was in an emergency and needed help, but the very next moment gunfire started from in the distance, continuing until we could hear the gunshots right next to our tents. The duration of the gunfire felt like an eternity, but our group reckons it carried on for about 15 minutes. I thought we were caught in the middle of tribes fighting against each other, but when the gunfire stopped, we heard them shouting for us to get out of our tents and demanded identification, saying they'd been notified that there were bad, dangerous people in their area. We counted 1 police guy, 6 soldiers, and an unconfirmed number of shepherds, that some have arrived on horses. They were armed with machine guns. The police guy seemed calm, but the 1 soldier, a shortish guy, was extremely aggressive and instigated most of the interrogation. He seemed like he was on something and told one of the ladies to "Shut the f@ck up".They said that we were in Lesotho illegally, that they were going to deport us and took photos of some of our passports. They carried on about "Where are the white men? Why would women be here without their husbands?", so we explained that we were a hiking group.
They said that they were hoping to 'have a good time tonight'.Repeatedly they asked if we had guns, alcohol or cigarettes, but we told them that we didn't have, and one lady offered them her food and money, but they didn't seem interested in that. They also asked if we had meat on us. It started raining again and I thought that that might make them leave, but they just angrily carried on their interrogation. They demanded our 1 guide & porters to stand on their 1 knee, with their noses and faces in the ground, 1 arm behind their back, and when they lost their balance and fell over, they beat them with a stick all over their head and body. They cocked the gun and held it against their heads, execution style. They said that they'll show us how they'll make the guide & porters talk.
Some correspondence was in their Basotho language, which we couldn't understand. During this whole ordeal, 3 soldiers left, and it seemed like they went up the hill for signal to make a call. They told us to go into our tents and to not leave until they came back for hot coffee later in the morning so that they could watch what we had with us, what we packed in our bags. They discovered that we had a satellite phone, but couldn't figure out how it worked. Eventually, they left with the satellite phone, our guide's ID/guiding certification card, 2 head torches and a pair of hiking poles, but shortly afterward, they returned with the satellite phone, hiking poles, and our guide's certification card, they only kept the 2 head torches.
They then made the guide and porters sing a song, to prove that they were Zulu. After they left again, we were shivering and shaking from a combination of shock and from being cold and wet from the rain.
After sunrise, we all came out of our tents, discussed what happened, and tried to make some sense of the whole ordeal. There were many used bullets scattered around our campsite. We waited some time for their return, as they demanded, but we thought that since they returned most of the items they initially took, they probably wouldn't come back. We used our satellite phone to contact authorities to report the incident as an emergency, packed up, and left as soon as we could, hoping that they wouldn't follow us.

Anile, I am so sorry that you and your group suffered this trauma; it must have been terrifying. What a despicable act of intimidation and attempted extortion. I hope you have all managed to start healing since the incident. It seems you continued with your DGT, which shows impressive fortitude. It is a good thing you were so well supported on the hike. Thank you for sharing your story; it is very important that the hiking community is made aware of these incidents. Did you report the incident to the police?

Thank you TheRealDave. 3 of our group of 5 finished the DGT, which I  believe was very therapeutic after the incident and we spoke alot during our hike, about what happened.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to make a case at SAPS Bushman's Nek, because they said it happened outside the SA border, in Lesotho, but I I've been in correspondence with Rob Faure, Gavin Raubenheimer, Steve Cook & Paul Kok. I've been assured that the incident has been reported to all relevant authorities and that they are committed to get to the bottom of what happened. 

Hi Anile
Really sorry that happened to you guys, it read like an action movie, except there was no lights camera action, this was real and scary.  This is the second time that the LDF has caused issues, but nearly as horrible as this incident.  Good on you guys for continuing and completing the GT, as you say it was therapeutic to discuss with the group.  How did the guides feel about the incident?  It might also be a good idea to look into some trauma counselling as a group or individually as these can have a nasty way of creeping back on you when you least expect it, just a thought, not medical advise.  Thank you for reporting it.  Would media coverage of incidents like this be a good thing, it just seems to fly under the radar, not sure what everyone else thinks?

Hi Anile, sorry you had to experience this, really unpleasant. Out of interest do you have the GPS position this occurred, or could you mark the point on the map?

Might be useful as past incidents with lesotho defence force reoccured a few times in same location.

m

Thanks Serious tribe. Yes, we indeed felt like we were trapped in an action movie. The guides & porters were shaken, but they didn't share too much with us afterward about the incident. I got the impression they were concerned that this could hurt their business, which is their prime income to provide for their family. The one guide had done the DGT 55 times before, and he said that this was his very 1st encounter like this. Going forward, they made an effort to make contact when we saw a shepherd near where we were going to set up camp and made conversation to assess whether it was a friendly shepherd and that he/they didn't mind us camping there.
I understand your question about whether media coverage might be a good thing... I'm in 2 minds about this; on the one hand, I feel responsible to warn other hikers and on the other hand, it saddens me that people might decide not to do something as incredibly special as the DGT and never get to experience the Berg's beauty like we did and the effect it might have on people's lives who earn a living from taking hikers to Drakensberg. Initially I was reluctant to share our experience, but realised that I don't really have a choice. Imagine something worse happened to another hiker in that area and we never told our story to send out a warning?

Hi firephish. Unfortunately I didn't record the GPS coordinates, but attached is a pic of where at Tlanyaku River the incident took place (marked with red dot ).

I’ve read over the Berg Alert thread for 2019 which has details on the LDF encounters from January 2019. 
There are a few similarities to the events reported by Anile:
1. Culprits seemed to be defence force officials
2. ‘Officials’ were armed
3. The parties had guides/porters that were subject to punishment
4. The ‘officials’ demanded push ups or similar
5. The reports suggest the culprits were on drugs of some sort
6. The ‘officials’ complained about border violations
7. Theft was not evidently a key motivation
 

Agreed on the negative press, but it is good that it is mentioned on this forum as a start and a heads up.

I think that with more commercial ventures offering guided trips to bigger groups more regularly, the potential for conflict is going to be there.  I can imaging shepherds getting upset when their livestock gets stressed out by passing hikers, or stressed out by the dogs who are barking at passing hikers.  

It was good that the guides approached the next shepherds prior to camping as this may just be the polite thing to do, perhaps with a gift of a few sweets to sweeten the deal.

The Thlanyaku valley has always been populated, but is getting more so.  The shepherd may not have expected the soldiers to go to this extreme, and is very unprofessional of them to behave in this manner.  I also think when shepherds get fobbed off when asking for sweets, they have no conception of a GT and limited food weight, they think we are just being mean.  

Hopefully the authorities will be able to bring these troops to book and they get suitably punished.  I can’t believe that they were not under the influence of something as they really are ambassadors for their country, and this is not good optics at all.

I have recently posted some photos of a recent NT I did and I had a lot of very "angry" comments and messages send to me via FB, threatening deportations and violence because we are illegally in Lesotho and need to start to pay compensation for being there illegally. I eventually had to block and ban them from my profile as they were getting very aggressive and bordered on getting personal. 
But this type of violence is not good as I guide a lot of overseas guests and an incident like this will seriously hurt the tourist visiting the Drakensberg.