This article examines a selection of sites along the touristic route between Cato Ridge and Hillcrest in the Valley of a Thousand Hills in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. It provides an unsettling alternative narrative of the route focusing on ‘other’, non-touristic places in order to offer insight into the relationship between culture and nature in postcolonial and postapartheid South Africa. The integrating concept employed in looking at a diverse range of places is Michel Foucault’s notion of ‘heterotopia’. Foucault used this term to describe ‘other’ real spaces as an alternative to the conceptual device of the utopia which represents society in a perfected form and, as such, is a site with no real place. Taking the opposite direction to conventional tours, which go from south to north, from the coast to the inland, the author first describes a site in the north, Thor Chemicals, an enterprise that imported toxic waste from which it reclaimed, among others, mercury. The dangerous metal has seriously contaminated the external environment of the valley and also some of Thor’s manual workers, whose nervous system began to collapse. The struggle against Thor rallied a heterogeneous grouping of people including, among others, black peasants, white farmers and unionized workers. The author then presents Nansindlela farm, which claims to be a demonstration and training farm for small-scale farmers. After a description of The Valley Trust, an NGO which offers training courses, consultation and resources in the field of comprehensive primary health care and sustainable development, the author finally arrives at Camelot, a private estate built around a golf course where the aim is to ‘create in one place the means to a happy life’. Bibliogr., notes.
