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In 2002 game guide Sibusiso Vilane became the first black African to stand at the summit of Everest. This year he did it again. Don Pinnock tracked him down between mountains to see what it takes to make a hero.
What strikes you first about Sibusiso Vilane is not that he's an icon, though as the first dark-skinned African to climb Mount Everest he most certainly is. It's also not that he's a hero, having scaled the peak twice, from south then north, though that takes super-human courage.
What makes an impression is that he's simply a thoroughly nice person. He has no airs, no arrogance, he doesn't boast, he's happier to talk about other climbers' skills than about himself, he stresses the integrity of the team that got him there. He laughs a lot. He's a happy person. He's great company.
These are qualities that have served him well. As a sweet youngster (and he must have been sweet) from a fatherless family and a domestic-worker mother, he caught the eye of a Canadian family in Mbabane who paid for his schooling up to O-level. After that he began looking for a job. His mum said he was cut out for a smart office position (the way mum's do) but all he could find was a labourer's job on a building site.
Sibusiso, however, has another quality: tenacity. "I wrote hundreds of letters, applying for everything, right through 1993, but there were no jobs. They didn't even answer. Then I got a reply from Malolotja National Reserve in eastern Swaziland saying I hadn't got the job but they'd file my application. That was exciting. I mean, they actually replied to my letter!"
Two months later they invited him for an interview to be a ranger. "I thought: 'What does a ranger do?' The guy who interviewed me asked lots of questions then shook my hand and said I had the job. I was so excited, but I didn't know what a ranger did. I asked my construction boss back in Mbabane and he said you had to look after animals."
Sibusiso learned fast, and his luck changed again three years later when the British High Commissioner to Swaziland, John Dobel, walked into the reserve offices and asked if anyone could guide him on a walk to a wild part of the reserve. "We didn't do guided walks, but I offered to take him on my off day," said Sibusiso. "So we went and it was hard. We headed up a peak and there was this stunning view I'd never seen before."
The walks became a tradition and the two became friends. "One day John said to me: 'You'd make a great mountaineer.' I said to him that we blacks, when we look at mountains we don't have an urge to go to the top of them or look at the views."
John mulled over this, then said he didn't know of an African who'd climbed Everest. "Would you go if you were given the support?" John asked him.
"I didn't think," said Sibusiso, "I just said I'd be delighted."
They began climbing the Drakensberg together, then John paid for Sibusiso to climb Kilimanjaro with Johannesburg adventure-tour operator Wild Frontiers. John Doble retired but kept in contact, finally putting Sibusiso in touch with an adventure outfitter, Jagged Globe. They were keen to have him along, but weren't sure he had what it takes, so they sent him on an expedition to climb some lesser Himalayan peaks. If he could do a few 6 000-metre climbs and an 8 000-metre one, they told him, they'd consider him for Everest.
He did the trip but was shocked by the cold. On their last climb someone from another expedition descending past them unclipped and fell over the edge. "That really freaked out my team," said Sibusiso. "Afterwards John asked if I was still keen on Everest. I said I'd had headaches, been nauseous and watched someone die. But I'd seen Everest and I wanted to go there. I said to him that in Africa we have man-eating lions, in Tibet they have man-eating mountains."
Sibusiso was accepted onto Jagged's 2002 Everest team. By then he was working for Conservation Corporation Africa as a ranger near Nelspruit. He took leave, told nobody but his wife where he was going and flew to Katmandu.
"The Jagged Globe team were such amazing people," he said. "On the way up to Base Camp there were all these memorials to people who'd died on Everest - almost all on the way down. I thought: 'Well, if I die it will still be okay because there'll be a memorial to me that'll show an African died here challenging the highest mountain in the world.'"
The climb was gruelling, because to acclimatise they had to climb high and sleep low: up to 6 000 metres and back to Base Camp; up to 6 200 and back to Base Camp; then 7 300, then 8 000.
"We got to 8 500 and were almost blown off the mountain," he remembers. "It forced us back to Base Camp again. It was so exhausting."Finally, on 25 May, 2002 they did it. "I lifted up my eyes and saw the post with the prayer flags. I was walking and weeping and praying all at the same time. The summit is a highly spiritual place, so sacred - 8 848 metres high. But I felt welcome there. I looked across the world and said to myself: 'You are the first black African to stand here.' It felt okay."
Back in South Africa Sibusiso was hailed as a hero. He was mobbed, fêted and also congratulated personally by South African President Thabo Mbeki. Then he went back to work. When asked if he would ever do it again he told people: "Never." But Everest niggled. He'd done the South Col route; how about the more difficult North Ridge?
Finally he wrote to professional adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who he'd met in England, and asked if he'd join him in a North Ridge attempt. Ranulph phoned right back and accepted. They contacted Jagged Globe and began training. Sibusiso then invited veteran South African climber Alex Harris. Cape Union Mart offered to sponsor his equipment.
Earlier this year they all met in Katmandu and bussed into Tibet, where they were ferried to the northern Base Camp by Chinese officials. After that the torture of acclimatisation began: up and back, higher and higher. Then the weather grounded them for nearly two months with winds that ripped tents to tatters.
Finally a weather window opened and they began the final ascent. Seven hours later Sibusiso summited for the second time. "It was a clear day. Just stunning. The clouds were far below and I was standing at the highest point on earth."
On the way down his water ran out and he hadn't eaten. Then his oxygen ran out. The rest of the team descended fast but he slowed, exhausted, desperate. "I suddenly had zero energy. My pack felt so heavy. I couldn't see anyone. I couldn't see any of the camps and I couldn't go down anymore. I sat down, clipped my pack to the rope and began going down on my bum, dragging the pack."
The team leader noticed Sibusiso's absence and radioed to a higher team who sent a Sherpa to look for him. "That man saved my life. He gave me water and oxygen and I felt strong enough to stand and continue. But now I know how people die on Everest. You want to rest and you sit. Then you want to sleep. It comes in such a way that sleep is all you want. And then you've had it."
Would he do it again? Sibusiso thought for a bit. "I did the second climb to raise money for charities - children's charities. If some young people came to me and asked me to take them up, I couldn't refuse. If I refused, how could I be an inspiration to them?
But my wife, Nomsa, says: 'If you go, only go as far as Base Camp'."
*Alex Harris, South Africa's most accomplished mountaineer, also made the summit on this, his third attempt. He became the first South African to achieve the Seven Summits quest.
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