This study takes as its starting point an event that occurred on the morning of December 15 1998, in Hogsback. Hogsback is a small mountaintop community in the Amatola mountains in the Eastern Cape. Many of the black people who work for the white, land-owning members of the community (who comprise one-sixth of Hogsback's inhabitants) and the artists whose work I examine come from Hala, the village at the bottom of the Hogsback pass. Early every morning, they walk ten kilometers up the Hogsback pass, through the indigenous forest, and then return to the valley every evening. It is this relationship between mountains and valley, involving the juxtaposition of traditional African ways of seeing with aspects of white Western culture, that I wish to explore in this paper, by focussing on the the way in which they come together in objects created in the diverse, divided Hogsback community. On December 15, Hogsback was struck by a tornado. Several people were killed, and buildings were damaged, including Crab Bush Primary school, attented by children from Hogsback's black community and Hobbiton, an outdoor education camp for children. Two things are of note here: first the roofs, shiny unpainted zinc at Crab Bush and blue painted zinc at Hobbiton and secondly, the name Hobbiton (there are many similar place names from the fantasies of J.R.R. Tolkien in the Hogsback). The storm system of which the Hogsback tornado formed part moved on to Umtata and Nelson Mandela, who happened to be in Umtata on that day, narrowly escaped the tornado. In the subsequently, the Eastern Cape was struck by a number of tornadoes. For example, there were been several tornadoes in the northern Transkei, while some months later, the town of Alice suffered tornado damage. Hintsa's missing head--which has been linked to a number of disturbances and upheavals in South Africa--is sometimes cited as one possible reason for the number of recent tornadoes in the Eastern Cape. Until Hintsa's head is restored to its proper resting place, the tornadoes will continue, many say. Some claim Nelson Mandela has also played a part. Because, it is asserted, he did not carry out all the necessary traditional rituals when he married Graca Machel in his home village the tornado went looking for him in Umtata pharmacy. Although they have recently begun appearing more frequently, tornadoes are not something new to the Eastern Cape. Reverend Wilson Mafika, one of the oldest inhabitants of Hogsback, describes tornadoes that took place on Hogsback in 1943 and 1977 and in his father's and grandfather's day. Records of Thabo Mbeki's early life are missing, as a result of a tornado which destroyed his family home in the Transkei and the adjoining grocery store. Reverend J.S. Lister gives an account of of a tornado at Coolin farm, below the Elandsberg, on the plateau above the Hogsback pass in the earlier part of this century: [I]t had swept across the farm, uprooting trees and even fencing posts, and [we] were shown a sliver of wood which had been driven into the front door with such force that it could not be pulled out by hand (Lister: 6). In Hogsback, there are a number of young men who sell unfired clay animals, most often horses and hogs, by the roadside. They also sell walking sticks, wooden snakes and large carved pieces of wood. There is a more or less stable grouping of several men in their late twenties and early thirties, which includes Zithobile Mona, Sandile Nqweniso, his younger brother Tam, Nash (Tembani) Xwembe, Wowo Mzinyati, Mbuyiseli Jonas and Lennox Dlala. The sale of their clay creations constitutes their major form of income, although they will do other jobs where they can. Most of them have had limited schooling--on average, not more than four years (Wood/Loubser). They are joined by others on an irregular basis. For instance, schoolboys will usually be present at weekends, and other men will occasionally sell clay animals or walking sticks as a way of making some money when they are semi-employed or unemployed. …