The road to Mabhaleni, where we journeyed at the end of January to pay our final respects to Mpume, leads into the heart of south-eastern KwaZulu Natal, off Umthwalume.  It is, for inured city-dwellers, another country, a place of incredible beauty and tranquillity, with its deep undulating green valleys, regiments of hills that disappear into the horizon, and steep gorges whose slopes rush precipitously down into unknown chasms.  Orange dirt roads criss-cross the land, leading tantalisingly, to who knows where.  They tie this place to the rest of the province, to KwaMakhutha Township in Amanzimtoti, where Mpume lived with her husband Sibonelo and their two sons, Mawande and Skhona and to Ethekwini (Durban) where she worked as a para-legal at the offices of the Legal Resources Centre (LRC).