[Image: Backpack with Pratt / Facebook]
Somewhere hidden along the Garden Route coast is Clifford’s Cave – a sanctuary, a shelter, a makeshift museum and the home to one zany man named Clifford Brandon, who decked the whole thing out, white picket fence included.
Perhaps there is something particularly alluring about his off-the-grid living now more than ever, as we all stare aghast at the world’s shenanigans. Some peace and quiet in a dark hovel sounds quite nice actually. Well, Clifford seems to have figured it out.
Clifford recalls how divine intervention led him to Kaaiman’s Grotto, as it was originally called, in 2006, at which point he transformed it into a shelter for homeless Christians and a makeshift museum of trinkets. He hasn’t lived a conventional life, so an eccentric little alcove in the middle of nowhere seems completely appropriate.
Hanging from the jagged ceiling are painted seashell chandeliers, fake flower bouquets, glitter-encrusted masks and testaments to Brandon’s faith.
Indeed, Brandon’s cave is no ordinary shelter—it’s a home with distinct sections, much like the rooms of a normal house. In the ‘holy section,’ there are ten neatly arranged beds. “God told me to separate the holy section from the common one,” he explained to Josh Rubin for his Wide Awake Podcast on YouTube.
“When I first got here, there was nothing in the cave. Everything you see, God has given me. If you can’t be faithful with little, how can you be faithful with much?”
After a brush with death on the gritty streets of Cape Town, Brandon swapped the chaos for his brother’s ministry—a sanctuary for the homeless and those battling substance abuse in the quiet dorpie of Vredenburg, Western Cape.
Years of relentless Bible study followed, but eventually, Brandon found himself gatvol. “Ministry, ministry, ministry—like a hamster on a wheel,” he said. Desperate for a fresh start, he knelt in prayer, asking God for a place to call home. That’s apparently when God said he needs to give away everything he owns and head to Wilderness.
In the Wide Awake Podcast, Clifford revealed that in his previous life, he was actually a ‘rich b*tch’ with a wealthy mother.
As for the cave, it was also in the hands of someone wealthier before Clifford came. It was supposed to be a popular restaurant and tourist stop on the coastal route but a bout of heavy rains at the time washed out the restaurant’s only access track, forcing its owner, Johan Coetzee, to close shop.
Brandon says Coetzee agreed to let him “look after” the cave until the rails were repaired and the restaurant could resume operations- which was about 19 years ago. With tracks still in shambles and a halt on eviction notices from the train’s former operator, Transnet, Brandon says the cave is now his.
“The property Father has given me is the best real estate in the Garden Route. It’s worth more than R25 million”
That might be why he gets a flack from the locals, although the tourists eat his digs up.
Even though Clifford makes his bread and butter by tourists paying for a cave tour, he struggles, considering he is in the LGBTQ community.
“I’ve had people try to murder me. They murdered my boyfriend; they poisoned me afterwards after they thought they got away with it, but they never succeeded.”
He claimed that this was a hate crime because he is part of the LGBTQ community. Brandon has also opened his cave to other Christians who have nowhere else to go. “All the sh*t they give me, I would like to leave alone,” he joked.
Eish, looks like even when you live in the middle of nowhere in a cave, the forces of the outside world find a way in.
[Sources: Religious News & IOL]
