by Wilbur Smith
‘So, people of Zulu, I come to give you back the land of your fathers. I come to give you the promise that once again a black man will rule in Africa, and that as surely as tomorrow’s sun will rise, the future belongs to us.’
All of a sudden Joseph Dinizulu was struck by a sense of destiny.
‘A black man will rule in Africa.’
For Joseph Dinizulu, as for many others there that day, the world would never be the same again.
Victoria Dinizulu waited in her mother’s hut. She sat on the earthen floor with a tanned kaross of hyrax fur under her. She wore the traditional dress of a Zulu bride. The beadwork had been sewn by her mother and sisters, intricate and beautiful, each pattern carrying a hidden message. There were strings of coloured beads around her wrists and her ankles, and necklaces of beads, while her short skirt of leather strips was beaded and strings of beads were plaited into her hair and draped around her waist. In one respect only did her costume differ from that of the traditional Zulu bride: her breasts were covered, as they had been since puberty when she had been baptized into the Anglican Church. She wore a blouse of striped silk in gay colours which complemented the rest of her costume.
As she sat in the centre of the hut, she listened intently to the voice of her bridegroom from without. It carried clearly to her, though she had to shush the other girls when they whispered and giggled. Every word struck her with the force of an arrow, and she felt her love and duty for the man who uttered them swell until they threatened to choke her.
The interior of the hut was gloomy as an ancient cathedral for there were no windows, and the air was hazy with wood smoke that uncoiled lazily from the central fire and rose to the small hole in the summit of the belled roof. The cathedral atmosphere enhanced her mood of reverence, and when the voice of Moses Gama ceased, the silence seemed to enter her heart. No cheers or shouted agreement followed his speech. The men of Zulu were silent and disturbed by it. Victoria could feel it even where she sat in the darkened hut.
‘It is time now,’ her mother whispered, and lifted her to her feet. ‘Go with God,’ she whispered, for her mother was a Christian and had introduced her to that religion.
‘Be a good wife to this man,’ she instructed, and led her to the entrance of the hut.
She stepped outside, into the dazzling sunlight. This was the moment for which the guests had been waiting, and when they saw how beautiful she was, they roared like bulls and drummed their shields. Her father came to greet her and lead her to the carved ebony stool at the entrance of the kraal, so that the cimeza ceremony could begin.
The cimeza was the ‘closing of the eyes’ and Victoria sat with her eyes tightly closed as the representatives of the various clans came forward one at a time to place their gifts before her. Only then was Victoria allowed to open her eyes and exclaim in wonder at the generosity of the givers. There were gifts of pots and blankets and ornaments, marvellously woven beadwork, and envelopes of money.
Shrewdly old Sangane calculated the value of each as he stood behind her stool, and he was grinning with satisfaction when at last he gave the signal to his son Joseph to drive in the feast. He had set aside twelve fat steers for the slaughter, a gesture that proved him to be even more generous than the bearers of the wedding gifts, but then he was a great man and head of a noble clan. The chosen warriors came forward to slaughter the steers, and their mournful death bellows and the rank smell of fresh blood in the dust soon gave way to the aroma from the cooking fires that drifted blue smoke across the hillside.
At a gesture from old Sangane Moses Gama strode up the slope to the entrance of the kraal and Victoria rose to her feet to meet him. They faced each other and once again a silence fell. The guests were awed by this couple, the groom so tall and commanding, the bride beautiful and nubile.
Involuntarily they craned forward as Victoria unclipped the ucu string of beads from around her waist. This was the symbol of her virginity, and she knelt before Moses and, with both hands cupped in the formal and polite gesture, she offered him the beads. As he accepted her and her gift, a great shout went up from the guests. It was done, Moses Gama was her husband and her master at last.
Now the feasting and the beer-drinking could begin in earnest, and the raw red meat was heaped upon the coals and snatched off again barely singed, while the beer-pots passed from hand to hand and the young girls went swinging down the slope bearing fresh pots upon their heads.
Suddenly there was an uproar and a band of plumed warriors came dashing up the slope towards where Victoria sat at the kraal entrance. They were her brothers and halfbrothers and nephews, even Joseph Dinizulu was amongst them, and they shouted their war cries as they came to rescue their sister from this stranger who would take her from their midst.
However, the Buffaloes were ready for them, and with Hendrick at their head and sticks whistling and hissing, they rushed in to prevent the abduction. The women wailed and ululated and the fighting-sticks clattered and whacked on flesh, and the warriors howled and circled and charged at each other in a fine mist of dust.
It was for this that all metal weapons were strictly banned from the ceremony, for the fighting, which was at first playful, soon heated up and blood dripped and bones cracked before the abductors allowed themselves to be driven off. The blood was staunched with a handful of dust clapped on the wound, and both victors and vanquished had worked up a fine thirst and shouted to the girls to bring more beer. The uproar subsided for only a few minutes to be resumed almost immediately as from the top of the slope came the rumble of motor cars.
The children raced up the hill and began to clap and sing as two big motor cars appeared over the brow and came bumping slowly over the rough track that led to the kraal.
In the leading vehicle was a large white woman, with a red face as lined and craggy as that of a bulldog, and a wide-brimmed old-fashioned hat on her head from under which grey hair curled untidily.
‘Who is she?’ Moses demanded.
‘Anna, Lady Courtney,’ Victoria exclaimed. ‘She was the one who encouraged me to leave here and go into the world.’
Impulsively Victoria ran forward to meet the vehicle, and when Lady Courtney descended ponderously, she embraced her.
‘So, my child, you have come back to us.’ Lady Courtney’s accent was still thick, though she had lived thirty-five years in Africa.
‘Not for long.’ Victoria laughed and Lady Courtney looked at her fondly. Once the child had served in the big house as one of her house maids, until her bright beauty and intelligence had convinced Lady Courtney that she was superior to such menial work.
‘Where is this man who is taking you away?’ she demanded, and Victoria took her hand.
‘First you must greet my father, then I will introduce you to my husband.’
From the second motor car a middle-aged couple climbed down to be enthusiastically greeted by the crowd that pressed forward around them. The man was tall and dapper, with the bearing of a soldier. He was tanned by the sun and his eyes had the far-away look of the outdoor man. He twirled his moustaches and took his wife on his arm. She was almost as tall and even slimmer than he was, and despite the streaks of grey in her hair, she was still an unusually handsome woman.
Sangane Dinizulu came to greet them.
‘I see you, Jamela!’ His dignity was somewhat tempered by a happy grin of welcome, and Colonel Mark Anders answered him in perfectly colloquial Zulu.
‘I see you, old man.’ The term was one of respect. ‘May all your cattle and all your wives grow fat and sleek.’
Sangane turned to his wife Storm, who was the daughter of old General Sean Courtney. ‘I see you, Nkosikazi, you bring honour to my kraal.’ The bond between the two families was like steel. It went back to another century and had been tested a thousand times.
‘Oh, Sangane, I am so happy for you this day – and for Victoria.’ Storm left her husband and went quickly to embrace the Zulu girl.
‘I wish you joy and many
fine sons, Vicky,’ she told her, and Victoria answered,
‘I owe you and your family so much, Nkosikazi. I will never be able to repay you.’
‘Don’t ever try,’ Storm told her with mock severity. ‘I feel as though my own daughter is getting married today. Introduce us to your husband, Vicky.’
Now Moses Gama came towards them, and when Storm greeted him in Zulu, he replied gravely in English, ‘How do you do, Mrs Anders. Victoria has spoken of you and your family very often.’
When at last he turned to Mark Anders, he proffered his right hand.
‘How do you do, Colonel?’ Mosses asked, and a wry smile flitted across his lips as he saw the white man hesitate momentarily before accepting the handshake. It was unusual for men to greet each other thus across the dividing line of colour, and despite his fluency in the language and his pretended affection for the Zulu people, Moses recognized this man.
Colonel Mark Anders was an anachronism, a son of the English Queen Victoria, a soldier who had fought in two world wars, and the warden of Chaka’s Gate National Park which he had saved from the poachers and despoilers by dedication and sheer bloody-mindedness, and made into one of Africa’s most celebrated wild-life sanctuaries. He loved the wild animals of Africa with a kind of paternal passion, protecting and cherishing them, and to only a slightly less degree his attitude towards the black tribes, especially the Zulus, was the same, paternalistic and condescending. By this definition he was the mortal enemy of Moses Gama, and as they looked into each other’s eyes, they both recognized this fact.
‘I have heard the lion roar from afar,’ Mark Anders said in Zulu. ‘Now I meet the beast face to face.’
‘I have heard of you as well, Colonel,’ Moses replied, pointedly speaking English.
‘Victoria is a gentle child,’ Mark Anders persisted in his use of Zulu. ‘We all hope you will not teach her your fierce ways.’
‘She will be a dutiful wife,’ Moses said in English. ‘She will do what I ask of her, I am sure.’
Storm had been following the exchange, sensing the innate hostility between the two men and now she intervened smoothly.
‘If you are ready, Moses, we can all go down to Theuniskraal for the ceremony.’
Victoria and her mother had insisted on a Christian ceremony to reinforce traditional tribe wedding. Now Sangane and most of the other guests, who were pagan and ancestor-worshippers, remained at the kraal, while the diminished bridal party crowded into the two motor vehicles.
Theuniskraal was the home of Anna, Lady Courtney and the original seat of the Courtney family. It stood amongst its sprawling lawns and unruly gardens of palms and bougainvillaea and pride of India trees at the foot of the Ladyburg escarpment. It was a rambling old building of oddly assorted architectural styles, and beyond the gardens stretched endless fields of sugar cane, that dipped and undulated to the breeze like the swells of the ocean.
The wedding party trooped into the house to change into garb more suitable than beads and furs and feathers for the second ceremony while Lady Courtney and the family went to greet the Anglican priest in the marquee that had been set up on the front lawn.
When the bridegroom and his attendants came out on to the lawns half an hour later, they wore dark lounge suits and Victoria’s elder brother, who had pranced and swirled his plumes in the giya just a few hours before, now wore his Law Association tie in an impeccable Windsor knot and aviator-style dark glasses against the glare of Theuniskraal’s whitewashed walls, as he chatted affably with the Courtney family, while they waited for the bride.
Victoria’s mother was decked out in one of Lady Courtney’s cast-off caftans, for the two ladies were of similar build, and she was already sampling the fare that was laid out on the long trestle table in the marquee. Colonel Mark Anders and the Anglican priest stood a little aside from the main group; men of the same generation, they both found the proceedings disquieting and unnatural. It had taken all Storm’s powers to persuade the priest to perform the ceremony, and then he had only agreed on condition that the wedding was not held in his own church in the village where his conservative white congregation might take offence.
‘Damned if we weren’t all a sight better off in the old days when everybody knew their place instead of trying to ape their betters,’ Mark Anders grumbled, and the priest nodded.
‘No sense in looking for trouble—’ He broke off as Victoria came out on to the wide verandah. Storm Anders had helped her select her full-length white satin wedding dress with a wreath of tiny red tea roses holding the long veil in place around her brow. The contrast of red and white against her dark and glossy skin was striking and her joy was infectious. Even Mark Anders forgot his misgivings for the moment, as Lady Courtney at the piano struck up the wedding march.
Ather father’s kraal, Victoria’s family had built a magnificent new hut for her nuptial night. Her brothers and half-brothers had cut the wattle saplings and the trunk for the central post and plaited the stripped green branches into the shape of the beehive. Then her mother and sisters and half-sisters had done the women’s work of thatching, carefully combing the long grass stems and lacing the crisp bundles onto the wattle framework, packing and trimming and weaving them until the finished structure was smooth and symmetrical and the brushed grass stems shone like polished brass.
Everything the hut contained was new, from the three-legged pot to the lamp and the blankets and the magnificent kaross of hyrax and monkey skins which was the gift of Victoria’s sisters, lovingly tanned and sewn by them into a veritable work of art.
At the cooking fire in the centre of the hut Victoria worked alone, preparing the first meal for her husband, while she listened to the shouted laughter of the guests outside in the night. The millet beer was mild. However, the women had brewed hundreds of gallons and the guests had been drinking since early morning.
Now she heard the bridegroom’s party approaching the hut. There was singing and loud suggestive advice, cries of encouragement and rude exhortations to duty, and then Moses Gama stooped through the entrance. He straightened and stood tall over her, his head brushing the curved roof and outside the voices of his comrades retreated and dwindled.
Still kneeling, Victoria sat back on her heels and looked up at him. Now at last she had discarded her Western clothing and wore for the last time the short beaded skirt of the virgin. In the soft ruddy light of the fire her naked upper body had the dark patina of antique amber.
‘You are very beautiful,’ he said, for she was the very essence of Nguni womanhood. He came to her and took her hands and lifted her to her feet.
‘I have prepared food for you,’ she whispered huskily.
‘There will be time later to eat.’
He led her to the piled kaross and she stood submissively while he untied the thong of her apron and then lifted her in his arms and laid her on the bed of soft fur.
As a girl she had played the games with the boys in the reed banks beside the waterhole, and out on the open grassy veld where she had gone with the other girls to gather firewood conveniently close to where the cattle were being herded. These games of touching and exploring, of rubbing and fondling, right up to the forbidden act of intromission, were sanctioned by tribal custom and smiled at by the elders, but none of them had fully prepared her for the power and skill of this man, or for the sheer magnificence of him. He reached deeply into her body and touched her very soul so that much later in the night she clung to him and whispered:
‘Now I am more than just your wife, I am your slave to the end of my days.’
In the dawn her joy was blighted, and though her lovely moon face remained serene, she wept within when he told her, ‘There will only be one more night – on the road back to Johannesburg. Then I must leave you.’
‘For how long?’ she asked.
‘Until my work is done,’ he replied, then his expression softened and he stroked her face. ‘You knew that it must be so. I warned you that when you married me,
you were marrying the struggle.’
‘You warned me,’ she agreed in a husky whisper. ‘But there was no way that I could guess at the agony of your leaving.’
They rose early the following morning. Moses had acquired a secondhand Buick, old and shabby enough not to excite interest or envy, but one of Hendrick Tabaka’s expert mechanics had overhauled the engine and tightened the suspension, leaving the exterior untouched. In it they would return to Johannesburg.
Though the sun had not yet risen, the entire kraal was astir, and Victoria’s sisters had prepared breakfast for them. After they had eaten came the hard part of taking leave of her family. She knelt before her father.
‘Go in peace, my daughter,’ he told her fondly. ‘We will think of you often. Bring your sons to visit us.’
Victoria’s mother wept and keened as though it were a funeral, not a wedding, and Victoria could not comfort her although she embraced her and protested her love and duty until the other daughters took her away.
Then there were all her stepmothers and her half-brothers and half-sisters, and the uncles and aunts and cousins who had come from the furthest reaches of Zululand. Victoria had to make her farewells to all of them, though some partings were more poignant than others. One of these was her goodbye to Joseph Dinizulu, her favourite of all her relatives. Although he was a half-brother and seven years younger than she was, a special bond had always existed between them. The two of them were the brightest and most gifted of their generation in the family, and because Joseph lived at Drake’s Farm with one of the elder brothers, they had been able to continue their friendship.
However, Joseph would not be returning to the Wit-watersrand. He had written the entrance exams and been accepted by the exclusive multi-racial school, Waterford, in Swaziland, and Anna, Lady Courtney would be paying his school fees. Ironically, this was the same school to which Hendrick Tabaka was sending his sons, Wellington and Raleigh. There would be opportunity for their rivalry to flourish.