Little Suns

by Zakes Mda

  Malangana would not flinch. He would not give this white man the pleasure of his screams. After all, he had graduated from the school of the mountain where he had been trained to take pain like a man. Hope’s face reddened as he lashed out with greater vigour. He would not let an impertinent native destroy his reputation which preceded him even before he assumed the magistracy at Qumbu. He had acquired it when he was the magistrate among the Baphuthi people of Lesotho. Their King Moorosi had told his close friend Mhlontlo about Hope’s cruelty and penchant for flogging grown men, even chiefs, with his trusty cat-o’-nine-tails. When the amaMpondomise first saw him they didn’t think the tiny man with a deformed leg could be capable of any cruelty. Soon they learned that the king of Baphuthi knew what he was talking about.

  Still Malangana would rather die than give him satisfaction. Hope instructed the sergeant to lock the rebel up in jail and bring him before the magistrate for trial first thing in the morning.

  The next morning, still boiling with resentment, Malangana was brought to the House of Trials where Hope summarily sentenced him to a year in prison as a lesson to all those natives who were disrespectful and stubborn. But he tempered justice with mercy. There was the option of a fine: ten pounds.

  As he paged the leaves of the Book of Causes Malangana recalled how Mhlontlo refused to pay the fine. Malangana was an impetuous young man, he told the messengers. He had no business picking a fight with Hamilton Hope. He should therefore take his medicine like a man.

  ‘He has betrayed me,’ said Malangana. ‘My king and brother has let me down. Tell him when I am released from the white man’s prison I will pack my things and seek asylum from Mditshwa.’

  Mditshwa ruled over a rival branch of amaMpondomise across Itsitsa River in Tsolo, about nineteen miles from Qumbu.

  By the time the warder returned to take Malangana back to the Qumbu Jail the hip flask was empty, he had become bored with the Book of Causes and was staggering about pretending to be dusting the furniture.

  The warder was not blind. Malangana readied his buttocks for an impending encounter with the cat-o’-nine-tails.

  ‘I would have kept quiet if you had shared those Tears of Queen Victoria with me,’ the warder said repeatedly. ‘Ngoku awulibonanga!’ You will bear the consequences.

  Saturday September 25, 1880

  The chiefs and elders were already gathered outside the Maclear Magistracy when Mhlontlo arrived accompanied by Gxumisa and Malangana. The latter was there specifically to act as Mhlontlo’s interpreter. The three men were on horseback, with Mhlontlo riding in the middle on Gcazimbane. They were resplendent in European pants, riding boots and white beaded blankets, and the two older men carried knobkerries while Malangana carried an assegai and a shield, more as accoutrements than as weapons of war.

  Despite the drought that the elders said was the worst in living memory, the horses still looked fresh after almost two days on the hilly terrain from Sulenkama to Maclear, a distance of about forty-five miles. They had rested at each stream they crossed so that the beasts could drink and graze, and the men could nibble a bit on the iinkobe boiled sorghum kernels and sun-dried beef that they carried in their rock-rabbit-skin bags as provision – thanks to Mhlontlo’s wife of the Iqadi House. Most streams had run dry, but the riders moved on until they reached the ones that had some water.

  ‘The King of amaMpondomise has arrived,’ announced a policeman.

  Hamilton Hope glared at the policeman. Mr Welsh, the magistrate of Tsolo, smiled. He knew that Hope was very particular on how the native rulers were to be addressed. They were chiefs and nothing more. At best they were paramount chiefs if they – like Mhlontlo – had other chiefs owing allegiance to them. They could not be kings or queens. There was only one Sovereign, Her Majesty Queen Victoria. The natives ceased to be kings and queens when they were graciously ushered into the civilising fold of the British Empire.

  Mr Thompson, the magistrate of Maclear and convener of this meeting, beckoned Mhlontlo and indicated that he should join the other elders seated on the ground in front of the magistrates and their aides. There must have been a couple of hundred men gathered that day, and Mhlontlo could see among them a number of amaMpondomise military leaders who had left Sulenkama in the night and arrived at Maclear that morning. They were there to bear witness and to support their king.

  The three magistrates, Welsh, Hope and Thompson, were sitting on the chairs, with the convener seated in the middle. A group of white men was standing behind them, leaning against the sandstone wall of the Magistracy. Malangana could recognise three of them: Warren, Henman and Davis. Warren was a Captain in the Cape Mounted Riflemen and Henman was a clerk of the resident magistrate of Mthatha currently seconded to Hope. Davis was also a Captain in the Cape Mounted Riflemen and Adjutant in Qumbu. He was known as Sunduza among amaMpondomise and was popular mostly because his brother was a highly regarded missionary based at Shawbury Mission, but also because he spoke isiMpondomise as if he had suckled it at his mother’s breast. That was almost the case because, from the time he was a baby, he was brought up by amaMpondomise nannies and grew up playing with native children. He therefore spoke the language of the black people long before he could master his mother tongue.

  Malangana got to know these men when he was a prisoner. From Sunduza, particularly, he had learned what he knew of the English language.

  Malangana placed his assegai and shield on the ground and took his place next to Gxumisa.

  Mhlontlo did not immediately take his place but stood to survey the delegates sitting on the ground. He knew some of the chiefs and elders besides those who came from Sulenkama. Among them were Lehana and Lelingoana, chiefs of Basotho clans. But there were many others who were strangers. Protocol therefore demanded that he introduce himself by reciting his genealogy, which dated back to the great migrations of the 1400s and 1500s. It was a ritual the magistrates found tiresome, but because they wanted the cooperation of the natives they indulged them.

  ‘I greet you all, children of abaMbo. I am Mhlontlo, King of amaMpondomise,’ he said in a singsong voice. His body moved rhythmically and he gently hit his open palm with his knobkerrie as he mentioned the name of each ancestor. ‘I descend from Sibiside who led abaMbo from the land of the blue lakes. Sibiside begot Njanya, Dlamini and Mkhize. Dlamini is the one who founded amaSwati people; Mkhize is the father of those who later merged into a nation that became known as amaZulu. Njanya begot the twins Mpondo and Mpondomise, and Xesibe. Mpondo branched off to found his own nation called amaMpondo and Xesibe originated ama-Xesibe. Mpondomise established amaMpondomise.’

  ‘I’m sure your fellow chiefs know all those stories already,’ interrupted Thompson. ‘We don’t have all day.’

  You don’t interrupt a man in the middle of reciting his genealogy. Malangana shook his head; the white man never learns.

  Mhlontlo ignored Thompson and continued.

  ‘Mpondomise begot Ntose, and Ntose begot Ngcwina. Ngcwina begot Dosini, Ngqukatha and Gcaka from the Great House, and Nxotwe from the Right-hand House. Ngcwina also begot Cirha from the Iqadi House, and that was where the dust-storm began. Cirha’s mother was a Bushman woman, Manxangashe, yet still Ngcwina insisted that he be the heir to the throne even though he was from a junior house. Ngcwina felt that the rightful heir, Dosini, was an imbecile who would disgrace the throne. It is where our praise-name, Thole loMthwakazi, began.’

  Thompson was losing his cool; the meeting should have started already. He was about to interrupt with much firmness this time, but Welsh stopped him.

  ‘We need the natives’ cooperation,’ he said to Thompson between his teeth. ‘Let’s show them that we respect their protocol. It’s a small price to pay.’

  ‘Cirha begot Mhle,’ continued Mhlontlo. ‘Mhle begot Sabe. Sabe begot Qengebe. Qengebe begot Majola, the one who was born with the snake, setting a tradition of snake visits to all babies descending from him. Majola begot Ngwanya. Ngwanya begot Phahlo. Phahlo begot Ngcambe
, Ngcambe begot Myeki. Myeki begot Matiwane. I, Mhlontlo, am of Matiwane’s testicle.’

  There was silence for a while, as if the men were digesting the four hundred years of begetting.

  To the white men whose patience had been taxed this was just a litany of names that meant nothing, but to the delegates sitting on the ground, as Sunduza was at pains to explain to the magistrates and their aides, they were stowage of memory. Each name connected to a story of heroism or villainy, once told by bards at the fireside or at special ceremonies. Indeed, some of the people on the ground found some of the names linking snugly in the chain of their own ancestries. That’s how history was preserved and transmitted to the next generations – through the recitation of genealogies and of panegyrics.

  Malangana, on the other hand, was digesting the omission of Mamani in Mhlontlo’s recitation of the genealogy. She was supposed to feature between Phahlo and Ngcambe. She was Phahlo’s daughter who, on the death of her father in the middle of the eighteenth century, insisted on taking the throne even though she was a woman.

  ‘I’m the first-born child of Phahlo’s Great House. I should therefore be king of amaMpondomise.’

  Men had objected. It was unheard of for a woman to be king. The oldest of her younger brothers from the Great House qualified for that position. If there were no brothers from the Great House then the oldest of the males from the Right-hand House would be king. The search would proceed even to the Iqadi House, which is the most junior house whose function was normally to support the Great House.

  But Mamani would have none of that. She took over the throne and had those men who objected executed.

  Even before these events people had suspected there was something wrong with Mamani. She had refused to marry and had turned down suitors long after her younger sisters were married. One of her younger sisters, Thandela, was married to King Phalo of the amaXhosa nation and became the mother of Gcaleka. Now that Mamani was a king – no one would dare call her a queen – she sent emissaries to get her a bride. Mamani married Ntsibatha, the daughter of Nyawuza from the land of amaMpondo. People had never seen a woman marrying another woman and wondered how they would copulate and bring forth heirs.

  The heir to the throne of amaMpondomise was Ngcambe, Malangana’s and Mhlontlo’s great-grandfather, born of Mamani’s wife Ntsibatha from the seed of one of Mamani’s younger brothers.

  Although Malangana chuckled to himself at Mhlontlo’s omission of Mamani’s name he understood completely. No Mpondomise man worth his manhood talked proudly of Mamani. His mother once told him years back, ‘We don’t talk of Mamani, my child. She disturbed the natural order of things.’

  Malangana thought the omission of any ancestor in the genealogy was dishonest. After all, some of the men in the list were villains of the first order. He would not omit Mamani when it was his turn to recite the genealogy.

  The digesting continued for a few moments until Lelingoana broke the silence by making a joke about Mhlontlo’s pedigree, or lack thereof.

  ‘I could see from your stubbornness that you are a progeny of abaThwa,’ he said.

  Everyone on the ground laughed. The white men on the chairs maintained their puzzled yet stern expressions.

  Malangana’s mind wandered to his own Mthwakazi. That was how he thought of her. As his own. Even though nothing had happened between them in the twenty-two days since they argued about the number of suns in the heavens. He had been counting as each day passed very slowly and his yearning mounted. He was seen loitering outside the Great House at the Great Place. No one suspected that Mthwakazi was the object of his desire. Usually when he went to the Great Place it was for Gcazimbane. And indeed Gcazimbane became his excuse for dawdling around. Even when he was grooming the horse at the kraal his eyes kept darting to the path that led to the Great House.

  Mthwakazi was nowhere to be seen. She remained inside the house for most of the day helping the herbalists and diviners who were trying to save the life of the Queen of amaMpondomise. The story was doing the rounds from one household to the next throughout the land that she was getting worse by the day.

  Occasionally Malangana spotted Mthwakazi rushing from one hut to another, or beating the drum for a line of diviners lilting to yonder hills to dig for more curative roots. Malangana vowed to himself that he would bide his time and soon he would get the opportunity to be with her and win her over.

  After straightening her out about the suns, of course.

  A roar of laughter brought Malangana to the present, to the meeting of the traditional rulers and the magistrates. A policeman called for silence.

  Magistrate Thompson stood up to address the meeting. Sunduza stood next to him to translate.

  ‘I have called this meeting to discuss the Basotho uprising,’ said Thompson. ‘Without wasting further time I will ask Mr Hope to give you the details of what we need from you.’

  After Sunduza’s interpretation Mhlontlo looked to Malangana for confirmation of its accuracy. He liked Sunduza, but still when he was among his fellow white men he was a white man.

  ‘Uyichanile,’ said Malangana. He got it right.

  Of course, Mhlontlo wouldn’t have known that Sunduza was much more proficient in isiMpondomise than Malangana was in English.

  Hope did not stand up to address the chiefs. Instead he shifted for more comfort on the chair and leaned forward. He began by making his usual threats towards those who had not paid taxes; the chiefs would be held responsible if their subjects continued to dodge their civic responsibilities. The men on the ground grumbled that they had not travelled through the night to be harangued about taxes. Sunduza translated what he could catch of their murmurs to the magistrates.

  ‘Taxes are important, but they are not the reason we called you here,’ interjected Welsh.

  Hope’s eyes and smile could have frozen Itsitsa River in the middle of summer, but he did not even glance in Welsh’s direction.

  ‘I begin with taxes because everything flows from them,’ Hope said, glowering at the men on the ground and shaking his head. ‘Without the taxes nothing would be possible, including the expedition we plan to undertake. But as Mr Thompson said, the reason for our meeting is the war that Basotho rebels are waging against the Government, and the decisive manner in which we must respond.’

  It was not lost to Malangana that Sunduza did not interpret Welsh’s interjection. He could read in it and in Hope’s expression the uneasy relations between the two magistrates assigned to the rival regions of amaMpondomise. He whispered this to Mhlontlo, who agreed with him that white men were good at covering each other’s nakedness in front of the subjugated people.

  Hope continued, ‘You, as the subjects of the British Empire, are required to be part of that response.’

  The stubborn Basotho people were refusing to hand in their guns, Hope explained, defying the Peace Preservation Act enacted by Parliament in Cape Town in 1878 which required all the native peoples to surrender their guns and ammunition to the Government.

  This law was not informally known as the Disarmament Act for nothing. amaMpondomise had already felt its effect. Unlike the Basotho, who decided to take up arms against the British instead of surrendering them, a number of amaMpondomise men had already handed in their guns and ammunition to the magistrates. The wealthier men had even given up the Snider-Enfield firearms that they had acquired covertly from enterprising officers of the Cape Mounted Riflemen when the latter changed to the Martini-Henry rifle. Malangana remembered how he caught Gxumisa shedding a private tear when he had to part with his Snider-Enfield which he prized more as an ornament and a collector’s item than an instrument of death. He wondered why the old man had decided to obey this law when quite a few other men had hidden their guns. Perhaps he wanted to avoid humiliation because those who were discovered to have done so experienced Hamilton Hope’s cat-o’-nine-tails on their bare bottoms.

  Mhlontlo had heard of the rumours of the disgruntlement among the Basotho people abou
t the Disarmament Act, but had not been aware that a full-scale war had broken out that very month until Sunduza mentioned that Mr Hope had received a telegram the day before informing him of what the Basotho called Ntoa ea Lithunya – the Gun War.

  ‘They want us to fight against our own friends,’ whispered Malangana to Mhlontlo.

  ‘Why don’t they get amaMfengu to fight for them and leave us alone? After all, amaMfengu are Government people,’ asked Mhlontlo.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Ask them.’

  Malangana did.

  Sunduza had to reinterpret Malangana’s English before the magistrates could grasp what exactly he was asking. They broke out laughing at the way Malangana had pronounced some of the words, making it difficult for them to understand such a simple question.

  ‘The Fingoes are wise for they cooperate with the Government,’ said Hope. ‘They will therefore continue to benefit from the bounties of British civilisation. Many of them already serve the Government as policemen, clerks and aides to military officers. Indeed they will all be part of this war. But we need more men. The Cape Mounted Riflemen alone cannot fight the Basotho people. The CMR is thinly spread in all the rebellions of the natives. That is why every able-bodied man in our jurisdictions must be part of this expedition.’

  Some of the younger men seemed enthusiastic about the prospect of going to war while the elders mumbled their objections. They all looked to Mhlontlo to speak but he just sat there with a scowl on his face.

  Malangana was a young man fresh out of the school of the mountain and his blood was spoiling for adventure. But he felt strongly that this was not his people’s war.

  ‘Who exactly are we fighting?’ he asked.

  ‘Awuvanga na mfondini? Silwa nabeSuthu,’ said Sunduza. Didn’t you get it, man? We are fighting Basotho.