The Heart of Redness: A Novel

by Mda, Zakes

  It is clear to Qukezwa that Zim has no intention of discussing his spat with Bhonco. Perhaps she should tell him about her yearning for the city. Now she also talks in whistles. They both sound like birds of the forest.

  “You want to go to Butterworth or Centani? You are free to go there anytime you want. No one has ever stopped you.”

  “I am talking about Johannesburg, tata. I have Standard Eight but I sweep the floors. You heard what old man Bhonco said. Maybe if I go to the city I’ll be a clerk and earn better money than the small change that Dalton gives me. I’ll be somebody in the city.”

  This astonishes Zim. Surely it must be the work of the Unbelievers again. His daughter has never been dissatisfied with her lot in the village before. She cannot leave, he tells her, for she is the only one left to carry forward the tradition of belief.

  “Your brother left and never came back. He was deceived by the wealth of the city. The ancestors cannot be happy with that sort of thing. I swear in the name of Mlanjeni that they’ll beat him up with a thick stick.”

  “Of Mlanjeni, tata? Even though his prophecies were false?”

  “Who teaches you these things? Mlanjeni was a true prophet. All his sayings were true, but everything was spoiled by young men who could not leave women alone. Mlanjeni said so right from the beginning. His medicine and women did not mix. That is why he himself eschewed women all his life.”

  Then he tells her about Prophetess Nongqawuse.

  “Like the Nomyayi bird, she flew to the south,” he says. “Nomyayi flew to Gobe to prophesy things that would happen. Nongqawuse used to go with Nomyayi. They were one person.”

  Zim assures his daughter that if she works hard enough she will end up being a prophetess like Nongqawuse.

  At night Qukezwa dreams of Nongqawuse flying with a crow—the Nomyayi bird. She made sure that she slept with her legs stretched out. She will, therefore, be able to run away from her dreams if they become nightmares. One should be able to escape from the witches in one’s dreams, or even run away from the dream itself.

  But tonight there is no need to run away. She flies with Nomyayi in the land of the prophets.

  It was the land of the prophets. Then the gospel people came. Mhlakaza first belonged to the gospel people. But later he was in the company of prophets.

  The twins knew all about the gospel people. They knew Mhlakaza, even when he was called Wilhelm Goliath. He carried this strange name because he was a gospel man. He lived in Grahamstown with the white people. Twin and Twin-Twin used to listen to him teach the gospel in the company of a white man called Nathaniel Merriman, the Anglican archdeacon of Grahamstown.

  At first he was baptized in the Methodist Church, and married his wife, Sarah, from the clan of the amaMfengu, in that church. But soon enough he deserted his Methodist friends and threw in his lot with the Anglicans. The Methodists, he said, told their hearts in public. He preferred the private confessions of the Anglicans. Also, the Anglicans wore more beautiful robes.

  Twin and Twin-Twin did not see any difference between the Methodists and the Anglicans. They were all white people who, according to the teachings of the great Prophet Nxele, had been cast into the sea for murdering Tayi, the son of Thixo. The waves had spewed them on the shores of kwaXhosa. And now they were giving their reluctant hosts sleepless nights.

  When Mhlakaza was Wilhelm Goliath, he used to give the people a lot of pleasure. They watched him carry Merriman’s baggage, trudging behind the holy man across vast distances. The gospel men walked on foot between country towns and villages, preaching about a man called Christ. For eighteen months they walked all the way from Grahamstown to Graaff-Reinet, and then to Colesberg on the banks of the Orange River. Occasionally when Goliath lagged behind because of the heavy load, Merriman cautioned him against the sin of laziness. When they came to a stream, Goliath washed the holy man’s clothes, and while they were drying he preached to whoever was in sight.

  The gospel men provided much entertainment everywhere they went. Whenever they came to the twins’ village there was great merriment, and people knew that they were going to laugh until their ribs were painful.

  Wilhelm Goliath boasted that he was the first umXhosa ever to receive the Anglican Communion. He could recite the Creed, all Ten Commandments in their proper order, and the Lord’s Prayer. He spoke the language of the Dutch people too, as if he was one of them.

  Sometimes he would break into a fit of preaching. “I urge you, my countrymen . . . change from your evil ways, for they are the ways of the devil. Do away with ububomvu or ubuqaba, your heathen practices, your superstitions. . . and become amaGqobhoka . . . civilized ones. . . those who have converted to the path that was laid for us by Christ. Throw away your red ochre blankets! Wear trousers! Throw away your red isikhakha skirts! Wear dresses! For our Lord Christ died for us on the cross, to save us from eternal damnation.”

  These were utterances that were guaranteed to cause a lot of mirth among his listeners. They found it funny that the way to the white man’s heaven was through trousers and dresses. In any case, this Goliath looked hilarious in his ill-fitting black suit that used to belong to Merriman.

  The gospel men made sense only when they talked of the resurrection. When Merriman told the people that one day all humankind would rise from the dead, they were joyous. They said they would like to see their grandfathers and all their relatives who had left this world for that of the ancestors.

  But still, they continued to find the utterances that came from Goliath’s mouth quite ridiculous. Where did he get the nerve to be the spokesman of the god of the white man he knew nothing about?

  “This man is from such a distinguished family. His father was King Sarhili’s councillor. What is he doing with these people who were cast into the sea?” Twin-Twin asked.

  “We had our own prophets who are now with the ancestors,” cried Twin. “We had Ntsikana who prophesied the coming of the white man. Then we had Nxele who told us about our own god, Mdalidephu, who was in opposition to Thixo, the god of the white man. Now we have Mlanjeni. We do not need these people with their false prophets and false gods.”

  This was before Mlanjeni died of tuberculosis.

  But Twin shouldn’t have mentioned his name, for this inflamed Twin-Twin. He demanded that Twin should withdraw Mlanjeni’s name from the list of prophets, because he was not a true prophet.

  “Look what happened to us in the war! Where is our father now as we speak?” demanded Twin-Twin.

  But Twin was adamant that Mlanjeni was a true prophet in the same league as Ntsikana and Nxele.

  Relatives had to be called to separate the twins from a bloody stick duel. The elders of the village had to sit down and negotiate peace between the children of Xikixa. The twins shook hands and swore in the name of their headless father never to fight again.

  Once again they became close to each other.

  But another evil struck. A marauding disease that attacked cattle in their kraals, in the veld, and even in distant mountain cattle-posts. It crept in during the night, seizing its victims when they least expected it. No one had ever heard of it before, but those who had contact with the white settlements came with the news that it was lungsickness.

  Raging lungsickness. Strutting around like a bully. Laughing in the faces of grown men as they wept when they saw their favorite cattle wane away.

  White people knew of lungsickness because it came from their country. There were reports that it had killed many cattle across the seas in the land of the whites. It was brought to the land of the amaXhosa nation by Friesland bulls that came in a Dutch ship two years earlier, in 1853. Therefore even the best of the isiXhosa doctors did not know how to cure lungsickness.

  The disease was traveling the land of the amaXhosa people and of the amaMfengu like a wild fire. Cattle owners were trying to escape it by driving their herds to mountainous and secluded places. Yet many cattle were lost.

  Soon enough the disease attacked the twi
ns’ village. Twin-Twin wept as he watched his favorite bull die a horrible and protracted death. First it was constipated. Then it became diarrheic. It gasped for air, its tongue hanging out. When it died he was relieved that at last the pain was over, and he was determined to escape with his remaining herds. Twin did not need persuading. He too had suffered losses. He agreed with Twin-Twin that they should take their families and drive their cattle to new pastures where they could establish new homesteads.

  As if lungsickness was not enough, the maize in the fields was attacked by a disease that left it whimpering and blighted. It crept through the roots and killed the plant before the corn could ripen. It certainly was not going to be a year of plenty.

  Such a calamity had never been seen in kwaXhosa before. It was the work of malevolent spirits and of ubuthi, of witchcraft. The twins hoped that in a new settlement they would escape all this.

  The twins’ great trek took many days. It was a slow and painful journey, made even slower by the women and children, and by the pigs and chickens. During the day the trekkers camped so that the cattle could graze and the wives and their daughters could cook food. Those who were tired slept. When night fell they moved on again. They were accompanied and protected by the Seven Sisters, the stars from which the Khoikhoi were descended. The seven daughters of Tsiqwa. He who told his stories in heaven. The Creator.

  Qukezwa led the way, for she knew the language of the stars. She rode reinless on Gxagxa, Twin’s brown-and-white horse, which seemed to know exactly where to go without being guided by her.

  Twin was proud of his wife. She could do things that Twin-Twin’s numerous wives could not do. Even though people had constantly laughed at the foreign woman who used to open her thighs for the British soldiers, now her people’s stars were leading everyone to fresh pastures. Twin-Twin should be grateful, instead of making snide remarks whenever the couple added a stone and aromatic herbs to the piles of stones they sometimes came across at the crossroads, and then asked someone called Tsiqwa for his guidance and protection.

  Every night the twins shook with fear when they saw rivers of fire raging down the mountains. They knew immediately that this was the path to avoid, for it was the path of the disease.

  “The stars tell me that we must move until the sea stops us,” Qukezwa told them.

  After many weeks the twins reached Qolorha. Twin and Qukezwa established their home in the village of Ngcizele. They were so close to the sea that even as they slept at night they could hear the sound of the waves. Here was plenty of grazing land for Twin’s cattle.

  Twin-Twin and his many wives settled in the small village of KwaFeni a few miles away. Here too were great pastures for his cattle.

  Life was beautiful. But it was not completely free of disease. Sometimes the dastardly lungsickness crept in in the deep of the night, seized a prized ox, and drained it of flesh and blood. By this time, experience had taught the twins a few tricks. They separated the sick ox from the rest of the herd until it died. Then they buried the carcass far away from the village.

  The twins soon saw Mhlakaza again, for it happened that Qolorha was his ancestral home. He had built his single hut near the Gxarha River, and had called an imbhizo—a public meeting—of the people of the Qolorha area, including the villages of KwaFeni and Ngcizele, to discuss the wonders that had happened in his homestead.

  Qukezwa knew him at once and whispered to Twin, “Hey, is that not Wilhelm Goliath?”

  “Yes,” shouted Twin in amazement, “it is the gospel man, Wilhelm Goliath!”

  “You dare call me by that name again!” said Mhlakaza angrily. “I am not Wilhelm Goliath. I am Mhlakaza.”

  Twin did not understand what was wrong, for the man used to call himself Wilhelm Goliath, and would have been angry if he had been addressed as Mhlakaza.

  “He is sensitive about being called by that name,” a man standing next to them said.

  He explained to Twin and Qukezwa that when Merriman stopped walking and was confined to the church in Grahamstown, Mhlakaza’s days as a gospel man came to an end. At first the holy man engaged him to teach isiXhosa at a school, and built him a hut in his garden. But he was not a happy man at the holy man’s household. Merriman and his wife treated him like a servant, whereas on the road he had been a gospel man in his own right. He felt that Merriman’s wife didn’t like him. She called him a dreamy sort of fellow. And this convinced him that his enthusiasm for the gospel was not taken seriously by Merriman’s family. So he left and came to live next to his sister’s homestead near the Gxarha River. He gave up on the god of the white man, and reverted to the true god of his fathers.

  “I have called you here, my countrymen, because a wonderful thing has happened!” said Mhlakaza, addressing the small group of men and women who had gathered outside his hut. “Three days ago my niece, Nongqawuse, and my sister-in-law, Nombanda, went to the fields to chase away the birds that like to feed on the sorghum.”

  “Indeed that is wonderful,” said Twin-Twin sarcastically. “His children went to scare the birds in the fields, and he has called the whole nation to tell us about it.”

  But Mhlakaza ignored the amateur comedian and continued his speech. He called two young girls to stand in front of the people. “This older one is Nongqawuse,” he said. “She is fifteen years old. I took her as my own daughter after her parents were murdered by British soldiers during the War of Mlanjeni”. This eight-year-old one is Nombanda, my wife’s sister. Now, when these children were in the fields, a wonderful thing happened.”

  “The man has said that already,” said Twin. “Get on with the story. Tell us what happened.”

  “Does he know that we have left our fields and our cattle unattended?” asked Twin-Twin. Others agreed with him.

  “Don’t be in a hurry for the gravy before the meat is ready,” said Mhlakaza, demanding their patience. “Nongqawuse heard a voice calling her name behind the usundu bush.”

  “Was it not you, Twin-Twin, trying to seduce the poor girl behind the usundu bush? You are well known as a naughty man who loves young blood!” heckled another man, trying to be funny as well. But no one laughed. People were curious to hear more about the voice behind the usundu bush.

  Mhlakaza went on, “At first she thought she hadn’t heard well, and continued to play with Nombanda and to chase the birds. The voice persisted. She slowly walked to the bush, while Nombanda remained transfixed. At that time mist rose around the bush. The faces of two Strangers appeared in the mist and addressed her.”

  “What did they say?” people wanted to know. “Who did they say they were?”

  “Let the girl tell us herself,” demanded Twin-Twin.

  “Come, my child, and give us the message of the Strangers,” said Mhlakaza.

  Nongqawuse shyly stepped forward. She was unkempt and looked like a waif. In the manner of all great prophets she seemed confused and disorientated most of the time.

  “Who were the Strangers, my child?” asked Twin.

  “I do not know, father,” replied Nongqawuse. “They said they were messengers of Naphakade, He-Who-Is-Forever, the descendant of Sifuba-Sibanzi, the Broad-Chested-One.”

  People were confused. They had not heard of He-Who-Is-Forever, nor of the Broad-Chested-One. Obviously these must be the new names of the god of the amaXhosa people . . . the one who is known by everyone as Qamata or Mvelingqangi. . . the one who was called Mdalidephu by Prophet Nxele.

  Nongqawuse continued, “The Strangers said I must tell the nation that all cattle now living must be slaughtered. They have been reared by contaminated hands because there are people who deal in witchcraft. The fields must not be cultivated, but great new grain pits must be dug, new houses must be built, and great strong cattle kraals must be erected. Cut out new milk sacks and weave many doors from buka roots. The Strangers say that the whole community of the dead will arise. When the time is ripe they will arise from the dead, and new cattle will fill the kraals. The people must leave their witchcra
ft, for soon they will be examined by diviners.”

  Mhlakaza said that at first he had treated the message of the Strangers as a joke. But they had appeared to Nongqawuse again, and ordered her to give the message to her uncle. He had therefore told the chiefs and was given permission to call the imbhizo.

  He urged those present not to take the words of the Strangers lightly.

  “The rapid spread of lungsickness is proving the Strangers right,” he said. “The existing cattle are rotten and unclean. They have been bewitched. They must all be destroyed. You have all been wicked, and therefore everything that belongs to you is bad. Destroy everything. The new people who will arise from the dead will come with new cattle, horses, goats, sheep, dogs, fowl, and any other animals that the people may want. But the new animals of the new people cannot mix with your polluted ones. So destroy them. Destroy everything. Destroy the corn in your fields and in your granaries. Nongqawuse has told us that when the new people come there will be a new world of contentment and no one will ever lead a troubled life again.”

  As Camagu drives his Toyota Corolla on the gravel road he concludes that a generous artist painted the village of Qolorha-by-Sea, using splashes of lush color. It is a canvas where blue and green dominate. It is the blue of the skies and the distant hills, of the ocean and the rivers that flow into it. The green is of the meadows and the valleys, the tall grass and the usundu palms.

  He is pleased to see that there are some people here who still wear isiXhosa costume. They are few, though. Most of the men and women he passes on the road don’t dress any differently from people of the city.

  It is sad, he thinks, that when nations of the world wear their costumes with pride, the amaXhosa people despise theirs. They were taught by missionaries that it is a sign of civilization, of ubugqobhoka, to despise isikhakha as the clothing of the amaqaba—those who have not seen the light and who still smear themselves with red ochre.