The Heart of Redness: A Novel

by Mda, Zakes

  Under the umsintsi tree the elders present a wonderful spectacle of suffering. They are invoking grief by engaging in a memory ritual. In their trance they fleet back through the Middle Generations, and linger in the years when their forebears were hungry.

  Hunger had seeped through the soil of the land of the amaXhosa. It also fouled the ill-gotten lands of the neighboring amaMfengu. Yet that part of kwaXhosa that had been conquered and settled by the children of Queen Victoria—they whose ears reflected the light of the sun—continued to eat.

  The sons of the headless one were as diligent as their father used to be before he became stew in a British pot. The patriarch had taught them well about the art of working the soil and looking after animals. When the season was ripe, they cultivated the land. When it was time for hoeing, the women hoed the fields. The maize seemed to be promising. But before the corn was mature the disease attacked. Mercilessly. Once more the plants were left whimpering and blighted.

  Lungsickness continued its rampage. It had arrived even at these new pastures. There was no escaping it. It picked and chose at random those cattle it was going to take with it.

  At Twin’s homestead it displayed the height of arrogance by attacking his prize horse, Gxagxa. No one had heard of lungsickness attacking horses before. But now the beautiful brown-and-white horse was becoming a bag of bones in front of his eyes.

  Twin did not sleep. He kept vigil at Gxagxa’s stable. Qukezwa brought him sour milk and umphokoqo porridge. But he could not eat. As long as Gxagxa could not eat he found it impossible to eat. Qukezwa tried a new strategy and brought him the fermented sorghum soft-porridge known as ingodi, and then the fermented maize soft-porridge called amarhewu. She knew that these were her husband’s favorite drinks, which he found refreshing even after the hardest day’s work. But Twin did not touch them. He just sat there and watched Gxagxa go through the stages that he knew so well: constipation, then diarrhea, then weight loss. The poor horse spent days gasping for air, its tongue hanging out. Then it died.

  Yet Twin continued his vigil. He was waning away. Qukezwa feared that he was going to follow Gxagxa to the Otherworld. She pleaded. She cajoled. She threatened. Twin continued his vigil over a hide that covered only a pile of bones. Even when the flies and the worms came, he sat motionless and watched them feast.

  Qukezwa never really liked Twin-Twin, because he never really liked her. But after praying to the one who told his stories in heaven, she swallowed her pride and went to KwaFeni to appeal for Twin-Twin’s assistance. Twin-Twin put his kaross on his shoulder and rode to Ngcizele to see what was ailing his brother.

  “It is dead, child of my mother! That horse is dead!” shouted Twin-Twin, greatly exercised by his brother’s weakness. Whoever heard of a grown umXhosa man being affected like this by the death of a mere animal. Yes, he himself had felt the pain when his favorite ox died. One or two drops of tears did find their way down his cheeks. But this? Ridiculous! It showed clearly that his brother was a milksop.

  For the first time in almost two weeks Twin opened his lips. He uttered something about Heitsi Eibib.

  “He was a prophet, the son of Tsiqwa who died for the Khoikhoi people,” Qukezwa explained to Twin-Twin.

  “What has he got to do with us? This Heitsi Eibib is not one of us for my brother to be delirious about him. It is you, woman, who have put these strange ideas in his head. Now my brother dreams of foreign prophets that have nothing to do with the amaXhosa people. Is it your ubuthi—your witchcraft—that has made him become like this?”

  “Would I have called you if I had made him be like this?”

  Life seemed to return to Twin’s eyes. He smiled and looked at his brother.

  “In the same way that Heitsi Eibib saved the Khoikhoi, we need a prophet who will save the amaXhosa,” he said.

  “We have had our prophets. The prophets of the amaXhosa, not of the Khoikhoi or the abaThwa. We had Ntsikana and we had Nxele. What more do you want?” asked Twin-Twin. He was becoming impatient with this foolish talk.

  “Perhaps there is something in this Nongqawuse thing,” said Twin. “Perhaps she is the new prophet that will save us.”

  “She is just a foolish girl,” argued Twin-Twin.

  “Let us give her a chance, child of my mother. There might be something in her prophecies about the Strangers. She says the Strangers told her that all the animals and crops that we have today are contaminated. And indeed we see them dying every day. Here I have lost Gxagxa. The same Gxagxa who led us to these new pastures. Gxagxa is gone because of the contamination that blankets the land. Even in the new pastures we cannot escape the contamination. Perhaps we shall escape it if we heed Nongqawuse’s words and kill all our animals.”

  “Don’t you see, all the words she utters are really Mhlakaza’s words? She is Mhlakaza’s medium. The same Mhlakaza who was spreading lies, telling us that we must follow the god of the white man. The very white man who killed the son of his own god!”

  But Twin was no longer listening. He was humming the song that people sang after Nongqawuse had made her prophecies about the new people who would come from the dead with new animals after all the contaminated ones had been killed.

  “Now, I want you to listen very carefully, Twin,” said Twin-Twin, trying very hard to muster as much patience as was possible. “I can see you are taking a dangerous path. We have our own god. And he has no son either. Unlike the god of the white man or of your wife’s people.”

  Twin replied defensively, “Unlike the white people, the Khoikhoi did not kill the son of their god.”

  “It does not matter. What I am saying is, stick to your own god and his true prophets. Leave other people’s gods, including those gods’ sons, daughters, or any other members of their families.”

  In the days that followed, Twin seemed to have found peace and calmness at last. He embraced the stories that were beginning to spread that Mhlakaza had actually visited the land of the dead—the Otherworld where the ancestors lived—and had been caressed by the shadow of King Hintsa. Even though almost twenty years had passed since King Hintsa had been brutally murdered in 1835 by Governor Sir Benjamin D’Urban, the amaXhosa people still remembered him with great love. They had not forgotten how D’Urban had invited the king to a meeting, promising him that he would be safe, only to cut off his ears as souvenirs and ship his head to Britain. There must be something in Nongqawuse’s prophecies if Mhlakaza could be caressed by the shadow of the beloved king.

  Twin was attracted not only by the good news that new cattle would come with the new people from the Otherworld. Nongqawuse had also pronounced that if the people killed all their cattle and set all their granaries alight, the spirits would rise from the dead and drive all the white people into the sea. Who would not want to see the world as it was before the cursed white conquerors—who were capable of killing even the son of their own god—had been cast by the waves onto the lands of the amaXhosa?

  The good news also captured the imagination of King Sarhili, King Hintsa’s son. He had not forgotten how he had accompanied his father into D’Urban’s camp and had fortunately escaped when his father was held hostage for a ransom of twenty-five thousand cattle and five hundred horses. Since he had heard that his father had been gunned down when he tried to escape, his anger against the British had never diminished. His pained words were recalled every day in many an umXhosa household, “Where is my father? He is dead. He died by the hands of these people. He was killed in his own country. He died without fighting.”

  These prophecies presented his nation with a great opportunity to avenge itself against the puppies of Queen Victoria.

  Although Sarhili was chief of the amaGcaleka clan, he was recognized as the king of all the clans of the amaXhosa. Even those amaXhosa who lived in the lands that were now under British rule paid allegiance to him. When he showed great interest in the prophecies, many amaXhosa people followed him.

  There was great excitement at Twin’s homestead when
the news arrived that King Sarhili would be riding from his Great Place at Hohita to the sea. He was undertaking this journey of a day and part of the night because he wanted to see for himself the wonders that everyone was talking about.

  Twin and Qukezwa were at Mhlakaza’s homestead early in the morning. On Qukezwa’s back was their new yellow-colored baby son, Heitsi, named after the savior of the Khoikhoi. This naming of Xikixa’s grandson after his mother’s people—instead of his father’s, as was the custom—convinced Twin-Twin that his twin brother was now an absolute louse in the seams of his wife’s isikhakha skirt. But Twin had already shown on many occasions that when it came to his relationship with Qukezwa he was a man of his own mind.

  Although it was in the middle of a very cold winter, people were beginning to gather from all directions. Others had already camped at the banks of the Gxarha River. They had been there for many days listening to Nongqawuse, who was still seeing the Strangers almost every day. Sometimes she would be overwhelmed by the spirit so much that she got sick. Then Mhlakaza would take over and make his pronouncements. But the favorite of the people, and even of the chiefs, was young Nombanda, who talked so sweetly of the beautiful life that awaited those who carried out the instructions of the Strangers.

  At midday King Sarhili and his entourage arrived amidst the ululation of women. Neither Twin nor Qukezwa had ever seen him before. He looked impressive in his leopard-skin cape. His long beard was glistening in the winter sun.

  The whole place was filled with song and dance. The festive mood permeated the air, the river, and the great ocean. Everyone was filled with love for everyone else. It was wonderful to be there, to be loved so much, and to love others without reservation.

  The same voice that had spoken to Nongqawuse spoke to King Sarhili as well. He heard with his own ears the instructions of the Strangers. At a distance on the waves of the sea he saw his own son who had recently died. He was alive and well and living with King Hintsa in the Otherworld. He saw his favorite horse that had also recently died. It was happily frolicking with the very horse his father rode just before he met his fate at the hands of D’Urban’s headhunters.

  A feast was laid out for the king. He was served a fresh pot of beer by Nongqawuse herself, and was shown a fresh ear of corn. Fresh corn in the middle of winter? This, he was told, came with the new people from the Otherworld.

  “I have never tasted such wonderful beer,” said King Sarhili as he removed foam from his beard. “It is indeed the beer from the world of the ancestors. A wonderful life awaits my people. But can these wonderful promises of the Strangers not be fulfilled without destroying all the existing cattle?”

  “It cannot happen,” answered Mhlakaza. “The instructions are firm on that matter. The present animals are contaminated. So are the present crops. The Strangers made it clear that the new ones will not come unless we do as we are told. The new people, our ancestors, will not rise from the dead until we have cleansed the earth by destroying all our cattle and all our crops both in the fields and in the granaries.”

  “The instructions are clear,” said the king. “But my herds are too many. I shall only ask that I be given three months to destroy them all.”

  In the following weeks the king began to kill his cattle. The first victim was his best bull, which was famous for its beauty in all the land. Poets had recited poems and musicians had composed songs about it. When it fell, people knew that there was no turning back. The cattle had to be killed.

  At the same time he sent imiyolelo—his formal commands—throughout kwaXhosa that all amaXhosa should obey Mhlakaza’s instructions.

  Twin and Qukezwa formed part of the regular throngs that went to Mhlakaza’s place daily.

  “You have been taken up by this foolishness, child of my mother,” Twin-Twin warned him, “and you neglect your cattle and fields.”

  “What is the use of looking after them when they are going to die in any case?” responded Twin. “I am going to destroy them.”

  Twin-Twin shook his head and went off to look after his animals.

  At Mhlakaza’s homestead, Twin and Qukezwa joined the multitudes that felt the earth shake and heard bulls bellowing beneath the ground. They were the pedigree bulls waiting to replace those that were to be killed.

  All important visitors were introduced to the young prophetesses—Nongqawuse and Nombanda. They were treated to the sight of the girls talking to the spirits. The visitors themselves never heard the spirits, for the spirits could be heard only by the chosen ones. Twin believed that at times he heard them, although he could not say exactly what they were saying.

  Nongqawuse’s confused look that marked her as a prophet became more pronounced. And in the manner of all great messengers of the spirit world she was unkempt and didn’t take any particular care of her looks. She did not even care for the red ochre that girls her age applied on their bodies to beautify themselves. She cared only about the spirits, and every day she led the multitudes to the Gxarha River to show them the wonders from the Otherworld.

  A special delegation of chiefs from various parts of kwaXhosa arrived, and Twin, who was gaining more prominence in the homestead of Mhlakaza, was asked to accompany them to the mouth of the Gxarha River where Nongqawuse and Nombanda were already communing with the new people.

  As the chiefs approached the river they were overwhelmed by a wonderful fear. There was an explosion and great rocks fell from the cliffs overlooking the river. Soon the whole valley was covered with mist. The air was filled with the bellowing of cattle, the neighing of horses, and the bleating of sheep and goats.

  “Cast your eyes in the direction of the sea,” Nongqawuse commanded.

  And in the sea the chiefs saw hundreds of cattle. Over the horizon a great crowd of people appeared and disappeared again. It did that a number of times. The chiefs pleaded with Nongqawuse to tell the new people to come closer to the shore, so that they might communicate with them.

  “The new people will come only when you have killed all your cattle,” she told the chiefs. “You cannot talk with them now. Only I can talk with them.”

  When Twin went back to Ngcizele he spread the news of the wonders he had seen. He even went to KwaFeni to try to persuade his brother to believe in the prophecies.

  “That is nonsense,” said Twin-Twin. “You people saw what you wanted to see. Of course the sea has its creatures. The sea has whales and dolphins and water buffaloes and sea lions and sea horses. There are even sea people called water-maids. That is what you saw.”

  “Let me take you there, child of my mother. Then you will see with your own eyes the wonders that I am talking about.”

  “I have no time to waste, Twin. I have to look after my cattle and till the soil. You have seen how big my homestead has grown, with new children and new wives. Those spirits of yours will not feed my family.”

  Twin felt sorry for his brother. He went home to slaughter two of his best oxen.

  A few days later, Twin decided to go back to KwaFeni to try once more to reason with the stubborn Twin-Twin. He was surprised to see four horses, some still saddled, tethered outside his brother’s compound. Was it possible that the very child of his mother’s womb could organize a feast without informing him? A feast attended by men of substance too, judging by their fine horses.

  Under an umsintsi tree, five men were engaged in serious deliberations. Twin-Twin’s eyes betrayed his surprise at seeing his brother.

  “You are welcome, child of my mother, even though I did not know you would be coming,” he said.

  “Since when do I need permission to visit my brother’s house?” asked Twin.

  The men were eyeing him with suspicion. He stared back at them defiantly. He could identify only one of them—Sigidi. He knew him as the senior chief of those amaGcaleka clansmen who lived under the rule of the British in the conquered territory. He was resplendent as usual in his elaborate isiXhosa costume. Twin wondered who the distinguished old man was, with hair as
white as the snow on the Amathole Mountains. Then there were two younger men in European clothes. The old man himself wore a mixture of European and isiXhosa attire: pants and long-boots, and an animal-skin cape over his shoulders. Twin-Twin also looked splendid in his isiXhosa tanned-hide skirt, a zebra-skin cape, and beads of different types. Twin felt small and shabby in his casual donkey blanket—known by that name because of its gray color.

  “Twin, this grandfather you are staring at as if he is your age-mate is Nxito, King Sarhili’s uncle,” said Twin-Twin.

  Then he pointed at the men in European clothes. “And this here is Ned, the son of General Maqoma—yes, the man who led us in the War of Mlanjeni. This well-fed one is Mjuza, the son of our great prophet Nxele. Forgive my brother, my father and brothers, he has not been himself since he started believing in false prophets.”

  Twin was filled with shame for having rudely stared at the aged one. At the same time he was wondering how his brother had come to know such important people.

  “I did not mean to be rude, my father and brothers,” he said timidly.

  “As I was saying,” said Nxito, ignoring Twin and his apology, “our god, the great Qamata, knows how to punish those who think they can bully his people.”

  They were talking about Sir George Cathcart, the victor of the War of Mlanjeni.

  Ned was the next to speak. He worked at the Native Hospital as a laborer who was sometimes used as a porter and an orderly, depending on the need. He recounted to the great amusement of all how the white doctor and the superintendent at the hospital were still mourning for the governor even though it was all of two years since he had died at the hands of the Russian soldiers in the Crimean War.

  Everyone remembered how the news of Cathcart’s death had spread like wildfire, sparking jubilation and impromptu celebrations throughout kwaXhosa. People got to know of the Russians for the first time. Although the British insisted that they were white people like themselves, the amaXhosa knew that it was all a lie. The Russians were a black nation. They were the spirits of amaXhosa soldiers who had died in the various wars against the British colonists. In fact, those particular Russians who killed Cathcart were the amaXhosa soldiers who had been killed by the British during the War of Mlanjeni.