The Heart of Redness: A Novel

by Mda, Zakes

  Whenever Twin awoke from such dreams, his fervor for the girl-prophets multiplied tenfold.

  He was distressed about the rift between himself and Twin-Twin. He blamed it all on his twin brother’s stubbornness. And on his father’s headlessness. Because the British had cut his head off, Xikixa was not being an effective ancestor. A good ancestor is one who can be an emissary between the people of the world and the great Qamata. A good ancestor comes between his feuding descendants whenever they sacrifice a beast to him, and brings peace among them. Without a head Xikixa was unable to bring cohesion to his progeny. That was why they were fighting among themselves, and were destined to do so until his headless state was remedied.

  Only the resurrection of the dead could restore the elder’s dignity. And the dignity of all the amaXhosa people, dead or alive. It would bring about a regeneration of the earth. The new redeemer that the girl-prophets talked about, son of Sifuba-Sibanzi the Broad-Chested One, would lead this re-enactment of the original creation. The long-departed relatives of the amaXhosa people would come back from the world of the ancestors and would once more walk the earth of the living. The white colonists would disappear. So would the lungsickness that they had brought from across the oceans.

  The greatest joy of the Believers was that Prophet Nxele—who had drowned trying to escape from Robben Island some thirty years before—would come back and lead the people to victory over the colonists, in the same way that he had led the Russian army that had vanquished Cathcart in the Crimean War. It did not matter that Mjuza, Nxele’s son and heir, had rejected the prophecies of Nongqawuse. Mjuza was a lost cause who had been deceived by his colonial masters.

  These were the happiest times for Twin and Qukezwu. They had few cares in the world. They wandered on their uncultivated fields or on the sands of the sea, daydreaming of the wonderful life that awaited them. They sang the praises of Mhlakaza, Nongqawuse, and Nombanda. Their hearts overflowed with love and goodwill. So did the hearts of all Believers.

  And they looked beautiful too. Ever since Nongqawuse had ordered her followers to adorn themselves in their finery in celebration of the imminent arrival of the ancestors, Qukezwa would not be seen without her makeup of red and yellow ochre. Even old women who had long given up the practice of decorating themselves were seen covered in ochre and resplendent in ornaments. They knew that as soon as the ancestors arrived from the Otherworld, their youth would be restored.

  Finally the date of the resurrection was set by the prophets. The full moon of June 1856. The Believers waited with anticipation. But the day came and went like any other day. No miracles and wonders were seen at the Gxarha. Nor anywhere else in the lands of the amaGcaleka and throughout kwaXhosa. This was the First Disappointment.

  Some Believers began to unbelieve, and King Sarhili was roused to anger. He called an imbhizo at his Great Place, where all the important men of the amaGcaleka clan were invited.

  “How can we trust these prophets when they fail to keep their word?” he asked. “Why are they keeping the new people from rising? Until the prophets keep their word I shall command that the slaughter of the cattle should stop.”

  “Mhlakaza must be forced to show us the new people!” cried the men. “He must prove to us that his word is true!”

  When the prophet of Gxarha was finally hurled before them, he explained that the ancestors had failed to arise because on that day they had gone on a visit to an inaccessible corner of the Otherworld. He had been unable to get hold of them. Why, they had even been beyond the reach of greater prophets like Nongqawuse and Nombanda.

  “But since then we have spoken with them,” he assured the elders. “The rising of the dead will still happen. The next full moon will be the moon of wonders and dangers. On that great day two suns will rise in the sky. They will be red like the color of blood. In the middle of the sky, over Ntaba kaNdoda, our sacred mountain, they will collide, and the whole world will be in darkness. A great storm will arise, and only those huts that are newly thatched in preparation for the arrival of our ancestors will survive it. Out of the earth, at the mouths of all our great rivers, the dead will arise with their new cattle. Our forefathers will finally come wearing white blankets and shiny brass rings. And be warned, all you Unbelievers: the English and their collaborators, all those traitors who wear trousers, will be swallowed by the sea, which will take them back to the place of creation whence they came . . . to be re-created into better people.”

  The next full moon was in mid-August. Twin and Qukezwa did not sleep that night. They joined the revelers at the banks of the Gxarha River, and filled the valleys of Qolorha with song and laughter. The hills echoed the joyous sounds, and sent shivers down the spines of the colonists.

  While all the carousing was going on, Heitsi slept on a grass mat behind Mhlakaza’s hut. He was not alone. There were other toddlers and babies of the Believers. They were looked after by those girls who were too young to participate in the revelry. Heitsi was getting used to this. Of late he was spending a lot of time with strangers while Qukezwa attended to matters of belief.

  Soon the night was a memory. Everyone was tired. But no one slept. They wanted to see with their eyes the wonders and dangers.

  Qukezwa sat on the bank of the Gxarha River, rocking Heitsi on her lap and singing a lullaby that she had learned from her Khoikhoi people. Her eyes were looking fixedly at the horizon, waiting for the two red suns to burst out of the pink-and-purple skies. Her husband sat behind her, and joined in the call-and-response parts of the lullaby. His eyes were red and his breath reeked like a pigsty. When he belched, one could actually see waves of deadly fumes assailing the crisp air of dawn. His head was pounding with a hangover and lack of sleep. Yet he was going to soldier on for the rest of the day. If he slept, who would welcome Xikixa and the rest of the distinguished ancestors?

  The sun that rose was not red. Perhaps it would change color on the first steps of its journey across the sky. Perhaps a second one would rise. The Believers watched in breathless anticipation. The solitary sun walked across the sky as if it was just another day. It took its time, as it always did when it was watched. No other sun came. No great collision happened. No darkness. Instead the day was brighter than usual. The people had waited in vain. The ancestors did not venture out of the mouths of the rivers.

  This was the Second Disappointment.

  Once more there was anger directed at the sacred persons of the prophets. While the staunch Believers held tightly to their belief, the weak let disillusionment get the better of them. King Sarhili summoned Mhlakaza, who denied that he was the source of the prophecies. He put all the blame on Nongqawuse.

  “She is the one who talks with the new people,” he said. “I am merely her mouth.”

  King Sarhili retreated to Manyube, a conservation area and nature reserve where people were not allowed to chop trees or hunt animals and birds. He had often told his people, “One day these wonderful things of nature will get finished. Preserve them for future generations.” There he was able to think things over in a peaceful environment. He decided to issue a decree that chiefs should ban all further cattle-killing activities in their chiefdoms.

  But a few days later the Believers were encouraged by new reports that the new people had been seen taking a stroll in the countryside near the mouths of the great rivers. This proved that the prophecies had not failed completely. Perhaps something had gone wrong somewhere. Soon the truth was discovered. The fault lay with the people who had sold their cattle off instead of slaughtering them. And those who slaughtered them without going through the ritual of preserving their imiphefumlo, their souls.

  This explanation of the Second Disappointment was good enough for Sarhili. He issued new orders that the cattle-killing should continue. This time he pushed it relentlessly. He was like a man possessed. He rode once more from his Great Place at Hohita to Qolorha, where he conferred with the prophets.

  Qukezwa and Twin were among the multitudes that accompa
nied the king to the river. He rode further than the mouth of the Gxarha River, all the way to the mouth of the Kei River. And there he saw his father, the great King Hintsa, who had been beheaded by the British twenty-one years before. He was among a host of new people who appeared in boats at the mouth of the river. They told the king that they had come to liberate the black nations, and that this message must be passed throughout the world. In the meantime the cattle-killing movement must be strengthened.

  Sarhili was very excited. He announced to the multitudes, “I have seen my father! I have seen Hintsa face-to-face.”

  That night, as provisions were being cooked for the king and his entourage for the long ride back to his Great Place, he decided to take a walk. When he came back he announced that he had seen his father again.

  “I met my father among the wild mielies,” he said. “He gave me the spear that was buried with him. I have it now.”

  His words sparked a new wave of cattle-killing. And a new fervor in Twin and Qukezwa. Sacred fires were burning in their chests, jetting out of their mouths in the form of sermons that rende-red the words of the prophets to the multitudes.

  King Sarhili took the message of the new people seriously. As soon as he returned to his Great Place he sent emissaries to other black leaders in the region, to exhort them to kill their cattle. King Moshoeshoe of the Basotho people sent his own messengers to Qolorha to find out what all this cattle-killing meant. But none of the other kings heeded the prophecies.

  At the same time, Mhlakaza was extending a hand of reconciliation to the white settlers. He was asking them to kill their cattle and destroy their crops as well, for the sake of their own redemption. He invited them to come to the Gxarha River to see for themselves and hear the good news of the resurrection.

  “It is not enough for you to read the big black book,” he warned them. “You must throw away your witchcraft. The people that have come have not come to make war but to bring about a better state of things for all.”

  But the colonists were too stubborn to accept his invitation. What the Believers had suspected all along, that the whites were beyond redemption, was confirmed. What else would one expect from people who were a product of a different creation from that of the amaXhosa, people who were so unscrupulous that they killed the son of their own god?

  While Twin was trying to come to grips with issues of faith, Twin-Twin was grappling with his conscience. It seemed to him that his unbelief was sinking him deeper into collaboration with the conquerors of his people. Although he was strong enough to resist conversion, some of his fellow Unbelievers were becoming Christians. And when they did, they sang praises of the queen of the conquerors, asking some god to save her. That worried him a lot. He did not want the queen to be saved. He wanted nothing more than to see the complete disappearance of the colonists from kwaXhosa. But the way of Nongqawuse was not the way.

  Chief Nxito seemed to depend increasingly on Twin-Twin’s counsel, especially because Twin-Twin was now stationed at Qolorha under the protection of the British government, and was able to see what was happening in the old man’s chiefdom. Whenever the chief had to meet representatives of The Man Who Named Ten Rivers—even if it was merely John Dalton—Twin-Twin was required to be there.

  He was there when Dalton and Gawler arrived with new instructions from The Man Who Named Ten Rivers. The chiefs would henceforth receive a monthly salary in colonial money. They were no longer allowed to impose fines on those who were found guilty at the chiefs’ courts. Councillors like Twin-Twin who assisted the chiefs in exchange for a share of those fines would now also be paid by the government. This would make them loyal to the government instead of to the chiefs. The work of the chiefs was now made lighter because they would no longer be allowed to judge legal cases on their own. At every case there would be a British magistrate, who would do most of the work. This was because the governor valued the chiefs so much that he did not want them to be burdened with such mundane matters as presiding over cases.

  Nxito and his councillors seemed pleased with the new arrangement. Colonial money was reputed to be very powerful in the purchase of goods that could be bought only in the trading stores that were emerging throughout kwaXhosa. Many people bought such goods with grain. But those who had colonial money, the very money adorned with the image of Her Britannic Majesty, were men of status in the league of Ned and Mjuza.

  But Twin-Twin, ever ready to bring others down to earth, asked, “Now, if we are going to have this white man judging our cases, whose law is he going to apply?”

  “The law we apply every day,” answered Nxito. “Our law.”

  “The white man does not know our law,” said Twin-Twin vehemently. “He does not respect our law. He will apply the law of the English people. This is a way of introducing his laws among our people. As for the colonial money, The Man Who Named Ten Rivers is buying our chiefs. When they are paid by him, they will owe their loyalty to him, and not to the amaXhosa people, and not to our laws and customs and traditions!”

  Twin-Twin was right on both counts. The intention of The Man Who Named Ten Rivers was to break the power of the chiefs. After he had recovered from his nervous breakdown he called his senior officers and briefed them about his tour of the frontier and the new judicial system he was introducing to the natives.

  “It will gradually undermine and destroy Xhosa laws and customs,” he said. “European laws will, by imperceptible degrees, take the place of their own barbarous customs, and any Xhosa chief of importance will be daily brought into contact with a talented and honorable European gentleman, who will hourly interest himself in the advance and improvement of the entire tribe, and must in process of time gain an influence over the native races.”

  The applause was deafening. Here at last was a governor who knew how to deal with the native people without incurring the great expense of war. At the ball that evening he was the toast of the genteel society of Cape Town. Admirers surrounded him, eager to learn more about the situation on the frontier.

  He told them about the great cattle-killing movement. The whole thing was a conspiracy of Kreli and Moshesh, the king of the Basotho people, he explained, using the colonial names for Sarhili and Moshoeshoe. The latter was bent on uniting black resistance against white domination in the whole of southern Africa. That is why he had sent an emissary to Kreli. The Basotho king had grown too ambitious ever since he defeated the British under Governor Cathcart at the Battle of Berea a few years back.

  “Mhlakaza is merely an instrument in the hands of Kreli and Moshesh, working on the superstition and ignorance of the common people,” said the governor.

  “What would these chiefs gain from the cattle-killing?” an officer wanted to know.

  “Simple, my dear friend. The mind of the native can be very devious,” said the governor sagaciously.

  Everybody agreed that indeed the native had the slyness of the devil himself.

  “This whole cattle-killing movement is not just superstitious delusion. It is a plot by the two chiefs. . . a cold-blooded political scheme to involve the government in war, and to bring a host of desperate enemies upon us.”

  It was clear to the governor that his admirers were not bright enough to understand the intricacies of this political intrigue. Their faces were blank.

  “Kreli and Moshesh want to drive the pacified Xhosas into a war they do not want against the English. Hunger will make them desperate and they will fight. They will steal cattle from the white people and the Thembus to provide their fighting men with food. Now they are killing their own cattle so that they will have none to guard, and more men will be available to fight. Those are the true reasons for the cattle-killing.”

  Then he entertained the listeners with his stories of Australia, where he had succeeded in imposing English law in the place of the bloodthirsty aboriginal law. He had made it a point that aboriginal people were not allowed to congregate together and practice their old uncivilized habits. Instead they were
scattered all over the settler country, where they could be equipped with education and skills that were necessary for their survival in the modern world.

  “That’s what I plan to do with the Xhosa people as well,” he explained, giving a conspiratorial wink.

  Whereas previous governors like Sir Harry Smith had talked of exterminating the natives, his was a humane policy that aimed at civilizing them, and bringing them up to the supreme levels of the English.

  In Australia the policy of extermination had borne fruit, but in the Cape Colony it, had already failed even when its advocate, Sir Harry, had tried actively to implement it.

  “The natives of the Cape Colony and British Kaffraria must be grateful that my philosophy is an enlightened one,” the governor said. “They must seize the opportunity, and they must be disciplined. We have taken a few lessons from our success in Australia.”

  In New Zealand he had had similar success. He told the genteel folks amid sighs of admiration how he had disciplined a Maori chief called Te Rauparaha. He had been getting too big for his boots and was surely going to give the settlers some problems in the future, so Grey had accused him of plotting to kill white settlers and rape their women. The chief was arrested, and was released only after his people agreed to hand over three million acres of prime land for white settlement. This added more land to the millions of acres that Sir George had gained by various means from the Maori, including court-martialing and executing their uncooperative leaders and transporting some of them to Australia.

  As for Te Rauparaha, although there had been a great uproar that he had been falsely accused, it was well worth his sacrifice. His people received the greatest gift of all: education and British civilization. The governor built schools and hospitals for them. He could do the same too for the natives of the Cape Colony and British Kaffraria if they walked the road of civilization and did not fill their heads with idle thoughts of killing settlers and raping white women.