The Heart of Redness: A Novel

by Mda, Zakes

  “I do not know if you can compare our prophets with prophets who come from white people’s books,” says the uncle.

  “What I am saying is that it is wrong to dismiss those who believed in Nongqawuse as foolish,” says Camagu. “Her prophecies arose out of the spiritual and material anguish of the amaXhosa nation.”

  Dalton feels betrayed. It is fine to humor these people sometimes, to go along with their foibles before putting them on the correct path. But this Camagu seems to believe what he is saying. He is not merely ingratiating himself with his in-laws. He speaks with conviction. The Believers, on the other hand, hear his words. But they don’t mean anything to them. Educated people, they say, like to mystify the most straightforward of things. To cloud them with meaningless words.

  “You know very well, Camagu, that Nongqawuse was a little girl who craved attention,” Dalton says. “She had vaguely heard of the teachings of Nxele about the resurrection . . . and the Christian version of it, as her uncle had been a Christian at some stage. She therefore decided to concoct her own theology . . . which gathered momentum as she gained more prestige as a great prophetess. These were the delusions of a young girl!”

  This Dalton does not give up. His tongue becomes more careless as the bottles get emptier and as the sun creeps towards its resting place.

  “Miracles are miracles, John. She was a young girl, yes, and young girls are prone to seeing visions,” says Camagu.

  “If somebody I know who is a principal at the secondary school were here, she would tell you that the statement you have just made is highly sexist,” laughs Dalton.

  “It is true, you know? Who’s always seeing visions of the Virgin Mary? Young girls. Our Lady of Fatima . . . our lady of this and that. . . all places where young virgins saw visions of the Virgin!”

  The following day Camagu is shamefaced. He sits on the stoop while the rays of the morning sun warm his naked torso. He regrets that he argued with Dalton at Zim’s place. They made fools of themselves in the presence of his in-laws. They must have sounded arrogant and vain, arguing about people’s beliefs as if they were the fountains of all wisdom. Blabbering in loud voices while the elders watched in undisguised disgust. No wonder they have no respect for so-called educated people. It was all Dalton’s fault. He was drunk. Camagu himself did not touch the brandy at all, although he got louder with those who did. Dalton was gulping it like water. By the time they left he was staggering and singing boisterously.

  He is thinking of how he will redeem himself to his in-laws when Dalton arrives in his four-wheel-drive bakkie. The trader is in a jolly mood. He greets Camagu and carries on about the great success of their mission yesterday. He stops when he sees that Camagu is sullen.

  “What is wrong, man? What have they done to you now?”

  “You embarrassed me yesterday.”

  “Is that how you thank me for getting you a bride?”

  “You got too drunk. What will those people think of us?”

  “Those people are my people, man. I know them. They know me. I grew up with them. I am one of them. I do not know why you should be concerned how I behave when I am with them. Anyway, I came to talk about the plans you outlined at the meeting the other day.”

  “Ja. What about them?”

  Dalton says he has thought long and hard about them. He feels that they are good. But they can still be improved. Instead of building a backpackers’ hostel with self-catering chalets for nature-loving tourists, they should construct a cultural village owned and operated by the villagers. He already has two formidable women in NoManage and NoVangeli who are experienced in entertaining tourists by displaying cultural performances and practices of the amaXhosa. This is a proven kind of business. Tourists like visiting such cultural villages to see how the people live. The village will have proper isiXhosa huts rather than the newfangled hexagons that are found all over Qolorha. Women will wear traditional isiXhosa costumes as their forebears used to wear. They will grind millet and polish the floors with cow dung. They will draw patterns on the walls with ochre of different colors. There will be displays of clay pots and other earthenware items. Tourists will flock to watch young maidens dance and young men engage in stick fights. They will see the abakhwetha initiates whose bodies are covered in white ochre. They will learn how the amaXhosa of the wild coast live.

  “The abakhwetha initiates? Right there in the middle of the cultural village? What will the initiates be doing in the village?” wonders Camagu.

  “These will be actors, man, not the real abakhwetha.”

  “Then we won’t be showing the tourists the true picture of how the amaXhosa live. In the real-life situation you don’t find abakhwetha hanging around the village, women in their best amahomba costumes grinding millet and decorating walls, while maidens are dancing, and right there in front of the house young men are fighting with sticks. It’s too contrived.”

  “That’s the purpose of a cultural village: to show various aspects of the people’s culture in one place.”

  “That’s dishonest. It is just a museum that pretends that is how people live. Real people in today’s South Africa don’t lead the life that is seen in cultural villages. Some aspects of that life perhaps are true. But the bulk of what tourists see is the past. . . a lot of it an imaginary past. They must be honest and say that they are attempting to show how people used to live. They must not pretend that’s how people live now.”

  “It seems you intend to oppose everything that I come up with,” says Dalton bitterly. “First it was my water project, now you knock down things I have been doing successfully here with NoManage and NoVangeli long before you came to this village.”

  “I am just saying I have a problem with your plans. It is an attempt to preserve folk ways. . . to reinvent culture. When you excavate a buried precolonial identity of these people . . . a precolonial authenticity that is lost. . . are you suggesting that they currently have no culture . . . that they live in a cultural vacuum?”

  “Now you sound like Xoliswa Ximiya!”

  “Xoliswa Ximiya is not capable of saying what I have just said. She talks of civilization, by which she means what she imagines to be western civilization. I am interested in the culture of the amaXhosa as they live it today, not yesterday. The amaXhosa people are not a museum piece. Like all cultures, their culture is dynamic.”

  “I know what you are trying to do, Camagu. You are shooting down my ideas because you want to promote your own cooperative society. You want to benefit alone with your women. I heard that your lackeys, MamCirha and NoGiant, were trying to recruit NoVangeli and NoManage.”

  “I don’t know what you are on about. What would we want with NoManage and NoVangeli? We are in the business of harvesting the sea and manufacturing isiXhosa attire and jewelry, not of milking gullible tourists.”

  “You want everything for yourself. You don’t want me to have a piece of the action. You are greedy! My people will not allow you to get away with this. My people love me.”

  “Your people love you because you do things for them. I am talking of self-reliance where people do things for themselves. You are thinking like the businessman you are . . . you want a piece of the action. I do not want a piece of any action. This project will be fully owned by the villagers themselves and will be run by a committee elected by them in the true manner of cooperative societies.”

  In no time the village is talking of the fallout between Camagu and Dalton. It is interpreted by the villagers as a power struggle. The Unbelievers are happy that at last they will be able to break the Believers. As long as those who oppose the gambling paradise fight among themselves and are divided into two camps, the plans to develop the village towards the path of civilization will proceed smoothly. Soon the surveyors will be coming.

  Tongues wag in all directions. Some say Dalton is jealous of Camagu’s success with the women’s cooperative society. Dalton is not satisfied with owning Vulindlela Trading Store. He wants to own everything els
e in the village. Dalton’s supporters, on the other hand, claim that Camagu is trying to take over all aspects of the tourist trade, including the cultural tourism of NoManage and NoVangeli. Camagu came all the way from Johannesburg to plant the seed of division in the clan of the amaGcaleka. He is so ungrateful, after Dalton set him up in Qolorha, bought him a cottage, and even got him a bride.

  Camagu is despondent. The only bright spot in his life is that soon Qukezwa’s people will bring her to his cottage. Qukezwa and Heitsi. He has claimed Heitsi as his child, even though the elders were insisting that since he was born out of wedlock he, according to custom, belongs to Zim and not to Qukezwa’s new family. It will be wonderful to have an instant family. He never thought he was cut out to be a father. His ways were wild and carefree. They were ways that were in constant search of the pleasures of the flesh. Any flesh. Until he came to Qolorha-by-Sea. And was tamed by a nondescript daughter of Believers. Heitsi. He will be a good father to him. Heitsi. He who is named after Heitsi Eibib, the earliest prophet of the Khoikhoi. Heitsi. The son of Tsiqwa. Tsiqwa. He who tells his stories in heaven. Heitsi. The one who parted the waters of the Great River so that his people could cross when the enemy was chasing them. When his people had crossed, and the enemy was trying to pass through the opening, the Great River closed upon the enemy. And the enemy all died.

  Camagu smiles to himself when he remembers how he learned all this from Qukezwa when she was teaching him about the sacred cairns. He also learned that the Khoikhoi people were singing the story of Heitsi Eibib long before the white missionaries came to these shores with their similar story of Moses and the crossing of the Red Sea.

  A messenger breaks his reverie. Qukezwa will not be coming. At least not for a while. As soon as Camagu and Dalton had left after negotiating the lobola, Zim had declared that he could now go in peace, for his work was done. Then he just sat there staring at nothing. Since then he has not said a word. He does not hear anything. It is as if the world outside does not exist. Qukezwa feels that she cannot leave her father in this state. She will try to nurse him back to good health. Only then will she join her husband.

  But Zim remains in this state for many days. And then for many weeks. Nothing seems to help. After a while, Camagu is allowed to visit his wife. He is seen at Zim’s homestead at least every other day. He is puzzled by what is happening to Zim.

  Qukezwa arranges that they put his father on Gxagxa, his favorite horse, and lead him to Intlambo-ka-Nongqawuse—Nongqawuse’s Valley. They place him before Ityholo-lika-Nongqawuse, the bush where Nongqawuse first saw visions of the Strangers who gave her the message of salvation. Qukezwa hopes this will help to jog his spiritual memory back to the world of the living. But it does not help.

  An igqirha—a healer and diviner—is called and puts her finger right on the problem. Only after she and her acolytes have eaten the goat that was slaughtered for them, of course.

  She says the daughter of the amaGqunukhwebe—by which she means NoEngland—is calling Zim. But Qukezwa is holding him with her heart. She does not want her father to die. She is selfishly holding him very tightly. There is a tussle between the two women who love the elder. He therefore remains in limbo between the world of the living and the world of the ancestors.

  “NoEngland will finally win, for she is in cahoots with very powerful ancestors,” says the igqirha. “Qukezwa is only a girl, although her heart is powerful enough to hold the elder for so long.”

  Qukezwa is angry when the elders plead with her to release the poor man so that he may go in peace. Why does everyone want her father to die?

  While the relatives are waiting for NoEngland’s grand victory over Qukezwa, a woman is brought to Zim’s homestead on a triangular wooden sleigh pulled by two oxen. She is very sick. But her beauty shines through the illness. She is covered in a gray donkey blanket, and lies calmly on a mattress on the sleigh. Only her head is showing. She wears a bright-colored doek. Her eyes are downcast and speak only of shame.

  The sleigh is parked just outside Zim’s door, and the man who brought her unyokes the oxen. The Believers who are surrounding Zim hear the commotion outside and are amazed to see the woman on the sleigh and the man driving his oxen out of the homestead.

  “She is my daughter,” explains the man. “She insists that I leave her here. It is the only thing that will cure her.”

  And he is gone.

  No one knows what to do with the woman until Qukezwa arrives. She takes one look at her and screams.

  “What do you want here? Are you not satisfied with what you did to my mother? Have you come to put the final nail in my father’s coffin?”

  “Please, Qukezwa,” the woman whispers wanly, “have a heart. I am dying. This is the last appeal that I can make to NoEngland. I heard that Zim is in the process of dying and that you are holding him. I am glad you held him until I arrived. Perhaps he can take a message to No-England that she remove the curse. I have been to doctors of all sorts. They are unable to stop the flow. Only NoEngland can stop the pain that is racking my body.”

  The doctors at the hospital in East London gave her disease a name, she tells the men and women who are now surrounding her. Cervical cancer. They told her it was incurable. They gave her tablets to ease the pain. There was nothing new in what they said. She already knew that it was incurable, whatever one chose to call it. The igqirha himself had said so. Only the person who had caused it could reverse it. And that igqirha should know. He was the one who had “worked” her underwear for her to be like this in the first place.

  NoEngland cannot be woken from the dead to remove the curse. But at least Zim can ask her to remove the pain when they meet in the Otherworld. The woman says she will not move from where she is until she is given an audience with Zim.

  “You set your friends on me . . . to harass me wherever I went!” a callous Qukezwa yells at the hapless woman.

  “I will not move until Zim’s spirit departs from his body,” insists the woman.

  Everyone looks at Qukezwa as if the woman’s salvation lies with her. As if Qukezwa was responsible for her fate. She runs back to her rondavel, where she breaks down and cries. She is angry that they want to hasten her father’s death just so that he can carry their messages to NoEngland. She is determined more than ever to nurse him back to health. But the sick woman is just as determined to keep vigil outside Zim’s door. She is grateful for the bread and tea that merciful relatives of Zim serve her. But she will not be moved to any of the houses. She wants to wait outside Zim’s door.

  Camagu comes the following day to see Qukezwa and Heitsi, and to find out if there is any change in Zim’s state. He sees the woman on the sleigh. He takes one look at her and his heart beats faster. His palms sweat. He is out of breath, as if he had been running.

  “NomaRussia?” he wonders softly.

  She lifts her eyes wearily.

  “NomaRussia!” he calls excitedly.

  “Who are you?”

  “At the wake . . . in Hillbrow . . . you sang so beautifully.”

  “So I did.”

  “We spoke. Don’t you remember?”

  “There were many people there. I do not remember you. All I want is for the pain to go away.”

  11

  People were dying. Thousands of them. At first it was mostly old people and children. Then men and women in their prime. Dying everywhere. Corpses and skeletons were a common sight. In the dongas. On the veld. Even around the homesteads. No one had the strength to bury them.

  Twin and Qukezwa were determined to keep Heitsi alive at all costs. Twin had extricated himself from his lethargy. While he joined raiding parties that stole food from both Believers and Unbelievers, Qukezwa boiled up old bones that she picked up on the veld and in the dongas. Although the bones had been bleaching in the sun for years, she hoped to get some broth from them. She and Heitsi drank it as soup.

  Twin’s raiding parties went as far as East London. They broke into the colonists’ stabl
es and stole their horses. They slaughtered them and shared the meat. Qukezwa would see her husband approach from afar with a whole leg of a horse on his shoulders. She would rejoice, for there would be plenty of meat that day. The people could no longer afford to be disgusted about eating horsemeat. They forgot that they used to laugh at the Basotho people who regarded horsemeat, especially its biltong, as a delicacy.

  Sometimes, even before he reached home, Twin would be attacked by hordes of hungry people who would grab the meat and run away with it. Or, while Qukezwa was cooking it, hungry thieves would steal the whole pot, right from the fire, and run away with it. It was a dog-eat-dog world.

  And to their utter shame they did actually eat dogs. They stole the well-fed dogs of the colonists and cooked them for supper.

  But death continued unabated. The colonists protected their animals from marauders with barricades and guns. Many Believers just sat in their homes and waited for death. Helpless mothers watched as children fell, never to rise again. Dying wives watched as the family dogs ate the corpses of their husbands. They knew that sooner or later they too would end up in the dogs’ stomachs. But then the dogs themselves would end up in some hungry families’ stomachs. It was a dog-eat-dog world.

  “When things are like this, people will end up eating one another,” said Twin as he sat with Heitsi near the fire where Qukezwa was cooking some grass that they were going to eat before they slept.

  “Only mad people can do that. Even at the worst of times we would never be reduced to cannibalism as the Basotho were during the Difaqane wars and migrations,” replied Qukezwa.

  “Some people are mad already,” said Twin. “Hunger has made many people raving mad.”

  “The prophets have failed us,” lamented Qukezwa. “We must move. We must seek refuge, or even go to the colony and seek help from our cónquerors.”