The Sculptors of Mapungubwe

by Zakes Mda

  Chata was idle and it was driving him crazy. Things got worse when his soles began to itch. A few days later the itch turned into a burning sensation. He knew at once that this was the onset of mitshimbilo, the disease of the wanderers. And he could do nothing about it. He took to pacing the clearing in front of the house, pleading aloud with mitshimbilo to leave him alone. His guards thought it was either madness or he was possessed by spirits – in his case they would be evil spirits because only diviners were possessed by good spirits. When he thought he was going to explode with real madness and scream obscenities at everything sacred the burning pain subsided until it became a mild itch. It was tolerable enough and he soon learnt to ignore it. The mitshimbilo had listened to his plea.

  If he couldn’t create then he would have to de-create. And then create again. He decided to melt the gold of the Rain Dancer and her Namaqua-woman attachment. It took him days to do so but he was in no hurry. He wasn’t going anywhere. He separated the ivory as well. Tears ran down his face in rivers when the wooden frame became a bonfire. He melted the gold and reshaped it into many tiny ingots. At least he was busy again, although this time de-creating – he refused to see it as destroying – what had taken so long to create.

  There was no Rain Dancer any more. Only ivory and gold. He was attacked by pangs of loss. He missed the Rain Dancer. He started to re-create her once more, but this time in ivory only and in miniature. He was very deliberate and meticulous and it took many days for the shape of a woman to emerge.

  Baba-Munene came one day to check on him and found him working on the miniature dancer. “I don’t think Rendani will like this,” he said. “You are supposed to carve our royal symbols and totems. This is not a rhino but a woman you are carving.”

  “This one I am carving only for my fulfilment,” said Chata.

  “You are the Carver of Carvers. You cannot carve anything for your own fulfilment. That’s self-indulgence.”

  He patiently explained that Rendani’s presentations to the King stated in no uncertain terms that the person granted the honour of Muvhaḓi wa Vhavhaḓi should create to the glory of no one else but the King. His art should serve the important function of nation-building and moulding social cohesion. If at all he created a sculpture to celebrate the love or beauty of a woman, as Chata seemed to be doing, then that would be “mbisili”, a word created by the Royal Sculptor himself and accepted by the King as part of the vocabulary of the kingdom. Henceforth it would be used for any work of art that was both abominable and strange, and that worked against social cohesion and nation-building. Because these rules were outlined to the King and he accepted them, they were therefore the King’s word. It would be foolhardy to defy the King’s word. It had never been known to happen.

  “What you are carving now is a mbisili that is not befitting a Builder of the Nation and a Moulder of Social Cohesion like yourself. You must therefore cease and desist before the spirits are offended.”

  MBISILI. CHATA WAS TO hear that word many times after that. His urge to continue carving miniature ivory dancers was called that by Baba-Munene, by Rendani and even by the guards and the Royal Feeders. When he asked what it meant exactly he got no clear answer. From then on anything that the rulers did not like was mbisili. If it did not satisfy their aesthetic tastes it was mbisili. The word now went beyond works of art to any other activity of an artist. His yearning to visit the town and see Ma Chirikure was declared mbisili. His attempt to find out from the guards who either lived in the town or frequented it of the whereabouts and well-being of Chenayi was called mbisili after the guards revealed it to Rendani. Chata had not known that every conversation he had with them was transmitted to Rendani. In fact, his whole relationship with Chenayi was declared unnatural, an abomination, and therefore a mbisili. The word caught on, and other people fell victim to it. A dancer who tried to come up with innovative choreography, hoping to be the new Marubini, was accused of mbisili and was condemned and ostracised. When she couldn’t take it any longer she jumped to her death from the highest cliff on the hill. Many people were demonised on the basis of that word irrespective of the nature of their art work, its meaning and intention. Rendani, in his capacity as Royal Sculptor, was very active in determining what was or was not mbisili. It seemed all so arbitrary to Chata. Just that label itself was enough for people to support his decision. They didn’t need to see the work that had been condemned or know the person. If it was a mbisili it was an abomination that no one wanted to associate with. It was a shameful thing for anyone to be caught looking at a mbisili.

  “If you don’t stop this mbisili the King will hear about it. It will be a scandal for the Carver of Carvers to be involved in creating mbisili,” said Rendani to Chata one afternoon. He came to warn him because he had heard from the guards that he was continuing to carve the ivory figurines of female dancers. Hamisi wa Babu stood a few steps away talking to the guards about the recent hunt. At the same time he was straining to hear Rendani’s badgering of Chata, because the ear is a thief.

  Chata was sitting on a stool on the veranda carving some detail on a miniature sculpture. He did not respond to Rendani, and this infuriated him no end. Chata knew that there was nothing Rendani could do. The only possible punishment for mbisili was chastisement and isolation. People were ostracised until they punished themselves either by banishing themselves from the town or, like the innovative dancer, by killing themselves. As it was, he was already enduring enough chastisement from Baba-Munene, Rendani and everyone else with whom he came into contact to drive a weaker man to madness. As for isolation, his title of Carver of Carvers had already ensured that. So he would continue to carve exactly what he wanted to carve until they got sick and tired of him and took their title back. Surely they would not tolerate mbisili in their midst for ever. Perhaps his defiance was his path to freedom.

  So, he sat there and continued to carve while humming a song to himself and tapping his foot to its rhythm.

  “I am warning you, Chatambudza, you’ll not toy with the title that I worked so hard to invent. You’ll not cheapen it by creating mbisili. A Carver of Carvers must create only works that enhance social cohesion and nation-building, works that are to the glory of the living ancestor, our King.”

  He walked away in a huff. Hamisi wa Babu waved goodbye to Chata and followed Rendani.

  The guards looked pityingly at Chata. They had developed a very low opinion of him since it became common knowledge that he was stubbornly creating mbisili. Pity they had to protect such an unsavoury character. Even new guards who came to relieve them already had that attitude towards him. They no longer shared the latest gossip of the town with him. He had vicariously participated in the life of the town through such snippets. Even the Royal Feeders who brought him the delicacies that made him fat kept mum. They no longer entered the house but placed the food on the veranda. They did not want to be contaminated by mbisili.

  Later that evening the Swahili trader came back to see Chata on his own. They sat on the veranda and shared gourds of marula beer.

  “What happened, man?” asked Hamisi wa Babu. “Your people have made you into some kind of deity. I had to get a special dispensation from Baba-Munene to spend some time with you after Rendani totally refused.”

  “Yes, Rendani is very angry with me,” said Chata.

  “He’s angry with everybody today. Even with me.”

  The cause of all this rage? Rendani had revived his interest in Chido. That morning he sent a delegation of his uncles to her home to ask for her hand in marriage. They returned with downcast faces and heavy hearts. Chido, with the support of her family, had turned them down. This, of course, was an insult to Rendani. He vowed that the family would rue the day.

  The two men drank and talked about the old times sailing the seas. Hamisi wa Babu was keen to know what happened to Chata in Mogadishu after he was captured by slavers. Chata narrated his exploits with the Azande
with drunken relish. He went into the house and came back with his Azande weapons to show the trader.

  “We would have done wonderfully with weapons like those on our rhino hunt the other day,” said Hamisi wa Babu.

  He realised too late that he had let slip a secret. But Chata pretended it was no big deal because he wanted to hear more. He actually gave the impression that he would participate in a rhino hunt, given the opportunity. Hamisi wa Babu expressed a view that Chata had heard before in the dhow on the Zanj seas that it was silly for the rhino to be protected in Mapungubwe, just because of the kaafir beliefs that it was sacred. Although Chata was himself an infidel in his eyes, he saw him as an open-minded one who had seen the world. He therefore opened up and told him about the great hunt. Marula beer also greased his tongue nicely. They had travelled south with their entourage and had spent days in the bush with only the sky as their roof. They had slaughtered quite a few rhinos and cut off their horns.

  Hamisi wa Babu bragged that his first trip to Mapungubwe after many years of estrangement had paid off and he would be going home with rhino horns that would fetch quite a good price in Aden.

  It was late in the evening when Hamisi wa Babu staggered to the house that Rendani had built for a new wife. It had turned into a guest house since he was having problems finding a woman to marry.

  Chata was troubled by Hamisi wa Babu’s revelation. He had to do something about it. He regarded Hamisi wa Babu as a friend, a man who had given him the greatest opportunity in his life by taking him in his dhow to foreign lands. Hamisi wa Babu also took him for a friend, otherwise he wouldn’t have told him about the rhino hunt. He felt very bad that he would have to betray his trust.

  Although Chata’s quarters were in Baba-Munene’s compound, albeit at the far end, he could never just walk to his house and say “Hello, neighbour.” He sent one of his guards to request an audience. “It is something very urgent that I must discuss with Younger Father. Your very life depends on it,” he told the guard when he seemed a bit hesitant. A few hours later Chata was led to Baba-Munene’s house. The Younger Father was sitting on the veranda drinking sorghum porridge. He didn’t offer Chata a stool but asked his guards to stand out of earshot near the palisade entrance.

  “I shouldn’t be talking with you at all, Chatambudza, because I am told your mbisili is getting worse.”

  He was talking of it as if it was a disease.

  “I understand, Younger Father, but I must talk to you about rhino horns.”

  Reports had already reached Baba-Munene from travellers who had come across sporadic carcasses of rhinos that there were strange things happening in the kingdom of late. All the dead and putrefying animals had their horns missing. Diviners had attributed this to some evil spirit that was roaming the land. It was a curse that was closely related to the relentless drought. No one could imagine that human beings could actually kill rhinos.

  Chata told Baba-Munene what he had learnt. As he had expected, Baba-Munene did not believe him. “How can you invent such lies about a man who has bestowed such great honour upon you? You owe it to his father, the great Zwanga who also brought you up, to have some loyalty to him. Is it because Rendani exposed your mbisili?”

  Chata understood this reaction. No one could imagine that a Mapungubwe nobleman could kill a rhino, let alone get involved in the wholesale slaughter of rhinos so that foreigners could have their horns.

  “Remember, I once told you of Rendani’s lust for power. Even though you didn’t believe me you took precautions; you stopped his betrothal to Marubini.”

  “It was the King’s order,” said Baba-Munene defensively.

  “The King is wise,” said Chata. “All I am asking today is that you take similar precautions. Hamisi wa Babu is still here. He will be leaving soon, though. Have his baggage searched. The future of Mapungubwe may depend on this. We need rain, O Younger Father! But how can it fall when the land is drenched with the blood of our sacred totem?”

  Instead of answering him Baba-Munene yelled at the soldiers: “Accompany this man back to his lodgings.”

  MA CHIRIKURE COULDN’T BELIEVE her eyes when Chata approached her house, walking slowly like a man with a sickness. He was carrying a heavy tanned hide bag in one hand and his Azande weapons – the makraka and makrigga – in the other. He had another bag over his shoulders and it contained some of his precious possessions, including his silk kanga. He was not the Chata she knew, a nimble man with an athletic body and a spring in his gait. He dragged his feet; perhaps it was because of the weight of his baggage. He wore his Carver of Carvers kaross of patchwork hides like a cape, so she could see his flabby stomach. The chest that used to be rippling muscle now had breasts that were almost hanging like those of a woman. Even his face was full and round like a baby’s. Ma Chirikure squinted her cataracted eyes to make sure they were not making a mistake, and she said to herself: “Why should I be surprised at all? He is now one of the idle rich on the hill.”

  “You shouldn’t be seen here,” said Ma Chirikure even before Chata could open his mouth in a greeting.

  “My eyes wept, there’s only rubble where my house used to stand,” said Chata.

  “They said you’d never come back, that you were now a nobleman on top of the hill. Why would your eyes weep for a homestead that you asked to be destroyed since you no longer wanted to be associated with us commoners?”

  Ma Chirikure did not invite him into her house, and didn’t welcome him with a bowl of fermented porridge. They just stood there in the clearing in front of the house, anger in her eyes and perplexity in his.

  “I’m almost your mother,” said Ma Chirikure. “I ushered you through the passage of life. But I don’t want you here. They say you have mbisili.”

  “And what is this mbisili that I’m supposed to have, Ma Chirikure?”

  “Who knows what it is? All I know is that people like you who create things with their hands or with their bodies are sometimes possessed by evil spirits that make them create mbisili instead of beautiful things. And then they kill themselves as punishment by the ancestors.”

  Chata couldn’t but bow to the genius of his brother. Rendani had created an idea specifically to be used against him and now it had caught fire and had become part of the culture of the people of Mapungubwe. Chata tried to explain that mbisili lived only in the minds of the gullible. He told her how it came about. But Ma Chirikure’s anger did not abate.

  “We were proud of you when we heard that now you’re an important person,” she said. “But you abandoned us. You abandoned a child who had faith in you.”

  “I had no choice in the matter. I was confined to the hill by my Muvhaḓi wa Vhavhaḓi title. I could not defy the orders of the King. A Carver of Carvers is not allowed to go anywhere. He just sits there being fed like an ox that is being fattened for slaughter.”

  His escape was facilitated by the drought. The weakened King had become desperate because he could not produce the rain. His only hope was that the Rain Dancer could be found before the famine finished his people. Chata had then offered to find Marubini if he was allowed to go and look for her. From his Zhun/twasi bloodline he had inherited their famed tracking ability and he was confident that he would return to Mapungubwe with the Rain Dancer. The rain festival could then be made, she would dance up a storm and a downpour would quench the thirsty land.

  Baba-Munene was faced with the difficult decision as to whether a Carver of Carvers was allowed to undertake such a mission. He could not consult the other elders of the village as to what tradition said on the matter because there had never been a Carver of Carvers before. There was therefore no precedent to follow. The only person who could decide on the matter was the Royal Sculptor. He was the one who had been directed by the ancestors to invent such a title, and therefore he was the one who could definitively make a ruling on the matter, one way or the other. But unfortunately Baba-Munen
e was not talking to Rendani at that moment. Not until he came up with a good explanation for the rhino horns that were found in the guest house that was used by Hamisi wa Babu. On their discovery Hamisi wa Babu had fled before he was killed by what he referred to as infidels. Rendani was left alone to endure the shame. Baba-Munene was not going to consult him about anything until his case was resolved. He therefore erred on the side of rain and allowed the Carver of Carvers to go on a quest to bring the Rain Dancer back. But since the Carver of Carvers had to be protected at all times the guards would have to go with him. Chata insisted that he would either go on this quest alone, or not at all. His tracking powers were very sensitive. They would not work if he could sniff the smell of other people around him.

  “That is why I’m here, Ma Chirikure, and I need your help. I suspect you know where Marubini is.”

  Ma Chirikure had listened attentively, her body swaying gently from side to side.

  “Come inside,” she said. “I do not mind if your mbisili contaminates me. You’re my child after all.”

  He placed his heavy baggage on the floor and sat on a stool. Ma Chirikure apologised for not giving him a bowl of fermented porridge as she used to. Things were difficult for her and she didn’t have much to eat. Chata told her it didn’t matter, he would drink the soft porridge another day.

  “What makes you think I know where Marubini is? I told you once that her parents sent her to the land of the Karanga.”

  “I believed you then, Ma Chirikure. But I have since heard that her parents don’t know where she is. They had nothing to do with her disappearance. You must be the one who knows.”

  Ma Chirikure did not respond to this, which confirmed to Chata that indeed she knew where Marubini was hiding.

  “There are gold ingots in this bag,” said Chata. “They used to be the Rain Dancer. I want you to have them. You’ll never go hungry again.”