by Zakes Mda
Mpiyezintombi knew that though the White men’s presence was ostensibly to enjoy the first fruits with the King and to pay their respects to him, their crucial mission was to convince him to accede to the ultimatum Sir Bartle Frere had sent early that December, that King Cetshwayo should dismantle his military system or face a war with the British.
The reason given was that some of his warriors constantly crossed uThukela River to kill British subjects on the Natal side of the border. The King knew, of course, that the real intention was to contain the military might of the amaZulu nation.
He told Jantoni and the missionaries that he was the King and could not be given ultimatums by servants of other monarchs – Frere was the British High Commissioner for Southern Africa. This was the same response the Silent One had given to Frere’s messengers.
Mpiyezintombi found this very exciting, as did his fellow amabutho. Their spears and muskets were thirsty for British blood. Warriors become restless and fidgety without war.
At sunset the merry-making was over. The missionaries rode back to their mission stations and Jantoni repaired to the guest hut, where isigodlo girls would be pampering him, serving him victuals and their bodies if the activities of the day and intoxication had left some stamina in him.
The King first went to eNkatheni to sit on the iNkatha and commune with ancestral spirits. And then he went to his hut, where he was supposed to sleep by himself. He was required to abstain from women this night. He was said to be fasting.
In the evening Mpiyezintombi was skulking near the King’s gate, which was closest to the black house, when he heard the familiar whistling. He entered the gate and walked uprightly and brazenly to the black house so that whoever might be lurking in the shadows would think he had legitimate business there. Nomalanga was waiting outside the door, but the girls with the keys were nowhere to be found. He surmised that they had been carried away with the festivities and neglected their duty of guarding the black house. The lovers hid behind the bushes that grew near the house.
‘We must elope,’ said Mpiyezintombi. ‘Not immediately, but soon after the war. I still need to taste some real action against the British.’
‘He-Who-Washed-His-Spear-With-The-Blood-Of-A-Lion now wants to wash it with the blood of the White man?’
‘The blade of my spear has earned it,’ said Mpiyezintombi, his voice filled with braggadocio.
‘How do you know you’ll come back alive?’ asked Nomalanga with a giggle.
‘No soldier goes to war to die.’
Mpiyezintombi waited for a while for her response. When none was forthcoming he nudged her and said, ‘I will not let the Silent One gift you to anyone. Not even to himself. We must elope.’
‘We can’t,’ said Nomalanga. ‘That would disgrace my father.’
Mpiyezintombi understood exactly what she meant. Isigodlo girls were daughters of amaZulu nobility and military generals who caught the eye of the King and were ceded to him. It was a sad experience for the parents to part with their daughters, and yet a great honour at the same time. The shame would be not only hers but her parents’, too, if she eloped with another man. Nomalanga would certainly not want to do anything that would disgrace her father or jeopardise his life. One never knew what form the wrath of the Silent One would take.
Mpiyezintombi suddenly shushed Nomalanga; he thought he heard female voices coming from the direction of the King’s hut.
‘Is the Silent One not supposed to be fasting?’ whispered Mpiyezintombi.
‘Maybe it’s the royal mothers,’ said Nomalanga. ‘They are supposed to guard his hut when he is fasting.’
‘They were not there. I waited for you for a long time and saw no one.’
Mpiyezintombi panicked when the women’s voices became louder and were joined by the King’s. He had imagined the rest of the black isigodlo were asleep at that hour. He asked Nomalanga to lie flat on the ground among the bushes while he sneaked out to investigate.
He saw two isigodlo girls armed with muskets guarding the King. He was wearing his black overcoat with red trimmings on the sleeves and collar, and a black hat and shoes. This was the special attire that he wore only when he went to caca on the mound with latticed reed fencing that he used as a latrine. On every occasion he went to evacuate his bowels he assumed the guise of a British officer. The guards stood to attention at the entrance while the Silent One did his business.
Mpiyezintombi marvelled at the guards. It was a new custom altogether. Ordinarily when the King was fasting, he was guarded by the royal mothers, who would be unarmed. The practice of having girls armed with guns began only with the new rumours of an imminent war with the British. Older isigodlo girls known as amakhikiza had been formed into a regiment and were taught how to use firearms. Nomalanga was one of them and she told Mpiyezintombi that they were the new home-guard for the King, who had more confidence in them than in the men.
Mpiyezintombi became careless; he tripped on a stone and fell. The guards spotted him as he tried to creep back to join Nomalanga.
‘Who goes there?’ shouted one.
He was sure she had seen him but hoped she couldn’t identify him. At that time the Silent One was standing at the latticed entrance and Mpiyezintombi had no choice but to flee. As he pushed the gate open, the King shouted, ‘I have seen you, son of Khabazela. What witchcraft are you doing at the black house this time of the night?’
Mpiyezintombi cursed the moon. Of course, as one of the warriors who splashed him with sacred water during the iNkatha ceremonies, the Silent One would be able to recognise him even from his silhouette.
He took to his heels with nothing but his spear and his shield, which he always carried with him. He was certain that in the morning the King would summon him. Perhaps he would even send armed guards to frog-march him to his royal presence. He should be nowhere to be found by then. There would be no quarter given to anyone suspected of witchcraft. He-Who-Washed-His-Spear-With-The-Blood-Of-A-Lion fled like a feather being blown by a relentless wind, abandoning the comforts of his warrior life, and the respect and honour he had enjoyed from his peers and from his liege.
The possibility of war with the British was taken seriously. Mpiyezintombi’s regiment was hard in training, practising various manoeuvres, as were other regiments. As he ran across the valleys and up the hills he regretted that he would miss the war, the opportunity to distinguish himself in his regiment by slaying the British.
He hoped Nomalanga would have enough sense to lie there silently, and when the Silent One was back in his hut and all was quiet again, sneak back to umndlunkulu undetected. The Silent One would never know he had turned the black house into a trysting place. Let him continue believing he was alone doing some witchcraft there. Let him engage his best medicine men, diviners and shamans to neutralise whatever harmful magical potions he believed Mpiyezintombi had planted at the black house.
3
London – April 1880
The Great Farini
Em-Pee stands at the dock in Liverpool holding a jute sack of his worldly possessions, including his victuals for the voyage – salted pork and hard biscuits. The rest of his colleagues, all of them professing to be Zulus except Slaw, who is the only White man in the troupe, hold similar sacks and stand in trepidation among the buzz of boisterous Irishmen excited at immigrating to America.
Steerage is waiting for them and the troupe is not looking forward to it. Most of them have experienced it before. Slightly more than a year ago they sailed in steerage from Cape Town to London. Em-Pee remembers how he got seasick and threw up a few times. He hopes it will not happen this time; his body must by now be inured to the rigours of sea travel. He is grateful that the crossing from Liverpool to New York is said to be much shorter than that voyage of many weeks. It will take only about ten days in the iron-hulled steamship.
His eyes search for The Great Farini in the crowd but he is nowhere to be seen.The gangplank has been lowered to the dock but only cabin passeng
ers have boarded. Perhaps he is already resting comfortably in his first-class cabin.
‘Why the long face? This is the big time, guv.’
That is Slaw standing next to him with a big grin, crunching potato crisps. Em-Pee likes Czeslaw Trzetrzelewska. Like Mpiyezintombi, his name is quite a mouthful to the lazy tongues of the English, so they just call him Slaw. The Great Farini, however, mastered Slaw’s name and relishes calling him Mister Trzetrzelewska. Em-Pee has always wondered why he never took the same trouble to master Mpiyezintombi. He once voiced that concern. The Great Farini merely looked at him, shook his head and chuckled. Em-Pee gave up and grudgingly accepted the corruption of his name. He was to accept many other things after that, at first grudgingly, but by and by they would become part of who he was.
He has since learned to embrace and love the name.
‘P.T. Barnum is the Greatest Show on Earth,’ says Slaw.
‘I know,’ says Em-Pee.
Slaw looks at him closely, wondering why he is not evincing the slightest sign of excitement. ‘We’re going to be in it, guv. We’re going to be in the Greatest Show on Earth.’
Going to America has been Slaw’s biggest dream from the time he joined The Great Farini and tasted the thrill of performance. He never imagined he would be in a circus one day. Never had ambition to be anything but the street hustler he had always been until Em-Pee rescued him from sleeping rough and changed his life.
The Greatest Show on Earth means nothing to Em-Pee. He has heard a lot about it, but has never envisaged a life as a circus performer. A formal circus, that is, with giant marquees, clowns, trapeze artists, performing animals and candy floss. The dances that he and a whole bunch of ‘Zulus’ imported from Africa perform for The Great Farini don’t really qualify as a circus. The boss calls them ‘human curiosity spectacles’ and they often feature what less erudite impresarios call ‘freak show’ staples such as Daughter of Hottentot Venus, a young Khoikhoi girl with a big bottom and drooping breasts captured in the wilds of the Cape of Good Hope and adored by audiences for her resemblance to the original Hottentot Venus, born Sara Baartman, as seen in the sketches on the posters displayed at performances. The word that went around, never discounted by The Great Farini, was that the Khoikhoi girl was the authentic daughter of Baartman. Londoners never questioned how it was possible for Baartman, who died in 1815 in Paris at the age of twenty-five, to have an eighteen-year-old daughter in London in 1879 – sixty-four years later.
Unlike other curiosities in Farini’s menagerie, Daughter of Hottentot Venus does not exert herself performing contortions and grotesqueries. She just stands on a chair naked, with only a string of cowrie shells around her waist. Audiences line up to examine her big bottom, huge thighs and her elongated labia minora, which hang between the thighs, while they listen to a lecture on steatopygia, a genetic condition found among the native women of the southern tip of Africa, which endows them with oversized genitalia and derrières. The Great Farini believes very strongly in education, and all the performances are accompanied by lectures about the exotic places and cultures of the performers. Serious members of the audience take notes and make sketches as they inspect the woman’s parts closely. In the name of decency and of respecting the woman’s privacy, The Great Farini never allows the audience to touch her. There is a sign on her pedestal: Do Not Touch The Exhibit.
This voyage may be welcome to adventure-seekers like Slaw, but the departure from the shores of England leaves Em-Pee with unexplained poignancy. Perhaps it is because the voyage takes him further and further away from Cape Town, and therefore from kwaZulu, to which he still yearns to return. A year is a long time, a lot has happened, and his sins should also be forgiven, though his people have a saying that a crime once committed does not decay.
The memory of his escape from the consequences of that crime doesn’t decay either. It is as fresh as if it happened only last month. Yet it was almost two years ago that he traversed rugged landscapes, climbing mountains and abseiling steep cliffs, crossing deep gorges, overflowing rivers, luxuriant meadows and arid wastelands from bucolic Ondini, where birdsong wove itself into the refrains of the maidens bathing and washing clothes at the river, to the bustling impersonality of the city of Cape Town. He had arrived there after months of trekking south-westwards, living on roots and rodents and the occasional kindness of strangers. Sometimes he would be fortunate enough to hitch a ride on a wagon in a trader’s caravan in exchange for his labour, or would assist in har-vesting prickly pears in the Karoo, and in shearing me-rinos. He chortles when he recalls how he twice escaped with his life from bloodthirsty highwaymen, on one occasion facing two of them and fighting them with his assegai until they took to their heels. But on another occasion he took to the hills himself because there were too many attackers to take on.
In the big city by the sea he slept rough for a while, doing part-time work in the manicured gardens of Rondebosch, until he was employed to clean and cook at a homeless shelter by a Captain of the Hallelujah Army, a missionary group founded by William and Catherine Booth in England ‘to meet human needs in Christ’s name without discrimination’. The church had recently set up in Cape Town and was gaining many followers, especially among the destitute and the hungry, by feeding them; but also by singing, playing drums and trumpets, dancing and preaching in the streets in their black and red military uniforms. Those who knew real soldiers who fought real wars laughed at their pretension to militarism – uniforms, ranks and all. The missionaries ignored the mirth, declaring themselves to be soldiers, albeit of salvation.
The Captain liked Mpiyezintombi’s work ethic so much that he decided to employ him on a full-time basis, and gave him a room in his backyard and handme-down clothes from members of the congregation. Thus, he discarded his traditional ibheshu and impalaskin kaross, and strutted around in brown riding breeches, a pleated-bib pullover shirt and elastic-sided boots.
The Captain encouraged him to attend a night school in the docklands run by the same Christian army and was impressed to see that he had a great flair for language. Within months he could read and understand basic English, though the writing lagged. The Captain encouraged him to read his Cape Argus before he disposed of the newspapers in a disused basement where they were stored in stacks tied with twine, gathering mould that filled the place with musty odours.
Mpiyezintombi Mkhize learned of the events in kwa-Zulu from the excitement in his master’s household. The wire services brought news from Natal of a fermenting Anglo-Zulu War.
The Captain had been disillusioned with the increasingly liberal stance of the Cape Argus, which openly advocated integration. He was now an ardent reader of The Lantern, a weekly pro-imperialist paper that Mpiyezintombi devoured with much enthusiasm because of its funny cartoons and caricatures of the liberals it opposed.
It was from the pages of The Lantern that Mpiyezintombi learned of the amaZulu victory at the Battle of Isandlwana. He later confirmed it with his master, and again with the teacher and fellow students at the docklands night school. Piecing snatches of stories together, he re-created the battle in his imagination as if he were there himself. All the while he regretted that his desire for Nomalanga had deprived him of the opportunity to share in the glory of annihilating the British.
The British colonists in Natal had finally carried out their threat and crossed uThukela River to attack the kwaZulu Kingdom. Mpiyezintombi remembered how Sir Bartle Frere, the British High Commissioner for Southern Africa and therefore a personal representative of the Great White Queen from across the seas, had given King Cetshwayo kaMpande a silly ultimatum even before he, Mpiyezintombi, had escaped from Ondini. He’d known that his king would ignore it, but he didn’t believe the English would be so foolish as to invade his people.
The Red Coats, led by Lieutenant General Lord Chelmsford, marched into the Kingdom of amaZulu, creating havoc in their path, particularly on crops and livestock. Women and children took to the hills, and all menfolk, except
for the very old and sickly, took their places in their various regiments.
The ever-so-liberal Cape Argus, reporting on this invasion, wrote of a speech recalled by those present, where Cetshwayo addressed his soldiers and said in a plaintive voice, ‘I have not gone over the seas to look for the White man, yet they have come into my country and I would not be surprised if they took away our wives and cattle and crops and land. I have nothing against the White man and I cannot tell why they came to me. What shall I do?’
When Mpiyezintombi read these words, he sighed deeply and a single tear dropped down his cheek. At the mention of the women who would be taken away as if they were part of the cattle and land, his mind darted to Nomalanga. She would never allow herself to be taken, he assured himself. Yet he wondered where she could be. She had been one of the isigodlo girls who had been armed with muskets and were acting as the king’s personal bodyguards. Could Cetshwayo have sent them into battle? He remembered her as a very feisty woman. She would fight to the death if any British soldier tried to abduct her.
On the eleventh day, on 22 January 1879, the Red Coats faced Cetshwayo’s troops. The amaZulu military formations were under the supreme command of a general of whom Mpiyezintombi was in awe, Ntshingwayo kaMahole Khoza – one of the men who had mentored him through the ranks.
Mpiyezintombi knew that he would have led one of the regiments if he had been there. Indeed, a mate of his, a man who served under him once, Mavumengwana kaNdlela, was basking in the glory of having led the regiment that administered the lethal blow to Chelmsford’s well-resourced army.
The British Empire fell to its knees that day at the Battle of Isandlwana. A force of twenty thousand soldiers armed only with cowhide shields, short assegais and a few muskets, destroyed columns of one thousand and eight hundred Red Coats armed with the latest in military technology – Martini-Henry breech-loaders, field guns and Hale rocket batteries. More than one thousand and three hundred Red Coats were killed that day, and the rest were put to flight.