CHAPTER 5
Chaka Leaves Home in Flight
IN THOSE days, long ago, wild beasts used to terrorise the people a great deal. On many evenings, while the people were sitting around or as they were about to turn in, a hyena, if it had found no goats to eat, would come into the village and grab a person and run off with him, with no one brave enough to go in pursuit and force it to abandon its prey. That poor person would scream continuously in the middle of the darkness, saying: “It’s picking me up! It’s putting me down! It’s picking me up again! It’s putting me down! Now it’s eating me!” He would shout these words in an attempt to raise the alarm so that the people would know where he was and come to his rescue. But in spite of all that, it would eventually eat him with no one coming to help him. Since there were no strong doors, very often children such as Chaka were placed near the door in the young people’s hut, so that the hyenas should take them and the others should escape. Chaka himself was made to sleep by the door there in the young men’s hut, so that such hazards of the night, including those involving witchcraft, should begin with him. He had been turned into a barricade used to protect the others. But in spite of all that, such dangers kept passing him by: a hyena would simply sniff at him and pass to the far end of the hut and grab someone there. Indeed, it appears that a hyena always avoids taking a person sleeping right by the door, just as if it knew that the ones who sleep near the door are the hated ones.
Twice or three times, Chaka had his hands tied right there in the young people’s hut, and was made to sleep outside near the door tied up like that, so that the hyena should see him as soon as it came. This would be done on a day when a hyena had been seen near the village, and it was expected that it would catch some people after dark; but on those occasions the hyena would feast on goats and leave the people alone. Chaka’s growing up was truly painful.
Such cases of people being eaten by hyenas happened in Lesotho as well, because we hear that a hyena ate one of Moshoeshoe’s wives. It took her in the middle of the village, in the presence of other people, and she sang that painful song as it went with her in its mouth. Yet Moshoeshoe heard her all the time, together with his warriors such as the Brave of Makoa, Makoanyane, and Mokolokolo of Thesele who were present and heard her; but all of them were afraid to go outside, saying that it was a hyena made from a lump of bread, a hyena of witchcraft.
One day a hyena entered the young people’s hut at dead of night, when the people were in deep sleep right there at Ncube’s. Mfokazana was there, together with some young men from his village. When it entered, there was utter silence, everyone dead with fright, because it was dreaded in a manner we are unable to describe, even by the braves. It went in, sniffed at a person, and passed; it sniffed at another one and passed; it sniffed at another one whom it picked out and carried outside, and this happened to be the girl with whom Mfokazana was in love. Everyone pretended to be dead, they maintained absolute silence; Mfokazana himself did likewise, not simply imitating the others, but truly afraid, lying like a corpse, yet in fact he knew the identity of the person the hyena had taken.
When the hyena came outside, that girl screamed in a loud and painful voice which even woke up many people in the village who were fast asleep at the time and she began to sing the song of those taken by the hyena: “It’s picking me up! It’s putting me down!” She cried in this manner, this poor child, in the midst of utter stillness, the sound of her heart-rending voice being heard throughout the entire village, and fleeting through the darkness of the night, and penetrating the forests and the neighbouring villages; and the people of those villages knew too that a hyena had attacked and they tucked their blankets more tightly around them, as if it had said that it wanted to eat many people in one night.
It was feared very much, the brown hyena, and the people trembled when they heard of its deeds:
The brown hyena, wolf with a brown-coloured forearm,
Little father of the lion and the spotted hyena,
Child with zigzag tattoo, mark of brave warriors;
Brown hyena, you child who is a warrior-who-hunts-by-night,
What makes you fear to hunt by day?
I fear the guilt of attacking the people’s herds.
Chaka was sleeping in a different hut with a few others, having left the young people’s hut because of the way he suffered there, and the great hostility of the other young men, which made him fear that they might kill him while he slept. He heard that girl’s scream in his sleep; the second time, however, he heard it distinctly, and he even recognised the voice of the person who had been taken by the hyena, and his sleep was immediately gone and he woke those with whom he was sleeping, saying: “Vukani, madoda, intombi yemuka nencuka!” (Wake up, men, a girl has been taken by the hyena!) In a flash he was out of the house.
Because of the weight it was carrying, since this was a heavy person, the hyena had to rest frequently, and it took a long time to get out of the village.
Chaka, when he came outside, stood and listened to hear the direction from which the voice came, and just as he stood there he heard her: “It’s putting me down!” Then off he went, this young warrior, and he ran on his toes so that he should not make any noise; and when the girl said again: “It’s picking me up!” Chaka saw the hyena, and even saw the person in his mouth. Now he ran fast, knowing that the hyena would not hear his footsteps because of the sound of its own; also he was running so that he should reach it before it rested again. He came right up to it and stabbed it even as it ran foolishly with its stumpy ears bent forward. He stabbed it under the forearm with a mighty stroke and the spear went in and came out on the other side and pierced the ground, nailing it down. It fell down flop, and it let the girl slip out of its grip, and it lay prostrate kicking but twice or three times in its last efforts. It died in complete silence, like a dumb creature, without crying or making any sound whatsoever. Chaka said one word only, “Nanso!” (There!), and he kept quiet and proceeded to pull out his spear slowly, as was the custom when one had killed a fierce beast.
As for the young girl, her eyes were dim and she could not see well, not even where the hyena was taking her. When it sagged down, she thought it was simply resting. But when she realised that it was not picking her up again, she was at once on her feet, and she looked about, even though she could not see clearly. The first thing she saw was an extraordinarily tall person standing next to her, near the hyena; and her eyes, whose sight was dimmed by fright, did not see properly, and she thought that the hyena had now reached the place of the witches who owned it, and that she was now going to be eaten. She let out two piercing cries with a voice far more painful than before, the voice of someone who is dying when all hope of being saved is gone and death stares him in the face at close range. And when she cried like that, the people continued to tremble in their houses, and the young people, in their hut, were like dead things, and among them Mfokazana was the most scared.
This young woman, when she let out this painful cry, even fell on the ground from fright. Chaka held her by the arm and helped her up, and he spoke encouraging words, saying: “You are safe, stop crying and rejoice. It is the hyena that has died. Get up and see it. It is I, Chaka.”
The young girl heard the voice, but it was like a confused voice. Chaka spoke again, and this time she heard and recognised his voice. She looked into Chaka’s eyes and found that it was indeed he, Chaka, in person. She looked at the hyena and saw it lying prone on the ground. She cast a glance this way and that, her sight being quite clear now, and she saw the houses and the cattle folds of her village and realised that they were indeed the very ones she knew. She looked once again at the hyena, and she found that it was not just lying there, it was dead, completely and for ever dead. And once again Chaka encouraged her with his words, saying she must put aside her fear since she was safe.
All her senses now came back, the sting and pain of death were gone; the light, the fullness and the joy of life were once again in full
view. She yelled three times and she clung to Chaka, hanging on to him and kissing him, and doing all sorts of things, and she said: “I knew it could never be anyone else but you, Chaka, saviour of those in the grip of death, where all hope is lost! Mfokazana abandoned me even though we were next to each other, in the same hut!” And then she started to run at great speed, tearing across the village, shouting to all the people to get up and come and see a miracle, come and hear a miracle, the miracle performed by Chaka who had lifted her out of death, out of the jaws of a hyena.
The people were overwhelmed with joy, even though their joy was mixed with shame. They asked themselves, with much astonishment, how far were Chaka’s deeds going to go in their beauty, their nobility and their praiseworthiness. The young people also asked themselves, with sadness and shame, how long was Chaka going to continue degrading them, since their feeling of unworthiness just kept growing. Why, just a few days before, he had killed a lion after they had all run away, and now even today he killed a hyena that had run off with a person right from their midst with none of them ready to go to the rescue. The young girls whose agemate had been taken by the hyena immediately came out of their houses to go and see their peer who had just returned from the dead, and also to see her worthy warrior, as well as the wild beast he had killed, which they feared so much that their food went down with difficulty; they went also to sing songs which would praise Chaka and despise Mfokazana.
When Mfokazana began to understand how matters stood, he at once left his house and started on the road to his home at Nobamba; however, he realised that it would not help to go there, because the news would reach there before the sun and his disgrace would be even uglier because it would be said that he was so ashamed that he ran away. At once he decided to kill Chaka in a cruel manner so that those who were praising him should be spited, and instead of a song of praise they should raise the sound of weeping; he said: “I have already been disgraced too many times because of this dog of Nandi’s, today I must remove it from my path.”
But that time the people had already run with great speed to go and tell Senzangakhona what had happened. A group of young men, among them Dingana, were on their feet at once to go to Ncube’s. By the time Mfokazana arrived at the spot where the hyena had been killed, the people had already gathered there in large numbers, and Chaka was sitting on the hyena he had killed, slowly wiping off the blood from the handle of his spear; he was completely silent, and only his deeds spoke, only the people spoke. The young girl he had saved was now crying even more than before, for it was now that she began to see the horror of the death from which she had returned, when she realised that she was the first to have escaped from the jaws of that vicious animal.
When Mfokazana arrived there, he hit Chaka on the back of his head so that he fell forward on his face. Chaka, as he got up, reached for his spear and his stick, ran through the crowd and then turned around, and just as he did so he came face to face with Mfokazana pursuing him.
It happened that, as soon as they faced each other, Chaka struck him directly on the forehead and threw him down. The young men of Mfokazana’s peer group came, but Chaka fought like a man: he smashed the skull of one of them and his little brain fell out, and he died belching like someone who had drunk too much beer. That stick, as it came up, split someone’s chin apart so that his jaws were separated and his tongue dangled in space: what an ugly death that man died! And when Chaka swung it sideways, it crushed another man’s head between the eyes and the ear, and the eye was dislodged from its socket, and it fell on the ground a flat mass like the eye of a sheep. The last young man, even though his comrades were already on the ground, was now fighting in earnest. He kept trying to go around Chaka’s back, and because of that frequent turning from one side to another, he stumbled and was thrown forward towards Chaka. Chaka moved slightly out of his way, and just as the man was about to pass him, he hit him in the back of the head, so that he went and fell on his face, and he died with his teeth dug deep into the ground, and with his wound in an ugly place, at the back of his head. Only then did Chaka find a little time to catch his breath and he sat down again on that beast of his. Blood came out of Mfokazana’s mouth and nose and ears, and it flowed like that of a sheep whose neck had been severed, and it did not seem that he might live.
When Dingana arrived there and heard what had happened, and saw Mfokazana on the ground, he immediately attacked Chaka believing that he was tired so that the highest praise should go to himself for having killed Chaka, the bravest of all braves. But above all, he realised that the kingship would now be his once Mfokazana and Chaka were dead. A few people of Ncube’s village took Chaka’s side, and the battle was joined and great blows were exchanged. After a while, the brother of the girl who had been taken by the hyena inflicted an ugly wound on Dingana, and he was greatly weakened from the loss of blood and lay stretched out on the ground. At that time, the night passed completely, and Senzangakhona arrived together with his wives.
The people who told Senzangakhona had not specified that it was Chaka who had killed the hyena; they had simply said “your son”, and rumour began to say that it was Mfokazana, and that was why the royal wives came. They arrived just after the fighting had ceased, and they saw Chaka sitting on the hyena and this at once proved to them that he was the doer of the deed. And just as they began to look around they saw Mfokazana, Dingana and the others where they lay, all covered with blood; then the air was filled with crying when they saw that, even though the hyena was indeed dead, it had been killed together with their children, and by Nandi’s son at that. They spoke with anger, saying Chaka should be killed. Senzangakhona then gave the order to all his people and the people of Ncube’s, saying: “Kill him!” And it is here that we see clearly that Chaka had indeed become a hare-that-was-struck-on-the-ear, one-without-parents, a buffalo-standing-all-by-itself, because all those who saw him fought him without any reason at all.
Quite a few men of Ncube’s village, as well as certain other young men, at that point offered themselves to die with Chaka. The women, Nandi’s agemates, sang a song of grief, a lamentation; they sang crying, with tears flowing down their cheeks, saying:
Alas! You gods, think of us,
Look upon us who are killed for a crime that is not there.
Alas! You spirits, you are our witnesses,
You are the witnesses of that day in the fields.
Alas! The king is without truth,
He is without truth, he is a chameleon
Even after we have born for him a male child,
A male child, conqueror of the mighty ones.
Alas! Senzangakhona is afraid of his equals,
And vents his rage upon the defenceless!
The battle was joined. Chaka now decided to fight in earnest since he had heard from his own father’s mouth that he was to be killed; now he fought without any further restraint, without feeling a sense of respect for anything. He had thought, after all, that his father would first ask where the trouble had started; but now, since all he heard was the order his father gave, he fought in all seriousness. Up to this time he had only been fencing with his stick, but now he began to use his spear.
In that battle his spear broke, and eventually even his stick broke, and then he jumped and stood on one side to see where he might find weapons, and he found that he was left all alone, everyone on his side already lying on the ground. As he jumped, they were immediately in hot pursuit. He ran in earnest now, not simply running away from the sharpness of the spear, but determined to flee, to throw himself away, to give himself to the plains, and go to a place where he would never again be seen, from where he would never return. He ran until he entered the forest and hid himself there.
When Dingiswayo heard this, he imposed a fine of cattle on Senzangakhona, saying that he taught his warriors the ways of cowardice; he commanded him to search for Chaka at once and bring him to him alive, not dead.
In this chapter we find that it is indeed true t
hat the fruit of sin is amazingly bitter, because we do not see any transgression on Chaka’s part in these matters, yet, in spite of all that, his father commands that he should be killed. The real issue, the cause of it all, was that Nandi and Senzangakhona suffered from guilt, and Senzangakhona, fearing that his crime would be exposed, went to the length of plotting to kill his own son. Yet, if Senzangakhona had not committed this shameful deed in his youth, Chaka would have been at his home at Nobamba, a precious child, a child dearly loved by his father.
CHAPTER 6
Chaka Meets Isanusi
CHAKA WAS in the forest when, at high noon, a heart-rending wailing arose in Ncube’s village. He saw milling crowds, men and women, including those from the neighbouring villages, who had come, summoned by the screams they had heard in the night when the hyena ran off with a person, summoned also by the second occasion of weeping which began when the night was beginning to clear away. The wailing which Chaka heard was that of the women who were crying for their men who had died, and those who were crying for their brothers and their lovers who had died. These were all crying for their dead, and were not concerned with Senzangakhona. But there were others who were crying for Chaka himself, asking themselves how great was the hatred of the person who had bewitched his father to make him abandon his child with such lack of concern, and for no reason whatsoever.
At midday the cattle and the goats cried in their folds because of hunger; the calves and the kids cried for being deprived of their mothers’ milk; dogs howled in the middle of the village, crying for their masters who had died; and even the fowls added to the crying, even though they were simply carried away by the general din. When the noise of all these creatures came together, it became something never heard before, and the air was simply choked with sound, and it was like the day a great king had died because, when the great bee has died, even the animals know it. Chaka heard the wailing of all these creatures and, loving kingship as he did, he said: “All these things are happening because of me, and yet I am still but a green sapling, a weakling. How will it be the day I become a man and I take over the kingship? How I shall take my revenge the day that sun of mine shall rise!”
Chaka Page 6