There was a gorge near the royal city which had very deep ravines. A little way above it, opposite the city, was the fountain from which the people obtained their water. This was the gorge where Chaka killed the people he had condemned, who were then thrown into its crevasses. This was the place which the vultures and the hyenas had at last begun to frequent. This was where the cowards were killed, as well as all those whom Chaka killed during his lifetime, including the occasion of the mourning of Nandi’s death. Eventually the adjoining fountain was no longer used after sunset or before sunrise because of the evil ghosts haunting it; and as the killing continued, the fountain was in the end abandoned altogether as the evil spirits refused to let anyone use it. Even today no one crosses that gorge after sunset, because that is the abode of the spirits which failed to reach their destination, the home of Zulu. The name of this gorge, together with its ravines, is uDonga lukaTatiyana (Tatiyana’s gorge), even though we do not know its original name, because this one came into being during Chaka’s reign.
We have said that Chaka sat down to rest his tired limbs, and he fell asleep instantly and began to dream again. He saw himself at home at Mgungundlovu; he was looking over that little gorge called uDonga lukaTatiyana. He heard a strong wind which blew with the force of a hurricane, followed by a deafening clamour of many people. And then suddenly he saw, inside that gorge, the people whom he had killed milling around in rage, while others were looking at him with pity, without saying anything. He saw uHili whirling around in there, saying over and over again: “Chaka! Chaka! Chaka!”, and then gnashing his teeth. He also saw all the evil spirits gathering in that place, as well as his friend, the King of the Deep Pool. And all these were looking towards him.
While Chaka was still looking at this spectacle in his dream, Isanusi and his servants arrived. All three of them stood dead quiet. They looked like people who were happy to see him. Yet theirs was not the normal happiness of human beings, but resembled that of someone who had conquered his enemy and was getting ready to strike the final blow. They were like people who were glad that that particular day had arrived at last. Isanusi said: “Chaka, today I have come to demand my reward; I told you, the day I passed here, that you should get yourself ready while I was gone, and that you should give me that which belongs to me without hesitation or argument just as I have worked for you diligently and with precision, so that you obtained kingship and honour and riches and fame in great abundance.”
Even though these were not evil words, they caused Chaka untold pain, for he realised that Isanusi was counting the milling multitudes in uDonga lukaTatiyana as comprising his kingdom as evidenced by the fact that he was looking at them as he spoke. And when he heard those words, he jumped up in his sleep and fell on top of one of his men, killing him. He woke up, and he looked this way and that, trembling all the time, and all that he noticed was that the night was about to pass; beyond that he saw nothing, and was conscious only of the fact that he had been dreaming.
The sun came up, and with great difficulty he held himself steady, and he got up and conversed with the people; yet even as he spoke to them they were conscious that he was no longer the Chaka they knew. He stood up, the lion of Zulu descent, fearless beast of the wilds, but he stood up sapped of his strength, unable even to raise his mane. He stood up, the great elephant, but he stood up tremblingly, drained of all his strength, gasping like an ox suffering from the mmamotohwane disease, with its ears drooping besides. His beautiful body, his broad shoulders and his heavy limbs all rolled over and lumbered slowly, wearily and shakily, refusing to do as he wished. He stood up unsteady on his feet, yet so fearsome that whenever he as much as raised his hands as if to strike someone, that person died at once with his mouth open just like the beak of a bird. Death, strong as the male calf of a bovine, had seized him, but he could not see it; it had come, but he was unable to run away from it, or to fight it! That very same death which in his boasts during the days of his greatest glory, he claimed the Zulu armies had fought and conquered, and buried deep in the ground, that same death had come today, but he was unable to release himself from its grip.
When the sun rose that day the Dukuza regiment was no more, having vanished with the night, and only a portion of the MaChaka remained. There was only one regiment which remained intact, and that was the Dinotshi. Chaka told the men who were there with him to choose for themselves fifty cattle from each of the groups he had separated by colour, saying that that was his token of gratitude to them because they had served him with such devotion. But while they were busy selecting them, he sent a charging mob of young warriors to go and kill them, alleging that they were the ones bewitching him because as he lay ill, even before he died, they were already helping themselves to his cattle.
CHAPTER 26
The End of Chaka
THE SUN came up, and it rose higher, and when the cattle began to get used to the pastures, Dingana and Mhlangana arrived. By then they had already been among the surviving regiments, because these were camping some distance away from Chaka, about a half hour for a swift runner.
When his brothers arrived, Chaka felt a surge of new life from his excitement, and he jumped up as if he was seeing them for the first time, and as if they brought him cool water with which to soothe his pain. The aches and affliction that he had suffered also subsided and gave him a chance to talk to them. Chaka had already been much weakened by his fretfulness and the unsettled nature of the thoughts in his troubled heart; yet, despite his weakness, he had not grown thin. He conversed with them for the greater part of that day, asking them about their expedition, and they in turn explained all the things he asked them. Dingana soon realised that Chaka had indeed lost much strength, and he resolved to accomplish his evil design on that very day on which they met.
At midday Chaka’s illness once again rose up, and when the afternoon shadows formed and stretched away, the pains became so very severe that they gave him no time to converse with his brothers.
At that very time Moshoeshoe’s messengers arrived, bringing him crane feathers which he used to decorate his armies. He took them and admired them; but the aching of his heart once more rose up against him. His deeds once more passed before his eyes; and of all the people he had removed from the earth before their time, the one he saw was Noliwa, and she was in that same hut where he killed her, and he also heard her voice as she uttered those last words: “Chaka, my beloved, you who are now my father, you who are Jobe, you who are Dingiswayo, you …!” And when he heard those words, and even saw Noliwa’s face, his head swam, and his entire body was bathed in sweat. He now understood Isanusi’s words much more clearly than when he first heard them, as he said to him: “At this very moment your name has been entered among those of the kings of my home, and the highest among them, besides.”
When Noliwa’s apparition vanished, Nandi’s came into view, and as soon as their eyes met, Chaka tried to scream but his voice would not come out, and he simply sat staring blankly at the crane feathers, and to all appearances he was looking at them, whereas in fact he never even saw them. Nandi was at that same place where she was when her son removed her from the earth; and during all this time Noliwa’s voice kept ringing in his ears.
When those had vanished, he saw uDonga lukaTatiyana crammed full with the people he had wiped off the face of the earth with Nandi standing on one side and Noliwa on the other; and while he was looking at them, Isanusi appeared from far away together with his aides, and he heard a voice coming from that multitude mocking him and saying: “Chaka, murderer of your own brothers, the blood of your own father! Murderer of your own wife, companion of your heart! Murderer of your own children, your very own blood! Murderer of your own mother, she who gave you birth!”
Dingana observed that Chaka was dreaming, and then he signalled to Mbopha with his eyebrows so that he could get closer since their time had now come; he glanced back at Mhlangana, and he too came closer. Dingana came nearer to Chaka as if to admire the feathers,
and then in a flash he stabbed him so that his spear sank into his body and appeared on the other side; Mhlangana stabbed him in the back, and his spear came out in front, while Mbopha’s entered on the side; all those spears met inside Chaka’s stomach, and at that very moment Isanusi appeared before Chaka to demand his reward.
When he felt the spears enter his body, Chaka, instead of fighting back like a man, as he used to, turned around slowly and woke up from his waking sleep, from the daytime dreams he dreamed with his eyes wide open. When he began to turn around, his pains ceased and his face smoothed out and assumed its normal appearance, and Dingana and Mhlangana, knowing him as they did, ran helter-skelter. And then Chaka said to them: “You are killing me in the hope that you will be kings when I am dead, whereas you are wrong, that is not the way it will be because umlungu, the white man, is coming, and it is he who will rule you, and you will be his servants.”
Chaka died riddled with wounds, far away from his home. When the sun had set his corpse was carried to a little rise in the open plains so that it should be devoured by the beasts of the veld. On the following day the people went early in the morning to see what remained. They found that Chaka’s body was still intact, but had instead turned as green as moss. They found many animal footprints all around Chaka’s body, and they were utterly amazed that even an animal like the hyena, which is more greedy than the pig, had not eaten it in the night. They went and told Dingana, and he went with them to the corpse. As they came near, a flight of crows flew away from it, and they were sure they would find that they had dug out his eyes. But they found them both intact. A great fear descended upon them all, and they trembled, and Dingana ordered that the body should be buried quickly lest it should, by some unknown chance, rise again.
So it came about, the end of Chaka, son of Senzangakhona.
Even to this very day the Zulus, when they think how they were once a strong nation in the days of Chaka, and how other nations dreaded them so much that they could hardly swallow their food, and when they remember their kingdom which has fallen, tears well up in their eyes, and they say: “They ferment, they curdle! Even great pools dry away!”
Ka mathetho
(End of the Tale)
Summary
Written in Sesotho in 1909 and first translated in 1931, Thomas Mofolo’s classic South African novel has formed the foundation of all modern interpretations of the Shaka legend. A modern tragedy and the first of its kind to mythologise the life of the Zulu Warrior King, Chaka tells the tragic story of a boy shunned by his father – a Zulu prince born out of wedlock who, through unbridled ambition, sorcery and sheer brutality, claims his rightful place as heir to the throne.
This edition features Daniel P. Kunene’s modern English translation, an introduction by the translator and a brand-new foreword by Wamuwi Mbao.
About the Author
Thomas Mofolo was born in Lesotho in 1876. He is considered to be one of the greatest of the African authors who flourished during the early 20th century. He wrote in Sesotho for the Morija mission, and it was with Chaka, his third novel after Moeti oa Bochabela (The Traveller to the East [1907]) and Pitseng (1910), that Mofolo established himself as author, thus making an early African contribution to modern world literature.
In 1910 Mofolo gave up writing and left for South Africa. He was a labour agent for the gold mines of Transvaal and the plantations of Natal. During the late 1920s he bought a store in Lesotho and in 1937 acquired a farm in South Africa, but was evicted under the Bantu Land Act. He died in Lesotho in 1948.
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Translation and introduction copyright © Daniel P. Kunene 1981
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First published in English by International Institute
of African Language and Cultures 1931
Available in print:
First edition in 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7957-0714-8
Epub edition:
First edition in 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7957-0715-5 (epub)
Mobi edition:
First edition in 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7957-0716-2 (mobi)
This reprint of Chaka is published by arrangement
with Pearson Education Limited
Chaka Page 22