The night of the new moon. A prolonged drought scorched the land and Mthwakazi sat flat on the ground at ebaleni, the clearing in front of the Great House. With her legs stretched out and a diviner’s drum between her thighs she beat it with her hands in a slow tired rhythm. This went on for hours until the ears of the people within its range became accustomed to the lamentation and could hear it no more.
She heard a loud moan from the house, and then a sharp wail. She knew immediately that what the nation dreaded had finally happened. She had been waiting for it. She hastened the tempo. One wail became two. And then three. Soon there was a wave of wails, relayed from the Great House to the Right-hand House; from the Right-hand House to the Left-hand House; from the Left-hand House to the Iqadi House. Until the whole of Mhlontlo’s Great Place was drenched in wails. The animals in the kraals, in the stables, in the pounds, joined in their various voices.
By the time these sounds reached Malangana in an adobe rondavel where he slept, dreamed of Mthwakazi and played with himself to her spectre, they had swirled into a vortex of hollow howls. He knew without anyone telling him that they were announcing the death of the Queen of amaMpondomise, daughter of Sarhili, King of amaGcaleka, they who descended, together with amaRharhabe, from an ancestor called Xhosa, and were therefore also known as amaXhosa.
The howls were relayed from one household to the next, until they assumed a life of their own. They were echoed by the hills and the cliffs and the caves, across the streams to the rest of Qumbu, and across Itsitsa River to Tsolo. Those who were sleeping could not but wake up and the owls of the night stopped their labours and added to the howls with their hoots, making the vortex fatter and fatter. As it gathered volume it also gained force, sweeping the land, uprooting trees in its path and hurling emaciated cattle across the valley as if they were dry leaves.
Its sheer rudeness silenced Mthwakazi’s drum. She held tightly to it nonetheless, and buried her face on its taut cowhide drum-head. She wept quietly. Even the most powerful herbs of her abaThwa people had failed to save the queen. She had given up long before the diviners had, and had whispered her opinion to those who would listen that the daughter of King Sarhili should be released so that her spirit might find its path in peace from the land of amaMpondomise to the land of her amaXhosa ancestors. It was a long way for a spirit to travel and ceremonies would be held by both nations to ease its journey and to welcome it in the dimension of the dead and the unborn. But that would be for the coming days, and none of those rituals would have anything to do with her except as a drawer of water and carrier of wood. For now she wetted the cowhide drum with her tears.
Malangana’s first thought after cursing death for stealing the beloved queen was of Gcazimbane. He rose to his feet, put on his pants and a blanket over his shoulder and struggled against the momentum of the howls to the Great Place. He headed straight to the kraal where Gcazimbane was snorting and squealing in turn among bellowing bulls. He embraced the horse tightly around its neck until it gradually calmed down and began to snicker. He led it out of the kraal but once there he did not know what next to do with it.
The howls were now a distance away, leaving deathly silence in their wake. Mthwakazi resumed beating the drum. Its tempo went back to slow and tired.
‘What are you doing here?’ Malangana was startled by Mhlontlo. He had not heard him approach; his face had been buried in Gcazimbane’s neck.
Mhlontlo’s voice was shaky and he was sniffling.
‘I caught a cold,’ he said.
Although Malangana couldn’t see his eyes in the dark he knew that a cold had nothing to do with it. He was crying. He was a man and a king, yet he was crying. The queen had been his partner, companion and adviser. Having been raised in the court of King Sarhili, regarded as the greatest of all the monarchs in the region, she had been wise in all matters of statecraft.
‘Take him back to the kraal,’ said Mhlontlo. ‘What has happened has happened. We cannot undo it.’
Malangana led Gcazimbane back to the kraal and secured the gate of tree trunks. He hesitated when he saw that Mhlontlo was waiting. Then he joined him and they quietly walked towards the Great House.
The two men stood in front of Mthwakazi as she beat the drum. She did not look up. She continued as if they were not there. Malangana was visibly shaking, trying very hard to suppress the hyperventilation that had suddenly overtaken him. Mhlontlo placed his hand on the head of the drum, stopping her from beating it. She looked up for the first time and saw the two men distorted by a glass of tears.
‘Go, child of the people of the trance. It is enough. The land has heard,’ said Mhlontlo.
‘It is to accompany every step she takes to the land of her ancestors,’ she said.
‘It is too early for that, child of the people of the eland. She will only become an ancestor after we have performed umbuyiso ritual. For now, go and sleep. That’s what we must all do.’
Mthwakazi rose to her feet and tiptoed into the Great House to join the other mourners. Diviners and the old women of Sulenkama had swiftly congregated to prepare the queen for burial. Their songs were subdued.
Malangana took the drum. It would serve as a good excuse to see Mthwakazi again. Mhlontlo did not ask him why he was taking the drum. Perhaps he did not even notice. His mind was occupied with how he would cope with grief – for the passing away of his queen and for the drought that was killing the earth. It had been an omen, this drought. A harbinger of the greatest death his Great Place had experienced so far.
Malangana could not fall asleep after that. He sat on his icantsi bedding and contemplated the drum. His body began to shake when the significance of its presence in his room hit him. This was Mthwakazi’s own drum. Not just a drum; a sacred drum. This was the drum she beat when she communed with her ancestors. What if the spirits of all the dead abaThwa lived in it? How would it be possible to sleep in their presence?
Occasional waves of distant wails reminded him that sleeping should not be a priority on a night like this in any case. Perhaps he should have stayed with Mhlontlo instead of rushing home to sleep.
The king had not been himself lately. Even as the queen lay sick he was making extravagant promises to Hamilton Hope. Only four days ago Malangana had accompanied him to yet another meeting with the magistrate, after which Hope entertained them to a dinner of lamb, peas and mealie-rice on the veranda of The Residency. The magistrate looked frail, and he indeed confirmed that he had been in bed with a fever. Malangana wished in his heart that the man was suffering from more than just fever; maybe from consumption. He had seen when he was in jail how deadly the disease could be. It ate its victims to the bone and then killed them. It would be wonderful if Hope was getting his comeuppance from the protective ancestors of the amaMpondomise people for using his whip indiscriminately on revered elders. Malangana was smarting inside even as he sat in the shade of the veranda chewing on the soft lamb and doing his best to interpret for Hope, who spoke in a mixture of English and Sesotho, sprinkling them with the few words of isiMpondomise he had learned since being assigned to Mhlontlo’s jurisdiction two years before. He would never forgive Hope for his kati. His buttocks still twitched whenever he thought of the two occasions he had been its victim.
Sunduza – the brother of the Reverend Davis, trusted by both amaMpondomise and Hope – was not there to interpret for the magistrate that day. The only other white man present was Warren. He sat quietly throughout, only jotting down notes in an exercise book with a new-fangled fountain pen. Hope kept looking at the pen with fascination as it left a trail of blue behind its nib without needing to be dipped into an ink bottle after every word or two.
Mhlontlo was making his point to the magistrate: what the amaMpondomise people hated more than anything was judicial control. Government was taking away all the powers of the chiefs. What good was any chief without judicial control?
‘I keep my promises to those who are obedient to the Government,’ Hope said. ‘I will return some of your power over the smaller chiefs provided you raise the army we need and lead it against Magwayi. You need to prove yourself, Umhlonhlo.’
‘Haven’t I proved myself ?’
‘Oh, you’ve been very good so far. But the expedition against Magwayi will be the ultimate test.’
Mhlontlo assured the magistrate once more that he would indeed be part of the expedition.
‘Nd’zak’fel’aph’ufa khona,’ he said. The king had said this before; at that meeting with the magistrates. Where you die, I will die.
Malangana’s consternation was not lost on Hope. He gave the young man what he thought was a benevolent smile and shook his beard in his direction. He then poured his guests shots of brandy and asked how they liked the fire-water, as their fellow natives called it. Mhlontlo and Malangana mumbled their pleasure. Warren raised his glass and said ‘Cheers’ before swallowing the shot in one gulp.
‘The Dutch are getting better at this all the time,’ said Warren.
‘Maybe someday one will retire in a Cape vineyard,’ said Hope, and the two white men chuckled. ‘Find refuge in a distillery.’
The chuckles became laughter. It must have been an inside joke because the two amaMpondomise men did not get it.
‘And how do you like the new extension to The Residency?’ Hope’s question was directed to Warren.
‘Mrs Hope showed me around,’ said Warren. ‘Solid construction, sir. One doesn’t see this kind of workmanship in these parts.’
Hope went on about how parsimonious the Government could be. It had not been easy to get approval for these improvements.
‘It reminds me of when I first came here two years ago, all the difficulties I encountered getting approval for the erection of suitable quarters for myself and my clerk,’ said Hope sadly. ‘I had to live in a Kafir hut.’
That, of course, was an extremely uncomfortable situation for him and his dear wife, Emmie. They had been brought here from Basutoland where he had constructed two beautiful houses at his expense, which he had to abandon at short notice. Surely the Government did not expect him to use his own meagre resources to build a house. For months on end not only did he reside in a Kafir hut, he conducted the administration of the district and presided over court cases in Kafir huts. It was demeaning to the dignity of the Government that its officers had to live and transact business in that kind of environment. He had to struggle before funds were allocated to build The Residency and the Courthouse. And now finally there were the extensions that Emmie was very pleased about; creating a drawing room that was separate from the dining room.
The two amaMpondomise men just sat there and listened and said nothing.
As they were riding back to Sulenkama Mhlontlo asked Malangana what Hope and Warren were talking about.
‘It was just a lot of nonsense about how he struggled to get Government to build him a house.’
‘So he doesn’t always get what he wants from his masters?’
‘Ultimately he did.’
‘Only ultimately. He may not get the guns we have asked for. We won’t fight the war against Magwayi if he doesn’t supply us with guns.’
‘You promised him . . . “Where you die, I will die.”’
‘You will never understand matters of statecraft,’ said Mhlontlo firmly, indicating that the subject was closed.
They rode silently for a while. The sun had long set, yet the earth was breathing out heat through its fissures.
‘This confounded drought!’ said Malangana.
‘It knells death, little son of my father,’ said Mhlontlo.
Cattle were emaciated and crops were withering away. Even Mhlontlo’s own fields were cracked like the heels of an old woman. His sorghum, beans and pumpkin had died prematurely, soon after peeping out of the ground. A week before he had sent Malangana and his eldest son Charles to sell some of his cattle to purchase grain. Some cattle died on the way.
But the drought did not only knell the death of cattle. The queen’s life was ebbing away and the king feared the worst. What frustrated him most was that he was himself a healer, ixhwele, yet he was hopeless against the evil forces that were consuming his wife to the bone. amaMpondomise had a saying that a doctor could not heal himself. It was obvious that he could not heal his wife either. He became an angry and impatient man. The diviners and herbalists dreaded his visits to the Great House. He would kneel by the queen’s bedding, hold her limp hand and gaze into her eyes. But her eyes did not return the gaze. They hid behind a pane of greyness instead. He would then rise to his feet and pace the floor, yelling at everyone and calling them names.
‘You’re all useless! If you had lived in the domain of Shaka kaSenzangakhona he would have killed you all.’
He summoned his uncle Gxumisa to the Great Place. Gxumisa suggested that abaThwa rainmakers should be called. Healing the land from the drought might also serve to heal the queen from her ailment. abaThwa were always the final resort when things were really desperate. amaMpondomise despised them as people who owned no property, especially cattle, and whose dwellings were the natural caves in the mountains. Yet they were in awe of these small-statured people for their prowess with curative herbs and for their skill in the manufacture of rain. Both of these gifts were a result of the fact that as mountain dwellers they were close to the rain clouds and to the roots and berries that grew only on the steep slopes. They were people of the eland and the praying mantis and the snake. It was believed that many of them were iinzalwamhlaba – autochthons.
Gxumisa led a delegation to the mountains to look for a rain doctor of the abaThwa people. Malangana had wanted to be part of the delegation if only to observe at first hand how abaThwa lived and conducted their affairs, which might give him some guidance on how to deal with Mthwakazi and slake his unrequited love for her. He was hoping to learn a thing or two that he might use to impress her. But Mhlontlo would not allow him to go because he needed him to interpret in his meetings with Hope. And there seemed to be more and more of them lately.
The delegation walked for five days before they reached the Caves of Ngqunkrungqu. They came back with a troupe of abaThwa who danced and tranced and boiled herbs that they fed the queen. They bathed her in them and made her throw up and emptied her royal bowels with enemas. Still the heavens refused to open up and shower the earth with its blessings. And the queen refused to get better.
Hamilton Hope, on the other hand, was getting better, which was a blow to Malangana and all those who had hoped his spirit was about to float across the oceans to the land of his ancestors.
Malangana stared at the drum and thought of its owner. She had been elusive. Sometimes he even suspected she was an illusion. Until he went by the Great House and saw her outside dancing with the diviners or chanting with the shamans and amaxhwele herbalists. It assured him she was real. As real as the woman who had argued with him about the number of suns in the skies. Why, she appeared real even in the dreams where she hid herself among the boulders like Gcazimbane and he had to search for her. As real as the wetness of his wet dreams.
He remembered one day soon after they had returned from that meeting with the magistrates in Elliot. He was sitting by the kraal with a group of his age-mates listening to Gxumisa and other elders reciting some of the great historical events of the amaMpondomise nation. He decided to test the waters and bring in the issue of Mthwakazi. He seized the opportunity when Gxumisa served each man from his rock-rabbit-skin bag a pinch of icuba-laBathwa, the tobacco of the Bushmen, also known as dagab by the Khoikhoi or dagga by the Trek-Boers. As the men stuffed it in their pipes and lit them Gxumisa said, ‘Though abaThwa are such puny people their tobacco has a gigantic punch.’
The men laughed as they puffed on and filled the air with the dizzying aroma.
‘Talking of abaThwa,’ said Malangana, ‘where did this girl who nurses the queen come from? Who are her people?’
‘No one knows,’ said Nzuze, one of Mhlontlo’s younger brothers.
‘How is that possible?’ asked Malangana.
‘It is true,’ said Gxumisa, blowing a helix of smoke. ‘She is a child of the earth.’
Malangana discovered for the first time that Mthwakazi was not born of any woman nor begot of any man. She sprang from the earth like a fresh millet plant. It was like that with some of the abaThwa people. They were children of the earth – iinzalwamhlaba.
‘So what’s going to happen when someone wants to marry her? With whom are his people going to negotiate lobolo?’
Mahlangeni broke out laughing. Though he was older than Malangana and was a family man the two men had established a close friendship after Mahlangeni sacrificed his buttocks that were ripped to bits by Hamilton Hope’s salted cat-o’-nine-tails. Malangana once confided in him how he was being haunted by Mthwakazi. Mahlangeni, of course, had pooh-poohed the whole idea. How could a noble Mpondomise man even entertain such thoughts about a low-born woman? Or an autochthon as it had now been revealed?
Malangana glared at him.
‘I didn’t say anything,’ said Mahlangeni, giggling like a naughty girl.
‘Why, nephew, are you thinking of taking her for a bride?’ asked Gxumisa.
He was quite perfunctory about the question. He thought he was just teasing his nephew.
‘No, no, I am just asking,’ said Malangana.
He was fidgeting, rolling the bowl of his pipe in his palms.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Mahlangeni, laughing.
‘What’s wrong with that?’ asked Malangana. ‘She’s a person too.’
Everyone stared at Malangana. It hit them for the first time that something was serious here. Nzuze contemplated him sternly.
‘You look as shocked as if I said I want to marry a clanswoman,’ said Malangana.
Marrying a woman from your own clan would, of course, have been a taboo of the first order. amaMpondomise clans took wives from other clans to avoid inbreeding, even though their common ancestor dated back to the 1500s.
‘You can’t be serious, younger brother,’ said Nzuze. ‘She is of the abaThwa people.’
Gxumisa took a long drag from his pipe and ejected one long jet of smoke.
‘I thought this was a joke,’ he said. ‘Does Mhlontlo know about this?’
‘Nzuze and Mahlangeni are the ones who are making this a serious issue, bawo,’ said Malangana. ‘For me it was just a fleeting thought. The king knows nothing about it.’
‘Hayi hayi hayikhona! His reaction tells me that this is serious,’ said Nzuze. ‘Listen to me, little brother. Do not even entertain such thoughts. You are the son of Matiwane. The grandson of Myeki. Look for a wife elsewhere. Although you are from Matiwane’s Iqadi House, he honoured you by naming you after our founding ancestor. You cannot disgrace our nation by marrying a Bushwoman. I am going to oppose that. And I am going to make sure that my brother, the king, does not give his blessing to such a marriage. Marry well like our king. Marry from the amaGcaleka or amaRharhabe or abaThembu or amaMpondo or any other noble nation.’
‘What if I like the Mthwakazi?’ asked Malangana.
‘If you really like the Mthwa woman you can have her as your fifth or sixth wife, something to play with when you come home tired from the fields or from battle – not the mother of your heirs,’ explained Nzuze patiently. ‘Make her an Iqadi, not of your Great House, not of your Right-hand House, perhaps of your Left-hand House, which would make her sixth in rank.’
Malangana and Mahlangeni broke out laughing. In a marriage of a well-off Mpondomise man there were three main wives: the senior wife belonged to the Great House, the second wife to the Right-hand house and the third to the Left-hand House. But he could still marry more wives. For instance he could marry a wife who would act as a helper to the senior wife. She would therefore belong to the Iqadi House to the Great House. The ranking became complicated when he married more and more wives and the Left and Right-hand Houses had their own Iqadi Houses – wives who served as their helpers. What Nzuze was suggesting was therefore strange to the men because it was another way of suggesting the marriage should never happen at all.
‘Do you think I am going to be so rich as to marry six wives?’ asked Malangana. ‘Even Mhlontlo doesn’t have six wives.’
‘By the time Malangana is able to marry the sixth one he will be an old man and Mthwakazi will be a shrivelled old woman with abaThwa great-grandchildren of her own in some distant caves somewhere.’
‘Or she’ll be dead,’ said another man.
‘We’ll all be dead,’ said Gxumisa.
The men burst out laughing again. Icuba-laBathwa was adding to their mirth, for it was known to cause grown men to giggle and guffaw ceaselessly like maidens gossiping and shrieking at the river while washing clothes and beating the leather karosses and skirts against the rocks.
Malangana shook his head sadly. To these men Mthwakazi was a joke.
Indeed, she was a joke to everyone else at Sulenkama. For one thing, Mthwakazi did not titivate herself with white and red ochre as amaMpondomise maidens did. Her hair was unbraided and, according to other maidens, looked like iinkobe – by which they meant it was as though black grain had been scattered sparsely on her head. She wore only a tanned ox-hide skirt and anklets of shrivelled roots instead of an isikhakha skirt of calico and the colourful glass beads that were popular with maidens her age throughout the land. What did Malangana see in a girl like that?
‘You can whisper it to me, mfondini,’ said Mahlangeni, ‘what is it that you see in this nkazana of abaThwa people?’
‘It will not happen,’ Nzuze kept repeating. ‘We’ll not allow it. Just let my brother hear of it.’
‘How do you know it will be an issue with him?’ asked Gxumisa. ‘You’re all hypocrites! All of you here of the Majola lineage have the blood of abaThwa flowing in your bodies, and you are not ashamed to include that fact in your praise poetry by calling each other thole loMthwakazi.’ The progeny of a Bushwoman.
He pulled hard on his pipe and blew a cloud of smoke at Nzuze’s face.
‘But when it comes to the real world you think you are too good to share your icantsi mat with a Mthwa woman, rha!’
The young men confessed that they had never known how they got to be called the ‘calves of a Mthwakazi’. Gxumisa told them about their ancestor Ngcwina in the 1600s, who was the grandson of Mpondomise, the founder of the nation. After marrying women for his Great House, the Right-hand House and the Left-hand House and having children by those houses, and indeed after having a rightful heir called Dosini from the Great House, he decided to take another wife for his Iqadi House.
‘This is how it happened,’ said Gxumisa, relishing the prospect of storytelling. ‘King Ngcwina had been having dreams about a strange woman in a cave. He was a famous dreamer.’
One day the men of the amaMpondomise regiments went on a hunt on the Ngele Mountains. For three days they did not come across any animal. Just when they were about to give up they heard their dogs bark and rushed in their direction. And there in a cave was this strange girl.
‘This is the girl that the king has been dreaming about,’ the soldiers said.
They took the Mthwa girl back to Mvenyane, which was where the kingdom of amaMpondomise had its Great Place in those days, almost two centuries before it moved to Sulenkama. There she was welcomed with much singing and dancing and feasting.
She was named Manxangashe, and she blossomed as a maiden of beauty and honour. She was the best cook of all the women at the Great Place, and King Ngcwina was partial to her exquisite dishes. She did all her cooking at the Great House, the house of Mangutyana, the king’s senior wife.
Like all the maidens of amaMpondomise she was supposed to remain pure and unsullied until someone married her. But other women noticed that something was growing in her. When Mangutyana asked what she had been doing and with whom she pointed to the heavens. Mangutyana knew immediately that she had been impregnated by the king. Nothing more could be said about it. She, as the most senior of the wives, had to insist that the king marry Manxangashe for the Iqadi House.
‘A delegation was sent to the Ngele Mountains,’ said Gxumisa. ‘She, in fact, led the delegation.’
His audience laughed at this.
‘You never know with the ways of abaThwa. Their women are headstrong and do things the way they want to do them. When they reached the foot of the Ngele Mountains Manxangashe instructed the delegation to remain there and she climbed alone right up to the highest cliffs where the caves were located. She was gone for three days. And what was the delegation doing all that time? Kindling a fire. She had instructed them to do that. If she didn’t see any smoke coming out of a fire she would not return. And of course if she didn’t return they would be in trouble with the king.’
On her return she said her people wanted two black oxen as lobolo. The king paid this. But apparently it was not enough. She demanded that the delegation should return to the Ngele Mountains and this process was repeated until eight black oxen were paid in all. Only then could she officially become King Ngcwina’s wife of the Iqadi House.
This Mthwa woman must have wielded a lot of power over the king. After she gave birth to a son, Cirha, Ngcwina made him heir to the throne, though he was of Iqadi House, instead of the rightful heir, Dosini from the Great House. That, of course, caused a lot of bitterness. But his word was final.
‘Mhlontlo and all of you here are direct descendants of Cirha, the son of that Bushwoman, and today we recite that with pride in our genealogy and praise poetry. Why should Malangana not marry his Mthwakazi?’
There was silence.
Malangana sat like a rock on his bedding and stared at the drum as if to outbrave it. It stared back unflinchingly. It was as stubborn as its owner – the one who had been referred to as ‘his Mthwakazi’ by no less a personage than his uncle Gxumisa, repository of the history and the wisdom of the ages. He would be letting posterity down if he did not make that a reality.
His stare would not hold back the twilight before the sunrise. It crept under his bamboo door and windows.
‘Yirholeni t’anci.’ I greet you, younger father. That was Charles at the door.
‘Kuyangenwa,’ Malangana responded. You are allowed to enter.
Charles Matiwane was sporting a brown jacket with matching riding breeches and a bowler hat. He was Mhlontlo’s son from the Great House, and therefore the heir to the throne. He was one of the amakhumsha people as his father sent him to Shawbury at an early age to receive the white man’s education from the missionaries so that when he took over as king he would be able to understand the thinking of Government and would therefore serve the interests of his people better. He still had a long way to go before his book-learning was done.
‘You got umbiko, Jol’inkomo? You must have ridden through the night,’ said Malangana, asking him about the death announcement that was relayed to him, and calling him by their common clan name which was usually used as an endearment.
‘Father wants us to ride to Qumbu to report my mother’s death to the magistrate,’ said Charles.
Malangana did not waste time with ablutions. Within minutes he was with a group of men being addressed by Mhlontlo under the coast coral trees that grew in front of the Great Place.
‘I am sending a delegation to tell Hamilton Hope that my uncle Gxumisa will lead the men against Magwayi,’ said Mhlontlo. ‘I will no longer be available to take part in any blood-spilling.’
He had to mourn his wife. He could not go into battle. The ukuzila custom forbade it. He would have to mourn for many moons since this was his wife of the Great House, and therefore the Queen-Mother of all the wives and children from all the Houses. As part of ukuzila he was forbidden to eat salted meat. Also, he was not allowed to touch a woman or arms of war for a number of full moons. Salt, women and war! This abstinence would continue until umbuyiso, the ritual that happened after the period of mourning and the purpose of which was to bring the spirit of the deceased back home to the land of the ancestors. Everyone looked forward to umbuyiso because it was a festive occasion with a lot of beer and meat to celebrate the fact that the deceased had now become a fully fledged ancestor.
‘But of course we are ahead of ourselves,’ said Gxumisa. ‘As of now we are faced with the more urgent problems of the burial. Nations will be gathering to mourn with us. The queen was not just an ordinary queen. She was the daughter of King Sarhili.’
Long before umbuyiso the Great Place needed to slaughter cattle to accompany the dead on the long road to the land of the ancestors. Nothing less than a span of fatted black oxen led by a nursing cow famed for its abundant milk would be fitting homage to the queen and to the palates of the mourners. But where would fatted beasts come from when there was so much drought in the land of amaMpondomise? As the elders raised these questions everyone knew that the answers lay with the ukuphekisa traditions, where neighbouring kingdoms who were on a friendly footing with amaMpondomise would contribute beasts and corn for the event, in the same way that amaMpondomise families themselves would each contribute clay pots of beer and other cooked items on the day of the event.
After all these plans had been outlined Mhlontlo instructed the delegation to Hamilton Hope to repair to Qumbu forthwith.
‘Only the three young bloods will comprise the delegation, Mahlangeni, Malangana and Charles,’ said Mhlontlo. ‘I need the rest of you here at the Great Place to perform various tasks in preparation for the burial.’
As the three men rode out of Sulenkama they saw a puny maiden in a cowhide skirt running on a footpath in their direction and yelling: ‘Malangana weee, Malangana!’
It was Mthwakazi.
‘Hayibo! What does this thing of yours want now?’ asked Mahlangeni.
Malangana stopped. The other two men rode on. Charles, however, slacked off a bit and kept on looking back. Mahlangeni trotted on with nary a backward glance.
‘I want my drum back, Malangana,’ said Mthwakazi as soon as she caught up to him.
‘You look very beautiful when you are angry,’ said Malangana, chuckling. ‘Kodwa ke isimilo siyephi? Kuyabuliswa k’qala.’ But where have your manners gone? Custom demands that you greet first.
‘You stole my drum, Malangana,’ said Mthwakazi.
He was smiling. She must be joking. She was not smiling. She stood defiantly in front of the horse, arms akimbo.
‘Stole? Me steal from you?’
‘I want my sacred drum.’
‘I am on an important mission for our king and you stop me to accuse me of theft?’
He gave the horse a nudge with his knee and it began to move.
‘I am going to report you, wena Malangana,’ said Mthwakazi. ‘I am going to lodge a case of theft at inkundla against you.’
Malangana laughed out loud and said, ‘You’re being dramatic. When I come back we’ll talk about it. Meet me by the river and we’ll talk about the theft of your drum under the stars.’
He galloped away. The two men were halfway to Qumbu when he caught up with them. Not a word passed among them until they reached the magistrate’s office.
‘The natives must learn that they cannot just see the magistrate on a whim without an appointment,’ said Henman. ‘He is preparing to go to court.’
‘They say it’s an emergency,’ said Sunduza. ‘It’s about the war against Magwayi.’
Thanks to Sunduza’s negotiations Hamilton Hope finally agreed to see Mhlontlo’s emissaries, but only for ten minutes. They were ushered into his office.
‘Charles, you’re back with your father,’ said Hope. ‘I thought you’d be at school.’
‘My mother left us,’ said Charles.
‘She did? Where did she go? Back to the kraal of Kreli?’
‘She passed away, sir,’ said Charles trying very hard to keep his voice firm.
‘I’m sorry to hear that, old chap. What can I do for you?’
‘The king cannot lead the men to war because he is mourning,’ said Malangana.
‘So Umhlonhlo is now reneging, is he? Using his wife’s death as an excuse?’
Malangana explained that amaMpondomise were not pulling out of the war. Only Mhlontlo would not be participating because ukuzila customs forbade him to touch weapons of war or to spill blood. He had appointed his uncle Gxumisa, a tried-and-tested general, to lead the forces.
‘I do not accept that,’ said Hope. ‘Umhlonhlo is a liar!’
‘This man is insulting our king,’ said Mahlangeni.
‘Calm down,’ whispered Malangana.
‘This is just an excuse. After all, you people have many wives. What’s the big bother? Umhlonhlo has other wives, hasn’t he? Surely he can’t be a crybaby about one wife.’
‘It is the custom, sir,’ said Charles. His speech came in gasps and his hands were shaking. That was his mother that Hope was talking about so dismissively.
‘You, Charles, should know better. You’re a Christian,’ said Hope.
‘My father and his people are not governed by the Christian doctrine, sir.’
‘Now here is my final word on this,’ said Hope. ‘Tell Umhlonhlo that he shall lead the Pondomise against Magwayi. I will be delivering the requested arms and ammunitions and he shall lead his warriors to war. Government is determined to be obeyed. We cannot make exceptions for him. We cannot be seen to be weak. We are not governed by native customs. You are now under Government, you cannot expect Government to come down to your level and adopt your customs. If Umhlonhlo is not willing to listen to Government then he must give way to a chief who will. Umhlonhlo used to be a wise chief who obeyed Government. He must remember what happened to his friend Moorosi of the Baphuthi tribe.’
Sunduza was interpreting all this for the benefit of the increasingly seething Mahlangeni and, as far as he was concerned, Malangana as well.
As the three men were riding home Mahlangeni was yelling at his companions: ‘You people don’t see anything wrong with this? The man insults our king, calling him a liar and even threatening to behead him like they did to Moorosi?’
‘Of course it is wrong,’ said Malangana. ‘But what did you want us to do?’
He did not answer. Obviously he did not know what they should have done.
Charles was visibly shaken. This was his first encounter with Hamilton Hope, the magistrate in action. He had only seen Hamilton Hope the benevolent member of the congregation in church who often visited the school to encourage the missionaries in their good works.
‘We’re powerless,’ said Malangana. ‘They pick and choose who our kings will be. They have done it already to the abaThembu people where they removed King Ngangelizwe and placed a person of their liking. They think they can do it now to amaMpondomise.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Mahlangeni. ‘You are powerless.’
He prodded his horse and it bolted away, leaving Malangana and Charles stupefied.