Broken River Tent Read online

  ‘For us, in the Xhosa royal families, it was easier to be closer to your mother’s children than your paternal siblings, who were more or less your rivals rather than brethren. But Xhonxo, who was rather namby-pamby, was my favourite brother, though we didn’t share the same mother. The three of us grew up close. We played pebble games together, fished for crabs in sloots; made whips for sham fights from rushes we picked in the open watercourses where we also learnt to swim. We killed birds with sticks and stones, roasting them over wood fires before devouring them, bones and all.

  ‘Xhonxo and I were fond of taunting our sister Nongwane for her burgeoning over-zealousness with her newly found faith, which later was propagated by the cryptic Ntsikana. She grew such a long beak because of that religion that she was wont to preach whenever she opened her mouth. It was almost necessary to trim her wings now and then. Her religion made her smug and priggish. Bhulineli, whom the English called John Brownlee, took over where Ntsikana left as her chief priest when Ngqika gave him permission to open a school eMgwali. Nongwane attended that school and learnt white man’s ways. I, meantime, couldn’t be bothered with such effeminate things. I had wars to fight and my father’s cattle to tend. Besides, I didn’t like what I saw in my sister. You couldn’t even joke with her about anything anymore without her taking umbrage, or becoming sanctimonious. Her world became grey. In no time she shunned our rituals and celebrations, saying they were barbaric and encouraged immodesty. I tell you, it reached a point where being around her became a strain. I didn’t know what to talk to her about. Very soon I understood why the whites had to crucify their prophet. If this Christ was half the nuisance Nongwane became the cross was his come-uppance. It is difficult to coexist with such self-righteous bores.

  ‘Nongwane and her cabal raised a lot of noise and fuss about prophetic visions that made them drunk with religious fever, jabbering nonsense with their heads tilted to one side. Most of us were interested in the new teaching at first without really letting the whole thing go beyond the surface and circumstances of our lives. The fables of the new religion were intriguing but over time they grew tepid and lost their novelty. What irked me more than anything else was their followers’ inability to handle criticism. They preferred to wrap things in enigmas instead of discussing issues straight up. Whenever I said this my sister accused me of incomprehension, saying I had been blinded by heathenism. She felt I was deafened by the shallow wishful thinking that prefers lazy familiar traditional ways for no reason except that they’re old. Whenever we laughed at her, out loud, she’d burst into frustrated tears and then our father would reprimand us, warning us not to be rude by making fun of other people’s beliefs.

  ‘We named the converts and all those who were ever ready to believe in the spick and span amagqoboka – turncoats – who caught every passing wind because they lacked anchor. Since then those who trust too easily in the novel before understanding the old were called amagqoboka, because they’ve turned their hollowness inside out. Unlike my sister, I couldn’t afford to be indifferent to the verdict of our society. I was being groomed to be a chief. “A man’s foes shall be they of his household,” she would quote from their book with a red mouth to me whenever we heard arguments like that. But I could see she was grieved by what she called “the obtuseness of your heart”. It tore me apart too to see her religion dividing us. I still maintain, faced with all the malice of the devil they painted so gruesomely, and the restraints God supposedly imposes on us, as they preached, I’d choose my forefathers’ ways. I wouldn’t want to spend eternity with a God who’s so shallow as to be stiffened to hostility by mere creatures.

  ‘In those days it became notorious for people to carry their life disappointments into some form of a religious calling, wanting to implicate the nation in their personal ambitions, like Nxele who made himself into a war doctor and the national Makhanda. Mlanjeni, with blanched body, pale and gaunt as a reed and weak as a sloth – because he spent his waking hours submerged, up to his neck, in rivers – came a decade after Nxele. These false prophets confused our chiefs with their belligerent prophecies about the people of the river, who were supposedly well disposed to us, and those of the foam, coming from the sea, who, though ill disposed to us, were also coming to rescue the Xhosas from colonial power.

  ‘Before the tumult that came with white people settling in our land, Nongwane and I, during our teens, were sent to live with my uncle in the vicinity of the Mtontsi forest. On the given day we set out at dog’s distending hour, when you can just about discern the cow’s shining horns. Still we didn’t beat my father’s imbongi and the sending-off party. Immediately we started the journey his praises accompanied us, half-singing, half-reciting against the background of crowing cocks, barking dogs and bellowing cows:

  Sasombuluka isikhotsholo sehlathi laseMthontsi,

  Yasombuluka inkuzi abayikhuz’ ukuhlaba ingekahlabi,

  Hazi bothinina mhla yahlaba.

  Sasombulaka isilo samaRharhabe kwakhal’ izakhwasha

  Hizan’ nibone ubuhle bomfanaqwa buk’ Nothontho

  Qabintulo, qabintulo, nderham!

  There distends the flying cobra of Mthontsi forest,

  The bull they wonder about its gouge before it gores,

  I wonder what’ll they say the day it impales.

  There distends the ogre of Rharhabe disturbing guinea-fowls,

  Come and see the beauty of Nothonto’s mirror image,

  Rock lizard, rock lizard, I disappear!

  ‘Thus went our send-off party. We travelled until about noon when the sun became unbearable. Then, at the wadi of Ncerhana, just before the confluent waters, we sat under a willow tree. When the afternoon wore away the heat of the forenoon we continued and reached the kraal at ghost hours the following day.

  ‘Many places I’ve seen, but there are none as dear to my heart as the alluvial soil of Ngcwenxa. This is the area the white people called the Kat River valley. This was the place for which my friendship with Stockenström was broken, because he betrayed me and confiscated the land, through the colonial government, as an experimental settlement for the Khoi and amaMfengu.

  ‘The area is fenced by Nkonkobe mountains. It has the spurs of Waterkloof and the ridge of Tyumi on the west. I am sure you’ll also rarely in your life see land of such beauty, with its high green and rugged rolling hills whose sediment makes the valleys down below so fertile. My character was formed there under the sharp eye of my maternal uncle Kota. At the foot of the Nkonkobe mountains was where I learnt how to cut the furrow straight when turning the soil. That was where Nongwane brought me food from the pestle and the millstone of Nothontho. We would have starved beside those willows had Nothontho not been industrious with her grinding stones, kibbling the golden harvest. What would have happened to us if the leaning wind hadn’t given her a hand in winnowing the chaff? Who would have fed the pigs with cobs if Nongwane hadn’t hurried from collecting wood in the thickets of Mthontsi, where treetops tamed the fury of sunrays and the dimness checked the pride of the British during our bush wars? Where trees were reflected in the soft dimming glow of Ngcwenxa’s still pools.

  ‘Awu madoda! I saw a gleeman accompany my mother’s child with flirtatious songs as she went to fetch water at the river. Nongwane scorned him with pretended bashfulness and lips twitching with a controlled smile when she saw me. “Have you brought me some cow dung to smear your rondavel, Maqoma?” my sister asked, glad to change focus from her embarrassment of me seeing her with a boy. “Your room is disgusting.” And, labouring her point: “I’ve been telling you to stop smoking umgqutsapere with your friends.” But she was flattered. I could see my mother’s child was flattered by his attention. Her smile was from one cheek to another, her dimples like stars in donga-coloured skies. Then we would go home. I would help her carry the bunch of wood she’d collected from the bush, while balancing a crock of water on her head. Then I’d sit at the hearth, watching my mother’s child snap beans, wring chickens’ heads and pluck th
eir feathers. I would watch her as exhaustion from working in the fields settled on my shoulders and eyes, as she shucked corn and dug eyes out of the potatoes in preparation for the evening meal. That was the time when we would pass a silent word of gratitude to women like Nongwane who provided for us men.

  ‘And it was there that I also met my first love. Be done, work! Be done, chores! I have a tryst over the hill. Isiponono sami sindilindele. My inamorata is waiting for me. “Don’t hold me too close, Maqoma. You’re a warrior, you’ll soon leave me with a sore heart. It is not wise to give one’s heart to a wandering warrior. People are talking,” said isiponono sami as we rolled, frolicking in the grass like calves. Oh, she was a buxom, stout and rumbustious thing – I made her my first wife. We talked of fickle things under the mimosa tree until the sun said, “Buy me if you can and I’ll stay. If you can’t, why are you still here? Do you not know that my setting wakes ucelizapholo, Venus, the shepherd and lovers’ star? Who’ll milk the cows if you linger here whispering sweet nothings? And you, young lady? Are the pots standing in your hearth?”

  ‘That was perhaps the quietest and most fulfilling period of my life. Little did I know it would be those well-watered foothills of the Kat River valley that would provide those thieves with an incentive to banish me and rob my people.

  ‘We lived eMthontsi for four years. Then word came from Tyumi, summoning me for the school of circumcision. I went to the school of circumcision eBlayi, fitting of a chief’s son. I had companions and coevals to accompany me. That sealed our fate as blood brothers for life. They would, for instance, never marry without notifying me, likewise myself. When we grew up they became my first councillors. We established a tribe together called amaJingqi. Matshaya, one of them, became isandla sam sokunene, the hand of my chiefdom, my main assistant, and the others were the core of my council.

  ‘We remained in the boma as initiates from seedtime until harvest, coming out of the school during the calving of the herds and lambing of the flocks, so as to be fed umthubi, the richest, first yellow milk. During the day we went in search of firewood, and hunted with dogs, sticks and long spears for our meat, as far as the Nkonkobe mountains. We would pilfer chickens and any other food we wanted from village homesteads – everyone understood and were lenient, by custom, to the needs of the initiates. No one minded, since everybody, except the white farmers, knew it was what abakhwetha did. In the evenings, or at dawn, we sang initiation songs, most of which were our traditional anthems. We sang them whenever we wanted to invoke unity, like when going to war. We were tested on our knowledge of initiation language, age-old Xhosa wisdom, and beaten by sticks when our knowledge or memory failed us. Amakhankata dressed our wounds pretty roughly to test our endurance and strength, and often it happened that:

  The goat that had not bleated

  When its throat was cut

  Cried out when it was skinned.

  ‘We ate poor unsavoury, unsalted food. Water was mixed with ashes in the first weeks. If one is to become a man he must learn to overcome hardship, humiliation and disgust, we were told. It was a hard six months away from the village.’

  ‘A whole six months?’ Phila asked. ‘We go for a month these days, sometimes less if one has to go to school.’

  ‘And go back to the village with a fresh wound? No wonder you people have become so weak in bed, and can’t handle more than one wife.

  ‘Making premature contact with village people, especially women, weakens your virility.’

  ‘How exactly?’

  ‘Witchcraft. What else?’

  ‘Mfxim!’ answered Phila in amusement.

  ‘It also affects your healing powers. After those six months we washed off our white ochre. We burnt the grass of our bomas, and emerged for the great ceremony that marked our acceptance as adult males and warriors. Never had I seen my mother so proud, ululating, singing, dancing and prancing like a young buck. Then the festivities began. We were given our imisoko. My father, Ngqika, gave me, together with ilifa lam, as part of my inheritance, a white bull with dotted spots I coveted very much. The bull was magnificent, streaked and spotted black. Its pedigree went to the ancient of times in our tribe, and had a bizarre effect in the village. People called it Isitshingitshingi Jingqi because it swept through during our oxen race tournaments, and was lethal when fighting with other bulls. My father seldom made me as happy as he did that day. Other minor chiefs of the land and the surrounding areas came to pay their homage, giving me gifts; as Ngqika’s first born they gave me amawu, choice gifts. Even Hintsa sent a delegation, something that pleased me much, as it meant he recognised me as the possible heir of our chieftainship. Ngqika, in view of everyone, placed a necklace of red beads around my neck to signify my stature as his potent heir.’

  ‘They turned into a system of patronage?’ Phila taunted the chief. ‘Seriously, though – you named your tribe after a bull?’

  ‘Or the bull was named after the tribe. I can’t remember which came first now. As amaJingqi then we were in a league of our own; full warriors who spent almost all our time in stringent exercises and gruesome hunting expeditions. We started as a warrior camp of amaNgqika before eventually developing into a fully fledged tribe. We were young, sharp, charged and fed the usual honed speeches about our land that was seeping out like a ripped maize sack under our noses. Ngqika did not beat about the bush as he told us what had been happening in the land while we had been gone.

  ‘“You push your livestock in the morning to graze on the mountains. When you come back there is a white flag in the field where they lay the previous day, and a white man wielding a white paper, telling you that it entitles him to build a farm there. That means you can no longer graze or hunt in that area. He insults you, calling you lazy for not tilling the land that is empty and yearning for crops. The following day it’s the same story in another area. They need huge acreages to farm. All you’re good for, you’re told, is to be a good, biddable, hard-working kaffir who knows his place. To work for your white master and learn the ways of civilisation. Fields we used for grazing were now filled with waving corn – barley and wheat everywhere. Where were our cattle supposed to feed, was the question we asked, after we’ve fed ourselves with white man’s bread?”

  ‘Later that day I noticed that the colour of my father’s face had changed. Sorrow and sad anxiety from the confusion of his mind was written all over it. He looked sickly, nervous. The light had gone from his eyes. After he had satiated himself on the “tears of the queen”, he took me aside to explain what was troubling him. His middle-age paunch trembled as he said, “The children of pride are upon us, my child. They have no honour. Their spirit is animated by greed. They speak peaceable and believable words with deceitful hearts. I’ve seen the sign of things to come. Our future is strewn with blood. They are going to subdue Phalo’s land, take its spoils to their occidental hives, and make all of us their vassals and tributaries.” I was alarmed by the manner in which he talked, but I answered calmly, trying to downplay his fear. “You speak like a demented man, father. You need to get some sleep. Everybody knows white people are your friends.”

  ‘“Friends? Friends? I’m scared shitful of them. Sleep? What sleep? I’ve not had decent sleep since the day I saw the first white man, and how much death their magic pipes can sow with just one roar. Did you see what they did to Ndlambe’s men with mbayi-mbayis? Sleep went from my eyes since the first day I laid them on those cannons and heard with my own ears the rumble and tumble of death they cause. My heart has been cast on the sea of anxiety. The hope of holding onto our land has fallen away from my heart. They say they bring us news from heaven, yet they fortify the devil in our midst.”

  ‘A sepulchral silence fell between us. Fear hung heavy as frost in my father’s eyes. I pleaded with him. “Father, please try and get some sleep, we’ll talk again in the morning.” That was all I could say before clothing my disappointment in dignified silence. Too late I understood that my father’s weaknesses came from too
much insight playing havoc with his courage. His was a sad story of a purebred racehorse put to work hauling water. In the end, it didn’t matter what we did. The stars were against us and the tent of the River People was broken.’

  Phila woke with the sinking sun and expanding shadows. A river ran between the newly tilled fields and the scowling mountains. He started the car and drove off. As he crossed the Buffalo River to enter eQonce he recalled this was where Rharhabe had killed inyathi and sent the upper arm to appease the wrath of his elder brother Gcaleka. Several people were hitchhiking there, with mini-bus taxis stopping at intervals.

  Taking a deep breath, Phila entered eQonce, where he had booked a room in an old colonial hotel. The town, known to the British colonists as King William’s Town after their then newly crowned monarch, was once the colonial capital of the so-called Adelaide Province. It amused Phila no less that its regality had returned, because it had, again, under the current dispensation been made the provincial capital of the Eastern Cape. Harry Smith, who basically founded the town as military headquarters, tied its establishment to the geography of the area for military defence. He designed the town’s main streets to radiate like the spokes of a wagon wheel towards the system of forts he had founded on the feet of the mountains they called Amatola and Winterberg, while amaXhosa referred to them as Amathole and Nkonkobe, respectively.