Broken River Tent Read online

  “And that’s when you get lost in them?”

  “Sometimes I hear the voices and see the faces of people who were there.”

  “In your dreams?”

  “Something like that.”

  The wind was blustery and hot. Matswane held her sunhat on with her hand as it gusted around them.

  “The Xhosa blocked all roads to the fort during that war, and held those inside at ransom. Each time the Brits sent an offensive against the Xhosas, assegais drank their blood. Hi! hi! hi! Xhosa bullets also harvested them from those hilltops over there. It was suicidal and hopeless to stand against so many Xhosas, so those inside decided to sit still in the protection of the fort, waiting for reinforcements since they were outnumbered with no way of escape. They were held hostage for about three days. Included among them was Harry Smith – then already a governor – Maqoma’s rich enemy and nemesis. When you read the letters Smith wrote during those days you realise he had reached a dementia with fear. The letters were disjointed and incoherent. He even requested the colonial government to convince a Zulu army to come attack the Xhosas who had risen to annihilate the whites in the Eastern Cape. He was in the devil’s grip. He knew the shoe was of Maqoma’s stitching. He knew Maqoma was not gonna let him get out of the fort alive, not after the humiliation he had meted out to Maqoma a few years before in Port Elizabeth.”

  “What humiliation?”

  “Coming back from England as the new Governor, Smith summoned the Xhosa chiefs, Maqoma among them, and asked them to kiss his ring as a symbol of serving him. He also asked them to kneel before him, whereupon he put the heel of his boot on each of their necks.”

  “Yark! That’s sick!”

  “Hence Maqoma had orchestrated things into this siege, to avenge himself on Smith. Smith survived by the skin of the teeth. He escaped in the morning on horseback disguised as one of the Khoi Cape Mounted Rifles according to official colonial books. But the Xhosas say he was disguised in women’s clothes, knowing very well the custom of the Xhosas of not harming women even during times of war.

  “Any who tried to come out of the fort were killed by the Xhosa, who wanted to reduce the garrison to the utmost dire straits, with no food or ammunition nor provisions to replenish them. Their intention was to finish them when they were weak, before their reinforcements arrived.

  “According to the Xhosa plan, a KhoiKhoi man from Bhotomane’s chiefdom, who worked at the fort, was to start a fire inside, creating a diversion. He was also supposed to canvas around the disgruntled KhoiKhoi of the Cape Mounted Rifles to fight on the Xhosa side when the time came. Maqoma, the chief who led the assaults, later cursed the thought that made him rush to trust the KhoiKhoi. On the given night the Xhosas descended from their fastness so as to be outside the fort’s wall at first light. As soon as the saboteur gave the fire signal they were to attack. But the signal never came. The result? When daylight came the Xhosa were as exposed as a Bushman’s back, white people waiting patiently, guns in hand, ready to fire through the holes of the fort. They had somehow learnt of the ruse – no prizes for guessing from whom. They rained hell on the Xhosas at first light before they could retreat to safety. Even to this day the white people do not know how they escaped from the mouth of that lion. They learnt to respect, fear and thus hate Maqoma that day.

  “Fate blunted the edge of Xhosa opportunity. When they got back to their villages some Xhosa men were so charged they started attacking the missionaries who stayed in their villages, and killing white traders before their chiefs could restrain them. The missionaries were no longer safe in Xhosa villages, so they were given chief escorts across colonial borders. Some Xhosas who had converted to white people’s ways, like the young Soga, who attended school at the missionary yard, left with the white people. The colonial government took such acts as the declaration of full war. And so another Frontier War began.”

  “Will you go back to her?” Matswane asked.

  “What?” Phila was bewildered. “Who?”

  “Your woman.”

  “Who said I have a woman to go back to?”

  “Your likes always do.”

  “My what? … You know what? Let’s not talk about this anymore.”

  “Fine.”

  Silence fell between them. When Phila glanced at Matswane, he thought he saw sadness in her eyes. He was confused as to what he was supposed to say. When he finally spoke it was as though he was reading from a prepared speech.

  “I am travelling into my life, in an attempt to read what is in it for me, perhaps even to learn to accept myself, vague losses and all. I do not yet have a verdict on who is my woman and who is not. It could be I shall not be able to live with what, who, I am. What then? I cannot drag others into the mess. That is why I am unable to be attentive to others at this time in my life. I’ve no mystery to share …”

  “I’m not looking for mysteries to solve, just situations I’m comfortable with,” said Matswane, her tone slightly reprimanding. “And I’m comfortable with you.”

  Phila felt he was back to square one. “I don’t have much foresight. I’m against happiness as the only goal of this life, so I shall not gel well with your type.”

  “My type? Against happiness, but for ecstasy? We’ll see how that goes.”

  “I feel incomplete and unhappy in most situations. I’m sure you can see how that will eventually be a problem. You’ll get bored with me very soon. People usually hate me, strongly, when they discover I cannot be turned into what they want me to be.”

  “I don’t want to end up like you, but I’d like to go with you for a little while, to clarify some things in my own head also.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. The fact that I don’t want to get married to Siva for one,” Matswane said. “Perhaps I’ve grown too comfortable in my own life, allowing others to make decisions for me. Siva is more of my parents’ choice for me than mine. I see how that can be a problem for me, perhaps not now but later on. I don’t want misery, but I would like to see what else is out there.”

  Perhaps he had been wrong about this woman. “I thought you were happy with your life?” Phila said, hiding behind a smile.

  “I am. Just not content.

  “Mine is the kind of happiness that breeds blandness.”

  “Now you want to use me as your guinea pig, to see if there’s any value in sadness?” Phila grinned, then admitted it out loud: “I might have been wrong about you.”

  “No, you were right. You saw the side I presented.”

  “I’m beginning to like the other side also.”

  “I want you to like me.”

  “You want what you already have. I’m scared for the time when you see the real me, that’s all.”

  “What for? I’m the one who stands to lose here.”

  “And I don’t?”

  “Somehow I think everything is a gain to you.”

  “If by that you mean I am alive to life whatever it brings.”

  “You seek stories to remind yourself you’re alive?”

  “I was just reading from the hotel’s bedside Bible this morning. The psalmist says those who are alive to life, their lives are like a story that’s being told. Or something like that. What are we without the stories we tell each other about each other? Keats says it better: I have an habitual feeling of my real life having passed, and that I am leading a posthumous existence. I get stabbed by life: flowers, babies, homeless people, roads with or without cars, the marketplace, the silence of a deserted church building and so on. The very act of living, breathing, eating and walking is sacramental to me. That, to me, is being fully alive. Let us be going.”

  They began walking towards the car.

  ‘Why is she coming with us?’

  Maqoma. Of course.

  ‘It’s a free country.’

  At that moment Phila recalled a dream he’d had the previous night about the Philistines. He had dreamt of terror-filled King Saul in Endor consulting a mediu
m through the prophet Samuel. When he came across the psalm Phila was trying to find the passage of the dream from the Bible: Samuel said to Saul, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” “I am in great distress,” Saul said. “The Philistines are fighting against me, and God has turned away from me. He no longer answers me, either by prophets or dreams. So I’ve called on you to tell me what to do.” Phila wondered if he had called on Maqoma to tell him what to do.

  After breakfast the following morning Phila and Matswane drove to Maqoma’s grave in Qoboqobo. From the Engen filling station they immediately took the right turn to climb a curving road towards Dimbaza, a black township now looking more like a ghost town. During the era of the Bantustans, when Maqoma’s remains were exhumed from Robben Island to the area, it was a booming town of textile manufacturing. But they couldn’t compete with cheap items from China and one after another the factories closed. Jobs faded and lean days returned. This pushed rapid urbanisation to those cities that were still able to offer jobs. Denizens from peri-urban townships and rural areas like Dimbaza formed the greater part of the informal residents who converged on big cities like Johannesburg and Cape Town.

  “Are we still on the right path?” Matswane, who was at the wheel, asked a rather quiet Phila.

  “Yes. Drive until you see a sign that says Qoboqobo and follow that.” After a moment he corrected himself. “No, the turn will say Keiskammahoek. They still call these places by their colonial names.”

  “I don’t like it much when you keep quiet, babes.” Mat tried to revive the conversation again after five minutes or so.

  “Really, don’t worry about it.”

  The landscape turned verdant with clumps of forest that thickened towards the foot of Amathole fastnesses amaXhosa had used as their natural forts during their wars with the colonial forces. They branched towards Keiskammahoek and drove through thickets of forest and past lakes of white waters, most of which was now privately owned by white farmers, with a dapple of Xhosa huts whose owners either worked on the white farms, or deserted them to eke out a living in the cities, living insalubriously like animals in zinc dwellings, zamatyotyombe. After they climbed over the Keiskamma River, Phila asked that they stop.

  “Here? What happened here?”

  But Phila was in no mood for talking. He trained his eyes on the hill where the Uniondale missionary school was built. It was the first post where Zisani Soga had taught when he came back from Glasgow the first time. The post was organised by his friends and benefactors, the Nivens, who manned the station. It was the first mission the Xhosas burnt down during the 1851 clash, partly in deep resentment of Zisani whom they saw as a bad influence on others for trying to convert them.

  When they continued their drive they took the east branch off the main road to Boma Pass where Sandile’s warriors had ambushed and killed thirteen British soldiers at the start of that war. The forest all around them was thick. Then they saw a small black and white road pointer to Maqoma’s grave.

  “Ah!” exclaimed Matswane.

  All this time Phila had stayed silent. The burden of history weighed on him. He got out of the car and walked a couple of times around the grave. There was nothing much of ceremonial pomp to it, just a rectangle of granite stone with Jong’Umsobomvu’s biographical details engraved on it. Then a few praise-song notes of his clan name. It felt wrong. The whole thing felt wrong. Matswane’s presence. Maqoma’s silence. His mind going blank. It all felt wrong.

  He walked back to the car, climbed onto the bonnet and lit a cigarette. He lay there, supine, looking at the azure skies. The wind gathered. The forest, a few feet away, started singing. Phila listened. He didn’t hear anything. He got off the bonnet and lay on his back on the grass, to get a better feel of the ground rumblings. Momentarily, Matswane joined him, lying supine too. They were quiet together for a long time.

  When the forest shadows had almost reached them, Phila got up and pulled Matswane to her feet. “Come! Let us be on our way, the day is far gone,” he declared.

  They each put a stone on the grave before they left.

  At the hotel they lay the same way on the bed, side by side. Matswane kept Phila primed with whisky. After about an hour and a half, Phila said, “I actually like that the grave has no pompous ceremony about it, even though I doubt it would stay so for long. Sooner or later a politician would come along, wanting to use Maqoma for political gain, spouting silly ideas of putting up a monument or something. I would like to think his indomitable spirit would tear down such monuments. The only thing I would change is the epithet on the grave. I would keep the biological details, of course. But instead of the clan praise thing I would let Mqhayi speak for him also.”

  “Who is Mqhayi?” Matswane asked.

  “One of our greatest poets,” Phila said. “Surely you know Mqhayi?” Matswane shook her head and Phila began to recite:

  Asinithenganga ngazo izicengo;

  Asinithenganga ngayo imibengo;

  Bekungenganzuzo zimakhwesikhwezi,

  Bekungenganzuzo ingangeenkwenkwezi.

  Sikwatsho nakuni, bafel’eAfrika,

  KwelaseJamani yaseMpumalanga,

  NelaseJamani yaseNtshonalanga.

  Bekungembek’eninayo kuKumkani,

  Bekungentobeko yenu kwiBritani.

  “He wrote that poem for those brave soldiers who went down with the troopship, the SS Mendi, in 1917.”

  “Oh … I think I heard about that,” said Matswane, “but you’ll have to translate.” She looked at him expectantly and Phila recalled that she didn’t speak Xhosa. He recited the passage slowly in English, moving away from the official translation, which he’d never liked, even when they were still students and made to recite the poem. For one thing, he could never understand why they rendered Mqhayi’s clear reference to Germany, in iJamani, to West. He now understood that translation is a third language between the two being translated; not only did it depend on the skill of the translator, but it also came riddled with the translator’s own linguistic quirks. Hence, like fingerprints, no translations could be the same:

  We didn’t bait you by supplications;

  We didn’t bait you by skewers;

  We didn’t promise star wealth for booty;

  Nor the shining spread of stars to take.

  We say to you also who died in Africa,

  Because of German mischief in the West.

  Was it not valour for your king,

  Or your dignified tribute to Britain …

  “That is powerful,” Matswane said when he had finished. “I can understand how such a poet would lend words to Maqoma’s grave.”

  “Perhaps the last part would be misplaced, since Maqoma was no friend of Britain. Come to think about it, neither were the soldiers who sank with the Mendi. They went there to fight for the land they had been promised if they joined the British forces.”

  Phila told her how in the past the government of Ciskei celebrated the day of independence at Ntaba kaNdoda. How Maqoma’s bones were buried there after being exhumed from Robben Island in 1985.

  “Unfortunately, death didn’t find him ‘on the mountaintop somewhere at dawn’, as Maqoma had wished, but surrounded instead by yawning waters, incarcerated in the land of lepers.”

  “How did he die?” Matswane asked quietly.

  “Under mysterious circumstances. Exactly how he died was never explained by the government of the time.”

  “He must have been quite a character for you to invest so much energy into researching his life.”

  “That he is … was. I’m sure he is pleased with his bones reburied at Ntaba kaNdoda, which meant so much to him. That’s where his character was formed – or so I understand from … Anyway, it is also close to the scene of the first battle he ever led against amaNdlambe. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Battle of Amalinde?”

  “Can’t say I have,” said Mat. “But I have a feeling you’re going to tell me about it.”

  Kicking Against the Goad
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br />   ‘A RAINMAKING CEREMONY WAS HELD at the great house near the banks of Mgxada.’

  Maqoma was in a good mood compared to the last time they’d talked. Phila felt a sharp relief in hearing the chief’s voice. He had been feeling a certain mental constipation without him over the past few days.

  ‘The ceremony was organised by Suthu, Ngqika’s great wife, for the benefit of her benighted son Sandile,’ continued Maqoma. ‘Mqantsi, the rainmaking shaman, whose influence was at its height, officiated at the ceremony. He had a virulent hatred for the white missionaries, put the blame on them for the raging drought that was in the land then. In fact he blamed them for everything that was wrong in our land. Without rain there was no contending with white men’s ways for us. Rain was a source of our self-sufficiency. The likes of Mqantsi and Mlanjeni used people’s credulity for their own ends. “Since white man came in our land,” was Mqantsi’s leitmotif, “seasons have changed, rain has been withheld. White people raise winds, by witchcraft, that blow the rain away to the oceans.” He brought cheers to the hearts of the confused nation. “Our only reprieve is in chasing them away!” More shouts of support. “They’ve come to our land to kill with hunger all those who do not adopt their ways.”

  ‘That was how Mqantsi invoked people’s hatred against white missionaries; reinventing Nxele’s rallying call. I was a little ambivalent. I liked his preaching against white people, but I wanted things to be taken at a steady pace, to prepare our warriors to fight with white men’s smoking sticks of death. Mqantsi and his followers saw my caution as a sign of weakness.

  ‘Mqantsi liked to hold his rainmaking ceremonies on Sundays so as to intimidate those who wished to attend services at the missionary bases. He made it a point to hold them close to the missionary stations so as to distract their congregations. He called for a boycott against selling farm produce, like milk, corn, eggs and meat, to the inhabitants of mission stations. If I’m not mistaken, there were about four stations in Tyumi.