The Heart of Redness: A Novel (14 page)

But it is difficult for many people to know which side to take. Even Camagu, with all his learning, cannot make up his mind. Every day of the two weeks he has been at this village he has spent time with
Xoliswa Ximiya. Sometimes just an hour or two after school, or almost half a day during weekends. It is understandable, then, that at this imbhizo he is more sympathetic to the position of the Unbelievers.

Xoliswa Ximiya stands unyieldingly next to him. If only his mates at Giggles could see him now, in the company of this model-type in all her clinical elegance!

He has tried to observe the patterns of believing and unbelieving at this village, to try to make sense of them. And they remain beyond his comprehension. He has talked with Bhonco at length. Unfortunately he has not had any opportunity to talk with Zim. Camagu concludes that these people select positions in such a way that they are never found to be on the same side on any issue. Even at the
inkundla
, where they are both councillors and counsellors at Chief Xikixa’s court, they are always at loggerheads.

“The Unbelievers stand for progress,” asserts Bhonco, to the assenting murmurs of his followers. He exudes graveness and anger as he punches the air with his fist. The whiff of friendliness that Camagu once observed on his furrowed face has flown with the reproof of the elders. “We want to get rid of this bush which is a sign of our uncivilized state. We want developers to come and build the gambling city that will bring money to this community. That will bring modernity to our lives, and will rid us of our redness.”

Xoliswa Ximiya is proud of her father’s position. If only he had asked NoPetticoat to press his suit. But even a wrinkled suit is better than no suit at all. Far better than beads and traditional isiXhosa costume, even though a rock-rabbit-skin bag hangs over the elder’s off-white shirt and twisted tie.

Zim stands up, looking regal in his traditional finery. He is smiling.

“This son of Ximiya talks of progress. Yet he wants to destroy the bush that has been here since the days of our forefathers. What kind of progress is that?” he asks. He is very deliberate in his manner and in his speech.

“What does the bush do for you?” shouts Bhonco. He has lost patience with the stupidity of the Believers. “The new developments will bring tourists. The new developments will create employment for
us all. The new developments will bring people from all over the world. From America!”

His last point, thinks Camagu, comes from the elder’s daughter.

“Yes. Those people!” scoffs Zim. “Those so-called tourists! They come here to steal our lizards and our birds.”

“Who wants lizards, anyway?” asks Bhonco contemptuously. “Do you eat lizards, Zim? Why do you complain about lizards and birds? Does a grown man like you eat birds like a young shepherd? Like a herdboy in the veld?”

“They come to steal our aloes and our cycads and our usundu palms and our
ikhamanga
wild banana trees,” insists Zim.

Bhonco is exasperated. He has never heard such foolishness oozing from every pore of a man who is supposed to be an elder of the village. Will progress and civilization stall because of such madness? Yes, people have been caught smuggling cycads and reptiles out of Qolorha, which is the height of foolishness. Why arrest a man for taking wild things that belong to no one in particular? And they are ugly too, these lizards. And these plants are of no use at all to the people. They are good neither as wood nor as food. And when there is progress, who would need wood from the forest anyway?

“People will be using fire from electricity,” says Bhonco proudly, “like my daughter does in her house in the schoolyard where, as you know, she is the principal.”

Xoliswa Ximiya has recently bought two hot plates, since the school joined the Blue Flamingo Hotel and Vulindlela Trading Store as the only places in the village that have electricity drawn from Butterworth. Well, the only places if you exclude the holiday cottages, most of which are connected to electricity lines or have their own generators.

But she is not pleased when her father mentions her great achievement. That is why she did not want to come to this imbhizo in the first place. She knew that in the course of the quarrel between the feuding families, things would get personal. She heard what happened at the store during nkamnkam day when her name was thrown into the fray by her own father. Camagu prevailed on her to come, so she now finds herself being pierced by a hundred pairs of eyes while her utilization of
electricity is bandied about so shamelessly. Camagu gives her a reassuring smile.

“When there is progress,” adds Bhonco, “there’ll even be streetlights.”

“Why should we fight about this?” asks Zim. “We are all descendants of the headless one.”

Trust Zim to use that trick. Whenever he gets stuck in a debate he resorts to sentimental appeals to their common ancestry. Yet he will continue to hold desperately to a bad argument, as if his very life depends on it.

It is as it should be, for as a Believer it would be sacrilege to be in harmony with any position taken by the Unbelievers. Camagu suspects that even if a miracle were to happen, and Bhonco were to change his position and denounce the developers, Zim would suddenly do an about-face and support the developers.

“When it suits you we are all descendants of the headless one,” sneers Bhonco. “But when you laugh at my misfortunes, such as my not getting nkamnkam from the government even though I am an aged one, you forget that we are both of the headless one. Or when you want to destroy the people by standing in the way of progress. You are a wily one, Zim. You are just waiting to stab me in the back in the same way that your fathers stabbed my fathers. In the same way that your fathers led this nation to destruction by following the teachings of Nongqawuse.”

Zim resorts to ridiculing Bhonco. He laughs mockingly. His followers join the mirth. No one knows what they are laughing at. Bhonco is livid.

“This man who believes in progress—”

But even before Zim can complete his words Bhonco points his stick at him with indignation. “I do not believe in progress,” he shouts in a pained voice. “I am an Unbeliever. None of us Unbelievers believe! We stand for progress!”

“Okay, he stands for progress,” says Zim graciously. “Yet he hasn’t progressed from the old-style rondavel to the modern hexagon. Some of us have hexagons aplenty in our compounds. He has a single pink rondavel. What kind of progress is that?”

It is a cowardly thing to laugh at a man for his possessions or lack of them, mumble the people as they go their different directions. It is clear that Zim has run out of reasoning. If Chief Xikixa and his development committees had any balls at all, they would certainly follow Bhonco’s way. They would make a ruling once and for all that the development work should begin.

“Chiefs cannot just issue orders,” the history teacher from the secondary school says, trying to calm Bhonco as he walks with him towards his homestead. “That is what democracy is all about. Citizens must first debate these matters. There must be consensus before a decision is taken.”

“Such are the ills of democracy!” remarks Bhonco.

“But it was like that even in the days of our forefathers,” says the teacher. “Chiefs never made decisions unilaterally. That is why they had councillors who would go out to get the views of the people first. That is why they held imbhizos which all the men were obliged to attend. Things were spoiled during the Middle Generations when the white man imposed a new system on us, and created his own petty chiefs who became little despots on behalf of their masters.”

“Get away from me, small boy! Who invited you to walk with me?” shouts Bhonco. “Who are you to teach me how things were done in the days of our forefathers?”

The impertinent teacher withdraws. He sees Xoliswa Ximiya and Camagu walking away together, and rushes to join them. It is clear that the headmistress too finds his presence irritating. But Camagu welcomes him and wants to find out where he stands in this great debate.

“I do not know,” says the teacher.

“You do not know?” asks Xoliswa Ximiya with disgust. “A whole secondary school history teacher is ignorant of developmental issues! What did your parents send you to school for?”

“These are difficult issues, Miss Ximiya,” says the teacher apologetically. “Sometimes I find myself tilting more to the position of the Believers. I think it is important to conserve nature . . . our forests. . . our rivers. . .”

“What about jobs? What about the tourists?”

“We can still get tourists. Different types of tourists. Those who want to commune with nature. Those who want to admire our plants, which they regard as exotic. Those who want to photograph our birds.”

“Those who want to see the natives in their primitive state, you mean,” says Xoliswa Ximiya disdainfully. “The only people who will get jobs from that kind of a tourist are the con artists, NoManage and NoVangeli.”

Camagu learns that NoManage and NoVangeli are two formidable women who earn their living from what John Dalton calls cultural tourism. Their work is to display
amasiko
—the customs and cultural practices of the amaXhosa—to the white people who are brought to their hut in Dalton’s four-wheel-drive bakkie, after he has taken them on various trails to Nongqawuse’s Valley, the great lagoon, the shipwrecks, rivers, and gorges, and the ancient middens and cairns. Often when these tourists come, NoManage pretends she is a traditional healer, what the tourists call a witch doctor, and performs magic rites of her own concoction. At this time NoVangeli and the tourists hide some items, and NoManage uses her supernatural powers to discover where they are hidden. Then the tourists watch the two women polish the floor with cow dung. After this the tourists try their hand at grinding mielies or sorghum on a grinding stone or crushing maize into samp with a granite or wooden pestle. All these shenanigans are performed by these women in their full isiXhosa traditional costume of the amahomba, which is cumbersome to work in. Such costume is meant to be worn only on special occasions when people want to look smart and beautiful, not when they are toiling and sweating. And the tourists pay good money for all this foolery!

Xoliswa Ximiya is not happy that her people are made to act like buffoons for these white tourists. She is miffed that the trails glorify primitive practices. Her people are like monkeys in a zoo, observed with amusement by white foreigners with John Dalton’s assistance. But, worst of all, she will never forgive Dalton for taking them to Nongqawuse’s Pool, where they drop coins for good luck. She hates Nongqawuse. The mere mention of her name makes her cringe in embarrassment. That episode of the story of her people is a shame and a disgrace.

“What is strange about people like Dalton,” muses Xoliswa Ximiya as if to herself, “is that his white forebears in the days of Nongqawuse were grouped with the amaGogotya—the Unbelievers—as people who would be swept into the sea on the day of the rising of the dead. But here is John Dalton today standing with the amaThamba—the Believers—in fighting against progress.”

Camagu excuses himself. He has a few letters to write in his hotel room. He gives her a peck on the cheek, and promises to see her tomorrow.

Wagging tongues follow him as he makes his way to the Blue Flamingo. Here is someone who has come to save Xoliswa Ximiya from spinsterhood, the people at beer parties gossip. But others think that he is suspect. Why is he not married at such an old age? The wiser ones say that he has not had the time to marry. He has been at school all these years. Haven’t they heard that his head is rotten with education? He is so learned that he has reached the highest possible class in the world. Vathiswa has even spread it that he is a doctor, although not the kind that cures illnesses. There are other kinds of doctors, she has assured them, who have earned that title by reaching the destination beyond which all knowledge ends.

It is clear that the community has been worried that their headmistress might die an old maid. It is well known that men are intimidated by educated women. And by “educated women” they mean those who have gone to high schools and universities to imbibe western education, rather than those who have received traditional isiXhosa education at home and during various rites of passage. Men are more at home with the kind of woman they can trample under their feet. Even educated men prefer uneducated women. Perhaps this stranger from Johannesburg is a different breed of educated man. He is not intimidated by the dispassionate beauty. Otherwise why would he have been seen with her every day for the last two weeks? People have eyes. They can see. They have ears. They can hear.

In the morning he lies in bed for a while, planning his future. It dawns on him that he really has no future to plan—not in this village. His
money will not last forever at this hotel. His mission to find Noma-Russia has failed. Anyway, if he found her what would he do with her? It was a foolish quest. He must prepare to leave. He must work his way. back to Johannesburg. Back to the disrupted journey to the airport. Back to Xoliswa Ximiya’s U.S. of A. With this thought he sinks into utter depression.