The Heart of Redness: A Novel (20 page)

“I met my father among the wild mielies,” he said. “He gave me the spear that was buried with him. I have it now.”

His words sparked a new wave of cattle-killing. And a new fervor in Twin and Qukezwa. Sacred fires were burning in their chests, jetting
out of their mouths in the form of sermons that rende-red the words of the prophets to the multitudes.

King Sarhili took the message of the new people seriously. As soon as he returned to his Great Place he sent emissaries to other black leaders in the region, to exhort them to kill their cattle. King Moshoeshoe of the Basotho people sent his own messengers to Qolorha to find out what all this cattle-killing meant. But none of the other kings heeded the prophecies.

At the same time, Mhlakaza was extending a hand of reconciliation to the white settlers. He was asking them to kill their cattle and destroy their crops as well, for the sake of their own redemption. He invited them to come to the Gxarha River to see for themselves and hear the good news of the resurrection.

“It is not enough for you to read the big black book,” he warned them. “You must throw away your witchcraft. The people that have come have not come to make war but to bring about a better state of things for all.”

But the colonists were too stubborn to accept his invitation. What the Believers had suspected all along, that the whites were beyond redemption, was confirmed. What else would one expect from people who were a product of a different creation from that of the amaXhosa, people who were so unscrupulous that they killed the son of their own god?

While Twin was trying to come to grips with issues of faith, Twin-Twin was grappling with his conscience. It seemed to him that his unbelief was sinking him deeper into collaboration with the conquerors of his people. Although he was strong enough to resist conversion, some of his fellow Unbelievers were becoming Christians. And when they did, they sang praises of the queen of the conquerors, asking some god to save her. That worried him a lot. He did not want the queen to be saved. He wanted nothing more than to see the complete disappearance of the colonists from kwaXhosa. But the way of Nongqawuse was not the way.

Chief Nxito seemed to depend increasingly on Twin-Twin’s counsel, especially because Twin-Twin was now stationed at Qolorha under
the protection of the British government, and was able to see what was happening in the old man’s chiefdom. Whenever the chief had to meet representatives of The Man Who Named Ten Rivers—even if it was merely John Dalton—Twin-Twin was required to be there.

He was there when Dalton and Gawler arrived with new instructions from The Man Who Named Ten Rivers. The chiefs would henceforth receive a monthly salary in colonial money. They were no longer allowed to impose fines on those who were found guilty at the chiefs’ courts. Councillors like Twin-Twin who assisted the chiefs in exchange for a share of those fines would now also be paid by the government. This would make them loyal to the government instead of to the chiefs. The work of the chiefs was now made lighter because they would no longer be allowed to judge legal cases on their own. At every case there would be a British magistrate, who would do most of the work. This was because the governor valued the chiefs so much that he did not want them to be burdened with such mundane matters as presiding over cases.

Nxito and his councillors seemed pleased with the new arrangement. Colonial money was reputed to be very powerful in the purchase of goods that could be bought only in the trading stores that were emerging throughout kwaXhosa. Many people bought such goods with grain. But those who had colonial money, the very money adorned with the image of Her Britannic Majesty, were men of status in the league of Ned and Mjuza.

But Twin-Twin, ever ready to bring others down to earth, asked, “Now, if we are going to have this white man judging our cases, whose law is he going to apply?”

“The law we apply every day,” answered Nxito. “Our law.”

“The white man does not know our law,” said Twin-Twin vehemently. “He does not respect our law. He will apply the law of the English people. This is a way of introducing his laws among our people. As for the colonial money, The Man Who Named Ten Rivers is buying our chiefs. When they are paid by him, they will owe their loyalty to him, and not to the amaXhosa people, and not to our laws and customs and traditions!”

Twin-Twin was right on both counts. The intention of The Man Who Named Ten Rivers was to break the power of the chiefs. After he
had recovered from his nervous breakdown he called his senior officers and briefed them about his tour of the frontier and the new judicial system he was introducing to the natives.

“It will gradually undermine and destroy Xhosa laws and customs,” he said. “European laws will, by imperceptible degrees, take the place of their own barbarous customs, and any Xhosa chief of importance will be daily brought into contact with a talented and honorable European gentleman, who will hourly interest himself in the advance and improvement of the entire tribe, and must in process of time gain an influence over the native races.”

The applause was deafening. Here at last was a governor who knew how to deal with the native people without incurring the great expense of war. At the ball that evening he was the toast of the genteel society of Cape Town. Admirers surrounded him, eager to learn more about the situation on the frontier.

He told them about the great cattle-killing movement. The whole thing was a conspiracy of Kreli and Moshesh, the king of the Basotho people, he explained, using the colonial names for Sarhili and Moshoeshoe. The latter was bent on uniting black resistance against white domination in the whole of southern Africa. That is why he had sent an emissary to Kreli. The Basotho king had grown too ambitious ever since he defeated the British under Governor Cathcart at the Battle of Berea a few years back.

“Mhlakaza is merely an instrument in the hands of Kreli and Moshesh, working on the superstition and ignorance of the common people,” said the governor.

“What would these chiefs gain from the cattle-killing?” an officer wanted to know.

“Simple, my dear friend. The mind of the native can be very devious,” said the governor sagaciously.

Everybody agreed that indeed the native had the slyness of the devil himself.

“This whole cattle-killing movement is not just superstitious delusion. It is a plot by the two chiefs. . . a cold-blooded political scheme to involve the government in war, and to bring a host of desperate enemies upon us.”

It was clear to the governor that his admirers were not bright enough to understand the intricacies of this political intrigue. Their faces were blank.

“Kreli and Moshesh want to drive the pacified Xhosas into a war they do not want against the English. Hunger will make them desperate and they will fight. They will steal cattle from the white people and the Thembus to provide their fighting men with food. Now they are killing their own cattle so that they will have none to guard, and more men will be available to fight. Those are the true reasons for the cattle-killing.”

Then he entertained the listeners with his stories of Australia, where he had succeeded in imposing English law in the place of the bloodthirsty aboriginal law. He had made it a point that aboriginal people were not allowed to congregate together and practice their old uncivilized habits. Instead they were scattered all over the settler country, where they could be equipped with education and skills that were necessary for their survival in the modern world.

“That’s what I plan to do with the Xhosa people as well,” he explained, giving a conspiratorial wink.

Whereas previous governors like Sir Harry Smith had talked of exterminating the natives, his was a humane policy that aimed at civilizing them, and bringing them up to the supreme levels of the English.

In Australia the policy of extermination had borne fruit, but in the Cape Colony it, had already failed even when its advocate, Sir Harry, had tried actively to implement it.

“The natives of the Cape Colony and British Kaffraria must be grateful that my philosophy is an enlightened one,” the governor said. “They must seize the opportunity, and they must be disciplined. We have taken a few lessons from our success in Australia.”

In New Zealand he had had similar success. He told the genteel folks amid sighs of admiration how he had disciplined a Maori chief called Te Rauparaha. He had been getting too big for his boots and was surely going to give the settlers some problems in the future, so Grey had accused him of plotting to kill white settlers and rape their women. The chief was arrested, and was released only after his people agreed to hand over three million acres of prime land for white settlement. This added
more land to the millions of acres that Sir George had gained by various means from the Maori, including court-martialing and executing their uncooperative leaders and transporting some of them to Australia.

As for Te Rauparaha, although there had been a great uproar that he had been falsely accused, it was well worth his sacrifice. His people received the greatest gift of all: education and British civilization. The governor built schools and hospitals for them. He could do the same too for the natives of the Cape Colony and British Kaffraria if they walked the road of civilization and did not fill their heads with idle thoughts of killing settlers and raping white women.

“But I am afraid that is exactly what those cattle-killers of the frontier plan to do . . . kill settlers and rape white women,” said the governor. “And I will deal with them in the same manner that I dealt with Te Rauparaha.”

The sufferings of the Middle Generations are only whispered. It is because of the insistence:
Forget the past. Don’t only forgive it. Forget it as well. The past did not happen. You only dreamt it. It is a figment of your rich collective imagination. It did not happen. Banish your memory. It is a sin to have a memory. There is virtue in amnesia. The past. It did not happen. It did not happen. It did not happen
.

John Dalton’s friends think that memory is being used to torment them for the sins of their fathers. Sins committed in good faith.

Next week two of them are leaving, one for Australia and the other for New Zealand. One owns a cottage at Qolorha-by-Sea and the other lives in Port Elizabeth. Today they and a few other cottage owners gather in the garden of the emigrant, braaing meat on an open charcoal stand and drinking beer.

Dalton is one of the guests.

“What will happen to this nice cottage?” he asks.

“I am selling it,” says the emigrant. “My house in East London too. And my ostrich farm in the Karoo. I am leaving everything in the hands of my estate agents.”

Perhaps Camagu will be interested in this cottage, thinks Dalton. He seems so happy in Qolorha, and is involving himself in the life of
the community. He has even established a business with some village women.

It all started with the oysters and mussels that he ate at Zim’s. He was sold on the taste. When he moved to the sea cottage he is currently taking care of on behalf of the Butterworth doctor, he made it a habit to buy fresh oysters and mussels from the women. Two women in particular, NoGiant and MamCirha, became regulars at his cottage. Every other day they brought him oysters and mussels kept in a bucket of sea water to prevent them from going bad. They told him that sea-harvest can last for many days in a bucket of sea water. Since then he has not had any need to buy meat.

Later on, Camagu wanted to learn to harvest the sea himself. But the women would not teach him. He was good as a customer and not as a competitor. One morning he found Qukezwa harvesting the sea. She was in a good mood and offered to teach him the art of catching mussels and oysters, or imbhaza and imbhatyisa. She told him that the best time to catch this valued seafood was in the morning between seven and nine.

“When the moon is red,” she explained, “or is dying, with only a small piece remaining, then we know that the next morning will be good for harvesting the sea.”

She taught him how to walk into the sea, sometimes with the water rising up to his chest, how to use his hands to feel the rocks at the bottom, and how to use an ulugxa to dislodge imbhaza and imbhatyisa from the rocks. She also taught him how to get amangquba and
amaqonga
, the varieties of abalone that look like big snails. He learned fast, for there was no guarantee that Qukezwa’s good mood would still be there the next morning.

NoGiant and MamCirha were not happy that he was no longer buying their seafood now that he could harvest his own. In fact, he could not eat all his harvest, and this gave him a good idea. He had no means of earning a living in this village. Soon his money was going to run out. His Toyota was sitting idle since he hardly went anywhere in it. He made up his mind to catch oysters and mussels, keep them in sea water as he was taught by the women, take them in his car, and sell them to hotels in East London and the surrounding smaller towns. He
was not going to compete with the women. Instead he would form a cooperative society with them.

Indeed, the business was established, with NoGiant and MamCirha leading a committee of very enthusiastic women. It is not as lucrative as they might wish. It is struggling on. But Camagu, for the first time after many years, is a very fulfilled man.

Although he has not said it in so many words, he regards Qolorha as his home now, and it is reasonable for Dalton to suspect he will not be thinking of going to America or even back to Johannesburg in the near future. He often says this is the most beautiful place in the world. Even if he leaves, there is no harm in investing in property, especially such a prime one. Dalton will certainly bring the matter to his attention.

“This is one of the things we’ll miss,” says the second emigrant to the first. “I don’t think where we’re going we’ll get such beautiful land for a bottle of brandy.”

Everyone laughs. Except Dalton.

“You are the only one who will remain in this mess, John,” says a cottage owner who sees himself as a prospective emigrant down the line. “Everyone is leaving.”