Little Suns

by Zakes Mda

  Malangana walks in the village looking for familiar faces. Occasionally he comes across them but they don’t recognise him. Most of them are people who were much younger before the war, who are now the family men of Sulenkama. They mix with a lot of strangers from other nations who were rewarded with tracts of Mpondomise lands for their loyalty to the English. amaMpondomise men his age either died fighting or were dispersed as refugees in other people’s countries. They are the ones who would ultimately have recognised him despite all the changes that have happened to his now convoluted constitution. The people he meets on the village pathways don’t associate him with anyone who was born and grew up there. Many of the original families, even those who did not become refugees, scattered after the war. Among those that still remain, those who had known of Malangana, heard that he died in the war. Various narratives of war confuse Malangana with Mahlangeni and merge them into one. The only Malangana that people know for sure is the original Malangana, the patriarch of abaMbo who was also known as Sibiside from whom many nations were born. But that was more than twenty-five generations ago.

  There is now a general dealer’s store at Sulenkama and people don’t have to go all the way to Qumbu to sell their hides and skins and buy sugar and tea. The habit of drinking tea has spread even among people who are not amakhumsha.

  Malangana spends a lot of time at the general dealer’s store and every time he sees someone wearing intsimbi-ezimhlohle, the diviner’s white beads, on the wrists and on the ankles he enquires about the nature of divination they are engaged in and if they are open to consultation. When he hears that they have practised in Sulenkama for less than twenty years, or they are themselves younger than that age or come from other nations or regions, then he apologises and says they are not what his ancestors are looking for – or they are just not appropriate for his needs.

  He has been doing this for the past few days, so he is not surprised when a diviner in full regalia approaches him, greets him politely and sits down next to him on the cement stoep of the store and says: ‘Ndingabuza tata?’ May I ask a question, sir? He nods, yes.

  ‘You are the old man who’s looking for an old local diviner?’

  ‘Yes, but you’re too young to be the kind of healer I am looking for.’

  ‘We have intlombe tonight. There will be all kinds of healers and diviners. You will get the healer you want. You’ll be healed.’

  This is very exciting for Malangana. Intlombe is a spiritual gathering of traditional healers and diviners where they sing, dance and perform healing and shamanistic rituals. The diviner gives him directions and he promises he will definitely be there.

  In the afternoon he returns to the camp of the tree planters because they always insist every morning: ‘Come back, xhego, come back! Don’t be swallowed by the nice times of Sulenkama. We hear the love potions of the women are very strong there.’ They just like his company and the stories he tells, though they think he invents them. They don’t believe a decrepit old man like this can have had all those experiences. Perhaps they can’t imagine him being anything but what he is now.

  He fell in with the company of these young men on the very night he arrived at Sulenkama. As he descended the hill into the village and caught the first whiff of smoke he felt his lungs opening. And then all of a sudden without any warning at all the Gcazimbane in him came out in a long, full-bodied neigh. Four boys appeared from the bushes and ran towards him and stood in front of him open-mouthed. The neighing did not stop. It had never done this before. It had never gone on so long. The boys were getting scared. Was this a man or a ghost? Then all of a sudden it stopped.

  ‘How did you do that?’ one boy asked.

  ‘I ate a horse once,’ said Malangana. ‘My favourite horse. Now that I am back at its home, in the land of its fathers, it was galloping out. It’s gone now. It will never haunt me again.’

  That must be it. This explanation was just rolling out of his mouth – he had not thought about it. But it made sense. That was why he was feeling light, as if some burden had just been lifted. To the boys it was nonsense. But it was funny. They laughed and said variously: ‘The others must hear this. Come and join us at our camp. We’ve never heard anyone neigh like a horse before, actually even better and louder than the strongest horse. Come on, come on, we have room enough.’

  He followed them and found that the camp was a yard of corrugated-iron structures where young Government workers recruited from all over the eastern Colony stayed to plant trees in earmarked areas. These camps, they told him, were temporary. When they finished planting the gum trees at Sulenkama they were going to move to some place else and set up camp and plant another forest of trees imported from England.

  When Malangana returns from the general dealer’s store his four friends are already back from work. They are sitting on wooden boxes outside their corrugated-iron shack boiling water in a kettle on a drie-voet stand on an open fire. They are eating wheat bread with tea.

  ‘Your horse is not back yet?’ asks one of the young men.

  ‘I told you it’s gone,’ says Malangana.

  ‘Now people think we’re liars when we say you know how to neigh like a horse,’ says another.

  They give him a mug of tea and a chunk of bread.

  ‘You people can even afford umkhupha,’ says Malangana. ‘You eat like white people.’

  They are more interested in his stories.

  ‘Tell us about this horse that you say you ate.’

  ‘I don’t believe this eating part,’ says another young man. ‘How does one eat a horse?’

  ‘My people do eat it,’ says one who is a Mosotho from Herschel District. ‘We learned it from the French missionaries who were the first to go to Lesotho.’

  ‘I am not interested in the eating of the horse,’ says the original questioner. ‘I want to know how this khehla rescued the horse. He told us how the horse of his king was captured and he was going to tell us today how he rescued it.’

  Malangana clears his throat; the young men chuckle in expectation of a good yarn. He can see that some of them are taking his story with a pinch of salt but he tells it nonetheless. Perhaps they think it is intsomi, a folk tale.

  After stealing a horse from a village he rode to the nearest town, Lusikisiki, where he spent a few days with amaMpondo military people. He was pretending he was an employee of a white man who traded in horses. His master was looking for cheap impounded horses that he could buy and resell in the Boer republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.

  One day he was nearly caught out when someone who knew the differences between the languages of the various peoples of the Colony suspected he was a Mpondomise spy just from the words he used. He was caught out when he said he wanted to buy ihatjhi, which was what amaMpondomise called a horse. The rest of the black peoples of the region called a horse ihashe. He had to find a very fast exit from that tavern before any attention could be drawn to the possibility of his being from the enemy camp.

  Malangana tells the young men that his investigations did pay off. He found Gcazimbane in Kokstad in an English army stall. The horse raised its tail high and snickered the moment it saw him. When he got into the stall and brushed its mane it nuzzled and blew. It cooperated and allowed itself to be stolen. He didn’t leave Gcazimbane’s stall empty, though. He left in it the nag he had stolen from the village.

  He doesn’t tell the young men that after finding Gcazimbane he battled with his conscience for a long time. He was tempted to ride southwards back to the land of amaMpondomise to look for Mthwakazi. He actually rode for some miles in the Maclear direction. Then he remembered the war and the devastation they had left behind. He decided he would be betraying Mhlontlo. He turned back and rode towards Maluti. He would make another plan about Mthwakazi.

  The young men do not know anything about his search for Mthwakazi.

  He takes up the story from where he catches up with Mhlontlo and some of his party in Herschel and they cross
the Lesotho border at Telle River. Mhlontlo was overjoyed to be reunited with Gcazimbane.

  Malangana discovered that most of Mhlontlo’s party which took the Matatiele route had a confrontation with a small Boer force at the border of Qacha’s Nek. They were able to overpower it and crossed into Lesotho safely without any casualties.

  ‘Now let me tell you, my friend, there is no truth in your story,’ says one of the young men who might be a Mpondomise from his claim of a superior knowledge of this history. ‘You should have given the horse in your story a different name, not Gcazimbane.’

  The other young men laugh and encourage their mate: ‘Yes, tell him, my friend. From now on, madala, we must call you ihatjhi.’

  He roars with laughter. His peers think this is brilliant and join him.

  ‘Our elders tell us that a man called Mahlangeni, the killer of Hope and a war hero during those olden days you’re talking about, was shot in the back by a white man called Larry in the dust of that War of Hope. They say he was riding on . . . Gcazimbane. He fell with Gcazimbane and they died together right there.’

  ‘Uyayibona ke lonto?’ says another young man, enjoying the exposure of an old man’s fibs. You see that? ‘And yet you tell us innocent boys that you rescued Gcazimbane from the English and then ate him.’

  ‘He even knew Mhlontlo! Did you hear that? This xhego was Mhlontlo’s mate.’

  Another round of laughter and applause. Malangana only smiles.

  ‘Next time he will tell us he ate Hope,’ another clown comes with the rejoinder.

  Malangana does not take offence. He lets them have fun at his expense. It is not their fault he does not look like a war hero. They would not believe him if he told them he was in that war and that his friend Mahlangeni did not die on Gcazimbane. He was shot in the back all right, in the War of Hope, wearing Hope’s coat and Hope’s trousers, riding a horse, yes, but it was not Gcazimbane.

  After the bread and tea Malangana tells his friends he has other engagements that night and leaves. They are worried that maybe they were too hard on him, ribbing him about his lies. He assures them that he took their jokes in the good spirit in which they were meant.

  The intlombe is held in a big rondavel. A number of diviners are already dancing and their acolytes are beating the drums. He has been in the room for only a few minutes when he is struck by a vaguely familiar sound. One of the drums here has a sound he has heard before. He squints in the dimness of paraffin lamps and candles to examine each acolyte and then his or her drum. And there is the drum that he knows so well being beaten by one of the acolytes. Mthwakazi’s drum. What is amazing about it is that it looks exactly as it did twenty years ago. He hobbles towards the dancing diviners and stands right in front of them. Some of them recognise the old man from the general dealer’s store. The drummers are lined up behind the dancing diviners. Malangana holds his crutches under his armpits and half-raises his hands.

  ‘Camagu! Camagwini zinyanya zam!’ He is addressing the diviners in their language of the spirits. ‘I am appealing to you. I want to talk to that drum. My spirits instruct me to talk to that drum. I need that drum.’

  The diviners give permission to the acolyte to talk to him. She walks reluctantly to the side next to the small audience while the diviners resume their dance.

  ‘Where did you get this drum?’ asks Malangana.

  ‘Yho lo tata! What do you want with this drum?’ asks the acolyte.

  ‘I know this drum. I am looking for the owner of this drum.’

  For some reason the acolyte is becoming scared. ‘What do you want with the owner of this drum?’

  ‘Listen; take me to the owner of this drum. I will give you any money you want.’ Malangana is trying hard not to sound desperate.

  ‘Any money I want? Do you have money wena?’ Obviously he does not look like someone who would have money. ‘Do you want to buy this drum?’

  ‘Yes, I will even buy it if you first take me to the owner. I will buy it for the price of a cow because my ancestors want it.’

  ‘Two cows,’ says the acolyte. ‘But show me the money first.’

  ‘Just wait, I’ll be back.’

  Malangana goes outside. He takes a walk. He is looking for a private spot. He walks to the kraal. The cattle are sleeping and chewing cud. He unbuttons his pants and drops them to his ankles. He visits his secret stash and withdraws a few banknotes. He dresses quickly and hobbles back to the intlombe. The acolyte has resumed her drumming. Malangana attracts her attention and surreptitiously shows her the money. Her eyes open so wide they threaten to pop out of their sockets – so much money!

  She immediately says, ‘I will give you the drum now for the price of two cows because I can see your spirits really want it for your healing.’

  Malangana says, ‘Actually, it is the owner of the drum I want even more than the drum itself. Give me the drum and take me to the owner for the price of two cows.’

  The acolyte seems to have a problem.

  ‘Take the drum without the owner for the price of one cow.’

  ‘The drum without the owner is useless to me,’ insists Malangana.

  ‘Yho lo tata! Don’t be difficult torho! I will tell you the truth; the owner of this drum does not know that I borrowed it without her permission for the intlombe tonight.’

  And yet she wanted to sell it to him? What kind of a doctor is she going to be? But Malangana does not pose this question to her. He does not want to alienate her.

  ‘Take me to the owner tomorrow. I will pay you secretly for it. We won’t reveal that you stole her drum for the intlombe.’

  She agrees. They will meet at the general dealer’s store.

  Saturday April 5, 1890

  Since it was something that happened only once a month, or if you were lucky twice, that the moon was completely round and so huge and so close to the earth as if you could touch it, and it made the world so bright as if it was daytime, the villagers felt it would be a crime to waste such a night. The girls were out in the village playground singing lipina-tsa-mokopu – the songs of the pumpkin – though it was out of season. It was all of five months before harvest time. Boys were sitting by the kraal pretending to be men, telling one another tall tales. Men were standing in groups under trees debating as to whether the diamond mine in Kimberley offered a better deal than the new gold mine in Johannesburg at the native recruiting office in Cutting Camp. Old men had invaded the silos for old dry corn and were roasting it on one side, and then battling to chew it before roasting the other side, as the women cooked food on outdoor hearths in three-legged cast-iron pots.

  Malangana sat on the adobe stoep of his grass thatched hut and watched the moon and listened to the dogs and the wild animals that he presumed were jackals barking at it. He laughed as some silly mongrels jumped at it with their tongues hanging out, hoping to lick it. His body began to rattle with laughter. He knew what was happening. Even when he walked it happened and he had long accepted it as his lot. And when he coughed it was worse.

  He had stopped walking unless it was absolutely essential. In his early years in Lesotho he used to walk for miles each day. He was the man who linked the amaMpondomise refugees in the different parts of Lesotho where they had settled. Even after they had spread over the years and established homes in different parts of southern Lesotho they knew that Malangana could be relied upon to keep the links strong.

  He used to ride Gcazimbane or Xokindini and visit Mhlontlo at Phiring near Phamong in the district of Mohale’s Hoek where he was nursing his depression at the homestead the sons of Moshoeshoe had given him as a place of refuge. Or he would surreptitiously cross the Telle River at its most mountainous part to see his brother Feyiya who had established his homestead at eKra in an area that was no longer Lesotho but the Cape Colony. Indeed a number of the members of the House of Matiwane under the leadership of Cesane had recrossed the Telle River into the area of the Herschel District, part of the territory conquered from Lesotho and falling
under the Cape Colony, and had established their homesteads on the mountains that used to be Qhobosheane-ea-Moorosi – the Fort of Moorosi – where their vanquished ally, King Moorosi, had defended his Baphuthi people against the Boers, the British and the Basotho.

  This branch of the House of Matiwane under Cesane on the border of Lesotho became known as amaCesane oMda, which meant the ‘People of Cesane of the Border’ (referring to the border of Lesotho and the Cape Colony) and their village was called Qoboshane after the original fort.

  It was only after ten years or so of exile that Feyiya and the others gathered the courage to cross the Telle River and settle at Qoboshane. They believed that after so many years the Cape Colony Government had forgotten all about them. In any event they were never wanted men as individuals as there was never a list compiled of participants in the rebellion. The wanted people were the leaders Mhlontlo and Mditshwa, who were known by name, not the general ama-Mpondomise men who fought in the war and could get lost in the crowd. In a war every man was a soldier and Government could not arrest the whole adult male population of amaMpondomise. However, for Malangana things were different. He was very close to Mhlontlo. Not only was he his horse’s groom, he was his interpreter and adviser. Even in the field of battle he fought next to him. He believed he was known to the white man. He would be a wanted man as an individual. He did not join those who settled at Qoboshane lest Government came knocking. He stayed with those who remained in Lesotho, and built himself a bachelor’s hut in the village of Qomoqomong. That was why his visits to his brother Feyiya at eKra were made only under the cover of darkness.

  When the moon was full like this and the dogs were howling and everybody was full of the joys of life his body always reminded him of its complaints against the world. The more the girls sang and the children laughed the more the aches attacked his joints and his muscles and even his bones right to the marrow.

  Over the years he had watched his once strong and muscular body shrivel and squirm. It was not the withering of age. In the early years of his exile in Lesotho he was quite active. So was Mhlontlo.