Little Suns (6 page)

‘Cirha begot Mhle,’ continued Mhlontlo. ‘Mhle begot Sabe. Sabe begot Qengebe. Qengebe begot Majola, the one who was born with the snake, setting a tradition of snake visits to all babies descending from him. Majola begot Ngwanya. Ngwanya begot Phahlo. Phahlo begot Ngcambe, Ngcambe begot Myeki. Myeki begot Matiwane. I, Mhlontlo, am of Matiwane’s testicle.’

There was silence for a while, as if the men were digesting the four hundred years of begetting.

To the white men whose patience had been taxed this was just a litany of names that meant nothing, but to the delegates sitting on the ground, as Sunduza was at pains to explain to the magistrates and their aides, they were stowage of memory. Each name connected to a story of heroism or villainy, once told by bards at the fireside or at special ceremonies. Indeed, some of the people on the ground found some of the names linking snugly in the chain of their own ancestries. That’s how history was preserved and transmitted to the next generations – through the recitation of genealogies and of panegyrics.

Malangana, on the other hand, was digesting the omission of Mamani in Mhlontlo’s recitation of the genealogy. She was supposed to feature between Phahlo and Ngcambe. She was Phahlo’s daughter who, on the death of her father in the middle of the eighteenth century, insisted on taking the throne even though she was a woman.

‘I’m the first-born child of Phahlo’s Great House. I should therefore be king of amaMpondomise.’

Men had objected. It was unheard of for a woman to be king. The oldest of her younger brothers from the Great House qualified for that position. If there were no brothers from the Great House then the oldest of the males from the Right-hand House would be king. The search would proceed even to the Iqadi House, which is the most junior house whose function was normally to support the Great House.

But Mamani would have none of that. She took over the throne and had those men who objected executed.

Even before these events people had suspected there was something wrong with Mamani. She had refused to marry and had turned down suitors long after her younger sisters were married. One of her younger sisters, Thandela, was married to King Phalo of the amaXhosa nation and became the mother of Gcaleka. Now that Mamani was a king – no one would dare call her a queen – she sent emissaries to get her a bride. Mamani married Ntsibatha, the daughter of Nyawuza from the land of amaMpondo. People had never seen a woman marrying another woman and wondered how they would copulate and bring forth heirs.

The heir to the throne of amaMpondomise was Ngcambe, Malangana’s and Mhlontlo’s great-grandfather, born of Mamani’s wife Ntsibatha from the seed of one of Mamani’s younger brothers.

Although Malangana chuckled to himself at Mhlontlo’s omission of Mamani’s name he understood completely. No Mpondomise man worth his manhood talked proudly of Mamani. His mother once told him years back, ‘We don’t talk of Mamani, my child. She disturbed the natural order of things.’

Malangana thought the omission of any ancestor in the genealogy was dishonest. After all, some of the men in the list were villains of the first order. He would not omit Mamani when it was his turn to recite the genealogy.

The digesting continued for a few moments until Lelingoana broke the silence by making a joke about Mhlontlo’s pedigree, or lack thereof.

‘I could see from your stubbornness that you are a progeny of abaThwa,’ he said.

Everyone on the ground laughed. The white men on the chairs maintained their puzzled yet stern expressions.

Malangana’s mind wandered to his own Mthwakazi. That was how he thought of her. As his own. Even though nothing had happened between them in the twenty-two days since they argued about the number of suns in the heavens. He had been counting as each day passed very slowly and his yearning mounted. He was seen loitering outside the Great House at the Great Place. No one suspected that Mthwakazi was the object of his desire. Usually when he went to the Great Place it was for Gcazimbane. And indeed Gcazimbane became his excuse for dawdling around. Even when he was grooming the horse at the kraal his eyes kept darting to the path that led to the Great House.

Mthwakazi was nowhere to be seen. She remained inside the house for most of the day helping the herbalists and diviners who were trying to save the life of the Queen of amaMpondomise. The story was doing the rounds from one household to the next throughout the land that she was getting worse by the day.

Occasionally Malangana spotted Mthwakazi rushing from one hut to another, or beating the drum for a line of diviners lilting to yonder hills to dig for more curative roots. Malangana vowed to himself that he would bide his time and soon he would get the opportunity to be with her and win her over.

After straightening her out about the suns, of course.

A roar of laughter brought Malangana to the present, to the meeting of the traditional rulers and the magistrates. A policeman called for silence.

Magistrate Thompson stood up to address the meeting. Sunduza stood next to him to translate.

‘I have called this meeting to discuss the Basotho uprising,’ said Thompson. ‘Without wasting further time I will ask Mr Hope to give you the details of what we need from you.’

After Sunduza’s interpretation Mhlontlo looked to Malangana for confirmation of its accuracy. He liked Sunduza, but still when he was among his fellow white men he was a white man.

‘
Uyichanile
,’ said Malangana.
He got it right.

Of course, Mhlontlo wouldn’t have known that Sunduza was much more proficient in isiMpondomise than Malangana was in English.

Hope did not stand up to address the chiefs. Instead he shifted for more comfort on the chair and leaned forward. He began by making his usual threats towards those who had not paid taxes; the chiefs would be held responsible if their subjects continued to dodge their civic responsibilities. The men on the ground grumbled that they had not travelled through the night to be harangued about taxes. Sunduza translated what he could catch of their murmurs to the magistrates.

‘Taxes are important, but they are not the reason we called you here,’ interjected Welsh.

Hope’s eyes and smile could have frozen Itsitsa River in the middle of summer, but he did not even glance in Welsh’s direction.

‘I begin with taxes because everything flows from them,’ Hope said, glowering at the men on the ground and shaking his head. ‘Without the taxes nothing would be possible, including the expedition we plan to undertake. But as Mr Thompson said, the reason for our meeting is the war that Basotho rebels are waging against the Government, and the decisive manner in which we must respond.’

It was not lost to Malangana that Sunduza did not interpret Welsh’s interjection. He could read in it and in Hope’s expression the uneasy relations between the two magistrates assigned to the rival regions of amaMpondomise. He whispered this to Mhlontlo, who agreed with him that white men were good at covering each other’s nakedness in front of the subjugated people.

Hope continued, ‘You, as the subjects of the British Empire, are required to be part of that response.’

The stubborn Basotho people were refusing to hand in their guns, Hope explained, defying the Peace Preservation Act enacted by Parliament in Cape Town in 1878 which required all the native peoples to surrender their guns and ammunition to the Government.

This law was not informally known as the Disarmament Act for nothing. amaMpondomise had already felt its effect. Unlike the Basotho, who decided to take up arms against the British instead of surrendering them, a number of amaMpondomise men had already handed in their guns and ammunition to the magistrates. The wealthier men had even given up the Snider-Enfield firearms that they had acquired covertly from enterprising officers of the Cape Mounted Riflemen when the latter changed to the Martini-Henry rifle. Malangana remembered how he caught Gxumisa shedding a private tear when he had to part with his Snider-Enfield which he prized more as an ornament and a collector’s item than an instrument of death. He wondered why the old man had decided to obey this law when quite a few other men had hidden their guns. Perhaps he wanted to avoid humiliation because those who were discovered to have done so experienced Hamilton Hope’s cat-o’-nine-tails on their bare bottoms.

Mhlontlo had heard of the rumours of the disgruntlement among the Basotho people about the Disarmament Act, but had not been aware that a full-scale war had broken out that very month until Sunduza mentioned that Mr Hope had received a telegram the day before informing him of what the Basotho called
Ntoa ea Lithunya
– the Gun War.

‘They want us to fight against our own friends,’ whispered Malangana to Mhlontlo.

‘Why don’t they get amaMfengu to fight for them and leave us alone? After all, amaMfengu are Government people,’ asked Mhlontlo.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Ask them.’

Malangana did.

Sunduza had to reinterpret Malangana’s English before the magistrates could grasp what exactly he was asking. They broke out laughing at the way Malangana had pronounced some of the words, making it difficult for them to understand such a simple question.

‘The Fingoes are wise for they cooperate with the Government,’ said Hope. ‘They will therefore continue to benefit from the bounties of British civilisation. Many of them already serve the Government as policemen, clerks and aides to military officers. Indeed they will all be part of this war. But we need more men. The Cape Mounted Riflemen alone cannot fight the Basotho people. The
CMR
is thinly spread in all the rebellions of the natives. That is why every able-bodied man in our jurisdictions must be part of this expedition.’

Some of the younger men seemed enthusiastic about the prospect of going to war while the elders mumbled their objections. They all looked to Mhlontlo to speak but he just sat there with a scowl on his face.

Malangana was a young man fresh out of the school of the mountain and his blood was spoiling for adventure. But he felt strongly that this was not his people’s war.

‘Who exactly are we fighting?’ he asked.

‘
Awuvanga na mfondini? Silwa nabeSuthu
,’ said Sunduza.
Didn’t you get it, man? We are fighting Basotho
.

‘That still does not answer Malangana’s question, Sunduza son of Davis,’ said Gxumisa. ‘Are we fighting Chief Lelingoana’s people? They are Basotho too.’

Lelingoana chuckled and said, ‘Do you think I’d be here with you if they were fighting my clan?’

‘You know very well that Lelingoana’s clan lives in our territory and is our ally,’ said Thompson.

‘Oh, so we are fighting the Basotho of Lesotho?’ asked Gxumisa.

‘We have no intention of going into Basutoland,’ Hope explained. ‘The Basotho in Matatiele under Chief Magwayi are fighting in
our
territory. We had better go there and look.’

Mhlontlo, Gxumisa and Malangana exchanged glances and shook their heads at the mention of Chief Magwayi. Hope and Mhlontlo once quarrelled about Magwayi. The Mosotho chief was refusing to pay taxes and Hope was threatening to hold Mhlontlo responsible for that defiance because Magwayi was a vassal chief in Mhlontlo’s territory, which was in Hope’s magisterial jurisdiction. Malangana admired Magwayi for being the stringy meat that was stubbornly resisting being picked out of Hope’s teeth. Anyone who irked the magistrate was bound to find favour with Malangana.

‘We’ll follow the men whose ears radiate the rays of the sun,’ said Lelingoana, expressing his willingness to be led into war by the white man against his fellow Mosotho chief.

‘I am only Lelingoana’s puppy,’ said another chief who went by the Christian name of Joel. ‘I will follow him to war against Magwayi.’

But the magistrates were not satisfied. They fixed their gaze on Mhlontlo.

‘
Thetha kaloku, Nkosi-e-Nkulu yaMampondomise
,’ said Sunduza, smiling at Mhlontlo.
Say something, Paramount Chief of amaMpondomise
.

‘Tell the white man that I cannot speak on the matter because amaMpondomise are not here,’ said Mhlontlo.

Hope would have none of the delaying tactics. The man was here with his advisers. He could and should make a decision that day.

‘The magistrates demand an answer now,’ said Sunduza.

Without a word Mhlontlo stood up. Gxumisa, Malangana and the other amaMpondomise men did likewise and followed their king. They walked for some distance and stopped when they thought they were out of earshot. They sat on the rocks and watched distant sheep and goats grazing on the parched grass and young shepherds frolicking among the aloes on the banks of Mooi River. Boys could frolic at the worst of times.

‘I do not want this war,’ said Mhlontlo.

‘But what choice do we have?’ asked Gxumisa, lighting his pipe.

‘Our king is not a boy. He is the King of amaMpondomise. If he says he does not want his people to be dragged into a war that has nothing to do with them who will force him?’ asked Malangana, also lighting his pipe.

Soon all the men were puffing on their pipes and the air was filled with the pungent smell of home-grown tobacco.

‘We placed ourselves under their protection,’ said Gxumisa resignedly. It was clear to Malangana that he wanted to give in.

‘I was against that protection right from the beginning,’ said Mahlangeni, a man Malangana admired because he shared his views on defying Government orders. ‘When we asked them for their protection we allowed them to rule us.’

This was still a sore point with the older generation of amaMpondomise, especially those who had objected when Mhlontlo decided to seek British protection through the then magistrate Joseph Orpen, after being advised to do so by the missionary Bishop Key. Mahlangeni, then a young man newly graduated from the school of the mountain, had been in the forefront of those who opposed Mhlontlo’s move. Even today as a married man with two wives his head was still as hot as if he were of Malangana’s age.

‘We didn’t ask them to be our masters,’ said Mhlontlo, shifting uncomfortably on his rock. ‘We asked them to be our allies.’