Zakes Mda - The Heart of Redness

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.