Zakes Mda - The Heart of Redness

When people wake up the next morning they find that Noma-Russia has also died. This fuels further anger among the Believers. This unscrupulous woman would not leave Zim alone, they fume. Even when he was called by his wife, she forced her way to accompany him. Now Zim has taken his mistress with him to the world of the ancestors. There is going to be a big war between her and NoEngland. They send for her father to fetch the body of his daughter for burial.

Bhonco, son of Ximiya, is enraged when he hears that Zim is dead. Zim was always one up on him. Now he will reach the world of the ancestors before him. He is going to become an ancestor before him. When Bhonco finally dies and goes to the world of the ancestors, Zim will have been there for a long time. When Bhonco is a newcomer, Zim will be familiar with all the corners of the Otherworld. And in the meantime, while Bhonco is still on earth, who knows what lies Zim will tell about him to the other ancestors? Who knows what havoc he will create in the homesteads of the Unbelievers? Zim will be a very unfriendly ancestor. A vengeful one who will not be appeased even by slaughtered goats and oxen. The Believers have won one more time. A final victory that Bhonco will never top as long as he lives. His scars itch woefully.

During Zim’s burial, graveside orators say that when a soldier falls, another one rises. Heitsi’s generation will carry forward the work left by those who came before. Another orator says Zim’s is a family well beloved by the ancestors. A family of death. First it was NoEngland. Then it was Twin. Now it is Zim himself.

A month after Zim’s funeral, Qukezwa has not yet joined Camagu at his cottage. She can join him only after the isizathu , the ceremony for the dead that happens months after death. At the isizathu women wear the best of their isikhakha skirts and the beads of the amahomba. A beast is slaughtered and beer is brewed. Men and women dance the umxhentso dance together, in memory of the dead.

Camagu is at Zim’s homestead, where he spends a lot of time playing with Heitsi. He sees a number of villagers going down towards Nongqawuse’s Valley. They tell him that the government people are here to survey the place. The construction of the holiday paradise and gambling complex will be going ahead. The war has finally been lost.

At Nongqawuse’s Valley he finds a group of men talking with the surveyor, a scrawny white man in a khaki safari suit. Bhonco, son of Ximiya, is at the center of the group, which includes Chief Xikixa. There is another group a short distance away, looking dejected. Camagu recognizes them immediately as those people who have stood with him in opposing the gambling complex.

The surveyor is excitedly showing Bhonco’s enthusiastic crowd his new equipment. It is a tellurometer, he says. And guess what? It was invented here in South Africa. It can pinpoint a location with great accuracy, beyond the capability of any other instrument. So they must not worry. He is going to finish the surveying in a very short time, and soon their wonderful gambling city will rise in all its crystal splendor and glory where wild bushes and trees once grew.

“Well, son of Cesane, you and your Believers have lost in the end,” says Bhonco.

“Did you allow this?” Camagu directs this question to Xikixa.

“It is not for me to allow it, son of Cesane,” says the chief. “The government wants this development. It may be good for the village after all. The wheels of progress are grinding on, son of Cesane. No one can stop them.”

With a flourish the surveyor begins his work. Bhonco and his followers cheer. Camagu and his followers look on hopelessly. They are about to leave when John Dalton arrives in his four-wheel-drive vehicle. He is hooting all the way. He halts abruptly next to the surveyor, and majestically steps out of his bakkie brandishing some papers.

“And what do you think you’re doing, my friend?” he asks.

“What am I doing? Surveying, of course. Surveying the site that will have the gambling city and the tarred road that will lead to it,” responds the surveyor animatedly. “You see over there? That’s where we’ll have all the rides. And then the cable car. .”

“I am afraid there won’t be any gambling city, my friend.” Dalton hands him a piece of paper. It is a court order forbidding any surveying of the place. It is accompanied by a letter from the government department of arts, culture, and heritage declaring the place a national heritage site.

“No one is allowed to touch this place!” Dalton shouts triumphantly.

People cheer and lift Dalton to their shoulders. He is the savior of their village. They ululate and sing songs of victory. Bhonco, however, is like a raging bull. His followers try to calm him down. He shouts insults at everyone in sight, both friends and foes. Once more he is defeated.

Dalton also gives Camagu a victorious sneer. He has won his people back from the clutches of the overeager stranger from the city of Johannesburg. That is why he had not told anyone that he had applied for a court order to stop the developers, or that he personally drove to Pretoria to get the government letter. That is why he had insisted to the sheriff of the court that he serve the court order himself. That is why he had kept the government letter and the court order until the last minute. To win his people back.

She sings in soft pastel colors, this Qukezwa. She sings in many voices, as Heitsi plays on the sand. He is six years old, yet he has shown no interest in the sea. From the day he was born to ululations and heckling, his mother dreamt of the day she would take him to the sea and teach him to swim. His upbringing would be different from hers. Her mother had never allowed her near the sea. Heitsi would swim better than any fish. But, to her disappointment, Heitsi has no interest in the sea. He has come because his mother dragged him along. He plays on the sandbank as Qukezwa paddles at the shallow end of the lagoon and sings in split-tones.

She sings in glaring colors. In violent colors. Colors of gore. Colors of today and of yesterday. Dreamy colors. Colors that paint nightmares on barren landscapes. She haunts yesterday’s reefs and ridges with redness. And from these a man who is great at naming emerges. He once named ten rivers. Now he rides wildly throughout kwaXhosa, shouting at the top of his voice, declaring to everyone who cares to listen, “Finally I have pacified Xhosaland!”

Pacified homesteads are in ruins. Pacified men register themselves as pacified laborers in the emerging towns. Pacified men in their emaciated thousands. Pacified women remain to tend the soil and build pacified families. When pacified men return, their homesteads have been moved elsewhere, and crammed into tiny pacified villages. Their pacified fields have become rich settler farmlands.

Twin-Twin’s sons are back from the Amathole Mountains and have rebuilt their homestead. But it is much smaller than before. He is one of the few people who still have cattle. They are as emaciated as the sunken-eyed ghosts that walk the land. Their milk is thin and watery. It produces amasi sour milk that looks like dirty dishwater. But people eat. Sometimes beggars get the remains.

Qukezwa is a beggar who will get nothing. Even though her eyes are sunken like those of the other ghosts that walk the land, and her high Khoikhoi cheekbones have been rendered sharper by famine, she will not even walk close to Twin-Twin’s homestead. She spends all her life at the wild beach. Like those of her people who are called strandlopers. She goes into the sea and gets some shellfish. She eats it raw and takes some to Heitsi. Heitsi is old enough to catch his own. But he seems to have some aversion to the sea. He would rather watch his mother from the safe distance of the rough beach.