Indaba, My Children: African Tribal History, Legends, Customs And Religious Beliefs. Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa
village. When arrive . . . Kadimo shall have . . . nice slice . . . for supper.’
‘Kadimo . . . I beg you . . .’
But she got no further as a squat, hunchbacked and incredibly ugly shape burst into the cave and seized Kadimo by the ankle, dragging him outside into the howling rains. There was a short savage struggle, a loud gurgling scream and silence. Then the bowlegged and hunchbacked monstrosity called Zozo, who had trailed them relentlessly across the plains and through the forests, entered the cave.
‘Zozo!’ cried Ojoyo. ‘You saved me – he was going to eat me!’
‘Yes, I saved you, but not for long. You knew Vunakwe?’ asked the hunchback.
‘Yes, I knew her very well; she fell into the Zambezi and . . .’
‘You lie shamefully . . . you killed Vunakwe, and Zozo is Vunakwe’s brother.’
‘Vunakwe had no brothers, I knew her father, her whole family.’
‘Father of Vunakwe . . . never owned that Zozo was his son, because Zozo a deformed thing. Zozo always lived alone. Now you die.’
‘No Zozo! You saved me . . .’
‘Die Ojoyo!’
A copper knife stabbed down fiercely . . . once . . . twice . . .
* * *
After Lumbedu’s death the Strange Ones came out into the open and took over the astonished land. Soon hundreds of people began to feel the sting of the slave-driver’s whip within the borders of their own native land. Dozens, scores of kraals and villages stood empty, their inhabitants having been forced into the Strange Ones’ ships and taken away across the seas, never to be seen again.
The shocked land saw sights it had never seen before – long lines of men, women and children tied together with chains like living beads on a string, hauling sleds of stones the Strange Ones used to build great forts all over the land as far south as beyond the Herero. The shocked land also saw thousands of its black sons made to dig into the bowels of the earth like so many ants, to bring up iron ore, copper, and the yellow ‘sun metal’. The Sacred Iron Mountain of Taba-Tsipi, or Taba-Zimbi, became a mass of tunnels in which tens of thousands of chained slaves worked and died.
Long trains of oxen and even tamed zebras began to wind their way eastward over mountains and across plains, heavily laden with gold, iron ore and ivory, to be loaded on to ships of the Strange Ones and taken across the sea.
Elephants and hippos – the animals hitherto regarded as sacred by nearly all the tribes – were butchered by the Strange Ones from one corner of the agonised land to the other, the elephants for their ivory and the hippos for their bones and blubber.
Many tribes fled from the wanton destruction and oppression of the Strange Ones and some of these tribes even reached that country which is now Swaziland.
Contrary to those who claim to know about the Black people, the Swazi people did not branch from the Nguni tribes that migrated into the lands south of the Limpopoma about eight hundred years ago. The Swazi and the Bomvana tribes came south of the Limpopoma much earlier than did the Nguni. When the Nguni came, they found the Swazi had degenerated to such an extent that they no longer built villages, but lived in trees like monkeys; hence the popular insult of ‘Tree Dwellers’ the Nguni (from whom the Zulus sprang) applied to the Swazis.
The Swazis adopted the culture and even the language of the Nguni, which they speak with a hissing accent. They even adopted the weapons and the battle tactics of the Nguni. The Swazi are well known for their habit of wearing their hair very long and even dyeing it red with clay and wild root juices. They still imitate the long hair of those long-dead White men who invaded the Black land more than two thousand years ago.
The Strange Ones established great plantations near the Inyangani Mountains and here thousands of slaves also toiled, planting, hoeing and reaping corn and other crops which the Strange Ones had brought from their native lands. Even today, traces of these fantastic plantations that legends say were fertilised with hacked bits of bodies of dead slaves during winter, still survive for all to see and marvel at. These are known today as the terraced plantations of Inyanga. No Black people ever farmed in the terraced style.
In the course of time, more of the Strange Ones came to settle in the land, together with members of that hated race called the Arabi, which was to wreak so much havoc in our land in years that followed. Many of the Strange Ones took wives from the Lawu (Hottentots) and from the Batwa (Bushmen) races and many became the sons and daughters of Strange Ones and Yellow Ones.
Fifty years after Lumbedu’s death the Strange Ones began to build many cities and villages in the land. But the biggest and most important city was on the shores of lake Makarikari – today a vast shallow salt pan.
This city was big enough to contain more than a thousand people, the legends say, and it was surrounded by a strong stockade of wood with stone towers at regular intervals. A deep ditch, filled with water, went completely around the city, rendering it utterly impregnable to attack, and the only entry into the city was over a short wooden bridge across the ditch into a gateway. A great settlement sprang up around the city in the course of time as hundreds of traders, slave-raiders and ordinary settlers built their homes outside the city walls, and there raised their families.
The Strange Ones began to multiply in the land, although fever and all-too-frequent epidemics killed many of them. As a result of their trade with lands beyond the great waters, the Strange Ones amassed fantastic wealth in their homes and cities and they lived their lives in great luxury. Today, one still finds in the possession of Bantu witchdoctors incredibly old and rusted swords with bronze hilts, swords so old that their blades crumble at a light blow with a stone. There are unbelievably old ornaments of gold and silver and bronze – ornaments that are neither Bantu nor Arabi; worn, pitted and even distorted by age – ornaments that are today very jealously guarded by Tribal Historians and High Witchdoctors as the Secret Charms of the tribe. These ornaments are still used today in secret rituals and they still keep the memory of the Strange Ones fresh in Tribal Story-Tellers’ minds.
As time went on, the empire of the Strange Ones, like all things based on murder, oppression and theft, began to take the downward path of decay. The number of ships that crawled up the mouth of the Zambezi began to lessen gradually and many of the sites where gold, iron and copper had been mined were abandoned and forgotten. Gradually the empire of the Strange Ones was isolated from the world outside and the Strange Ones turned more and more of their attention to making their lives as full of luxury and pleasure as possible. Soon the lives of each and every one of them became one long orgy of song, dance, food and drink. They invented new and fantastic ways of entertainment. They had idols before which they performed orgies both revolting and utterly fantastic. The legends say that some of their queens and empresses began mating with beasts in attempts at finding new sources of carnal pleasure. Some even tried to mate their daughters to lions in an attempt at producing a new race of men who were supposed to combine the courage, endurance and ferocity of lions with the intelligence of human beings.
The legends also say that one of the Emperors of the Strange Ones had a young man for a Queen and he used to kill women, both of his own race and of the Bantu race, with great cruelty, as entertainment.
It is said that the Emperors of the Strange Ones called themselves the ‘Children of the Star’, because they claimed to have descended from a star that fell on earth, which took a young woman of the Strange Ones and had sons by her.
The next part of this strange story of the Strange Ones begins with the birth of a man called Mukanda, or Lumukanda, the Destroyer, who was destined to play a major role in the history of the Strange Ones. Lumukanda was born of slave parents in one of the filthy underground stalls where the slaves were kept in the great city on the shores of lake Makarikari.