Chaka. Thomas Mofolo
du Lessouto,5 a commemorative volume published by the PEMS to cover the first seventy-five years of the Mission’s work in Lesotho, that is, 1833 to 1908. The Livre d’Or, published in 1912, states that “a fourth manuscript dedicated by the same author to describe the customs of the Zulus is at this very moment in the hands of one missionary from whom Mofolo has asked for criticism and advice”.6 What made “Chaka” a “fourth” rather than a “third” manuscript was the existence of another manuscript, also mentioned in the Livre d’Or, submitted by Mofolo very likely in 1908 and rejected by the missionaries. It is referred to by a French title, namely, L’Ange déchu (The Fallen Angel).7 As regards the “Chaka” manuscript being “dedicated to describe the customs of the Zulus”, Thomas Mofolo Jr (Mofolo’s son by his second wife, also known as Mofolo Mofolo) states that the original manuscript contained at least two chapters which described in some detail the history and customs of the Zulus, as well as their military system which had apparently impressed Mofolo very highly during his researches in Natal. Mofolo Mofolo states that these chapters had to be left out of the final manuscript as published in 1925 in order to reduce its size, since in those days authors were expected to pay the costs of producing their own manuscripts, and the less bulky a manuscript was, the less costly it was to produce. The two-plus chapters were left out for those reasons, says Mofolo Mofolo, and this was done in consultation with the author. According to Reverend Albert Brutsch, Archivist at Morija, while it is not quite accurate to say that authors were expected to pay to produce their manuscripts, there were nevertheless cases where, because of the excessive bulk of a manuscript, the author had to bear part of the cost. He cites Germond’s Chronicles of Lesotho as an example.
The question of these omitted chapters naturally interested me a great deal, and I more than once put the question to Mofolo Mofolo whether there might not have been another reason for this action. He was, however, quite unequivocal on this point, insisting that the chapters were left out solely for the reasons mentioned above, and not because they were considered to be in any way offensive and/or detrimental to the teachings of the missionaries.
There is evidence that the first time Mofolo gave any further attention to the “Chaka” manuscript since 1909 or 1910 was in the early 1920s, which coincides with the return to Lesotho from France of the Reverend A. Casalis, who was the one person who constantly advised and encouraged Mofolo in his efforts as a writer. This revision of the manuscript was finished some time before July 1922, the time when Mofolo told Zurcher that he (Mofolo) “had just finished writing the book Chaka”.8 When this is taken together with the fact that, as Gérard asserts, “the records of the ‘Conférence des missionaries du Lessouto’ clearly show that Casalis was solely and entirely responsible for the publication of the book”,9 the conclusion is inevitable that the revisions of the early 1920s were done with Casalis’s direct assistance, and probably at his suggestion. Casalis would then have, quite understandably, strongly supported publication.
In terms of the delay in publication of Chaka, then, the problematic period is three years, that is 1922–5, and not the entire fifteen or sixteen years beginning 1909/10. Which means that there are still unanswered questions suggesting a hesitation in the publication of this book. This seems to be supported by the failure to serialise the book in the Leselinyana before publication, a time-honoured tradition which was still being practised at that very time. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, these facts suggest an attempt to suppress the manuscript. However, the major controversies around this book took place after, and not before, its publication.
Translations of Chaka
By translating Chaka into English in 1931 (published by the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures, now the International African Institute), F. H. Dutton made an important contribution to world literature, and performed an invaluable service to the dissemination of Sesotho culture through literature. Through Dutton’s translation, not only Europe became aware of, and benefited from, Mofolo’s masterpiece, but indeed Africa itself. We often lose sight of the fact that translations of this nature facilitate communication within Africa as well. It is through translation, to take just one more example, that the present writer came to enjoy p’Bitek’s beautiful lament, Song of Lawino, which he could not have read in the original Acoli. Dutton’s translation of Chaka inspired non-Sesotho-speaking Africa to heights of creativity as exemplified by the works of Senghor, Badian and Mulikita.
After Dutton’s translation, Chaka was translated also into French. Then abridged versions were published in English, German, French and Italian. More recently an abridged version has been published in Swahili, very likely translated from Grenfell Williams’s English abridged version. And even more recently still, the unabridged version has been translated into Afrikaans. Unfortunately the translator, Chris Swanepoel, has marred an otherwise good translation by leaving out portions of the original without any explanation whatsoever. Some of these omissions are quite extensive.
The merging of history and fiction in Mofolo’s Chaka
By his own testimony, Mofolo, in writing this book, did not intend to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the Zulu king; neither did he intend to tell nothing but “exaggerations produced by a facile pen” as suggested by N. R. Thoahlane, a Mosotho reader writing in the Leselinyana in February 1927. In responding to a letter written by Reverend S. M. Malale, a Sesotho-speaking Shangana, in July 1928, in which Malale questioned the accuracy of certain historical facts concerning the establishment of the Shangana nation, Mofolo, having admitted that Malale was a better judge than he regarding that particular aspect of the history, went on to say:
Ke a kgolwa diphoso tsa mofuta wona di ngata haholo bukeng ya Chaka; empa ha ke a di tsotella haholo hobane ha ke ngole histori, ke ngola tshomo, nka re ke ngola nnete, empa ee ekeditsweng haholo, ya fokotswa haholo, ha tlohelwa tse ding tse ngata, ha ngolwa tse ding tse ngata tseo e seng nnete, e le feela ho phetha morero wa ka ka buka ena.
I believe that errors of this kind are very many in the book Chaka; but I am not very concerned about them because I am not writing history, I am writing a tale, or I should rather say I am writing what actually happened, but to which a great deal has been added, and from which a great deal has been removed, so that much has been left out, and much has been written that did not actually happen, with the aim solely of fulfilling my purpose in writing this book.
A similar statement is found in the book itself, at the beginning of Chapter 23, where Mofolo says:
mme ere ka ha e se kgopolo ya rona ho bolela ditaba tsa bophelo ba hae kaofela, re ikgethetse lehlakore le leng feela, lee lokelang morero wa rona mona …
but since it is not our purpose to recount all the affairs of his life, we have chosen only one part which suits our present purpose …
This unspecified “purpose” leaves one curious, and it is with a view to at least partially satisfying this curiosity that the following comments are made in order to identify some of the more important areas where fact and fiction are at variance with each other. In just about all of these, the effect is to build up greater intensity in the plot, and to increase dramatic tensions by creating new juxtapositions of highly volatile events and situations.
Firstly, the spring of action in Mofolo’s version of Chaka’s life is that Senzangakhona, though having three or four wives, has no son and therefore no heir. To correct this situation, he decides to take another wife. He therefore arranges a feast to which he invites the young people from the neighbouring villages. Having fallen in love with Nandi, he persuades her to engage in complete intercourse with him in the fields on her return home. She becomes pregnant, and in spite of hurried marriage arrangements, she is at least two months pregnant by the time she joins Senzangakhona’s household.
While the above makes for an excellent plot which is simply chock-full of potential dynamite, the historical Senzangakhona did not have the problem of lacking an heir, and did not engage in the actions narrated by Mofolo. But since the historical Shaka had a truly Achillean stature, Mofolo’s artistic triumph is scored not so much in making Nandi give birth to Chaka, but in creating attendant circumstances which complement that stature. Thus Chaka’s alleged “illegitimacy” becomes his Achilles heel, and Mofolo capitalises on this triumph by making the senior wives soon get sons of their own,