Shaka the Great (78 page)

Peregrinations
, thinks Fynn with a wry smile. They've certainly done their share of riding and walking since then—and himself more than the others.

And then they were there.

Here.

He remembers dancing shields and prancing blades.

He remembers men, screaming men, being put to death before their very eyes.

He remembers feathers and tails, plumes and bristling adornments.

He remembers dust and singing women; and drums and ranks of warriors looming nearer, then retreating, as though daring the strangers to advance a few more paces.

He remembers wide eyes from Frederick and Jantjie, and wouldn't be surprised if they could have said the same thing of him and Farewell. Even the Dutchmen remained quiet.

He remembers still more men dying right at their feet, staining the dirt red.

But where was the king who ordered such callous, casual slaughter simply to impress—or terrify—his guests?

Where was this Shaka?

And suddenly the spears and shields parted, and there he was: a profusion of plumes and skins, monkey, genet and leopard tails, dried mealies and stalks of the wild sugar cane that grew in those parts, pleats and beads and feathers.

He was helped to his feet by his retainers and embarked on a long, baying harangue that Frederick, their interpreter, was unable to translate. And every so often this apparition would pause, and a roar would go up from the crowd.

But one man standing to the side, a big tall man, who unlike the others was wearing no adornments, caught Fynn's eye. He hadn't moved forward to help the feathers and skins to rise, yet he was dressed as a servant, or commoner …

And suddenly Fynn
knew
.

Leaning toward Farewell, he pointed to the same man and said: “Farewell, there is Shaka.”

He'd had to speak loudly, to be heard over the bellowing, and the man had heard him, too.

And their eyes met. And Shaka smiled. He held up his hand and wagged his finger at Fynn.

Returning to their huts, Fynn is almost knocked over by a man running through the darkness. But he thinks nothing of it, and doesn't notice the blood that covers the man's chin and chest.

Certain “luxury items” have, from time to time, been reverently laid at Shaka's feet. A brass telescope, razors, soaps, silk, braid intended to adorn an admiral's dress uniform. But beads and a form of thick cotton cloth make up the main type of currency used by the Farewell Trading Company (est.1823).

The cloth comes from the Dongari region, near Bombay in India, while the beads originate from Venice. Given the smugness evinced by certain traders at various stages during the Age of Exploration, it would be all too easy to assume that the Zulus were being ripped off. Ivory, gold and land in exchange for beads and dungarees—come on! Farewell and his partners were nothing more than thieves out to exploit the poor natives!

Accusations of chicanery, extortion and exploitation are not without substance in instances where trade was imposed by gunboats and the like, or where a European monarch decided a certain portion of Africa was his to do with as he liked. But that certainly wasn't the case when Fynn valiantly bellowed Shaka's name, after being confronted by two “ferocious fellows” of our acquaintance. These traders were in no position to proselytize or force Shaka to do anything the Bull Elephant didn't want to do.

Shaka had the upper hand when it came to trade, and, as it was with the Portuguese at Delagoa, so it was with Jorgi's men. For the People Of The Sky thought they were the ones getting the better part of the deal.

Shaka was happy to “sell” them the bay the Zulus called Ethekwini. Jorgi's men were few in number, so if some wanted to move away and establish their own kraals, that wasn't a problem. All they needed to do was obtain Shaka's permission.

When it came to gold, the Zulus were a little more ambivalent. They didn't consider it valuable, and found it too soft to have any practical use. But they knew, from the tales that had come down to them through the
generations, that there were those, such as the Ma-Iti and the Arabi, who prized this metal considerably, and would therefore seek to enslave human beings and force them to burrow deep under the ground in search of the stuff. For this reason, the places where gold could be found were kept a secret, and traders were fed only a paltry trickle.

Ivory the Zulus had no use for, which is why traders and travelers speak of piles of ivory lying outside native settlements, as if there was a surplus. The Zulus (and other tribes in the region) rarely hunted elephants—a laborious, time-consuming, not to mention dangerous, process when you're armed only with spears and ferocious expressions. When they did kill an elephant, the Zulus used all parts of the creature except for the ivory. And here came these grinning, cringing, albino Long Noses wanting to buy the tusks! Quite what they did with the ivory was anyone's guess—but the consensus was that they ate it.

Things would change but right now, in the 1820s, in the absence of blockades, bombardments and blankets infected with smallpox, one has to ask who was exploiting who.

It's easy to see the uses hardy Dongari Kapar might have been put to, but it's those beads that are really interesting.

Many cultures have deemed beads valuable, and throughout the ages these decorative objects, ranging from a millimeter to several centimeters in diameter, have been fashioned from stone, bone, horn, ivory, pearl, coral, wood and seeds.

Say the word “bead” these days, however, and most people think of wooden orbs spun on a lathe, or the cheap, garishly colored plastic kind. But the beads used for trade purposes in Africa and the Americas from the fifteenth century onwards were Italian chevrons created by glassmakers in Venice and Murano.

Making them involves a time-consuming process that starts with the initial core formed from a molten ball of glass called a gather. An air bubble is blown into the center of the gather, and then the molten ball is dropped into a star-shaped mold with anywhere between five and fifteen points. Once several layers of colored glass have been applied, the hot substance is drawn out into a long rod. The bubble at the center of the gather stretches with the rod and forms the threading hole in the bead. The diameter of the
resulting beads is determined by the amount of glass in the original gather, and also by how thinly the glass is extended out. The cooled cane is then cut into short segments, which will reveal a star pattern in cross-section.

The beads brought by Farewell are composed of green, white, blue and red layers. If not quite miniature works of art, they are artifacts created by skilled craftsmen, and one could say as much work has gone into their creation as a latter-day run of banknotes of whichever currency one cares to choose.

The call: “The King comes!”

And the soldiers in the cattlefold start drumming their spears against their shields.

The regiments have become one army again, as happens before battle, and the men stand shoulder to shoulder behind a wall of overlapping shields. And, in the ranks behind the van, each man drums his spear against his neighbor's shield.

Motion and sound.

Sound that is motion.

The pumping-blood beat of a living creature born out of the merging of the many; the something else that makes the whole more than just the sum of its parts. Steel claws beat against stony cowhide: knock-knock-knocking.

No let-up, no respite; easier to tell your heart to stop beating. Those hungry blades demanding blood: knock-knock-knocking.

The rumble of thunder, slowed down but called closer, so it seems as if it'll never end. And watch out when it does: knock-knock-knocking.

On the battlefield itself, the storm that follows the thunder, the flood of charging feet, the falling-rain hiss of the Zulu war cry, they are even worse: a torrent able to swamp forests and sweep aside mountains, never mind cringing savages whose knees have already begun to bang to together in time to that same knock-knock-knocking.

And today? See what the iklwas call forth …

Just as the many here have become something else, so we have a man who is more than a man.

Called forth by the iklwas, he has legs, he has feet just like a man, and a head; but his body, from shoulders to knees, is thatch.

Three overlapping layers adorned with a profusion of lichen and moss, maize leaves and branches, and cuttings from other crops.

Accompanied by an elderly man carrying a selection of uselwa gourds dangling from cords draped around his neck, he enters the cattlefold—and the drumming stops.

Thatch and leaves and branches.

When he's a few paces away from the wall of shields, the old-timer steps in front of him and helps him remove the thatch coat. Then Mbilini KaZiwedum, for it is he, turns round, and the man who is more than a man affixes the thatch around the graybeard's shoulders, himself becoming something else in the process.

Becoming Shaka.

Greasy, glistening Night Muthi—fragments of the dead moon—covers his limbs. And the left side of his body—arm, torso, leg—is black, while the right side is yellow—a grubby, sandy yellow. And his face and neck are red—the fierce dark orange-red of some sunsets.

A mixture of baboon, genet and hyena pelts form his kilt, while the amashoba beneath his knees are made from the skin of the black bull his men slaughtered yesterday afternoon.

As the thatch was placed around his shoulders, Mbilini ensured the gourds were left hanging on the outside. Now he hands one to Shaka.

The King moves still closer to the shields.

A hush.

He throws the uselwa up into the air, once …

Twice …

After he catches it for the third time, he flings the calabash at the shields closest to him.

A lunge, with his right leg slipping forward so the bended knee can take his weight, then a slight twisting of the shoulders, before executing a throw—a single, fluid motion—that sees the calabash shatter against the shields.