NYU Black Renaissance Noire Winter/Spring 2012 | Page 18

16 The !Kung woman taught Chata to guard these secrets with his life, for indeed his life depended on them. She impressed it on him that if the people of Mapungubwe knew he had the power to visit the world of the spirits at will, they would condemn him as a wizard and would stone him to death. Although there was nothing special among the !Kung about these powers since any !Kung man or woman could dance himself or herself into a deep trance, the Mapungubweans who worshipped a different God called Mwali were bound to be suspicious of what they didn’t understand. The !Kung woman taught her son to respect animals because there was a time in the timeless past when animals were human beings with all human characteristics and behaviours and habits and customs. People were therefore animals and animals were people. All creatures were kindred spirits. The spirit of humanity lived in all animals, especially the great meat animals: the eland, the kudu, the gemsbok, and the giraffe. The !Kung woman taught her son how to feel the pain of animals. When the boys were older, Zwanga allowed them to roam around the bush as long as they had performed their chores at the smithy. They spent a lot of time playing with shepherds and herdboys at the basin of the Limpopo and Shashe rivers, where they displayed their skill in moulding animals with clay. These red or black figures, depending on the colour of the clay, were about the size of a man’s hand. Rendi could mould oxen, bulls and cows that were so realistic that their legs had joints and their feet had hoofs, whereas the cattle of the other boys had only pointed stumps for limbs. Chata on the other hand created animals that never existed anywhere except in his imagination. Some of these were three-legged, had horns growing all around the neck, beaks like vultures and wings on their tails. Whereas the boys envied Rendi’s skill to render realistic images of cattle and goats that they interacted with in the meadows and cattle posts, they laughed at Chata’s inability to reproduce life as they knew it. Rendi joined in the laughter. “Where have you ever seen an animal like this?” he asked. “It is because he is of Vhasarwa,” said one of the herdboys. “The Vhasarwa are lower than animals.” Rendi took offence at this. “Don’t you insult my mukomana,” he said, adopting a fighting stance. Chata took offence for a different reason. “Don’t you insult animals,” he said. “Animals are people too.” He also adopted a fighting stance. The herdboys stamped on their clay creation that were standing on a granite rock to be dried by the sun. When the boys came for Rendi and Chata and were about to surround them, the two boys knew that they would not be a match in a fight; they ran away. The herdboys gave a brief chase while hurling further invectives at them. On the way home Rendi tried to console Chata, “Don’t worry, mukomana. One day you’ll know how to mould beautiful things too. I’ll teach you.” He was chuffed at the discovery that at least there was something that he was much better at than Chata. The next day Rendi and Chata went hunting for ostrich eggs. When they hadn’t found any by the afternoon they decided to go moulding once again. Those insolent herdboys would not be at the river at that time of the day, they would have driven the cattle to the grazing lands further north as they only took them to the river at midday to drink. The boys sat down to knead the clay with water until it was soft and pliable. Rendi tried to demonstrate to Chata how he could mould a bull that looked like a bull, but Chata did not seem to be paying much attention. He was bent on moulding his fantastical animals that were weird to look at and made Rendi laugh. But the laughter did not offend Chata at all. “My hands won’t allow me to make animals that looked like the animals that we see every day out there in the veld. They only want to shape the animals of my dreams.”