NYU Black Renaissance Noire Winter/Spring 2012 | Page 18
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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.”