Exploring Our World

Shaka has always been a controversial figure: a strong, successful African leader and innovative general who created a powerful new nation at the moment when Europeans were beginning to dominate the continent, or a psychotic dictator and mass-murderer who provided colonialists with a convenient stereotype of African depravity? Mofolo exploits this tension by putting him into the centre of a tragic epic, entirely African and pre-Christian in its idiom, but also heavy with what look like biblical, Homeric and Shakespearean accents. We meet Chaka as a brave, talented, but persecuted youth whose enemies are trying to deny his royal blood. He's driven out into the wilderness, where he meets a mysterious sorcerer-figure, Isanusi, who offers him dominion over the kingdoms of this world: Chaka only pauses to ask "where do I sign?" With the help of Isanusi's assistant demons, Ndlebe and Malunga, he is able to defeat his half-brothers and inherit his father's kingdom, and then that of his suzerain Dingiswayo. And before we know where we are, he's rebranded the nation. According to Mofolo — who may be letting his Basotho prejudices slip in here — they were previously called "People of the male organ of the dog". MaZulu, "People of the sky," does seem to have a classier touch. And he's built a capital, reformed the army, altered military tactics, killed tens of thousands of his own people and his enemies, and conquered most of the known world. Then Isanusi comes round to collect his fee, and it all starts going horribly wrong. Kunene's translation has a very stately, Authorised Version sort of feel about it, and he has an odd kind of insistence on keeping out Afrikaans words, even when they are very familiar. Veld slips in a couple of times, but that's about it. This is the only Southern African book I've ever read in which a livestock enclosure is called a "fold" instead of a kraal. This perhaps comes from Mofolo's insistence on keeping the presence of Europeans completely out of the story until Chaka's reference to them in his ominous last words. In real life, Chaka had a few Europeans in his entourage, and his strategic situation was very strongly affected by the advancing Afrikaners pushing the Xhosa back towards his territory. A fabulous epic, which would make a great opera...