NYU Black Renaissance Noire Winter/Spring 2012 | Page 17

Those days Zwanga, who owned the
mine, spent most of the time at the
compound even though he had a home
in town. He found it more convenient
to process the gold on site and to create
the jewellery and the gold ingots with
which he bartered for beads and other
items that the Swahili traders brought.
He also traded with other compounds,
mostly across the Limpopo in the north
and further south of Mapungubwe
that variously mined iron, tin and
copper. From these assorted minerals
he forged hoes and spears and knives
and bangles. His smithy then was right
there at his mining compound and
not at his house in the town. His senior
wife also spent most of her time at
the mining compound while his other
wives looked after the houses in the
town. That was why her first son,
Rendani, was born at the compound.

Chata impressed Zwanga quite early
on. He was very curious about metals.
He spent hours on end watching
Zwanga smelting metal in his crucible
and then shaping it into wonderful
objects that were in demand with
the town-dwellers. Rendi could not
understand Chata’s fascination.
He would rather shirk his lessons and
sneak away to spy on girls as they
bathed in the river. Of course, Chata
enjoyed that pastime as well and would
therefore be torn between observing
Zwanga’s craftsmanship and following
Rendi to the river.
Chata was the smarter one in the ways of
the wild. It was an instinct he inherited
from his mother’s people. But the !Kung
woman did not want the boy to rely
only on instinct. She took him to the
wilderness and taught him the herbs
and the shrubs and the bushes and
their various uses either for healing or
for eating. In the woods she taught him
the dances of her people—those that
sent the dancer into a trance where the
dancer communed with the world of
the dead and the unborn. She taught
him how to alter his consciousness, not
only for the purposes of entering the
world of the spirits, but for inhabiting
the bodies of the graceful animals
of the wild such as gazelles and other
antelopes, so as to be able to run
like them and dance with their grace.
In Mapungubwe they reduced people
to some animals when they wanted
to demean them. But Chata learnt that
in his mother’s worldview it was an
honour to be compared to an animal; it
spoke of one’s elegance and generosity,
strength and cunning.

BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE

brought up as brothers and saw each
other in that light. They were born in
the same year, at the same mining
compound, a day’s journey south of
Mapungubwe. They got to be known
as the Zwanga Twins by the miners,
even though only Rendani belonged to
the Muvhadi Makone—the master
ˆ
carver and blacksmith. Chata was the
son of Zwanga’s servant, a !Kung
woman—and that was all she was ever
called; she was of such a lower caste
that no one ever bothered to know her
name. She came to the compound
some years back with her husband who
herded Zwanga’s cattle when Zwanga
still owned some herds, before becoming
a rain doctor. Some of the !Kung
people who had been routed out of
their cave dwelling communities,
perhaps by hunger due to the depletion
of wild animals and wild berries and
roots, became cattle herders for the
wealthy Mapungubweans in exchange
of food and shelter. This, in effect,
meant that they bonded themselves
into vhupuli, as slavery was called.
The grandees who had cattle-posts out
there across t he Limpopo River relied
on the !Kung, the Khwe and other
hunter-gatherer people, who were
generally called the San by the Khoikhoi,
to look after their animals.

Chata and Rendi, as Rendani was then
called, soon discovered each other
and became playmates. No one knew
why Zwanga took a shine on Chata,
the son of a phuli or slave. But he did.
When he began to train his son in
the rudiments of shaping clay and
wood into objects of art, and later in
identifying the characteristics of
various metals, he included Chata in
those lessons.

15

CHATAMBUDZA
AND RENDANI WERE

The story is rather vague on how the
!Kung woman got widowed. Only a
few months after her husband died did
she give birth to Chatambudza. Many
people thought she would take the
baby back to her people. They had no
idea that her people lived in the
Kgalagadi desert, a journey of many
moons south-west of Mapungubwe.
How would a lone woman and a baby
manage such a hazardous journey?
The !Kung were hardy people and she
could easily have survived on the roots
of shrubs, eggs of birds and the
caterpillars that fed on mopane and
mango trees. But her safety could
not be guaranteed in the wilderness for
all those moons and, indeed, even if
she reached the Kgalagadi how would
she find her kith and kin in that vast
desert? The !Kung people moved and
followed the migrations of wild beasts
on which they depended for their meat.
All these were the !Kung woman’s
concerns when she decided to stay at the
compound. She found accommodation
with Ma Chirikure, a woman who cooked
for the miners and was rumoured to
service the unmarried ones in ways that
were only whispered about.