“That’s dishonest. It is just a museum that pretends that is how people live. Real people in today’s South Africa don’t lead the life that is seen in cultural villages. Some aspects of that life perhaps are true. But the bulk of what tourists see is the past. . a lot of it an imaginary past. They must be honest and say that they are attempting to show how people used to live. They must not pretend that’s how people live now.”
“It seems you intend to oppose everything that I come up with,” says Dalton bitterly. “First it was my water project, now you knock down things I have been doing successfully here with NoManage and NoVangeli long before you came to this village.”
“I am just saying I have a problem with your plans. It is an attempt to preserve folk ways. . to reinvent culture. When you excavate a buried precolonial identity of these people. . a precolonial authenticity that is lost. . are you suggesting that they currently have no culture. . that they live in a cultural vacuum?”
“Now you sound like Xoliswa Ximiya!”
“Xoliswa Ximiya is not capable of saying what I have just said. She talks of civilization, by which she means what she imagines to be western civilization. I am interested in the culture of the amaXhosa as they live it today, not yesterday. The amaXhosa people are not a museum piece. Like all cultures, their culture is dynamic.”
“I know what you are trying to do, Camagu. You are shooting down my ideas because you want to promote your own cooperative society. You want to benefit alone with your women. I heard that your lackeys, MamCirha and NoGiant, were trying to recruit NoVangeli and NoManage.”
“I don’t know what you are on about. What would we want with NoManage and NoVangeli? We are in the business of harvesting the sea and manufacturing isiXhosa attire and jewelry, not of milking gullible tourists.”
“You want everything for yourself. You don’t want me to have a piece of the action. You are greedy! My people will not allow you to get away with this. My people love me.”
“Your people love you because you do things for them. I am talking of self-reliance where people do things for themselves. You are thinking like the businessman you are. . you want a piece of the action. I do not want a piece of any action. This project will be fully owned by the villagers themselves and will be run by a committee elected by them in the true manner of cooperative societies.”
In no time the village is talking of the fallout between Camagu and Dalton. It is interpreted by the villagers as a power struggle. The Unbelievers are happy that at last they will be able to break the Believers. As long as those who oppose the gambling paradise fight among themselves and are divided into two camps, the plans to develop the village towards the path of civilization will proceed smoothly. Soon the surveyors will be coming.
Tongues wag in all directions. Some say Dalton is jealous of Camagu’s success with the women’s cooperative society. Dalton is not satisfied with owning Vulindlela Trading Store. He wants to own everything else in the village. Dalton’s supporters, on the other hand, claim that Camagu is trying to take over all aspects of the tourist trade, including the cultural tourism of NoManage and NoVangeli. Camagu came all the way from Johannesburg to plant the seed of division in the clan of the amaGcaleka. He is so ungrateful, after Dalton set him up in Qolorha, bought him a cottage, and even got him a bride.
Camagu is despondent. The only bright spot in his life is that soon Qukezwa’s people will bring her to his cottage. Qukezwa and Heitsi. He has claimed Heitsi as his child, even though the elders were insisting that since he was born out of wedlock he, according to custom, belongs to Zim and not to Qukezwa’s new family. It will be wonderful to have an instant family. He never thought he was cut out to be a father. His ways were wild and carefree. They were ways that were in constant search of the pleasures of the flesh. Any flesh. Until he came to Qolorha-by-Sea. And was tamed by a nondescript daughter of Believers. Heitsi. He will be a good father to him. Heitsi. He who is named after Heitsi Eibib, the earliest prophet of the Khoikhoi. Heitsi. The son of Tsiqwa. Tsiqwa. He who tells his stories in heaven. Heitsi. The one who parted the waters of the Great River so that his people could cross when the enemy was chasing them. When his people had crossed, and the enemy was trying to pass through the opening, the Great River closed upon the enemy. And the enemy all died.
Camagu smiles to himself when he remembers how he learned all this from Qukezwa when she was teaching him about the sacred cairns. He also learned that the Khoikhoi people were singing the story of Heitsi Eibib long before the white missionaries came to these shores with their similar story of Moses and the crossing of the Red Sea.
A messenger breaks his reverie. Qukezwa will not be coming. At least not for a while. As soon as Camagu and Dalton had left after negotiating the lobola, Zim had declared that he could now go in peace, for his work was done. Then he just sat there staring at nothing. Since then he has not said a word. He does not hear anything. It is as if the world outside does not exist. Qukezwa feels that she cannot leave her father in this state. She will try to nurse him back to good health. Only then will she join her husband.
But Zim remains in this state for many days. And then for many weeks. Nothing seems to help. After a while, Camagu is allowed to visit his wife. He is seen at Zim’s homestead at least every other day. He is puzzled by what is happening to Zim.
Qukezwa arranges that they put his father on Gxagxa, his favorite horse, and lead him to Intlambo-ka-Nongqawuse — Nongqawuse’s Valley. They place him before Ityholo-lika-Nongqawuse, the bush where Nongqawuse first saw visions of the Strangers who gave her the message of salvation. Qukezwa hopes this will help to jog his spiritual memory back to the world of the living. But it does not help.
An igqirha — a healer and diviner — is called and puts her finger right on the problem. Only after she and her acolytes have eaten the goat that was slaughtered for them, of course.
She says the daughter of the amaGqunukhwebe — by which she means NoEngland — is calling Zim. But Qukezwa is holding him with her heart. She does not want her father to die. She is selfishly holding him very tightly. There is a tussle between the two women who love the elder. He therefore remains in limbo between the world of the living and the world of the ancestors.
“NoEngland will finally win, for she is in cahoots with very powerful ancestors,” says the igqirha. “Qukezwa is only a girl, although her heart is powerful enough to hold the elder for so long.”
Qukezwa is angry when the elders plead with her to release the poor man so that he may go in peace. Why does everyone want her father to die?
While the relatives are waiting for NoEngland’s grand victory over Qukezwa, a woman is brought to Zim’s homestead on a triangular wooden sleigh pulled by two oxen. She is very sick. But her beauty shines through the illness. She is covered in a gray donkey blanket, and lies calmly on a mattress on the sleigh. Only her head is showing. She wears a bright-colored doek. Her eyes are downcast and speak only of shame.
The sleigh is parked just outside Zim’s door, and the man who brought her unyokes the oxen. The Believers who are surrounding Zim hear the commotion outside and are amazed to see the woman on the sleigh and the man driving his oxen out of the homestead.
“She is my daughter,” explains the man. “She insists that I leave her here. It is the only thing that will cure her.”
And he is gone.
No one knows what to do with the woman until Qukezwa arrives. She takes one look at her and screams.
“What do you want here? Are you not satisfied with what you did to my mother? Have you come to put the final nail in my father’s coffin?”