The Interpreters: South Africa’s New Nonfiction, edited by Sean Christie and Hedley Twidle is a 500-page collection of the best of the best creative nonfiction from the country from the last 30 years – featuring big names (Coetzee, Ndebele, Steinberg, Madondo, De Greef, Malan, Kannemeyer, Sosibo, Krog, Motshumi) and lesser known but no less important emerging voices (Mji, Nkosi, Roy) on the SA literary journalism scene.
Christie and Twidle spent more than a year collecting these 33 outstanding contributions, digging extremely deeply into archives, excavating forgotten works in consultation with peers and colleagues, and putting together a book that is more than the sum of its parts. This is a retelling of recent South African history – an offering of new, old, and alternative perspectives, and examples of the highest craftsmanship coming out of South Africa.
This excerpt is published by permission.
Fighting Shadows by Lidudumalingani
One afternoon my father and the other boys from the Zikhovane village decided to walk across a vast landscape, two valleys and a river, to a village called Qombolo to disrupt a wedding. It was not that they had a feud with either the bridegroom or the bride. Their grudge was that the boys of Qombolo had refused their village’s invitation to ukuqula (a stick fighting game), one too many times. Disrupting the wedding was their way of waging war against this show of disrespect.
In my father’s day, stick fighting feuds between the villages often started as innocent games. Boys from one village would challenge boys from another village. If a village boy did not adhere to stick fighting’s single unwavering rule – that one could not hit the opponent on the head – the game would escalate to a feud. Actually, the rule stood for nothing. Nobody insisted on it. The boys knew this. The feuds, unlike the games, were bloody. In games, the intention was to show off skill and charisma. In feuds, it was to injure.
During the games, different villages would team up. A vacant patch of land, equidistant between the two villages so as not to appear to favour one side, would be identified. The boys arrived chanting and dancing like warriors. But it was just play. The most popular stick fighting chant was “qula kwedini” (“stick fight my brother, bring it on young boy”) – specifically composed for the game and nothing else.
Qula kwedini kabawo; khawuze nazo kwedini bawo; nazo kwedini kabawo.
After a few games the vacant land was transformed into a battlefield, which seemed to exist just for the stick fights. Today, in popular stick fighting landscapes, if one looks and listens closely, the dust, the sound of sticks rattling, the whistling, cheering, singing, dancing and crying still hang there.
A day before the wedding, shortly after the sun had disappeared, my father left for Qombolo to visit his sister. Camouflaged by the thick shadows of the mountain that stood tall, as if to protect Qombolo village from an invisible monster, he sneaked furtively into his sister’s home. This was a risk, but he was prepared to take it. After all, he was known in villages near and far as the best stick fighter in the area. He trusted that if he was spotted he could defend himself. He spent the night at his sister’s place, preoccupied with the approaching day’s attack. I imagine that elsewhere the bride was fitting her dress, estranged from sleep, replaying a perfect day that had not yet happened, unaware that her wedding would be filled with chaos.
On the morning of the wedding day, boys from my father’s village, Zikhovane, and neighbouring villages Kwebulana and Hange met to discuss their strategy. They decided on a change of tactic, informed more by a gut feeling than by any real reconnaissance of Qombolo. The new plan was that the fight would be waged in the Ngcongcolorha River and not at the wedding. The boys would hide at the riverbank, disguising themselves in the natural shrubs that grew along the banks, and when any Qombolo boy walked past they would attack.
That afternoon, plans in place, the boys from all the three united villages gathered in the veld of Kwebulana and began to make their way to the Ngcongcolorha River.
Across the landscape, with the veld stretching until it was out of sight, they tested their sticks on each other. There was no beating involved, that was reserved for the enemy. This was an opportunity for them to show off their skills, skills they had learned from playing stick fighting in the veld. Jujuju Mkhunjula, who stood with my father in the first line of offence, was known for his crouching style of fighting – a move he had adopted because he was short. He would crouch with one knee and swing his stick in the air. His blows landed on his opponents’ ankles and knees. A good blow would send them tumbling to the floor. Once down, Mkhunjula would land a perfectly placed hit to his adversary’s head.
My father, with his petite body, was the dancer. He would dance around his opponents, much like Muhammad Ali, land his blows and move again quickly. He told me that his moves were tailored for each fighter he faced. If the fighter was left-handed, my father would dance to their right, and if right-handed, to their left. His strategy was to disorientate. He would hit his opponent, but they had no chance to return the blow because their attack stick was always just out of reach. His other popular trick was to feign a shot. This prompted his opponent to defend, thus exposing a part of himself and presenting my father with the opportunity to strike a blow.
As the boys crossed the landscape, testing their sticks, the destination grew nearer. They were walking towards the same mountains the sun hid behind at night. I imagine them picking up their pace in an attempt to overtake the sun’s movement, to get there before it did. Dancing, chanting, eating and occasionally stick fighting, they crossed the land between the Kwebulana and Qombolo villages. In no time they were at the Ngcongcolorha River.
In the meantime, my father waited in his sister’s house, impatiently pacing up and down, ready to pick up his sticks and fight. In the afternoon, with no news of the wedding being disrupted and no sight of his boys, he decided to meander outside. The Qombolo boys spotted him in the confines of his sister’s yard and did not waste time. They charged towards the house. He went to get his sticks and came out to meet them. Somewhere in his mind, even though the doubt lingered, he hoped that his boys were not far away, that they would soon arrive to help him fight off the attack. He could not have been more wrong. His friends were, by then, busy disguising themselves as the riverbank. No sooner had he exited his yard than an avalanche of blows assaulted him. He tried to dance but his choreography was off balance. The odds were so tipped against him that his every move was halted. Finally, his sticks went flying in the air and he fell to the ground. His opponents, overcome by excitement, continued beating him.
A few weeks later, when his gums were no longer swollen and the pain in his body had eased, my father and his friends returned to Qombolo to avenge his beating. The plan was that they would ambush any boy they saw and beat him to death. My father and Jujuju Mkhunjulwa formed the frontline; the rest followed behind, mirroring their every move, nodding at their every instruction. They spotted their first opponents. They had planned to dish the full wrath of their revenge. But, although some boys landed in hospital, there was neither a death nor a counterattack. My father soon left for Bloemfontein to find temporary work. Many other boys followed him – to Bloem, to Port Elizabeth, to Cape Town.
Lidudumalingani is a writer, photographer and filmmaker. He was raised in Zikhovane village in the Eastern Cape and currently lives in Johannesburg, where he works as a commissioning editor for the Multichoice Group. In 2016, he was awarded the Caine Prize for African Writing for his short story Memories We Lost. Fighting Shadows was first published in the Chimurenga Chronic, 2 February 2016. © Lidudumalingani