The Xhosa Double

“THE XHOSA DOUBLE” PREAMBLE . 1936. Sipho, aged eighteen, lay in agony on the reed matt in the hut. Reaching under the none too clean cloth loosely wrapped around his lower waist, he touched his penis, or rather he touched the mud and blood soaked bandage on it and winced in pain. He and sixteen other Xhosa youths, aged sixteen to nineteen years had for six weeks been disciplined, served a sparse diet, cleansed and lectured to. Their bodies were painted in black mud stripes and their faces had been painted with white stripes. All participants were made to run, fight, dance and to chant and grunt while so doing, in order to prepare for the event. The ceremony was meant to mark the passage from boyhood to manhood. Only the fit and those of age and considered to be sufficiently worthy were invited to take part. Failure to be invited, or refusal to attend was tantamount to disqualification from their niche in the multi layered societal structure of their clan. Those who partook and passed accorded the rights and privileges of young tribesmen. When the “abakweta” or ritual circumcision was performed on him with a none too sharp instrument, Sipho fainted. He had of course inhaled marijuana beforehand, as had the others, it being a common practice of the tribal inhabitants of the Transkei. Marijuana grew abundantly and the smoking of it had been reintroduced to him in the ritual circumcision training in the hut, which now had the pervasive odour of body sweat, blood and marijuana. The others, once circumcised, had run screaming or howling towards the river to the sound of drums and chanting by the elders. But he had fainted and had remained in the hut, thereby disgracing himself before his peers and before the elders. Slowly and in great pain, with the limited strength he could muster in his agonised state, Sipho dragged himself to a sitting position, turned over and crawled out of the hut, like a dog slinking into the night. He knew he could not remain. The hut was soon to be burned together with the clothes, the bandages and ritual items. The circumcised were now men. He, however, had lost face. He would crawl away, hide, and if he survived the night and the next day, he would make his way from his tribal village to Umtata, the nearest town and capital of the Transkei. He was not sure he would make it. Somehow, he did and from there he eventually came to Egoli, “ The City of Gold” or Johannesburg, as it was called, and Sipho, the son of a minor chief of a minor tribe of the Amopondo branch of the Xhosa people, became in time the head of his country. Not in his own right, but through the machinations of the powers that be or perhaps the gods of his forefathers. FROM THE BOOK Belson had another frequently recurring dream. It was the reliving of what was perhaps his finest moment. He was in the dock of the Pretoria Supreme Court of South Africa on 20th April 1964, delivering the opening statement of his defence case in the Rivonia Trial. The speech took four hours. The court, the reporters and the world at large, heard his words. He said forcefully and with emphasis “I am prepared to die”. Belson repeated this statement three times. Portions of the speech he had made came and went in his dream. He had opened with “I am the First Accused.” Indeed, he was the first and foremost of the accused. Those in the dock with him were also leaders of the black revolutionary movement. Mostly they were blacks. There were a few whites and some Indians as well. But Belson stood out as the leader. The accused were charged with training recruits in the use of explosives for the purpose of guerilla warfare for violent revolution and sabotage. In addition they were charged with conspiring to act with foreign military units when they invaded South Africa. It was alleged that they were promoting Communism and were soliciting and receiving money from sympathizers abroad to fund their aims and actions. The prosecution stated that a six month supply of munitions they were said to have was sufficient to blow up a city the size of Johannesburg. In his dreams Bandela relived parts of his speech. He had said “ In my youth in the Transkei I listened to the elders of my tribe telling stories of the old days. Amongst the tales they related to me were those of wars fought by our ancestors in defense of the fatherland. The names of Dingane and Bambatha, Hintsa and Makana, Sgunthi and Dalasile, Moshoeshoe and Sekukhuni, were praised as the glory of the entire African nation” “ Some things so far told to the Court are true and some are untrue. I do not, however deny that I planned sabotage..….We felt that without violence there would be no way open to the African people to succeed in their struggle against the principle of white supremacy. All lawful modes of expressing opposition to this principle had been closed by legislation. We chose to defy the law. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and then the Government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence.”