The rat, the pig and the cat
ISANDLWANA is a forbidding place where the Sphinx-like hill of that name looks down on the plain where British forces were massacred in probably their worst-ever setback in a colonial conflict – and where the Zulus, although they held the field, also suffered unsustainable losses.
It is a place of ghosts and harsh terrain, scorched brown at this time of year. Yet it is visited by thousands of tourists, many of them British military parties come to pay homage. Isandlwana Lodge, which looks down on the battlefield, has mounted on the walls an astonishing array of the crests of British regiments.
It's not a place you expect to hear children's stories. Yet that's what you get these days. After supper in the lodge, young girls from the district entertain guests with traditional Zulu stories (in English translation) handed down over the generations.
Speaking beautifully modulated English, and miming the action, last weekend one told the tale of how the hare got its long ears. Another related a drama involving a rat, a pig and a cat. A redoubtable lady known as Ma Khumalo gave – through an interpreter – an entertaining account of her life and career producing handicrafts. Her exquisitely turned out traditional Zulu costume was testimony to her needlework skills.
It went down very well. The story-telling is an initiative by Wilna Botha, who runs an NGO called Ignite!Africa which runs craft shops at Isandlwana and various other tourist spots in KZN. Ignite!Africa is involved in training, as well as marketing its WOWZulu! brand of Zulu artefacts overseas plus developing an internal market.
But it doesn't stop there. Wilna believes the modern cellphone culture could undermine the fireside story-telling tradition of the Zulus, and she's determined to make story-telling part of the tourism package. Hence the after-supper sessions at Isandlwana Lodge.
I won't let on how the hare got its long ears. Nor what happened between the rat, the pig and the cat. But believe me, it's real drama.
Great ladies
WILNA Botha has also published a book called Burning Bright: Extraordinary women of KwaZulu-Natal. It has the life stories and life philosophies of some truly remarkable women, among them Devi Rajab, who writes a thoughtful column for this newspaper.
Interestingly, the book is dedicated in part to the late Monica Fairall, "a graceful child of Zululand who walked lightly on this earth yet cast a bright glow that brought warmth and joy to millions."
Hear, hear! Monica is remembered with great affection by many of us in the hackery and scribbling trade.
Cockamamy war
DRIVING back from Isandlwana, the heaving hills are a wintry brown. One reflects that at the time of the battle they would have been a brilliant green.
Those British troops must have thought, as they went into Zululand, that they were entering a kind of frozen seascape. Little could they have known what lay ahead.
The Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 was surely the most unjust, contrived and cockamamy colonial escapade the British ever embarked upon. As Lord Chelmsford sipped tea some distance away, oblivious of the trap into which he'd led his men, it was Private Tommy Atkins who took the rap. Ain't it always so?
Magical names
THE PLACE names as you drive through that hilly part of Zululand have a magic all their own: Nkandla, Qudeni, Babanango …
In the village pub at Nkandla (the village is some distance from JZ's pad down in the Tugela valley), the bar counter was a rough slab of quartz from the nearby gold mine. In the old days the barman would pour a bottle of whisky onto the quartz which would run off in different directions, a miner poised with open mouth at the end of every runnel.
At Babanango, Stan Wintgen – a colourful former Royal Marine – used to hold court in a tiny pub festooned with women's bras and knickers and with all kinds of figurines and knick-knacks on the counter, spring-loaded and of exquisite vulgarity.
The pub has re-opened since Stan's death, but the bras, knickers and figurines have disappeared. Zululand surely can't have gone puritanical?
At any rate, the memories are still magical.
Tailpiece
PADDY held up a bank with a sawn-off shotgun. But nobody was injured. He'd sawn off the wrong end.
Last word
The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum. – Havelock Ellis
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