April 15, 2004
By James Mitchell
Yesterday - after deep and informed thought - we exercised our democratic rights. Or, quite possibly, we just totalled the sum of all our fears, ignorance and prejudices...and exercised our democratic rights. Or neither, as the case may be, and just stayed home and watched the box.
The second scenario is all too common, because ours remains a country where exposure to differing cultures and belief systems is generally inadequate. Historically, this was government policy: to separate rather than draw together.
Today it's more often the result of individuals and groups withdrawing into their comfort zones rather than relishing all the variety and excitement
He would visit the older people to add to his tales |
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Over the years, however, there have been those who sought to make available to a wider audience the legends and stories that informed their world-view. Among the most distinguished was Archibald Campbell Jordan, born on October 30, 1906, in the Eastern Cape.
Despite the resonance of those names, he wasn't the scion of some Scottish missionary, rather a member of the Nobadula family of the Zengele clan, in the Tsolo District. Born in the tiny village of Mbokotwana, Archibald Campbell Jordan was to become an academic, author, linguist, critic, poet, musician and cricketer...plus a nationalist, a freedom fighter and a revolutionary.
He was also the father of Zweledinga Pallo Jordan, the distinguished ANC member who once tangled with Nelson Mandela over Jordan's commitment to a genuinely independent state broadcast system, as opposed to the government mouthpiece it remains, with only a change of masters.
AC Jordan's writing seems an appropriate precursor to his son's belief in inclusivity. In his novel The Wrath of the Ancestors he depicts the clash between the traditional Xhosa way of life and the present, much as did Zakes Mda in his memorable The Heart of Redness.
The story depicts a young Xhosa of noble lineage, Zwelinzema, who is studying at the then University College of Fort Hare (the Western world), but leaves to take up his duties as king of the Mpondomise people (the ancestral duty).
It is not an easy or even a welcome decision, and yet "it was particularly those who had a deep sense of duty and even harboured misgivings when they took over the seat of kingship, who usually proved to be the greatest servants of the people".
Although the wise words above are spoken to Zwelinzema by a white, Christian bishop, one of the themes of The Wrath of the Ancestors remains the variance and even hostility in beliefs between traditionalists and church-goers, as well as the honest differences between those who seek education and those who consider themselves "the red-ochre people".
Yet this is no didactic settling of scores between old and new
. It is written with humour and compassion, while the use of Xhosa imagery, with traditional idioms and proverbs, enriches the story and clothes the bare frame of the plot.
In the end, the reader can only conclude that the way forward is through compromise, that the best of the new must be strengthened by the value systems of the old.
Tales from Southern Africa, first published in the United States after AC Jordan's death there in 1968, could equally have been titled "Tales from Transkei", for that is their origin, more particularly from the Qumbu District.
Jordan would, whenever possible, seek out "the old women who were renowned as storytellers, to record their tales. When he was in Cape Town, he would visit the older people in the townships, to add to his collection of tales. One of his favourite haunts was a house in Stone Street in that notorious slum, District Six...Each Thursday, a woman from Qumbu, who worked in town, visited the house in Stone Street. She was known as a great narrator. Together with the large audience that gathered for her sessions, she contributed quite a few tales to this collection. Though the atmosphere was perhaps contrived, it was the closest parallel to the traditional setting that could be recreated in the cities."
So writes Pallo Jordan in his foreword, and he would perhaps agree that equally, a book of this nature is "contrived" in contrast with the traditional format of the storyteller, and the expected interaction with the audience.
Yet, if we cannot all be present around the fire to hear these stories in the original manner, Tales from Southern Africa is an admirable and necessary substitute.
More wide ranging, but no less important in explaining us to ourselves, is The New Century of South African Short Stories. Despite the title, this is not an updating of A Century of South African Short Stories, published in 1978, but a totally new anthology.
It ranges from the earliest myths and fables through writers like Sarah Gertrude Millin and RRR Dhlomo to modernists such as Ashraf Jamal and Ivan Vladislavic.
One unusual feature in the last of the four sections is the inclusion of "Lekotse's Testimony at the TRC", titled The Sheep-herder's tale, and retold by Antjie Krog.
The wrap-up, as Krog takes her tape-recorder across the road in Ladybrand, seeking impressions of the TRC visit, are ample proof of our need for better understanding of one another.
" 'F*K*f! F*k*f!' he screams as he storms into into the Co-op. I find myself on the pavement, my blood thick with humiliation. God, has nothing - nothing! - changed?"
The answer, of course, is both that much has changed...and little. But more will change with the ever-wider dissemination of books such as these.
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