The Tongue Is Fire : South African Storytellers and Apartheid

In the years between the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 and the Soweto Uprising of 1976—a period that was both the height of the apartheid system in South Africa and, in retrospect, the beginning of its end—Harold Scheub went to Africa to collect stories. With tape-recorder and camera in hand, Scheub registered the testaments of Swati, Xhosa, Ndebele, and Zulu storytellers, farming people who lived in the remote reaches of rural South Africa. While young people fought in the streets of Soweto and South African writers made the world aware of apartheid's evils, the rural storytellers resisted apartheid in their own way, using myth and metaphor to preserve their traditions and confront their oppressors. For more than 20 years, Scheub kept the promise he made to the storytellers to publish his translations of their stories only when freedom came to South Africa. The Tongue Is Fire presents these voices of South African oral tradition—the historians, the poets, the epic-performers, the myth-makers—documenting their enduring faith in the power of the word to sustain tradition in the face of determined efforts to distort or eliminate it. These texts are a tribute to the storytellers who have always, in periods of crisis, exercised their art to inspire their own people. Frontmatter Illustrations (page xiii) Preface (page xv) Note (page xxvii) Introduction: Some Moments, Figures, and Themes in South African History (page 3) PROLOGUE FOUNDERS OF THE INHERITANCE: "LET ME GO BACK" Introduction (page 21) Origins of the Xhosa (Ndumiso Bhotomane, page 31) PART 1 CULTIVATING THE PAST: "THIS IS GOD'S PLACE" Introduction (page 51) "The Necessary Clown" (Nongenile Masithathu Zenani, page 61) "The Endless Mountain" (Nongenile Masithathu Zenani, page 78) PART 2 AMBIGUOUS PROMISE: "IT KEEPS ON HAPPENING, IT KEEPS ON HAPPENING" Introduction (page 149) Malikophu's Daughter (Noplani Gxavu, page 163) The Deadly Pumpkin (Emily Ntsobane, page 187) PART 3 THE THREATENED DREAM: "THE LAND WAS SEIZED" Introduction (page 205) So Tall He Touched the Heavens (Mdukiswa Tyabashe, page 223) All the Land of the Mpondomise (Mdukiswa Tyabashe, page 227) Snapping at the Water's Foam (Mtshophane Mamba, page 275) The Land Was Seized: The Ngcayechibi War of 1877 (Ndumiso Bhotomane, page 279) The Land Has Grown Old (Ashton Ngcama, page 282) Tears in Your Stomach (Ashton Ngcama, page 287) PART 4 UNCERTAIN HOPE: LIGHTING "AN UNCONTROLLABLE FIRE" Introduction (page 293) She Spoke about the Resurrection: Nongqawuse and the Cattle Killing of 1857 (Ndumiso Bhotomane, page 304) No Person Arose (Nongenile Masithathu Zenani, page 307) Chakijana, the Trickster (Sondoda Ngcobo, page 314) Chakijana, Zulu Freedom-fighter (Sondoda Ngcobo, page 334) So Everybody Was After Chakijana (Frederick William Calverley, page 346) The Whites Were to Be Killed (P. W. van Niekerk, page 358) EPILOGUE SEIZERS OF THE INHERITANCE: "THE STORY IS PAINFUL" Introduction (page 361) Jabulani Alone (Nomusa Makhoba, page 369) Age and Death (Magagamela Koko, page 395) Notes (page 401) Sources (page 421) Index (page 429) This work presents the voices of the South African oral tradition - the historians, the poets, the epic-performers, the myth-makers - documenting their enduring faith in the power of the word to sustain tradition in the face of determined efforts to distort or eliminate it.