Review

Reviewed Work(s): Indaba, My Children by Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa

Review by: Charles P. Blakney
Source: African Historical Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1968), pp. 122-125
Published by: Boston University African Studies Center
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/216202
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122 BOOK REVIEWS

INDABA, MY CHILDREN. By Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa. New York: Humanities

Press, Inc. 1966. Pp. xiii, 354, illustrations. $11.00.

In his introduction "Vusamazulu the Outcast" tells us:

I am a Native of South Africa ... My father is a former Catholic cate-
chist... my mother, a "heathen," refused to be converted to Christianity
and my parents parted just after I was born... In 1928 my father came
... to take me away ... despite my mother's protest . .. For the next 20
years we lived on different farms and then lastly at the mine where my
father still works as a carpenter ... In 1954 I found myself employment
in one of Johannesburg's leading curio shops .. . I have been employed
there ever since . .. Being an amateur artist of sorts, I have travelled
quite widely in the country of my birth, first with Catholic priests in
1946 and 1948 and then with my present employer in 1958 (p. xii).
This much I am inclined to believe.

The author also says:

What I am trying to achieve with this book: simply to lay the foundation
for better understanding between two different types of human beings, by
destroying wrong notions and false "facts," and exposing much of what
must be known at the risk of censure by both Black and White people ...
I took what is called a "chief's Great Blood Oath" . . . swearing to tell
the world the truth about the Bantu people ... I swore to do this, come
imprisonment, torture or death, and even if the very fires of Hell or
the cold of Eternal Darkness stood in my way (pp. x and xiii).
This much is histrionics.

The dust cover (author unidentified) announces:

In these pages, Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa, Hereditary Witchdoctor
the Zulu nation, Guardian of Tribal History, and Guardian of Tribal
Religion -- "The Chosen One" -- tears aside the veil of secrecy that
for centuries has concealed the truth about African tribal history and
of their customs and religious beliefs.
That is nonsense.

Indaba, My Children is utterly without redeeming historical value

contains no authentic Bantu tradition. If it says anything true about Afric
their history, it is by accident. As it is presented to the public, it is a f

A further excerpt from the introduction provides us with a key to t

secret of this book: "If a Black man with a little knowledge of English, Fre
or Portuguese wants to study the White man -- as I have done -- all he h

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 BOOK REVIEWS 123

is to go into the nearest town and become a regular customer of one of the
second-hand bookshops there. He must buy and read no less than twenty
ferent kinds of books and magazines a month for a period of no less than 1
years" (p. ix). The style and content of Indaba, My Children clearly ind
that second-hand books, not tribal tradition, have provided the author with
bulk of his material. Such historical observations as are in his book seem to
have been picked up from idle speculation overheard around the curio sho

It may be just as well that the references to history are few. In an

case, they are quite incidental to the main concerns of the book -- magic, sex,
and violence. His story begins in the land of Tura-ya-Moya, near the great
lake Nyanza, within spear-throwing distance of the Masai, among the Wakambi.
In Section Two the action shifts southward with little explanation and depicts the
coming of the Strange Ones, the Maiti (identified on page ii as Phoenicians,
probably from the town of Gatti). Against these a chief called Lubo led a hoard
of Bantu, Bushmen, and half-castes. The Phoenician empire was destroyed,
its last survivors were eaten (they tasted good), and the victors became the
Lu-Anda, Luaaaanda, Luanda, Lunda of the eastern Congo (this bit of etymology
appears on page 105). The final sections detail the conflict between the Mambo
chiefs of Rhodesia and the Nguni chiefs. I am not quite sure of the final out-
come, but somehow a Portuguese "Kapitanoh" became involved, and the evil
empress, Muxakasa, who was shamelessly flirting with a white Arab, was
destroyed, or perhaps was transformed and disappeared. It does not make
much difference; this is fantasy, not tradition.

To give the fantasy a veneer of authenticity, the pages are decorated

with little line drawings. If they are by the author, he is not a bad draughtsman.
The drawings mostly depict items from the curio shop shelves. But he also in-
cludes hieroglyphs with translations, pictures of Phoenician boats and armored
warriors exactly, the captions say, as described in Zulu tradition. The inter-
spersing of authentic drums and masks with Phoenician warriors and their
hieroglyphics may be enough to make the willing believe that the warrior did
not really come out of the worn highschool book on ancient history that turned
up in that second-hand book shop, but it certainly would not fool any serious
student of Africa.

Off-handed references to ancient lore and law are likewise calculated to

lend an aura of authenticity. One I shall always treasure is to be found in a
footnote on page 299, where the reader will find a description of the law abou
kissing among the tribes; for confirmation the reader is referred to "the Seco
Law of the twenty-one High Laws in the 'Secret and Sacred Code of Love' a
the Tribes, " a volume that should prove to be good reading when it is rev
to the world!

In the prologue Mr. Mutwa tells us with great ceremony that "these
tribal story-tellers were called Guardians of the Umlando or Tribal History.
And I, Vusamazulu the Outcast, am proud to be one of these, and here I shall

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124 BOOK REVIEWS

tell these stories to you in the very words of the Guardians who told them
me." Those readers who have not had the opportunity to look at any aut
Zulu traditional literature can be assured that not even the wildest translations
could result in gems like, "soft-eyed virgins abandon their shyness and tur
into ravening bolts of brown, passion-charged lightning, " and, "the High
Leader's voice rang out hoarsely: 'Avengers Ten and Three -- ford the stream
and follow them!'" These provide, at best, an idea of the kind of books they
were selling in that second-hand book shop.

As for the proper names of the characters in the book, they provide a
brief guide to the route followed by the author's employers in their journeys
through Africa in pursuit of curios. Za-Ha-Rrellel, the evil father of all
Tokoloshes, mush have gotten his name among or near Lunyoro-speaking
peoples; it seems to be derived from Za (go), ha (to), and rrellel (I hate
to guess!). Names like Kiambo and Marimba come from East Africa, the
Mecca of all South African curio hunters. Notable among these is the "God of
Light, " Mulungu, which is the name for God among a large number of north-
eastern Bantu-speaking tribes. South African readers were gratified by this
choice, no doubt, since the word is homophonic with the word meaning white
man in southern languages. From Rhodesia comes Munumutaba, the dynasty
of kings centered at Limbabwe; the name is fractured Shona from fractured
Portuguese as it might sound in fractured Zulu. Lulama-Maneruana is sup-
posed to be the name for a Shona heroine, but the phonemics are improbable,
to say the least. The rest of the names, after discarding East African and
invented ones, come mostly from the author's own Zulu environment. His
characters are about as authentic as a curio shop window display. As for his
stories being passed down through ancient Zulu tradition, repeated word for
word, there is not a chance. The people and events in this book make such a
long list of inconsistencies that they are not worth describing. But, although
this book is worthless as a source of historical information about Africa, it may
be of interest to historians of a future generation as it oozes with the symptoms
of South Africa's sickness.

II

As a symptom of historical process this book is too tragic to joke

What first distresses the reader who is familiar with southern Africa is what
the author reveals about himself and his generation of detribalized Africans.
Denied the authentic tradition of the Zulu by his catechist father, and denied any
valid participation in Western society by his baas, what values remain for him
to cling to in such a world? Thus, he lives in a half-world of destructive and
sensuous beings among whom history works itself out in passion and magic. At
the end of the history he describes in Indaba, My Children, people are what they
were at the beginning; nothing has been learned. The only desperate little hope
that remains is the survival of the real self in an unreal world:

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 BOOK REVIEWS 125

From life's own stark, deserted land,

I snatch this fragrant triumph - -
That on the day I'm laid to rest,
Men shall salute my grave -- (p. 246).
Perhaps this is an acceptable excuse for the fraud Mr. Mutwa tries to perpetrate
in presenting his umlando (tribal history) to people who care so little about the
destruction of his society and his own spirit.

One must also be distressed at the waste of obvious talent. This book
would not have been worthy of an author with access to adequate academic dis-
cipline and resources; but for a young African to achieve such fluency out of the
resources of a little Potchefstroom book shop suggests that, had he grown up in
a healthy society, men might have had cause to salute his grave.

More frightening still is that those in South Africa with the necessary
affluence to buy this book take so much pleasure from it -- and, what is worse,
that many of them believe what they read there is the real, secret Africa.
After the book first appeared on the stands in Rhodesia, I spoke to several
people who were shocked at the suggestion that it might not be authentic. These
were the kind of settlers who tell us, "We know these people; we have lived in
Africa all our lives."

This is not surprising. Mr. Mutwa has learned some things that were
not written in second-hand books. From what must have been bitter experience
he knows that many white men in southern Africa are willing to pay for what
they want to hear about themselves. So Mr. Mutwa caters to their tastes by
telling them that "there are Africans - - hundreds of them - - who still believe
. . . that White women [with a capital "w" again] do not bear their children in
the painful way Black mamanas bear their piccanins . . . but that they lay
shining glass eggs that hatch out little Bwanas a day after being laid! . . .
Thousands . . . attribute godlike and terrible powers to Whites." How the
advocates of baaskap love to hear this sort of thing; and how they must have
thrilled to the description of the coming of the white man to Africa in Mutwa's
description of the Phoenicians: "They moved through the forest like a serpent
of living, shimmering bronze, each as alert as an angry lion, cold deep-set
eyes scanning the forest with the lofty contemptuousness of gods" (p. 55).

Little wonder that the Durban Sunday Tribune, according to the dust
jacket, hailed this book by calling it "an epic which may well rank as the most
outstanding contribution yet made by an African." But perhaps there is still
hope even in that statement -- at least it does not call the author a "Munt, " or a
"Native" with a capital "n, " or even a "Bantu, " as the official government
terminology would have it.
Charles P. Blakney
United Church Board for World
Ministries

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