adminKok’s Tales with Robert Mshengu Kavanagh
ADAM Kok’s wife, Rudo, comes from Mutasa in Manicaland.
She and Adam had journeyed to Rudo’s rural home over the weekend. A sekuru of hers had died and the family was distributing the old man’s personal effects.
As a mukwambo, Adam had been treated to a popular family story about the late old man. He told it to me when he got back to Harare. It went like this.
Sekuru Josphat was a n’anga (traditional doctor) but he had worked all his life as an agricultural worker on the farms of various white farmers in Marange, Makoni and Mutasa.
He himself lived in Goto on the banks of the Ruzawi River. This sekuru was a renowned lady’s man and he had left a woman with his child or children on each of the farms he had worked on.
The last farm he worked on was in the Headlands area and the name of the farmer was a Mr Swanepoel. Now every farm that sekuru Josphat had left, he had left for his own reasons. However, it so happened that, for a reason Josphat couldn’t quite understand, Baas Swanepoel had told him to pack his belongings and be off his farm within 24 hours.
Josphat was puzzled but not being a man to give trouble, he simply did as he was told. His fellow workers gave him a good send-off that evening — sadza and a road-runner and copious gallons of mhamba.
When everyone had either passed out or gone off to sleep, sekuru Josphat went to the dingy little room he shared with another worker, took from his things a short stick and went to the cattle kraal.
The cattle made no noise – they knew sekuru Josphat well – as he touched forty of the very best beasts lightly on the rump with his stick. Then he went off to sleep.
He rose early in the morning and then with his few belongings, which of course included the things he used in his work as a n’anga, he set out cross-country on his long journey home to Goto.
Now the strange thing was that as sekuru Josphat set off down the dust road to the farm gate, the noise of cattle could be heard behind him. The 40 prime beasts sekuru Josphat had touched lightly on the rump with his stick had broken down the danga and were following him.
Baas Swanepoel’s workers were woken up by the noise of the cattle and one of them immediately ran off to tell the baas, who of course, was furious. He and his two sons grabbed their rifles and with some of the workers they set out in pursuit of the cattle – not before phoning the police, however.
Those were the days when the police in the rural areas of Zimbabwe were almost like the white farmers’ security guards and a detachment of them rushed to the farm to join in the chase. Naturally, this detachment was headed by a white officer.
It was an easy matter to track the route the cattle had taken and it wasn’t long before the workers guessed where it was heading. They began whispering to each other that this was the route sekuru Josphat would have taken on his way back home.
It didn’t take time for Swanepoel and his two sons, Dirk and Jannie, to twig that the disappearance of the cattle was the work of the farm labourer who had been dismissed the day before. They suspected that, disgruntled with his dismissal, he had taken the cattle in revenge.
They soon caught up with sekuru Josphat, the missing cattle walking docilely behind him. Now this was strange. Anyone stealing cattle would have to drive them before him, but sekuru Josphat was simply walking home and it was the cattle themselves that seemed to be following him.
Nevertheless, there was no doubt about it that he was the guilty party. Swanepoel wanted to shoot him dead there and then. The sons wanted to beat him up there and then.
The white policeman, however, counselled that instead of shooting or beating Josphat up, it would be better to arrest him for cattle-theft and take him off to jail – where it would be a lot easier to beat him up or even kill him if that was necessary.
However, sekuru Josphat knew his rights. “What is the baas arresting me for, officer?” he asked the policeman.
“I am arresting you for cattle theft, boy,” said the policeman.
“That is good, officer. It is good to arrest people who steal cattle. I have had many of my own cattle stolen and I wish policemen like you could come and arrest them. But why arrest me? I would never steal cattle. What cattle have I stolen?”
When the white baas, Swanepoel, heard this he was beside himself and it was very hard for the white policeman to stop him venting his fury on sekuru.
“Did you not see that I am just walking home? I am not driving the cattle before me. Have you ever seen a cattle thief behave in this way? Here are the cattle. Let Baas Swanepoel and the two pikinini baases take their cattle home so I can continue with my journey. I am returning to my rural home in Goto and I have a long way to go.”
The white policeman thought that in the circumstances this would probably be the best solution and he managed to persuade Swanepoel and his sons to take his advice and drive their cattle home. Josphat continued on his journey.
The black onlookers, workers and policemen, could have given the white men very good advice if they had asked for it. But no one asked for it and in any case out of loyalty to their erstwhile fellow labourer, sekuru Josphat, they were glad no one bothered to ask for it.
However, when the order came to drive the cattle home, they set to work with relish, knowing only too well what was going to happen – which was that the more they tried to turn the heads of the cattle back to Baas Swanepoel’s farm, the more the cattle insisted in going in the other direction.
Baas Swanepoel was beside himself with impotent anger. What made it worse is that he could see the smirks on the faces of his workers and he knew they knew exactly what was going on. Despite all their efforts, they could not persuade or force a single beast to go back to the farm.
Finally, having uttered some of the most outrageous swearwords in his native language, Afrikaans, and having clobbered a few of his workers, Baas Swanepoel decided that he would rather shoot the cattle than allow the old son-of-the-soil to get the better of him.
He had already shot dead two of his cattle before the white policeman was able to seize his gun, shouting: “Mr Swanepoel, are you mad? Don’t do it. You need a licence to slaughter cattle. If you go ahead and shoot a single beast, it will be you who ends up in the Headlands jail and not your boy, Josphat!”
There was a hush. For a moment it appeared that Baas Swanepoel was about to shoot the white police officer. Fortunately, his sons intervened. Dirk took the gun and Jannie gently steered his devastated father back to Hemelsig (the sight of Heaven), which was what their grandfather had called their farm when the colonial government had arranged for him to take the land away from those who had lived on it for ages.
While Baas Swanepoel and his two sons, Dirk and Jannie, the silent chorus, the white police officer and his silent policemen all went in one direction, back to the farm, the 40 prime cattle hurried off in the other direction to catch up with sekuru Josphat.
And that is how sekuru Josphat came back to his homestead on the banks of the Ruzawi River with a herd of 40 prime cattle.
After he had spent some days recovering and resting after his long trek from Headlands, Josphat selected four cattle – two per child – and took them off to Mai Joseph on the first farm where he had worked and handed them over as maintenance for the two children he had left with her.
Ten more cattle he disposed of in this way. His own wife and family in Goto had nothing to complain about as 24 of Baas Swanepoel’s prime cattle now lowed and moo’ed mudanga. They turned out to be very useful when Josphat’s two sons found wives of their own and needed cattle for pfuma.
Now the wily old man, sekuru Josphat, was dead. He not only left behind a prosperous farm with many prime cattle on it but he also left a legend, which his family will no doubt recount for generations to come.
Zororai murugare, sekuru.
To access previous Kok Tales go to https://rmshengukavanagh.wordpress.com
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter