Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) -- Fiction; English fiction; Xhosa (African people) -- Fiction
"Swear," said he, "by the bones of Congo's forefathers, to drive the
Amglezi to the sea which spits them up. Behold, we will turn the
hail-storm of their fire to water--it shall be as water poured through a
broken calabash. What right has the white man to put his foot before us
on our war-paths, when we choose to quarrel with the Gaikas about grass?
The bad people of Gaika steal from us--he shares the plunder--then we
take up arms against him--the white man comes, and tramples down our
corn; he begins the war, and will not let us rest in our huts, though
our fight with Gaika is no business of his. Gaika calls himself the
white man's friend; he is a liar--he hates the white man--but likes to
sit where he will in the colony with his eyes open. He stretches out
his hand, and the Amglezi fill it. The Amglezi are fools, and believe
him. He does not steal their cattle himself, but sits still upon the
hills, and sees it go by to the kloofs in the Amatolas; and quarrels
with us when he finds us there waiting to share the plunder that belongs
to all the land--our land--a land that will soon be dead to us, for
shall we reap the corn we have planted? Gaika is a woman--he will not
fight us himself, but lifts up his voice, and cries aloud to the white
men, who come among us like locusts, and eat us up, and then pay Gaika
in beads and buttons for his treachery to his brothers. Let the Amglezi
come--let them kill the last man of us--but let not Umlala's children
put their necks under the foot of Gaika. Better to be dead lions in our
own kraals, than live dogs in the Amglezi's territory. The white man
calls himself the protector of the Kafir tribes dwelling on the borders
of the country he has made his own; but we are oppressed by his
protection, and we will not have it; and we know, too, that some of the
Amglezi are with us in heart; for they tell us we are wronged, and bring
us arms and powder wherewith to regain our rights."
Doda thought within himself, "we pay for such stores;" but the thought
rested in his breast, for he dared not express it.
Amani proceeded, waving aloft an assegai, which quivered in the grasp of
his muscular palm:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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