GOLD DIGGER
Zakes Mda questions the role of the state as it collides with art, patriotism and imagination, writes Michele Magwood
The Sculptors of Mapungubwe ★★★ ★★ Zakes Mda (Kwela, 195)
THE lucent seam running through Zakes Mda’s new novel is that of the famous Mapungubwe gold, alloyed with the theme of art. Which is the better art? That which mimics accurately, or that which springs from the imagination? Mda, back in South Africa on one of his visits from the US, is in no doubt where he stands on this question. “I belong on the imagination side of things. I’m not dismissive of art that mimics, but I’m in favour of the guy who creates the kind of sculpture that is not official art.”
The setting for the novel is the gold-rich kingdom of Mapungubwe almost 1 000 years ago, and centres on the rivalry between two young men. Chatambudza and Rendani are the heirs to the Royal Sculptor Zwanga. They have grown up together, close as blood brothers, but as the story opens, their relationship is fracturing. Rendani carves and moulds exquisite likenesses of animals, while Chata, the son of a !Kung woman, creates fantastic creatures from the visions he summons in trance dances. This is, Rendani insists, “mbilisi”, or heresy. All art must be created for the glory of the king and the nation. Anything else is an abomination.
“Even today in states that profess to be free, the bureaucrats and the ruling elites have a problem with art that is independent, that doesn’t extol the official line,” says Mda. “Here we talk of nation building and social cohesion — if the artists are patriots they are expected to create official art. Then another artist decides to paint the penis of the president. He’s the equivalent of Chata.”
For all its concerns about art, however, this is a curiously artless novel. There’s a flaccidness to the writing, the sentences strung too loosely: “He swung his knobkierie and his cowhide shield which he carried as accoutrements to the easy rhythm of his steps as he ambled on the pathways among the homes until he got to the western end of the hill.” Zwanga gives his son “a toothless smile. He was proud of him. He had manned-up so quickly.”
Nevertheless, the history of Mapungubwe is enough to carry the reader along. The secluded king is only seen when he emerges to make rain, the god Mwali can only be communicated with through the ancestors. Mda writes of homosexuality, “the intercrural intercourse” that for Azande warriors was part of the victory celebrations after battle, and of slavery.
“The concept of buying or selling a slave was unheard of to them — that notion came with the Arabs. The slaves they had were mostly Bushmen people who, because of starvation and so on, would put themselves in bondage under rich people. Or slaves could be captured from enemies in battle,” says Mda.
He writes of diviners with their bowls full of cowrie shells, of shaving foam made with wood ash boiled in lard, of Swahili traders bringing glass beads and silk in exchange for ivory, gold and tame leopards. We learn of the ancient method of smelting gold and that a thousand years ago rhino horn was coveted by Arabs for dagger handles.
The story is rich in such detail, the matrix to age-old themes of greed, power, class. And the love of a beautiful woman.
Mda observes: “All artists are conscious of the fact that as you create art it changes you, it makes you see things from a different perspective, it gives you new insights about life. This novel created me as I was creating it. It enriched me with more knowledge. I’m different from who I was before I wrote it.”
And, indeed, the overriding impression one takes away from this novel is that the story it tells is more about its author than of the artists who laboured for their king — and themselves — a millennium ago. —