Credo Mutwa - a short biography and bibliography of this KwaZulu-Natal author.
Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa (1921 - ) was born in
Natal. His father was a former Catholic
catechist from the Embo district near Inanda. His mother
was the descendant of a long line
of Zulu medicine-men and custodians of tribal lore and
customs. His parents
parted shortly after Vusamazulu's birth, because his
mother refused to convert
to Christianity. Mutwa was educated by his maternal
grandfather, a medicine-man,
and carrying the bags for him, the boy learned some of the
older man's secrets.
In 1928 Vusamazulu was taken to the Transvaal by his
father. They lived on a farm
near Potchefstroom, where his father was a labourer. After
twenty years of
different farms the father found employment in one of the
Johannesburg mines as
a carpenter. Mutwa himself found employment in 1954 in a
curio shop in
Johannesburg and has been working there ever since. When
he visited his mother
and grandfather in Zululand after thirty years of absence,
he renounced
Christianity at their command, and underwent the ceremony
of purification, in
order to begin training as a medicine-man. He also
prepared himself to assume
the post of custodian of tribal lore and customs in the
event of his
grandfather's death. Mutwa has written African tales which
have their roots in
oral, traditional Zulu culture. Two well known collections
of these stories are
Indaba My Children (1966) and My People: writings
of a Zulu Witchdoctor
(1969).
Selected WorkFrom Indaba, My Children (1966)
The beautiful queen of the Wakambi, the
peerless Marimba, was walking through the forest with her
handmaidens on her way
to the riverside to bathe her body in the cool waters.
Birds sang in the trees
overhead and the forest was heavy with the scent of
thousands of flowering
shrubs. Myriads of butterflies and colourful insects were
fluttering in clouds
of white, blue and brown among the wild flowers and the
buzzing song of nyoshi,
the bee, was clearly heard in the blinding sunlight. Timid
hares galloped
through the long grass and the cooing voice of le-iba, the
turtle dove, added
yet more enchantment to an already enchanting day.
The sky was the purest of blue, Only a few clouds were to
be seen in the eternal
expanse of the heavens and those were as soft as wool and
as delicate as the
body of a Sun-maiden.
As the queen went through the forest, her great-eyes were
as alive as moon
crystal. From the enchanting woodland scene she drank in
inspiration as the
grateful grass drinks the morning dew. Where the ordinary
man sees only the
trees,' she saw them in their dignity and superb beauty;
and where the ordinary
man hears only the rustling of the breeze through the
branches of the trees, and
the senseless twittering of the numerous birds, she heard
the soul-stirring
verses of the Song of Creation.
She was not very far from the river when she saw a number
of young boys gathered
together above something that lay in the tall grass, The
boys were talking and
gesticulating excitedly and were all patting one amongst
them on the back in
obvious congratulation. Their voices floated through the
scented air into the
keen ears of Marimba and, as one might expect from this
great woman, she left
her retinue and went to investigate. What she saw there
filled her with anger
and disgust, and tears sprang unbidden into her eyes. One
of these boys had
invented a particularly vicious and cowardly kind of
snare. With which to catch young antelopes. He had tried it
out and it had worked all
too well. Lying on
the ground With a cruel noose around her lifeless neck was
a young steenbuck ewe
which had fallen a victim of this fiendish trap, and the
poor animal had only a
few days to go before it produced young.
"Which of you sons of night-howling, splay-footed,
green-bellied hyenas invented
this thing?" demanded Marimba hotly.
The boys made no reply. They just stared at their dusty
feet in very frightened
silence. Two of them wetted their loinskins at the same
time, much to the
amusement of the royal handmaidens.
"I asked you a question, you mud-wallowing tadpoles!
" cried Marimba. At last one
of them said in a voice that was hardly a whisper:
"I . , . I did, Oh Great
One."
"You did, did you?" cried Marimba in a burst of
ecstatic fury. "Now indeed, you
are going to suffer for your deed!"
"Mercy please, Oh Great One," whispered the
boy.
"Marimba has no mercy for bloodthirsty little idiots
of your kind," said the
angry queen coldly. "Breathe into the nostrils of
that animal and bring it back
to life."
The astonished followers of Marimba saw the boy lift the
head of the dead buck
and actually try to breathe life back into it. There was a
gale of feminine
laughter which the angry chieftainess quelled with a look
of cold fury in her
glittering eyes. A deep respectful silence settled upon
the group of watching
maidservants while the boy, with sweating face and
inflated cheeks, and a heart
that was almost stopping with cold fear, huffed and puffed
in vain to revive the
dead animal.
"That animal had better come back to life, Oh little
vermin," said the princess
cruelly. "If it does not you will soon wish that you
had never been born."
The badly frightened boy tried his best. He tried
everything he could while the
queen watched him coldly and impassively, and the
handmaidens watched with broad
smiles on their faces.
"Why", said Marimba at long last, "it seems
to me as if you find it easier to
kill an animal than to bring it back to life!'
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Bibliography1966. Indaba My Children.
1966. Africa Is My Witness.
1969. My People: writings of a Zulu Witchdoctor.
n.d. uNosilimela.
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