Herbert Dhlomo - a short biography and bibliography of this KwaZulu-Natal author.
Herbert I. E. Dhlomo (1903 - 1956) the younger brother of
R.R.R. Dhlomo, was born in Siyama
Village near Pietermaritzburg, Natal, South Africa. In the
thirties he was
appointed to the staff of the Bantu World, a weekly
journal, and later was
assistant editor of Ilanga lase Natal. He died at
King Edward Hospital in
Durban on October 23, 1956.
Dhlomo's first work is also the first drama published in
English by a black
South African author. Entitled The Girl Who Killed to
Save (1936), it is
based on an episode of the Xhosa history, the cattle-
killing tragedy of
1857. The Valley of Thousand Hills (1941) is a long
elegiac poem, based on
the contrast between the harmony of nature and cruelty and
ugliness of human
society. Three of Dhlomo's plays, dealing with
the Zulu kings Shaka, Cetshwayo and the paramount chief
and founder of the
Sotho nation, Moshesh, "were meant to be published in
one book, which the
author intended to call The Black Bulls" (B.W.
Vilakazi). Apparently, none
of these works ever reached print.
Chaka - a Tragedy (1936), however, was performed by
the African Dramatic
Society in Johannesburg. Dhlomo also dealt with Zulu oral
art in a series of
articles. His controversy with B.W. Vilakazi about form
and content of Bantu
literature is probably the first controversy in the
history of African
literature.
'Dhlomo provides one of the most lucid expositions of the
societal
significance of folk art, and especially praise poetry, to
have come from
the pen of an African' (Albert S. Gerard). Selected Workfrom Dingana (Adapted performance script. First
performed by the Medical Students' Drama Group
of the University of Natal, 28 May 1954.)
JEQE: Shaka - The man who set the world on
fire: It is right that I should spend my last moments
speaking in his
praise, 0 countryside, O hills, O cattle paths and winding
streams - how
much he loved these things, Shaka, King of Men, the Black
One, in the
listening hours of night we sought the path, he and I, to
the inner
mystery of life, the soul of watching mountains and the
pregnant
darkness. For beauty of bird or woman or evening strangely
stabbed him,
and in all his wildest acts, I believe, he sought the
blood of beauty,
and the heart of it.
NTOMBAZI: How wonderful, the Zulu tongue; strong, and full
of stabbing
music.
JEQE: Is it?
NTOMBAZI: Your speech is song.
JEQE: Ha, in Zululand we run to eloquence; we are
all orators and
bards.
NTOMBAZI: Are you not hungry and thirsty after all your
trials?
JEQE: You are a woman who understands the language of the
stomach.
NTOMBAZI: Here is water.
JEQE: (Drinking) Water is like a woman, cool, sweet, and
lovely.
NTOMBAZI: The pot is like you, warrior; big, strong, and
empty.
JEQE:
Indeed I am still empty.
NTOMBAZI: There is food in the village.
JEQE: Whose
village is it?
NTOMBAZI: Ntombazi's.
JEQE: Ntombazi. She, that great healer.
NTOMBAZI: And slayer.
JEQE: And slayer. The renowned doctor of Swaziland. So
far from death
I've come to death, for the Zulus who come here never
return.
NTOMBAZI: Yes, in Zululand you make words; in Swaziland we
make
medicine. This is a land of doctors: almost every grown-up
person here
knows which roots and leaves are medicinal - and which
have power to
kill.
JEQE: I wish some of us knew more about such things, and
less about
forging arms. Yet medicine has its own evils. It is made
of insects,
lowly creatures, and herbs: wild and earthy things. So it
has two
powers: a power for life and, a power of destruction. Bibliography1936. Chaka: A Tragedy.
1936. The Living Dead.
1936. The Girl who Killed to Save: Nongqause the
Liberator.
1941. Valley of a Thousand Hills.
1954. Dingana. (Adapted performance script) - Pietermaritzburg -
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