world, and what little is left on it,
Has my mercy, oh beloved one;
Calm down – earthquakes, fires and storms,
Trouble my earth no more!’
The great city tilted and sank
Forever below the seas;
The real sun broke through the dissolving clouds
And the sea turned a blazing copper-red.
Two figures, one male and one female,
Joyfully rode on the back of a fish;
They were riding towards the rising sun—
Blessed by our Goddess and the Tree of Life!
POSTSCRIPT
Indaba . . . Let us pause here, oh my children, and reflect most seriously upon the rather lengthy legends we have heard.
It is said, briefly, that the Great Spirit had created the Universe for reasons that nobody must endeavour to fathom. The Great Spirit used a being called the First Goddess, who worked as a tool under His directions. In answer to a request she was granted as a companion a weird kind of ‘being’, half plant and half animal, the Tree of Life. This Tree of Life is the most revered deity throughout Bantu Africa, even today. Numerous representative designs are engraved on clay pots, burnt on wooden spoons, trays and other vessels. It is also frequently depicted in all kinds of ornamental carvings, in ebony, ivory and mahogany. Some of these designs are illustrated in the accompanying figures.
The Ndebele tribes of the Transvaal are the most fanatical worshippers of the Tree of Life, south of the Zambesi. The Zulus, too, are strong believers in this deity, but some interpret it as a huge hollow reed, rather than a tree. They call it Uhlanga Lwe Zizwe, which means ‘Reed of all Nations.’
We then came to Za-Ha-Rrellel (Tsarelleli or Sarelleli to most tribes today), who was said to have been responsible for the infection of all mankind with mental diseases like ambition and a love for all the wicked things that mostly ensue from it, including bloodshed.
The main reason why the Africans used to destroy crippled and otherwise deformed children was to prevent this fabled tyrant from ever being reborn or reincarnated, to spread his evil and dangerous knowledge amongst men once more.
Many of the mighty cliffs in Zululand and the Transkei stand today as dumb witnesses of many sacrifices of deformed children that have been made in the course of time.
THE COMING OF THE SECOND PEOPLE
OR
‘THY ORDEAL, OH AMARAVA’
BEHOLD THE SURVIVORS!
Like the rest of the First Amarire People,
The beautiful Amarava was immortal and could live forever
Unless deliberately stabbed with a spear
Or devoured by a ferocious beast.
But unlike the rest of the Amarire People,
She had not become sterile, nor had she lost
The power of walking and running
In that world of floating mats and sleds;
Except, of course, those sub-human beings
Which Za-Ha-Rrellel, the Emperor, had created.
In that glittering fantastic world of the obese
Where even yawning had become a strenuous thing,
Amarava stood alone, like a full-hipped
Heavy-breasted narrow-waisted goddess
Amongst so many bloated, sterile
And depraved swine.
People laughed at her and called her a barbarian,
A crude and uncivilised atavism,
Who should have been cast off the floating golden city
To live in a cave like the savage she was.
But Amarava, whose name was later corrupted
By the Bantu to Mamiravi or Mamerafe
The so-called ‘Mother of Nations,’
Heeded none of all this ridicule.
She contented herself with composing—
Singing songs in which she bitterly derided
Her people with their hollow, meaningless,
Depraved and selfish civilization.
When the Emperor Za-Ha-Rrellel
Massed his metal beasts for his most disastrous attack
On the Tree of Life,
Amarava stood alone in the doorway
Of her humble silver hut
And watched with horror and deep fascination
As the clanking hordes of iron grass-hoppers
And huge bronze poisonous scorpions
Thundered by on their way to the Great Square.
Like the rest of the Amarire she already knew
The purpose of those myriads of robot insects
And just what they were intending to attack.
As she stood there a cloud of horrible apprehension
Darkened the pure blue skies of her virgin soul.
‘Oh no!’ she whispered, ‘Oh Great Za-Ha-Rrellel,
Now with this you are going too far!’
Then, sick at heart she turned
And commanding the door to close,
She dropped on her silver floating mat
And soon fell fast asleep.
She was awakened by a torrent
Of the most dreadful sounds she had ever heard
In her very
