The Strange Ones established great plantations near the Inyangani Mountains and here thousands of slaves also toiled, planting, hoeing and reaping corn and other crops which the Strange Ones had brought from their native lands. Even today, traces of these fantastic plantations that legends say were fertilised with hacked bits of bodies of dead slaves during winter, still survive for all to see and marvel at. These are known today as the terraced plantations of Inyanga. No Black people ever farmed in the terraced style.
In the course of time, more of the Strange Ones came to settle in the land, together with members of that hated race called the Arabi, which was to wreak so much havoc in our land in years that followed. Many of the Strange Ones took wives from the Lawu (Hottentots) and from the Batwa (Bushmen) races and many became the sons and daughters of Strange Ones and Yellow Ones.
Fifty years after Lumbedu’s death the Strange Ones began to build many cities and villages in the land. But the biggest and most important city was on the shores of lake Makarikari – today a vast shallow salt pan.
This city was big enough to contain more than a thousand people, the legends say, and it was surrounded by a strong stockade of wood with stone towers at regular intervals. A deep ditch, filled with water, went completely around the city, rendering it utterly impregnable to attack, and the only entry into the city was over a short wooden bridge across the ditch into a gateway. A great settlement sprang up around the city in the course of time as hundreds of traders, slave-raiders and ordinary settlers built their homes outside the city walls, and there raised their families.
The Strange Ones began to multiply in the land, although fever and all-too-frequent epidemics killed many of them. As a result of their trade with lands beyond the great waters, the Strange Ones amassed fantastic wealth in their homes and cities and they lived their lives in great luxury. Today, one still finds in the possession of Bantu witchdoctors incredibly old and rusted swords with bronze hilts, swords so old that their blades crumble at a light blow with a stone. There are unbelievably old ornaments of gold and silver and bronze – ornaments that are neither Bantu nor Arabi; worn, pitted and even distorted by age – ornaments that are today very jealously guarded by Tribal Historians and High Witchdoctors as the Secret Charms of the tribe. These ornaments are still used today in secret rituals and they still keep the memory of the Strange Ones fresh in Tribal Story-Tellers’ minds.
As time went on, the empire of the Strange Ones, like all things based on murder, oppression and theft, began to take the downward path of decay. The number of ships that crawled up the mouth of the Zambezi began to lessen gradually and many of the sites where gold, iron and copper had been mined were abandoned and forgotten. Gradually the empire of the Strange Ones was isolated from the world outside and the Strange Ones turned more and more of their attention to making their lives as full of luxury and pleasure as possible. Soon the lives of each and every one of them became one long orgy of song, dance, food and drink. They invented new and fantastic ways of entertainment. They had idols before which they performed orgies both revolting and utterly fantastic. The legends say that some of their queens and empresses began mating with beasts in attempts at finding new sources of carnal pleasure. Some even tried to mate their daughters to lions in an attempt at producing a new race of men who were supposed to combine the courage, endurance and ferocity of lions with the intelligence of human beings.
The legends also say that one of the Emperors of the Strange Ones had a young man for a Queen and he used to kill women, both of his own race and of the Bantu race, with great cruelty, as entertainment.
It is said that the Emperors of the Strange Ones called themselves the ‘Children of the Star’, because they claimed to have descended from a star that fell on earth, which took a young woman of the Strange Ones and had sons by her.
The next part of this strange story of the Strange Ones begins with the birth of a man called Mukanda, or Lumukanda, the Destroyer, who was destined to play a major role in the history of the Strange Ones. Lumukanda was born of slave parents in one of the filthy underground stalls where the slaves were kept in the great city on the shores of lake Makarikari.
He grew up a slave who knew no other kind of life except that of a slave. To him, as to all others born in slavery, the word freedom meant absolutely nothing and he lived only to be commanded and to obey. He was nothing but a puppet, dancing and capering at the commands of cruel masters.
By this time, the Black race between the Zambezi and Limpopoma rivers had been all but totally annihilated and the only free people there were the dead ones. At the time when the mighty hero Lumakanda was a youth of sixteen the empire of the Strange Ones was suddenly split violently into two as the result of a war between the White Emperors whose names have come down to us as Kadesi and Karesu. (These are not their true names; the Tribal Chroniclers have corrupted them in the course of time.)
When the story (which custom commands us to tell in Lumakanda’s own words) commences, this war between the quarrelling foreign rulers had just ended in defeat and flight for Kadesi, and victory for the unnatural Karesu who had a male and not a female consort.
And so, my children, now begins the strangest story of all – the second sequel of our great Zima-Mbje Story, the grand epic that is still sung and chanted by many tribes even today, the undying story of the undying man who loved a goddess and who changed the destiny of an empire.
THE STORY OF LUMUKANDA
THE WHISPERING NIGHT
Night had fallen, but the feasting in the house of the man who owned me went on without pause. The great hall was one blaze of light from the many torches burning steadily inside. The sounds of merriment were loud in my ears as I stood guard at the gate with my friend Lubo.
Many were the masters who came into the gate, but few were those who went out – and they left only because they were so full of good food and so drunk they could eat and drink no more.
Some left our owner’s house on gilded stretchers carried by slaves because they had passed into the dark valleys of unconsciousness as a result of the vast quantities of beer and wine they had consumed. One of them came out in the most un-masterly fashion, being dragged out by the hair by no less a person than our owner’s son, and flung head over heels down the clay steps of the great house into the dust. We learnt later that this worthy had been treated in such a fashion because he had heatedly told the owner of the house that rather than see the mad and unnatural Karesu ruling the Empire, he would have Kadesi on the throne. That was treasonable talk and Lubo and I agreed that the offending master had got off very lightly indeed.
The moon rose and its eerie light gave the white-painted houses of the great city a delicate, ghostly quality that had to be seen to be believed. Beyond the brooding stockades that guarded the city like a crocodile’s jaws, the huge expanse of water that was Makarikari became one fantastic sheet of living silver. A few stars sparkled faintly in the heavens, fighting a losing battle against the grey soft light of the sacred orb of the night and the song of thousands of crickets was loud.
There were no thoughts of what the future held for me; I had no speculations over what was in store for me. I, and the rest of my shackled race, led our lives like the beasts of burden we were; it was of no use for us to speculate or to dream, because daydreams make a slave’s life more intolerable than the chains around his ankles and neck.
A rasping voice rang out from the top of the steps behind us: ‘Lumukanda, the second slave, the master calls for you.’
It was the old man, Obu, the first
