The Uncoiling Python

South African Storytellers and Resistance

Harold Scheub

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780821443323
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: African Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

There are many collections of African oral traditions, but few as carefully organized as The Uncoiling Python. Harold Scheub, one of the world's leading scholars of African oral traditions and folklore, explores the ways in which oral traditions have served to combat and subvert colonial domination in South Africa. From the time colonial forces first came to southern Africa in 1487, oral and written traditions have been a bulwark against what became 350 years of colonial rule, characterized by the racist policies of apartheid. The Uncoiling Python: South African Storytellers and Resistance is the first in-depth study of oral tradition as a means of survival.

In open insurrections and other subversive activities Africans resisted the daily humiliations of colonial rule, but perhaps the most effective and least apparent expression of subversion was through indigenous storytelling and poetic traditions. Harold Scheub has collected the stories and poetry of the Xhosa, Zulu, Swati, and Ndebele peoples to present a fascinating analysis of how the apparently harmless tellers of tales and creators of poetry acted as front-line soldiers.

1

METAPHOR

Inevitable Encounters, Tools for Analysis

When I was witnessing performances of oral stories in southern Africa, I slowly became aware of how meaning is generated. Storytellers and their audiences acquainted me with two essential aspects of analysis: a complex form of metaphor and a basic transformational movement. These, I learned, were the basic tools that lead to understanding.

METAPHOR

Of the tools for understanding how stories work, none is more important than metaphor. A Ndebele story reveals the metaphorical process: two men, one from the west and one from the east, are bound to move from the one to the other. This is the metaphorical state of human existence—humans always moving to their other side, their lives composed of this process of movement, a move to completion. Metaphor is more than a connection of two unlike images: it is the process of connection to two images that, while apparently unlike, are in fact precisely the same. Metaphor is that mysterious inevitable movement.

A Ndebele Story

“STRANGE ENCOUNTERS”

By Agnes Ncube

Agnes Ncube creates a story about two friends whose closeness results in “Strange Encounters.” One goes to the west and settles. He makes a difficult journey to visit his friend, then goes back to his home in the west. When he decides once again to return to the east, with the help of two men he cuts brush and fights ogres along the way. Then the other man sets out to visit his friend in the west. The two meet during their journeys. Strangely, they have identical thoughts of following ashes on the path. They meet in the mythic center . . . out there, far from their homes, in a land of heavy brush and ogres, ashes point the way.

Two men had been friends for a long time. Then one day one of the men set out to hunt, going toward the west. While on the hunt, he came to a place that had a lot of game. So he settled there, and he built a homestead for himself.

After a time, he thought, “I left my friend behind back there. I’d like to go back to see him, but how can I leave my homestead here?”

This friend of his was thinking the same thing: “How will I ever see my friend again? Which way should I go to see him?” While he was thinking about this, it began to rain hard. He considered setting out, but he thought, “I’ll have trouble crossing overflowing rivers along the way.”

Then, one day, this man who had set out from where they had originally lived, the one who had built a homestead for himself, became the first to make the journey. While he was traveling, he said, “When a person sets out on a journey like this, he should go toward the east, where he came from.” So he went straight in that easterly direction. He traveled on, persisting in his journeying, not knowing what to expect.

Then, suddenly, he was there with his friend, who was very surprised at their meeting after so many days and years.

“Where have you come from?”

They greeted each other, rejoiced with each other. All was well, and this one told him that he had found a beautiful site and had built a homestead.

After a time, the man’s sojourn came to an end. He had to return to his homestead. So he set out—going west, sleeping along the way, stopping as he went along. At length, he arrived at his home.

After a time, he began to consider again whether he should return to his old home in the future. But he knew now that where he wanted to go, that place in the east, was a long distance. “I might come across wild animals and ogres.” Then he thought, “On the other hand, if I don’t get up and go back there, what will happen?”

So the man looked back and prepared to set out, knowing that to the east of his homestead was much fearsome, grassy land. He decided that he must have two men to accompany him. The men agreed. He said, “Let’s take axes, men, and as we go we’ll cut the bushes. We’ll try to go precisely in an easterly direction. That’s the only way to get to where my friend is.” So they cut the bushes, and moved on and on.¹

In the meantime, the other man felt saddened that his friend had taken such a long trip and had traversed long roads to get there, that he had spent such a long time on the road. “I will begin a long, arduous journey toward the west. It might be that I shall find my friend who comes from the west, I may find him striving with all his strength to reach my home, the home of his friend.”

At the same time, the one who came from the east was striving with all his strength, seeking the help of other people. They chopped down the bushes to open the way. Having cleared a long path, they could see that the homestead toward which they were moving was getting closer. So they cut down more bushes.

As the one who came from the west was asleep one day, the one who came from the east said, “I can see in front of me what appears to be my old homestead drawing closer and closer. I desire therefore that I should enter secretly, so that I may see whether what I see in front of me is actually my home.”

He pushed ahead with his plan, terribly afraid, thinking of wild animals and ogres, knowing that they ate people up completely. As he continued on his journey, as he traveled on, he began to see ashes appearing on his path. It was toward evening. He pushed ahead, however, following the ashes, even though he had thoughts sometimes about ogres. He pressed on.

When he arrived at the place where the ashes came from, he found that friend of his, also traveling. He was very happy, and he greeted him. They asked each other questions.

This man said, “Thoughts came to my mind as I slept. I decided to continue cutting down the bushes, going toward the east. It was as if I had a peculiar sense of where you might be. The first time I went in the direction of the west, and traversed long slopes and ridges. When I returned, I journeyed over quite a few slopes, cutting down as I went, opening up a path.”

The other said, “I have been involved in a similar undertaking. What is it that has caused identical thoughts to come to us?”

They were taken aback.

So it was that they had cut down the bushes until they met, having opened up a way that was short, beginning with the idea that they should visit the home of the man who lived in the west. When they arrived there, an ox and a goat were slaughtered. And there was a huge celebration.

And there was festivity in the homestead of the friend who had remained behind. There was a great slaughtering and wonderful merrymaking. There was feasting. Everything was done, there was rejoicing because they had received thoughts that were identical, thoughts that had had a happy issue. It was wonderful.

COMMENTARY

Stories are regularly composed of two characters who, taken together, reveal the two sides of one individual. Typically, one of those characters is mythic. In this case, the two characters seem to be real-life figures, but they meet in the mythic arena between their two homes. For this storyteller, the strangeness of the encounter is sufficient: “What is it that has caused identical thoughts to come to us?” In the end, “there was rejoicing because they had received thoughts that were identical, thoughts that had had a happy issue.”

Metaphor occurs as the two characters merge into union.

TRANSFORMATION

Stories deal with transformation. The theme of transformation weaves through this book; the oral stories and poems of the San and Nguni peoples of southern Africa are essentially constructed around transformation patterns. This constant theme of transformation reveals the way the people of the region survived the onslaught of colonialism. Because we have been dealing with the uncoiling python, consider three stories about snakes . . .

A Zulu Story

MAMBAKAMAQULA

By Kholekile

Two sisters, a cripple, and Mambakamaqula are the crucial characters in the story, with the cripple testing and instructing the girls, one of whom succeeds, while the other fails. The success of the elder sister is revealed by her doppelgänger, the snake-man. The other sister is cast aside. The two sisters and Mambakamaqula are the same being: the two sisters, the two sides of the same character; Mambakamaqula, the fantasy shadow whose move from animal to human mirrors the princess’s move from girl to woman. The mystical aspects of the storytelling performance involve an inner movement that is energized by emotions at the same time that it organizes emotions, and so moves metaphor from vehicle to tenor.² The uncoiling snake is the storyteller’s artistic device to reveal a transformation at the same time that metaphorical connections between humans and the animated world around them are being made.

It happened that a king of his people begot female children. They grew up until they were older girls.

They heard that there was a king, Mambakamaqula. The elder one, the crown princess, left. She went to be married to Mambakamaqula.

She went out and arrived there. At the river of that place, she found a cripple fetching water and carrying it on her hips.

The cripple said, “Where are you going, mother? Come here, and you shall put this burden upon me.” She asked, “Where are you going?”

The princess answered, “I am going to be married to Mambakamaqula.”

She said, “Yo! Sit down and let me tell you.” And she proceeded, “He is a snake, child of man.” She went on, “Don’t be frightened, don’t be seized by fear. If you are, he will kill you. When you have ...