He had begun addressing them in the sitting posture, but as he warmed to his subject had risen to his feet, and now strode up and down as he spoke.
“I am nobody. I am a boy. I am a child among the sons of Senzangakona, the Root of the Tree that overshadows the land, the rise of the sun that sheds light on the people. It is not I who should be talking here to-day, Amazulu. Hau! even as that Great One foretold, he who died by ‘the stroke of Sopuza’ the land is splintered and rent. He, Senzangakona’s great son, he whom the whites have taken from us, the shine of whose head-ring is dulled in his prison—what of him? Not little by little, but in large cuts his ‘life’ is being rent from him. Where are they whom he left—they who were as his life? Ha! are they not given over as a prey to a traitor; the spoiler of his father’s house, the son of Mapita. Who is he? The dog of him who is gone. Who is Sibepu?”
“Whau! Sibepu!” broke from the listeners. “The spoiler of his father’s house!”
“Eh-hé! The spoiler of his father’s house!” echoed the group of chiefs, squatted behind the speaker.
“From the meanest of the nation,” went on the speaker, “the Abelungu have chosen those who should be kings over us. Umfanawendhlela, he who now sits at the royal kraals on the Mahlabatini. Who is he? Who is Umfanawendhlela?”
“Whau! Umfanawendhlela!” broke forth again the contemptuous roar.
“Yet such as these are the Abelungu now using as their dogs, setting them on to hunt those before whom they formerly cringed and crawled. Those of the House of Senzangakona are already hungry. All their cattle is being taken by these dogs of the Abelungu, and with the women of the Royal House they can do what they will, for have they not already done so? But behind these sits another dog and laughs. U’ Jandone! Who is Jandone?”
“Hau! U’ Jandone!”
This time the roar was indescribable in its volume of execration. It seemed to split the surrounding rocks with the concentrated vengefulness of its echo. For a few moments the speaker could not continue, so irrepressible were the murmurs of wrath and hate which seethed through the ranks of his listeners.
“Who made him a Zulu,” he went on, “since he came into the country white? Who made him rich—rich in cattle, and wives, and power? Who but him who is gone? But when the storm gathered and the Abelungu invented childish grievances and said ‘the might of Zulu must be crushed’—did this one who had come here white to be made black; who had come here poor to be made rich—did he stand by that Great One’s side and say ‘This is my father who has made me great. This is my friend, by whom I am what I am. I hold his hand. His fall is my fall. Did he?’ Hau! Jandone!”