Free Little Suns by Zakes Mda

the Great House.
    The two men stood in front of Mthwakazi as she beat the drum. She did not look up. She continued as if they were not there. Malangana was visibly shaking, trying very hard to suppress the hyperventilation that had suddenly overtaken him. Mhlontlo placed his hand on the head of the drum, stopping her from beating it. She looked up for the first time and saw the two men distorted by a glass of tears.
    ‘Go, child of the people of the trance. It is enough. The land has heard,’ said Mhlontlo.
    ‘It is to accompany every step she takes to the land of her ancestors,’ she said.
    ‘It is too early for that, child of the people of the eland. She will only become an ancestor after we have performed
umbuyiso
ritual. For now, go and sleep. That’s what we must all do.’
    Mthwakazi rose to her feet and tiptoed into the Great House to join the other mourners. Diviners and the old women of Sulenkama had swiftly congregated to prepare the queen for burial. Their songs were subdued.
    Malangana took the drum. It would serve as a good excuse to see Mthwakazi again. Mhlontlo did not ask him why he was taking the drum. Perhaps he did not even notice. His mind was occupied with how he would cope with grief – for the passing away of his queen and for the drought that was killing the earth. It had been an omen, this drought. A harbinger of the greatest death his Great Place had experienced so far.
    Malangana could not fall asleep after that. He sat on his
icantsi
bedding and contemplated the drum. His body began to shake when the significance of its presence in his room hit him. This was Mthwakazi’s own drum. Not just a drum; a sacred drum. This was the drum she beat when she communed with her ancestors. What if the spirits of all the dead abaThwa lived in it? How would it be possible to sleep in their presence?
    Occasional waves of distant wails reminded him that sleeping should not be a priority on a night like this in any case. Perhaps he should have stayed with Mhlontlo instead of rushing home to sleep.
    The king had not been himself lately. Even as the queen lay sick he was making extravagant promises to Hamilton Hope. Only four days ago Malangana had accompanied him to yet another meeting with the magistrate, after which Hope entertained them to a dinner of lamb, peas and mealie-rice on the veranda of The Residency. The magistrate looked frail, and he indeed confirmed that he had been in bed with a fever. Malangana wished in his heart that the man was suffering from more than just fever; maybe from consumption. He had seen when he was in jail how deadly the disease could be. It ate its victims to the bone and then killed them. It would be wonderful if Hope was getting his comeuppance from the protective ancestors of the amaMpondomise people for using his whip indiscriminately on revered elders. Malangana was smarting inside even as he sat in the shade of the veranda chewing on the soft lamb and doing his best to interpret for Hope, who spoke in a mixture of English and Sesotho, sprinkling them with the few words of isiMpondomise he had learned since being assigned to Mhlontlo’s jurisdiction two years before. He would never forgive Hope for his
kati
. His buttocks still twitched whenever he thought of the two occasions he had been its victim.
    Sunduza – the brother of the Reverend Davis, trusted by both amaMpondomise and Hope – was not there to interpret for the magistrate that day. The only other white man present was Warren. He sat quietly throughout, only jotting down notes in an exercise book with a new-fangled fountain pen. Hope kept looking at the pen with fascination as it left a trail of blue behind its nib without needing to be dipped into an ink bottle after every word or two.
    Mhlontlo was making his point to the magistrate: what the amaMpondomise people hated more than anything was judicial control. Government was taking away all the powers of the chiefs. What good was any chief without judicial