Mofolo’s Shaka

When I started to read Mofolo”s Chaka, I was struck by the manner in which Mofolo had moulded Chaka’s character. What is more interesting is the fact that the book was written at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, to be precise -Mofolo finished the book in l909, and yet it raised controversial questions, which are directly linked to the Shaka/Mfecane debate today.

Although the book was finished in l909, its publication process was delayed. In the early twenties, Mofolo revised the book and it was finally published in l925. It is not clear why the book was delayed.

Firstly, Mofolo’s novel was a premature study. Given the nature of the debates today, it has not received the status that it deserves from various critics. Kunene, to quote just a few, in his book Thomas Mofolo and the Emergence of Written Sesotho Prose, has seen the novel as a distorted view of what actually happened. He also argued that it brilliantly portrayed Chaka’s cruelty and Mofolo’s racism. Kunene argued that Mofolo's hatred for the Zulus caused him to destroy the King of the Zulus and he also suggested that the novel is a brilliant combination of fact and fiction. The latter view interests me more, because it raises a question to me. Is this not what historians always do in their historical writings?

Given the nature of historical debates today in relation to history and literature, I would like to argue that literature is a relevant source in the historical process. This is simply because of similarity between the historical ‘conventions’ and literary works. Firstly, historical conventions require us to use sources as evidence for our arguments. Historians SELECT ‘relevant’ information for their arguments. At some stage when there are loopholes they manage to find their way through the past and use their imaginations to recreate the past (Clingman, Radical History Review, 46/7, 1990). At the end historians often come up with diverse conclusions and successfully provide evidence to justify their views. This exposes the fictional character of the historical writings and as a result it impacts on the ways we ‘recreate’ the past.

Literature, in the same manner as history, ‘recreates’ the past by merging fact and fiction. But literary works, unlike historical writings, uses different narrative strategies. Although imagination plays a pivotal role in literature, there is an element of fact as it portrays real experiences, feelings, class structure and other features of the chosen community and this, according to Clingman, is what fulfils history. In addition to this, the literary writer will not tell us the sources s/he has used. Therefore, for me, it is essential to incorporate literary works, like Mofolo’s Chaka, as part of history as this might be an eye-opener for historical processes.

The novel deals with contemporary debates. The major debate, which is currently on the table, is the image of Chaka. Mofolo brilliantly creates this image, which seems to be approached in a limited way by the historians. For example some Zulus refer to Chaka as the greatest leader and on the other hand some portray him as a devil that gained power through his spear. Whether, at this stage, Chaka is used for a particular purpose is not the issue, but what is significant is the fact that no one has satisfactorily argued why Chaka’s image, good or bad, has continued to be popular. Mofolo’s book, for me, does supply useful and challenging ideas.

Secondly, how writers, politicians and some individuals, could manipulate Chaka’s image, whether by glorifying or destroying him, is equally addressed in the book.

Nevertheless, this study is, I must emphasise, not an attempt to contribute, directly, to the debates which are currently on the table about Chaka, but merely a simple review of how Mofolo, according to my own assessment, has represented Chaka in the novel. This assessment will hopefully open up other forms of debates and see whether Chaka was perhaps a piece of all these representations or perhaps a mystery.

Mofolo’s novel has actually touched on various questions through his multiple representation of Chaka’s character because, although he had portrayed him as a contradictory character, he had brilliantly woven Chaka as a controversial character in such a way that he becomes a bit of everything. Hamilton, in Authoring Shaka, also identified the ambiguity in Chaka. Is it not, perhaps, who Chaka really was, hence everyone could claim him and also provide evidence, successfully, to prove her/his view? We need to look, in detail, at Mofolo’s representation of Chaka.

In the novel Mofolo gives us a controversial view of Chaka and it resulted to three images of Chaka. The first image is Chaka as a warmhearted man who