THE PROSELYTE OF OPHIR

For a struggling writer, this blogger is too lazy. Picture this: The editor of a insanely exciting South African journal asks, 'Potash can you send us a couple of random words?'
'Yea, easy like,' says P, The.
Two months post-deadline, Potash, The, in one of those ubiquitous moments of deliriums tremens, pens some inchoate junk but passes out at a point sub- 700 words.
Here it is...

In a small village, near Voi, as you approach the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa, there lives a young man. A man of great learning. A man well versed in both Bantu folk lore and Judaic-Christian-Hellenistic thought. His name: Mengo Samana- the philosopher; the mad man.

Samana's ancestors were great medicine men, even kings and queens. They were great travellers and conquistadors, ruling the Land of the Motapas and the territories of Moshoeshoe. Great Sangomas is what they were, holding dominion over all manner of being on the great veld long before Shaka the Zulu. They staged epic battles against the merchants from Arabia and hoarded Africa's bounty long before oom Paul Kruger's Afrikaner crud and the Rooineks.

In that tiny village near Voi, a nameless village on the Nyika Plateau, lives Mengo Samana. Mengo Samana whose belief in the ways of ancient Africa has been defiled by that thing that the Butterfly People call education. Samana now lives by a new religion that is an abomination to the kayas of his ancestors; a streak of murk against the chaste cloth that is the ways of the tribe.

That Mengo Samana is the Proselyte of Ophir and this here is but a page from his tome: Vanga va Zilizea- Ages of the Gods.

***

From whose face shall we pluck an eye, that we may be rid of the miscegenation of our times? From the face of our noble Moses or from that of his filthy Ethiopian?
“Oh our dear sister, Miriam,” quoth Aaron, “how shamed before our people doth this sin of our brother make us!”
“Ye, Aaron, that is our brother...” Miriam wept, “intercede for us. Before the altar of Yahweh our people dare not stand for we are shamed.”

Upon whose back shall we lay the sjambok, that the house of Japheth- whose purity now lies desecrate- may escape the wrath of the great Jehovah? Upon the back of the dirty Kaffir or upon that of her Baas?
“It is my right to lay this pink whip on the kaffir,” yells the Baas. He holds up the scriptures- God's covenant with the men of his choice- with one hand and the sjambok in the other. (A later day Onan on the high street). “Spare the rod and spoil the Kaffir!”Baas tells it to the mountains, the hills and everywhere.
“Whatever,” says Oom Paul in the shoulder shrug dialect, “she just a Kaffir anyhow and he a man... may that man that has not sinned against his dog cast the first stone against the Baas.”

And it comes to pass, once again, that out in the fields where only men and livestock go, the Kaffir gets the sjambok. Just for being a kaffir you may say but also it might be seen that the master likes to put sjambok to Kaffir?

Back home the womenfolk wait- wait, with ovens heated and ready, for the men to bring in the oats. Late into the night, when the hearth has gone cold and the women taken to bed their hot water bottles, douche and suppositories, again, the men bring in chaff. Chaff while every Sunday morning they stand solemn before the altar of the lord and sing: Bringing in the sheaves... bringing in the sheaves.. we shall come rejoicing bringing in the sheaves.

But who is to blame? The Kaffir will lie with anything, or so the tales of our old wives go, and the Kaffir is full of diseases and desires for our kind. Who will teach our children to be wary of the wiles of the Kaffir- the harlotry of Kaffirdom? Wasn't the wisest of our people, that great King Solomon, not violated by that Shulamite with her sexual entreaties of 'I am black and comely?'

May the thigh of the Kaffir that tempts our sons to lie with her rot and may her belly swell. That is the curse as given to us by the lord through Moses.