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Updated: June 7, 2025
"O King, it is well known that the Black One who went before you had a certain little assegai handled with the royal red wood, which drank the blood of many. It was with this assegai that Mopo his servant, who vanished from the land after the death of Dingaan, let out the life of the Black One at the kraal Duguza, but what became of it afterwards none have heard for certain.
Draw near and look on him who was the king; it is the command of Dingaan and Umhlangana, the kings, that you draw near and look on him who was the king, that his death at the hand of Masilo may be told through all the land." "You are better at making of kings, Mopo, than at the saving of one who was your king from the stroke of a wanderer," said the leader of the Bees, looking at me doubtfully.
"You are the son of the Black One who is dead, yea, sprung from the blood of Chaka and of Baleka, my sister." "I still have some kinship with you then, Mopo, and that I am glad of. Wow! who would have guessed that I was the son of the Silwana, of that hyena man?
Thus was Makedama buried beneath the bodies of his people; thus was ended the tribe of the Langeni; as my mother had dreamed, so it came about; and thus did Chaka take vengeance for that cup of milk which was refused to him many a year before. "Thou hast not won thy bet, Mopo," said the king presently. "See there is a little space where one more may find room to sleep.
I forget the story of that woman, for I remember only these things that happened long ago, before I grew very old. Look on this right hand of mine, my father! I cannot see it now; and yet I, Mopo, son of Makedama, seem to see it as once I saw, red with the blood of two kings. Look on Suddenly the old man ceased, his head fell forward upon his withered breast.
But as my tale drew it its end I saw that he listened ill, as a man listens who has a weightier matter pressing on his heart, and before it was well done he broke in: "So, Mopo, my uncle, if I am the son of Chaka and Baleka, Nada the Lily is no sister to me." "Nay, Umslopogaas, she is only your cousin." "Over near of blood," he said; "yet that shall not stand between us," and his face grew glad.
Thus speaks Mopo the inyanga, Mopo the doctor, who never yet prophesied that which should not be." Then we marched from the kraal Umgugundhlovu, and when next I saw that kraal it was to burn all of it which Dingaan had left unburnt, and when next I saw Dingaan ah! that is to be told of, my father.
There they walked about, or sat drinking beer or taking snuff, but never a sup of the beer or a pinch of the snuff did they offer me, no, not even those among them whom I chanced not to have killed. So I left them and walked on, seeking for Mopo, my foster-father, and a certain man, my blood-brother, by whose side I hunted with the wolves, yes, for them, and for another."
Now when he heard this the Councillor who was named Mopo, he with the withered hand, started up, then sat down again, but all were so intent upon listening to Dingaan that none noticed his movements save Noie and the priests of the ghosts. "I see a man, a fat man come out of the cave," went on Dingaan. "He seems to be wounded and weary, also his stomach is sunken as though with hunger.
Here Umslopogaas passed his hand across his mouth, a significant gesture amongst the Zulus. "Mopo," I said, "yes, I have heard the story of Mopo, also that Chaka's body became his servant in the end, since Mopo killed him with the help of the princes Dingaan and Umhlangana. Also I have heard that this Mopo still lives, though not in Zululand."
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