The covenant - James A. Michener [173]
Well to the east, in a valley unusually well protected, lived the Great Chief, who had never even visited the western frontier where the family of Sotopo and Mandiso lived. All tribes owed allegiance to the Great Chief, though his effective powers over them were limited to precedence at festivals and rituals, and determination of the rights of the royal family, to which all chiefs of the tribal group belonged. The constituent tribes were organized geographically, Sotopo's being the westernmost. Tribal chiefs appointed headmen of various clans or 'neighborhoods,' which were large enough to permit their members to intermarry. The 'neighborhoods' were broken down into kraals, where intermarriage was forbidden, and Sotopo's father, Makubele, was kraal headman; he carried orders from above, served at ceremonies and postured a good deal, but everyone knew, especially Makubele himself, that the kraal was really ruled by the tongue of Tutula, Old Grandmother. The family consisted of forty-one members.
To say 'They owned a wooded hillside well inland from the sea' would confuse the entire point of this story, because nobody owned any part of the land. Sotopo's father owned many cattle, and if the cows continued to produce calves, he might well become the next chief. Old Grandmother owned the beautifully tanned animal skins she used as coverlets in winter. And Sotopo owned his polished hard-wood assegais. But the land belonged to the spirits who governed life; it existed forever, for everyone, and was apportioned temporarily according to the dictates of the tribal chief and senior headman. Sotopo's father occupied the hillside for the time being, and when he died the older son could inherit the loan-place, but no man or family ever acquired ownership.
The beauty of the system was that since all the land in the world was free, when a dispute over succession occurred or a kraal became crowded, the aggrieved could simply move on; if an entire kraal decided to move west, as happened continually, they left behind unencumbered land open for others to occupy. In some other distant valley as acceptable as the one they had left, they would settle down, and life would continue much as it had done for the last eight hundred years. All that was needed to ensure happiness was unlimited land.
'What we should get on with now,' Makubele said, puffing his pipe after the excitement over the boys' trip quieted, 'is Mandiso's circumcision.' Everyone agreed, especially Mandiso, who was seventeen years old now and eager to become a man. The running away to the west had been a last childish adventure; now girls in the valley were beginning to look at him with extra interest, and unless he went through the painful ordeal of officially becoming a man, there was no chance that he could ever attain one of them, no matter how much lobola he assembled for a purchase. Their valley already contained one man, now in his forties, who had evaded circumcision, and no one would have much to do with him, women or men, because he had not certified his manhood.
Young Sotopo, only fourteen that year, had become aware during their expedition that his brother was changing, growing more serious; sometimes Mandiso had remained silent for most of a day, as if he were anticipating the rites that lay ahead, and now no one was more attentive to the impending rituals than Sotopo. He kept wondering how he would perform, were he Mandiso.
He watched as the family elders