The covenant - James A. Michener [293]
By 1823 Shaka had consolidated the major portion of his nation, bringing into carefully defined order what had previously been a mass of contending chiefdoms. He was an excellent administrator, offering positions of considerable importance to any gifted members of defeated tribes, and recalling his own unhappy days as an alien among the Langeni, he made the newcomers totally welcome, so that within a few months they began to forget that they had ever been anything but Zulu.
Nxumalo saw that iron rule was necessary if such a patchwork of clans was ever to become a unified kingdom; brutal punishments were accepted, for in the black tribes the chief served as father of the people, and what displeased him displeased his children, who became almost eager for retribution. Shaka started his reign in accordance with tradition; his rule was no more bloody than that of his predecessors, but as his authority widened he was tempted, like all burgeoning tyrants, to make his whim the law of the land.
In this he was encouraged by a curious personal motivation: he looked with scorn at all diviners and witch doctors, for although he knew they were necessary, he also knew they were a sorry lot. But the more he denigrated them, the more he was tempted to usurp their power; he became his own diviner, and those about him lived in terror. A nod when he was speaking, a belch, an injudicious fart, and Shaka would point to the offender, signaling his knobkerrie team to strangle that one.
But never in the early days was he a senseless tyrant; he gave the Zulu an able, generous government. He was especially careful to ensure that his people had reliable water supplies, stable sources of food, and his care of cattle would never be excelled. His personal herds numbered above twenty thousand, and he expressed his love for them in various ways. As a Zulu, he cherished cattle above any other possession, for he knew that a man's stature depended on the number of cattle he had been able to accumulate and that a nation's welfare was determined by the care with which it protected its animals.
His herds were so large that he was able to segregate them by color, which had not only an esthetic result but also a very practical one, because the cowhide shields of various regiments could be differentiated. The iziCwe, for example, carried only white shields with black fittings. Others had black, a choice color, or brown or red, the red finding little favor, for it was thought to be unlucky.
He was most careful with the animals intended for sacrifice, for upon them depended the spiritual safety of his kingdom, as well as his own. He never felt more secure than when he attended a ritual slaughter, stripped naked and washed himself in the still-warm chyme of a freshly slain bull. This thick liquid, the contents of the animal's stomach at the completion of the digestive process, was life-giving, and to feel one's self cleansed by it was an assurance of immortality.
Even more important, however, was the precious little sac, about as big as a child's fist, which fastened to the dead animal's liver. This was the gall bladder, in which rested the bitter fluid that symbolized life: it was acrid, like the taste of death, yet the bladder in which it lived was shaped exactly like the womb from which life sprang. Also, mysteriously, it resembled