Credo Mutwa biography
Contents
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Africa My People
Part 3: Mysteries of Africa
Part 4: The Origins of the Gods
Part 5: Mysterious Africa the History of the Cross
Part 6: Children of Mars
Part 7: More info on Credo Mutwa
Part 8: HOPE for South Africa
Part 9: AIDS in South Africa
Part 1: Introduction
Ostrich People from Mars in Africa
I was born in Zululand on the 21st July 1921 according to my father. When my father met my mother,
he had just lost his wife and a number of children in a terrible influenza epidemic, which had
spread through Southern Africa, killing thousands of people in the years 1918 and 1919. Thus my
father was a widower with three surviving children. When my parents met it was in the year 1920,
and my father was a builder and a Christian, and my mother was a young Zulu girl, who practiced
the ancient religion of the Zulu people. I am told that my parents were deeply in love with each
other and wanted to get married, but the white missionaries forbade my father from marrying my
mother until she became a Christian. My mother’s father was a crusty old warrior, who had taken
part in the bitter wars, that the Zulus had fought against the English, and he coldly refused to
allow his daughter to come under the yoke of what he called the "religion of our enemies." I cannot
allow my child to become a Christian," my grandfather was said to have said," These Christians are
a race of thieves, of liars, and murderers, who stole our country from us at sword point and at
gunpoint. I would rather die, than see a Christ worshipping Christian within the stockade of my
village. Never!"
Caught between catholic missionaries on one hand, and a stubborn old Zulu warrior on the other, my
mother and father had no choice, but to separate. Although my father already suspected, that my
mother was pregnant. A great scandal broke out in my grandfather’s village, when my mother’s
pregnancy was discovered. My grandfather chased my mother out of his homestead and she was taken by
one of her aunts to her own village and there she gave birth to me, an illegitimate child, a child
of shame. In those days there was no greater shame among the Zulus, than for a girl to give birth
out of wedlock. A great stigma was attached to this thing. After a time however, my grandfather
allowed my mother - whom he loved dearly
to return, back to his village and he insisted, that she was not to see my father again. It so
happened, that when I was about a year old, a younger brother of my father, who had heard about my
birth come up from the Natal South Coast to my mother's village and asked my grandfathers
permission to take me away, permission, that my grandfather angrily granted. "Remove this disgrace
from my home, Christian fellow!" he said to my father's brother," And tell your brother, that if I
ever set eyes on him, I will make him suffer bitterly for what he did to my daughter. I will seize
him and kill him very slowly indeed. Tell him that.
I was taken to my father’s home in the South of Natal, on the northern bank of the Umkumazi River,
and there I grew up. And it was while growing, up that it was discovered, that I was something of a
visionary and a prophet. A talent, which together with an artistic inclination, to draw and to
sculpt, the woman, who brought me up, my fathers new wife, did her uttermost to suppress. I did not
attend school, until I was well within my 14th year of life. And because my family now kept on
travelling, as a result of my fathers building profession, which took him from town to town, we
became a family of travellers, who never stayed long in one place.
In 1935, my father found a job, a major building job, in the Transvaal and he brought us all from
Natal to join him, where he was building. I attended school on and off in different schools, and
then, in 1937 I went through great shock and trauma, when I was seized and sodomized by a gang of
mineworkers outside a mine compound. This caused me to be ill for a long time. And although I was
taken to white doctors, I could find no help, until my father's brother, the same one, who had
taken me away from my maternal grandfather, decided to take me back to my mothers village in the
hope, that I would find help there. And I did. My grandfather, a man, whom my father despised as a
heathen and a demon worshipper, helped me and brought me back to health, where Christian doctors
had failed. I, still a Christian and a confessing catholic, had not believed at all, that my
grandfather would be able to help me. And I was greatly surprised when he did, and I began to
wonder were not the missionaries wrong, when they called people, such as my grandfather, ungodly
heathens. If my grandfather had been a stupid heathen savage, as white missionaries loved to call
people like him, how is it that he had been able to help me? It was here, that I began to question
many things, that I never questioned before. Where our ancestors really the savages, that quiet
missionaries would have us believe they were? Were we Africans really a race of primitives, who
possessed no knowledge at all, before the white man came to Africa? These and many, many other
questions began to haunt my mind. And then one day when he was sure, that I was fully returned to
health, my grandfather told me, that the illness, that had been troubling me for so long, had
actually been a sacred illness, which required, that I had to become a shaman, a healer. And when
the old man said this to me, I readily agreed to undergo initiation at the hands of one of my
grandfather’s daughters, a young sangoma named Myrna. When they heard, that I had become a
sangoma, both my father and my stepmother, told my maternal uncle, that I was never to set foot in
their home again. And so I found myself on my own, a youth without a home, without family and so I
began travelling. First I went to Swaziland and then the land of the Basotho, and I developed a
wanderlust, that was to be with me until today. I was not travelling for enjoyment, however I was
travelling for knowledge, in search of clarity of mind and in search of the truth about my people.
Sometimes I would find jobs for a few months and then move on. Sometimes I found myself travelling
with missionaries, the very people, in whom
I no longer believed. Sometimes I found myself travelling with miners, returning home from the
Johannesburg gold mines. I came into contact with men and women of countries, that I had not known
about before. I learned things, that I had not known about before. I experienced things,
which only those, that walk the path of the healer in Africa, experience. If a strange thing
was happening in the place, that I happened to be, I became one of those, who were summoned to that
place to help using Africa's ancient wisdom and knowledge in that situation. I found myself amongst
amazing and strange people. I found myself amongst men and women, possessing knowledge, that was
already ancient ... I heard stories from the lips of storytellers, that went back to the remotest
of the remote times. Stories, that very few had ever heard before. As the years past, I
became filled with a fanatical obsession; I realized how rapidly Africa was changing. I realized to
my shock and sorrow, that the culture of my people, a culture, that I had thought immortal, was
actually dying. Very, very soon the Africa, that I knew, would become a forgotten thing. A thing of
the past and I decided to try and preserve somehow, what I could of my people’s culture. How was I
to do that? Friends advised me to write books. One friend advised me to build living museums, in
which I would preserve the dying culture of my people, and I struggled very hard to bring these
things about.
I wrote books, and I tried to borrow money from banks and organizations, supposedly established to
help black people, who wanted to establish businesses. Again and again, I was disappointed, until,
after long years of struggle. In 1975
I succeeded in obtaining permission and funds to build the first living museum, for the
preservation of my people’s knowledge, religion and culture, in the centre of Soweto. Many black
people misunderstood the purpose of my having built this living museum. They falsely accused me of
cooperating with the apartheid regime and of quote-"glamorising the Soweto ghetto" But I did not
see myself as a politician, I saw myself as a healer, whose duty it was to preserve the greatness
of his people, regardless of which government happened to be in power in South Africa. I saw myself
as a healer, whose purpose it was to create job opportunities for my starving people in Soweto,
regardless of whether we were ruled by the apartheid regime or the A.N.C government. I believed
firmly, that knowledge was about politics and that a race, that did not know its true greatness,
will never obtain full freedom. And I was saddened by the fact, that our people were making huge
sacrifices, fighting for freedom when they did not know their full greatness. I said to my now late
wife, Cecilia, and myself, that if our people gain freedom under these circumstances, that freedom
would be an illusion and a fraud. Years of careful investigation had taught me the European powers,
that had colonized Africa, had done more, than just beat our people into submission with artillery
and rifles. They had done more, than simply sown confusion amongst our people by introducing many
conflicting versions of the Christian religion amongst people. They had deliberately so brainwashed
our people, that Africans had lost all self-knowledge, self-love, self-respect, self-pride and
self-dependency. If you rob people of all these things you turn them into a race of robots, forever
dependent upon you. And even if you stood up and walked away from these people, and said to them,
that you were giving them back their freedom, they would stand up and follow you wherever you are
going for their minds were still your slaves even though their bodies were now free of your
chains.
I believed, then as I believe now, that the African has never really gained freedom and
independence. Which is why our people have not been able to achieve what nations, such as India,
and the tiger Nations of South East Asia, which were once also colonized by the white people as we
were, have today achieved. For example today India is a nuclear power feared and respected by all
nations on earth. India is admired for its great culture and its ancient religious philosophies as
well as
its other philosophies. While Africa is a downtrodden casualty of history forever dependent like a
whipped slave upon her former oppressors. This breaks my heart as a black man, I, who, over many
years of travelling through my motherland, have discovered, that there was a time when we, the
black people now held in contempt by many races, were once masters of the world. When we, now
derided as a nation of savages, incapable of ruling itself, were once the tutors of the early
world, I feel great bitterness, when I see how far we have been made to fall. We whose sons and
daughters, once walked tall in the Americas, not as slaves, but rather as civilians and rulers. I
wept, when I found out, that we were once the founders of some of the world’s oldest civilizations.
We were there in Sumeria, we were there in India, we founded great kingdoms in Cambodia, and the
first man to be saluted as emperor of China was one of us, a son of Africa, a black man. Buddha
was
a black man from Africa, his earliest statues confirm this. Krishna was a black warrior. The
goddess Kali, is depicted as an African woman... I weep even now, when I see Africans slaughter
each other in the streets of South Africa, now supposedly
a free nation. I weep even now when my people hunger and suffer in the veld in South Africa. I weep
even now when Eurocentric education is being fed to our children. Fed in order to make them
Afrofobes, creatures that hate and despise their motherland, which look down in contempt upon their
own people, because this is what all European educated black people do. They despise Africa and all
she stands for. And they are in contempt of the culture of her people. They are still even now
doing the colonialists dirty work for them, because if you want to destroy the culture of a nation,
you must brainwash the youth of that nation and make them do your dirty work for you. There is not
a single university in Africa, even now, which teaches our people the truth about themselves. There
is not a single school in South Africa even now, which teaches our people about what it means to be
an African. Our children who will stone a Sangoma to death, who will burn an Inyanga to death with
a petrol soaked car tire even now, do not know, and were never taught, that Africans were once
kings of the Americas. They were founders of the amazing Olmec Civilization, whose breath taking
relics craved in eternal
stone still amazes visitors in museums to this day.
Our children, who would gladly spit at the face of a sangoma, who hate the traditional dress of
their people, would gladly put on a highland kilt, not knowing, that amongst the founders of the
Scottish nation were black men and woman, and that the surnames of some of these Scotsmen, confirm
this. Sholto-Douglas, what does this Surname mean? Sholto-Douglas. It means Behold the black man.
Black knights once fought for the kings of Scotland, and the Danish people, who are fraudulently
represented in the history books as blond and pink skinned Nordics, had large numbers of black men
in their ranks. When Alfred slaughtered the Danes, in England so many years ago, amongst the
warriors, that he slew, were dark skinned men, whose ancestors had come to Denmark from Africa
thousands of years before. All these truths are hidden from our children. Our political leaders,
fail to create United Nations in Africa. Our political leaders live on a razors edge in Africa
everywhere. They sit on shaky thrones, from which they can get kicked off by any armed thug,
carrying the rank of colonel or general. Why? Because you can never build a viable nation on the
cesspit of self-ignorance and self-despite.
I have seen many African leaders at first sight, I have spoken to some of these men and all of them
have one thing in common, they are simply white men in black skins. And this is why they fail again
and again to create a peaceful, progressing and prosperous Africa. They are still slaves of their
long departed colonial masters. Look at what is happening in South Africa now. Look at the
confusion and the crime, the disunity and the epidemic political killings. What do all these things
tell you?
That our people lack self-pride and self-knowledge and therefore can never be politically united
ever. I have suffered in the cause of my battle against shadows. When you are fighting against
ignorance you suffer like if you were on a battlefield under gun fire. I have lost people I love; I
have lost a woman I love years ago in 1960 to the guns of the white man. To the guns of the
oppressive regime I was falsely accused of being a supporter of. I lost a son, my first-born son,
innocent, to the knives of black activists, murdering people under the banner of the mass
democratic movement. I came close to losing another son to the spears of the Inkatha freedom party!
I have been cheated by whites, who took advantage of my ignorance and stupidity and who robbed me
of millions of rands of money I made out of my books. Even as I am talking to you now, there is a
white woman, who deceived me into signing away everything, that I wrote, everything that I painted,
and everything that I sculpted. I have suffered, and am still suffering. Even now there are white
men, that have set my own children, my sons against me. A Christian preacher of lies brainwashed my
daughter's mind and stole her away from me, saying, you must not talk to your father , he is a
devil worshipper. I am not seeking anybodies sympathy when I am telling you this; I just want you
all to know, who and what Credo Mutwa is. I am one of the scums of this earth, a creature dejected
and ridiculed by university professors. Professors, who later came sneaking into my home, seeking
the very information, that they ridiculed me for revealing. I am a black man, who has every reason
to be bitter and angry. But somehow I cannot get myself to be angry. You cannot be angry at the
ignorant. You cannot, but pity the self-destructive.
Many years ago I was fortunate enough to find a woman, who loved me, a woman, who became my wife
and the mother of my seven children. This woman was a strong and godly woman, whose quietness, hid
a person of steel, this woman gave up drinking, gave up dependence on alcohol out of the love of
her children, and of love of fool and the cretin, that she married. Today I stand alone, a man
rejected by the world. A widower, who lost his wife a few months ago under extremely sinister
circumstances. My wife went to hospital supposedly suffering from cancer of the uterus, while I was
away, and x-rays showed a strange metal device inside her womb. Nobody knows, what this device was.
Nobody knows how it had got into my wife's uterus, but before my wife passed away,
I received a threatening letter
warning me not to talk to a man, named David Icke or else my wife would die. I did not take
that warning seriously, and my wife died within two weeks, after I had received it. I have every
reason to be angry with the frot, that is called western civilization. I have every reason to be
angry with the various foreign religions, that enslave our peoples' minds and blinker their vision.
I have every reason to be angry with education systems, that rob our people of their true worth, of
the truth about themselves. This is my friends is Credo Mutwa. I am a sculptor, who has created
large sculptures in various parts of South Africa. I am a painter, who has painted pictures, that
were afterwards stolen from him, by exploiters. I am the writer of books, whose books fill the
pockets of others with money, and nit his own. That is Credo Mutwa. I have used the knowledge, that
I acquired over many years of investigation and travel, I have used that knowledge to create job
opportunities for my starving people. The villages, that I built in Soweto, and which were
destroyed by misguided youths. The villages, that I built in Mafekeng, and the village and the
statues, that I built in the Eastern Cape, placed bread in the hands of my starving fellow South
Africans. I made jobs, where there were none. I made livings for my people, where there had been
none. I believe, that a truly democratic country is a country, that uses the spiritual talents and
the heritage of its people to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. But what has been my
reward?
I have been scorned; demonise, lied about by conspirators, who delight in setting black against
black, by gullible blacks, that swallow any garbage white newspapers feed them. If you speak about
the international conspires, that is the government behind many countries governments, people laugh
at you, but there is such a thing and it is ruining my people even now. The Aids epidemic, which
will soon wipe out great tribes, such as the Zulus, my people, is no accident, neither is the flood
of drugs, that is sweeping over this once beautiful country. The soaring crime wave is no accident.
The epidemic of political killings, which are almost a daily occurrence in some parts of South
Africa is no accident either. All these things are planned by someone and carried out by someone on
behalf of that someone. They tell us, that the high incidence of rape in South Africa is a macho
thing. Rubbish! It is deliberate, it is planned, and most of the women, that are raped in South
Africa, are raped for black magical purposes. Children, who disappear; where do they disappear
to?
In South Africa today, criminals have got more rights, than law-abiding citizens. A criminal will
kill your father, in the morning, be arrested in the afternoon and be released on bail on the
following morning to come back and kill you, who helped
the police to put him behind bars. Today in South Africa, as in Prohibition era, America, the
distinction between the police and the criminals is getting dimmer and dimmer by the day. And all
this is no accident.
Biography Part 2: Africa My People
There are many shameful things, that are being done to Africa and her people by Western nations
these days. These shameful things are also being done to African people by Western researchers, as
well as ordinary writers, who deliberately by pass my Motherland, driving her into isolation, and
treating her as though she was not part and parcel of humankind. These writers and these
researchers deliberately overlook many important facts about our people, and sometime go out of
their way to deliberately merely skim the surface of African knowledge, overlooking the rest, and
passing on to nations and races, which they favour. There was a time when I wondered, why this was
being done? But now I know, too late, the cold blooded satanic purpose behind all this. The black
man of South Africa must be denied his identity to make it easier for people with sinister agenda
to turn him into a puppet, spiritually and physically dependent on the west and its rapacious and
exploitive ways. The black man must be made to look down upon himself and the other nations too,
must be made to look down upon him in contempt. I know as a keeper of my peoples oldest traditions,
that sometimes when an animal, be it a goat or an ox, is about to be sacrificed to the ancestral
spirits, it must be driven into isolation, kept apart from the other animals, before it is
slaughtered. And Africa today is being slaughtered. The wars, that are tearing her apart, the
thing, that is called Aids, that is raging like wild fire though the plains and valleys, though my
motherland, are all part of the arsenal of murder, that is being employed by certain organizations
and nations, in order to bring about Africa’s destruction as a race. When I say this, I am not
paranoid; I am a man, who has studied a number of terrible facts, that are to be seen in Africa for
some years now. Africa is being destroyed. There are those, in whose interests it is that this, the
Mother Continent of humankind must be depopulated though war, famine and disease and sent into
oblivion along with the great knowledge, that it’s people possessed. I have taken an oath, that
even if Africa is ultimately destroyed, as the great prophets once
forsaw, that it would be, the shiny fruits of its children’s mind would not perish. Hundreds of
books and magazines have been written and published about Native American people and their
undeniably great cultures, that they once possessed. Hundreds of books have been written and
published in the west about the Hindu people of India, their sciences and their great philosophies.
But nobody ever wants to write anything worthwhile and in depth about Africa. For example it is a
well-known fact, that Native American people in Central and South America possessed deep knowledge
about the universe, about the constellations, about solar as well as lunar eclipses. It is also
well known, that these people possessed great calendars of great sophistication and great accuracy.
But the fact, that African people of various tribes of Eastern, Central, Western, and Southern
Africa possess the same knowledge has been overlooked. One particularly atrocious crime, for which
I cannot forgive people of Europe is, that whenever they write about the people of Africa, they
deliberately separate them. They treat the ones they talk about as if they were not part and parcel
of the African continent at all. Nowhere is this more evident, than when European scientists talk
about Egypt. They deal with the Egyptians as if Egyptians were a totally separate race from the
rest of Africa, and yet anyone, that knows Africa well, will tell you, that Africa is
interconnected.
That the various people of our Motherland are inter connected as are the gears and flywheels of a
clock, and to see the people of Egypt apart from the rest of Africa is a fraud, a delusion, a
crime. The people of Egypt were an African people,
not at all removed from those in Nubia, in Ethiopia and in those African regions far to the South
of Egypt. For example, anyone that knows Africa well, will tell you, that the many half-human, and
half-animal gods, that the Egyptians worshipped,
had their origins deep in Central as well as Southern Africa and that these gods are still being
worshipped by the people of Africa even now. Here is yet another example of how the western
investigator deliberately distort facts about Africa.
There are writers, that write about the khoi San people in Southern Africa- the Bushman people.
These writers deliberately view the Khoi san as if they were an entity completely isolated from the
rest of the African people, and yet I can tell you,
I, who have Khoi san blood in me, that the cultures of many black nations in Southern Africa were
intimately interconnected with the Khoi san cultures. The same thing is done when writers write
about people such as the pygmies in Central Africa, the Wat-wu. One writer even went as far as to
say, that the Wat-wa were not an African race and I ask myself, where the thundering hell this
white fool thinks the Wat-wa comes from? On which far island does he find them? Anyone, that knows
the culture and the language of the Wat-wa, will tell you, that this culture and language are
interconnected with the cultures of other people in that part of Africa, where the Wat-wa, or Twa
are to be found. This deliberate separation of Africa, the creation of some of the separate races
and tribes has resulted in great disaster for the people of Africa as a whole. For example,
for many years, the Belgium’s committed the crime of dividing up the people of the Burundi and
Rwanda into two separate races. The Watutsi were believed to belong to the Nileotics, and the
Bahutu were seen to be Bantu. But anyone, who knows the history of these people will tell you, that
the Watutsi and the Bahutu are not so separate people, they are simply two divisions of exactly the
same people, and these two divisions had lived in peace for hundreds of years, until animosity was
stirred up between them by the Belgium colonists to suit their own sinister agenda. Before Africa
vanishes under the clouds of endemic civil wars, before my motherland disappears under the fog of
Aids and other man made diseases, designed for the extermination of my people, I Credo Mutwa, want
to correct these blatant injustices.
I, Credo Mutwa want to expose these crimes, shameful crimes of the intellect. And as a first step
towards correcting this injustice, I want to tell you, that it was not only the Mayas, the Incas,
the Aztecs and other people of Central and South America, who possessed amazing knowledge about the
mysteries of the Universe. It was not only these people, that possessed knowledge about solar as
well as lunar eclipses, as well as the Earth’s movement though space. Our people of
many tribes in Southern, Eastern and Central Africa possessed this knowledge. And they passed it on
from generation to generation in various ways, but mostly orally.
Part 3: Mysteries of Africa
Before human beings were created on this planet, there had existed a very wise race of people,
known as the Imanyukela. These people had come from the constellation, known to white people as
Orion, and they had inhabited our Earth for thousands and thousands of years. And that before they
had left our earth to return once more to the sacred Spider constellation, they made a great
excavation under the Earth, beneath the Ruwensory Mountains - the Mountains of the Moon, and deep
in the bowels of Mother Earth, the Imanyukela built a city of copper buildings. A city with a wall
of silver all around it. A city built at the huge mountain of pure crystal. The mountain of
knowledge. The mountain, from which all knowledge on earth comes. And a mountain, to which all
knowledge on earth ultimately returns. This old woman told me, that her grandmother had told her
this story, while she was still a virgin of some fifteen years or so and undergoing initiation into
the mysteries and the culture of the Bahutu people. The old woman went on to tell me, that many
generations ago, there came to the land of the Bahutu, a group of little yellow skinned men, who
wore colourful robes and strange brightly coloured hats. These men, she said, had come in search of
the great city of knowledge, which they had heard many, many years ago, stands in the Earth under
the Mountains of the Moon, the Ruwensory Mountains. This story remained in my mind and was one of
the many, many strange stories, that I had heard during my long, long travels through Africa.
A
nd then, much to my amazement, in the year 1975 a friendly bright priest
from Tibet arrived at my home in Soweto. The priest's name was Akyong Rin Poche, whom ever today I
still regard as a great friend of mine, is a man, who sparkles like a glass of precious champagne.
He is a man, unlike most Tibetan monks, whom I have met in my life, who looks at life through the
mask of humour. He is a man, who is ever smiling. A man, whose ever word is perfumed with humour. A
man, who laughs readily. A lovely and lively fellow human being. I was honoured to talk to
this man in one of the huts, that formed the museum
village that I had built in Soweto, and Akyong Rin Poche nearly knocked me over by asking me a
question, that caught me totally by surprise, and which brought back memories of bygone years in a
green and half forgotten Central African country.
"Do you know anything," he asked," About the city of copper, which is said to be somewhere in
Central Africa?" For a few moments I was stricken Dumb by astonishment and I replied," Yes,
honourable Rin Poche. In the days I was travelling through the land of the Watutsi and the Bahutu,
the land, that was then known as Rwanda Urundi, I heard a story about this mysterious city, and I
also heard, that this city lies deep underground, under the Mountains of the Moon."
Akyong Rin Poche threw another surprise at my feet. He told me how in olden days a great Lama led a
group of fellow monks on an expedition into Central Africa in search of this mysterious city, and
that Lama and his followers were never heard from again. I was stunned, here was an African story
being confirmed by a man from Tibet. I was totally flabbergasted, and I thanked God, that many
years ago I had set myself the task of recovering, that I had learned through my long journeys
through Africa. Today Rwanda and Burundi are countries in grip of death. Tens of thousands of
people have been slaughtered. Scores of tribes have been decimated and scattered, never to be
reformed again. And great quantities of knowledge have been lost forever. This is the agony of
Africa. This is the shame of my motherland.
Part 4: The Origins of the Gods
In many western countries, when an old person dies it is simply the death of an old human being,
who has gone through life and whose days on earth now come to an end. But in Africa, the death of
an elder- an old man or an old woman, becomes a supreme disaster, because in the mind of that elder
often carries knowledge passed down from parent to child. Knowledge, that is not only valuable to
Africa and her children, but to human kind as a whole. No matter where you go in Africa, no matter
how deep into the interior of the dark continent you tread, you will find very ancient stories,
which are incredibly similar. You will find African tribes and races, who will tell you, that they
are descendants from gods, who came out
of the skies thousands of years ago. Some however say, that these gods came to them from the sea in
magical boats, made out of reeds or wood or copper or even gold. In some cases these gods and
goddesses are described as beautiful human beings, whose skins were either bright blue or green or
even silver. But most of the time you will find it being said these great gods, especially the
ones, that came out of the sky were non human, scaly creatures, which lived most of the time in mud
or in water. Creatures of an extremely frightening and hideously ugly appearance. Some say, that
these creatures were like crocodiles, with crocodile like teeth and jaws, but with very large round
heads. Some say, that these
creatures are very tall beings with snake like heads, set on long thin necks, very long arms and
very long legs. There are those, that tell us, that these gods, who came from the skies, travelled
through the land in magical boats, made of bright metal, silver, copper or gold. Boats, which had
the ability to sail over water or even to fly through the sky like birds. It is further said, that
some of these sky gods carried their souls in little bags, which hung from their belts. These souls
being in the form of spheres of crystal clear material. Spheres, which could float about in the
air, and which emitted a dazzling light. A light, which could illuminate an entire village at
night. We are told, that some very brave African chiefs used to hold these great gods hostage
simply by snatching their little shiny soul globes away from them and hiding them in holes deep in
the ground. Throughout Africa we are told, that these mysterious beings taught human beings many
things.
They taught human beings how to have laws, knowledge of herbal medicine, knowledge of arts and
knowledge of the mysteries of creation and the Cosmos as a whole. We are told, that some of these
gods had the ability to change their shapes at will. They had the ability to assume the shape and
the appearance of any creature, that there is on Earth, whenever they had good reason to do so. A
sky god could even turn itself into a rhinocero and elephant or even a stork, a sky god could even
turn turn itself into a rock or even a tree. We are told, that some of the gods used to travel
through the sky in swings made out of brightly coloured lengths of rope. The Wutwa people of the
forests of Congo told me about one such god,
who swung through the sky on a swing, whose ends were attached to the clouds in the sky, and who
could go anywhere, no matter how far away, and come back before sunset on his magical swing. In
Africa these mysterious gods are known by various names, in West Africa, in the land of the Bumbara
people these amphibian or reptilian sky gods are known as Zishwezi. The word zishwezi means either
the swimmers or the divers or the gliders. It was said, that these sky gods could dive from above
the clouds down to the top of a mountain whenever they felt like it, they could also take deep
dives into the bottom of the ocean and from there fetch magical objects and then bring them to the
shore, placing them at the feet of
the astonished black people. In West Africa again, these creatures are called the Asa, which means
the mighty ones of magic. It is from this word asa, a word, that speaks great magical power, that
comes the name Asanti, which means a king,
but literally means, the child of asand, as you know Asanti gave birth to the word, Ashanti.
In the land of the Dogon people we find the famous Nommo, a race of reptilian or amphibian beings,
who were said to have come from the Sirius star to give knowledge and religion to the black people
of Dogon. Incidentally, scientists have never explained the meaning of Dogon...
There are tribes in various parts of Africa, which regard themselves as
God's chosen people. These tribes call themselves by a name, which means god. (it looks like Jewish people, LM).
In South Africa there is a tribe, that calls itself the Tonga, and another very large group, which
calls itself the Tsonga. And in Zimbabwe there are two tribes, one of which is called the Batonga,
and another, that is called the Tongaila. The name Tonga, Tsonga or Donga means people of god and
you will find these people living in some of the holiest and most spiritual places in Africa. For
example, the Matonga people of Northern Zululand live in the area of the sacred St Lucia Lake,
which is believed by the Zulu people and other tribes in Natal to be the place where, hundreds of
years ago, the great earth mother arrived in a boat of reeds, accompanied by her son and his two
wives. And she came to give laws, culture, religion as well as healing arts, and other mysteries to
human beings. It is said, that the Great Earth Mother was a huge woman, very, very fat with bright
green skin and so was her son and his two wives. There once existed in Zimbabwe a very sacred place
called Kariba Gorge, which is now covered by a huge lake as a result of the damming of the Zambezi
River at this place. In Kariba Gorge, there lived two remarkable tribes, the Batonga, which means
people of God, and the more remarkable tribe, whose name is the Tongaila. Tonga, as you know, means
God, but the word ila also means god, thus the Tongaila people are called the people of the God,
ila- the wise old god, who according to some stories created the Earth and everything in it. The
Tonga and the Tongaila used to tell me, that not only are the chosen people sent by God to guard
the Kariba Gorge, but they are also in yearly touch with the great gods, who come from the stars,
whom they call the
Bananaila, the children of ila. Now let us go to West Africa for a while, in the land of the Dogon,
there, I was told, that when the Nommo arrived from the sky in their fantastic sky ship (UFO),
there were several of them, thirteen or fourteen. And they created a lake around their sky ship and
every morning they used to swim from their sky ship to the shores of the lake and there preach to
the people, who assembled in large numbers around the lake. It is said, that before the Nommo
departed, returning with a great noise back to their home star, they first chose one of their
number, killed it and cut its body up into little pieces and then gave these pieces to the
assembled people to eat in the first sacrificial ritual of its kind on Earth.
When the people had eaten the sacred flesh of the star creature and drunk its blood mixed with
water, the Nommo took the lower jaw of their creature and by some incredible fact of magic brought
the whole creature back to life again. We are told, that this is the way, that the Nommo taught our
people, that there is no death and that behind every death there shall be a resurrection. And
also, that an individual must sometimes sacrifice himself or herself for the good of the
community.
It is the Nommo, we are told, that taught the people of Africa about the mysteries of
reincarnation, about the belief that, that, which goes away, gone off on the wings of death, will
always come back again on the fragrant wings of life. In the land
of Nigeria, we hear of how the Great Mother Goddess, Mawi gave birth to human beings after having
created the world, and that after a number of centuries, people on Earth became filled with
selfishness and other forms of negative behaviour, and the Great Mother, who was now in the land of
the gods, sent down her daughter, Gabato, to Earth to once more place human beings upon the path of
righteous. It is said, that
Gabato arrived on Earth in the mouth of a
Great Serpent with all
the colours of the rainbow! And this Serpent, crawled all over the
Earth, and such was its size and so great was its weight, that wherever it went it created gorges
and valleys and canyons. What I found was very astonishing, was that in many countries of the
world, amongst the aborigines of Australia, and amongst the native people of the Americas, as in
Africa, you find belief in the Rainbow Serpent. And you also find belief in the Feathered Serpent.
In the Americas, in South and Central America mostly, the Feathered Serpent is called Quetzalcoatl,
and amongst my people, the Zulus, we find belief in a Serpent called Yndlondlo. The Yndlondlo is
said to be a huge mamba or a huge python, whose neck is covered in greyish blue feathers, like the
feathers of a blue crane, and at the top of the Serpent's head grow three feathers. A green one, a
red one and a white one, which look like huge ostrich tail feathers. The Yndlondlo, like the
(South) American Quetzalcoatl, is
associated with God, the
Sun.
Part 5: Mysterious Africa, the History of the Cross
A mystery, that has fascinated Africans for thousands of years. Seen in cross section, this rather
dull looking crystal shows a cross like pattern in it. It shows a pattern of the kind, that our
people of olden days used to call the perfect cross, or the
Cross of the
Sun. Before I tell you more, I wish you to know, that the thing, known as a cross, was not
brought to Africa by missionaries, knowledge of the cross in its many forms, was here in South
Africa from the remotest of remote times.
It was already known to the mystics of Africa long, long before the Christian religion was
established in Europe, and further more, the various types of cross were used by African healers
and mystics for either good purposes, or evil ones. Africans believed, that the cross, either made
of wood, ivory or metal was a powerful object, possessed of great magic, capable of unleashing
powers of healing, or renewing or powers of destruction and killing. There were three types of
cross, that Africans used for healing, there was the T-shaped cross, known in Western mysticism as
the tau cross, then there was the proper cross ...A cross with a long stem and short arms. Then
there was the unsaid cross, known to white people as the Ankh, which many western thinkers wrongly
assume to have been only known to the ancient Egyptians. This ankh was actually known by our people
as the knot of eternity, or the knot of eternal life, and it was used even by Khoi San people, for
purposes of healing. The greatest users of the ankh, were the almost extinct Khoi Khoi or Hottentot
people. The Khoi Khoi said, that
the unsaid cross represented their Great
Sun god, Heitsie-Ibib. The zulus, Xhosas and the Swazis and other Ngoni speaking peoples of South
Africa, also believed in a Sun god, who died each evening to be reborn again each morning. Who died
each winter and was reborn again each spring. They believed, that this beautiful son of God
the Father and God the Mother, whom they knew by various names, had lost his left leg in a savage
fight against a terrible dragon, some say a gigantic crocodile, which walked on its hind legs, its
rear legs much, much longer than its fore legs. The symbol of
this
handsome God of the Sun, this hero God and bringer of peace, was also the unsaid cross,
which the Zulus called Mlenze-munye. The Swazis knew him as Mlente-munye. The name Mlenze-munye or
Mlente-mmunye mean the one legged
one. The one with one leg. And incidentally, when Africans saw the cross, which missionaries often
hung around their necks, they immediately recognized it as the symbol of the eternal God with one
leg, who dies and is born again forever and ever. And they respected missionaries as messengers
from this God. Which is why in some part of Africa missionaries were called a name,
which is also one of the many names of the African Sun god, namely Muruti,
which means the great teacher, a name by which Twana speaking, Owambo speaking and Sotho speaking
people still call missionaries to this day. Our people believed also in what they called the
perfect cross, the most powerful cross of all. This was a cross, that had all its four wings of
exactly equal length. The cross of the kind, that white people call the Celtic cross. A cross,
which is often imprisoned within a circle, with all its wings of exactly equal length, our people
used this cross, drawing it in its many forms, healing some of the most horribly diseases, to which
the body is prone. Before a person was treated for cancer, the herbs, the powdered herbs, which
were to be used in this treatment, were first laid out on a piece of clean springbok skin on the
likeness of the perfect cross, then spoon after spoon, they were taken and poured into a clay pot,
which had been blessed several times. There were forms of the cross, which unlike these, which I
have briefly described, which were used for healing, were used for extremely destructive purposes
and one of these is what the white people call the Saint Andrews cross. The X-shaped cross, which
even today we find teachers in mission schools using to mark a wrong answer,
written by a pupil in his or her exercise book.
Africans believed, that
the X-shaped cross possessed great powers of evil, and they used it to put curses upon people. It
may be of interest to you to learn, that when a Xhosa person from the Eastern Cape, says, that you
are crazy, you are mad he says, "Uphameene." And the literal meaning of this word is, "You have a
cross put upon you," across, which has made you cross witted, mad. In ancient times and even
modern times, when a African artist, woodcarver or decorator of any kind draws a cross, he or she
must take great care to only draw one of those crosses, that heal and not to dare to draw, carve or
render in beads, one of the evil crosses, because Africans say, that the first person, that gets
affected by a negative engraving or a negative drawing, is the artist himself. And the first person
to be affected by a positive drawing or a positive engraving is the artist himself or herself.
Part 6: Children of Mars
Africa is a land full of surprises, and they, who travel through her forests and upon the banks of
her great rivers, and over her eternal plains, must always be prepared to meet surprises. One day I
was travelling along the Zambezi river, when
I came to a homestead, which people in villages, that I had passed, had told me about. I had been
told, that in this small village I would find some of the wisest people in the land, people, who
claim ancestry from creatures, who are said to have
come from the Red
Star, known as Liitolafisi, the Red Star, whose name means the eye of the brown hyena is the Star,
or rather the Planet, that white people call Mars. I wanted to meet these wise people, and
when I came to the homestead, a collection of grass and wooden huts, protected by a wooden fence, I
saw a number of women and children standing inside the fence near the gate. These people were
smiling at me and their smiles grew even wider as I drew near the gate, the woman standing nearest
to the gate, moved slightly to her left, coming to stand right in the centre of the open gate. My
eyes went to her feet, and all courage left me, and
like the coward, that
I often am, I turned around and ran away, followed by loud peals of feminine laughter. I had
dropped all my property, my bag and my walking stick upon the dusty path, that led to the gate, and
there I was running away like a fat ape, seeking the safety of the green bush. The women laughed
and laughed again, and when I threw a glance over my shoulder, I saw them come out and pick up my
property and take it into the village. I had never seen anything like what I saw on that day, the
thing, that caused me to run away like an idiot fleeing a bush fire. The woman, who had stood in
the centre of the gate facing me, had only two large toes on either of her feet. It was as if I was
staring at the feet of not a human being, but of a monstrous bird from the valleys of folklore and
legend. Shamefaced, I walked towards a tree and stood under it, trembling with fear, and as I stood
there, a group of men came out of the village and walked laughing and smiling towards me. Nearly
all of them had only two toes on each foot. They wore no shoes, and in the African dust their feet
really looked frightening. They came around me and surrounded me and said: " Do not be afraid of
us, we are people just like you. What is it about us, that frightens you?"
Unable to answer, my face hot with shame and embarrassment, I glanced toward their feet and then
they roared with laughter. This is how I met a tribe of people, known as the Bantwana, which means
children. A tribe of people, who claim, that their remote ancestors were bird like people, who came
from the stars and who mated with earthly women and produced these two toed human beings. The
Bantwana people welcomed me into their small village and for three months at the feet of two of
their elders, I learned about things, that left me numb with amazement. The Bantwana are shy
people, who in ancient times suffered persecution at the hands of people of other tribes, but when
they like you and trust you, and feel pity
for you, they will tell you things, that fill you with great amazement. They will tell you, that
there are twenty four inhabited planets within the area of space in …
Part 7: More info on Credo Mutwa
Although South Africa possesses a huge, highly organized tourist industry, that tourist industry,
however, has not scratched the surface, let alone dented it of the colossal potential as a tourist
Mecca and destination, that our country possesses. South Africa could attract four or five times
the number of tourists, that it is at this moment attracting, if only those, whose duty is to
attract those tourists, knew more about their country, about South Africa and knew just how huge is
the
potential, that this country possesses as a Mecca for tourists. It is one of the most shameful
truths in our country, that those, who live within our country's borders, know little or nothing
about the country, in which they live. There may be those, who resent my words, but this is a fact
and I want to state again, that the tourist potential of the Republic of South Africa is grossly
under-utilized by those, whose duty is to tap into it and to activate it for the benefit of the
peoples of this land.
If those in authority could know more about South Africa's tourist potential, unemployment in our
country would be cut down by a large percent and we would find hundreds of black people,
especially, successfully involved in the tourist industry of our country. I speak as someone, who
has travelled to many parts of the world, when I say, that in some countries you find thousands of
people gainfully engaged in their particular country's tourist industry, whereas in South Africa
only a small percentage of people are engaged in this. What is utterly shameful is that, in South
Africa, tourism is mostly white-owned and white-run business and black people, even now, are left
out in the cold or if they are engaged in the tourist industry at all, they are engaged simply as
employees and paid servants. I have been to countries such as Japan, where that country's tourist
industry involves thousands of people. I have been to countries such as South America, especially,
where you find hundreds of native Americans gainfully involved in their country's huge tourist
industry. Furthermore, when tourists arrive in South Africa, they are shown many things only from
the perspective of the European people and not
from the African perspective. For example, they are shown South Africa's wild life and they are
shown this wild life from the viewpoint of white scientists only, from the viewpoint of white
settlers only and they are denied the rich folklore, that black people - Koi Koi and Koi San people
- knew and still know about wild animals. Tourists are shown, for example the South African
wildebeest, but they are not told what Africans think about this animal and thought about it, that
the wildebeest was one of the holiest animals in Africa. It was believed by the various tribes to
possess powers of expelling negative spirits and other evil influences from the land and the tail
of the wildebeest is used even now by shamans and sangomas, as an instrument for exorcising evil
spirits from people and from places. Tourists are shown the zebra, they are told, that this is a
Burchells Zebra or whoever's zebra and then they are given the Latin name for this African
animal.
They are never told, that to African people the zebra was an animal sacred to the great Earth
Mother, an animal, whose spoor possessed a power to take away infertility and other female
illnesses from black women. I can say, bluntly, that a tourist gets cheated in South Africa, in
that he or she is denied the great beauty of the folklore, that our people held and still hold
regarding animals. I believe, that this gross injustice must be remedied and remedied at once.
Zoologist and other
scientists have been in Africa for just over four hundred years, but Africans have lived side by
side with wild animals, birds and insects for millennia and over the years they built mythologies
around these creatures, mythologies, that should not be denied to those, who visit our country's
shores. There are even places in South Africa, places of great interest, about which tourists know
nothing, because those, who live within our country's shores, know nothing and care to know nothing
about those things. I say again, that South Africa is a paradise, a potential paradise for overseas
visitors, if only those in authority could allow traditional Africans to have their say and to talk
to overseas visitors openly just as trained tour-guides do. South Africa does not consist only of
scientists. South Africa does not consist only of white settlers. It consists of ancient tribes and
communities, which were here long before the first Portuguese ship sailed around the Cape of Good
Hope.
I am going to talk to you about two places. Two places, whose potential as tourist destinations we
are going to unveil. The first of these two places is a piece of land called Vulindaba, whose name
means open the story or start the story. Vulindaba is at the foot of a range of mountains of the
Megaliesberg Mountain system. It lies along a road named Lazy River Road. Vulindaba is going to be
opened as a wilderness trail to young people, overseas visitors as well as school children.
Vulindaba is a piece of unspoilt countryside. It is a piece of wild bush and grassland. It is a
piece of snarling rocks and a steep mountain slope. It is a piece of land, on which there still
grow some of the ancient flora, which one finds or used to find in this place. There will be
accommodation at Vulindaba for young people to spend the night under the South African stars, to
listen to stories and to listen to dancing and drum beating - to be one with the spirit of the
wilderness and to be one with the spirit of the ancient Mountains of Magadi. This was a land once
ruled by matriarchs - a land of hard-working people, who were engaged in trade with seafarers far
to the east of South Africa. There are many stories in this land.
There are many songs, which one can still hear being sung by old men and old women in this area. It
is here, that one must, once more, reconnect oneself with the bygone days of this country. There is
mystery among the Megaliesberg Mountains. There are ancient things, that you find here, which have
never been written about in any tourist brochure. There are historical structures, which still
stand on farms in this area. There are ancient mines, which go deep into the entrails of the
mountains. Mines, which were dug by people we do not know. People, who were mining for something we
do not know. There are places amongst the Megaliesberg Mountains, which have been regarded as
sacred by black people for hundreds if not thousands of years. Let me tell you about one such
place. There is a farm along the Lazy River Road and on the edge of this farm there is a spring of
pure water. Water, that bubbles out of the earth, travels for a few yards
or so and then disappears back into the earth again. Our people called this spring the Spring of
Marutwani, who is said to have been a great female healer and prophetess, who lived nearly two
hundred years ago. For many generations now sick black people, as well as traditional healers, have
been coming to the Spring of Marutwani to get its pure healing water and in these two or three
decades most people, who have been coming to this place, have been members of the powerful Zion
Catholic Church, the most powerful free church in South Africa, who have been coming here with
plastic containers to get the water of Marutwani's spring. Now let me show you a blatant injustice
- an injustice born of ignorance.
There are in England a number of sacred wells and springs, whose waters are said to possess healing
powers and in my travels to the far away British Isles I came across several such sacred wells and
springs and one of them is called Chalice Well. The rusty coloured water, that comes out of Chalice
Well, has been believed by the English people to possess healing powers for thousands of years and
the waters of this spring are bottled and exported to distant parts of the world by the English
people. But here in South Africa we have got springs like the Spring of Marutwani, about which the
world knows nothing and the water of Marutwani has got just as powerful healing powers as Chalice
Well, Lourdes and other famous places like that in Europe and in England possess. Everybody knows
about Chalice Well, but nobody knows about the Sacred Spring of Marutwani and the powers - real
powers of healing that it possesses. Another thing. In the same area, that Vulindaba is, about a
few miles away from it, there stands a little hill, a small mountain, which for thousands of years
has been viewed by black people as a mountain just as sacred as Mount Zion is to the people of
Israel. This mountain is called Intaba kaNgwenya. This mountain stands out above the landscape and
is visible from almost anywhere. Black people, especially the Mandebele people, have held the
belief, that gods from the stars descend upon this mountain on a regular
basis and ascend up this mountain also on a regular basis for reasons, that we human beings do not
know.
Hundreds of Ndebele men and women over the decades have claimed to
have seen strange creatures, whose skins are chalk-white. Creatures with the heads of crocodiles
and the bodies of human beings, descending out of the sky and then returning back to the sky from
the top of this mountain. Many years ago, when I was a Sangoma novice, I heard stories about
these
strange crocodile gods near the cooking fires of wise men and wise
women, who had their homes around this amazing little mountain. The farmers, upon whose land
this mountain stands, do not realize, what a sacred or an important thing it is and they do not
realize how it can be used to attract visitors from far away across the wide belly of Mother Earth.
We have got treasures, that the gods gave us, but these treasures are unknown to us. This is the
tragedy of South Africa.
When people visit Vulindaba they shall hear about all this and much more. Not far away from
Vulindaba, across the tarred road that leads to Hartebeespoort, you shall find another place,
another farm, which, like Vulindaba sits at the feet of the mighty Megaliesberg Mountains, but this
farm is unique in that there is a river, the mighty Crocodile River, which flows through the land
at the foot of a huge mountain, which old people used to call Nkwe Mountain. This mountain is a
huge, massive thing and seen from a certain angle it looks like a gigantic, sleeping leopard with
its head resting upon its paws and what is amazing is that there is a visible feature on the slope
of this mountain, which looks like the open, snarling mouth of the leopard. There are two
semi-circular features, which look like the mouth of a beast. The Sleeping Leopard Mountain is
joined by a smaller mountain with a sharp point, which the old women, who used to have their kraals
in this place many
years ago, used to call the Iswele, the Woman's Breast Mountain, and between the Leopard Mountain
and the Woman's Breast Mountain there is a gap and from behind this gap rises the sun and it goes
over the farm to set in the West. We are
told, that ancient tribal astrologers used to observe the sun and the moon rising from behind these
two mountains and they could tell, which season it was by which part of the gap between the two
mountains was the sun rising at any given time. This farm, that I am talking about is now owned by
the London based, Women for Peace, the brave women, who go into places such as Bosnia and Sarajevo
to comfort traumatized refugees and to care for the injured and upon this farm it is our intention
to create unique attractions, which visitors will see. One of these attractions will be a healing
village, where actual healing of people will take place. Traditional healers will be available here
to tend to those, who require their skills.
Also in this place there will be a place for visitors to spend nights and days and there will also
be a Garden of Mysteries, with standing stones, erected according to traditional African ways.
There will also be statues of various African gods, which will be seen in this place. This place,
which did not have a name before, has been given the beautiful African name Naledi, that means a
star or the giver of enlightenment.
Here visitors will take part in traditional astronomy and astrology and here stories will be told
and visitors will also be shown healing herbs grown in the Garden of Mysteries. They will be shown
that and much, much more. Works of art and other beautiful traditional artifacts will be here for
sale for those, who wish to buy them. It will be a place of Life, a place of Light and a place of
Beauty.
Part 8: HOPE for South Africa
Hope for South Africa. No matter how dark the night may seem to be, No matter how angry the thunder
storm, there is always a ray of light, that can pierce those thunder clouds and that can make the
night turn into day. No one can deny there is AIDS devouring our people like a dragon in this land.
There are the people, who say that AIDS does not exist and that it is not the fearful thing that we
take it to be. I would like to ask these people most respectfully "what is that, what is killing
our people out there in the countryside; I have held many AIDS victims in my arms some of them have
died in my hands. I know, that there is something out there killing our people. I know, that this
thing is as real as you and I. There is an African saying that says the poor woman who refuses to
see the rapist, and who shut her eyes to his ugly presents, will not however escape his presents
and we can not fight AIDS by saying it is not there. It is there. We cannot, we dare not, the
reality of this disease, which has such a serious impact on our society, which has a disastrous
impact on our families. Although this disease is so evil it can be defeated. Just as other diseases
in the past was eventually defeated. May people, who do not realize that what we are seeing is
actually a repercussion of history. In my younger days diseases such as gonerea/syfeler and TB were
as terrible and incurable as AIDS is today and they were eventually defeated. People today complain
about
anti-aids drugs and in the past I heard people complaining about anti-venereal diseases medicines
in the 1930. There was a time when an African with TB all he had to do is go home and die exactly
as the case with AIDS today. But people must
never forget that the greatest disease people have is there minds and that if we put our minds
together we can defeat this ailment. In the darkness today that is South Africa, in the darkness,
as death and misery there is however a faint green ray of Hope in a plant called Suterlandia
Furtencens. This plant was known for hundred's of years by the Khoi-Khoi and Khoi Sun as well as
African people. It was the plant in older days was the weapon against diseases such as cancer to TB
and other diseases. It was also a sedative and a tonic amongst the untold story of Africa.
Part 9: AIDS in South Africa
There was someone whose name, if I remember correctly, was Santana or Santanaya (George Santayana)
- a person of great wisdom indeed. This Santana or Santanaya spoke the following words: "If people
fail to learn from history they will always repeat history's mistakes."
Upon this planet all living entities - be they birds or animals or even human beings - are given an
important ability by the Creator, which is to learn from experience and on learning, to survive the
angry night and the roaring storms of existence upon this world. But many of us, supposedly
civilized human beings, appear to be losing this very important God-given talent. We no longer
appear to have the capacity to learn. We take it for granted, that we are intelligent beings. We
take it for granted, that we know many things - but the fact is that we know nothing or next to
nothing and that we seldom learn from experience. When things happen we tend to forget them and
because of our having forgotten them we tend to make mistakes - mistakes, that cost us our lives,
mistakes that cost us our happiness, mistakes that even threaten the existence of the very earth,
which has nurtured and cherished us for so many millions of years. Today a hideous pandemic known
as Aids is sweeping through South Africa today we are told that four million people, our brothers
and sisters, our neighbours, our fellow tribesmen and tribeswomen are already contaminated by Aids
and are living with it. Hundreds of
people have died since Aids appeared in South Africa some 20 or 21 years ago. The bony hand of Aids
has snuffed out hundreds of our brightest stars, our young intellectuals, our young leaders, and
the number of deaths is increasing fast.
For some reason Aids, which was said to be a slow killer, has become even more vicious, than before
and is killing our people with amazing speed. Today every person, who dies of an illness is
immediately suspected of having died of an Aids related illness. But that is not all. The name Aids
carries with it a stigma a brand of shame so dark and terrible and intense, I can only liken it to
the kind of stigma, that societies in Africa and in ancient Israel placed upon the shoulders of
those unfortunate people, that suffered from leprosy. A lot of empty lip service is being paid in
SA today to the fact, that everybody should fight to remove the stigma, that is attached to Aids.
But actually very little is being done to bring this about and the entities, that caused this
terrible stigma namely the newspapers and other news media are doing next to nothing to
de-stigmatise Aids. They started it all and they should put it right. When Aids first
appeared it was said to be a disease of drug-takers and homosexuals. People, who are looked down
upon by holier-than-thou sections of our society. Suddenly we were told that Aids was a
heterosexual disease, apart from being a homosexual one, and that it attacked even those
people, who thought, that they were leading clean and God-fearing lives. It is the news
media, that should correct this dreadful mistake for they were the instruments of it spreading,
when this disease first came to existence. It is spoken by our people in this proverb, that he, who
has farted inside the chieftain's great house, should find perfumed herbs to burn in the fireplace
and take away the smell - and this proverb I throw at the feet of newspapers, not only in this
South Africa, but in other parts of the world as well. You started this rot, you farted in the
chief's house - now please find perfumed herbs and burn them to take away your stench. I am an old
man, closely approaching my eightieth year and over my head the angry years have passed like water
over the wall of a dam. I have seen many things and I can tell you from my experience, that what we
are seeing in South Africa is really something new, but rather a repetition of history, brought
about by people, who have failed to learn history's lessons. Today in South Africa we talk about
the disease called Aids, which we are told there, is no cure for. We are further told about how
expensive are the medicines for combating Aids are and lastly, we are told about Aids orphans. Oh,
I have seen them - the pathetic little waifs, the scatterlings left upon the cruel road of history
by a disease, that knows no pity. I have seen children already marked by the claws of Aids
-children, who will not see their fifty years of life. Children, who will be torn away from the
arms of our motherland by Aids and hurled into the dark night of death without every having known,
what life really is and what life is about. I have seen wasted little children, many of them hardly
more than skeletons - children, whose mothers and fathers have already died of Aids. I have seen
this and much more. I have seen the horrible impact, that Aids is having on our people's family
life. I have seen how Aids is separating men from wives, child from parent. I have seen that and
much, much more, but within my swollen heart, bloated with old age, a voice, a grave voice from
yesterday keeps on saying to me.
"Mutwa, you have seen all this before. Your country and your people have gone through much of this
before. Much of what we see happening in South Africa today is not new, but has happened before and
the people of our country failed miserably to learn from that."
What am I talking about? There was once a time in the 1920's, 1930's and 1940's, when Tuberculosis
was just as deadly a killer of our people as Aids is today - in those days Tuberculosis was known
as Consumption and any black person, who was told by doctors, that he or she had Consumption,
reacted exactly as black people, who are told, that they have got Aids do today. The person knew in
those days before streptomycin and other magic anti-Tuberculosis drugs, that a sentence of death
had been passed by some angry god over him or her and that he or she must silently and with as much
courage as possible await the dark Angel of Death's coming. There was once a time in my country's
history, when diseases such as Gonorrhoea, Syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases, which
had been brought into Africa by people from Europe, were as deadly and incurable as Aids is today.
If Aids today has created thousands of Aids orphans then, my friends, so did Gonorrhoea, Syphilis
and Tuberculosis. Those people, who are complaining about how expensive anti-Aids drugs are, should
listen to what I have to tell them now. In olden days there were crude medicines, which were used
against Syphilis, Gonorrhoea and such like diseases. Most of these medicines were in the form of
pills - ugly, round black coloured things, which were made of mercury. I remember them well. These
pills were priced right out of the lives of grass-route level Africans. I remember, that some
unscrupulous white doctors of those times used to demand two cows for a tinful of these mercury
pills. Pills, which eventually drove the user mad - pills, which tanned the teeth of those, who
used them over a time as black as those of goats. Very few of our people could afford these mercury
tablets. Even more expensive, were much later preparations created for the combating of venereal
disease. I remember one such preparation known as 606 or Salvasan. These tablets were out of reach
of our people and many, many people died horrible deaths, hideously disfigured by Syphilis,
hideously mutilated by Gonorrhoea, because they could not afford those silver bullets of those
times.
In those days, as is the case today, people were filled with a massive hysteria, regarding diseases
such as Tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases. It is one of the most brutal facts of our
country's history, that in those days, if a farmer learned that one of his black labourers had
contracted either Gonorrhoea, Syphilis or even Tuberculosis, that white farmer became frightened
that these diseases would, somehow be transmitted to members of his own family and he used to take
the black man or woman away from his farm on the pretext of taking him or her to "a good doctor" in
a nearby town and when the farmer and his worker reached an isolated spot the farmer used to order
the worker to get off the wagon and to walk the rest of the distance - giving him a meaningless
letter supposedly to be taken to the great doctor in the town and the farmer would stop his wagon
and let the black person climb off and then he would wait for him or her to walk some distance away
towards the imaginary source of help and when the person was still within rifle range the farmer
used to draw his gun and shoot the worker dead, drag him or her into a clump of bushes and return
home. On so many occasions was this thing done almost all over South Africa, especially in Natal
and in the Eastern Cape and the Northern Transvaal, that our people began to develop a cold
distrust of going to seek the help of doctors, when they found themselves the victim or either
Tuberculosis or venereal disease. It became a tradition for our people to believe and, rightly so,
that if he or she sought the help of a doctor, he or she would not return alive, but would be
finished off somewhere along the road.
Today, there are still thousands of Zulu people, Xhosa people and people of other tribes, who
firmly believe, that if they go to a clinic or seek the help of a doctor when they have got either
Tuberculosis or venereal disease, that they will be finished off. I have met hundred of such people
and this belief, which is still as strong now as it was over sixty years ago or more, is one of the
things, that are making our battle against Aids a hundred times more difficult, than it otherwise
would have been. In the olden days, there was something, which our people used to call ingane
kaNodndwa, which means the child of a prostitute. This child of a prostitute was often the
offspring of a woman, who had suffered for years from Gonorrhoea and who then died after giving
birth to this child. Usually such children were born blind, which was a strange characteristic I
observed of children, whose mothers suffered from this scourge. The child was born weak in body and
in mind and was sometimes covered with sores and when having reached the age of walking, unable to
walk properly. In those days it was quite common for a woman, while walking along the street to be
approached by a strange woman,
a prostitute, and given a child wrapped in blankets, "here" would say the prostitute, "I give you
this child, please bring it up in memory of me". In those days our people still believed very
firmly in their sacred traditions and their belief in the traditional black religion had not yet
been destroyed by the foreign creed known as Christianity. In those days our people regarded
children as very sacred beings indeed - so much, so that in no African tribe or community did you
find an orphan.
All orphaned children were immediately adopted, handed over to relatives and brought up with
dignity and love by people, who still believed, that the greatest duty of all human beings was to
cherish, protect and nurture children. In those days things such as sexual abuse of children were
totally unknown. In those days were believed, that there was no greater luck that could befall a
person, but for that person to be given a living breathing child by a total stranger. I know many
sangomas who, in their younger days, had been given children by prostitutes in Johannesburg and who
brought up these children as their very own. One of the greatest sangomas, who once lived in
Johannesburg, was a Sangoma known as Dorcas Danisa. Dorcas Danisa was a true psychic like Mr. Uri
Geller, she could bend spoons and other metal objects and one day when she was still a young woman
way back in the 1940's, Dorcas had been approached by a destitute woman, who had made a living out
of selling her body and who was now riddled with syphilis and no longer able to earn a living. This
woman approached Dorcas Danisa with a boy-child, who was deformed. The boy was crippled, paralyzed
from the waist down and Dorcas brought up this boy as her own child - saw to it, that he had proper
schooling and when Dorcas died, this boy now grown into full manhood inherited Dorcas's estate.
Very, very few people knew that he was not her natural son, but a son by adoption - given to Dorcas
by a strange a woman, well over thirty years before. When a child was born deformed, when a child
was born blind, the offspring of a prostitute, our people used to cherish that child, bring it up
as their own, and see to it that it grew into a mature, happy and respected human being. But today,
with our traditions destroyed and our religion shattered, black people have become utterly cruel
and selfish and vicious towards those, they should be assisting. Today our people run away from
those of their countrymen and women, who have been traumatized by Aids and Tuberculosis. Children
orphaned by Aids are treated worse, than beasts. In Westernized and Christianized communities of
today children suffering from Aids, weakened by HIV are beaten, ostracized, ill treated and forced
to scavenge for scraps of food in dirty dustbins. I have seen it many times and I have wondered,
why our people have changed so much within one man's lifetime. We have become a nation of extremely
cruel people towards our own kind and kin and the reason for this is that we have thrown away our
culture and our religion like so much rubbish and accepted falsehoods shouted at us from the
pulpits of deceivers and the altars of liars. Today, if you want to adopt a suffering child, you
have got to go through a whole hell of bureaucracy - you got to answer a thousand questions - you
have got to travel many miles from this office to that one. Things are not being made at all easy
for us, African people to do what we feel is our godly duty towards those of us, who are suffering.
Sometimes in the darkness of the night when I lie unsleeping, lost in thought,
I despair for the future of the black people. I despair for he future of my country. But at the
same time, man is a winged creature, a creature given spiritual wings and these wings have one name
and that name is Hope. No matter how dark the
night or how angry the storm a human being must keep his wings of Hope unfurled and strong
otherwise he shall fall out of the skies as Icarus and perish upon the rocks far below. It is true,
that there is darkness over South Africa, it is true that there is despair in the land at this
moment, but what we are facing is a disease like any other - a disease, made worse by the high rate
of unemployment in our country. A disease made worse by the fact, that our people are starving. You
can never fight a deadly disease like Aids, if you are torn apart by hunger - if you are torn apart
by unemployment, but there is hope, a very faint hope for the people of South Africa. We must
believe in that Hope otherwise we are a nation of dead things. There is a Hope, that Aids can be
defeated - there is a hope, that the economic situation of our country can get better. One of the
most amazing things, that I have found in my long and bitter life is this - that it appears as if
God prepared this world for the coming of animals and human beings and for the meeting of any
emergency, that may arise - that there isn't a disease on this planet, that has a cure and man has,
but to look around carefully and find it. There is a plant growing in the veld in South Africa,
especially in the Cape. This is a plant with rather a strong smell - a beautiful plant that looks
like a delicate fern - a plant with bright red, strange looking flowers, flowers that taste almost
like honey when you eat them. This plants name is Sutherlandia Fructesence - a plant, that was
known for thousands of years for its healing powers by Bushmen, Koi San and Koi Koi, Hottentots as
well as Bantu people. This medicine was one of seven medicines, that our traditional healers called
xxxxxxx, the final medicines, medicines, which must only be used when the entire nation is in
danger as it is now. This medicine, Sutherlandia, is safe to take and has been used by our people
for thousands of years.
