Those obsessed with Shaka and the mighty AmaZulu will delight in reading this epic story.
It is a mix of the Zulu empire at its zenith, based on fictionalised history, myth-making and fascinating characters who did or did not live.
So one needs to exercise understanding when reading Walton Golightly’s latest work.
He knows his material and history and, in a way, delves into the territory of the likes of George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones when he looks at Shaka.
Golightly readily admits it as well in the prelude of this book, when he writes: “If I have lied, I have lied the truth. If this is not the way things were, it’s the way they should have been.”
He also pushes the stereotype of Zulu nobility – “who must have strong thighs, be tall and dark” to fit the colonial idea of the sexually charged dark other, in this case a Zulu man. Golightly also gives us insight into what is really a forgotten history, one that is not taught in schools any longer and is hardly spoken about.
He writes that he sees Shaka as “a warrior-king in the Arthurian mould, with the iklwa as his Excalibur, visions of Avalon amid the birth pangs of apartheid.
“He is an aquarium and an airport, a simile and a model for capitalist middle management, a justification and also a metaphor. For certain whitey academics, political toadies who think cynicism and spite acceptable substitutes for scholarship, he is a nobody...”
The book opens in 1826 when Shaka has consolidated his power and is ready to move against his enemies, just as white men are arriving off the coast of what will become Durban.
The white men seem small and have strange ways, but Shaka can see there is more to them.
In this book he is obsessed with divining their secrets while becoming oblivious to the threat growing from within his own court.
Golightly was born in 1966 and attended St Henry’s College (Marist Brothers).
He studied at the University of Natal, where he majored in English and philosophy.
Following his national service he went on to work as a sub-editor on several national magazines.
He has previously written the tome, AmaZulu, which was published in 2007. - Cape Argus