Hintsa's Ghost

Andrew K. Miller's Hintsa's Ghost is an audacious offering, treading very precarious waters that very few South Africans, let alone a white South African, of British ancestry, would dare to tread.

This slim offering, over sixty pages, weaves Miller's narrative exposition of who he is, who we, collectively are, how we engage ourselves, each other and the world around us. It is structured thematically around the tragic story of the great Xhosa leader, Hintsa, who fought a war against the British colonists, in the 18th century and emerged as one of the pre-eminent proponents of sovereignty and self determination. Hintsa was the chief of the Gcaleka people and the paramount chief of the Xhosa from 1804, who was captured during the sixth frontier war of 1834, when he led his people in an uprising against the British. The record of this difficult period in South Africa's history reflects that this great chief was shot under the pretext of "trying to escape", after which his body was allegedly mutilated, and his severed head sent to Britain.

Using the narrative around how Hintsa's engagement with the colonists unfolded, Miller weaves a spellbinding literary patchwork quilt, under sections titled the war, the peace, the truce. It is an engaging and compelling read, which is not for the faint-hearted, because it is like drinking hard liquor straight up, without any chaser.

He opens with The Negotiation: a cripple's perspective, which begins with:

I promised myself
Long ago
That I would stop Lying
That I would not duck reasonable people
Seeking reasonable things......<

And then he moves swiftly, his pen used as a scythe, to give his meaning of Death:

Staring at me
Wetting her lips
Lifting her skirt
Waiting
For fresh young meat

And as if these offerings are not enough, the author demonstrates his grit, his ability to engage the advertising industry; the poet takes licence and aims a loaded weapon, and screams:

the worst puns
the weakest themes
the poorest taste
yet it works
we all obey
in our own way
most days
to live is to choose your evils
to be happy
is to be lucky
with the dice

One cannot but feel that Miller has seen, and reflected our collective purgatory, the artist in the inferno of creation, and the collateral damage that flows from it, in his searing remembrance of nhlanhla xaba, when he writes...

You burn
Once an artist
Now ashes
But how fitting
To be taken
On the couch
Your brush waiting next to you
Faithful
You were so deep
In the colour
You could not come back

What Miller has done with this simple yet devastating treatise is to remind us of our humanity, to tread, as the progeny of the colonist into disturbing history, and to return, as himself, to offer us a vision of our collective existence.