The book, Chaka, by Thomas Mofolo, will be out in about a week’s time, and I’ll give it out for free to subscribers of our newsletter, so be sure to follow us by email. Also, if you want to download this artwork, perhaps to use as wallpapers for your desktop or mobile devices, or to print and hang on your wall, I’ve given it to my patrons. Follow this link to support my works, and to enable me to keep this publishing venture alive.
Like Myths and Legends of the Bantu and Other Africans, I consider this an important work. It is among the first writings of speculative fiction by an African, and though it snuggles neatly into the fantasy genre, I think of it as a folk history documenting the rise and fall of Shaka Zulu. I’ve written an editorial note explaining why I think this book is important, for example how it depicts illegitimate relationships. Today, when a woman gets pregnant out of wedlock, or as a school-going teenager, she is put to shame, and she might suffer consequences that haunt her for the rest of her life. And yet, the man is seen as a hero of some sort and rarely carries the burden. In the past, the man would suffer equal,or even worse, punishment. The story of Shaka Zulu, as told in this book, revolves around an inkosi (a leader among the Zulu) who was afraid that people would find out he impregnated a woman without marrying her. All the decisions he made as inkosi were because of this fear, and it created the environment that nurtured Shaka into the legend we know of today. This is one reason that prompted me to re-publish this book, of course getting rid of racist and problematic words, and making it palatable for a modern audience, but I’ll leave that for the Editor’s Note. Today, I’m talking about the cover, mostly my inspiration for it.
The Blossoming of the Big Tree
Dilman Dila
eBook $7 | UGX 15k
“…delightful — wonderful worldbuilding with a thoughtfully-constructed solarpunk vision as well as a compelling story that hooks you in!”
“…delightful — wonderful worldbuilding with a thoughtfully-constructed solarpunk vision as well as a compelling story that hooks you in!”
eBook $7 | UGX 15k
I don’t know if I’m getting better at this, and so should explore making some small extra money designing book covers, but this took me only about eight hours, from scratch. The other covers always took a while, some, like that of The Blossoming of the Big Tree, consumed more than a month of my life before I got what I liked enough to share. Perhaps I finished it quickly since the idea ran in my head for so many weeks. I turned the image over and over again in my mind, even before I created the first pixel. I also thought a lot about the tools I’d use (what I’d do in Blender, in Krita, and in Inkscape) and so when I eventually sat down to do it, well, I wasn’t fumbling around too much. This is similar to how I write some of my short stories, which come out in one sitting, though they are around 7k words, for I think about them a lot before I write the first word.
When I first read Chaka, I thought it was a fantasy like Lord of the Rings, if Sauron was the main character, and so when I was thinking of the cover, I had very many scenes to get inspiration from. I think this book could work well as a graphic novel, or even as a film.
My first option was to depict the meeting between Chaka and a creature Mofolo calls ‘the lord of the deep waters’. I wish he had used the Zulu word for this creature, but well, let’s go with what he left us with. The passage goes as follows:
‘While Chaka was gazing deep into the pool where the ripples of water were, he saw the huge head of an enormous snake emerge suddenly very close to where he was. It had long ears like those of a hare, but in shape they were more like the ears of a field-mouse. Its eyes resembled great green hammer-stones, and its whole appearance was unimaginably terrifying…. When it approached him it put out its two long tongues and pointed them at him, as if it were going to draw him into its mouth, for its jaws were big enough to swallow him easily. When Chaka saw the tongues coming towards him he was terrified and a-tremble with fear. This was the first time that he ever felt fear of this kind – a coward’s fear.’
Myths and Legends of the Bantu and Other Africans
Alice Werner, Dilman Dila (editor)
Free Book!
Subscribe to our newsletter and get this amazing book, a guide to the myths and legends of African people, many of which are largely forgotten, or lost to time. If you already subscribed, enter your email and the book will be delivered.
Free Book!
Subscribe to our newsletter and get this amazing book, a guide to the myths and legends of African people, many of which are largely forgotten, or lost to time. If you already subscribed, enter your email and the book will be delivered.
I wanted to create this scene, but well, I saw it would take me a lot of time to create that creature, and I have a lot of things that demand my attention, and only very little time to do them all. So I settled for a simpler idea. And at this point, let me show you the cover!
Oh, so, as usual, I looked at the first cover I made (the deep blue one) and decided I didn’t like it much, so I made a second version, just tweaking the background colors to make the characters stand out better. Which one do you like?
The image in the cover is self-explanatory. A man holding a spear and a shield, walking, but he leaves behind bloody footprints. This is a literal interpretation of Shaka’s journey to power. But you might be wondering about the tree, and I don’t think I did it justice for it was not a normal tree. Here, I used a 3D model of an olive tree, for the shape was nice to look at, but mostly because it was the quickest thing I could get to make the cover. The tree described in the book deserves something grander, something out of this world. Or perhaps I’m overthinking it, and it was just an ordinary-looking tree? This is the passage about it.
The sangoma said he did not have the remaining medicine with him; it was one that caused bloodshed and murder. “It is very evil, but of great power. Choose.” He left all to Chaka’s will, but he told him that the medicine was indeed evil, and did not disguise it. Then he stood to one side so that Chaka might do as he wished.
“I desire it,” said Chaka. And now the decision had been made: of his own free will Chaka had chosen death in place of life.
When Chaka spoke the sangoma gazed at him in silence, and then said, “So be it. Let us go and seek it.”
There was a certain tree in those days standing alone on the veld, deserted. It was said that if any one wished to cut it he must prepare himself with medicines immediately before going to the tree, for if he tried to cut it without having prepared himself he would perish instantly. It was said that when a person struck it, it cried out like a young child, and its sap was like blood. When a person cut it they had to be stripped and naked. It was an enchanted tree, for if a person put a branch of it on the windward side of a house, all the inhabitants of that house died. And it was kept on the open veld like certain other dangerous medicines. Report went that if any part of this tree was cut away it dried up at once; life-giving power went out of it with the medicine that had been taken from it.
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