| s h o r
t s t o r i e s . . .
After getting a piece published in
Spearhead Publishers' Urban One fiction anthology in 2001, I was invited
to submit a story for the Urban Two anthology in 2002. This is it.
The Monolithic
Presence of the Gentle Seda Mntu
by Hagen Engler
Target Kloof is a
valley pass which crosses the Baakens River in the heart of Port
Elizabeth. It links Central, the old part of town with Walmer, the
suburb on the opposite bank of the river.
At the bottom of the
valley is a building belonging to the Centre for Free Thought. The
centre offers yoga classes and regularly hosts guest speakers.
It was here that I
first met Seda Mntu.
Greg, a lapsed-hippy
lawyer friend of mine suggested I come to a talk at the Centre. I'd been
to an earlier talk there by Graham Hancock. Part of one of his book
tours. The whole questioning conventional history thing.
What if past
civilisations were more advanced than us? What if the pyramids are five
times older than we've been told they are? What if the wisdom of the
ancients has been lost for millennia, kept from ordinary people by the
orthodox establishment? And what if we could still tap into that wisdom?
Well what if my arse
was a meringue pie had been my immediate reaction to all his smoke and
mirrors with history. Revisionism was all very well, but sooner or later
someone will revise that again. Whenever the pyramids were built they
were still lank old and built by some pretty sharp cats. Respect to the
pyramid builders.
And respect to the
orthodox establishment. They kept my public relations firm going. All
the knowledge I need is the news editors of the local papers, the radio
station managers and the hippest nightclubs in any town and I'll make
your product huge. Ancient wisdom won't help me sell more alco-pops to
teenagers, or magazines to gym moms.
No, I was pretty smug
until I met Seda Mntu.
I was well connected
around town and I'd managed to parlay my network into a tasty little
income. Gillian and I worked it hard but the business was now running on
its own momentum. Now we were a name agency and the clients were coming
to us. By September 1998 I hadn't done a pitch for 18 months and life
was sweet. We had the Smirnoff Ice promo account, the Billabong Surf
Classic, the annual arts festival and some minor Coca-Cola products.
Gill was doing her bit
to keep the office side cooking, so I was mainly lunching with clients
organising some of the outside events. Golf days and such.
And trying to find
myself. There was something missing - and it wasn't marrying Gillian and
buying a house together, at least I didn't think so.
Two weeks before my
thirtieth birthday Greg and I turned into the Creative Thought Centre to
see Seda Mntu speak.
In the hall we met
Jenny Adler, the CTC founder and a few of the other women from the
centre. I noticed they were all wearing white T shirts. We were
introduced to Seda, a slight Tanzanian man with an incredibly calm
presence.
Seda shook hands in the
almost limp African style and flashed an enormous smile.
"Welcome,'' he said. "Welcome my friends."
It was 7.30pm and the
searingly overlit auditorium was a third full. Jenny Adler gushingly
introduced Seda as "someone who's had a huge impact on my life. The
light he's brought into my life is truly amazing ..."
She blushed like a
communion bride. "We're all truly blessed to have here a man of
such ... importance ..."
We all laughed together
at her embarrassment as Seda minced up to the podium like a little
Christopher Pryor. He thanked us for giving up our valuable time
"to listen to a Tanzanian peasant".
"But it is rare
that one gets to hear the messiah in person, don't you agree," he
said with a sly wink.
We laughed, but not at
the irony, because it was plain to see that Seda Mntu is God.
For the next two hours
we gazed enraptured upon his brilliance as Seda told us the Story of
One.
As he spoke he glowed
and shimmered, an aura of gold light blowing off him in wisps. It was
blinding.
Seda said he was the
founder of One, the original religion, the word that was God. The Light.
Man, like a misty
rainbow in the light of the sun, has split the light into the separate
components of the spectrum. He broke the One religion up into its many
constituent religions, separate, but carrying different shades of the
true light.
But when light is
refracted too far it dissipates and the beam becomes dimmer. All that
remains are ideas, indications of where the light would have fallen if
it were stronger.
This is what was
happening to the religions of man, Seda told us. The religious spectrum
had dimmed. The light was weak. The word was no longer with God.
It was time to return
to the One religion. Remove the prism, the divisive traditional
religions, be bathed in the true white light. Combine the colours of the
spectrum to recreate the Light of One.
It was all stoner new
age rhetoric, but what made it so undeniably believable was the
monolithic presence of the gentle Seda Mntu.
In the fluorescent
auditorium light the glare of his aura seemed to pulsate around the
room, enveloping us. In later years as we came to work together, I
discovered he could turn the light up and down, literally make himself
bigger and smaller.
"As humans, each
of us has a presence as big as a house, but we choose to focus on only
our physical core, to keep ourselves small. When we were giants on the
earth we did not live like this."
He told us he was in
his 914th life and remarked that "The lives are longer these days,
though they pass quicker". But Seda Mntu spent his sleeping hours
on the 9th vibrational level, where All was One and he could commune
with his friends, Lord Myetrea and Lord Shiva.
"In fact, in one
of my previous incarnations I was the man called Jesus Christ!"
My cynicism willed me
to disbelieve him but I could not. I resolved to join the Growth to One.
"Christoff, the
young man from the PR, what do you want to know," Seda asked me
when question time arrived.
Projectile sweating
from my palms I stood and said: "Tell us what to do"
"Help us become
One," he said.
After the talk I
arranged a meeting with Seda for the next day. He was staying with his
companion Seth at the home of Muriel, another CTC girl.
In the car Greg and I
sat with our heads in our hands and cried like babies. His coruscating
aura was just burnt into our retinas. It felt like we'd been staring
into the sun without blinking for two hours. From that night until today
whenever I close my eyes I see the face Seda Mntu
The next day's meeting
was another epiphany. Seda showed me drawings of his friends, and seemed
genuinely sad that we could only see the pictures when in fact they were
all there with us - Myetrea, Ghandi, Krishnamurti, Horus, Luther,
Ganesh, Anansi -- all there, but on the 9th level.
I photographed Seda in
the garden in front of the strelitzia bush. They came out with a little
misty aura around him. "Sometimes it looks like mist, sometimes it
looks like fire," he guffawed when I showed them to him.
He spoke of his lives
and I begged to hear of his life as Jesus. He chuckled at this:
"Ha, ha. You still know of me!"
He related the tale of
Jesus' journey to the Himalayas, where he completed his enlightenment in
the tutelage of the mountain gurus. At the end of the epiphany there was
a gathering of the deities and it was decided that Jesus would begin the
next cycle of man's awakening, the next leg of the Journey to One.
Jesus would give up his
life in the service of the Word, but his work would bring man closer to
remembering than he had come since the time of Osiris.
When man began the
materialising experiment he said to us: ``We will separate ourselves
from you and see if we can return to one. But if ever we forget our
Oneness, come to remind us.’’
He would return to
guide and observe - as Mohammed, as Michelangelo, as King - as the
reaction the gods of One had catalysed came together over the eons.
Now the cycle was
complete. It was time for the next phase. Once we were clouds, Now We
Are Water. Soon We Will Be One.
So the Messiah was
back, he meant business and he was from Tanzania. It was time for me to
come on board.
We brainstormed the
Colour of One Campaign. Reflective everything was the idea. Mirrored
billboards, white T-shirts. Blank print ads. Black, silent music videos
with just one syncopated, throbbing, compelling tone.
That would come later
though. First we had to build a profile. Obviously it would all be
centred around Seda, since he was the actual Messiah. But One felt the
people were not quite ready for "Hi, I'm back" billboards. We
needed to build up to that.
The way I saw it, we
had to go for big national profile, all markets.
We needed spoken word
kwaito mixes of Seda's raps: "I remember flying high above my
village, then seeing the hut and thinking, 'oh, so this will be my
home'".
We also needed some
miracles. Seda assured me his curative skills were still sharp and
demonstrated by reaching behind me and removing a kidney stone from my
lumbar region as if he was picking off a scab. It felt like he'd removed
a thorn from my flesh.
We put Seda on
thrice-weekly healings at the CTC, sommer smiling at cripples and
watching them stand up. The guy would pick up an Aids patient and hug
them, then put them gently back on their feet and they would hug him
back and scream: "We are One".
He held psychological
healings too. Healing the guilty, healing the angry, healing the bitter,
oh god ... healing the sad. And all become happy.
I cried, really I did,
to see how powerful it was. We pulled bigger crowds and eventually had
to move to a marquee by the sea (One With The Ocean, we called it). but
it was still just a PE thing. This thing of One.
We transcribed a couple
of his talks and soon we had a series of eight Journey to One self-help
volumes. But the book tours were the main tool. Even so, we still sold
books. At sixty pages they were, as Seda always said of the books,
"a no-brainer".
When we went national
we went with the messiah kwaito angle in the youth market (Simunye vids
with deep house mix of the throbbing One tone - B, it turns out, 440
Hz). Then we went for the sensitive new healer angle in Cosmo, Sarie and
True Love.
In between this me and
Gill began having problems. She felt I was neglecting the PR side of the
business, that One was taking too much of my time. She said she'd known
we were One since she took acid in first year and now she was saving for
a new couch. She didn't quite get it. I didn't want to come on too
strong and evangelical, so I ended up leaving it.
I said we would always
be One and since we were spending so little time together anyway I set
her free to be One with Anyone. Truth is I felt Gill belonged to my life
before Seda and since she couldn't yet see she was One we weren't quite
communicating.
But it was amazing to
see Seda's effect on women. The effeminate, limp-wristed rascal side of
him seemed to bring out every one of a woman's emotions all at once. He
even dragged his feet a little as he walked and women would sometimes
rush up to support him. The once outside a PTA meeting some old girl put
her back out trying to lift Seda over a puddle. Seda whispered:
"it's okay, okay" and the woman seemed to get enough energy to
carry him all the way up the steps into the hall.
Young girls would grab
his legs and to the mortification of their parents, begin rubbing their
pudenda against him. But he would patiently prise them from his shins
and exhort: "come, come my little sisters, we are one. We Are
One".
Things began happening
fast. The best break commercially was when we got Coke behind us. The
paid for all the merchandising - the white tees were doing a bomb - but
we negotiated a world-first no-branding, no sale deal. At the One events
you could get Coke products for free. Most people went for the Bonaqua.
It was a wicked alliance: business and religion. But we were still just
a national phenomenon.
We got a very coolly
styled You cover - they sell 230 000 a week - and started opening Onet
franchises, cafes where people could watch live telecasts of Seda's
concerts in between cruising the web and sinking a couple of beers or
cappucinos.
"Plenty, as well
as want, can separate friends," something Seda had written as
Cowley was inscribed inside the rims of the cups and glasses. The
Montecasino Onet cafe made it onto Top Billing and the campaign began
knitting together.
"Like a newly
rejuvenated lawn, we are growing together," Seda joked. "You
are my Canada Green, Christoff". And from then I was Canada Green.
We sometimes did appearances as Seda Mntu and Canada Green.
But we saved our best
for Felicia.
I figured Felicia was
our route to Oprah. If we did well on Oprah, Larry King would soon
follow and that was our way of reaching the world. Thus far, no one we
had reached had not become One.
In clubs you'd hear the
One Tone being dropped in behind progressive house tracks, bands could
play one-chord punk tunes in the One Tone and the possibilities for the
One Ringtone were vast. We were Speeding Towards One.
"A poor
schoolteacher from Pemba, Tanzania claims he is the New Messiah," a
journalist-toned Felicia introduced Us. "Seda Mntu is 42. He is the
leader of the One Cult which has been gaining popularity in the Eastern
Cape region over the last couple of months."
We took over Felicia.
The taping lasted all
day as audience members clambered to be healed of sadness. Felicia
herself was healed of globalism and began speaking like Brenda Fassie. A
man with cancer got up and joined the freestyle rap at the end of the
programme. Seda got his aura throbbing to the rhythm of the One Tone and
people were as blinded by the light as always.
Next thing we know
we're on Oprah next week and then it's now and things are moving fast.
Seda hugs Oprah and she instantly loses 25 kg on live TV. The miracles
are getting truly transcendental and world opinionmakers start demanding
face time.
Gill calls me in
Chicago and says she misses me. We promise to get together in South
Africa. Larry King's people phone. We have lunch with Steven Spielberg
who wants to do a documentary epic of the Journey to One.
We do CNN and Seda
drops the entire healing angle and pleads for world peace. "My
brothers and sisters, only peace will win your war. Next thing we're on
a three-way with Erakat and Netanyahu which ends with all three leaders
making a joint statement of understanding.
Things are moving so
fast. We close the PR firm and Gill joins me on the Journey to One.
We're in Switzerland for the UN session on third world debt relief. Seda
makes himself as big as a house and delivers a blistering speech on
behalf of the Southern African Non-Governmental Forum.
"If a tree forgets
his roots he can only fall,'' Seda says. "We are the soil. We are
nurturing your roots. We ask only that you let the leaves fall from your
branches that they may nourish us. That way we will feed you
forever"
Blair wears a white
T-shirt when he makes the debt forgiveness announcement and things begin
quickening.
They get quicker.
Erakat wants us at a Middle East peace summit. Seda suggests a global
convention of Arab and Jewish diaspora to mediate the talks. Biafra and
Nader join the Journey to One and the US becomes a tripartite political
system. One World Peace thrives almost immediately.
Days seem like minutes
now. Geneva, The Hague, Johannesburg, New York, Lusaka.
Seda becomes all most
opaque, so fast is he vibrating. One day I reach for a glass of juice
and the glass rises and hovers into my hand. I discover I can heal by
touch. I suspect it’s from contact with Seda.
Gill and I are together
daily, but there is no sex. It’s like our bodies are now no longer the
point.
By the time One With
Seda Mntu plays Wembley stadium he is flickering like a light that may
go out any time, changing size and shape. The audience seems to throb
with us when we play 440 Hz you can see this mist of light rising off
them in time to the vibration. At one point during the climax Seda
leaves the ground and hovers a good few inches clear of the stage, just
glowing.
Hollywood Bowl, Sydney,
Central Park, Brasilia, Lagos, the Love Parade. It’s all knitting
together.
The One tour group’s
little culture bubble is getting so tight we’re almost
indistinguishable. We travel, perform, and sleep together. Conversations
are increasingly non-verbal.
After concerts we all
share the light, healing all who need it. For we are all Seda Mntu. And
All is One.
One Africa, one Europe
one economy, one brand, one world with us giving it up on stage every
day and every night, travel-unite, travel-unite. And no food now, We
seem to be running on light energy.
Now millions are One.
The quickening accelerates. In the mirror I can notice my edges
blurring. The TV spots are now less sensational since the show hosts are
now all One and the appearances are now more a celebration of One than a
demonstration of it.
But we are increasingly
hard to film. Now we link vibrationally on higher levels. I meet Myetrea
on level seven. He tells me earth itself is deconcretising, becoming
misty.
Now our ancestors are
among us. I am 600 people and growing. Sometimes I blow around likely a
dustcloud and have to concentrate to make myself crystallise again, but
my features are no longer those of Christoff or even Canada Green.
I am quickening and I
am remembering. The materialising experiment is ending.
Gill and I are one,
Seda and I are one, Greg is one with us, Jenny is one with us. We move
as a curtain of light and separate if our egos or our bodies are
required, but it becomes increasingly unnecessary.
We are only light
parcels and light waves, blowing through and with each other.
We are light parcels
and light waves.
We are shafts of light.
We are one light.
We are light.
One light.
We.
Are.
One.
.
So where are we at, us
hip cats? International, that's a fact, but what do we bring to that?
Does the international
worldwide bit have much of us in it?
It does do, or should
do, would do, coz we could do a stack to whack a rack of Africa concept
attack to go with all that.
But are we who we
purport to be when we purport to be the unity community, dropping flip
judgments with impunity as the unreconciled wile away the decades of
disunity. The MC's of unity, us, we, Mzantsi Africa reconciled as we'd
like to be, ideally.
Crime fills the papers,
dictatorial neighbours make the rand drop like gauges, or real wages, or
shark divers cages, anti-globalist rages, neo-colonial history pages to
read, but not. What we got are sages, sanusis, sangomas, sans pages, but
walking, talking bone-throwing universities given cursory short shrift
by condescending half-right self-appointed opinion-leaders as we take on
another culture's values they don't even believe in anyway.
Are we as phat as all
that?
Perhaps.
All hip hectic hip hop
beats. What's it, one-twenty a minute, nothing in it. Anyone can spin
it. It's really all in the production, isn't it? But don't be dissin'
it. Funkpopjazzhiphop I dig that shitrockskateshop. Kwaitokwelablues I
don't mind, I can dig it. I dig that Metro FM spoken word bit, you musta
seen that shit.
You can put a lotta
labels on it. Your food, your thoughts, your neighbours got it. Foreign
made, imported shoes and attitudes with bagels on it. Pick up a couple
cable comments on it, one or too-good-to-view CNN heart-wrenching
pictures of it.
More Aids infants in a
month go down than Osama can shake a hijack plane at, but you gotta know
which of all of those poor late-lamented we can really be expected to
have a plan to have protected over here this year.
I hear you, I hear you.
No tsotsis coming near you, next to fuckall at all to fear, you gotta
god that makes it clear, you sign up to spiritual contracts made up many
miles from here, are you aware that there's more of that right here than
anywhere. Spiritual contracts, I mean.
It's obscene, we taking
on value systems from the world's most war-torn regions. How 'bout a
local religion like the new constitution? Nah, never work, coz homegrown
just doesn't fly this side unless it walks and talks and smells and
farts like artists from outside. Am I right?
"Show me the roots
rock," the talent scouts are gonna say one day, they gonna say,
"I seen dis, back home in the States. I don't need no ghetto
gangster hip hop fakes, don't need no RnB diva double, I got dat back at
my own shack, I need dat like a RadioShack Star Trek jet pack. Fuck
that".
Ja, that's what they
gonna say. But I know that you know that we know that they know less
than nutting about our things. Manu Dibango been dropping those things
in the fifties, nah'msaying?
Souldiscohiphophighlife,
you can dig it, latino-stylie Lion of Cameroon, it's irie to be back in
Africa, don't you scheme? But skei for the skollies, ekse. Skort for
scammers, sorry ek's jammer, can be a bummer for the karma like a
half-rhyme at the best of times, but times change chop-chop, china, so
check out the chops and changes.
If we recycle anything,
it'll always have been an African thing from way back whenever, if ever.
Everything's just a new
spin on things, so whatever.
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