Mda’s latest novel paints a picture of how the West, then and now, refashions the other to validate its own preconceptions

Metal thieves have vandalised a statue of dead Zulu warriors at the entrance of the Isandlwana battlefield in northern KwaZulu-Natal.

Nearly 80 Zulu warriors wearing armbands of white goat fur and loinclothes of antelope tails race down the battlefield of Isandlwana screaming and slapping their wooden clubs…