Dismembers of the Wedding

Five thousand excited Pondo and Gaika tribesmen put on their best feathers one day last week and poured into the Great Place, the Royal Kraal of Paramount Chief Archibald Sandile of Gaikaland. They gathered for the greatest social event in the history of the tribes: the wedding of Chief Sandile's son, Anthorpe, to Eunice, daughter of Paramount Chief Victor Poto Mdamase of Pondoland.

But on the heels of the tribesmen came a deluge of uninvited guests: more than 3,000 gawking whites from nearby East London (pop. 76,000) arrived in a raucous parade of cars, buses and lorries. They elbowed their way into the kraal, streamed through Chief Sandile's house as though it were a wax museum. When the bride, covered from head to foot in a ritual green blanket, approached the Royal Kraal, the whites charged toward her, blocking the entrance. The bridegroom, waiting anxiously for a first look at the bride he had never seen, could see only the shouting throng of the uninvited.

The embarrassed bride knelt before the Gaika elders to pay homage, and was almost tumbled to the ground by an overenthusiastic camera bug. Then, draping a leopard skin about her shoulders, she picked up an assagai (spear) to fling it into the Royal Kraal gatepost--the traditional demand for admission to the Gaika tribe. The jam of whites spoiled her aim: she missed. Bridegroom Anthorpe, in a long leopard skin, gave up in disgust and returned to his dressing room. Not for another hour did Anthorpe confront his bride. At an open-air altar, flanked by the mayors of nearby cities and other distinguished guests, the Bishop of Grahamstown tried to perform the Anglican marriage ceremony. But a gaggle of more than 70 camera-bearing whites crowded the honored guests off their chairs, knocked over the Communion wine, tore the altar backcloth, left empty Coca-Cola bottles on the altar-cloth. Above the altar, someone raised a huge billboard exhorting all present to smoke Commando cigarettes.

It was three hours before Anthorpe and Eunice were made man and wife. Bridegroom and bride struggled through the crowd to the seclusion of Chief Sandile's house. The whites streamed back to the cities, leaving the Gaika and the Pondo tribesmen to ponder on the strange customs and manners of white people.

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