Part 4

In the Northern part of Matabeleland, not far from the Zambesi river, lives a tribe called Bashankwe who follow a custom of marriage known locally as "ku garidzela" which is in effect a rendering of personal service, in the doing of such primitive husbandry as there obtains by the prospective son-in-law for the parent of the girl chosen instead of paying for her a consideration in money or cattle as is done by most of the Natives in South Africa. It is a practice similar to the custom which may be supposed to have been general in Palestine when Jacob served for Rachel in the days of the Hebrew patriarchs. Sometime ago I discussed the nature and present incidence of this custom with a chief named Sileya of those parts, a wholly untutored Native. A point brought up for settlement was the validity, under the present régime, of the claim for compensation that under their law might be brought by a rejected "garidzela" lover for the value of the work done by him during his period of service when, at the end of such service, he found the girl unwilling to marry him. I had explained to the chief that the white man's government would always set its face against any custom whereby it might be possible for the parents to pledge their daughters in marriage, and had pointed out that this particular custom was for that reason not viewed with favour by the authorities. To this Sileya replied: "If you, the Government, will make it plain that the man who finds himself refused by the girl for whom he has been serving can claim compensation for the work he has done then the fathers will become more careful than they now are and they will refuse to accept the young man's services save where the girl is old enough to consent for herself, for no man likes to give up what he has won and held, and in this manner our old custom will not go against the way of the Government." This reply, which I have Englished almost literally, is typical of the Native form of argumentation and it shows good all-round thinking ability; it is not a particular instance of special intelligence, but a fair example of average Native perspicacity.

A few months ago, while discussing with some elderly Matabele Natives the subject of miscegenation in South Africa generally one of the old men voiced the opinion of the meeting thus:

"White people do what they like, they take what they like, and when they like certain girls they take them, and what can we say? And, after all, why should they not do so? Everything belongs to them, we are their people, our girls belong to them, the white people only take what is theirs to take."

"But," I interpolated, "white men do not take the girls away from you, it is the girls themselves who leave their own kind and go to the white men."

"No," he replied, "I say they take the girls because they know as well as we do that women--all women--will always go where they can live with ease and have plenty and be without work, and this they can do when they go to the white man, whereas with us they must work. Therefore I say that the white men take the girls away from us, but I do not say that they do wrong so long as they only play with them and have no children by them, for it is the manner of all the world that men and women come together and no law can be made to stop them from doing so, but the white men do wrong when they allow the black women to have children by them because such children grow up without proper homes, and that is very sad and wrong."

I think the average white man, whatever his own opinion may be on this matter, will acknowledge that there is clear thought and strong common-sense in the old man's dictum, and this old man is an ordinary raw Native, without any European education.

My good friend, Mahlabanyane, is a typical Tebele of the old school. In his youth he accompanied the hunter Selous on many wanderings, and he never tires of telling of the ways and habits of the game and wild animals he has seen and shot. One day he told me that he had observed all the wild animals of Rhodesia, big and small, and that he had examined them all after they had been killed. He had come to the conclusion, he said, that many of the bigger animals were related to one another in some wonderful way, and that they had probably come out of the earth, all alike, and had then afterwards become different, "as people do when they separate and live always by themselves away from other people," he added.

"Look at the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus and the wild pig," he said, "they must at one time have been one kind; their teeth are alike, and none of them chew the cud. I think they must be cousins to one another, and, one time, perhaps, they were brothers."

Leaving aside the question of the absolute correctness of the old man's observation there can be no doubt that we have here a thinker who, being struck with the physiological similarity of some animals is attempting to account for the fact, and does so along the lines of Darwin and his predecessors, but without any of the facts and theories that were recorded before they began their labours. I asked the old fellow if he had ever heard Selous talk about this matter, and he said he had not; the idea, he said, had come out of his own head.

One day a Zambesi woman whose husband, a petty chief, was awaiting trial for murder at my station, sent word to me asking for permission to dance that night in the compound. Surmising that there was a religious motive behind this request I gave my consent, and afterwards watched the dancing for an hour or so.

The element of rhythm in sound and movement has always been one of the chief means of exciting and expressing religious exaltation as well as sexual passion, and the two emotions merge easily in all primitive people whether they be the half-civilised moujiks of Russia, or the frequenters of modern "Revival Meetings," or the naked Batonka on the banks of the Zambesi. The Batonka, indeed, are particularly fond of dancing to the beat of the ubiquitous drum.

The woman, who was accompanied by a few of her female friends, danced with unusual grace, and her movements were remarkably free from erotic incitation. Holding a pair of gourds in which little stones rattled not unmusically, like castanets, she gyrated in the moonlight and pirouetted on her toes with such lightness and elegance that my curiosity was roused, and the next morning I had her brought to my office and asked her to account, if she could, for the marked difference between her way of dancing and that of the rest of her people.

This is what she said: "I was very sad and my whole body was heavy. I felt ill, so I asked that I might be allowed to dance. Dancing always does me good when I feel unwell. I did not learn to dance in the way I do from anyone. I think the Great Spirit gave to me the gift of dancing, the power came down on me when I was a child. I have never seen Europeans or Arabs dancing. I have never seen an Arab dancing woman. I dance my way because the Spirit gave it to me to do so."

I then asked her what it was that made her well. Was it the dancing or the profuse sweating which I had noticed? "The Spirit," she said, "made me well, he gave me to dance, the dancing made we sweat thereby cooling my body, and that made me well, it brought my heart back to its right place."

This clear expression of concatenated thought from a Native woman who had had no missionary tuition or other education of the Western kind shows to my mind sound reasoning capacity no less developed than that met with in Europeans generally.

Turning over my notes I select, at random, a few more instances to illustrate my argument.

A Tebele youth of about twenty years of age, smooth-limbed and good looking, was charged some years ago in the Rhodesian High Court with the crime of abducting two young Native girls for his own immoral purposes. I made a note of the chief part of his speech in his own defence at the time. This is what he said:

"I have the gift of singing and dancing, my father had it, and his father before him. When I sing and dance people forget their sorrows, and when I leave a kraal, singing as I go, the people follow me for the joy of my song, so that sometimes I have to drive them away. Now it is easy to drive away old men and women, but who can drive away two pretty girls like these that have been made to speak against me to-day? When I sang and danced at their kraal their father gave me a goat because I had made his heart white and glad, and his daughters followed me and joined in the play--and I am young! When I become old and can no longer sing and dance the girls will not follow me. Why should I not be merry while I may? I never said a word to these girls, they followed me, I did not call them. But now, if the white men who listen to my words feel doubtful about what I say, then I would ask the judge to allow me to show them here and now how I can dance and sing, and if, after hearing and seeing me do so, they still think I am to blame, then I have no more to say; I shall go to gaol with a broken heart, and silent."

The offer made by this African Apollo, I need not say, was not accepted, and he was found guilty and sentenced to a term of imprisonment with hard labour, but I remember that several of the jurymen expressed their astonishment afterwards at hearing so good a defence so pleasingly expressed by a raw Native youth who had never been to any kind of school.

On one occasion I had some trouble to make a Native complainant understand that the evidence upon which he relied was entirely hearsay and therefore of no avail against the man he wished to charge with a crime of theft. While talking an elderly Tebele arrived and I put the matter to him. He listened gravely and when I had finished he turned to the other and said:

"Have you not heard before that that which is heard only cannot be heard again in Court? You must bring witnesses who saw and heard themselves what you say has happened. The words of the man who says he heard the story from another is no testimony against a man when he is to be tried for a crime or a debt."

After writing down this crisp and explicit statement from a Native whom I knew to have had little or no intercourse with educated Europeans I asked the old man if he had ever heard the matter discussed in a European Court. He said he had not, and seemed surprised that I should consider his words worth putting down in a note-book.

When it is realised how few laymen amongst ourselves are able to grasp the distinction between admissible and inadmissible evidence in a Court of Law, and how few would be able to express themselves as clearly as did this old, so-called, heathen, then the instance is seen to be worth citing.

I remember a Native witchdoctor who in defending himself against a charge of alleged witchcraft practice spoke thus:

"The people you have heard to-day came to me and told me that they had had sickness and death at their kraal. I knew these people and I knew that there had been strife among them for a long time over the dividing of an inheritance. I threw the bones--it is our way--and I told these people that the spirit of the old woman, who was the grand-mother of most of them, was angry because of the quarrelling that did not cease; I told them that the snakes, that is to say the ancestral spirits of these people, were angry at the noise of the quarrelling, and I told them to redeem their fault by killing a goat,--it is our way. And now it is said that I have done wrong. In what way have I done wrong? I have heard a white missionary say that the white man's God sends sickness to people when they sin, and that if the sinners leave off their evil ways then they become well and happy again, and I said the same to these people--and if they paid me ten shillings, why, do not the whites make payments to their priests?"

I might add, in parenthesis, that the argument advanced did not find favour with the magistrate on the bench who, like so many of his kind, had little knowledge of Bantu lore and languages, and who therefore could only perceive the letter of the law and not the human spirit behind the acts that constituted a breach of the white man's statute.

The Natives, like most of the white people, prefer not to think overmuch about death and whether there be life for us beyond the grave; like the vast majority of Europeans they prefer to take the superstitions and beliefs of their forefathers for granted. Vague notions about ancestral and familiar spirits that emanate from the grave in the guise of snakes or other animals are accepted in the same spirit or traditional mood in which the doctrines and dogmas of the various religions of Europe are accepted by the bulk of white believers.

I have found among the Bantu the same child-like faith in all that is proclaimed by traditional authority about things supernatural, and I have found also among them the same hesitation or inability to believe without questioning in all that is laid down in the name of tradition that we see among ourselves. The will to believe is temperamental and general, but the unbeliever is found among the Bantu as well as everywhere else.