Chapter 37

THE KAFIRS: THEIR HISTORY AND INSTITUTIONS

The curtain rises upon the Kafir peoples when the Portuguese landed on the east coast of Africa in the beginning of the sixteenth century. Arab sheiks then held a few of the coast villages, ruling over a mixed race, nominally Mohammedan, and trading with the Bantu tribes of the interior. The vessels of these Arabs crossed the Indian Ocean with the monsoon to Calicut and the Malabar coast, and the Indian goods they carried back were exchanged for the gold and ivory which the natives brought down. The principal race that held the country between the Limpopo and the Zambesi was that which the Portuguese called Makalanga or Makaranga, and which we call Makalaka. They are the progenitors of the tribes who, now greatly reduced in numbers and divided into small villages and clans, occupy Mashonaland. Their head chief was called the Monomotapa, a name interpreted to mean "Lord of the Mountain" or "Lord of the Mines." This personage was turned by Portuguese grandiloquence into an emperor, and by some European geographers into the name of an empire; so Monomotapa came to figure on old maps as the designation of a vast territory.

When, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Dutch at the Cape began to learn something of the Kafirs who dwelt to the eastward, they found that there was no large dominion, but a great number of petty tribes, mostly engaged in war with one another. Some were half nomad, none was firmly rooted in the soil; and the fact that tribes who spoke similar dialects were often far away from one another, with a tribe of a different dialect living between, indicated that there had been many displacements of population of which no historical record existed. Early in the present century events occurred which showed how such displacements might have been brought about. In the last years of the eighteenth century Dingiswayo, the exiled son of the chief of the Abatetwa tribe, which lived in what is now Zululand, found his way to the Cape, and learned to admire the military organization of the British troops who were then holding the Colony. Returning home and regaining his throne, he began to organise and drill his warriors, who before that time had fought without order or discipline, like other savages. His favourite officer was Tshaka, a young chief, also exiled, who belonged to the then small tribe of Zulus. On the death of Dingiswayo, Tshaka was chosen its chief by the army, and the tribes that had obeyed Dingiswayo were thenceforward known under the name of Zulus. Tshaka, who united to his intellectual gifts a boundless ambition and a ruthless will, further improved the military system of his master, and armed his soldiers with a new weapon, a short, broad-bladed spear, fit for stabbing at close quarters, instead of the old light javelin which had been theretofore used. He formed them into regiments, and drilled them to such a perfection of courage that no enemy could withstand their rush, and the defeated force, except such as could escape by fleetness of foot, was slaughtered on the spot. Quarter had never been given in native wars, but the trained valour of the Zulus, and their habit of immediately engaging the enemy hand to hand, not only gave them an advantage like that which suddenly made the Spartan infantry superior to all their neighbours, but rendered their victories far more sanguinary than native battles had previously been Tshaka rapidly subjected or blotted out the clans that lived near, except the Swazis, a kindred tribe whose difficult country gave them some protection. He devastated all the region round that of his own subjects, while the flight before his warriors of the weaker tribes, each of which fell upon its neighbours with the assagai, caused widespread slaughter and ruin all over South-east Africa. Natal became almost a desert, and of the survivors who escaped into the mountains, many took to human flesh for want of other food. To the north of the Vaal River a section of the Zulu army, which had revolted under its general, Mosilikatze, carried slaughter and destruction through the surrounding country for hundreds of miles, till it was itself chased away beyond the Limpopo by the emigrant Boers, as will be related in the following chapter.

To trace the history of these various native wars would occupy far more space than I can spare. I will sum up their general results.

A new and powerful kingdom, far stronger than any other native monarchy we know to have existed before or since, was formed by the Zulus. It remained powerful under Dingaan (who murdered his half brother Tshaka in 1828), Panda (brother of Tshaka and Dingaan), and Cetewayo (son of Panda), till 1879, when it was overthrown by the British.

Various offshoots from the Zulu nation were scattered out in different directions. The Matabili occupied Matabililand in 1838. The Angoni had before that year crossed the Zambesi and settled in Nyassaland, where they are still formidable to their native neighbours and troublesome to the whites.

Kafir tribes from the north-east were chased southward into the mountain country now called Basutoland, most of which had been previously inhabited only by Bushmen, and here the Basuto kingdom was built up out of fugitive clans, by the famous chief Moshesh, between 1820 and 1840.

Some of the Bechuana tribes were driven from the east into their present seats in Bechuanaland, some few far north-west to the banks of the Zambesi, where Livingstone found them.

Not only what is now Natal, but most of what is now the Orange Free State, with a part of the Transvaal, was almost denuded of inhabitants. This had the important consequence of inducing the emigrants from Cape Colony, whose fortunes I shall trace in the following chapter, to move toward these regions and establish themselves there.

The Gaza tribe, of Zulu race, but revolters from Tshaka, broke away from that tyrant, and carried fire and sword among the Tongas and other tribes living to the west and north-west of Delagoa Bay. In 1833 they destroyed the Portuguese garrison there. In 1862 a chief called Mzila became their king, and established his dominion over all the tribes that dwell on the eastern slope of the Quathlamba Mountains, between the Limpopo and the Zambesi. He and his son Gungunhana, who in 1896 was seized and carried off by the Portuguese, were for a time at the head of the third great native power in South Africa, the other two being that of Cetewayo, which perished in 1879, and that of Lo Bengula, overthrown in 1893. All three chiefs were Zulus in blood. Originally small in number, this race has played by far the greatest part in the annals of the native peoples.

The career of Tshaka has deserved some description, because it changed the face of South Africa in a somewhat similar way, allowing for the difference of scale, to that in which the career of Tshaka's contemporary, Napoleon Bonaparte, changed the face of Europe. But in 1836, eight years after Tshaka's death, the white man, who had hitherto come in contact with the Kafirs only on the Zambesi and at a few points on the south-eastern and southern coast, began that march into the interior which has now brought him to the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Thenceforward the wars of the natives among themselves cease to be important. It is their strife with the European conqueror that is of consequence, and the narrative of that strife belongs to the history of the European colonies and republics, which will be given in the two succeeding chapters. This, however, seems the right place for some remarks on the government and customs of the Kafir tribes, intended to explain the conditions under which these tribes have met and attempted to resist the white strangers who have now become their rulers.

The Kafirs were savages, yet not of a low type, for they tilled the soil, could work in metals, spoke a highly developed language, and had a sort of customary law. The south-east coast tribes, Zulus, Pondos, Tembus, Kosas, inhabiting a fairly well-watered and fertile country, were, as a rule, the strongest men and the fiercest fighters; but the tribes of the interior were not inferior in intellect, and sometimes superior in the arts. Lower in every respect were the west-coast tribes. They dwelt in a poor and almost waterless land, and their blood was mixed with that of Hottentots and Bushmen. In every race the organization was by families, clans, and tribes, the tribe consisting of a number of clans or smaller groups, having at its head one supreme chief, belonging to a family whose lineage was respected. The power of the chief was, however, not everywhere the same. Among the Zulus, whose organization was entirely military, he was a despot whose word was law. Among the Bechuana tribes, and their kinsfolk the Basutos, he was obliged to defer to the sentiment of the people, which (in some tribes) found expression in a public meeting where every freeman had a right to speak and might differ from the chief.[9] Even such able men as the Basuto Moshesh and the Bechuana Khama had often to bend to the wish of their subjects, and a further check existed in the tendency to move away from a harsh and unpopular chief and place one's self under the protection of some more tactful ruler. Everywhere, of course, the old customs had great power, and the influence of the old men who were most conversant with them was considerable. The chief of the whole tribe did not interfere much with affairs outside his own particular clan, and was a more important figure in war-time than during peace. Aided by a council of his leading men, each chief administered justice and settled disputes; and it was his function to allot land to those who asked for a field to till, the land itself belonging to the tribe as a whole. The chiefs act gave a title to the piece allotted so long as it was cultivated, for public opinion resented any arbitrary eviction; but pasture-land was open to all the cattle of the clansmen. It was in cattle that the wealth of a chief or a rich man lay, and cattle, being the common measure of value, served as currency, as they serve still among the more remote tribes which have not learned to use British coin. Polygamy was practised by all who could afford it, the wife being purchased from her father with cattle, more or fewer according to her rank. This practice, called _lobola_, still prevails universally, and has caused much perplexity to the missionaries. Its evil effects are obvious, but it is closely intertwined with the whole system of native society. A chief had usually a head wife, belonging to some important house, and her sons were preferred in succession to those of the inferior wives. In some tribes the chief, like a Turkish sultan, had no regular wife, but only concubines. Among the coast tribes no one, except a chief, was suffered to marry any one of kin to him. There was great pride of birth among the head chiefs, and their genealogies have in not a few cases been carefully kept for seven or eight generations.

Slavery existed among some of the tribes of the interior, and the ordinary wife was everywhere little better than a slave, being required to do nearly all the tillage and most of the other work, except that about the cattle, which, being more honourable, was performed by men. The male Kafir is a lazy fellow who likes talking and sleeping better than continuous physical exertion, and the difficulty of inducing him to work is the chief difficulty which European mine-owners in South Africa complain of. Like most men in his state of civilization, he is fond of hunting, even in its lowest forms, and of fighting. Both of these pleasures are being withdrawn from him, the former by the extinction of the game, the latter by the British Government; but it will be long before he acquires the habits of steady and patient industry which have become part of the character of the inhabitants of India.

War was the natural state of the tribes toward one another, just as it was among the Red Indians and the primitive Celts, and indeed generally everywhere in the early days of Europe. Their weapons were the spear or assagai, and a sort of wooden club, occasionally a crescent-shaped battle-axe, and still less frequently the bow. Horses were unknown, for the ox, sheep, goat and dog were over all South Africa the only domesticated quadrupeds. One tribe, however, the Basutos, now breeds horses extensively, and has turned them to account in fighting. The rapid movement of their mounted warriors was one of the chief difficulties the colonial forces had to deal with in the last Basuto war. The courage in war which distinguished the tribes of Zulu and Kosa race was all the more creditable because it had not, like that of the Mohammedan dervishes of the Sudan, or of Mohammedans anywhere engaged in a _jehad_, a religious motive and the promise of future bliss behind it. The British army has encountered no more daring or formidable enemies. Nine wars were needed to subjugate the Kafirs of the southern coast, although till recently they had few firearms. But the natives had no idea of the tactics needed in facing a civilized foe. As in their battles with the Boers they were destroyed by the fire of horsemen riding up, delivering a volley, and riding off before an assagai could reach them, so in the great war with Cetewayo in 1879 they fought in the open and were mowed down by British volleys; and in 1893 the Matabili perished in the same way under the fire of riflemen and Maxim guns sheltered behind a laager of wagons.

Religion was a powerful factor in Kafir life; but religion did not mean the worship of any deity, for there was no deity. Still less had it any moral significance. To the Kafirs, as to most savage races, the world was full of spirits--spirits of the rivers, the mountains, and the woods. Most important were the ghosts of the dead, who had power to injure or to help the living, and who were therefore propitiated by offerings at stated periods, as well as on occasions when their aid was specially desired. This kind of worship, the worship once most generally diffused throughout the world, and which held its ground among the Greeks and Italians in the most flourishing period of ancient civilization, as it does in China and Japan to-day, was and is virtually the religion of the Kafirs. It was chiefly rendered to the ghosts of the chiefs, who retained in the spirit world the exceptional importance they had held among the living; and it had much weight in maintaining loyalty to a chief, because revolt against him was an insult to a powerful set of ghosts. The ghost dwelt at the spot where the body was buried, and it was therefore at the grave that the offerings, mostly of cakes and Kafir beer, were made. Occasionally animals were killed, not so much by way of sacrifice as for the sake of providing the ghost with a specially precious kind of food, though the two ideas run close together in most primitive worships.[10] Among the Matabili, for instance, there was once a year a great feast in honour of the king's ancestors, who were supposed to come and join in the mirth. It was also to the grave that those who wished to call up the ghost by spells went to effect their nefarious purpose, and the real place of interment of a great chief was for this reason sometimes concealed, I found at Thaba Bosiyo, the famous stronghold of the Basuto chief Moshesh, that his body had been secretly removed from the place where he was buried to baffle the wizards, who might try to use his ghost against the living. The ghost is, of course, apt to be spiteful, that of an uncle (I was told) particularly so; and if he is neglected he is extremely likely to bring some evil on the family or tribe. Sometimes the spirit of an ancestor passes into an animal, and by preference into that of a snake, not that it lives in the snake, but that it assumes this form when it wishes to visit men. A particular kind of green snake is revered by the Matabili for this reason. And most, if not all, tribes had an animal which they deemed to be of kin to them, and which they called their "_siboko_," a term apparently corresponding to the totem of the North American Indians. Creatures of this species they never killed, and some tribes took their name from it. Thus the Ba-Taung are the people of the lion; the Ba-Mangwato have the duyker antelope for their totem; and in the Basuto _pitso_ (public meeting) an orator will begin by addressing his audience as "sons of the crocodile." Of human sacrifices there seems to be no trace. Men were killed for all possible reasons, but never as offerings. And, indeed, to have so killed them would have been to treat the ghosts as cannibals, a view foreign to native habits, for though human flesh has been resorted to in times of severe famine, it has never been regularly eaten, and the use of it excites disgust.

Whether the Kafirs had any idea of a supreme being is a question which has been much discussed. In several tribes the word, differently spelled "Umlimo" or "Mlimo" or "Molimo" (said to mean "hidden" or "unseen"), is used to denote either a power apparently different from that of the nature sprites or ghosts of the dead, or else the prophet or soothsayer who delivers messages or oracles supposed to emanate from this power. The missionaries have in their native versions of the Bible used the term to translate the word "God." Sometimes, among the Tongas at least, the word _tilo_ (sky) is used to describe a mysterious force; as, for instance, when a man dies without any apparent malady, he is said to be killed by the _tilo_.[11] On the whole, after many inquiries from missionaries and others who know the natives well, I was led to the conclusion that the Kafirs have a vague notion of some power transcending that of common ghosts, and able to affect the operations of nature (as, for instance, to send rain), but far too dimly conceived to be properly describable as a divine being.[12] Or to put the thing in other words, the ordinary and familiar nature-sprites and ghosts of the departed do not exhaust the possibilities of super-human agency; for there remains, as among the Athenians whose altar St. Paul found (Acts