The natives of British Central Africa

by Alice Werner

I remember being told that native burglars (I understand that such exist, but cannot say I have come across them personally, and do not believe that they are common, except in the coast towns), when setting out for their night’s work, strip and oil themselves all over. This, I understood at the time, was to make it difficult for any one to get a grip of them, if caught; but it has since occurred to me that it was also part of the process for rendering themselves invisible—the medicine being applied externally as an unguent.

Secret theft is looked on with horror, as probably connected with witchcraft. Natives are so ready to share everything they have with their neighbours, that a person who stealthily takes what he might have for the asking lays himself open to suspicion of yet darker dealings. It is the Bewitcher, the Mfiti, who is the great terror of native life.

Witchcraft is not, so far as I can make out, thought of as a system of compelling the unseen powers (whether dead ancestors or nature-spirits) to work one’s will. The mfiti, however, employs certain animals as messengers—the owl, and the jackal, whose bark summons him to midnight orgies; but I do not know that he intrusts these creatures, as Zulu sorcerers are said to do the baboon and the wild-cat, with ‘sendings’ to injure an enemy. Besides bewitching, as aforesaid, by means of ‘medicines,’ the things one most frequently hears of his doing are turning himself into a hyena, leopard, or other animal, and digging up graves to eat the flesh of corpses. But I am not sure that the latter ever happens without the former, it being usually for this purpose that the hyena shape is supposed to be assumed. So much of the funeral ceremonies is connected with this belief that we shall have to treat it more fully when we come to them.

Witchcraft and cannibalism are synonymous. ‘Why did So-and-So have to drink mwavi?’ ‘Chifukwa wodiera antu—because he was an eater of men.’ This need not imply that he actually has eaten any one, only that he has caused (or tried to cause) some one’s death with the intention of eating the corpse. It is the reverse of the vampire superstition, where the corpse will not stay dead, but gets up and feeds on the living; and as there was a recognised remedy for this evil in the Middle Ages, so there are various ways of preventing witches from getting at the graves, as we shall see in due course. It has been said that cannibalism of this sort is actually prevalent among the Anyanja; but the statements on this subject require to be carefully sifted. The Yaos were thirty years ago in the habit of using certain parts of their slain enemies as a charm for producing strength and courage; they reduced them to ashes and mixed them with gruel, which had to be eaten in a particular way. Ordinary cannibalism may have been practised in times of scarcity. But the Europeans who were in the Shiré during the terrible famine of 1862-3, heard of no such cases, though nine-tenths of the Anyanja population perished, many committing suicide in despair. There may, of course, be some foundation in fact for this very widespread belief, but it is quite capable of flourishing on little or none.[15]

Certain medicines (called mphiyu by the Atonga) have the power of turning those who take them into some animal—each kind, leopard, hyena, crocodile, or what not, having its own particular medicine. The Atonga belief presents some interesting features.

‘The living man might inform his friends that he had medicine to change him into a crocodile, and if after his death a crocodile made its appearance in a pool where crocodiles had not often been seen before, it was of course believed to be their friend come back. If these animals took to killing people, a representation would very probably be made to the relatives of the dead to go and attend to their spirit, and have it appeased. That a man-eating lion or other beast of prey was a real mzuka (one risen from the dead under another form) people could easily tell, when the corpses were left uneaten: a real lion, it was thought, would be sure to devour its victim. If this killing went on after complaint had been made to the supposed relatives of the mzuka, the issue would probably be a mlandu with these on account of their alleged carelessness of the rites due to their dead. People who were known to have eaten mphiyu were not mourned for in the ordinary way with loud wailing and outcry. They were silently wept for by their relatives, the only sound of mourning that might be heard being the mimic pounding in the empty grain-mortar into which pieces of rubber were thrown from time to time to still further deaden the sound. When after a time they heard lions or leopards roaring in the bush, the villagers said, “There’s Karakatu (i.e. one risen), he’s mourning for himself.”’

Not only do the natives firmly believe that their neighbours can thus on occasion transform themselves, but occasionally a man is found to be convinced that he can do so himself and has actually done it. Du Chaillu mentions a case like this in West Africa, and Sir H. H. Johnston has recorded another. A number of murders had taken place near Chiromo in 1891 or 1892, and were ultimately traced to an old man who had been in the habit of lurking in the long grass beside the path to the river, till some person passed by alone, when he would leap out and stab him, afterwards mutilating the body. He admitted these crimes himself.

‘He could not help it (he said), as he had a strong feeling at times that he was changed into a lion and was impelled, as a lion, to kill and mutilate. As according to our view of the law he was not a sane person, he was sentenced to be detained “during the chief’s pleasure,” and this “were-lion” has been most usefully employed for years in perfect contentment keeping the roads of Chiromo in good repair.’

An Englishman who had lived for some time in the Makanga country told me that these people credit the were-hyena with a human wife, who lives in a village and performs the ordinary work of a native woman by day, but by night opens the door of the goat-kraal to admit her husband, and then goes away into the bush with him to join in the feast. A goat was carried off one night from the village near which the narrator lived, and the people showed him, in the morning, the hyena’s tracks, and, running parallel with them, the print of bare human feet. It was in vain to point out that some one might have attempted to pursue the hyena and rescue his prey, or, at any rate, have run out to see what had happened—they were positive that the footprints were those of the hyena’s wife. Rats, too, may be wizards in animal shape, which is a reason for their nibbling the toes of sleepers.