Some of a man’s property is, as we have seen, buried with him. Out of the rest, his successor has to pay the funeral expenses, including heavy fees to the undertakers, who, besides, have partaken of the offerings and the funeral feast. There may also be a prosecution for witchcraft to be paid for out of the estate, though this may be compensated by damages. If, however, the deceased had himself been prosecuted and had died of the ordeal, his heir has to pay damages to the bewitched person or his representatives.
There are certain well-understood causes of death which are not supposed to require any investigation, though, according to some, every death is put down to witchcraft. The witch is believed to kill a person, and then, when his relations have buried him, to send out messengers to find out where the grave is. When they come back, they tell their master that they have seen the meat (the ‘game’—i.e. the corpse), and say, ‘Come along.’ Then the owl ‘which sits on the head of the chief’ goes out and summons all the witches to the feast. The animals lead the way to the grave, a fire is made, and the chief asks who it was that killed the person they are about to eat. One answers, ‘It was I,’ and the chief tells him to ‘bring the meat out.’ ‘So the man who killed him sounds a rattle and calls him by his early name’—the name he bore before he attended the mysteries, which has a compelling power over him—and he comes out. The wizard then reproaches him for real or imaginary insults and injuries—possibly there are unhealthy-minded persons who will brood for years over fancied wrongs, and when the man they are nursing a grudge against dies, imagine that they have killed him—and finally kills him over again. ‘Then they take the meat and divide it, and take it with them to their village; the mfiti cooks it at night and eats it, and takes a pot and digs to conceal it in the deserted house of the deceased, and leaves and goes to his own house as if nothing had happened.’
If all the energy expended to prevent these proceedings counts for anything, it may well be believed that they never happen at all. When the circumstances of a death seem to warrant suspicion, the witch-detective, whose methods are described elsewhere, is sometimes called in, and the people pointed out by her are either killed at once or compelled to drink mwavi. But the ordeal is sometimes put in operation without resorting to her. Persons who feel themselves under suspicion may demand it in order to clear their character. So firmly do they believe that it will not hurt them if innocent, that no one, unless conscious of guilt, ever seems to shrink from the trial.
The Yaos hold that it should not be administered to a free person without grave cause—i.e. unless suspicion is definitely directed to some one person. The Angoni and Makololo chiefs, whose government (at least as regards the subject tribes) was more despotic, used to order wholesale mwavi-drinkings, trying a whole village or district to discover the supposed culprit. In these cases, the poison was often taken by proxy and given to fowls or dogs—each animal being tied by a string to the person whom it represented, and whose guilt or innocence was decided by its death or recovery. There was a cause célèbre of this kind at Chekusi’s kraal, about twenty years ago. Chekusi’s mother had been suffering from rheumatism, and had been treated for it by Dr. Henry, of the Livingstonia Mission. Shortly afterwards, unfortunately, she committed suicide in a fit of depression, and, naturally, things looked very black for the doctor. However, there were two other possible culprits, and a trial took place with three sets of fowls, one for the Europeans at Livlezi Mission, one, I think, for Mponda, with whom Chekusi was then more or less at war, and the third for the other suspected party. The proceedings were complicated by the number of victims demanded by the importance of the occasion: had one been allotted to each defendant, the decision would have been quite clear; as it was, some of each set died and some recovered, and the issue was such hopeless confusion that the case was dropped without arriving at a verdict.
The poison used throughout the Shiré Highlands, on the Lake, and by the Angoni appears to be the same; it is the pounded bark of a tree known to science as Erythrophleum guineense. Its effect is fatal within an hour or two, unless it causes sickness; this symptom is therefore held to be a sign of innocence. Its different action on different people probably arises from the strength of the dose being varied by accident or design.
When a trial of this sort is decided on, the mapondera, or ‘pounder,’ is sent for. He prepares the poison in the bwalo, before the assembled people, by pounding the bark, steeped in water, in a small wooden mortar, with a pestle which has a cover fixed round it to prevent the liquid splashing out. The result is a red infusion, said by those who have been fortunate enough to taste it and recover, to be very bitter. This information I had from a man who complained that he was not well, and to whom, finding that he seemed to have feverish symptoms, I offered a dose of quinine. After tasting it—and retiring out of sight to reject it with decency—he declined any more, on the ground that it was exactly like the mwavi he had been compelled to drink a month ago. The usual dose is about half a pint; the accused come up one by one to drink, and then sit down on the ground to wait till it takes effect. This, as stated, is usually within an hour or two. In cases where public feeling is very strong against the accused, the end is not always waited for, but he or she is lynched as soon as the symptoms seem likely to be fatal.
It is said that the accused has a voice in the selection of the professional who is to mix the draught; but most natives believe so firmly in the infallibility of the mwavi-test, that in practice it matters little to them who compounds it. Of course, the mapondera has opportunities of diluting the dose, as his own inclinations or hints previously received from interested parties may prompt; and this is probably the reason why the greater number of those who submit to the test usually escape. I remember an occasion when several families escaping from the war which was going on between Chekusi’s men and Bazale, near Lake Malombe, halted at a village near Ntumbi, where a child belonging to one of them died. They accused the people of the place of bewitching them, and called on them to drink mwavi, which was immediately done. One child of the village died; it is likely that it succumbed to a dose which was not strong enough to kill the adults. But the matter did not end here. The people who had demanded the ordeal were subjects of Chekusi’s brother Mandala, who was also the over-lord of certain kraals in the neighbourhood, while the villagers who had drunk the poison were under the immediate jurisdiction of Chekusi himself. The latter thought that his rights had been infringed, and insisted that some of his brother’s subjects should take mwavi in their turn. I do not know how many did so this time, but the number of deaths was two.
Two other cases came to my personal knowledge—one a wholesale affair of the kind already referred to. Chekusi had been ill; and Mandala (apparently just then on exceptionally good terms with him) sent for a number of people to the royal kraal, and administered the ordeal to find out who had bewitched him. Among those who went from Ntumbi were two old men mentioned in a previous chapter—Pembereka and Kaboa. The former died—Kaboa either recovered or he did not drink the poison, which, however, is unusual, and, I fancy, unprecedented; and, if I understood him rightly, it is surprising that he should have been allowed to depart without further trouble. What he said to me was, ‘I refused’ (ndakana), which might, however, conceivably mean that his system had rejected the drug. The mourning for poor old Pembereka continued at his kraal for two or three days, and subsequently his family went up to Chekusi’s to finish the mourning there and (we were told) to drink mwavi, but on what grounds I never made out: in any case there was no further fatality. As we have already seen, those who die by mwavi are not usually buried, but cast out to be eaten by wild beasts; we gathered from rumours which reached us that this was not done in Pembereka’s case, but that he was buried at Chekusi’s.
The other case was a local one: a young girl died suddenly—possibly of pneumonia or rapid consumption; she was delicate, but seemed in fairly good health when we last saw her, about three months before her death. Her father, the Ntumbi head-man, made a number of people drink mwavi, and one young man died—chifukwa wodiera antu, as my informant said—‘because he was an eater of men.’ It is possible, however, that there might have been more deaths in this case but for the action of an English planter who heard of the matter in time and came to the rescue with ipecacuanha.
A case which all the older residents in British Central Africa will remember took place at Blantyre. Mr. John Moir, at that time manager of the African Lakes Company, got wind of the trial and arrived on the scene when matters were already so far advanced that it seemed best to act first and explain afterwards. Accordingly, he began by kicking over the doctor’s mortar, and then set forth his views on the subject. He succeeded in getting the proceedings quashed, but—and this is the interesting feature in the story—the rescued victim considered himself ever afterwards to have a standing grievance against Mr. Moir. He was a local head-man of some standing, and complained that, as he had not been allowed the opportunity of clearing his character, he was under a cloud and likely to remain so for the rest of his life. His people were leaving him and settling elsewhere—no one cared to be associated with a person of such doubtful reputation—in short, he was a ruined man!