Never shall I forget the scene in court, as they were asked whether they had anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon them. It was just sundown, and an angry storm had been raging outside for fully an hour. Growling, cracking peals of thunder had interrupted the judge’s summing up, and now, during a lull, the glare of a wet sunset came in through the windows, and a few heavy drops of rain still fell like stones on the corrugated iron roof during the tense silence. They stood in the dock those twelve dark figures, some leaning eagerly forward over the rail, their eyeballs protruding in the climax of the moment’s excitement, others impassive and statuesque. Amid the public was a subdued, hush. The native public especially seemed turned to stone.
In answer to the appeal the bulk of the prisoners shook their heads. They had nothing to say, they declared, and then subsided into stolid silence. But when it came to the turn of Ivondwe, he harangued the Court at some length. The white man, he said, professed to be the protector and tolerator of all religions. Now this, for which they stood there, was part of the black man’s religion—or at any rate a section of it. Why then, was not that tolerated too? Ivuzamanzi, when it came to his turn, answered with heat, that he was the son of a chief—that he was a Zulu of the tribe of Umtetwa; that he cared nothing for a set of preaching whites and their stupid laws; that he only wished he had crossed the river long ago, and gone to konza to Cetywayo. There he would have been in a warrior land where the head-ring of his father and chief could not have been insulted with impunity by a swaggering igcwane like the one who sat yonder—pointing to Falkner—who, however, perhaps fortunately, didn’t understand what was being said until the interpreter had rendered it, and then it was too late to kick up a row. Then he might have joined one day in driving the whites into the sea, where sooner or later they would all be driven. He was the son of a chief and could die like one. He was not going to lie down and howl for mercy like a miserable cheat of an isanusi.
This with a savage glare at Ukozi.
The latter said not much. He had confessed. He had done what he could to put right what had been done. His life was in the hands of the Government.
The judge drew on the black cap, and proceeded to pass formal sentence.
The twelve prisoners before him, he said, after a long and painstaking trial extending over several days, had been convicted of the most heinous crime known to the law, that of murder, the penalty of which was death. They had only been indicted for, and found guilty of one murder, but there was ample evidence that many others had lain at their door. This murder then, was the outcome of one of the vilest, most benighted forms of superstition that had ever disgraced our common humanity, whether black or white. As for urging, as one of the prisoners had done, that such murder was part of the black man’s religion—or anybody’s religion—why he could only say that such a statement was a slander upon the honest, straightforward, native population of the Colony, of whose good and trustworthy qualities he personally had had many years of experience. It was a relic of the blackest and most benighted days of past heathenism, and it was clear that a bold attempt had been made on the part of the prisoner Ukozi, to revive and spread it in the midst of a peaceful and law-abiding native population living contentedly under the Queen’s rule and under the Queen’s laws. Once these terrible superstitions—and their outcome of foul and mysterious murder—took root, there was no seeing where they would end, therefore it was providential that this wicked and horrible conspiracy against the lives of their fellow subjects had been brought to light, and he would especially urge, and solemnly warn, his native hearers present in court to set their faces resolutely against anything of the kind in their midst. Not for one moment would it be tolerated, nor would any plea of custom, or such a travesty of the sacred name of religion, as had been brought forward by one of the prisoners, be even so much as considered in mitigation of the just doom meted out by the law to all who should be found guilty of such an offence.
Sentence of death was then formally passed upon the whole dozen.
There were many influential natives among the audience in court. These, I could see, were impressed, and in the right direction, moreover I gathered from their comments, which I overheard as they dispersed, that to many of them the existence of the Brotherhood of the Dew came as a revelation. And the comments were diverse and instructive.
“Au!” one man remarked. “There is but one among the twelve who wears the head-ring, and he is the one that shows fear.”