“The news? Au! it is great. Everywhere we have our emissaries; everywhere the people are listening. They are tired of being dogs to the whites: tired of having to send their children away to work, so as to find money to pay the whites. Soon our plan of deliverance will be complete, soon when we have brought home universal brotherhood to those of one colour—and, brothers, the time is now very near.”
“And that time—when it comes—who will lead the people, Umfundisi?” asked an old head-ringed man who was seated next to the chief.
“The leader will be found,” was the ready answer. “It may be that he is found—already found.”
“Is he found on this side of the river or on the other?” went on the old man, who was inclined to “heckle” the visitor.
“That, as yet, is dark. But—he is found.”
A murmur went round the group. They were becoming interested. Only Manamandhla remained perfectly impassive. He made no remarks and asked no questions.
The conversation ran on in subdued tones, which however grew more and more animated. The emissary was glib of tongue and knew how to hold his audience. At last Babatyana said:
“It sounds well, Jobo. Now is the time to tell it—or some of it—to the people outside. They wait to hear.”
The Rev. Job Magwegwe—by the way the name by which the chief had addressed him was a corruption of his “Christiana” name—was an educated Fingo, hailing from the Cape Colony, where he had been trained for a missionary, and finally became a qualified minister in one of the more important sects whose activity lay in that direction. But he promptly saw that in the capacity of missionary he was going to prove a failure. Those of his own colour openly scoffed at him. What could he teach them, they asked? He was one of themselves, his father was So-and-So—and no better than any of them. The whites could teach them things, but a black man could not teach a black man anything. And so on.
But luck befriended the Rev. Job. The Ethiopian movement had just come into being, and here he saw his chance. There was more to be made by going about among distant races where his origin was not known, living on the fat of the land, and preaching a visionary deliverance from imaginary evils to those well attuned to listen, than staying at home, striving to drill into a contemptuous audience the “tenets” of a dry-as-dust and very defective form of Christianity. So he promptly migrated to Natal, and being a plausible, smooth-tongued rogue soon found himself in clover, in the official capacity of an accredited emissary of the “Ethiopian Church,” whose mission it was to instil in the native mind the high-sounding doctrine of “Africa for its natives.”