Chapter Six.
A Native Utopia.
The open space outside the kraal was thronged. Hundreds had collected in obedience to the word of the chief. More were still coming in, and the preacher rubbed his fat hands together with smug complacency. Your educated native is nothing if not conceited, and the Rev. Job Magwegwe was no exception to this rule. Here was an audience for him; a noble audience, and, withal an appreciative one.
His appearance was greeted by a deep murmur from the expectant crowd, which at once disposed itself to listen. He had resumed his black coat and waistcoat and settled his white choker; he was not going to omit any accessory to his clerical dignity if he knew it.
He led off with a long prayer, to which most of those present listened with ill-concealed boredom, but the smug self-conceit of the man had captured his better judgment, and he was only brought up by Babatyana remarking in an audible aside that the people had not assembled to take part in a prayer meeting but to hear the news. So he took the hint and started his address.
He began by sketching the history of the people, within their own time. Since the days of the old wars they had increased immensely and were still increasing, so that soon the land would not be able to hold its population. It would hold them but for the white man. The white man. But was this the white man’s land? Did Nkulunkulu (Literally, “The Great Guest.” one of the names for the Deity) give him this land? No. The white man came over the sea in ships and took it. Nkulunkulu said “This is the black man’s land and here have I placed him,” yet the white man took it. The whites came over in small numbers, then more. But even now what were their numbers? Why, a handful, a mere handful. The whites who ruled them could live in an ostrich’s nest, when compared to the blacks whom they had dispossessed. And why had they been able to dispossess them? Because there was no unity among the native nations. Each was jealous of the other and none could combine. The time, however, was at hand when these dissensions should be of the past; when all the native nations should unite, when their native land should belong to them and not to the white man, when the Amazulu and the Basutu, the tribes in Natal and the Amampondo and the Amaxosa should all possess their own again, should all dwell together as brothers, none lording it over the other, should dwell together in peace and unity in the land which Nkulunkulu had given to them—to them and not to the white man.
The preacher was working himself up to a pitch of eloquence that impressed his audience—and a native orator can be very eloquent indeed. Murmurs of applause greeted his periods, and now as he paused to wipe his clammy forehead with the white handkerchief of civilisation, these grew quite tumultuous. Only Manamandhla the Zulu kept saturnine silence. He knew who, in this wonderful brotherhood of equality, was going to have the upper hand, and any idea to the contrary moved him to mirth, as too absurd to be worthy of a moment’s consideration.
But the ways of Nkulunkulu—went on the preacher unctuously—though sometimes slow were always sure, and now He had revealed His will to some who had come across great distances of sea to bring it to them; not white men but black like themselves. These had come hither with a message of deliverance to all the dark races, and he himself was a humble mouthpiece of such. But there were many such mouthpieces. They were everywhere, and were being heard gladly. Who could refuse to hear them? The people of this land were being oppressed and trampled upon; and so it was wherever the white man set down his foot. Let them look at the past. Where were the nations that dwelt proudly in their own lands? Gone, utterly gone, or slaves to the white man; who planted his own laws upon them and punished them heavily if they did not obey.