The crafty rascal however found it convenient to ignore the fact that the worst that the white man had ever done to them was a joke when compared with the treatment formerly meted out to the black man by his brother black. Then he proceeded to quote from the Scriptures.
There was a fair sprinkling of amakolwa among his audience, i.e. those who had been converted to Christianity—of a sort—and these now listened with renewed zest. They would appreciate his arguments, and afterwards make them plain to their fellow countrymen not so privileged, in their discussions from kraal to kraal.
He deftly quoted from the history of the Israelites, and their deliverance from the Egyptian bondage, making out that these were in similar bondage, that the promises made to Israel were given to them too. He went further. He even assured them that they were offshoots of Israel, cleverly citing numbers of their national and tribal customs, some obsolete but many still in force, which exactly corresponded with the precepts of the Mosaic law. The great book of the white men which revealed the will of Nkulunkulu, he declared, was wrongly so called, in that it was not revealed to white men at all, but to dark men. The whites had stolen it, as they stole everything.
A deep bass hum of applause broke from his audience. It was a strange scene. The vast assemblage held spellbound, the preacher, arrayed as one who preaches the gospel of peace, instead, swaying this multitude of dark savages with the gospel of revolt and war, and all the ruthless atrocity of horror which such represents. All spellbound there in the clear light of the broad moon, flooding down upon ridge and valley, and loom of mountain misty against the stars.
For upwards of another hour the preacher went on, the entranced audience drinking in every word. They could have listened to him all night, but he had too much natural astuteness to risk repeating himself.
“Brothers,” he concluded, “I have shown you your bondage. You are increasing, as the chosen people of old, and the more you are increasing the more you have to pay in taxes to the white man; the more you have to submit to his slave-imposing laws. You may say—as many have said—‘What can we do? The white man has cannon and we have the assegai, what chance then have we?’ But even the white man’s cannon is not able to go everywhere, and even if it could, there is a more powerful weapon still. There are those who rule the whites who will lift up a voice in your behalf. Who will say—‘Stop. This has gone far enough. We will not have our black brethren butchered solely because they are black.’ I know what I say, for I have seen and talked with such. ‘Stop,’ they will say. ‘Bloodshed must cease.’ And the nation will approve because war costs money, and white people are no fonder of having to pay than are black people. Then when their fighting men are withdrawn—then we will rise in our might, in one overwhelming black wave, and sweep all these whites back into the sea, whence they came. Be patient. You will have ‘the word’ in good time and that time soon. I have shown you your bondage, now I am showing you your way out, for it is the will of Nkulunkulu. I have done.”
A deep murmur arose. The vast multitude, moved to the core, took some time to realise that the proceedings were over. Then it broke up. Many remained on the ground, squatting in groups, eagerly discussing the points put forward; others broke up, and in twos or threes, or singly, departed for their homes. Among the latter was Teliso the native detective.
Not all, however, so went. There was a disposition among some of the headmen to probe further the speaker’s statements. Who were these rulers among the Amangisi (English) who would call upon their countrymen to stop the war? enquired the old man who had shown a disposition to heckle the preacher in Babatyana’s hut. He was old, but he had never heard of the chiefs of any people who would seek to turn that people back in the moment of their victory. Whau! this was wonderful news, but—who were they?
“M-m! Who are they?” hummed the others. But the Rev. Job was not nonplussed.
“They are among the head indunas of the nation,” he replied. “The ways of the white man are not as our ways, else that which I have been telling you would seem so much childish folly. Brothers, you will remember how the indunas of the Amangisi treated the Amabuna (Boers) when they had conquered them many years ago. They gave them back all their lands, and went away. They lost hundreds and hundreds of fighting men at the hands of the Amabuna, yet they gave them back all their lands, nor did they even exact any tribute. And what happened yesterday? After three years of fighting, wherein thousands and thousands of Amangisi were slain, did they not pay the Amabuna largely to make peace? Are they not preparing even now to give them back their lands once more? Whau! And even so will they deal with us.”