CHAPTER IX.
Barozi Laws.
The ancient laws and customs of the Barozi are respected by the Administration as long as there is nothing repugnant in them to the ideas of justice as represented by the present standards of British Law. It is endeavoured in this chapter to give a brief outline of the more important of their laws with the penalties ensuing on a breach thereof, as in vogue before the arrival of the present Administration.
Homicide was not punishable by any fixed penalty, and no difference was made between murder and manslaughter. The penalty lay in the hands of relatives of the deceased, who could do one of four things to the guilty party, viz., to kill the guilty, to fine him, to take him as a slave or to let the matter drop. The last mentioned was naturally only done when politic to do so, the first penalty was generally resorted to when the guilty party was very poor and possibly useless as a slave. Compensation was nearly always settled by the assembled Kotla.
If a man was found slain near a village, but with no actual evidence as to the slayer, the village was held responsible for the killing and the Kotla placed a collective penalty on the village. A certain amount of danger lay in discovering a slain person at any distance from human habitations, as the finding often brought a charge of killing as its reward.
In a case where there was actually no proof, witch-doctors were called in, and some wretched person who had fallen foul of the witch-doctor or even of some of the relatives of the deceased, generally got fined, however innocent he might really be.
All cases of homicide are now adjudicated upon at proper Courts of Justice, duly approved of by the High Commissioner of South Africa.
Theft was punished frequently, more severely than homicide, but in a country where lock and bolts were unknown, this was probably inevitable. The guilty party had all his possessions seized by the aggrieved party and a clay pot was smashed, portions of it were made red hot with fire and the thief was seized and his fist tightly closed round one of the red hot pieces and firmly held there. This generally resulted in his being maimed for life, as the burnt hand festered and rotted away in most cases, while, even if it were looked after well enough to heal, the flesh and sinews of the hand were so burnt as to prevent the hand ever resuming its normal state and condition.
A kleptomaniac or an incorrigible thief was promptly helped into the next world. A first offence, if the value of the stolen property was very minute, was occasionally let off with a fine, but a second offence always brought the punishment of burning of the right hand. Theft cases are now tried by the Courts of Administration.
Adultery was punishable in various ways. The killing of the guilty couple if found “in flagrante delicto” brought no penalty on the husband. If the matter came to the ears of the injured husband later, the paramour was fined one head of cattle. There was no fine or compensation from the paramour if the guilty wife had gone uninvited to his hut, but the paramour was nearly always accused of having called the woman to his hut and could then be fined for the offence. The Barozi law has always been distinctly unjust on this point, but it was doubtless necessitated by the lack of morals among the Barozi. A woman could name any number of paramours to her husband on his return from a long journey or a hunting or fighting expedition, and these would one and all have to pay a fine to the husband, although the woman might have named them out of spite only. There is no such thing as rape amongst the Barozi. A man criminally assaulting a female child under the age of puberty, might possibly have to pay a fine to the girl’s father, but carnal knowledge of an unmarried girl earned no penalty, and there is no known case of any woman or girl needing coercion, in fact the power to refuse, on the woman’s part might practically be said to be non-existent, while the laxity or rather utter lack of morals certainly made the desire to refuse non-existent.