“He was then ordered to produce the matter with which he had bewitched the son of his chief. He replied, ‘I have no bewitching matter; but destroy me quickly, if my chief has consented to my death.’ His executioners said they must torture him until he produced it, to which he answered, ‘Save yourselves the trouble, for torture as you will I cannot produce what I have not.’ He was then held down on the ground, and several men proceeded to pierce his body all over with long Kaffir needles. The miserable victim bore this with extraordinary resolution; his tormentors tiring, and complaining of the pain it gave their hands, and of the needles or skewers bending.
“During this time a fire had been kindled, in which large flat stones were placed to heat; the man was then directed to rise, they pointed out to him the fire, telling him it was for his further torture unless he produced the bewitching matter. He answered, ‘I told you the truth when I said, Save yourselves the trouble; as for the hot stones, I can bear them, for I am innocent; I would pray to be strangled at once, but that you would say I fear your torture.’ Here his wife, who had also been seized, was stripped perfectly naked, and cruelly beaten and ill-treated before his eyes. The victim was then led to the fire, where he was thrown on his back, stretched out with his arms and legs tied to strong pegs driven into the ground, and the stones, now red-hot, were taken out of the fire and placed on his naked body—on the groin, stomach, and chest, supported by others on each side of him, also heated and pressed against his body. It is impossible to describe the awful effect of this barbarous process, the stones slipping off the scorched and broiling flesh, being only kept in their places by the sticks of the fiendish executioners.
“Through all this the heroic fellow still remained perfectly sensible, and when asked if he wished to be released to discover his hidden charm, said, ‘Release me.’ They did so, fully expecting they had vanquished his resolution, when, to the astonishment of all, he stood up a ghastly spectacle, broiled alive! his smoking flesh hanging in pieces from his body! and composedly asked his tormentors, ‘What do you wish me to do now?’ They repeated their demand, but he resolutely asserted his innocence, and begged them to put him out of his misery; and as they were now getting tired of their labor, they made a running noose on the rheim around his neck, jerked him to the ground, and savagely dragged him about on the sharp stones, then placing their feet on the back of his neck, they drew the noose tight, and strangled him. His mangled corpse was taken into his own hut, which was set on fire and burnt to ashes. His sufferings commenced at ten A. M. and only ended at sunset.”
Kona, whose illness was the cause of this fearful scene, was a son of Macomo, the well-known Kaffir chief, who resisted the English forces for so long a time.
It seems strange that the Kaffir should act in this manner; naturally, he is by no means of a vindictive or cruel nature. Hot-tempered he is, and likely enough to avenge himself when offended, by a blow of a club or the point of an assagai. But, after the heat of the moment has passed away, his good-humor returns, and he becomes as cheerful and lively as ever. Even in war, as has already been mentioned, he is not generally a cruel soldier, when not excited by actual combat, and it seems rather strange that when a man toward whom he has felt no enmity, and who may, perhaps, be his nearest relative, is accused of a crime—no matter what it may be—he should be guilty, in cold blood, of deliberate cruelty too terrible to be described. The fact is, this conduct shows how great is his fear of the intangible power of witchcraft. Fear is ever the parent of cruelty, and the simple fact that a naturally kind-hearted and good-tempered man will lose all sense of ruth, and inflict nameless tortures on his fellow, shows the abject fear of witchcraft which fills a Kaffir’s mind.
Sometimes the prophet is not able to hide a charm in a convenient place, and is obliged to have recourse to other means. If, for example, it would be necessary to show that the “evil-doer” had buried the charm in his own hut, the prophet would not be able to gain access to the spot, and would therefore have the earth dug up, and try to convey surreptitiously some pieces of root or bone into the hole. Mr. Isaacs once detected a notable prophetess in this proceeding, and exposed the trick before the assembled people.
Some of his immediate followers were ill, and they sent for a prophetess who knew that the white man did not believe in her powers. So she sent him a message, saying that, if he would give her a cow, she would detect the charms that were destroying his people, and would allow him to be present when she dug up the enchanted roots. So he sent a cow, and two days afterward had another message, stating that the cow was too small, and she must have a larger one, or that the difference must be made up in calico. At the same time she asked for the services of one of his men, named Maslamfu. He sent the calico, but declined the latter portion of the request, knowing that the man was only wanted as a means of gaining information. The expected day arrived, and, on account of the celebrity of the prophetess, vast numbers of men belonging to various tribes came in bodies, each headed by a chief of a kraal. Messenger after messenger came to announce her advance, but she did not make her appearance, and at last a courier came to say that the spirit would not allow her to proceed any further until some beads were sent to her. The chiefs, of whose arrival she had heard, and on whose liberality she doubtlessly depended, made a collection straightway, got together a parcel of beads, and sent the present by the messenger.
The beads having softened her heart, she made her solemn entry into the kraal, followed by a guard of fifty warriors, all in full panoply of war. The procession moved in solemn march to the centre of the isi-baya, and then the warriors formed themselves in a line, their large shields resting on the ground and covering the body as high as the chin, and their assagais grasped in their right hands. She was also accompanied by Maslamfu, the very man whom she had asked for, and who was evidently an old attendant of her own. The prophetess was decorated in the usual wild and extravagant manner, and she had improved her complexion by painting her nose and one eyelid with charcoal, and the other eyelid with red earth. She had also allowed all her hair to grow, and had plastered it together with a mixture of charcoal and fat. The usual tufted wand of office was in her hand.
Having now made her appearance, she demanded more beads, which were given to her, in order that she should have no excuse for declining to proceed any further in her incantations. She then began her work in earnest, leaping and bounding from one side of the enclosure to the other, and displaying the most wonderful agility. During this part of the proceedings she sang a song as an accompaniment to her dance, the words of the song itself either having no meaning, or being quite incomprehensible to the hearers. The burden of each stanza was, however, simple enough, and all the assembled host of Kaffirs joined in it at the full stretch of their lungs. After rushing to several huts, and pretending to smell them, she suddenly stopped before the white men, who were carefully watching her, and demanded another cow, on the plea that if the noxious charm were dug up without the sacrifice of a second cow, the spirits would be offended. At last she received the promise of a cow, under the proviso that the rest of the performance was to be satisfactory.
After a variety of strange performances, she suddenly turned to her audience, and appointed one of them to dig up the fatal soil. The man was a great muscular Kaffir, but he trembled like a child as he approached the sorceress, and was evidently so terrified that she was obliged to lay a spell upon him which would counteract the evil influence of the buried charm. She gave him an assagai by way of a spade, a pot for the roots, and directed him successively to three huts, making him dig in each, but was baffled by the vigilant watch which was kept upon all her movements. Having vainly searched the three huts, she suddenly turned and walked quickly out of the kraal, followed by the still terrified excavator, her husband, and Maslamfu, and proceeded to a garden, into which she flung an assagai, and told her man to dig up the spot on which the spear fell. “Being now outdone, and closely followed by us, and finding all her efforts to elude our vigilance were vain, for we examined into all her tricks with the most persevering scrutiny, she suddenly turned round, and at a quick pace proceeded to the kraal, where she very sagaciously called for her snuff box. Her husband ran to her, and presented one. This attracted my notice, as Maslamfu had hitherto performed the office of snuff box bearer, and I conjectured that, instead of snuff in the box, her husband had presented her with roots. I did not fail in my prediction; for, as she proceeded to the upper part of the kraal, she took the spear from the man appointed to dig, and dug herself in front of the hut where the people had been sick, took some earth, and added it to that in the pot; then proceeded as rapidly as possible to the calf kraal, where she dug about two inches deep, and applied two fingers of the left hand to scoop a little earth out, at the same time holding the roots with her other two fingers; then, in a second, closed her hand, mixing the roots with the earth, and putting them into the pot, saying to the man, ‘These are the things you have been looking for.’”