GROUP VIII.
SOUTHERN AFRICA.—NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE CAPE.—PORT NATAL.
A. ZULUS. (THE TALLER AND DARKER.) B. BUSHMEN. (THE SHORTER AND BROWNER.)
A. The Zulu group is taken from life—from the men lately exhibited at St. George’s Hall. The story told is the search for some lost article. When this is the case, a Fetish-man, medium-man, mystery-man, or conjuror (we may choose our name), is called in, and set upon the suspected parties, who sit round in a circle. The conjuror then works himself, like the Pythoness of the old oracles, into a state of rabid excitement, and keeps it up until he fixes upon the culprit.
Nothing is less peculiar than this practice throughout Africa—throughout, indeed, most savage countries; nor is it without its value. Writing about the same practice on the Gold Coast, an author already quoted, after stating the “superstitious rites employed by the Fetish-men for the detection of crime,” adds, “and whether it is that these people really possess such powerful influence over their wretched dupes, as to frighten into confession of his guilt the perpetrator of crime, or whether it is that they manage by their numerous spies to obtain a clue sufficient in most cases to lead to the detection of the person, is more than I can venture to assert; but, be the means employed what they may, a Fetish-man will assuredly very often bring a crime home to the right person, even after the most patient investigation in the ordinary way has failed to elicit the slightest clue.”
The Zulus come from the part about Port Natal. They are closely allied, in language, at least, to the Kaffres—the Kaffres of the Amakosa, Amaponda, Amatembu, and other tribes, but too well known to the Cape Colonist and the English tax-payer.
They are similarly allied to the Bechuana tribes of the interior. The Bechuanas, however, are browner in colour, as is expected from their locality, which is high and dry.
The Fingoes are also an allied population.
The differences between the Proper Kaffres, the Bechuanas, the Fingoes, and the Zulus, lie within a small compass, so that the general likeness is pretty clear. But neither the differences nor the likenesses between the populations akin to the Kaffres end here.
The word (the derivation of which has been given [elsewhere]) has two meanings. It means, in its more limited sense, the Kaffres of Caffraria, chiefly of the Amakosa tribe, the men who have given so much trouble to the colonists. But it also has a wider or more general signification, and in this case it serves as the designation of a large family of allied populations—and a very large family—one of the largest in Africa.
The connecting link between its numerous branches is the language, of which the structure has (amongst others) the following characteristic peculiarities. Suppose that in English, instead of saying
Man’s dog, we said dan dog,
Sun’s beam—bun beam,
Father’s daughter—dather daughter,
Daughter’s father—faughter father;