By this arrangement much of the territory, indeed almost the whole, between the Kei and the Keiskamma was restored to the previous occupants. But the labour and difficulty I had to prevent locations on the tracts of country reserved for military purposes and sites of towns is not to be described. Frequently I have been compelled to resort to very harsh measures; but I never would admit of any arrangement bordering on a compromise. I started on the principle of Yes and No, Right and Wrong. I was ever inflexible, and I ever strove most energetically to establish that faith in my word and uncompromising justice which aided me beyond anything to effect what I ultimately did. I closed the door to all appeal or reference to events which occurred prior to the conclusion of peace. In their own words, “the old kraal was shut,” never to be reopened. It was fortunate for me that I adopted this policy, for no records of the Court of Chancery embraced more retrospect than my new subjects were disposed to. They were all by nature subtle and acute lawyers. The councillor given me by Macomo was an old man of great ability; Lords Bacon, Thurlow, and Eldon were not more acquainted with our laws than was this old fellow with the laws of his people. He had been Gaika’s Prime Minister and Lord Chancellor, and was attached to the English. With this old fellow I spent six hours a day for several successive days, until I made myself thoroughly acquainted with their laws and rights of person. Although these closely resembled the law of Moses given in Leviticus, and, if correctly administered, were excellent, I soon discovered that might was right, that the damnable forgery of sorcery and witchcraft was the primum mobile of oppression and extortion, and that under the cloak of punishment for this offence there was committed oppression of so barbarous and tyrannical a kind as it was hardly to be conceived that beings endowed with reason could perpetrate on each other. The following sketch will give some idea of what commonly takes place.
In Kafirland the witch-doctors and the rain-makers are in the confidence of their respective chiefs. Whenever any individual renders himself obnoxious to the chief or any of his family or influential men, he is accused of bewitching either the chief, his wife, or child, or cattle, or any other thing, but no one is ever considered capable of this sort of sorcery but a man rich in goods, viz. cattle.
A witch-dance is then called, special care being taken to summon the individual upon whom it is intended to affix the crime. An old hag, perfectly naked, comes forth; the assembled people dance round her in a circle; she is, in their expression, to “smell out” the person who has bewitched the supposed sufferers. After a variety of gesticulations, this hag approaches the individual already named by the chief, and literally smells him, proclaiming him the culprit. If he is very rich, the chief and his pagate, or councillors, are satisfied with “eating him up” (the native expression for having all one’s property confiscated under an accusation of witchcraft); if not so, or if he is very obnoxious, they have various punishments, such as putting him at once to death by a species of hanging, or rather strangulating by a leather thong, throwing the poor wretch on the ground upon his back, tethering his arms apart above his head, his legs apart and fully extended, then bringing large quantities of large black ants,[111] throwing them upon him, and leaving him exposed until the pain and anguish of the stings put an end to his existence; burning the body all over with large flat stones (the poor wretch on whose account I punished Umhala so severely[112] had thirty large places burned on his person); taking the accused to the edge of a particular precipice and hurling him down; and several other methods. No individual, man, woman, or child, is safe. The witch-doctors are in the confidence of the chief, as much as the Inquisitors are in that of the Pope, and no more arbitrary oppression is exercised on earth than by these Kafir chiefs and witch-doctors.
I soon saw that the witch-doctors and rain-makers, i.e. fellows who professed and were believed to be capable of bringing down rain in time of drought, would be my formidable opponents in introducing a new order of things, as their supposed power, if I succeeded, must ultimately be annihilated.
Having thus made myself acquainted with the laws of the barbarous people whom I was to govern and lead on to become civilized beings and British subjects, I was in a position to begin proceedings. At my suggestion, the Governor appointed magistrates to each tribe, consisting principally of officers of the army. With Macomo and Tyalie and the widow Suta, and with the heir-apparent Sandilli, Gaika’s young son, I had Captain Stretch; with Dushani’s tribe, the widow Nonibe,[113] and her son, I had Captain Southey; with Umhala and the T’slambie tribes, Captain Rawstorne.
The missionaries all came back to their respective missions, and with the magistrates, the missionaries, and other aid afforded by the kind attention paid by Sir Benjamin D’Urban to all my wants, I proceeded to take a nominal census of the whole male population arrived at puberty, with the number of their women, children, etc. At first the Kafirs were much opposed to this, but through the aid of my councillor Ganya, the common sense of which they have a great share, and my patient explanation of the utility of the measure, I succeeded. I found I had upwards of 100,000 barbarians to reclaim who had no knowledge of right or wrong beyond arbitrary power, desire, and self-will. To attach the people to the new order of things was of vast importance; to lessen the power of the chiefs equally so; but this had to be gradual, for if I removed the hereditary restraint of the chiefs, I should open the gates to an anarchy which I might not be able to quell.
A fortunate circumstance occurred, which enabled me to make gigantic steps. The Kafirs have a barbarous festival, when all the maidens are compelled to attend to undergo a sort of “Rape of the Sabines.” These maidens, during the festival, are appropriated by the chiefs to themselves and their followers, and then sent back to their families. Old Ganya, who came to tell me this, said, “Now you have an opportunity, by preventing this brutal custom, to restrain the lawlessness of the chiefs, and to win the hearts of their subjects.” He added that there were many fathers of families in camp, who had come to appeal to me for protection. I immediately gave them an audience,[114] as I invariably did every one who desired to see me. I acquired great ascendancy by first ascertaining through the interpreter the grounds on which they had come, and when they were ushered into the presence, exclaiming, “Ah, you want so and so!” The poor wretches were much astonished at this, believing that I had the power to divine their thoughts; and I frequently saved myself from listening to a string of lies very plausibly linked together.
I also established with every magistrate a police of Kafirs, and I had a considerable number with me, to apprehend delinquents and culprits and summon the heads of the kraals. These police carried with them from the magistrate a long stick with a brass knob. This is a custom of their own. Fakoo has a cat’s tail on his wands of office. At headquarters I had a very long stick with a large knob, which was always held by my Gold Stick when I was in council, or upon trials, cases of appeal, mandates, issuing proclamations, etc. And when I seized the stick, held it myself, and gave a decisive order, that was formal and irrevocable. For when once I had decided, no power could induce me to swerve from that decision.
When the police were out, if they were treated with contumely, and the head of a kraal refused obedience or compliance, this stick was stuck in his cattle-kraal, and he was obliged to bring it himself to the authority whence it emanated; while so long as it remained in the kraal, the proprietor was under the ban of the Empire, excommunicated, or outlawed. The fear they had of this wand was literally magical. I never had to use military aid in support of my police but once, and then I did so, more as a display of the rapidity with which I could turn out troops and rush them to the spot than from any absolute necessity. Such was the respect for these policemen, that the neighbours of a delinquent would voluntarily turn out in their support, and I always rewarded such support by a present of cattle from my treasury (formed from fines levied for offences).