To give a concrete case or two, we might say that when the main reservoir of the Kimberley waterworks was built, one of the labourers one week-end lost the whole of his weekly pay. He inquired, and searched everywhere he could think of, but nobody had seen his missing purse. But on Monday morning he conceived a plan for the recovery of his lost purse. In pursuance of this plan, on the Monday he asked for and obtained a day off; then he declared to the gang of labourers that he was going to the nearest location to consult a bone-thrower. Instead of going to the location, however, he went to the open country, gathered some plants, returned to the dormitories while the others were at work, boiled the herbs in a pot of water and put it aside to cool. When the workmen returned for their midday meal he announced an imaginary consultation he had had with the bone-thrower, and that that functionary had divined the whereabouts of the purse; it was to the effect that the purse had been stolen and was in the possession of a fellow-worker. "The doctor," he said, "gave me some herbs. I have cooked them, and by his direction each of you is invited to immerse his hands in the decoction which is now cool. If you are not the thief, nothing would happen to you, but to the one who has stolen my money," he added with emphasis, "the doctor said that the medicine will snap the thief's fingers clean off and leave him only with the palm."
One by one the men dipped their hands in the "medicine", and as they took turns at the pot, one young fellow at length became visibly disturbed, and believing that the concoction was true, he confessed to the theft and undertook to refund the money, rather than lose his fingers.
Another case was this. "A Transkeian missionary once heard of the serious indisposition of a Native. It was not a natural sickness, it was believed, but was the effect of sorcery, and news in that sense was noised abroad. Such cases primitive Natives believe to be beyond the skill of a medical man. White doctors, they would say, know next to nothing at all about such things. They do not believe in witchcraft and how could they be expected to be able to smell it out of a patient. Only a witch-doctor — if he is more skilful — can smell out and subdue the charm directed by another witch-doctor into the body of the bewitched.
Having heard this piece of native philosophy on witchcraft, the missionary startled the Natives by telling them in their own tongue that he could cure the disease. And he did cure it. He captured a baby lizard from the rocks which abound in the craggy undulations of most parts of the Transkei. He hid it in the inside pocket of his coat and proceeded to the sick-bed with some real medicines in his hand. "When a man who is not sick imagines himself sick," says Dr. Kellogg, "he must be sick indeed," and truly, in accordance with this saying, the Native was dangerously ill. A bone-thrower, who had in the presence and hearing of the sick man divined his malady, pronounced that he was not only bewitched by a snake, but also that the reptile was within him and was eating him to death. In these circumstances the missionary administered an emetic to the reluctant patient, in the presence of some incredulous spectators, who had never known a white man to extract a reptile from the person of a bewitched Native. Further, by some agility of the hand, the missionary produced from his pocket unobserved, just as the emetic was acting, the baby lizard he had taken from the rocks. So smartly was this done that everybody, including the patient, believed the reptile to have been extracted from his body by the power of the medicine administered by the missionary. The sick man at once stood up and walked, and the missionary was known, by all who witnessed the marvel, as the greatest witch-doctor of the neighbourhood.
In like manner, when some civilized Christians made remarks on New Year's Day about the figure 13, there was much gossiping among the more superstitious Natives as to the form of trouble which the year 1913 had in store for the Natives, although none knew that a revolutionary law of Draconian severity would be launched in their midst during this eventful year.
The powerful African potentate, Menelik of Abyssinia (whose death had been falsely circulated no fewer than seven times during the past dozen years), really died in 1913.
Letsie II, paramount chief of the semi-independent Basuto nation, departed this life during this same year.
Dinizulu (son of the great Cetewayo, whose impis slew the Prince Imperial in 1879), who was born to inherit the throne of his fathers, and who lived to be one of the most disappointed men of his day, spent many years in prison and in exile, and was known in his lifetime as the Black Napoleon; was released from prison by the Union Government, and given back his pension of 500 Pounds per annum. Sharing the hopes of his people that in accordance with the Government's erstwhile good intentions now tottering before a growing Republicanism, Zululand would be restored to the Zulus, and he established as their ruler under the Crown. He, too, died in the year 1913.
An unusually large number of good and noble men of greater or lesser renown were gathered to their fathers during this year.
It is perhaps not generally known that few British statesmen did so much for the South African Natives, in so short a term of service at the Colonial Office, as the Hon. A. Lyttleton. And he, too, left us rather suddenly during this troublous year of 1913. In this year, too, South Africa was visited by a drought which for severity was pronounced to be unprecedented in the knowledge of all the old inhabitants. Remarks — some pithy, some ugly — were made upon the drought by Dutchmen. They all remembered how the God of their fathers used to send them nice soaking rains regularly each spring-time, and that it usually continued to nourish the plants and other of the country's vegetation throughout the summer, and they concluded that there must be some reason why He does not do it now. The majority of Dutchmen whom the writer thus overheard attributed the visitation to the sins of the foreigners, who are fast buying up the country, and cursing it by settling godless people upon it. One or two saw in it the vengeance of the Supreme Being for the unnecessary persecution of His black creatures, but they were afraid to say this aloud. "See," said one, "is the drought not worse in the `Free' State where Kafirs seem to be very hard hit by this new law?" This was true. Dutchmen's cattle were dying of poverty in the "Free" State, and the land was so parched in some parts that it seemed difficult to believe that grass could ever grow in these places again, supposing the long-looked-for rain came at last.