Bantu Folk Lore (Medical and General)Hewat, Matthew L.
Science
Bantu Folk Lore (Medical and General)
Hewat, Matthew L.
Pondo (African people); Traditional medicine -- South Africa; Xhosa (African people); Zulu (African people)
His procedure is something thus:—Having been paid his fee, a goat or
something, he sits down with his kaross, throws the “Indawuli” and then
proceeds.
First he recapitulates the disease and details of treatment that have
been adopted, and then accuses someone of witchcraft, someone whom he
has a spite against or whom he knows to be suspected. Says the child
was charmed by the individual by means of magic medicines which he had
burned, which drew the lizard and toad and snake, “Uhili, Icanti and
Impundulu” to the mother’s hut and then the child sickened. He predicts
his certain death: a self evident fact by this time and which soon
takes place, resulting in much trouble in the king’s household and
often bloodshed.
The story is told of a great witch doctor being called to cure a girl
of Epilepsy, which was supposed to be “Umdhlemyana,” sickness caused by
the casting of a love spell by a young man in the neighbourhood; also
of an instance where a child accidently buried in a landslip alive, and
heard crying is allowed to die unreleased, while witch doctors have
cattle and then goats driven over the place to appease the “Imishologu”
in whose custody the child was.
There is another form of “smelling out,” a more fearful affair the
“Umhlalho,” or in Zulu “Ingoboko.” This is a tribal affair, and is
carried out in the following manner:
The chief agrees to the summoning of a great “Umhlalho,” a great public
dance, to which selected tribes are invited, and must attend. The
“Gqira,” the tribes being assembled, after various incantations and
probably working himself or herself (for females often take to this
profession) into a frenzy, will single out an individual, or even at
times a whole tribe as a guilty party, by throwing ashes over them.
This act being called “Ukunuka.” These parties may have been guilty of,
say, causing sickness in the king’s household, making one of his wives
miscarry, or, in the case of a tribe, having assisted in the escape of
a fugitive.
Those proclaimed guilty at an “Umhlalho” by means of the “Ukunuka”
(throwing ashes), the signs of being “smelled out,” are often summarily
slaughtered or at least severely punished, often with horrible
tortures.
It was an “Isanusi” called “Malakaza,” who was responsible, under the
direction of Kreli, for the great “Cattle Slaughter of the Kaffirs in
1856,” by which, according to the Hon. Charles Brownlee, an undoubted
authority, it is computed that over 20,000 natives died of starvation
and other diseases, and 30,000 were forced to seek relief in the Cape
Colony.
An “Insanuse” goes through a regular course of initiation and education
after the following methods:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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