He Would Not Deny
The Extortion To Me; That Would Be `Boherehere' (Swindling)."
He Thus Thought Extortion Better Than Swindling.
I could not detect
any difference in the morality of the two transactions,
but Sekomi's ideas of honesty are
The lowest I have met with
in any Bechuana chief, and this instance is mentioned as the only approach
to demanding payment for leave to pass that I have met with in the south.
In all other cases the difficulty has been to get a chief to give us men
to show the way, and the payment has only been for guides.
Englishmen have always very properly avoided giving that idea
to the native mind which we shall hereafter find prove troublesome,
that payment ought to be made for passage through a country.
All the Bechuana and Caffre tribes south of the Zambesi
practice circumcision (`boguera'), but the rites observed
are carefully concealed. The initiated alone can approach, but in this town
I was once a spectator of the second part of the ceremony of the circumcision,
called "sechu". Just at the dawn of day, a row of boys of nearly
fourteen years of age stood naked in the kotla, each having a pair of sandals
as a shield on his hands. Facing them stood the men of the town
in a similar state of nudity, all armed with long thin wands,
of a tough, strong, supple bush called moretloa (`Grewia flava'),
and engaged in a dance named "koha", in which questions are put to the boys,
as "Will you guard the chief well?" "Will you herd the cattle well?" and,
while the latter give an affirmative response, the men rush forward to them,
and each aims a full-weight blow at the back of one of the boys.
Shielding himself with the sandals above his head, he causes the supple wand
to descend and bend into his back, and every stroke inflicted thus
makes the blood squirt out of a wound a foot or eighteen inches long.
At the end of the dance, the boys' backs are seamed with wounds and weals,
the scars of which remain through life. This is intended
to harden the young soldiers, and prepare them for the rank of men.
After this ceremony, and after killing a rhinoceros, they may marry a wife.
In the "koha" the same respect is shown to age as in many other
of their customs. A younger man, rushing from the ranks
to exercise his wand on the backs of the youths, may be himself
the object of chastisement by the older, and, on the occasion referred to,
Sekomi received a severe cut on the leg from one of his gray-haired people.
On my joking with some of the young men on their want of courage,
notwithstanding all the beatings of which they bore marks,
and hinting that our soldiers were brave without suffering so much,
one rose up and said, "Ask him if, when he and I were compelled by a lion
to stop and make a fire, I did not lie down and sleep as well as himself."
In other parts a challenge to try a race would have been given,
and you may frequently see grown men adopting that means
of testing superiority, like so many children.
The sechu is practiced by three tribes only. Boguera is observed
by all the Bechuanas and Caffres, but not by the negro tribes
beyond 20 Deg. south. The "boguera" is a civil rather than a religious rite.
All the boys of an age between ten and fourteen or fifteen
are selected to be the companions for life of one of the sons of the chief.
They are taken out to some retired spot in the forest,
and huts are erected for their accommodation; the old men go out
and teach them to dance, initiating them, at the same time,
into all the mysteries of African politics and government.
Each one is expected to compose an oration in praise of himself,
called a "leina" or name, and to be able to repeat it
with sufficient fluency. A good deal of beating is required to bring them up
to the required excellency in different matters, so that, when they return
from the close seclusion in which they are kept, they have generally
a number of scars to show on their backs. These bands or regiments,
named mepato in the plural and mopato in the singular,
receive particular appellations; as, the Matsatsi - the suns;
the Mabusa - the rulers; equivalent to our Coldstreams or Enniskillens;
and, though living in different parts of the town, they turn out at the call,
and act under the chief's son as their commander. They recognize a sort
of equality and partial communism ever afterward, and address each other
by the title of molekane or comrade. In cases of offence against their rules,
as eating alone when any of their comrades are within call,
or in cases of cowardice or dereliction of duty, they may strike one another,
or any member of a younger mopato, but never any one of an older band;
and when three or four companies have been made, the oldest
no longer takes the field in time of war, but remains as a guard
over the women and children. When a fugitive comes to a tribe, he is directed
to the mopato analogous to that to which in his own tribe he belongs,
and does duty as a member. No one of the natives knows how old he is.
If asked his age, he answers by putting another question,
"Does a man remember when he was born?" Age is reckoned by
the number of mepato they have seen pass through the formulae of admission.
When they see four or five mepato younger than themselves,
they are no longer obliged to bear arms. The oldest individual I ever met
boasted he had seen eleven sets of boys submit to the boguera.
Supposing him to have been fifteen when he saw his own, and fresh bands
were added every six or seven years, he must have been about forty
when he saw the fifth, and may have attained seventy-five or eighty years,
which is no great age; but it seemed so to them, for he had now doubled
the age for superannuation among them.
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