The Brothers Of The Deceased
Are Supposed To Take Them - The Younger Brother May Not Marry The
Elder Brother's Widows, But The Elder Brothers May Marry Those Of
The Younger Brother.
Should any of the women object to the
arrangement, they may "leave the family."
I own that the ground principle of African law practically is "the
simple plan that they should take who have the power, and they
should keep who can," and this tells particularly against women and
children who have not got living, powerful relations of their own.
Unless the children of a man are grown up and sufficiently powerful
on their own account, they have little chance of sharing in the
distribution of his estate; but in spite of this abuse of power
there is among Negroes and Bantus a definite and acknowledged Law,
to which an appeal can be made by persons of all classes, provided
they have the wherewithal to set the machinery of it in motion. The
difficulty the children and widows have in sharing in the
distribution of the estate of the father and husband arises, I
fancy, in the principle of the husband's brothers being the true
heir, which has sunk into a fossilised state near the trading
stations in the face of the white culture. The reason for this
inheritance of goods passing from the man to his brother by the same
mother has no doubt for one of its origins the recognition of the
fact that the brother by the same mother must be a near relation,
whereas, in spite of the strict laws against adultery, the
relationship to you of the children born of your wives is not so
certain. Nevertheless this is one of the obvious and easy
explanations for things it is well to exercise great care before
accepting, for you must always remember that the African's mind does
not run on identical lines with the European - what may be self-
evident to you is not so to him, and vice versa. I have frequently
heard African metaphysicians complain that white men make great
jumps in their thought-course, and do not follow an idea step by
step. You soon become conscious of the careful way a Negro follows
his idea. Certain customs of his you can, by the exercise of great
patience, trace back in a perfectly smooth line from their source in
some natural phenomenon. Others, of course, you cannot, the traces
of the intervening steps of the idea having been lost, owing partly
to the veneration in which old customs are held, which causes them
to regard the fact that their fathers had this fashion as reason
enough for their having it, and above all to the total absence of
all but oral tradition. But so great a faith have I in the lack of
inventive power in the African, that I feel sure all their customs,
had we the material that has slipped down into the great swamp of
time, could be traced back either, as I have said, to some natural
phenomenon, or to the thing being advisable, for reasons of utility.
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