BANTU WOMAN CHIEF.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 217, 12 September 1936, Page 8 (Supplement)

BANTU WOMAN CHIEF.

QUEEN NZELE'S WIVES ""How would anyone set about describing a queen whose household consists of 20 wives and several husbands?" ask the author of "The Empire of Snakes." - "A queen who spends all her days sitting on the porch of her palace, dressed fin .' a faded gown and a soiled cotton turban on her head. who owns a four-poster bed that is Bft long and 7ft wide, but who sleeps on the floor beside it. A queen who serves tea to white travellers who stop to chat out of fragile Dresden cups; who within one year spent 8000 shillings on new wives whom she quickly married , off to young "men of Samue, and who has done more to, help the British fight the ' deadly tsetse fly than any other African native from Cairo to Capetown. Yes —how would one describe such a woman? To start with, let me point out that Queen Nzele, in the eyes of her people, is not a woman, but a chief. According to Bantu

custom, chiefs must have many wives, and, being a Bantu, as well as chief, Queen Nzele is no exception. After a bit of investigating I discovered that the Sultana of Samue bought anywhere from six to 12 new wives a year, with the exception of one year when she bought twenty. These purchases were not made because the queen is a female bluebeard, but for purely economic reasons. There is no servant class within the Wanyamwesi tribe. When the head of a household needs help for home or field he marries it; for in Africa, women do the work until the children are old enough to help. . . . Any Samue debutante would give her eye-teeth to become one of Queen Nzele's wives. She watches over them with motherly care— makes them work, but not too hard — gives them good huts to live in—and i feeds them with better food than their own homes provide. Another incentive is that all of Queen Nzele's 'wives' land good husbands. The average 'wife' does not remain more than a year or two under the Queen's roof before she is married to some native youth, for the queen is reputed to be a great matchmaker." 1