TERROR MAGIC IN EAST AFRICA.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3464, 7 April 1930, Page 7

TERROR MAGIC IN EAST AFRICA.

Many mysterious deaths in East Africa, in Tanganyika Territory, have been traced to 1 heir source, 'J hey are due. we are told, to a secret society of medicine men and witch-doctors, who call themselves Raswezi. i or Phey-wlio-arc-irresistible. A sanguinary qualification Jor membership Tn this black brotherhood, we learn from a contributor to the Umpire Review (London), is that the tribesman candidate shall murder, by poison or .spell, at least two of bis blood relatives. Of another such cult, exposed in Northern Kenya, we read: •■A game scum on safari in Hie Rendilie country, investigating reports of <dralle poaching, noted that many vuiiiir Rendilie men wore small ele- ) haul tasks attached to thongs of hide. Ills first suspicion was that the Ren(iiiic were trapping elephant bull calves for their meat and bide. Closer mcolligation, however, showed that *ne (usks which the voting Rendilie woie were not newly shot, but bad been handed down from lather to son lor

ncnerations, and wore part of a proles, jne regalia of fetish worship. On n i "iit'' of tin* now moon, medicine men oTthe see ref Han. the unholy priests ~l (ln> fetish. resort to wild secret ints ii lhe forests where, to the 1,10:111 of drums anil the howls ol pipes || )( . V (*; 1 1| up thoir devotees among the young men an I women of the tribe. Fantastic rites in which black goats are Mitfocated to propitiate the spirits ol I |i, dead ami invoke the powers of t.ie. |,h,k man's other world are perlormen while the fetish worshippers dance round sacred (ires, lashing themselves iuio a frenzy of lanat ieisin. ■ - I'he fetish tusks are then laved »n tli< -moke and pressed »>y the dancers upon I heir foreheads while the medii ine men pra\ to their gods. IUI dei,::ucherics of meal eating and pombe drinking bring this grotesque rite to <-|j; i); 1\ of indescribable abandon. He. ~-:,11 > thicc inolfciisivc natives who werc 1 rekking from one kraal to an--0i1,,.- md wen' unfortunate enough • > blunder into the black circle of let.sii ,j, ||, | v: .|, brut aI Iv beaten and later wvl;n<l on ,< bush-trail to their homes r.ud iiia.--ai red in cold blood.