WHITE WOMAN RULES BLACKS

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 April 1938, Page 4

WHITE WOMAN RULES BLACKS

EUROPEANS NOT ALLOWED TO S A white woman who has never been seen by a white man rules a. tribe of 6,000 natives in the Hadjad'gi Reserve of Northern Transvaal. Native priests guard! her by day and night. The existence of this modern “She.” of whom Rider Haggard might have written, was revealed by Mr. Brian Ballenden, so of Mr. G. Ballenden. chief of the Johannesburg Native Affairs Department. Young Ballenden said that the woman rules the tribe through priests, tried! to draw the chieftainess from the shelter of the guarded xraal by giving a film show with portable cinema apparatus. “Three thousand 1 natives gathered to watch the first film of their lives. 1 waited* for the white chieftainess. There was a d'eath-like silence as three black handmaidens Walked down and said the chieftainess would see the show, but only from the dark interior of the kraal.

“1 stayed several days hoping to see her, but I. saw only her kinsmen, who had European features, with nose and lips clean-cut, and some with grey eyes. “The story is that a native chief abducted a white woman. When he died there was no heir, so the white woman became the chieftainess.” Mr. Ballenden trekked through hundreds of miles of mountainous count...- io. „lo u-bje.- ..j upi;:' _ (■ cd with presents, priests of the chieflainess closed round the hut and forbade his advance.