TREKKING THROUGH NATAL

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 55, Issue 3938, 11 August 1937, Page 9

TREKKING THROUGH NATAL

AN INTERESTING JOURNEY. STRANGE JULU TABOOS. For the benefit of readers whose knowledge of geography is weak, Mr Carel Birkby explains in “Zulu Journey” (just published in London), that Zululand, which has an area of about 10,5'03 square miles, is the northern part of Natal, by which it was annexed in 1897. More than 250,000 natives live in little beehive-shaped huts in Zululand. “The Zulu are a people with beliefs and manners ail their own,” writes Mr Birkby. “In Zululand a man, provided he is black, may have as many wives as he wish, r, or at least as many as he can afford. But he must never look a mother-in-law in the face. That is just one of the strange taboos of Zululand. If a Zulu husband encounters the mother of one of his wives, he covers h’.s face and avoids her "as graciously as possible.

“Zulu husbands are kind and indulgent to their wives, their in-laws, and their children. Though many households contain a half-dozen wives or more, there is little jealousy among the wives. Domestic quarrels are rare. That may be because the women are too busy working to have time for quarrelling. The Zulu women do the work, while their husbands loaf about the karaals, keep check on the herds, or hunt wild game. The women till the soil, plant the crops, and attend to the harvests. They store their own grain, and the husband is not permitted to enter' ths storehouse. On the other hand it is the duty of the wives to support the husbands, feed them well, and supply them with cash from the sale of surplus crops.” WHITE MAN A ZULU CHIEF. Mr Birkby has written a very entertaining book about his trek through Zululand, Swaziland and Pondolani, all of which are parts of Natal. H? met several sons of John Dunn, a white .man who became a Zulu chief through his friendship with the famous chief, Cetewayo. It is not difficult to meet descendants of Joan Dunn, for, like other Zulu chiefs, ue was a polygamist on a grand scale, and he was the father of 79 children, of whom 60 are still living. From on • of the sons, Tom Dunn, “a merry nutbrown man, with close-cropped ha'r and a moustache,” who is a famous guide and hunter, Mr Birkby learned some interesting things about the business side of big-game hunting.

“It doesn’t pay to act as a guide or hunter to a party of white tourists, so much as to shoot your own game and sell umuti to the natives,” sai 1 Tom Dunn to the author. “In my time I’ve shot thirty hippo. Some bulls do not yield a bottle of fat. But I know the moment a hippo cow sticks her head up how much fat there is to be got off her. You can generally render down about three or four petrol tins of fat from a cow,

and sometimes as much as eight—32 gallons. Hippo fat can be sold wholesale at about £1 a whisky bottle, and then the retail pedlar can make as much as £5 clear profit. Here is th > reason. The natives pay a shilling for a half-ounce bottle of the stuff. They value it highly, because they believe :f you smear a little hippo fat on yourself your will become irresistible—everybody will love you. POTIONS OR CHARMS. “Elephants are worth shooting for umuti, because in the tubes inside the liver of a big bull elephant you come on little lumps of yellow stuff called mdaka. It sells at £1 for the size of a pea, or smaller. I’m not quite sure what it is used for, out I believe it is supposed to act like a lucky bean—-nd also to act as a love talisman. Most of the Zulus have love potions, or charms. Ths crocodile is profitable to shoot als >. The fat, rendered down, is considered a safeguard against poison. The native who believes that he may bo given poisoned food by an enemy takes a lick of crocodile fat before he eats. So a half-ounce bottle is worth a shilling. “Crocodile fat has another property, according to the Zulus.: If a thunder storm is raging, and you drop a little fat on your fire, the moment it starts to smoke it will keep lightning away from your kraal. I have sold the stones out of a crocodile’s gizzard for a shilling each. Sometimes there are hundreds of them in a single crocodile. These little round stones are licked by Zulus who want to ensure a long life, for they think that the crocodile owes his life of 403 years and more to them.” I “OLD KING COLE.” In East Griqualand Mr Birkby met Jim Cole, an energetic old gentleman of 95 years, known as “Old King Cole,” and also as the “Rockefeller of Riverside,” a small village on the border of Natal and the Cape Province. Mr Cole is reputed to be a millionaire. “He owns a chain of eighteen trading stores,” writes Mr Birkby. “He employs eighteen farm managers to run eighteen blocks of farmS -isome of them immense holdings—ranging from Basutoland to Portuguese East Africa. You can travel at times for 25 miles and never step eff his lands.” Fcr a time Jim Cole issued his own currency to the natives. The coins consisted of brass discs. “When Jim Cole bought the natives’ produce he paid them in these tokens, which .he intended should bn tender’ for goods bought at his trading steres,” writes Mr Birkby. “He paid his ‘boys’ their wages in these brass coins also. Soon, howeve., ‘Cole currency’ became practically common tender in East Griqualand. The natives trusted the great ‘Ujim, and so they use his coins as free:y as they used Queen Victoria’s—more freely, in fact, since in the early days real cash was scarce in East Griqualand. Until eighteen months ago the Cole coins still criculated in some parts of the country, but now th? police have put their foot down, and insisted that the currency of only one King may be used in the realm.’