AFRICAN BUSHMEN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 229, 30 September 1935, Page 8

AFRICAN BUSHMEN

SLAVERY ALLEGATIONS REBUUTTAL OF CHARGES. CAPETOWN, Aug. J. Further light on the relations between the Baniangwato, a Bechuanaland tribe, and the Masarwa bushmen, whom, it was alleged, according to a Colonial Office report some time ago, they held in a state of thraldom tanca mount to slavery, is shed by the report of an inquiry held by the South Africa District Committee of the London Missionary Society. The society’s directors iu London, deeply disturbed over the slavery story, asked that Tshekedi. the Baniangwato chief who figured in the somewhat sensational affair at Serowe two years ago, should be interrogated about the Masarwa. The outcome is that he and his people have been acquitted of the grave charges. Chief Tshekedi explained to the mis sionaries how the bushmen came to- be subservient to his people. “It is s process which has been at work in other nations and countries, and not only in ours. In this world we sec that when a strong people comes into a country of a people who arc not strong, if there is not actual conquest by war, the conquest is begun by saying, ‘Let us all Jive at peace together.’ And for a time it is so. But by and by the strong people begin to assume more power than was originally intended, and we also see this where white people are concerned.” The missionaries failed to find any evidence of a system of child slavery and think on the whole that the better class of Tshekedi’s people treat their domestic bushmen with kindness. The bushmen are allowed to appeal to the chief in case of trouble with their masters. The missionaries seem to be much struck by accounts of how the bushmen treated their children. The following written account was quoted by Tshekedi: “These people take no great care of their children, and never correct them, except in a fit of rage, when they almost kill them by severe usage. In a quarrel between father and mother, the defeated party wreaks his or her vengeance on the child of the conqueror, which in general loses its life. Tame Hottentots seldom destroy their children, except in a fit of passion; but the bushmen will kill their childre without remorse. There are instances of parents throwing their offspring to the hungry lion, who stood roaring before their cavern, refusing to depart till some peace offering was made to hinw”