;'00 SMALL-POX AMONGST THE BA-RONGA. 



This strange rite throws a very interesting light on the ideas 

 of the Natives on religion and witchcraft, and opens a wide field 

 for the curiosity of the ethnographer. 



Let us first consider the religious act. As already pointed 

 out, it is altogether different from the ordinary hahla of the Ba- 

 Ronga. Ba-Ronga, as well as all the South African Bantu, are 

 distinctly " ancestrolatrists." They worship ancestral spirits or 

 other spirits of departed people which they have exorcised, and- 

 which have become a kind of protecting gods for them. They 

 A-ery rarely worship Nature spirits, material objects, or imper- 

 sonal powers. Fetichism is almost entirely absent. And here 

 we meet with a strange being, named the Questioner, a kind of 

 angel of judgment, who passes through the country very much 

 I'.ke the Messenger of God who visited the Egyptians in the 

 famous Paschal night! This is so different from the regular 

 ancestor worship that I first wondered if the idea was not alto- 

 gether foreign. Notice that the Questioner is called Mavusanc, 

 a Zulu word ; and the term employed to expel him, dhlida, is also 

 Zulu. Is not this rite a Zulu importation? My informants deny 

 it, and assert that Mavusane is also called Mabutise, the Ronga 

 equivalent of the word Maznisane. On the other hand, the wiiole 

 rite is so eminently Bantu, especially the part played in it by 

 witchcraft, that one must altogether abandon the idea of an 

 European origin. The use of Zulu terms can be explained by the 

 fact that the Questioner is considered as coming from another 

 country, and is therefore addressed in a foreign tongue, just as 

 the possessing spirits, which are exorcised by means of songs 

 and exhortations in the Zulu or Ndjao languages according to 

 their supposed origin. The fact remains that, apart from the 

 common and well-defined belief in ancestrolatry, there are in the 

 Ronga religion intuitions of a different nature, and that the hahla 

 is occasionally addressed to beings or forces which are not 

 ancestors' spirits. I have already given an example of thai 

 Avorship in my paper on " The Sacrifice of Reconciliation."* 

 In that case we have seen a Ronga addressing a prayer to his 

 djleta, viz., to the oath with imprecation which he had made, and 

 from which he wanted to be freed. There may also be a relation 

 between Questioner and Tilo, Heaven, this vague, more or less 

 impersonal power which amongst the Ba-Ronga represents the 

 monotheistic idea, much more developed amongst other Bantu 

 tribes. Whatever may be the origin of this small-pox religious 

 rite, it proves that Bantu religion is much more complicated and 

 perhaps deeper than one generally admits. 



The part played by Witchcraft is wonderful, and it reveals 

 the undeniable presence of moral conscience as well as its extra- 

 ordinary rudimentary state amongst Natives. A great calamity 

 has arisen. The clan is under the threat of death. Conscience 

 is awakened, because conscience exists. But the only sin which 

 patients near death are expected to confess is witchcraft, which 

 IS certainly the crime par excellence for the Bantu, but which is 



* Rept. 8.A.A.A.8., Cape Town, 179-182 (1910). 



