The Theory of Witchcraft. 235 



to pass. He will be killed or wounded. Or, if the rzoi does not 

 wish to do so much harm, he will only send antelopes to destroy the 

 fields and eat the sweet potatoes. Even in our Christian village, 

 during the days when the " duikers " are plentiful, and become a 

 nuisance owing to the fact that the natives have no more guns, you 

 might hear somebody suying : They are sending us their duikers ! 

 Who are tJiey? Mystery ! They are the haloyil But do not call 

 them by their name ! 



The mitisa (ku mita, to swallow, ku mitisa, to make somebody 

 swallow) is the only means of bewitching which is used during the 

 day. It consists in giving to a visitor something to eat or to drink 

 in which certain drugs have been introduced. The mealie pap or 

 the beer seem perfectly normal, but owing to the enchantments of 

 buloyi, as soon as you have swallowed them, they are transformed, 

 in vour throat, into any kind of harmful beast, which threatens to 

 suffocate you, and gives rise to a disease and perhaps produces death ! 

 You will have swallowed in this w^ay a snake, a beetle, of the copris 

 genus, one of those strange dung-eaters, a big fly, or certain kinds of 

 meats of animals. The great effort of the native doctors to whom you 

 will apply for treatment Avill be to remove these foreign bodies, and 

 when you vomit they will show you with triumph a bit of bone, a 

 tooth, that famous beetle, or other objects which they had previously 

 and cleverly introduced themselves. . . . There is a medicine which 

 natives like to have inoculated into their tongue, and which has the 

 wonderful property of forcing the bewitched food to reveal its true 

 character when you eat it. If you have been treated with it, you 

 will hear the cracking of the elytra of the beetle, and at once be able 

 to spit out of your mouth the death-containing food ! 



The matshehva (ku tshela, to throw) are precisely these foreign 

 bodies which the tioi introduces into you by the way of giving 

 you poisoned food, but during the night, wdien he lies down over 

 you and wants to kill you in a slower, more mysterious way than by 

 bucking your blood or stealing your spiritual body ! 



The ntchiitchu (ku tchutcha, to inspire) is another way of getting 

 jrid of an enemy. It is a bewitching of the will by which the not 

 inspires his enemy with the idea of leaving the country. Without 

 motive, the poor bewitched prepares himself to go to Johannesburg or 

 anywhere else. There he will become the prey of other baloyi, who 

 will kill him. When a boy dies in the mines, as hundreds of them 

 do, his parents think : He has been killed by such and such a disease. 

 But the author of his death is not in Johannesburg, he is here at 

 home ; it is the noi who hated him and made him go by " ntchutchu." 



The mffiilo is still worse. That word which comes from the 

 verb ku pfula, to open, designates the mysterious power which the 

 baloyi possess to open any kind of things. One of them, a Nkuna, 

 named Nwayekeyeke, had charms to open the kraals of oxen ; during 

 the night, he would come into a village holding a tail of hyena daubed 

 over with peculiar medicines, and would throw on all the inhabitants 

 a deep sleep. Then, waving the tail, he would open the kraal and 



