136 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS SECTION E. 



any efforts at irrigation. The building of huts, with the assistance 

 of neighbours, is similarly regulated, and one- of the huts is 

 usually set apart for the use of strangers, who may desire hos- 

 pitality overnight. Any refusal to provide hospitality when 

 required by one of equal or higher rank would be much resented, 

 and probably bring those who did venture to refuse into serious 

 trouble. Then, again, in a polygamous community it is some- 

 times a problem to maintain the peace as between many wives, 

 and the " wise forefathers " have justified their supposed wisdom 

 in this direction. Associated with matters pertaining to mar- 

 riage is the important hlonipa custom whereby daughters-in-law 

 are cut off from all intercourse with the husband's male relations 

 in the ascending line. Their names are not to be pronounced 

 even mentally, and if the emphatic syllable of any one of their 

 names occurs in any other word it is to be scrupulously avoided. 

 In this way a large group of hlonipa words has come to be 

 created, and these are commonly used as required. 



Women-folk, related by blood, are allowed to enter the 

 cattlefold — except in certain periodical eventualities — and to 

 cross the inkundhla, where the cattle foregather. But strange 

 women, or those related only by affinity to the owner of the 

 kraal, are not allowed on any pretext to go near the cattlefold, or 

 to cross the inkundhla, and that is why circuitous footpaths are 

 always found around the back of the huts. No unauthorised 

 persons would venture to touch the milk sac without permission 

 — they would rather die of hunger. And so we could continue 

 to enumerate customs relating to the cutting of timber while the 

 crops were still green, in all probability the survival of a wise 

 forest law in regions where timber was scarce and had to be 

 conserved ; the feast of first-fruits, chiefly observed by the 

 Pondos. and yet subject to modification and variation in dif- 

 ferent localities ; customs relating to the making of fire ; and, 

 indeed, customs in every department of life. 



Were these optional in character they would have little 

 real significance for us, but the fact is that any wilful breach of 

 custom would result in the loss of caste, and any misfortunes 

 occurring at that tune would certainly be traced to the delinquent. 

 The caste system of India has been rightly emphasised, but in 

 South Africa we have an amazingly well-developed caste sys- 

 tem, as the facts recorded above clearly and conclusively show. 

 The only difference, so far as I can see, is that in India there 

 are several castes presenting a distinct gradation, while in South 

 Africa we have a single powerful caste, which reduces all to 

 the same dead level. And as the missionaries in India are com- 

 pelled to face the barrier of caste, so we in South Africa have 

 a similar task, with this singular difference, that the problem 

 is recognised and resolutely ifaced in India, whereas in this 

 country its presence is .so little suspected even by our respected 

 leaders, that no one ever dreams of referring to it as the great 

 obstacle to progress. 



