PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS — SECTION E. 13/ 



It must not. however, be thoiig-ht that I am sut^^csting a 

 comparison between the hio^hly-developecl caste system of India 

 in its reHgious si.s^nificance and that of the primitive natives of 

 this country, for I am quite content to establish the fact that 

 the communism of Kafifraria amounts to a ri^id sinjscle-caste 

 system, and faikire to observe the customs even in their minutia; 

 causes the uncleanness of the individual, and consequently a loss 

 of caste, and the displeasure of the spirits of the ancestors who 

 are to be apjjeased by sacrifice. 



If. therefore, we sum up the whole position anew, we find 

 that a review of each particular custom always brino^s us back 

 to the same point. The strangle nku-hlompa custom ujx^n which 

 we dwelt briefly, a custom relating- to languas^e, is really rooted 

 and grounded in ancestor-worship. The puberty rites, with 

 their accompaniments of the ukutshila and Ntonjane dances, for 

 the male and female initiatory rites respectively, are likewise 

 associated directly with ancestor-worship. So also everv other 

 custom, as well as questions of peace or war, diseases of cattle, 

 goats, and sheep, sterilitv or fecundity, droughts, floods, heat, 

 cold, famine, disease, agriculture, all these are supposed to be 

 connected with, or ])roifoiuidly aiYected by. the activities of the 

 spirits. 



Now customs may, and do. have a very real place and value 

 in the organisation of tribal life, and it is a very serious problem 

 to decide whether we should proceed on a policy of the repression 

 of native customs, or whether we should allow them to be per- 

 petuated. Some of these customs undoubtedly operated 

 beneficially upon heathen life in times past, and do so still 

 in localities where tribalism is dominant. But it does not follow 

 that those customs should still obtain in circles where education 

 is replacing the tribal superstitions with which the customs are 

 so intimately associated. One such custom, that of circum- 

 cision, was referred to in this connection bv the Rev. W. A. 

 Norton, B.A., B.Litt., in his Presidential Address to this section 

 of the Association last year. In expressing his conviction that 

 circumcision should not be suppressed, he states : 



What has struck me is the very little valid evidence that most 

 missionaries have to offer of the essential character and moral effect (in 

 the wider sense) of the rites, and how very little dispassionate study is 



given to the matter Early missionaries had to make a decision 



before the birth of ethnology, and that they did fearlessly, according to 

 their light, however much their own immediate success was hindered. 

 It may be that then was the time for trenchant severance from an evil 

 inevitable legacy of past abuse. 



But now, I cannot help feeling, the native suffers grievous loss of 

 very much needed discipline through the uprooting of the landmarks of 

 immemorial sanction, and I hope it may not be too late to save some 

 part of the structure of what is now recognised, among serious students, 

 as a highly respectable ethnic system, in the face of the obvious failure 

 of the effect to Europcanise.* 



Now, speaking generally, the whole position is tuiscon' 

 * Rept. S.A. Assn. for Adv. of Sc, Johannesburg (1918), pp. 112-113. 



