Fon a hundred years the South African Kaffir has been
exposed to the study of that portion of the civilised world which is curious about barbarism. Hasty travellers have visited him, politicians have generalised on his vices or his virtues, as it suited their policy, and he has been a most con- venient stage property to the novelist of adventure. The works of Theal, Bleek, and Callaway, and the admirable little books of M. Jacottet on the Basutos and M. Junot on the Baronga, have told us something of his folk-lore. But hitherto no one has attempted a complete portrayal of his
• The Essential Kafir. By Dudley Kidd. With 100 Full-page Illustrations from Photographs by the Author. London : A. and C. Black. [20s. net.] life. The valuable collection of papers called The Natives of South Africa was in the main political, with the exception of Mr. Scully's chapter on Kaffir life, which was, however, rather a summary than a study. What has hitherto been lacking- was a complete investigation of the several races which make- up the Bantu, from all the standpoints which full knowledge demands, an inquiry not only into the sociology and economics of their life, but into their vie intime, with its perverted psychology and fragmentary religion. It is a difficult task, requiring high powers of observation, long and patient investigation, a freedom from prejudice and from the vice of glib generalising, and sufficient culture to provide the necessary standpoint. Mr. Kidd in his remarkable book has attempted this task, and in our opinion he has succeeded. His book is by far the most important contribution that we are- aware of to the understanding of what must remain one of the• cardinal South African problems. He does not theorise, he is a collector of data ; and the self-restraint which he shows in this respect must seem most praiseworthy to any one who knows how the field of inquiry is cumbered with half-truths and im- perfect generalities. What the business was which took him on his travels he does not explain; but his observation-ground is complete, and embraces not only the natives of the Transkei and Natal, but of Mozambique and the North as far as Lake Nyassa. Any one who is familiar with Kaffirs knows how hard it is to collect accurate information. They will purposely misunderstand the nature of an interrogation, and their con- ception of politeness leads them to assent to every statement of the questioner. To have achieved so much argues remarkable ingenuity and patience on the writer's part. To his scientific thoroughness Mr. Kidd adds many literary graces. His pages bring before us the wide, quiet spaces of the veld, and the slow cycle of a Kaffir's days. He does not set out to be picturesque, but the sharp impress of keenly felt sensations and unforgettable pictures is on all his work. His book is a kind of epic of the veld, the world which was in being long before the voortrekkers crossed the Orange, and which still lives apart from the changes of war and governments. As a last word of praise, let us add that he has given us many photographs, of which we can only say that they are the real thing, and therefore unobtainable by the casual traveller. Photographs of Kaffir life you may buy by the score in any South African town; but pictures such as Mr. Kidd's are the fruit of long and intimate study.
The common saying is that the native is a child ; but the bed-rock element in his nature is less childish than animal. " They are highly evolved animals, and to our first view are gifted with minds which are almost blank. They are often jolly, good-natured, ease-loving, selfish ; their nature is well rooted in red earth ; and if we do not like to look on them as bone of our bone, they certainly are earth of our earth, and claim kinship with us through the lowest strands of our animal nature." Cruel and lustful almost beyond belief was the old Kaffir life. When Mr. Kidd first visited Pondoland, before its annexation, it was calculated that fully one person on an average daily was put to death in that district for witchcraft; and the doings of Bunn, the Swazi King, in quite recent years are familiar to all South Africans. When Chaka's mother died he wanted to kill off every mother in the country to show his grief, and was with difficulty satisfied with the slaughter of seven thousand. The Kaffir's instincts are those of the wild animals around him, and his customs are almost coeval with the rocks. His- ceremonies of circumcision and purification, from which some writers have foolishly jumped to a Semitic origin, his taboos, his sin-offerings, his modes of justice, his folk-tales, are all hoar-ancient. Mr. Kidd takes his life from birth, and traces it through boyhood, marriage, war, and hunting to old age, death, and the world of spirits,—a wonderful record, full of understanding and humour. He does not attempt to sum- marise Kaffir psychology, as so many have tried, within a few pages, but the book gives us much insight into the workings of the native mind. It is a very logical mind, for though the logic is bad—it cannot distinguish between post hoc and propter hoc—it is consistently applied. Here is an instance where a nonsensical deduction has a kind of crude logic. " When the Matabele first saw a locomotive engine at Bulawayo, they declared that it was a large animal which fed on fire ; that it hated work—else why did it scream before it moved P—and that it suffered badly from malaria. Did not the white doctor pour medicine into it whenever it groaned ? " He has an amazing memory, a strong sense of justice, a readiness to absorb ideas crudely, which misleads many teachers, who think he has grasped a new thought when in reality the lesson taught him has merely provided a con- venient expression for a quite different idea which had been simmering in his brain. This last trait, we think, is the great barrier to education, and Mr. Kidd has very accurately described it. " The native mind is supersaturated with beliefs —with extra beliefs '—and so your very question causes some of the vague ideas which are floating in his mind to crystallise out into clearly defined thoughts You bring many of his vague feelings above the ` threshold,' and they become definite and clear-cut ; and so he recognises them as his own thought. Out of his mental fog arises a belief which your questions have suggested." He has no sense of beauty ; " the only beauty the Kafirs recognise is the fatness of their women and the colour of their oxen." On Kaffir religion Mr. Kidd is indefinite, because there is nothing definite to tell. We think that he is right in saying that the spirit of their belief is to be found in ancestor-worship ; but it is very different from the creed we usually associate with that name. The customs at death are so curious and complex that it is impossible to frame from them any coherent doctrine of the Hereafter. Their folk-tales are in the strictest sense fireside stories, and though they have often a mythic origin, it has been forgotten in their present use. On the unexplained in Kaffir life—their power of collecting information, of foretelling events and distributing news with incredible speed—Mr. Kidd has some interesting and rational passages. He quotes a few ramarkable cases; but, on the whole, he leans against the theory of an " extra sense," and believes, rightly as we think, that all such instances are capable of being explained, either by some natural code of signals—the human voice or drums— or as skilful anticipations of what was going to happen. We have known a Kaffir incorrect in his information, which was put down to a bad guess ; if he had been correct, why should we have attributed it to anything more than a good one ?
Mr. Kidd has none of that vulgar intolerance of mis- sionary work which the lesser kind of traveller shows, and which is often based on the most flimsy hearsay. No one who studies this book will be misled by the old argument that the natives are sufficiently moral if only the missionaries would leave them alone. Much missionary work is ineffective enough, and a great deal is conducted on impolitic lines ; but whatever the weaknesses of the Christianised Kaffir, he marks a stage immeasurably higher than the raw life of the kraal. Bar- barism is picturesque enough; but to one who knows the unspeakable lusts and cruelties at the base of Kaffir society, any form of civilisation must seem preferable, how- ever imperfect. On the political future of the native Mr. Kidd speaks with the same good sense and moderation. No native will ever feel the equal of the white, or claim equality save in moments of brag. "It is an absurdity, which needs no exposure, to say that the Kafir is in all respects equal to a white man But he is capable of improvement; he can develop, for he has the basal elements of manhood, though he is at present low down in the scale of civilisation This is what, I take it, the missionary means. And surely we have lost our senses if we deny this." But for the present black is divided from white not by colour only, but by a radical mental dissimilarity, and any theory of government which does not recognise this fact will end in failure. The Kaffir may develop, but at present he has not shown that he is capable of developing mentally beyond a certain stage. Mr. Kidd bases his hope for the future in education, which shall abolish his more paralysing superstitions, and especially industrial education, which may give him new occupations and ambitions in the debacle of his old life. It was the con- clusion of Mr. Rhodes, and it must be the conclusion of every man who looks at the problem with a serious and tolerant mind.
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