Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

BLACK SUFFRAGETTES 235
function is to scrutinise the cause of death of any of its
members. As African men often play their women the
scurviest of tricks, it is absolutely necessary that these
women combine in some sort to beat the tom-tom of their
sex. This secret society it was that decreed a " Married
Women's Property Act " long before the belated English
Act of 1883, and on the death of one of their guild they
pounce down on her moveable estate " to the uttermost
farthing." Some of these female Club decisions have
indeed assumed portentous proportions in the high poli-
tics of Central Africa, a notorious instance being the
ceding of the whole north shore of Lake Mweru to satiate
a Budindu Club claim. For they fastened on the Lake
King with the almost trifling plea that one of their princess
(Inamfumu) members of the guild had been delivered of a
still-born child, and for this " crime " the King of all Mweru
(her husband) was forced to pay a large slice of territory.
Beginning at the Muntemune River on the north-west
corner of the Lake, and sweeping right round the map
as far as Kalembwe's on the east, this poor henpecked King
solemnly expropriated himself of all that land to appease
the ** lioness robbed of her whelp," i.e. the princess who
bore him the still-born child. This, in fact, was the
biggest legal fish the Club ever fried, and these Suffragette
Lake ladies clothe themselves with impressiveness as they
tell the twice-told tale of this, the Waterloo of their Club.
Yet, so binding and final was this territorial decision
that to this day, if an elephant dies in the waters of the
Muntemune with its head pointing to the north bank,