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

10
THINKING BLACK
kept in durance vile for the sins of some unknown second
party ? No wonder the African roads are all blocked
intertribally. Here is harmless Jones coming along the
trail, and they pounce on him as surety for the crime of
some unknown John Smith, the theory being that Jones,
one bright day, will retaliate and swoop down on Smith,
claiming damages for illegal seizure. Now try and con-
ceive what a tangle of triangles this makes all over the
land, for in a thousand cases the stranger-surety A. never
saw in the flesh the conjectural culprit B. But what is
that to C. the kidnapper ? Is not this his only way of
setting the clumsy legal mill in motion ? Moral : He
that is surety for a stranger must smart for it. Take
even your best type of negro and try and argue some
sense into him on this cobweb system of native paths and
he shows not a twinge of penitence. No ; unwarped and
unbiased as he looks, this Nkole idea he defends as a
time-honoured maxim, the treacherous triangle of the
thing being its best point— yea, is it not a triangle, and
therefore all point together ?
But it is generally the Missionary who has got to pay.
Even in later days this Bantu bed-rock idea still clings to
the semi-educated African. Listen to another Nkole tale,
with quite a touch of terror in it, a noble white man the
victim ; the author of it all only a negro body smarting
under a sense of personal wrong. The scene is out East
in more civilised conditions. Maltreated by a brother
black, this man is exasperated to find that his enemy
is too strong for him ; has a sort of aristocratic status,