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

296 THINKING BLACK
then, with no dawdle, and ignoring all political com-
plications of the future, Tete and Kavalo, two generals,
went across to Munema, and were received of this
Jezebel with her usual smirk of coquetry. Invited into
her own house on a plea of privacy, she was strangled
on the spot as a witch, the mob in the capital declaring
that Mushidi was perfection in so scorning the high
status of such a grand dame. Cast out on the Lunsala
Flats, that distinguished witch's body was despised by
every passer-by, and speedily became carrion for the
scavenger hyenas ever on the prowl. Jezebel, I have
called her, because that name in her last moments
became awfully and literally appropriate. For as these
executioners entered her courtyard, the good-as-dead
woman cried out the most ancient greeting in Africa :
"Is it peace?" (Mutendef) And in that subsequent
hurried strangling of their victim they could be heard
literally answering the old Jehu taunt : " What peace
so long as your whoredoms and witchcrafts are so
many ? " But Mushidi has not had long to wait before
he learns that here is only another annoying illustration
of the fact that women are the source of all his woes.
The roar for revenge can now be heard on his Eastern
boundary, the Rugarugas taking the field as champions
of the dead Jezebel. Thus it comes to pass that the
dead Masengo is the casus belli of his Sanga civil war,
just as in the East another wild war is waging over the
death of Queen Matayu. Does this justify the Spanish
saying, "Where woman is, there trouble is"?