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

340 THINKING BLACK
arise a model Chief, with a new-born dignity that would
brook no nonsense. Ever since his day of simulated
death Chief Swiva, in fact, has been very much alive.
Where are we, then ? What are your cannibal's latent
ideas of things ? Or is this man-eating merely a vulgar
expedient to satisfy the qualms of hunger ? Here is a
cannibal at my elbow who will tell us all. When I ask
him about Budianane (the technical term this), he tem-
porises, of course, in the usual cannibal way. However,
as he has exactly the look of the cat that has been at the
milk, he soon breaks the sorry seal of confession. Now,
all that man's story is simply the old bundle of contra-
dictions, for the subject of cannibalism halves in two like
an orange : on the one hand the greedy omnivora who
must have broth ; on the other hand a whole priesthood
ritual with human flesh as the buttress idea. All this, of
course, is typically African ; for as we saw, see, and shall
see, the concrete and abstract are inseparable :
" shadowing "
each other is the literal idea we see in the Bantu abstract
prefix. The coarse concrete side of man-eating, then, is
simply the African carrying out the " beast-precedents
to a legitimate conclusion. Granted there are beasts
major and beasts minor, but the negro at once schedules
himself down among the carnivora. Is not (he argues)
human war merely man the carnivorous shedding blood like
the lion and leopard ? The big animal grabs at the
little one even as the big negro swallows the small one
the deduction is therefore inexorable that you must eat
what you kill. Again, and yet again, have I heard