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Updated: May 7, 2025
This, however, was not their view, or that of Umslopogaas himself. It happened that one of these men, Goroko by name, who practised as a witch-doctor in his lighter moments, naturally suspected that a spell had been cast upon them, for such people see magic in everything. Therefore he organised a "smelling-out" at which Umslopogaas, who was as superstitious as the rest, assisted.
These persons are largely employed in Zululand to smell out witches who are supposed to have bewitched others, and are of course very useful as political agents. Any person denounced by them is at once executed. A friend of the writer's was once present at a political smelling-out on a large scale, and describes it as a very curious and unpleasant scene.
This woman Sihamba, who might have been a little over thirty years of age, had been living in our neighbourhood for some three or four years and practising as a doctoress. Not that she was a "black" doctoress, for she never took part in the "smelling-out" of human beings for witchcraft or in the more evil sort of rites.
Who will be the first to learn the truths, I wonder?" and she stared in turn at the faces of every one of them, a process which seemed to cause general alarm, bearing, as it did, a strong resemblance to the smelling-out of savage witch-doctors. Indeed, they all began to talk of this or that at hazard, but she was not to be put off by such interruptions.
About eight days later, during which time I had heard nothing of the matter and seen no one connected with it, for the whole thing seemed to have become Zila that is, not to be talked about I received a summons to attend the "smelling-out," and went, wondering what witch-doctor had been chosen for that bloody and barbarous ceremony.
We have only to remember how England, in the seventeenth century, could work itself up into a frenzy on this account to realize how, in an African society even of the better sort, the "smelling-out" and destroying of a witch may easily become a general panacea for quieting the public nerves.
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