"PROPHETS" IN THE LAND.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9694, 19 January 1910, Page 7

"PROPHETS" IN THE LAND.

An incident which the "Cape Times" describes as "remarkable and in some respects serious," occurred recently at Taungs, in the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Two natives from Mafeking arrived in Moluli's territory, announcing that they were "prophets,'' and in spite of efforts by Moluli to stay their progress. they made their way south, holding meetings fxoni time to time. At Taungs they attracted a very large crowd, and while one vehemently declared he was sent as a Divine emissary, the other chanted at intervals "Glory, Halleluah " Regarding th is as a kind of chorus in which they might join, the spectators assisted ;n the refrain with all their lung power. So far little harm was done, the affair being regarded as comic rather than otherwise. But a turn was given to the situation when the orator, worked up to a very excitable condition, turned towards the village and declared that before the sun went down not a white man or white woman must be left alive in it. This justified the inter-' ference of the police, who arrested | the "prophets" and escorted them to the magistrate. A still worse part of the story follows. An angry crowd of over a thousand natives followed the small procession, and behaved so insultingly and threateningly before the magistrate that nothing but the whip of Moluli himself, plied vigorously right and left, could effect their dispersal. The Government are making full inquiry into the incident, with a view to discovering that influences have been at work to provoke it. The crazy claim put forward by thtsa'to fanatics is less disturbing than the evidence of a receptive atmosphere in a district where none would have expected to find it. These men are adherents of Ethiopianism, which ha 3 its counterpart in the Mahommedanism of the Mullahs of the Afghan frontier, in that it sees no crime in exterminating the whiteman on laud which its followers hold to belong to the black. When the claim elicits such native encouragement as it did at Taungs, which is inhabited by what has hitherto been regarded as a peace-loving and orderly tribe, the conclusion is inevitable that unhealthy conditions are at work. "The moral of the incident," points out the journal mentioned, "is that. while the white rulers of South Africa can never be too careful that their treatment of tne black and coloured races shall be just and equitable and humane, differences of opinion among themselves as to the best means of constructing a just and ! equitable and humane government should never permit the use of language which may easily be turned to mischievous uses by the native tribes.