The Coolidge examiner., 1932-07-08

Society. Washington, d. C.l
(WNU Service)
n fatal, South Africa, has gone
N to the sea for a new indus
try. Sharks, once the dread
hunters of the deep, now are hunt
ed. Natal fishermen, aboard huge
floating abbatoirs, divide shark car
casses into twenty valuable COM
modities.
Natal, however, Is not as famous
for its industries as for its natural
beauty. 1t has been called the Car
den Province of South Africa.
Whether one approaches the prov
ince by way Of mountain, plain or
sea, 1t Is vast region of perpetual
green, fringed on the east by broad
sandy beaches Of the Indian ocean.
In Natal the traveller might often
wonder whether he Is In Africa or
India, for here appear brown, bare
foot women, vlvidly draped, with
gilden anklets and jeweled nose or
naments, in the shadow Of little
white temples enfriezed with eff
gies of India's gods. 1t was in 1850,
in order to meet the labor short
age occasioned by slave liberation,
that sugar planters first imported
Indian coolies. Nowadays NataPs
white population hardly outnumbers
that of her East Indians.
To glimpse the Zululand of today
one motors a hundred miles north
ward to Durham, along sea level;
then climbs into the hill Businesses
of what at first seems an almost un-
populated country. At long inter-
walls your car passes some white
mans sugar cane, flourishing at
1000 feet, or his far-removed neigh
bors trading store and hostel; for
| by law the Zululand trader must ac-
commodate wayfarers in a country
side where, what with quarter of
a million acres of native reserva-
tions, dwellings consist almost ex-
clusively Of native kraals.
Zulus Keep Away From Roads.
But where are the natives? Are
there no more than the few passing
girls balancing baskets of corn on
their heads, and the few squatting
boys who carve wooden spoons while
watching cattle? The truth is, while
Zululand's little, circular kraals are
scattered far and wide, they are sell
dom near roads and. when distant,
melt into the background.
Zulus don't like living near roads.
They like streams and hills. And
besides If they lived too close to a
road some white men would make
them work on 1t. Nowadays, sadly
enough, that fine-looking creature,
the Zulu, too often forsakes his pic
turesque native dress for some
hodge-podge of hand-me-down store
clothes. To see true Zulu costumes
and customs, one must stumble for
tunately upon the right kraal at the
right time. For instance, when a
wedding ceremony is about to take
place, beer making Is in progress.
Kafr corn, having been wafer
stepped until it has sprouted, is be-
ing pounded fine, then mixed anew
with water to cause the fermenta-
tion which would produce-well, call
it a mild near-beer. Men furbish
assegais, oxhide shields, leopard
skin smocks. Some women undergo
primitive beauty parlor treatments
that build their hair into high, red
clayed permanent buns"
What one witnesses nowadays in
kraal life is the working out of an
administrative system based on
those scheduled native areas"
which are found in all the four
provinces. Operating downward from
the governor general, and through
hereditary chiefs, their headmen,
and the later's representatives in
each family or clan, this patriarchal
system aims at conserving with a
minimum of interference that which
is best in Bantu law and tradi-
ton. A truly staggering problem,
this, in adaptation" And 1t ap-
pears the more so when one real
ICES that it is scarcely century ago
that Natal, to cite one province only,
was a black paradise of a million or
more Bantu tribesmen.
In the Days of chaka.
Paradise? Inferno, rather! The
tribal troubles had begun when one
Dingiswayo, a would-be usurper, fed
to the Cape for refuge. There he be-
held the revelation Of military drill