Kiboko

Cut a long, inch-wide strip of hide from a freshly killed rhinoceros. Let the strip age a little and toughen. Then have one of your black boys taper the kiboko, or sjamboke, down, smooth and polish it with a bit of broken glass. Grinning ingratiatingly, he will hand you a tawny whip. Just right for use on a blackamoor, in the opinion of most South African white men. The callous manner in which White Rancher Jaerl Nafte recently violated every rule and canon of kiboko etiquette was really the cause of his undoing.

Some years ago the Union of South Africa forbade laying on of the kiboko by private individuals; but this law, like U. S. Prohibition statutes, has suffered practical modification. Just as home brew may be brewed in comparative security throughout the U. S., so a white South Africander may kiboko his refractory blacks providing the kibokee is first stretched on the ground and covered with a blanket to protect him from embarrassing welts and cuts with which he might run to the District Commissioner.

Neglecting to use a blanket, rash Rancher Jaerl Nafte and his foreman proceeded to kiboko a black named Sixpence Temba who, they said, had insulted a white woman. Spreadeagling the horrified blackamoor on a wagon wheel, they lashed him until their arms were tired. Later they suspended him by one toe from a tree and went on with the kibokoing though he screamed that they were killing him. When tired again, they left him and went off to a picnic. Sixpence, as he had prophesied, died.

Last week all the southern gentlemen in South Africa were incensed when Jaerl Nafte was convicted of manslaughtering Sixpence and sentenced not only to seven years' imprisonment but to receive ten lashes at the whipping post. Never before had a white man been sentenced to be kibokoed in South Africa for kibokoing a blackamoor. Irate Protestant editors called Catholic Judge Saul Solomon, K. C, who imposed the sentence, "negrophilist."

In handing down his decision Judge Solomon said: "Due to the fact that the defendant inflicted pain upon his victim by suspending him head downward and beating him to death, he likewise should suffer pain."

An appeal by counsel for the defendant to South African Prime Minister, General the Hon. James Barry Munnik Hertzog brought a curt reply, "The sentence of flogging must be carried out."