Note 65.1 — PSYCHE’S TASK

Rigorous penalties inflicted in Africa. Many African tribes repress sexual crimes by rigorous penalties, or did so until their moral standard was modified by contact with Europeans. The Baganda, their punishments for breaches of sexual morality. Among the Baganda of Central Africa, “though death was usually the punishment inflicted for adultery, an offender’s life would sometimes be spared, and he be fined two women, if he were able to pay them; the culprit was, however, maimed; he lost a limb, or had an eye gouged out, and showed by his maimed condition that he had been guilty of a crime. A slave taken in adultery with one of his master’s wives was invariably put to death. Women were compelled by torture to name their seducers; if the accused man denied the charge, the woman was asked to describe some personal peculiarity of his, or some mark on his body which could be identified; then if the man was found to have the peculiarity, he was either fined or put to death. In order to arrive at the truth, a man who denied a charge made against him was sometimes stretched out with his arms and feet tied to stakes driven firmly into the ground, a piece of barkcloth was then fastened about his private parts, and set smouldering. As soon as the fire reached his body, the pain became too great to bear, and the man would own himself guilty in order to be released from torture. He would then be either killed or fined. An adulterer was called a murderer (musi), because he was looked upon as a man who deliberately set about to compass the death of the woman’s husband; either directly, for he would go armed to visit the woman, and if he was disturbed, he would not hesitate to strike; or indirectly, by offending the fetiches. Men knew that, if they were caught in the act of adultery, the penalty would be death, unless they were related to the person wronged, in which case the latter might be willing to accept a fine, and might content himself with mutilating the culprit. The worst consequence to the injured husband was the anger of his fetiches and gods, whose custodian was his wife. By her action the wife had involved her husband in their displeasure; he was thus left exposed to the malice of any enemy, and his danger was increased in the time of war, because the gods had withdrawn their protection from him.”65.1 Thus among the Baganda adultery was regarded not simply as a civil offence but as a sin, which brought down the anger of the gods, not as we might expect, on the adulterer, but on the injured husband. Further, the Baganda were divided into a number of totemic clans, and members of any one clan were strictly prohibited from marrying or having sexual relations with each other. “Sexual intercourse with a member of the same clan (kive), or with a woman of the mother’s clan, was punished by the death of both parties, because they were considered to have brought the god’s displeasure on the whole clan.”65.2