Word: basuto
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Basutoland is a tiny (11,716 sq. mi.) British crown colony, entirely surrounded by the Union of South Africa. In theory, Basutoland is two-thirds Christian, but the real source of ultimate power, in the minds of most Basuto, is a gory brew called the diretlo. It is boiled up from human flesh, blood, fat, and herbs pounded into paste. To be really potent, the flesh must be stripped from a still living human body, which explains why 140 people have died since 1945-and 51 were accused of killings last year-to provide raw materials for diretlo...
...wise chief keeps a supply stuffed in a hidden lenaka, the hollowed horn of an antelope or ram, to smear on himself or members of his family when good fortune is most needed. Among the 650,000 Basuto, he who holds the lenaka holds power. Everyone agrees that no one has had more powerful medicine than Mantsebo Amelia Seeiso, Basutoland's portly, domineering Paramount Chieftainess...
...bullying Tsotsis, the Zulus stuck together, fought back in the trains, and often ambushed the Tsotsis themselves in the streets. The Zulus had a few gangsters of their own. Sometimes they made mistakes and attacked the wrong men. Soon the Zulus were embroiled with members of the Basuto tribe, which includes, besides many an honest workingman, a secret society of gangsters who call themselves "the Russians...
Bloody Boogie. Early this month, fed by weeks of intertribal bitterness, open battle was joined between the Basutos and the Zulus of Johannesburg. Two Zulus were beaten to death and a Basuto leader was caught, castrated and clubbed to death. The proprietor of a lunchroom shut down his jukebox, on the theory that too many tunes like White Horse Boogie and Bennie's Second Street Special would overexcite his Zulu clients. The precaution did little good. On the following Saturday a swarming mass of Zulus marched against the Basutos, armed with clubs and spears...
...prepared ambush along the slum town's dusty main street, the Basuto "Russians" were waiting with jungle knives, needle-sharp iron rods, battle-axes and a few guns. When the Zulus bore down, the Russians tried to corner each one singly. Then, in the horrified words of a local police officer, who witnessed the scene, they would "hack his knee or his Achilles tendon so that he would drop, then slowly, neatly, talking to him all the while and wishing him a pleasant journey to Hell, proceed to pare his head with a knife until he fell dead...