Like U.S. Presidents before F.D.R., the rain queens who rule over the Lovedu tribesmen in Africa's northern Transvaal are expected voluntarily to limit their own terms of office. When a rain queen's powers are on the wane (at the age of 60 or thereabouts), tradition calls for her to retire into the hills and quaff a poison compounded of crocodile entrails. This was the way it was in the days of Mujaji I and in the days of Mujaji II (the light-skinned queen who served as a model for H. Rider Haggard's all-powerful She) who dutifully killed herself in...
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