89109296384

Africa 1 1 1 \1 l1\1\1 ~1 I1 \1 1"\l~\ I I\I I \~

B89109296384A
III\I

"This welcome new edition of key texts, written about Africa as well as from within It, builds on the past but speaks
boldly to the current generation - with some striking contributions on contemporary Issues.
WetnrJy JarnM, Univets/fv of 0KkJtrJ

"This carefully chosen and brilliantly edited collection is an extraordinary resource for a1thropoIogIsts of AfrIca.
Some of the most seminal works in one of the most foundational domains In the discipline take on new sIgnItIcance
in the light of the new current scholarship represented in the volume and of the new COflIIEn8tIOIls among them that
Grinker, Lubkemann and Steiner have brought out. This volume is a treasure.
Caroline H. Bledsoe, NottI7westem UnNersity

"This impressive volume provides a critical genealogy of scholarship in Africa, weaving together historical and
contemporary pieces to provide insights not only into the political economy and cultural dynamism of Africa's past,
but of its future too."
Henrietta Moore, University of Cambridge and centre for the
Study of Global Gowmance, London School of Economics

"This superb collection of influential contemporary and classic works in African studies will be indispensable to both
students and instructors. Twelve thematic sections, each masterfully framed by the editors, offer a deft blend of
intellectual history, theory, and ethnography.
Angellque Haugerud. Rutgers Univets/ty

The second edition of the popular reader Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in OJlture, History, BIId Reptesentation offers
forty six articles illustrating the dynamic processes by which scholars have describecl and understood African history
and culture over the past several decades. This new edition presents fourteen new selections as well as two entirely
new parts, "VlOIeot Transformations: Conflict and Displacement" and "Development, Governance, and Globalization.
revealing the historical trajectory, daily experience, and vital influence of African people in the modem world.

Roy Richard Grinker is Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at George Washington University,
Director of the GW Institute for Ethnographic Research. and Editor-in-Chief of AnthropologicsJ Quarterly. He is
author of four other books, including In the Anns of Africa: The Ufe of Colin M. Tumbu', and Houses in the
Rainforest, and Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism. I
Stephen C. Lubkernann IS Associate Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at George Washington
University. He Is author of CullUre in Chaos. All Anthropology of the SOCIal Condition in War and Is associate
editor for AnthropologICal Ouarterly and a co-founder of GWU's Dlaspora Research Program.

Christopher B. SteIner IS the Lucy C. McDannel '22 Professor of Art History and Anthropology, and Director of
useum Studies at Connecticut College. He is the author of the award-winning book African Art in Tnmsit, al
co-editor (with Ruth Ptlillips) of Unpacking Culture: Art and Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds.

Cover image. Woman canying her baby and a !lOwl 01 coconuts

alking in front of the BasI!1Ca of Our lady of Peace an YalOOUSSO\lkro,
COte d'ivoire. Photo 0 Ntc Bothma I epa I Corbis. ISBN 978-1-4051-9060-2
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 Global Perspectives

In a time of ever increasing global phenomena, the series Clo/wl Perspectives offers regionally
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yolume includes a selection of previously published articles and an extensive introduction by EDITED BY ROY RICHARD GRINKER, STEPHEN C. LUBKEMANN,

the volume editor, providing an overview of the history and cultures of the region under AND CHRISTOPHER B. STEINER

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Librtlry orCul/gress Cllra/oging-ill-Pllblicdrioll Data Africa Observed: Discourses of the Imperial Imagination 31
Jean and John ComarojJ
Pcrspectives on Africa: a readcr in culture, history, and representation I editcd by Richard Grinker, Stephen C.
Lubkemann, and Christopher B. Steiner. - 2nd ed. 2 The l\1eaning of Our Work 44
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Includes bibliographical references and indcx.
ISBN 978-1++-13-3522-4 (hardcovu: aLk. paper) -ISBN 978-1-4051-9060-2 (pbl.. : alk. paper) I. Ethnology 3 Europe Upside Down: Fallacies of the New Afrocentrism 48
Africa, Sub-Saharan. 2. Africa, Sub-Saharan-Polilics amI government. 3. Africa, Sub-Saharan Economic Kwame Anthony Appiah
comlitions. -l. Africa, Sub-Saharan-Social life and customs. I. Grinkcr, Roy Richard, 1961 II. Lubkemann,
Stephen c., 1961> m. Steiner, Christopher Burghard. IV. 'ritle v. Series.
4 Discourse of Power and Knowledge of Otherness 55
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306.0967-<le22
2010002108 Part II From Tribe to Ethnicity: Kinship and Social Organization 61
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Librar~. Jilt roduction 63
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~ CONTENTS CONTENTS V11

6 The Illusion of Tribe 83 Part VI Ancestors, Gods, and the Philosophy of Religion 283
Ait/(m W Southall
ITltroductiol1 285
7 Ethnicity in Southern African History 95
Leroy Vail 19 Conversations with Ogotemmcli 291
.i\1a.rcel Crja.ule
Part III Economics as a Cultural System 109 10 African Philosophy, Myth and Realit) 302
In/rodltction 111 pflll/in J I humtflnd}i

8 Lele Econom) Compared with the Bushong 123 21 Ancestors as Elders in Africa 314
Mary Douglas fgor Kopytoff

9 Research on an African Mode of Production 139 Part VII Arts, Aesthetics, and Heritage 323
Ca/herille Coquet]'- Vidrovi/ch
II/trodllc/ion 325
10 The Cattle of Money and the Cattle of Girls among
the Nuer, 1930-83 151 22 Humorous Masks and Serious Politics among the Afikpo 19bo 335
Sharo/l Hutchinson Simoll Ottenberg
23 An, Identity, Boundaries: Postrnodcrnism and Contemporary African Art 348
Part IV Hunter-Gatherers in Africa 167 Olu Oguibe
Introduction 169 24 As Plato Duly Warned: Music, Politics, and Social
11 The Lesson of the Pygmies 175 Change in Coastal East Africa 354
Golin M. Tumbu/l Kel()' M. AskeTI'

12 Houses in the Rainforest: Gender and Ethnicity among 25 In Place of Slavery: Fashioning Coastal Identity 372
the Lese and Efe in Zaire 184 Bayo Holsey
Roy Richard Crinker
Part VIII Sex and Gender Studies in Africa: Economy and Society 379
13 Land Filled with Flies: The Evolution of Illusion 200
Edwi71 N Wdmsen Illtrodliction 381
Foragers, Genuine or Spurious? Situating the Kalahari San in Iostor)' 219 26 The Economics of Polygamy 389
Jacqueline S. Solmay and Richard B. Lee Ester Boserup
27 "Sitting on a .\1an": Colonialism and the Lost Political
Part V Witchcraft, Science, and Rationality: The Translation of Culture 237 Institutions of Igbo Women 399
Judith van Allen
II/troduc/ion 239
245 28 Virginity Testing: Managing Sexuality in a Maturing illV/ AIDS Epidemic 411
15 Conversations on Rain-making
Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala
David LivIlIgstone
16 The Notion of Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate E,'ents 249
E. E. Evaus-Pritdwrd Part IX Europe in Africa: Colonization 423
!1I/roduc/ion 425
17 Understanding a Primitive Society 257
Pt!ter Winch 29 The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa: \1ethods of Ruling Native Races 431
Frederick D. Lllgard
18 The Moral Economy of Witchcraft: An Essay
in Comparative History 270 30 How Europe Underdeveloped Africa 439
Ralph A. Aus/en Waller Rodney
 CONTENTS CONTENTS IX
VIII

31 The Invcntion of Tradition in Colonial Africa ,.j:) ++ The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly 629
Terence Ranger Jean-Fran(ois Bayart

32 Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary 462 45 "Govern Yourselves!" Democracy and Carnage in Northern Mozambique 644
Ngugi wa Thiong'o Harry G. W'est
-f6 Nucr-American Passages 660
Part X Nations and Nationalism 471 Dianna Shandy
Introduction 473 Jill/ex 671
33 Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century 477
Leopo/d SMar Seng/wr
34 On National Culture 484
Frantz Fallon
35 Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Modernity: The Paradox of \i1au Mau 498
Bruce J Berman
36 The Invisible Face: Masks, Ethnicity, and the State in Cote d'Ivoire 514
Christopher B. Steiner

Part XI Violent Transformations: Conflict and Displacement 521

bllroduction 523
37 Rimals of Rebellion in South-East Africa 531
Max Glucklllllll
38 Fighting for the Rainforest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone 543
Paul Richards
39 Sacrifice as Terror: The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 555
Christopher C. Taylllr
4() Whcre to Be an Ancestor? Reconstituting Socio-spirimal Worlds among
Displaced Mozambicans 569
Stepheu Lubkellltllm

Part XII Development, Govemance, and Globalization 583

Introduction 585
4-1 Expectations of Modernity: l'vlyths and Meanings of Urban Life
on the Zan1bian Copperbelt 595
James Ferguson
42 De\'elopment Aid and Strucmral Violence: The Case of Rwanda 609
'eter Ul'in
4-3 Nigerian Scams as Political Critique: Globalization, Inequality and 1-19 616
Daniel Jordan Smith

Acknowledgments
Jean and John Comaroff, OfRl!velatioll and Re,,'olutioll, Vol. I (1991), from The University of Chicago
Press, pp. 86-125.
Cheikh Anta Diop, "The Meaning of Our Work", pp. xii-xvii in The African Origins ofGivilisation:
~/th 01' Reality (1974), from Lawrence Hill Books.
Kwame Anthony Appiah, "Racisms" in Anatomy oj Ral'islll, ed. David Theo Goldberg' (1990),
PI' 3-17, included as "Europe Upside Down: Fallacies of the New Afrocentrism", Times Literm}1
Supplement, 12 February 1993, from University of Nlinnesota Press.
V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention oj Africa: Gliosis, Philosophy and the Order oj K11Owledge, Indiana
University Press (1988), pp. 1-2,6-11,15-16.
E. E. E\ans-Pritchard, The Nuer (1940), pp. 95-110, 113-17, 135-8, from Oxford University Press.
Aidan W. Southall, "The Illusion of Tribe", in Tlte Passing of Tribal Mall in AJrica, ed. P. C. W.
Gutkind, pp. 28-31,32-5,39-43,44,46-50, from E.]. Brill, Leiden, 1970.
Leroy Vail, The Greation oJTribalism in Southem Africa, Copyright 1988 LeroyVail, from University
of California Press, pp. 1-19.
Mary Douglas, "The Lele: Resistance to Change", in Markets In Africa, pp. 211-33, ed. Paul
Bohannan and George Dalton (1962), from Northwestern University Press.
Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, "Research on an African Mode of Production", in Relations oj
Productioll, pp. 261-88, ed. David Seddon (1978), from Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.
Sharon Hutchinson, "The Cattle of Money and the Cattle of Girls Among the Nuer 1930-83,"
American Etll1lologist (1992), 19 (2): 294-316, reproduced with permission from AAA.
Colin Turnbull, "The Lessons of the Pygmies", Scientific A1IIerican, 208-22 (1963), pp. 28-37.
Copyright 1963 by Scientific American, Inc. from Sciemific American, Inc.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XI
Roy Richard Grinker, Houses in the RainJorest: Etllllicity and Inequality among Fanners aurl Foragers
ill Central.4frica (1994), pp. 73-109. Copyright 1994 The Regents of the University of California,
from the University of California Press.
Edwin Wilmsen, Land Filled mith Flies (1989), from the University of Chicago Press, pp. 1-32.
Jacqueline S. Soloway and Richard B. Lee, "Foragers, Genuine or Spurious?: Situating the Kalahari
San in History", Curren! Anthropology, 31:2 (1990), PI'. 109-47.
David Livingstone, 1858, "Conversations on Rain-making," pp. 22-7. In Missionary Trfwe!s and
Researches 111 South .-4Fica. London: lvlurray.
E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraji, Oracles anrl .'Hagic among the Azande (1937; abridged edition
1976), from Oxford University Press.
Peter Winch, "Understanding a Primi6ve Society", American Philosophical Qimrterly, I (1964),
PI'. 307-24, from American Philosophical Quarterly.
RalphA. Austen, "The Moral Economy ofWitchcraft: An Essay in Comparative History", Modernity and
Its .Malcontents, cd. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff (1993), University of Chicago Press, pp. 89-110.
1\1. Griaule, Conversati071s with Ogotemmih (1948), Oxford University Press, pp. 11-32, from
International African Institute.
Paulin J. Hountondji, 1983. Aji-ican Philosophy, Myth and Reality, PI' 55-70. Reprimed with per
mission ofIndiana University Press.
Igor Kopytoff, HA ncestors as Elders in Africa," Africa, 41: 2 (1971), pp. 129-42. Reproduced by
permission of International African Institute.
Simon Otten berg, "Humol'Ous Masks and Serious Politics among the Afikpo lbo," in Africall Art fmd
Leadership, ed. Douglas Fraser and Herbert M. Cole (1972), pp. 99-121. Copyright 1972 by the
Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin Press. Reprinted by permission of the University
of Wisconsin Press.
Olu Oguibe, "Art, [demity, Boundaries: Postmodemism amI Contemporary African Art", in Reading
the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace, cd. 01u Oguibe and Okwui Enwezor,
pp. 17-19,20-1,23-5,27-8, Institute of International Visual Arts (INIVA), London, 1999 Olu
Oguibe and INI\A
Kelly::VI. Askew, "As Plato Duly Warned: Music, Politics, and Social Change in Coastal East Africa,"
AllthropologicalQiwrterly, 2003, 76(4): 609-37.
Bayo Holsey, Routes ofRlfmembral1ce: Reftshio111ng the Slave Trade ill Chana, Universit) of Chicago
Press (2008), pp. 9-14,109-10,112-21.
E~ter Boserup, "The Economics of Polygamy," in Women's Role in Economic Developmeru (1970),
.'\llen & Unwin, pp. 37-50, from Elisabeth \V. Case, Agent.
Judith Van Allen, 1982, " 'Sitting on a 1Vlan': Colonialism and the Lost Political Institutions of Igbo
Women," Cal/adian Journal ofAfrican Studies, 6 (2): 165-81.
Suzanne Leclerc-Madla1a, "Virginity Testing: Managing Sexuality in a Maturing I IIV/AIDS
Epidemic", iVTedical AllIhrop%gy Q!lal'terly 15(4), pp. 533-53,2001.
XII ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XIII

Frederick D. Lugard, 1922, "~tethods of Ruling Native Races," pp. 193-213. Tile Dual Mandale in Jean-Franyois Bayart, The Stale in Africa: The Politics oJthe Belly, 1993, pp. 211-27,231-43,268-9.
British Ji'opical Africa. London: Blad.\\ood. Copyright (\:, Longman Group UK Limited 1993.
Walter Rodney, HOlT? Europe Underkeeloped AFica (1972), Howard Cnivcrsity Press, pp. 223-60. Harry G. West, " 'Govern Yourselves!' Democracy and Carnage in Northern Mozambique," in Julia
Copyright @ 1972 by Walter Rodncy. Reprinted with the permission of Howard Uni\'ersity Paley (cd.), Democracy: Anlhropological Approaches. Copyright 2008 by the School for Advanced
Press. Research, Santa Fe, pp. 97-119.
Terence Ranger, "The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa," in The Invention oj Ji'adition, cd. Dianna Shandy, Nuer-, tllleriran Passages: Globalizing Sur/al1ese Migml/rl/l, Universil:) Press orFlorida,
Eric] lobsbawm and Terence Ranger (1983), by permission of the author and Past and Present 1st cdition, (2007), pp.109-26. Reprinted \\ ilh permission by the University Press or Florida.
Society, from Cambridge Univcrsity Press.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Detnined: A IVriter's PrisOIl Diary (1981), pp. 29-38, 56--62, from Heinemann
Publishers (Oxford) Ltd.
Leopold Sedar Senghor, "Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century," pp. 179-92. In
Wilfred Ca.rtey and M.arrin Kilson, eds, The AJnca11 Reader: bldepe1Jdem AFica, Vintage Books, New
York. Copyright 1970 by Wilfred Carty and Martin Kilson.
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched oj the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (1968, 1982) pp. 206--19,
226--7,236-47. Copyright 1963 by Presence Africaine, from HarperCollins Publishers Ltd and
GrovelAtlantic, lnc.
Bruce J. Berman. 1991. "Kationalism, Ethnicity, and Modernity: The Paradox of Mau Mau,"
Canadia1J Journal ojAJrimn Studies I Revue canndiellne des Etudes aFicnines 25(2): 181-206.
Christopher B. Steiner. 1992. "The !D\;sible Face: Masks, Ethnicity, and the St..1te in Cote d'l voire,
Wesr Africa," MJlSeu/1l Anlhropology 16(3): 53-7. Reproduced by permission of the American
Anthropological Association.
,lax Gluckman, Order alld Rebellioll in Trihal Aji-ica: Coltuted Essays wilh Autohiographical
Introductioll, ed. Max Gluckman, Routledge (2004), pp. 112-35. Copyright 2004, Routledge.
Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK.
Paul Richards, Fightillg Jor Ihe Railljorest: War, Youth, and Resources in Sierra Leone, Heinemann
(1996), Portsmouth, NIl, pp. xiii-xx, xxii-xxv, 25-32, 34,56--60.
Christopher C. Taylor, Sacr!(i.ce as Terror: The Rwandan Genocide oj 1994, Berg Publishers (2001),
pp. 101-2,105,110-14,117-19,127-37,139-40,142-5,153-7, 167-8, 174-6.
Stephen Lubkemann, "Where to Be an Ancestor? Reconstituting Socio-Spiritual Worlds among
Displacetll\ lozambicans," Journal ojRejiJgee Sllldies, Vol. 15, No.2, 2002, Oxford University Press
(2002), pp. Lub. 3-18, Lub. 20-4.
James Ferguson, E.\pectatio71S oj .'I4odernizy: Myths and Mearli1lgs oj Urban Life on the Zambiall
Copperbelt, 1st edition (1999), pp. 1-7,9-13,234-+7, 1999. Reprinted by permission ofUniversiry
of California Press.
Peter Uvin, "Development Aid and Structural Violence. The Case of Rwanda," Development, 42 (3)
(September 1999), pp. 49-56.
Daniel Jordan Smith, A Cultllre ofCormption: Everyday Deceplion and Poplliar Disco1ltelll in Nigeria,
Princeton Universit) Press (2008), pp. 28-52. Princeton U nivcrsit)' Press. Reprinted by permission
of Princeton University Press.
 List of Maps List of Figures

Map 1 Africa in the colonial era, c.I925 16 Figure 5.1 72

Map 2 Africa toda~~ showing the ethnic groups discussed in the book 17
Figure 5.2 73

Figure 5.3 73

Figure 5.4 77

Figure 5.5 Nuer socio-spatial categories 79

Figure 8.1 Average length of dry season expressed in days (From: F Buitot
"Saisons et Periodes Seches et Pluvieuses au Congo Beige" Druxelles, 1954) 124

Figure 8.2 Population density and forest cover (Lele and Bushong) (From N. Nicolai &

J. Jacques - "La transformation du paysage Congolais par Chemin de Fer" 1954 p. 112) 125

Figure 8.3 Age of retirement from work 136

'igure 8.4 Period of full work, showing age of entry into full agricultural responsibility 136

Figure 8.5 Lele economy and social organization 136

Figure 10.1 The relativity of the "cattle of money" I"canle of girls" distinction 162

Figure 11.1 Ituri Forest inhabited by the Pygmies occupies an arca of roughly

50,000 square miles in the northeastern corner of the tropical rain forest of
the Congo, in Central Africa 177

Figure 11.2 Detail map of the Ituri Forest shows the Pygmy camps visited

by the author (small open circles), villages (black dots) and various rivers

(thin lines). The camps are connected by forest paths (medium lines),

the villages by roads (heavy lines) 178

xvi LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 11.3 forest camps change strue! ure and constitution in cyclical fashion as Pygmies
mo,e from one campsite to another; they become increasingly fragmented at the approach
of the honey season (May through June), break up Juring the season (figures show number
of families) and re-form afterward. The disposition of huts, direction in which they face
and their shapes are as shown; some were later abandoned (broken lines). Of the clans
List of Plates
constituting the group with which the author stayed during the period, the main one was

the Bapuemi (solid-coloured areas). A quarrel resulted in a split camp (lower left)

which graduall) re-formed 180

Figure 13.1 Map of southern Africa showing the countries mentioned in the text;

L is Lesotho, S is Swaziland. In colonial times Botswana was known as the Bechuanaland

Protectorate or simply the Protectorate; Namibia was South-West Africa to the British

and Sudwcstafrika to the Germans. Ngamiland is the part of north western Botswana west

of the Okavango Delta and north of Lake Ngami, in which the location of CaeCae is

marked by a triangle; the asterisk marks the location of Barrow's 1797 observations 20 I

Figure 14.1 The 19th-century Kalahari, with relevant contemporary

boundaries and political divisions superimposed 223

Figure 26.1 Sex and age structure of population in African areas

of South Rhodesia in 1956 39+

Plate 22.1 Igbo, Afikpo. A dancer wearing the line .Mgbo (mother of Mgbo) mask.

The raffia backing to the mask and the method of attachment to the face are visible.

Mgbom village. Ht. 9" (22.8cm). (Photograph: author, 1960.) 337

Plate 22.2 Igbo, Afikpo. The actors are playing out a skit. The main body of the

perrormers is in the background. Mgbom village. (Photograph: author, 1960.) 338

Plate 36.1 Masked dancer with musicians performing at the festival of

masks in Man, ca. 1979. Photographer unknown. 516

 Introduction

List of Tables

Africa in Perspective

Table 8.1
Annual cycle of work 129
Table 26.1
Incidence of polygamy in Africa 391
Table 26.2
Rights and duties of Yoruba women 392
Table 26.3
Age distribution of married Moslem population of Dakar in Seneg'al 393
Table 41.1
Life expectancy and child mortality of urban Copperbelt residents, 1980-1990 598

Introduction
you may cast your gaze over a wide expanse, and in so doing assume that your view is somehow
Africa in Perspective
Yet, if we can learn anything from Griaule's efforts, it is that our views are largely determined
Even a rapid glance at the language we cOnllnonly use will demonstrate the ubiquity
of visual metaphors. If wc actively focus our attention on them, vigilantly keeping
an eye our for thosc deeply embedded as well as those on the surface, we can gain
an illuminating insight into the complex mirroring of perception and language.
Depending, of course, on one's outlook or point of \ ie,,~ the prevalence of such
metaphors will be accounted an obstacle or an aid to our knowledge of reality It is,
however, no idle speculation or figment of imagination to claim that if blinded to
their importance, wc will damage our abi.Jiry to inspect the world outside and intro
spect the world within. And our prospects for escaping their thrall, if indeed that is
even a foreseeable goal, will be greatl)' dimmed .... This opening paragraph should
suggest how ineluctable thc modality of the visual actually is, at least in our linguis
tic practice. (Martin Jay 1993. 011 /he ease nJith mhich tWl'1l/)'-olle 'Visual metaphors Ctlll
be used il1 01lly six sell/Cllces.)
French scholar Marcel Griaule, one of the first anthropologists to carry out extensive field
research in West Africa, was acutely aware that anthropological observation depends upon
perspective. He was known to have his tield assistants hold his ankles so that he could safely
peer out over the edge of high cliffs to observe from above the Dogon pcople, whom he stud
ied. This practice tells us much about Griaule's anthropology, to say nothing of how much he
trust.ed his assistants. Whether as an anthropologist, or as an avid pilot, he wanted the grand
view - to see everything all at once and from abO'e. He wTote: "Man is silly: he suspects his
neighbor, never the sky ... all his great and small intentions, his sanctuaries, his garbage, his
careless repairs, his ambitions for growth appear on an aerial photograph." From above,
Griaule wrote, he could discern "the underlying structure both of topography and of minds"
(quoted in Clifford, 1988: 68).
No'~ imagine that you are atop the tallesl structure in your community - it could be a moun
tain, a rooftop, the obserYation deck of a skyscraper or monwnent, or perhaps even the "Ivory
INTRODUCTION 3
Tower" of an academic institution. The perspective appears to offer endless possibilities for
sight, encumbered by little more than the biological limitations of human vision. The power of
obserV<ltioll can be both liberating and daunting for we may sense not only how much we can see
from certain places, but how little wc sec when we are elsewhere. From atop the imagined tower,
"real" or "true" and that your perception is "total" and "collective."
by the structures of observation. Each view frames an object or image that negates our libera
tion, for when we look at something we always, necessarily, lookjr-om somewhere else: whether
it be from a particular place, a cardinal direction, an above or a below. Pure vision is an illusion.
"There is no vision without purpose," writes literary critic W. J. T. Mitchell, for the "world is
already clothed in our systems of representation" (1986: 38).
The structures that frame our perception may be as obvious as the windO\'vs of the Empire State
Building', the observation deck of the Washington Monument, or the placards reading "scenic
view" that dot the highw3ys of America indicating to tourists where to take a photograph and
capture their visual memory. Sometimes these structures are much less obvious, however, as when
we see things through the looking glass of our mm values, assumptions, or beliefs - for example,
when European explorers looked at Africa through the distorting lens of colonialism, when mis
sionaries judged African religions in terms of Christian tenets and thought, or when anthropolo
gists e\'aluated beliefs in "~tchcraft according to the laws and methods of Western science.
Some points of view also have masters or authors - a fact that once again negates the apparent
liberation of what appears to be a privileged sight (or site): Eiffel, Hancock, and Washington,
among others. Like these architects of national landscapes, the master authors of anthropology
haye constructed the sites (or sights) from which students of Africa have viewed the histories,
societies, and cultures of the continent. Their own views, in turn, were of course heavily influ
enced by the values of their lime - values which authorized certain perspectives and limited or
prohibited others. When we critically assess these perspectives, the ohservers become the observed,
surveyors are put under surveillance and are transformed at once into subject and object.
In an essay on the development of public exhibitions in Europe, cultural critic Tony Bennett
(I 99-l: 133) reminds us that observation can also be a form of domination or surveillance; that
when we engage in survey and inspection we simultaneously become the seer and the seen.
There is power with the knowledge of observation, writes Bennett, "the power to order objects
a.nd persons into a world to be known and to lay it out before a -vision capable of encompassing
it as a totality" (1994: 149).
Just as observation is a form of control, so too is the process of writing and representing what
has been observed. In a study of language and colonialism in the former Belgian Congo, anthro
pologistJohannes Fabian argues that
Colonial expeditions were not just a form of imasion; nor was their purpose inspection. They were
determined efforts at ;n-smpJ;oll. By putting regions on a map and native words on a list, explorers laid
the first and deepest, foundations for colonial power. B)' giving proof of the 'scientific' nature of their
enterprise they exercised power in a pure subtle form - as the power to name, to describe, to classify.
(1986: 24)
To return for a moment to Griaule's station atop a cliff in the rocky escarpments of Mali, we
might argue also that his position makes him somcthing of a spy - able to look at others without
being looked at by them. Griaule inspects his field site with the "imperial eyes" of the colonizer
4 INTRODUCTION
that sought to describe and, in so doing, possess "t.heir" (dominated) others in Africa and
elsewhere (Pratt, 1992). The anthropologist, in this case, is invisible while what he sees from his
site of observation is rendered completely visible. This is what philosopher Michel Foucault
calls "disciplinary power" - a form of authority and control which is "exercised throug'h its
invisibility" (1979: 89). In most cases, of course, the structural distance between the observer
and the obsen'ed is less obvious than in the case of Griaule's panoptic vision of Africa, but the
underlying principle of hm\' power and control might be gained through observation and
description is almost always present in transcultural encounters and in any system of represen
tation. "It is the fact of being constantly seen," Foucault concludes, "that maintains rhe disci
plined individual in his subjection" (1979: 87).
If ide:as about ourselves and others derive from the ways in which we see and write, and if
seeing and writing are implicated in power relations, then it would be reason:1ble to question
critically some of the product') of vision and writing. These include not only books and encyclo
pedias, but the concepts and ideas that have emerged from them: family, kingship, clanship,
tribe, culture, ethnicity, feudality, bureaucracy, state, nation, and Africa, among others. To ques
tion these terms is not to dismiss them but rather to determine how, why, and when they
appeared, and assess to what degree they are "real" concepts, with reference to an objective real
ity, or whether they are cultural and heuristic constructs created for particular scientific, politi
cal, economic, or other purposes. The last term mentioned - Africa - is especially curious
because, at one level, Africa refers to an actual geological unity (the second largest continent
after Asia), but. at another level it refers to much more. The naming of a continent may seem
benign or innocuous, yet in past centuries, the term "continent" implied something' that holds
or retains. Indeed, the delineation and naming of a particular land mass by European explorers
and geographers has often led to the implication that Africa has, until recently, remained rela
tively isolated from the currents of world history. Africa appears in European literature and art
as a static, timeless, and separated land.
From this perspective, slaves may have left Africa for the New \Vorld, but little entered Africa
or crossed its paths until the era of European colonialism. Such a view is absolutely >\-Tong, since
Africans have been a powerful and fundamental force in world history long before the rise of
European civilizations. Africa has also been elaborated and articulated negatively in Europe and
~orth America in broad cultural and racial terms, as "dark," "savage," "barbarous," "heathen,"
"uncivilized," and "underdeveloped" - expressions that have had profound ramifications on
the idea of i\frica i.n Western thought. Again, these terms mask more about Africa than they
reveal, and tell us much more about Europeans than about Africans. But recognition of these
views highlights the extent to which our visions or illusions of Africa are created out of particu
lar assumptions - biases, prejudices, fantasies, or ideologies - and how these visions take shape
in tile various representational forms of art, literature, and scholarship.
This book is about scholarly perspectives. It is about how some writers have looked at Africa,
and how we today look back at them and see scholarship in a new light. This book, then, is not
only about perspectives on Africa as attitudes or points of view, but also about perspectives in a
more technical and artistic sense, as the process through which scholars render complex and
multidimensional experiences and phenomena as texts. Perspective - from the Latin paspectiva,
meaning optic and clea.r to the sight (Jay, 1993: 53) - refers in art to the technique of rendering
spatial extension into depth on a flat surface, such as drawing a three-dimensional scene on a
shallow plane. The development of perspectivist technique as artistic convention during the
European Renaissance privileged the viewer as the center of vision, and with the power to order
conceptions of reality through his gaze (see Jay, 1993; Berger, 1972). We are concerned here with
INTRODUCTION 5
this aspect of perspective, because we believe that, as a metaphor rooted in the visual arts, it can
help us understand intellectual history. Are there parallels, for example, between the illusionist
painter's "isual sleight-of-hand and the representation of Africa? How are the processes of see
ing and looking transformed into writing, reading, and the production of knowledge?
One of the centTal goals of this volume is to highlight the relationship between "perspective"
as technique, position, and metaphor, and "Africa" as an objective reality. We hope to uncover
AIrica as a concept; and to consider Africa as a subject that has been constructed, invented, and
interpreted in writing. Is there such a "thing" as Africa? How can we group hundreds of differ
ent cultures and languages into a single category called Africa? How do we learn about its peo
ples and cultures? How can we study Africa and still comprehend it as a process of invention,
and as a constructed entity that masks its own heterogeneity?
10 some enent the history of learning about culture has involved a shifting of perspectives, from
the privileged position of the observer looking at (or down at) objects of scientific scrutiny, to the
position of a participant engaged in a dialogue, who looks with (rather than simply at) the people
with whom he or she creates and shares a fieldwork experience. Many African authors, in fact, ana
lyze their own cultures, or study the cultures of Europe that once studied them. Africanist scholars
of the past largely looked from above, while many of those in the present look from a level position
or from below. Looking from below implies being sensitive to the power of observation about which
Bennen spoke, recognizing the biases inherent in anyone perspective, and considering how anthro
pologists and their assistants (usually called "informants") come to understand culture together;
sometimes it also means paying special attention to the beliefs, experiences, and interests of people
\\hose voices may be relatively absent from the historical and ethnographic record: the poor, the
marginalized, the oppressed. A critical reading of many texts in this volume may elicit questions
about an author's perspective. Is his or her interpretation of culture a view from afar? Is it a view
from close and within? Whose voices are heard? Whose voices are silent or muted?
One of the central paradoxes of intensive anthropological fieldwork is that it necessitates mul
tiple positions: to be close for a time, during the period of field research, and then to step back
and consider from afar the world in which one participated and lived. Like a pointillist painting
by Seurat, which appears as a chaotic collection of dots from up close but rewals itself as a clear
and detailed image from a distance, scholarly work requires movement and dynamics. The hag
gling one may have observed in a local cattle market in Kenya, or the witchcraft accusation one
may have listened to in Democratic Republic of Congo, may appear differently from the remove
of an academic vantage point. The one is now framed i.n terms of "the circulation of corrunodi
ties," "the construction of value" or "spheres of exchange"; the other, in terms of "social con
trol," "belief systems," or "modes of thought." Taking the language of psychoanalyst Heinz
Kohut, some anthropologists have noted the value of distinguishing between "experience near"
concepts - such as the Annde's conceptions of witchcraft or a Lese boy's affmity and affection
for his mother's brother - and "experience distant" concepts - such as "cosmological belief" and
"matrilateral alliance" (Geertz, 1983: 57). Or, to use an American example, "best friend" and
"significant other" are near, while "social relations" and "love object" are distant. Sometimes the
principles of culture (experience distant concepts) emerge out of tbe minutiae of everyday life, as
a linguist might generalize from a collection of particular sentences to a set of abstract gram
matical rules that stand apart from, and yet constitute, the act of speaking anyone of those sen
tences. Stepping back is inlportant because it is sometimes difficult to see things that are too close
to us. We take them for granted and, as the saying goes, cannol see the forest for the trees.
Another paradox of movement, from far to close and from close to far, involves the dynamic
relation between the exotic and the familiar. Often what piques our interest is something that
6 INTRODUCTION
seems peculiar and unfamiliar - a ritual practice, a marriage system, a religious belief Seen from
a distance, the values and practices of different cultures may even seem irrational or bi7.arre. I low
odd it must appear to some people that the Azande of central Africa, as Evans-Pritchard repre
sented them (see Part V), explain all misfortunes, including the death of the eldest people in their
communities, as caused by witchc.Taft. Yet, as we begin to understand a belief or practice ill the
context in which it exists, and from the perspective of those to whom it belongs, the irrational or
the strange begins to make sense, and is thu.s translated into our own logic of understanding. The
authors included in Part V comprehend the logic of Azande witchcraft beliefs without judging
them from their own scientific or philosophical perspectives. The central debate of Part V, how
ever, is precisely about the relation between the exotic and the familiar. Evans-Pritchard sees the
j\..zande as not too different from 'Western scientists (although he considers that they are wrong
to believe in witches), while Peter Winch views the Azande as quite distinct. Winch resists
strongly the impulse to view the Azande in terms of Western science, as merely "bad scientists,"
and illustrates for us the risk of making the unfamiliar familiar in the wrong terms, or to erase all
difference and see everyone as essentially alike. And, therein lies the difficult paradox of simulta
neously making the familiar strange and the strange familiar (Spiro, 1990).
Much of the work of addressing these challenging problems is carried out by scholars at the
typewriter or, today, on the word processor. The reason why we focus our attention in this
volume on the act of 'Hiting is that we learn about Africa by reading texts, and we become
scholars ofMrica by writing them. Most anthropologists spend months, if not years, conduct
ing research abroad, but when they return home they are confronted with translating experi
ence into text. Ethnography, the general term for anthropological description, literally means
"writing" (-graphy) "culture" (ethno-). The writing necessarily involves not only the transla
tion of experience, but the actual construction of an ensemble of words that must fit the con
ventions of scholarly discourse: the \-\lords must form grammatical sentences, then paragraphs,
chapters, and books. An ethnography might involve the division of a society into distinct
parts, such as kinship, economy, religion, and politics, when in everyday life these aspects of
culture are inextricably bound together. Certain voices may be made more salient than others
simply because they were the voices the ethnographer heard. And the writer's own interests
will determine how certain topics or ideas are selected for writing. Although authors seek to
represent many dimensions, writing (like filmmaking) leaves a lot of social experience on the
cutting room floor. Because writing is a process of selection, making and representing, schol
arship and fiction have more in common than meets the eye. They constitute forms of verbal
painting (pratt, 1992).
Our concern with these problems, and what they mean for the future of African studies, led
us to focus this volume on how African history and culture have been represented in writing.
On what authority do authors represent a whole society and its identities? This is a particu
larly troublesome question, when we consider that many anthropologists have worked among
people who cannot represent themselves in writing because they do not have a written lan
guage or because they are otherwise unable (or unauthorized) to write and publish. The aca
demic degrees and the requirements of publishers and reading audiences may serve to
authorize only certain people to speak - hence the relation between the word author and
authorize. How do we identify, define, and characterize someone else's culture? How can we
evaluate whether some characterizations arc "better" or more "accurate" than ot.hers? Critical
readers of scholarly work must give special care to analyzing the concepts, and the narrative
strategies and structures which authors use to give themselves the authority to represent and
to be believed (Clifford, 1983).
INTRODUCTION 7
Cwmre
Few concepts in contemporary social science are as abstract and imprecise, and at the same time
such a central object of study, as "culrure." Anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn (1978) once com
piled se,'eral hundred different definitions of the term culture. Of course, the more abstract the
term the more multiple are its possible meanings, and the more useful it can be as an analytic
construct. It is thus not necessarily fruitful for us to offer a unified or precise definition of cul
ture, especially since the more than fifty authors represented in this book employ the concept in
different ways. For some, culture is a public system of symbols and classifications that gives
meaning to an otherwise meaningless and disordered world; for others, culture is a form of
integration, through which social, economic, reli!tious, and political institutions are linked
rogether into a coherent whole; for others yet, culture refers to rhe ways in which human beings
create belief systems and social practices so that they are better able to benefit from the material
world in which they subsist.
We would like to stress that it is extraordina.rily difficult not only to define culture, but to
determine if there is a place where one culture begins and another ends. Anthropologists have
long been committed to identifying the boundaries of distinct cultures (in past times called
"tribes," a subject addressed in Part II), and to salvaging cultures putatively on the brink of
extinction in the rapid and sometimes destructive forces of modernization and globalization.
However, anthropologists and adler scholars from a variety of different disciplines have
begun to question the conventional view that the non-Western world consists of "endangered
aut henticities" (Clifford, 1988: 5). They have begun to believe, instead, that different cultures
have been in contact \-vith one another for as long as humanity has existed, and that, in the late
r'wentieth century, the boundaries of culture are even more permeable and fluid. Most readers
of this book will be familiar with the concept of authenlicity, and have at some time seen
advertisements for restaurants or shops offering "authentic" goods from some "exotic" cor
ner of the globe. At what point does something become "inauthentic"? Or are we all living
within a complex matrix of inauthenticities that we try to represent as homogeneous or unique
cultures?
The continent of Africa can be characterized as a collection of cultures, but it is also a place
for the blending of man) cultures, a process sometimes called "syncretism" (Stewart and Shaw,
199-1). The term refers to the merging of different forms into one, as when the Nuer of the
Sudan incorporate into their social organization rituals borrowed from the neighbouring Dinka
and, in the process, may no longer view them as being of Dinka origin. Or when religious lead
ers in Africa combine elements of Christianity or Islam with indigenous ideas and rituals into a
unified system of belief and practice.
The cover of this book highlights the blending of cultures in Africa. The image appears to
depict Saint Peter's Basilica i.n Vatican City, Rome. But the photograph, as the figures in the
foreground might indicate, was taken in Africa not ltaJy. During the 1980s, Felix Houphouet
Boigny, the first president of independent C6te d'Iyoire, and a devout Roman Catholic, built
this variation of Saint Peter's in his natal village ofYamoussoukro. His rendition of the basilica
was constructed to specifications that made it larger than the original. This post.-Renaissance
style European church erected in the heart of Africa's savannah, engineered by a Lebanese
architect, and built by Israeli and French workers, is the largest Christian edifice ever con
structed, with a dome rising nearl) forty feet higher than Saint Peter's. The Basilica of Our
Lady of Peace, as it is called, incorporates 272 Greek columns, resplendent doors made of
thirteenth-century stained glass from France, and a 7.4-acre esplanade of Italian marble tiles
8 INTRODUCTION
n
designed to hold 300,000 worshippers. Pope John Paul consecrated the basilica in September,
1990, amid a ceremony of Baule dancers (Massaquoi, 1990: 116).
When Houphouet-Boigny was buried in Yamoussoukro in 1994, a spectacular event was held
at the basilica. The New York Times reponed at length on the dazzling assemblage of visual
expressions that were present that day, while also commenting on the fascinating mix of cultural
Iraditions:
Two months after his death, President Felix I louphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast [Cote d'Ivou'c], one
of the last of a generation of African leaders to guide his people [rom colonialism, finally received a
somber state funeral today in the world's largest church, which he had built in hjs ancestral villag:e ....
All the panoply of Wtstern religious limrgy mixed with traditional African customs were on display
here: the stirring musie of Handel and Goul1od; the undulating music and dance of ancient African
rituals; a huge chorus dressed in bright hatik dress singing "!(/{/goh hudji gllja ," the Baoule-language
words for "Lord, it is you who has made all things"; a military honor guard dressed in bright red coats
and brandishlng glittering swords, and hundreds of "illage elders, resplendent in huge mulri-colored
strips of kente and korhOgO CIOlh. (Noble, 1994: A 1)
This is a particularly spectacular example of cultural blending and the creative assembly of diverse
traditions, but \\ hat it illustrates for LIS is the g'eneral condition in which so-called "distinct cultures"
are actually composed of many threads, each of which emerges out of the complexities of history,
and which sometimes come together to form a cultural fabric of new and seamless wholes. Other
notable examples of blending include Zionism, perhaps the most popular form of Christianity in
southern Aflica (Sundkler, 19-1-8; Comaroff, 1985), and the Kimbanguist church of the Democratic
RepUblic of Congo (Marrin, 1975). In Zionism, the prophct Isaiah Shembe not only brought
together aspects of Christianity with Zulu culture, but also the cosmological beliefs and practices of
several different sourhern African or "Bantu" cultures. Thus, the Zulu king becomes transformed
in Zionism as the Bantu Church Father. In Kirnbanguism, the prophet Simon Kimbangu articu
lated Christian ideas of sahation, but joined them with healing and anti-witchcraft rituals.
In addition to sym.Tetism one also finds cultural pluralism, that is, the co-existence of alterna
tive beliefs and practices without necessaril) being merged together into new syncretic entities.
For instance, in many parts of Africa there are different kinds of therapeutic alternatives, and they
do not always con1liet with one another; different illnesses may call for different kinds of thera
pies. For instance, John Janzen (1978) has shmvn 110\\ the Kongo of the Democratic Republic of
Congo choose among a variety of techniques for hcaling: Western medical therapies, the art of the
bangallga or "traditional healers," kinship therapy, in which kin members become integrally
involved in diagnosis and treatment, and a set of ritual healing choices that can be roughly groupcd
under the categories of initiation and purification. There are no clear or impermeable boundaries
between these therapeutic sy!>tems - for t:xample, kmship therap) usually involves some form of
purification, and bar/ganga usually try to involve kin members in therapy management - yet nei
ther do they form a syncretic system that combines, or reconciles, all of them together.
History
The process of narrating and interpreting the African past has long been an intellectual struggle
against European assumptions and prejudices about the nature of time and histol1' in Africa. As
historian David William Cohen states, "The major issue in the reconstruction of the African
past is ... t.he question of how far voices exterior to Africa shape the presentation ofAfrica's past
and present" (1985: 198). Many historians, especially those without any background or training
INTRODUCTION 9
in African historiography, have assumed incorrectly that prior to European contact with Africa
indigenous "traditions" were ancient, permanent, and reproduced from generation to genera
lion without change. In a now famous statement made in the early 19605, Hugh Trevor-Roper,
an eminent professor of Modern History at Oxford University, declared that "Perhaps, in the
future, there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none: there is only the
history of the Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness ... and darkness is not the subject of
history" (quoted in Fage, 1981: 31).
This false image of cultural isolation and temporal stagnation has been attributed not only to
"'friean history, but to prehistory as well. Graham C. Clark, for example, could write with "sci
entific" authorit) and confidence in the 1970s that much of Africa during the Late Pleistocene
"remained a kind of cultural museum in which Archaic traditions continued ... without con
tributing to the main course of human progress" (1971: 181). Contrary to this view, however,
research in paleontology and archaeology has shown that the first microlithic technology
emerged in Africa, and that cattle domestication and pottery may have been indigenous African
developments. We also often forget that the earliest complex states emerged on [he continent of
Africa, in what is today Egypt (McIntosh and Mcintosh, 1983). If we cast our sights back to the
evolution of humanity, we find that human-made tools appear in Africa at least 2.6 million years
ago, long before they appear in Eurasia.
Africa was indeed the birthplace of human kind. The earliest available evidence of our homi
nid ancestors has been unearthed in the Afar region of Ethiopia, and in the Rift Valley of north
ern Kenya and Ethiopia, where the remains are dated at about 4.5 million years before present
(see 'White, Suwa, and Asfaw, 1994; Leakey, Feibel, McDougall, and Walker, 1995). The first
appearance in the world of modern human behavior - people acting like contemporary humans
is at least 200,000 y.b.p. in highland Ethiopia, and the first modern human beings - people who
look like contemporary humans - appear at least 100,000 y.b.p. throughout east and southern
Africa in what are today Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa. From prehistory onward,
Africa has remained a vital and central force in building the world we live in. Until the late 1950s,
however, Africanist historical scholarship consisted almost entirely of the history of Europeans in
Africa, and was taught in university courses under the rubrie of "colonial history" Little or no
attention was paid to indigenous African views of the past or to the role Africans played in shap
ing global developments, processes, and structures. Explanation in this type of historiography
xogenous rather than endogenous history - consisted of locating the external (rather than
internal) causes for African events, and thus denied Africans their own historical agency.
Beginning sometime in the last several decades, a period which coincides with the dismantling of
European colonialism and the rise of independent African nation-states, the study ofAfrican history
has unfolded in two new, radically different, and more promising directions - both of which have
shifted the gaze of the historian away from Europe, and its colonial preoccupations, and toward the
continent of Africa itself The first of these new histories ofAfrica has been written on a global scale,
and "traces connections among discernible communities, regions, peoples, and nations that anthro
pologists have often separated and reified as discrete entities" (Roseberry, 1989: 125). Rather than
view Africa as a set of cultural enclaves, this new historical approach looks at the place of Africa in
shaping the world (Wolf, 1982). This kind of transnational focus demonstrates that precolonial,
colonial, and postcolonial Africa has not simply been subjected to the progression of other peoples'
histories, but has produced, directed, and contributed to the course of world events.
The second type of history that is being written in Africa today is a type of "social history"
that attempts to reconstruct the past from the records of ordinary lives. Rather than recount
"official" histories from above - whether it be from Europ~Jn colonial archives or from African
10 INTRODUCTION
chronicles of conq uest or kinglists of royal successions - this new history ofAfrica looks instead
from below to discover the pbce and meaning of the past in the individual and collective tbought
ofAfricans. Because many African societies chronicled the past in oral rather than written form,
the challenge of this type of histor} is to bring together a multitude of small fragments of local
knowledge, myths, epic narratives, and oral texts (Vansina, )985). From a Western point of view,
there is a tendency to perceive oral traditions as being less "accurate" or "reliable" than written
histories (see Hcnige, 1972; Clifford, 1988: 277-346). If we take the position, however, that all
history is in fact a higWy biased and often haphazard and radical selection of only a few moments
salvaged from a much denser swirl of past human activities and events, then the authorit) of the
written word is no more credible than verbal accounts. Both are representations of reality that
must be understood \\'ithin the cultural context of tlteir production and reproduction. The
notion of perspective, of course, underlies all historical accounts, since "different people carry
in their heads different modes and systems of arranging and simplifying the complex and mas
sive information that the past remits to the li\'ing" (Cohen, 1977: 15).
Anthropology has always had a peculiar and rather uneasy relationship to history. In trying to
define the field of anthropology as a distinct and unified discipline, many anthropologists in the
early to mid twcntieth centur) dismissed the study of history as something which was irrelevant
to the anthropological inquiry (Schapera, 1962). Evans-Pritchard, for example, in the days
before he began to stress the importance of history to social anthropology, declared in 1950 that
"a societ) can be understood satisfactoril) without reference to its past" (1950: 120). Today it is
clear that anthropology cannot ignore history. The past conditions the present, and so the
present must be understood as an isolated moment or a "slice of time" in what is a much broader
and more complex process of change.
There have been two central shifts in historical perspecti\e: one concerns the unit of analysis,
the other social dynamics. First, whereas most anthropologists once treated African societies as
discrete cultural isolates, cOl1temporar) anthropologists now vie\\ them as historically contin
gent, with permeable and changing boundaries. Second, although anthropologists once viewed
societies synchronically as systems that maintained and reproduced themselves in harmonious
balance, or oscillated between a small number of organizational principles (Leach, 1954), they
now tend to emphasize that societies arc constantly changing and in flux. Rather than looking at
societies as closed "systems" from which one must attempt to distill pervasive patterns and
structural principles, many anthropologists now look for "process" - shifting trajectories and
the patterns of change thar emerge through time. The problem with history for anthropology is
that most ethnographic fieldwork is conducted in a limited geographic region and in the course
of a relatively short span of time, where change may not be apparent or obsen1able (Moore, 1986:
7). The challenge, then, is to fit the "ethnographic present" of field research into a larger frame
work of historical development, process, and change. That framework must take into account
the dynamics of life in Africa, including the reaJities of violence, governance, displacement, and
voluntary popuJatioll movements.
Representation
One of the key problems in contemporary anthropology is what George Marcus and Michael
Fischer (1986) have called the "crisis of representation." By this they refer to the fact that anthro
pology, and the humanities and social sciences in general, can no longer make claims of represent
ing objective truths and mimetic reality. If postrnodern theor} has taught us anything, it is that
knowledge and its images are constructed from indi\ idual perspectives, and therefore, by
INTRODUCTION 11
definition, can only be biased, partial, and greatly simplified reductions of morc complex and
nuanced \\ holes. All descriptions of the social world are filLered through the subjective lenses of
multiple frameworks of interpretation - whether it be the perception of the observer, the language
of the narrator, or the assumptions of the reader. Representations, in short, can neither posit
unmcdiated authenticity nor make claim to universal validity (Duncan and LC), 1993: 3-5).
Those who teach and study Africa in the 21st century must learn to problematize the issue of
representation in order to locate and unpack the economic, political, personal, or other motiva
tions that might underlie any particular image of Africa. In his seminal books, entitled The
/111)(///;011 o/A.fric(l (1988) and The Idea a/Africa (1994), Congolese scholar and philosopher
V. y. lVludimbe has argued that since Greek timcs :Urica has "been represented in Western schol
arship b~ 'fantasies' and 'constructs' made up by scholars and writers" (1994: xv). What Mudimbe
is arguing here is not that the continent called '~'\frica" is somehow detached from the globe or
that it is a "geographic fiction," but rather he is saying that our kno\\ ledge of Africa has been
constructed and disseminated through (mostly negative) images and theories by Europeans about
Africa and Africans (Gyekye, 1995: xxiv). Such images of Africa have often been used by Western
writers to "establish opposites and 'others' wbose actuality is always subject to the continuous
interpretation and reinterpretation of their differences from 'us'" (Said, 1995: 3). For this rea
son, representations ofAfrica generally tell us far less about those who are being represented than
they do about the preoccupations and prejudices of those engaged in the act of representjng.
At different moments in history, negative images of Africa have been used to endorse various
Western activities on the African continent - such 35 the slave trade, military occupation, colo
nial expallsionism, Christian evangelical conversion, or e\'en the terms and conditions of inter
n:nional \"orld Bank loans. The following is a clear and poignant example of how a particular
representation of Africa could be used for self-interested goals and, in this case, for personal
economic gain. In the late eighteenth century, Archibald Dalzel, a British adventurer and polit
ical envoy in Africa, published an historical account of the West African kingdom of Dahomey
(1793). In this folio volume, illustrated (and, as it were, authenticated) by numerous copper
plate engra\ings, Dall.el painted an especially negative image of the peoples of Dallomey,
describing them variously as a "savage," "\\arJike," and "ferocious" nation whose rulers legiti
mated their authorit) through the frenetic exercise of large-scale human sacrifices. He argued
that the practice of raiding Dahomean villages to capture men and women for export as slave
labor to the Americas could be justified on the grounds that it rescued potential victims of
human sacrifice who would otherwise be killed by their own people. "\Vhatever evils the sJaYe
trade may be attended with," \\ rote DalzeJ, "tills we arc sure of, it is mercy to the unfortunate
bra\'c, and not less to poor wretches who, for a small degree of guilt, would otherwise suffer from
the butcher's knife" (1793: XX\). Research into the life and career of Dalzel reveals, however, that
he was hea\ ily invested in the slave trade and, at the time that he published his account, his busi
ness was under direct attack b) the anti-slave-trade movement, whose supporters were arguing
in the British parliament for the abolishment of slavery (Waldman, 1965). Thus, far from an
objective representation of Dahomey and its inhabitants, DaJzel's account, liKe so many others
bcfore and after him, was but a veiled artempt to further the author's own interests and goals.
The problem with books such as DalzeJ's is that their negative imagery lingers on long after
the publication of the origlnal accOunt. Subsequent travellers to Dahomey, for example, relied
heavily on Dal7.el's report, and often copied \"erbatim his descriptions of Dahomean rites and
customs, especially the human sacrifices which they themselves often admit not having seen.
"When new generations of explorers or administrators went to Africa," notes Philip Curtin,
"rhc!' went with prior impressions of what they would fmd" (1964: xii).
12 INTRODUCTION
The process of transcultmal representation goes both ways. Since earliest contact with foreign
cultures, Africans have also represented "others" in their arts, riluals, myths, and oral narra
tives. Some of these representations offered satirical commentary on colonial and missionary
activiries, others sought to incorporate the symbolic power of the "distant" and the "foreign"
into indigenous belief systems and religious practices, while yet others were intended as cultural
expressions of protcst and resistance.
Tn the 1940s, a Yoruba can'er named Thomas ana adulate created miniature scuJptures of
Europe-ans dressed in their characteristic colonial attire. These sculptures were made for sale to
rravelers and colonial agents who brought them back to Europe as exotic keepsakes and souve
nirs of Africa. Most of these carvings captured the clements of European demeanor that most
amused the Yoruba: "the pith-heLrnit of the district officer (often likened to a calabash); the long
moustache of the colonial governor (often compared to a cat's); the white wig of the lawyer
(often likened to the head of a senile person), and the spectacles on the nose of the court-clerk
(often likened to the eyes of an owl)" (Lawai, 1993: 9). While the artist is known to have told his
clients Ihat these carvings \\ere not intcnded to ridicule Europeans, but were meant instcad to
project hierarchy and rank, Nigerian art historian Babatunde Lawai cannot help but wonder
whether these carvings were not also intended as subversive images against colonial authority.
Were they not satirical commentary on idiosyncratic British character? Were tbey not objects of
ridicule which functioned to "savage" the European in an African visual art?
Representation is an issue which lies at the heart of a long-standing debate in African studies
regarding the culturaJ composition of Africa itself. On one side of the debate are those who argue
that there is indced such a thing as an "African" identity whose deep cssenc-e transcends the sur
face differences which distinguish one African culture from another. On the other side are those
"'ho argue that the peoples of Africa ha,-e far less cuhurally in com.mon than is usually assumed.
nglo-Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah is among those who have argued that
there is no culturaJ unit} in Africa, and that Africanist discourse has inaccurately grouped
together Yastly divergent cultures which bave little or nothing in common. "\Vhalever Africans
share," he writes, "we do not have a common traditional culture, common languages, a common
religious or conceptual vocabulary ... we do not even belong to a common race" (1992: 26).
"The central cultural fact of African life," Appiah concludes elsewhere, "remains not the same
ness of Africa's cultures, but their enormous diversity" (1995: 40).
Among those who maintain that there is in fact an underlying uniformity to the cultures of
Africa is anthropologist Igor Kopytoff, who has argued that in the historical diffusion of cul
tures across tbe continent, "the frontiersmen were bringing with them a basically similar kit of
cultural and ideological resources" (1987: 10). Thus, according to this perspective, cultures in
Africa spread through time from place to place carrying with them comparable cultural baggage
and deeply rooted worldviews, which today enable us to look at the continent of Africa as a
coherent cuJtural system and an epistemological whole. As Kopytoff concludes: "it is not sur
prising that Sub-Saharan Africa shouJd exhibit to such a striking degree a fundamental cultural
unity" (1987: 10).
Whilc Kopytoff's argument is largely historical and anthropological in nature, the debate
oyer Africa's culturaJ unity has also been linked at times to political arguments about the place
of modern Africa in a postcolonial world. Cheikh Anta Diop, for example, a SenegaJese historian
and outspoken proponent of Pan-African solidarity, argued beginning in the 1950s that African
cultures needed to find a common historical root which could unify tbe irlhabitants of the
continent (1978). Diop asserted that just as Europe drew much of its strength from the unity
it established by tracing its ancestry to a single Greco-Latin culture, so too Africa had to locate
INTRODUCTION 13
and exploit a similar unified cultural background in order to develop its own strength through a
coaJescing regime of self-awareness. Thus, the present diversity of Africa was, according to this
argument, "more illusion than reality" (July, 1987: 138).
Other arguments for the wltural unity of Mrica, which were also largely political in charac
tcr, were made, for instance, by some of the other proponents of the negritude movement, such
as the Martiniquan poet Aime Cesaire and Senegalese intellectual Leopold Senghor; by the
leader of independent Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, in his discourse on "African Personality"
(1963); and by man) African philosophers, including W. E. Abraham (l962), Kwesi Wiredu
(1980), and Paulin Hountondji (1983), among olhers. What joins all of these perspectives is a
common desire to go beyond the mere political or economic freedom which was offered by
African independence in the 1960s. True "independence" depended upon liberating Africa
from the ethical and aesthetic standards of the West, and on a process of "intellectual decoloni
tation" which involved a search for a common African ancestry in order to reunite a divided
continent auly, 1987: 18).
The question of Africa's cultural unity remains an important and controversial topic today. In
a "blockbuster" exhibition of African art held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, for
example, the issue of cultural unity emerged as a central point of contention and debate. Unlike
prior exhibitions of African art, which generally have concentrated on the arts of a more delim
ited or particular region - one defined as broadly, for example, as West or Central Africa as a
whole, or as narrowly as a single ethnic group, such as Yoruba, Dan, or Dogon - this exhibition,
entitled Africa: The Art af a COlltinent, included works from the entire continent, embracing
Ancient Egypt and Islamic North Africa as well.
The problem, however, is what do all these diverse cultures, separated by space and time, have
in common with each other? Appiah, who commented critically on the exhibition, argued that
what they have in common is merely their shared classificatory history in the Western taxonomy
and represenmtion of world art. "What unites these objects as African," he writes, "is not a
shared nature, not the shared character of the cultures from which they came, but allr ideas of
Afrie-a; ideas which ... have now come to be important for many Africans, and tlms are now
African ideas 100" (1995: 4-1). In our collective imagination ,\e have come to accept a category of
objccts we call African art. But can geographic contiguity alone suffice as a criterion for cultural
lassification? How do we define the category European art? Surely, there are more nuances to
such a category than merely including all art forms that emanate from the continent of Europe.
Imagine, for example, an exhibition of European art which lumped together Greek statuary,
illuminated Medicval manuscripts, paintings ofthe Italian Renaissance, and German Expressionist
prints. Does an exhibition of ''African art" amount to tJle same degree of cultural clustering of
diverse artistic expressions and distinct historicaJ moments? Or, conversely, is there a "deep" and
"unconscious" African identity which unites all artistic expressions from the continent?
Museum exhibitions reveal to the viewer things that might otherwise remain unnoticed or
unseen. They spotlight certain aspects of art and culture, while simultaneousl~" masking others
in the shadow of their own illuminations. To some extent, this book is itself a kind of exhibilion
a collection of pieces that comes to stand for a version of what is commonly called African stud
ies. Like an exhibition, this book offers what art historian S\'ctlanaAlpers (1991: 27) calls "a way
of seeing" - the structuring of vision which results from isolating an object of study in order to
encourage the viewer to look at the familiar in an unfamiliar way or, conversely, to see the unfa
miliar in a familiar way. Like a collection of objects ,~isplayed side-by-side in a museum case, this
volume assembles and binds works of scholarship that might not otherwise have come together.
Their juxtaposition is meant to encourage contrast and comparison, to spin the initial threads
14 INTRODUCTION
of intcrtextual dialogue and debate, and to engage with each other in a contest of methodology
and intcrpret2tion. But the totalit} of this collection is inevitabl) artificial or, as it were, inau
1hemic <;ince the field of study is constantly changing, growing, and redefining itself Yet like the
most timeless of exhibitions, which must eventually be dismantled and packed awa} LO make
room for something new, this book offers a timely collec! ion of perspecri,'cs on Africa - a series
of cssays \\ hich reprcsent our vision of African studies past and present, and a set of perspec
tives which will direct and condition the future of this discipline.
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Appiah, K\\ arne Anthony. 1992. Itl _'H)' Fallta 's Ilome: ..Hi-il'lI i/l Ihe Pltilosophy CuIJllre. New York and Oxford:
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INTRODUCTION J5
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Spiro, Melfol'd. E. 1990. "On the Strangc and Familiar in Recent Anthropological Thought." In.J. Stigler, R. A.
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Yansina, Jan, 1(j85. Oral Traliili!>lr "S HisTory. Madison: Cniversit) of Wisconsin Press.
\\aldman, Loren ~. 1\.165. ":\n Unnoticed Aspect of A.rchibald Dalzcl's 'lI,e JIislfll)' of Dflhom)'." JOl/rnal of
'l/riClll1lJislory 6(2): 185-92.
White, 1". D., G. Su\\a, and Il.\sfu\\. 1994. ",III.Hra!opilltem.' fIImitlus, a I\ew Spccics of Early lIominid from
_-\rami~, Ethiopia."'\'dlllre 371(6+95): 306-12.

 Cape Verde

..'
().~J

Gambia

Equatorial
Guinea
o
Sao Tome and Princip'b

[PORTUGUESEI
1. Azande Cabinda
So Tome 2. Fante (Angola)
aod 3. Hutu
Principe 4.lgbo
5. Kikuyu
6. !Kung San
7. Lele/Bushong
8. Lese/Efe
9. Mbuti
10. Mende

v
11. Muedan
12. Ndau
13. Nuer
14. Suku
15. Swahili
16. Tallensi
17. Tutsi
18. Tswana
19. Yonuba
Map 1 Africa in the colonial era, c.I925 20. Zulu

Map 2 Africa today, showing the ethnic groups discussed in the book
C ill
O(/)

~=s

-f--JO
C U
CD(/)

(/)-
CDO

QD

CD C
cern

 Introduction

The e~says in this part address the issue of representation, and explore ho\\ "Africa" has been
imagined and constructed in both ,Vestern and African discourses (see also our General
lntroduction). Since earliest contact between Europe and Africa, individuals on both sides of
the encounter ha\'e classified and represented the other from the perspective of their own cul
tural assumptions and values. Although the readings here deal largely with European images of
Africa and Africans, it is important to keep in mind that from the vcry earliest moments of
encounter Africans have also generated images of Europeans.
When European seafaring travelers first set foot on the coast of Central Africa in the late fif
teenth century, for example, it is reported that the local inhabitants sa\\ them as spirits \\ ho had
returncd to the Jiving from their ancestral world somewhere far off at sea. There was no category
of person ,in Central African thought which could account for a European, so rather than invent
one Ihe) were classified according to pre-existing criteria - as dead ancestors. Describing the
nature of this transcultural encounter, anthropologist Wyatt MacGaffey has written that:

When the first Portllguese arrived in Kongo in 1485 the~ exhibited the principa 1characteristics of the
dead: I he) were white in color, spoke an unintelligible language, and possessed technology superior
even [Q that of the local priestl) guild of smiths.... The first Portuguese, like their successors to the
prescnt day, were regarded as visitors from the land of the dead. (1986: 1(9)

Representations of Europeans in African visual art first appear in the fifteenth century in ivory
carvings (saltceUars, spoons, and Catholic ritual objects) which were commissioned by Portuguese
merchants from artists in coastal Sierra Leone to take back as tribute to the Portuguese crown
(Curnow, 1990; Blier, 1993). In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Europeans wcrc exten
si\cl) depicted in bronze plaques which adorned the king's palace at the royal court ofBcnin. In
these natunuistic representations created by highly accomplished court artists, Europeans may
be identificd by their military drcss and accoutrements, and by lheir beards, moustaches, and
hairstyles which werc charactcristic of Portuguese fashion during this period (Ezra, 1992: 128-9).
22 INTRODUCTION
The plaques, \\ hich hung throughour the palace in Benin City, alluded to the power of the king,
whose network of influence stretched as far as Europe - a remote land from where 'vI-ealth)
visitors came to pay their respect to the court.
As in the earlier example from the Kongo encounter with Europeans, the Portuguese were
folded almost seamlessly into prior categories of Benin soeial structure and religious beliefs.
"Because they came from across the sea, bringing \\ ith chem wealth and luxury items," writes
anthropologist Paula Ben-Amos, "the Portuguese travelers were readily incorporated into (or
perhaps generated) the complex of ideas associated \\ ith the god Olokun, ruler of the seas and
prO\;der of earthly wealth" (1980: 28). Sadly, yet ironically, these veT} plaques were among the
thousands of royal artifacts which were seized by the British military in 1897, during their
so-called Punitivc Expedition against the oba of Benin, "hose agents were charged with killing
SLX British officcrs in the course of a trade negotiation putatively gone awry. Man)' of these
objects '~cre sold shortly thereafter at auction in London, and are .110\\ held in museums amI
private collections throughout Europe and "Iorth America.
The British Punitive Expedition against the coun ofBenin took place at the height ofEurope's
militnry aggression toward Africa - an intense period of time when all European efforts were
being made to secure their colonial territories and est:ibJish resolute imperial authorit) abroad.
African resistance to European political rule was, in some areas of the continent, defiant, power
ful, and often bitter (WeiskeJ, 1980; Ranger, 1986). Also, during the same period, African rejec
tion of certain export commodities undermined European mercantile aspirations of economic
growth and prosperity in what European entrepreneurs had hoped was a promising ne\\ con
sumer marketplace in the African colonies. Textile manufacturers in France, for example, could
not understand wh) Afric:ans would reject their latest industrial, factor) -made c10Lh in favor of,
what the French perceived to be, the more crude and rudimentar) African handwO\'Cn fabrics
(Steiner, 1985).
Not surprisingly, then, this was a period in European history which generated a vast amolmt
of negative propaganda and denigratory stereotypes about Africa and :\.fricans. It was also a time
when technological developments in mass communications, especially newspapers and iIJus
trated magazines, enabled large amounls of information to be disseminated quickl) to a wide
;md eager audience (Schneider, 1982; Blanchard and Chatelier, 1993). Africans were depicted in
the European press in a manner \\ hich was calculated to entitle and authorize colonial expan
sionist goals. During the late nineteenth century, for example, on the eve of France's military
aggression against Dahomcan resistance to colonial rule, the French press seized upon both
textual and visual representations of human sacrifice in Dahomey. Most of these images had
been constructed and disseminated over a century earlier by Archibald Dalzel, a British mercan
tile explorer who had published horrific images of human sacrifice in his History 0/ Da!lolllY
(1793) in order to rationalize European violence against Africans in the Atlantic slave trade (see
the General Introduction). The "recycling" of this negative imagery by the French press was
now intended to legitimate colonial rule and, once again, rationalize European actions in Africa.
As historian William Schneider notes, "The mass illustrated [press] played a key role in prepar
ing the French public for the conqucst of Dahomey, which was the first episode in the French
government's ne\\ policy of open colonial aggrandizement in the 1890s" (1982: 103; Campion
Yincent, 1967).
Although the colonial period produced an abundance of racist and paternalistic images of
'\fr;ca in European an, literature, mass media, and scholarship, this was not always the case.
European images of Africa from about the twelfth to seventeenth centuries were predominantly
"positi\-e" ones which depicted Afric:ans either as "noble" beings living in harmony with nature,
INTRODUCTION 23
or as political allies whose vast I.ingdoms and empires were believed to be commensurate with
the most powerful of royal monarchies which reigned in Europc. A glorified image of Africa
emerged in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when Europeans began to 'iew Africans as
potential military partners against the spread of Islam. When the Crusaders lost Jerusalem in
12+4 and their strongholds in Palestine and Syria in 1291, Ethiopia became important as a pos
sible all) against the i\luslims (Debrunner, 1979: 24). A relationship of cooperation and mutual
respect between Europe and Ethiopia developed throughout the ensuing four centuries. In
1634, for example, when a school for Ethiopian linguistics was established in Rome, European
Christians believed that the Ethiopian language "as the "original language of paradise"
(Nedervcen Pieterse, 1992: 28).
Although these images do not represent the "beastliness" and "barbarism" which were to be
evoked later in the colonialist representation of "darkest" Africa, they are, of course, as philoso
pherVY Mudimbe (1988: 1994) reminds us, but one of two extremes in Europe's polarized
evaluation of Africa - both of which are equally based on European fantasies rather than on
African realities. Mudimbe writes:
from Herodotus onward, the West's self-representations have always included images of peoplc situ
,!ted outside of its cultural and imaginary frontiers. The paradox is that if, indeed, these outsiders were
understood as localized and far away geographically, thc)' were nonetheless imagined and rejected as
the intimate and other side of the Europe:m-Lhinking subject. (1994: xi).
The problem of representation has been taken up by literary critic Christopher j\J{jIler in his
book, Blank Dtlrkness: Africal/ist Discourse in French (1985). In a chapter entitled "Deriving a
Discourse," Miller explores the semantic and historical roots of the terms Africa and Africanist.
ikc Mudimbe, he argues that from the time of earliest contact, Africa has been imprinted with
European constructs, such that at some moments Africans were represented as "noble," while at
others they were judged "monstrous." Africa, according to whller, was a "blank" space in
Europe's collective imagination which could be populated with all sorts of invented creatures
and entangled in the various products of European fears and desires.
1\s a professor of literature, and one who focuses on texts and their representations, Miller
deals primarily with the question of language. No matter whcre European explorers went in
Africa - whether to the most accessible regions of the continent or the most remote - they
always brought back their knowledge and "discoveries" in the form of language. This language,
which eventually comes to be known as Africanist discourse, is structured by its 0\\ n predeter
mined form. That is to say, the unknown cannot be represented in language without reference
to something already kno\\ n. The language which was used to describe Africa was made to fit the
narrative conventions of European languages and rhetoric - its models, idioms, metaphors, sys
tems of classification, and cultural assumptions.
How diffcrent is this from the early Kongo encounter with Europeans, in which Europeans
were cyaluated according to pre-existing categories of thought? Does every process of transcul
tural representation involve locating points of intersection between the kno\\ n and the unknown,
the familiar and the unfamiliar, the self and the other? How would you go about describing
something, sayan object, to someone who had ne"cr seen anything like it before? Would you
tl) to describe it with images or "ith words;> Would you begin by noting what it looks like
(its appearance) or what it was used for (its function)? Would you draw contrasts and compari
sons bctween that unfamiliar object and something more commonly found in your own cultural
environment?
24 INTRODUCTION
While M.iller has lookeJ broadly a1 the question of representation and its discourses, Jean and
John Comaroff's essay in thi!, voillme, "Africa Observed," explores the "imagined landscape" of
Africa within the context of a \ ery specific historical moment, Beginning in the late eighteenth
century, they demonstrate the pervasive and profound influence of slavery in shaping European
discourses abollt Africa, On the one hand, abolitionists argued that slavery had corrupted
Africa - "deforming the normal progress of ci, iljzation" - and that Africans required emanci
pation and conversion to Christianity in order to be saved. On the other hand, those who
opposed abolition argued that Africans \\ere naturally incited to "savagery" and war, and that
the slave Irade rescued them from the fate of their own barbarism. Either way, the Comaroffs
conclude, "Africa was degraded and debased."
In rJleir attention to the European image of South Africa, in partjcular, the Comaroffs dem
onstrate how texts could be used to make specific territorial claims. Analyzing John Barrow's
AcrOUllI of 1'1'(n0s into tlte Imeriol' ofSouthern Africa in lite Years J791 (/ud 1198, for example,
they argue that the author intentionally <.-,eated the image of an empty landscape just waiting to
be seized by British colomal nile - an "unpopulated" place inhabited only by "unregenerate
natives" and "degenerate Dutchmen," both of whom feU outside British definitions of civiliza
tion and were, therefore, pcrceived as populations without legitimate claims to the land they
happened to occupy.
The Comaroffs bring into sharp focus the relationship between gender and representation in
their discussion of the portrayal of Africa as woman. Sexual metaphors of penetration abound
in the literature of African exploration, where Africa was reduced "to the body of a black female
yielding herself to white male discovery" (see also McClintock, 1995). Du.ring the late eight
eenth centmy, a new political discourse surfaced in Europe wrueh drew explicit physically
derived contrasts between men and women. Rooted in the pseudo-objectivity of a newly emerg
ing biological epistemology, (male) scientists claimed that men were the be,u"ers of reason 3..-1"1d
rationalit), while women's temperament was adversely affected by their dominant reproductive
rgans which were linked directly to tlle central nervous system. The denigration of Africa as
female body was linked to this new gender ideology, such that women and Africans were equally
devalued and made pcripheral in contrast to the European ideal of "rational man."
The Comaroffs examine the issue of representation from the perspective of how European
images of Africa are constructed and circulated. That is to say, their aim is to analyze and decon
struct the languages - textual strategies and visual gra.mmars - that have been llsed to portray
Africa in European narratives about other cultures. Other authors, especially those of African
descent, ha"e offered a different perspective on the issue of representation by addressing an even
mOre fundamental question: namely, how can one hope to represent the realities and complexi
ties of a foreign culture without possessing the full extent of language skills of an indigenous
speaker? Maxwell Owusu, for example, looks less at the dissemination of knowledge about Africa
in European texts, and more at the cLajms of authenticity and validity of the production of that
very knowledge at the moment of transcultural encounter and interlocution (Owusu 1978).
Although there are some noteworthy exceptions, anthropologists in the C<1Ily decades of this
century rareb bothered to learn the indigenous language. Working through "native"interprct
ers versed to a greater or lesser degree in the language of the colonizer (such as French, English,
or Portuguese), anthropologists collected data which was inevitably being filtered and corrupted
through its various st.ages of translation. Beginning in the 1940s and 19S0s, with the develop
ment of more intensive and long-term field research, anthropologists began to study the lan
g'uag'e of the people with whom they worked. Much of their knowledge was gained through
dictionaries and grammars written by European and American missionaries who had become
INTRODUCTION 25
proficient in most African languages as a means to proselytize. But no matter how well versed
one might become in <1 foreign tongue, it is arguable that unless one is raised and nurtured in the
cultural environment of a linguistic group it may be hard, if not impossible, to capture all of a
cultllfe's subtleties and complexities. In building his argument, Owusu makes reference to a
debate in anthropology wruch took place in the early 1940s between Marg'aret Mead and Robert
Lo\\ ie on the necessity of "native languages as fieldwork tools" While Lowie believed that lan
guage competence was essential to understanding other cultures, Mead viewed language as a
mere instrument of research which could be hired out through local interpreters. Although
neither of these anthropologists worked in Africa, their debate raises interesting problems
regarding language skills, the translation of culture, and the production of knowledge.
Owusu's argument is so compelling that one may wonder why anthropologists have not ques
tioned language competence more seriously before. His answer to this problem forms part of his
argument: throwing into doubt d1e issue of language proficiency in field research would under
mine all anthropology except the study of one's own culture. Since historically the unit of study
in anthropology has been non-Western societies (although this is now quickly changing), and
since anthropology was a discipline dominatecllargely by Western scholars (although today this
has significantly changed), the only people qualified to conduct field research in non-Western
contexts would be those who had been identified as the observed - and not the observers. This
dilemma explains why anthropologists have argued that what the stranger "discovers" in field
research is an abstraction of "reality" wruch is unknowable to indigenous peoples themselves.
The epistemological Jistance between anthropologists and the cultural data before them, the
argument goes, allows them to somehow "see" things that would otherwise remain unnoticed by
indigenous people who are too steeped in their own cultural traditions. The perspective cham
pioned by Owusu turns this methodological canon of anthropology on its head, and argues
instead tha.t the interpretation of culture can onl) come from "native" anthropologists who
speak the language with sufficient competence to understand the subtleties and nuances of cul
tural expression.
A related debate on African languages exists, within the context ofAfrican literature, between
Nigerian writer and critic Chinua Achebe and exiled Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Writing
in the earl) 1960s, just a few years after Nigerian independence, Achebe argued that English
ought to become the adopted language of African writers. He believed that Nigerian literature
should serve to promote feelings of national solidarity, and that it could only do so by assuming
the form of a "national" literature written in the nationallang'uage, rather than merely an "eth
lUC" literature "Titten in one of the numerous indigenous languages of Nigeria - such as Hausa,
ho, Yoruba, and so on (Achebe, 1975: 92).
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, conversely, has argued more recemly that African literature should be
written in the author's mother tongue, As a child listening' to stories told to him in rus natal
Gfkuyu language, he learned "to value words for their meanings and nuances. Language was not
a mere string of words. It had a suggestive power well beyond the immediate and lexical meaning"
(1986: 9). European lanf!uages, for ~gugi, were weapons of the colonizers - vehicles through
which the African soul was held prisoncr. The liberation of that expressive spirit for African
am hors, according to Ngugi, could only come from writing in the indigenous language of their
own culture. It would seem, then, that Owusu and Ngugi are arguing from the same perspective.
Ooth "iew language nol simply as a tool of communication, but rather as a rich purveyor of
culturalkno\\ ledge which loses its depth and meaning in Lhe process of translation. Representation
and language are thus linked in this complex matrix of culture, where they inform and predeter
mine One another.
26 INTRODUCTION
Two readings in this section offer an intertextual dialogue between two African scholars
regarding African cultural unity and the relationship between Europe, ancient Eg"pt, and sub
Saharan Africa. Beginning with Herodotus in the fifth century Be, scholars in Europe believed
that the rise of civilization in ancient Greece could be attributed to the fact that it had been
colonized by the pt'..oples of ancient Egypt, and was shaped largely through its cultural borrow
ings from African cultures, This model, which historian J'Viartin Bernal calls the Ancient Model,
was accepted until the 1700s, "hen racism and "continental chauvism" overtook European his
toriograph} (1987: 1-2). To the Emopean historians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
Bernal writes, "it was simply intolerable for Greece, which was seen not merely as the epitome
of Europe but also its pure childhood, to have been the result of tJle mixture of native Europeans
and colonizing Africans" (1987: 2). In their efforts to redefine the cultural genesis of European
civilization, these historians set forth an alternative model in which it was argued that the origin
of ancient Greece was the product of European or Aryan inlluence. This model, which Bernal
caUs tJle Aryan Model, denies any cultural borrowings in ancient Greece from Africa. The shift
between these two radically different theories of history can be attributed not to the discovery
of new evidence or facts, but rather to changing racial attitudes in Europe during the period of
the Atlantic slave trade, "After the rise of black slavery and racism," Bernal concludes on this
point, "European thinkers were concerned to keep black Africans as far as possible from
European civiliwtion" (1987: 30). Thus, we see once again that the construction of history is a
matter of representalion, and not the cumulati\'e growth of knowledge which leads to a higher
and more objecti'e truth. Unlil fairl~ recently, the Aryan Model was the "accepted" version of
histor): which accounted for the rise of ancient GreeJ.. ciYililation.
Beginning in the mid 194Os, however, Cheikh Anta Diop, a Senegalese scholar and a strong adv~
cate of Pan-African political urnty, reversed the Aryan Model and placed conventional wisdom on
its head when he argued that it was Europe that depended on Africa and not the other way around
Ouly, 1987: 137). In scores of painstakingly researched volumes on African history and prehistory,
Diop sought to demonstrate - through linguistics, archaeology, anthropology, paleontology, history,
arr histaf), chemistT}', and physics - that African culture had been transmitted to Greece in ancient
rimes across Lhc Meclitcrrancan, and that its influence accounted for the rise of European civiliza
tion. Europe, in other words, once again owed its cx:ist.ence to Africa, and in particular to the immense
artistic, cultural, and technological accomplishments of ancient Egypt. A I. the core of Diop's argu
ment - a point which was left somewhat ambiguous in the earlier Ancient Model - is the notion that
ancient Egypt was a black nation, c1assilied as a distinct Afiican population, which had migrated
north from southemAfrica, rather lhan one associated with the ancient 0Sear East.
Diop's "ork has become ?Jl important resource in the rise of the Afrocentric movement in
both Europe and North America, The arguments of Afrocentrism are twofold. First it holds that
most Western scholarship views the world through Eurocentric eyes (sec Lambropoulos, 1993).
The achievements of other cultures (especially African culnlres) are subordinated to those of
Europe, while racial assrunptions about ancient civilizations deny that thc cultural triumphs of
ancient Egypt can be attributed to the accomplishments of black people. Second, Afrocentrism
holds that Africa should bccome the center of world history. That Europe should be judged by
African standards and values, a.nd not the other way round.
In his article, "Europe Upside Down," KwameAnthony Appiah speaks out against a rising tide
of publications which embrace this new Afrocentric perspccti\c. He argues that Afrocentrism is
seriously flawed on, at least, two counts. First, he notes, by reclassifying Egypt as a black culture,
Afrocentri~s have accomplished nothing but simply to reverse a Eurocentric model of world his
tOty. Impressed by the prescnce of many of the cultural qualities with which Europeans defined
INTRODUCTION 27
ci\ ilization - a well-developed writing system, a compIe.\ political, religious, and social hierarchy, a
specialized class of professional artists and artisans, and the eyidcnce of monumental arcllitecture
_ Europeans recognized ancient Eg'"pt as the most highly (and sometimes the only) dcYcloped
culture em the African continent. But, Appiah asks, what about the lllIDlense accomplishments of
non-literate societies in Africa' Wh): should all the attention ofAfrocentric discourse be focused on
Egypt, when there are so many other cultures in Africa whose histories are chronicled in oral
(rather than \\rirten) traditions? The attention layished on ancient Egypt by tJle Afrocentric move
Illent inlplies that the rest of the continent was someho\\ more "primitive" or "undeveloped," and
thlL~ underscores (rather than undermines) Europe's negative evaluation of Africa.
Second, Appiah remarks that Afrocentrism mistakenly tries to locatc a cultural unity on the
:\Jrican continent (see the General Inn-oduction). This again, he says, is a bias which grows
dirccu) out of a Euroccntric preoccupation with identifying a common core of\Vestern culture.
Appiah helieves that Africa's strengt h deri, es not from its putati,"e homogeneity but rather from
its rich complexity and divcrsity. Elsewhere he has written that "\Ve cannot accept ... the pre
supposition that there is, even at quite a high level of abstraction, all African world view" (1992:
82; original emphasis). Thc Afrocentrist search for African culnlral solidarity in a "fancied past
of ~hal'ed glories" should be replaced, he argues, by a less racially motivated quest for black
unit) - one that looks for llIliversaJ struggles and shared experiences among a vast array of indi
\,jduals, around Africa and the African diaspora, who each belong to thcir own distinctive com
munities (1992: 173-80). African culture is something which needs to be constructed in the
present and future, and not something which can be retrieved from an invented past. As it now
stands, however, Appiah concludes, AfTocenrrism is simply Eurocentrism turned upside down.
Finan}, in a chapter on "Di.scourse of Power and Knowledge of Otherness" the philosopherVY.
Mudimbe explores the process of colonization as an exercise in the c1assi.fication of being's and
societies. Behind the brute forcc of Western military power and political will which enabled Europe
to dominate Atiica beginning in the nineteenth century lies, according to Mudimbe, a more perni
ciOll~ and powerful mode of domination which is found in the way Africa and Africans were repre
sented b): Europeans in art, literature and eventually the science of Africanist discourse.
Lsing as his starting point a painting by sixteenth-century German :lrtist Hans Burgkmair,
~iudimbe argues that the artist represents Africans simultaneously as familiar bodies (what he
calls "blackened whites") and as unfamiliar exoric beings who embod) all that Europe does not.
The painting, which shows a boy, a man, and a seated woman with a baby pressed to her breast,
can be read at first glance as a "charming and decorative" image not untypical of the conven
tions of group portraiture in Europe at the time. What lie below the surface of this familiar
scene, howe,"er, are the signs of exoticness that differentiate "them" from "us" - "all are naked
and have either bracelets around their arms or a string around their necks, clear signs that they
belong to a 'savage' universe." What ~tudimbe is suggesting here in this protracted art-histori
cal analysi~ is that the surface similarities draw the viewer in to suggest the possibilit)' of resem
blance and sameness to Europc, bur the suhtle signs of difference which emerge on closer
inspection become the markers of difference which signify the exoticness of the African Other.
It is these signs of difference that ultimarely emerge in the nineteenth century as rhe distin
guishing characteristics of what Europeans perceivc as African inferiority and serve as the justi
fication for colonialism and the unleashing of European hegemony in Africa. Thus, for Mlldimbe,
and the other authors in this section, the construction of knowledge and imagef) is not merely
the surface material that lies above the infrastJ"llcture ()f "real" political and social domination,
but rather lhe disC()urse a.nd symbol system of Europe's image of Africa is itself a form of con
trol and colonialism that merits investigation in its own right.
28 INTRODUCTION
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INTRODUCTION 29
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kuper, ,\dal11. 1988. The II/l'~lI1iOIl 0/ Pmmtit'c SoC/ety: Trtlll.ifomllltill/lS II/ all IIIIISioll. London and Nell York:
Routledge.
Leopold, ~1ark. 2005. fllside /I ~Sl l\'ile: J'il/lcllfe, Hisl",.)'. {IIIII RcpreSt'lltaliol1 /III nil Afri((111 Frolllier. Santa Fe:
School of ,0\ mcrican Research Press.
Lips, Julil1s E. 1937. Tlte SO'rage rllts 8//('k. .0Je,\ Ha\en: Yale University Press.
LUll, Catherine :\ . ,tnd Jane L Collins. 1993. Readillg ViltiOlIll! Geogra.pltic. Chicago: Uni\ersilY or Chicago
Prc.~s.
MackeY,1::\'a. 1<)95. "Postmodernism and Cultural Politics in a Multicultural Nation: Conlests ol'er Truth in the
111111 Ih( flellr/ofAfrica Controvers}." PII/Ili. Cllltllre 7: 403-31.
Miller, Christopher L 1990. Theorte.t lif/{{ria/lls: Frllllcoph""e Lilel'lI/lire 111/11 '}lIthropology ill ,lfrica. Chicago and
Londun: The Universitv of Chicago Press.
l\nacmcka, Obioma. 2005. Felllllle Cirelll/leisioll alld Ihe Plili/ics of Kllo",ledge: A/;,;coll 110lllm /II II/Ipmali.t/
DlS((Iurses. t'ew York: Praeger.
Olo~e. Felix N. 1971. Th~ 4merimn IlIIage of. ({rica: t1ylh """ Rt-lIlily. Buffalo, ]';Y: Black /\cadem) Press.
Onyc\\ uenyi, Innocl'11t C. 1993. The .1/rirllll Origill of Greek Philosophy: .111 Exercise ill AfrorelllriSIII. ",sukb:
Univcrsit~ of Nigeria Press.
Price, Sally. 1Y89. Pcimiflu .4.rl ill Cm'iiud Plaas. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Screqueh<.:rhan, T 19<)+. The }}er",(lIclI/;es ,~(Af"7C1111 Philo.'lIph)': IIon::.on IImI Discl/llrSt'. New York: Routledge.
Spurlin, William J 2006. [mlleritllislII /),itht" the A-Iargins: f2.!,eer RepreselltlJliOlI alld the P(I/ili,'s of CIIIIIlre In
Soulhem ;~friro. \lew York: Palgra\e \la(;millan.
Stahl, Anne B. 2001. lIt/killg Hislory ill Ballda: .rI1I/hropofogiral VisillllS lif./frim:' PliSt. Cambridge: Cambridge
L niversi 1y Press.
Steiner, Christopher B. 1995. "'li'a\'el Engravings and the Consrruction of the Primitive" In Elazar Barkan and
Ronald Bush, cds., Prehislories "f/he Future: 77u Primi/lrisl Projecllllld Ihe Cullllre o/IHoJUlli.!IIl, pp. 202-25,
411>-18. Stanford, C'\: Sianford L'ni\ersil) Press.
 1

Africa Observed

Discourses of the Imperial !maginatic1n

Jean andJohn ComarofJ

Let liS ... contrast piety with atheism, the philosopher with the rude savage, the
monarch with the Chief, luxury with want, philanthropy with lawless rapine: let us set
before us in one \ iew, the lofty cathedral and the straw-hut, the flowery garden and the
stony waste, the \erdant meldow and the arid sands. And" hen our imagination shall
have completed the picture, and placed it in a light which may imitc contemplation, it
will, I think, be impossible not to dcrive from it instruction of the highest class. (William
Burchell 1824:2,444)

The imagined landscape of Africa was greatly
elaborated in late eighteenth-century Britain,
albeit less as an end in itself than as a bypro
duct of the mal-ing of modern European self
consciousness (cf. Said 1978; Asad 1973; Gates
]986). Tts fearures were formed in the context of
vigorous argumenLs about humanity, reason, and
civilization - debates that wcre driven by the
social and cultural uphe'lvals that accompanied
the rise of capitalism and that forced the nations
Jf Europe tu refashion their sense of themselves
as Jlolities on a world map. Africa became an in&~
pensable lerm, a negative trope, in the language of
modernity; it pro\ ided a rhetorical ground on
which a new sense of heroic history could be acted
out (cf Godzich 1987).
More than an) thing dse, perhaps, :tbolitionism
subsumed the great debates :.md discourses of the
age. For it rai~ed aHthe crucial issues involved in
the contested relarionship between European and
Other, saYagel') and ci\ ilization, free labor and
scn'itude, man and commodity; the ideological
stuff, that is, from which a liberal hegemony was
being made. As Davis (1975:350) has noteo, the
antislavery movement replayed Adam Smith's
message in another key, making of it a program
for global social transformation: that all classes of
society should be recognized as sharing a natural
identity of interest; that the common wcalth
depended on the liberty of e\'cryonc to pursue
their own ends in an unfettered material and
moral econom~.

From Jeoln and John Comaroff, Q( Rcvdatlnll and R~volll/IIJII, vol. I (l991), Uni\'cr~ity of Chic:Jf(o Prcs~, pp. 8(r..125.
32 JEAN AND JOHN COMAROFF
Abolitionism, as some have claimed, might have
been a pragmatic attempt to resolve contradictions
in dle culture of postenlightenment Britain. And
it clearly was a dispute about the merits and mor
als of different modes of colonial production. But
it was also an exercise in mobilizing new forms of
representation and communication (see Anderson
1983) to arouse the middle and laboring classes to
a passion for epic reform; the contToversy was
widely aired in mass-circulating pamphlets, news
papers, and religious 1racts, as well as in the dis
criminating columns of the literary reviews. And it
drew upon a number of related discourses which
alike had become sites for lhe formulation of a
coherent bourgeois awan:ness. These discourses
arose out of a number of distinct but relatc.d fields
of exploration. Each aimed to construct what
Ifeidegger (1977: 115f.; see Godzich 1987:xiv) ha.~
identified as a mechanism of mastery, an cxplana
tOJ") scheme capable of objectifying nature and
representing it to t11e knowing, synthesizing
human suhject. Most significant among them - at
least in shaping the consciousness of our evange
lists - were the discoveries of the geographical
mission to Africa; the im'estigations into human
essence and difference within the emerging life
sciences; and Lhe mythology of the noble savage
celebrated by the romantic mO\"ement (Curtin
1964:34), which explored otherness in a variet)' of
aesthetic genres. Each of these discourses had its
own institutional context and e.xpressive forms.
But each played off tile others - often in produc
tive discord - and conduced to an increasingly
rationalized debate about the narure of ci\ iliza
tion, the civib7.ation of nature. '\nd togeilier, by
virtue of bntli their form and their content, lhey
established the dark continent as :l metaphysical
stage on which various white crusaders struck
moral postures (.'\chebe 1978:9).1
The symbolic terrain of a rarely-seen Africa,
then, was being shaped by a cascade of narrati\'es
that strung together motley "scientif:ic facts" and
poeric images - facts and images surveyed by an
ever more rO\ing European eye. As this suggests,
the rhetoric of light and dark, of color and cul
ture, was alre'ldy palpable in contemporary
Europe, though it had not yet taken on the full fan
of connotations it was to bear in Victorian thought.
Hume (l85-1-:3,228n), after all, had argued that
"there scarcely ever was a civilized nation of
!.1"egro] complexion," and Rousseau had echoed
his sentiment that blacks were mentally inferior
by nature,z Those who opposed abolition argued
that slaver~ was the "natural law" of Africa, as
much part of the condition of savagery as the can
nibalism and wanton bloodshed so luridly
described by some observers (Dalzel [1793] 1799;
Norris [1789] 1968). Abolitionists tended to
respond by blaming the sla\'e trade itself for
defomling the normal progress of civilization
(Austen and Smith 1969:79). Either way, Africa
was degraded and debased.
It was also ine"u'ic;lbly entangled in a western
embrace. Romantic poets might have envisaged
Africans liying lives free of Europe (Branrlinger
1985: 170), but the weight of public opinion al the
turn of the nineteenth cennlry suggested the
opposite. So, too, did the sheer weight of evi
dence. Whether as pun-eyors or reformers of the
"evil traffic," white men had written themselves
into the present and future of the continent.
Whatever else it might have entailed, abolitionism
did not argue for European withdrawal from
Africa. It made the case for the replacement of
one mode of colonial extraction with another.
Once emancipated, his hwnanity established, the
savage would become a fit subject of Empire and
Christendom.
In iliis chapter we examine each of the dis
coW"ses through which Africa came to be imag
ined, tracing their confluence to the argument
over slavery itself. In so doing, we witness the rise
of a more and more elaborate model of the rela
tionship of Europe to the "dark continent": a rela
tionship of both complementary opposition and
inequality, in which the former stood to the latter
as civilization to nature, savior to victim, actor to
subject. It was a rc.lationship whose very creation
implied a historical imperative, a process of inter
vention through which the wild \YOuld be culti
vated, the suffering saved. Life would imitate the
masterful gestures of art and science. The "nati\'e"
\yould be brought into the European world, but as
the recipient of a gift he could never return
except by acknowledging, gratefully, his own sub
ordination. And in this colonizing project the
Christian missionary would playa special role as
agcnt, scribe, and moral alibi ....
AFRICA OBSERVED 33
Into South Africa: Of Maps and Morals such districts as were contiguous to the Cape"
(1801-4:1,8). This was taken to indicate lax colo
In Britain ca. 1800, West Africa served as stereo
nial control, something that the British "spirit of
tvpe for the continent as a whole. The Cape of
commerce and adventurous industry" would rem
Good Hope was a secondary focus of European
edy. The frontispiece of Barrow's book has a com
concern. A small colony administered since 1652
prehensive map of thc Cape Colony, constructed
by the Dutch East lncLa Company, it had gener
from bearings, distances; and latitudes observed
,ltcd little travel literature, especially in English 3
during his travels. The map presents this land to
In 1795, however, the Cape was taken over by
Britain for the taking, its virgin scapes laid tantaliz
Brilain as a consequence of her war with the
ingly bare, its routes of access picked out in red.
French, who had invaded T{olland and were
Barrow's Account was also a moral geography of
tbought Iikel) to seize the Dutch outpost on the
the interior of the Cape, one which not so much
sea rOUie to the East (Harlow 1936:171f). John
emptied the landscape of its human inhabitants
Barrow, founder of the Royal Geographical Society
(Pratt 1985) as denied them any legitimate claim to
(",hich was to absorb the African Association), was
it. The text cleared the ethical ground for British
appointed personal secretary to Macartney, the
colonialism by depicting the territory as a polar
new governor of the Colony:' As Macartney's pro
ized human universe of unregenerate nalives and
lege he had accompanied the Jatter to China in
degenerate Dutchmen. The dualistic vision of
1792, serving officially as comptroller to the
nature in postenlightenment imagery, to \I bicb we
embassy but acting' also as observer of Chinese
alluded above and shall return, speaks out here.
ci\ilization (Lloyd 1970:24). ]\;0'" he was sent on a
The Dutch had negated their own humanity by
tour of the Souili African interior to represent His
treating the blacks as objects, prey to be "hunted"
j\lajest~ and to investigate the discontents of fron
(1801-4:1,273); they sought to validate a "mon
tier farmers, "hose long-standing resistance to the
strous" manhood (1801-4:1,145) by exterminat
Dutch Company hac! been transferred to the new
ing nature's innocents - rather than by elel'ating
administration. s
them, and all African humanity, through forceful
Barro'" 's Account of Travels jlltn the Interior of
cultivation. Their brutal bravado was founded on
SOli/hem Africa in the Years 1797 and] 798 (1801-4)
a my th of sa\agery that Barrow feels called upon to
was self-evidently a colonial document. A legitima
dispel (1801-U,196):
tion of the British annexation of the Cape, it aLw
gave eyewitness account of the degradation of the
It is a common idea, industriousl)" kept up in the
Ulch frontiersmen, who, lacking a European
colony, that the Ka ffers 6 are a savage, rreacherous,
"spirit of improvement and experiment," had
and crucl people, a character as f8lse as it is
regressed to take on the qualities of their rugged
unmerited ...
and soporific surrounds (1801-4: I,67; see also
Stre-dk 197+5f.; Coetzee 1988:29f). The very land
Likewise, speaking of the Khoisan, he adds that
~cape conveyed this unrefined state to Barrow's eye,
the "Hottentots" (Khoi) weTe "mild, quiet, and
schooled as he was on nicely-demarcated European
timid people, perfcctly harmless, honest, faith
vistas of private ownership (1801-4: 1,57):
ful," their timeless customary existence destroyed
by Dutch abuse (180l-04:1,151); and the
As none of the [extensive bnds] are enclosed "Bushmen" (San) were "like frightened children"
there is a general appearance of nakedness in the mowed down by Boer bullets as thq played with
country ... which ... if divided by fences, would bows and arrows (1801-4:1,273).
become sufficiently beautiful, as narure in draw These obsen-ations were grounded in the very
ing the outline has performed her part. real fact of genocide; there is plenty of collateral
evidence to prove that a war of ex'Termination had
The Dutch had not inyestigated the interior sys been waged along the frontier against the Khoisan
tematically and, perhaps most diagnostic for (see e.g. Marais 1944; Marks 1972; Elphjck and
Barrow, had "no kind of chart or survey, save of Malherbe 1989). Nor is there any doubt that Barrow
34 JEAN AND JOHN COMAROFF
believed himself to be" riting a hislflric(~/ account of
both Boer and Bushman, explaining how each had
bcen affected b) the \ iolent encounter with the
other. 1\lonethelcss, there is in this historiography
another process at work. l.n building his stereot)l'ic
contrasts, Barro\\, intentionally or not, was also
fleshing out an imaginative structure, a set of oppo
sitions which came to be shared b) many of his con
temporaries (sec Coerzee 1988:29f.). The Dutch
farmer was Europe-,m civilization grow n rotten in
the African sun - his "narure" made yet more
degenerate, his "indolence of body and 10\\
groveling mind" corrupted yet fmlher by being an
uwner and master of slaves (BalTow 1801--4 quoted
by Coetzee 1988:29; see also Philip 1828,1 :367f.;
1\10odie 1835:1,176). He was the vcr) antithesis of
Protestam enlightenment, ha\ing willfully permit
ted his own debasement. The "savage tribes," made
so brutish by seventeenth-ccnrury Dutch reports
(see Willem ten RJl) ne in Schapera 1933), \\ ere
really innocent and ignorant. TIle} might dance
and sing when moved b) their childish passions
and slept in beds "like the nest of an ostrich"
(1801-+1,148,275). \Vhile "low on the scale of
humanity," thcy were raw mal erial for the civilizing
project. For, notwithstanding their common pre
dicament as "miserable savages" (1801--4: 1,287) in
opposition to the British, peoples such as the
"Hottentots" had their own nobility. This :JcmuIII,
in short, validated the moral scheme of the first
L!\1S and \\'~L\LS missionaries to Sowb Africa,
coloring their view of the white perverts and
would-be black convertS who peopled the interior.
Barrow's social position guaranteed him a wide
readership among scholars, politicians, and the lit
erate public. The natural historian Lichtenstein
([ 1815] 1930,2: 12) noted at the tinle that in his
nati\ e Germany the "journals and almanacks"
vied to publish the British author's accounts of the
"ignorance, the brutality, the filthiness" of the
Dutch colonists. Lichtenstein himselfhad traveled
in the interior of South Africa between 1803 and
1806 in the emplo) of the Dutch goyernment. His
own two volume narrative appeared in German in
l810and 1812 and in English in 1812lrepr. 1928]
and 1815 [repro 1930]. It was highly critical of
Barrow's portrayal of the Dutch farmers and their
brutal domination of the "Canres" (1928: 1,59):
I \\ as led almost daily to ask myself whether these
\\ere really the same African colonisls which the
celebrated l\1.r Barrow represented as such bar
ba.rillns, as such mo.re than halj:"S3\ages - so much
diu J find the re:llit) in contradiction to his
descripi ion.
Again we are reminded that images of Africa arc
bom of European arguments about their own
essential nature: Barrow' was accused of betraying
his own kind; of failing, as an educated Ewope:lI1,
to credit the effects of the African climate and
hence to understand the "rough Cape peasantry"
and lheir relation to the blacks (1930:2,6-13). Yet,
lying beneath the surfaces of the debate, is a sct of
shared constructs that makes the dispute possible
in the firSl place. Lichtenstein docs not rcalh take
issue with Barrow's portraval ofAfricans, although
his 0\\ n descriptions lack the Englishman's stress
on their innocence and vulnerability. For him,
"Bushmen" are miserable and voracious: "no class
of savagcs ... lead lives so near those of brutes" or
are so low on the "scale of existcnce" (1930:2,2H).
But, he adds (1930:2,65):s
The rude rough man left entirely in a ~ta[e of
nature, is not in himsdf evil and wicked .... [He]
follow s blindl) the impulse of his passions, which
lead him to aClS, that to LIS, in the high point of
civilizalion we have attained, appear as crimes ..
Africa might have become a moral battlefield, but
ill. representation in late eighteentll-century
Europe also reilected a conceptual order fast
spreading among persons "of reason," an essential
humanism in terms of which man became his (mn
measure (Foucault [(75). No longer satisfied with
a notion of himself as God's passive creature, he
sought to define his "place in nature" (Thomas
1984:2+3 et passim); that is, to assess his position
on a scale of hunlanity rather than on a ladder to
healcn. A new narrative of human types was being
"Tirren, and the African was to have a definjte
niche in it. As a foil to the enlightened European,
he was doubly devalued: human yet ignorant of
salvation to begin with, he had now lost his inno
cence at the hands of ci\ ilization's most depraved
clements, slavers and the degenerate while men of
AFRICA OBSERVED
the tropics.? Here, as we have said, the texts of
travelers and explorers became entangled in the
lIebate o\'er abolition (sec Barrow 1801-04: I ,46).
But the discourse also informed, and was informed
by, arl,'1Iments withjn the relatcd field of natural
hislOf) and lhe emerging science of biology.
The New Biology and the Great
Chain of Being
fJJ the carly nineteenth century the life sciences
were preo(:cupied with the "great chain of being"
and especially with its lower half. As Figlio (1976:25)
obsef\cs, contemporary debates about man's place
in nature hinged upon the relationship of tbe
hum;lll species to the rest of the living world:
age, the West set up a mirror in which it might find
There was a focusing upon the multi-heeted idea
uf animalit), as opposed to an insistence upon a
SC<llar, IIni-dimensional hierarchy, with man at the
LOp of the visible, and God at the top of the lnvis
ible, realm.
Rooted in the contrast between the animate and the
inanimate, this focus on animalit) implied a concern
with the properties of "life" common to all beings.
i\nd it fixed on man as the embodiment of perfec
ion, since he alone bad distinguished himself by
using reason to discmer his own essence. This in
turn led inexorably ro the concept of "generic
human nat ure" (StOcking 1987: 17), a notion that
separateJ man from beast, people f.rom objects, and
rendered anomalous anything - like the slave trade
- th.lt confused them. Hut "human nature" was a
highl) abstract category. Once put to work in the
world it was immediatel) subject to intemal differ
entiation. This is "here the chain of being served as
a pO\\erful metaphor, for it conjured up a hierarchy
of distinct \aJ;eties within (a single) humankind.
n the epistemology of rhe time, then, the key to
kno\\ ledge seemed to lie increasinglv within man
himself. The essence of life was in the unplumbed
depthc; of organic being, to be grasped through the
imasive thrust, the looking and naming, of the
new biology (Foucault 1975). Its intcrior truth,
merely signified in outer bodily form, gave risc to
meaningful differences in the faculties and func
tion of li\'ing beings.
35
,~fh(an bodies, African lit/lure
We have already encountered traces of this episte
mology in the geograpJlical mission, where the
thrust into tbe African interior likened the conti
nent to a female bod)'. Bernhard Fabian (quoted in
Nerlich 1987: 179) reminds us that, in the late
eighteenth century, the qualities of the scientific
"spirit" were identified with the heroic "spirit" of
the adventurer: the natural scientist's penetration
into hitherto unknown realms had become one
with the advance into regions unknown. The newly
charted surfaces of the African landscape were to
have a direct connection with the uni\erse open
ing up \\ithin the person, for the geographical
mission expanded European knowledge of the glo
bal biology of mankind. In investigating the sav
a tangible, if lJlycrted, self-image. Non-Europeans
filled out the nether reaches of the scale of being,
providing the contrast against which cultivated
man might distinguish himself. On this scale,
moremer, the African was assigned a particularly
base position: he marked the point at which
humanity gave \\ay to animalit). In treating bim as
the very embodiment of salager)', of deviance from
a racially-defmed ideal (Gould 1981 :38), the tTavel
and adventwe literature gave ostensibly objective,
precise descriptions of both his boJily form and
his "manners and customs." In such popular
accounts, in other words, African "narure" was
grounded in the color, shape, and subslance of the
black physique.
With the rise of comparative anatomy and biol
ogy as formal sciences, the organic reduction of
African society and culture took un ever greater
authority. For much of the eighteenth century it
had been ci\-ilization that separated savage man
from his whitc counterpart - moral and politico
economic circumstance rather than physical
endowment (Stocking 1987: 18). But the VOL<lbu
lary of natural science was to strengthen and legiti
mize the association of dar\.. continents "ith black
bodies and djm minds. Comparative anatomical
schemes typically presented Africans as the most
extreme contrast with Europeans - in the new
technical argot, the "link" between m::m and beast
(Currin 1964:42). Linnaeus' SyslcT/la Nalurllc, first
published in 1735, laid out in initial form what
36 JEAN AND JOHN COMAROFF
would soon become a convention of biological clas
sification: a chromatic scale of white, yellow, red,
and black races, each native to one of the four
major continents (Gould 1981 :35; Curtin 1964:37).
As in the popular literature of travel and adven
ture, Africans were imariably placed at the bottom
of the ladder of enlightenment, bela", such paler
peoples as Asians or American Lndians (Buffon
1791; Blumenbach 1775, 1795; Whire 1799). By
1778 Buffon, who had added such features as hair,
stature, and physiognomy to his scheme, declared
that white was the "real and natural colollr of man"
(quoted in West 1982:56).10 Bhunenbach took this
yet further, to the shape ofthe skull, tJlcrehy intro
ducing one of the more penasive and enduring
elements in the ann:1ls of racial taxonom}. He went
011 LO claim, on this basis, that the Ethiopian \\ as
the Lowliest deviation from the "most beautiful"
Caucasian type (Street 1975:52ff.). The great chain
of being, a vertical scale, had been set on its side,
becoming aJso a linear history of human progress
from the peripheral regions of !be earth to irs north
European core. The hard facts of organic form, it
seemed, could now explain and determine the
place of men in the work!.
So I'll 01'. ({cstlle/ies, ami sefjhMd
The life sciences, !ben, were part of a broader dis
course about the hlffilan condition - a discourse
closely tied to Europe's encounter with the oon
European world. Raised to a new level of sclf-con
sciousness and authority, their "value free"
knowledge found a natwal validation for cultural
imperialism in the inner secrets of existence.
"Natural" scientists read off the degree of animal
it) and the perfection of life from the external fea
tures of different "organisms"; for tbese were taken
to be a function of t.he relative complexity, sym
metry, and refinement of t.he faculties within. Take,
for example, the influential Dutch scholar C'unper,
who, in a manner similar to Blumenbach, devised a
scale that correlated the shape of the skull with aes
thetic appearance and mental capacity: his "facial
angle" measUTed the projection of the:; jaw, a pro
truding profile being linked with the long snouts,
low hrows, and sensory-bound state of animals.
Applied to an eclectic ,uTay of "evidence" - includ
ing African travelers' accounts - this measurement
defined and ranked national character, gi\'iog
physical shape to the current philosophical con
cern with the relationship of race, nationality, and
civilization (cf Burne 185-!}
Camper's scale extended from dog tlllough ape
to Negro, then through the European peoples to
the ideal beauty of form epitomized in Greek
sculpnlre (l82l:x; see Figlio 1976:280- And it
was rapidly publicized wel! beyond the scientific
community, as were his more general pronounce
menrs. Thus the preface to an English translation
of his popular lectures addressed an artistic audi
ence on the moral and aesthetic implications of
the science of comparative anatomy (l821:x):
[The] grand object was to shew, lhat national dif
ferences may be reduced to rules; of which the clif
fcrcni directions of the facial line form a
fundamental norma or canon ... tbe knO\\ ledge uf
which will prevent Ihe artist from hlending tJle fea
tures of differel1l nations in the same indiviuual ...
Nationality, physical type, and aesthetic value are
condensed here into an iconography that would ill
due course become part. of the language of scien
tific racism. With his apartheid of thc sketchpad,
Camper imprinted the bodily contours of stereo
Iypic others on the European imagination - and
with them, a host of qualitative associations. His
sample African profile, for instance, a distinctl:
bestial representation, was to become standard in
nineteenth-century texts on racial difference; sig
nificamly, rhese texts gave prominence to imag-es
of black South Africans.
Georges Cuvier, the prestigious Swiss com para
ti\e aWJtomist of the early n.ineteenth century, took
the facial anglc and the biological reduction of cul
turc to new levels of sophistication, He developed
a scale to evaluate the perfection not only of the
intellect but also of the introspective self, the moral
core of the person, By gauging the proportion of
the mid-cranial area to that of tbe face, he sought
to reveal the degree of dependence of an organism
upon external sensal-ions; the si;-:c of the cranium
itself was taken to reOect the development of rea
son a.nd self-control. On this count, the "negro"
stood between the "most ferocious apes" and the
Europeans, who were themselves superseded by
the men and deities of ancient Greek sculpture
AFRICA OBSERVED
(Figlio 1976:28). But it was the neurological
dimension of Cuvier's scheme (1827: I ,49f.) 11ut
raised most explicitly the spiritual and moral
capacity of man, For the nenous system was the
site of internal animation, and its complex.ity
determined the higher faculties of life - intelli
gence and volition. The latter were ex.pressions of
a "soul or sentient principle," whose source of
vitalit) remained, at the time, a matter of serious
debate. Scientists, however, were more concerned
with the physica.l organization of this system,
which was centered on a compact inner core that
rC:1ched its most perfect form in the complicated
brain of man. I\s Figlio (1976:24) explains:
. this compactness [was associated] quite explic
itly with the higher faculties, indeed with the
sense of the "self". Just as the nervous system
coalesced into a centre IIom which dependent
nerves arose, so roo was the sense of self increas
ingly solidificd and distinct. Thus, a grading of
this. concentraring of the nervous system "as
simultaneollsly a grading of animal senticnce and
sclfhoou.
And so the bourgeois subject of the new Age of
Capitalism, 'llready secure i.n the Protestant ethic
and rational philosophy, was ~iven incontestable
grounding in biological nature. Needless to say,
the inner density and refinement associated by
Cmier with self-awareness and control were held
to be underdeveloped among non-Europeans.
This was especially true of blacks, who were bound
by the animal reflexcs of survj"al (1827:1,97; see
Currin 1964:231):
The negro race is confined 10 the south of MOl1!ll
Atlas. Its characters are, black complexion, wool!)
hair, compressed cranium, and flattish nose. In
the prominence of the lower part of the face, and
the thickness of the l.ips, il manifestly approaches
to the monkey tribe. The hordes of which Ihis
,'ariet) is composed have always remained in a
state of complete barbarism.
Cuvier's writings were summarized in the British
biomediC;lI press within months of their publica
lion and "ere assiduousl} discussed by scientists,
theologians, and men of letters (Fi:;lio 1976:35).
37
In an age when specialist knowledge was not yet
set apart b) technical language, work such as this
:1nd that of Camper - was rapidly directed to a
receptive, almost insatiable public. Often, as in
one widely read translation of Cuvier's All/mal
Ki1lgdol/l, some "popular and entertaining matter"
\I as added 0/1 the instincts and habits of animals
and primitive man (1827:I,i-ii). The editors in
this particular instance included a description of
the "unhappy races" of South Africa, a teUing bri
colage of current European curiosity, wilh suO-
stuntiating material drawn from the accounts of
travelers like Barrow and Lichtenstein. Thus were
the discoveries of geographical adventure con
verted into a scientific currency in whieh the uni
versal value of man might be reckoned.
As these trave! tales and salon exotica gained
scientific credentials, they hardened in to stereo
typic representations of Africa. Their influence on
the eye of subsequent European observations in
South Africa was to be tangible. Cu\'jer's editors
(1827:1,197), for example, prcwided an account of
tbe "Bushmen" as pygmy "plunderers" who
"Iurk[cd]" in the complicit woods and bushes.
This descriptioll seems to have been drawn
directly from Lichtenstein (1928: I,68n), yet we
encclUnler it, metapnor intact, in t.he "eyewitncss"
report given many years afterwards by the Rev.
Edwards (1886:66). The interplay of otller epi
thets in the Ani1/7al Kingdnm - "Hottentots" as
degraded and disgusting, or as swarthy, filthY, and
greasy - may also be traced to Lichtenstein
(1928: 1,69)11 They too were to flow fwm the pens
of later writers who claimed tbe autllOrity of
firsthand experience.
One item among the potpourri of curiosities in
the Animal Kingdom (1827: 1,196) was a descrip
tion of the "I lottentot Venus," an "essential black"
from the Cape Colony. This unfortunate "wild"
woman of Khoi ancestry had been taken to Europe
and made illto a traveling exhibit, shown first in
England and then, by an animal trainer, in France.
She died ill Paris in 1815 after European audi
ences had gazed in fascination at hcr for some five
years - and promptly ended up on Cuvier's dis
secting table (Gould 1985:294). His famous
account of her autopsy was to be repri.nted twice
within a decade of its publication; it centered on
the ;lllom.alies of her "organ of generation," which,
38 JEAN AND JOHN COMAROFF AFRICA OBSERVED 39

in its excessi\c de\e!opment of the labia minora,
was held to set her kind apart from other human
beings (Gilman 1985:212). Barrow, TOO, had 'Hit
ten of the genital aberrations of Khoisan \lomen,
and a host of anatomical repons weTe to follm\
Cu\-ier in focusing on the exotic, simia.n qualities
of black female reproductive organs. A barely sup
pressed infatuation with the torrid eroticism of
Africa made itself respectable as hiological
inquiry.
The story of the Hortentot Venus reminds us
that -"lungo Park, albeit in somewhat different
idiom, had also reduced Africa to the body of a
black female yielding herself to white male discov
ery. This my theme, as we shall see, was repeated in
both the poetry of romantic naturalists and the
sober prose of our missionary crusaders. But
Cuvier's writings show particularly plainly how
earl) nineteenth-eentury science actually articu
lated and authorized such constructions - ho\\ the
various products of current European fancy sailed
under the colors of biological knowledge about
man, woman, and nature. Nor did the ideological
message of this material remain implicit.
Supplementary details on African peoples in the
AI/imal Kingdom (1827:1,196) were summarized
with the contident statement that "a physical
obstacle to their progress seemed to be a more
natural solution to lthe] problem [of their lack of
de\elopment] than an~' political or local circum
stances."
The nature ofgellder
As all this suggests, the "signifying economy"
Godzich 1987:xi) of otherness took in gender as
well as racc. That "economy" has a long history, of
course. But we need only break into it at the dawn
of modernism. "Sometime in the late eighteenth
cenmry," Lacquer (1986: 1) observes, "human
sexual nature changed." It certainly did. With the
reoqranization of production and perception in
the age of re\olution, novel distinctions arose in
the construction of gender. And they raised the
problematic "nature of woman" to consciousness
in Europe as never before.
Given the epistemology of the time, it was inev
itable that this new consciousness should find the
source of gender relations in the bodies of men
and women - and that biology should be invoked
to explain a division of labor already established in
economy and society. The ideolog~' of the enlight
ened free market might celebrate equaJit~ and a
generic humanit). But its material practices sanc
tioned the exploitation of whole categories of peo
ple, usually on the basis of "natural" distin(.'!ions
like race and sex. Such stigmatizing signs often
come to imply each other: in late eighteenth
century images of Africa, the feminization of the
black "other" was a potent trope of devaluation.
The non-European was to be made as peripheral
to the global axes of reason and production as
women had become at home. Both were vital to
the material and imaginati\'e order of modern
Europe. Yet both were deprived of access to it:
highcst values. Biologv again provided the author
itative terms for this simultancous process of
inclusion and disqualification.
In sum, the manner in which Africa was por
trayed as \loman - with reference in particular to
the organs of procreation - was an e"tension of a
gender ideology fast taking root in late eighteenth
cemur) Europe. Here "the female body in its
reproductive capacity and in its distinction from
that of the male, [had come] to occupy a critical
place in :1 whule range of political discourses"
(Lacquer 1986: I). As the biology of childbcaring
became the essence of womanhood, it also seemed
to prescribe an increasingly radical, physically
derivcd contrast between male and female. For
centuries prior to this time, both medical and
commonsense knowledge appear to ha\e assumed
that women had the same reproductive organs as
lllen; that they were "men turned outside in"
(Lacquer 1986: 1). \10reover, gender identity had
not been vcsted in the anatomy of procreation
alone but in more general features of moral and
social disposition. 1.11 this respect too there \\-as a
continuity between male and female: far from
"a total division of mental properties between the
sexes," as Jordanova (1980:63) puts it, there had
heen "a continuum according to which reason
dominated ... "
Reason and intelligence were male properties, of
course; men and women had thus been arrayed
along a single axis whose telos was masculine
(Lacquer 1986:3). But the struggle between the
two qualities had occurred within rather than
between individuals, each person's temperament
being the product of both. Here FOllcault's insight
into changing perceptions of hermaphrodites
tluo\\s light on the emergence of modern gender
identity. In his introduction to the memoirs of
Herculine Barbin (l980:viif), he notes that medie
val canon and civil law defined them as people in
\\hom t.he twu sexes \lere juxtaposcd in variable
proportions. By the nineteenth century, howeleT, it
l~ld become the task of the medical expert to "find
the one true sex of the so-called hermaphrodile"
I>J\idson 1987), to reve.11 the unambiguous bio
logical reality lhal underlay uncertain appearances.
The premodern language of gender had also
integrated physical, mental, and social qualities,
making the bod) an icon of moral as much as of
procreat.ive status. Jordanova (1980:+9) notes that
medical and philosophical writings in the eight
eenth ccntur) focused on the breast. as a symbol of
the \alued role of women in domestic nurture.
The shitt of attention to the uterus in nineteenth
centur) hiology markcd a retre-Jt into the hidden
recesses of gynaecological anatomy, whence female
natu.re now seemed to emanate.
The new biology of difference and incommen
surability, then, shad.led women to their sexual
nature as resolutely as it freed men - or at least
EurOPL'an men - from the constraints of instinct
and bodily function. "It was," one physician
e"plained, "as if the Almighty, in creating the
female sex, had taken the uterus and built up a
woman around it" (Holbrook 1882; quoted in
Smith-Rosenherg and Rosenberg 1973:335). Here
the ideology of gender cut across contemporary
models of the nervous system and became impli
eated in the more general definition of modern
selfhood. For, by implication, women's reproduc
ti'e physiology rerouted their neurological path
ways, diffusing the compact density of the rational,
male self As opponcnts of female education were
to argue, the brain and the reproductive organs
simply could not de\'elop at the same time. The
uterus was ,lssumed to be connected directly to
the central ncn'ous system, shaping its constitu
tion and in return being affected by it (Smith
Rosenberg and Rosenberg 1973:335).
Women's sensibility was both greater and more
labile than that of men, and their nervous s) stems
lacked focus; their "fibres" were "mobile," especially
"those in the uterus" (1'lacquart 1799; quoted
in Jordanova 1980:48). Like the "low brow" non
European, the European female was played upon by
strong and frequent sensations from the external
em ironment. Tler conStitution was passionate and
mtuiti\e, susceptible to nervous disorders, and
responsive to control by males - particularly men of
science (Stocking 1987:]99)..iI, pri\'ileged relation
ship of sex and sellhood had been born: with the
emergence of the "psyche" in hlter nineteenth-{;en
wry thought, sexuality \\ould become the "exter
nalizarion ofthe hidden, inner l'SSenec ofpersonality"
(Davi.dson 1987:47). This development was prefig
urcd in the vision of missionaries earlier in thc cen
tury, which plated great diagnostic \leight upon
sexual propriety a') a symptom of "moral fiber" After
aU, as Davidson reminds us, moral theology had once
used "penert" - a perSOIl wilfully turning to e\'jl
from good - as an antonym of "convert." There is
evidence of this connotation, and of the more mod
em sense of"se:o.ual de' iance," in the evangelists' usc
of the term.
It has been poimed out (Smith-Rosenberg
and Rosenberg 1973:338; Stocking 1987:199;
Jordanova 1980:49) that contemporary discourses
on female nature were neither unanimous nor free
of contradiction. Women were held at once to be
sensitive and delicate, yet hard) and longer-lived;
passionate and quintessentially sexual, yet inno
cent and intuitively moral. Given the political load
that the ana tom) of \Yoman had come to bear, such
ambiguities were bound to fuel angry dispute; it is
not sW'prising that her bod) soon became an ideo
logical battlegrouml (Lacquer 1986:24). Feminists
and antlfeminists both exploited these contradic
tions, albeit in contrasting ways- the former being
no less quick than the latter to appeal to natural
diffcrences in making their casco Anna \Vheeler
and William Thompson (1825; quoted in Lacquer
1986:23), for example, argued that women
deserved greater political participation on grounds
of their innate moral aptitude and their undesir
ing, e\en passionless di~positions. And Fuller
(J 855), in her manifesto, 111i11lal1 i,t the l\'ineteentlz
Ce1ltury, described male and female as "two sides
f the great radical dualism," the female system
being "elcctrical in movement" and "intuitive in
function" (quoted in Ayala 1977:263). Thus, \,bile
the debate raged over social Yalues, its temlS
40 JEAN AND JOHN COMAROFF
reinforced the hegemony of biological determinism
and ineluctable gender distinction.
The ne\\ biology, in short, gave legitimacy to an
idealized image of rational man. Unlike women and
non-Europeans, he was a self-contained indi"idual
and was driven by inner reason, not by sensory
stimuli from the social an.d material environment.
This image of selfhood appeared simultaneousl} in
a wide range of late eighteenth-cenulr) moral and
technical discourses; biomedical science was just
one voice in a richly redundant chorus, its concern
with the inner body drawing attention a"a) from
m,m's dialectical relation with his context. But the
reduction did not go ILnchecked. It was counLered
by the social reformism of mainstream enlighten
ment religion and philosophy, which stressed the
reconstruction of persons and, through them, the
world. Humanitarian and evangelical rhetoric alike
had it that the possession of a soul and the capaci ty
to reason made every human being capable of
improvement. The self could be "cuilured,"'2 the
will strengthened by implanting spirirual truth and
by "uplifting" physical and social conditions.
Thus the biological determinism of the age was
usuall) quaJified by some attention to tl,e effects
of environment; conversely, the optimism of phi
lanthropists and evangelists was often tempered
by a suspicion that nature placed limits on the
ability of some human beings to develop. Nor \"'ere
scientists undivided on the issues: Gould
(1981:31 ff.) has distinguished "hard-" from "soft
liners" among significant eighteenth and nine
teenth-century tl1inker:, on the ques60n of the
African's potential for civilization. I ' While this
distinction may be too rigidly drawn, there ccr
tai;nly were loud and lengthy arguments about the
Notes
!\Iorwithstanding our particular concerns here, it
Cook, Mercer
goes withom saying that stercotypic images of "oth
1936 Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Negro. Journal
ers," in Africa anc.1 elsewhere, predate the age of
of Negro History 21:294--303.
revolution. So docs their metaphysical significance
Curtin, Philip D.
in European thought and representation. For a valu
1964 The Image of Ajhca: British Ideas and Action,
able history of medieval conceptions of the "mon
strous races," see Friedman (1981).
2 On Rousseau's liews in this respect, see Cook (1936);
also Curtin (1 96H2).
origin and implications of racial difference.
'Wi11less the debate over the role of elimate in the
origin of human diversity, in which some early
naturalists (e.g., Buffon 179]) and biologists (e.g.,
Blumenbach [1775, 1795] 1969) claimed that
negro physical characteristics gre\\ out of life in
the tropics (Curtin 1964:40). Here again scientific
thought evoked European notions of ecology that
went back at least a hundred years - in particular,
the humoral theory that "as the air is) so are the
inhabitants" (cf. Hodgen 1964:283). In this legacy
"southem climes" ,,"ere repeatedly associated with
heat md fecundity, sensuality and decay. For
instance, in his defense of Cape Dutchmen against
Barrow's attacks, Lichtenstein (1928:1,58) attrib
uted their "phlegm" to the African environment.
And for comparative support he quoted Goethe's
simibr ohservations of the indolenL Neapolitans.
The writings of the Soulh African missionaries
suggest that they too perceived a complex connec
tion between African bodies and landsc;~pes.
N[oreovcr, their efforts to reform the benighted
blacks were to e.."prbS an unresolved conflict
between the incorrigibility of natural endowment
and the possibility of human in1prO\ement. Visible
in the conflict, and in lhe entire European discourse
abOllt savager)', was an increasingly sharp - and gen
dered - contraSt between "nat ure" (all tllat exists
prior to civil society) and "ci\ i1ization" or "culture"
(collectively wrought existence, though not yet the
modem anthropological idea of a distillct, meaning
ful lifeworld; see Stocking 1987: 19; also note 12
above). This dichotomy was elaborated most exten
sively, perhaps, in the debate oyer the "noble sav
age," a chimera which relied hea\;ly on images of
Africa already in popular European circulation.
3 Three seventeenth-century accounrs were published
in Dutch and Latin (see Schapera 1933); tl\O in
German followed during rhe eighteenth Cefitw")
(Kolben 1731; Mentzel 1785-87).
4 Barrow's biograph) was notably similar to rhat of
Park. Doth were self-made sons of northern British
smallholders (Lloyd 1970).
5 (... ] The Cape was restored to the nCII' Batavian
Republic in 1803 under the Trearv' of Amit'ns but
AFRICA OBSERVED
was seized again by the British in 1806, after the
resumption of the Napoleonic WaH; (see e.g.
Davenport 1969:273f.).
6 It is clear that Barrow meant "kamr" here to include
all "aborigines." In the nineteenth century the term
also "Caffre") was often used more specifically to
describe the :-.Jguni-speaking peoples of South Africa
_ although it was later to become a general term of
abuse for blacks, much like "nigger" in the United
Stales of America.
7 For an account of British images of and attitudes
toward the Dutch settlers, see Strcak (1974), who also
discusses the writings of Ba.rrow and Lichtenstein.
We are gratcful to Robert Gordon for drawing our
atlCJ1tion to this reference.
8 Lichtenstein seems to have been the first \lTiter in this
gCllIe to make use of missionary observations of black
Sourh Africans (see the Prefatory Note to volume 1 of
his 'H-a<;els [po vi], republished by the Van Riebeeck
Society in 1928). His work in tum became an important
source of European constructions ofMrica.
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1980 Natuml Facts: A Historical Pcrspective on
Prall, \Ial) L
J985 Scratches on the Face of the COW1.try; or, What
Mr, Barrow Saw in thc Land of [he Bushmcn. Crilit'al
inqlli'l' 12, I 19-\3.
Studies Group. London: Virago Press.
Kolben, Pcter
1731 nle Presellr S/lIte ~F the Cllpe ~r Gond ]-jope.
2 \'ols. Translated from the German bv Mr Medley.
London: W Innys.
Lacquer, Thomas
1986 Orgasm, Gcncration, and the PoJitjcs of
Reproductive Biology. Repro'SeT/lllliolls 14: 1-41.
Lichtenstein, Hcnry [WH.G.]
1928-30 Trauls ill SOUl hem A/rica til rhe Years 1803,
18M, /805 and 1806. 2 vols. Translated frolJl the
1812-15 edition by A. Pll1mptre. Cape Town: The \'an
Riebeed Society.
AFRICA OBSERVED
1973 FUlmdarwn of th~ Cape (1811) and AVOIiI rite
&dWI/lltlS (\807). Translatcd and edited by O.l-I.
Spohr. Cape Town: A.."L Balkcma.
L10) d. Christophcr
19711 :Hr ElInO//' oflire Adlllirult)': /1 Lift; ~F Sir John
Burmw, 1764-18-18. London: Collins.
Marais, Johannes S.
11)+1 Alaynier alllithe Frrst Boer Repuhlic. Cape 1()\\n:
\Iaskell J\liller.
,\larks, Shula
1972 Khoisan Resistance to the Dutch in the
Se\'cntcenrh and Eighteenth Cenl uries. In/lrJlf/1 oj
/ji-i({1tI IlislurJ' 13: 55-80.
\lel1tzcl, Ouo E
1921-5 A Complele Imd Authen/i" Geographical alld
TopogTilp/llctll Descriplion ~F Ihe ... African Cape oj
Good Hopt. .. 2 parts. Translated from the 1785-7
original 2-vol. German edition by H-J _'v1andelbrote.
Cape Town: Thc Van Riebecck Society.
Moodie, John \\.0
1835 Tf/I K'lIrJ in SOllth A/nfl{. 2 \'ols. London: R.
Benlley.
Nerhch. Michael
1987 /de%gJ' 0/ dJt'enrure: Studies ill Modem COIl Thomas, Keith V
S(icmSllm, 1100---1750.2 vols. Translated by R. Cra\\ ley.
\Iinneapolis: Universil~ of Minnesota Press.
i\lorris. Rubcrt
1968 Memoirs ~F Iltt RI'igll o/Bossa Ahadec, Kit/g oj
Dahomcy- '" Facsimile uf the 1789 edition. Lundon:
Frarl k Cass.
Philip,]ohn
J828 Researches III SUIlIII_'lfriw; IlIlIslratillg rhe CiLi/,
Mnr" I, utld Religious Cmlli/timl of Ihe Native Tribes.
2 'ols. London: James DUIlcan. Reprinted, 1909;
\;C\\ York: "Icgro Universities Press.
C Dilly.
WiIliams, Raymond
1976 Keywords: A i/ocubuiliry of Culture allr! Socw)'
London: Oxford University
43
Said, Edward \V
1978 O,.ientalislil. :-';cw lork: Pantheon Books.
Schapera, Isaac
1933 Tlte Eorz>' Cape f-}oll<'llIOl', Described irl Ihe
Wririltgs o/Olfen Dapper (/668), H'il/elll 11m Rhylle
(1686), al/d Johanl/es Glllie/mus de Grevenbrock
(169S). Original texts and translations by L Schapera
and B. Farrington. Cape 1'0\111: The Van Riebeeck
Society.
Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, and Charles Rusenberg
1973 The Femalc Animal: ,'v1edical and Biological
Views of\Voman and her Role i11 Nineteenlh-centun
1987 Vlclorian A,"hropolog)'. ~ew York: The Free
Pn:ss; London: Collier Macmillan.
Srreal.., Michael
1974 The .1frikalle,- as helPed by Ihe Eng/ish, 1795
18.:;4. Cape Town: Struik.
Street, Brian V
1975 The Sllt'lIge ill Literatllre: RepreSell/atwlls 0/
'Pri'J11lh:e' Socit't)' in Ellg/ish ['ietiOIl, 18S8-1920.
London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan PauL
1984 ,HUll alld the ,varllrtll Hr,,,ld: Changillg AI/i
ludes ill Englill/d, 1500-18()O. Harmondswo,rth:
Penguin.
West, Corncl
1982 Proplresy Dclir;erllllce./: All A{roo.lmerico/I ReL'O
IlIliolll1ry Cln'is/lfIlI/ly. Philadelphia: Wcstminster
Press.
White, Charles
1799 All ACCUUlll of Ihe Regultlr Cradation i,1 ,I1all,
IIlId m DljJeretlt . /mmals alld Vegetables: and Fro'll
tile FIJ1'IIIU rn Ilu LOll"'. London: Printed for

facility. TI could seem too tempting to delude the
The Meaning of Our Work
Cheikh Anta Diop
I began my research in September 1946; because
of our colonial situation at that time, the political
problem dominated all others. In 1949 the RDN
was undergoing a crisis. I felt that Africa should
mobilize all its energy to help the movement turn
the tide of repression: thus I was elected Secretary
General of the RDA students in Paris and sen'ed
from 1950 to 1953. On July 4-8, 1951 we held in
Paris the first postwar Pan African Student Union
(from London) \\ell-reprcsented by more tllan 30
delegates, including the daughter of the Oni of 1fe,
the late Miss Adercmi Tedju. In February 1953
the first issue of the Vole de I'Aji-ique Noire
appeared; this was the organ of the RDA students.
Tn it, I published an article entitled "Towards a
Political Ideology in Black Africa."
That article contained a resume of Nations
negres, the manuscript of which was already com
pleted. All our ideas on African history, the past and
future of our lang'uages, their utilization in me most
advanced scientific fields as in education generally,
our concepts on the creation of a future federal
stare, continental or subcontinental, our thoughts
on African social structures, on strategy and tactics
in the strugg'le for national independence, and
From Cheikh Anta Diop, "The Meaning of our Work", pp. xii-xvii in The African Origins of Civilisation: Myllz or
Rea/ilJl (1974), Lawrence Hill Books.
2
by un\'ciling a mythical, embellished past. Those
so forth, all those ideas were clearly expressed in
that article. As would subsequently be seen, with
respect to the problem of the continent's political
independence, the French-speaking African politi
cians took their own good time before admitting
that this was the right political road to follow.
Nevertheless, thc RDA students organized them
selves into a federation within France and politi
cized African student circles by popularizing the
slogan of national independence for Africa from thc
Sahara to the Cape and from the Indian Ocean to
the Atlantic, as our periodical attests. The archives
of the FEANF (Federation of African Students in
France) indicate that it did not begin to adopt anti
colonialist positions until it was directed by RDA
students.z We stressed the cultural and political
content that we included in the concept of inde
pendence in order to get the latter adopted in
French-speaking Africa: already forgotten is the
bitter struggle that had. to be waged to impose it on
student circles in Paris, throughout France, and
even within the ranks of RDA students.
The cultural concept especially will claim our
attention here; the problem was posed in terms of
restoring th e collective nationalAfrican personality.
THE MEANING OF OUR WORK
It was particularly necessary to avoid the pitfall of
masses engaged in a struggle for national inde
pendence b) taking liberties with scienrific truth,
Egypt. In particular, the study of languages, insti
\~ho have followed us in our efforts for more than
20 years know no\\ that this was not the case and
that this fear remained groundless.
Admiltedly three factors compete to form the
col!cctiYC personality of a people: a psychic factor,
StL~cepliblc of a literar) approach; this is Ule f:lctor
that \\ould elsewhere be called national tempera
ment, and that the Negritude poets have over
stressed. In addition, there are the historical facLar
and the linguistic factor, both susceptible of being
approached scientifically. These last two factors
hal'e been the subject of our studies; we have
ende'lVored to remain strictly on scientific grounds.
Have foreign intellectuals, who challenge our
intentions and accuse us of all kinds of hidden
motiYes or ridiculous ideas, proceeded any di(fer
cntJ~? When they explain their own historical past
lr study their languages, that seems normal. Yet.
I\hen an \frican does likewise to help reconstruct
the national personality' of his people, distorted by
colonialism, that is considered backward or alarm
ing. We contend that such a study is the point of
departure for the cultural revolution properly under
stood. All the headlong flights of certain infantile
leftists who try to bypass this effort can be explained
by intellectual inertia, inhibition, or incom
petence. The most brilliant pseudo-revolutionary
eloquence ignores that need which must be met if
ow' peoples are to be reborn culturally and politi
cally. In truth, many Africans find this vision too
beautiful to be true; not so long ago some of them
could not break with the idea that Blacks are non
existent cu.lturally and historically. It was neees
s;try to put up with the cliche that Africans had no
history and If) to start from there to build some
thing moJestly!
Our imcstig-ations have com'inced us that the
West has not been calm enough and objective
l'nough to [cach us our history correctly, without
crude falsifications. Today, what interests me most
is to sec the [ormation of teams, not of passive reaJ
ers, but of honest, bold researcb workers, allergic to
complacency and busy substantiating and explor
ing ideas expressed in our work, such as:
45
1. Ancient Egypt was a Negro civilization.
The history of Black Africa will remain suspended
in air and cannot be written correctly until African
historians dare to connect it with the history of
!tltion, and so forth, ca.nnot be treated properly; in
a word, it will be impossiblc to build African
humanities, a body of African human sciences, so
long as that relationship does not appear legiti
matc. The African historian who eYades the prob
lem of Egypt is neither modest nor objective, nor
unruffled; he is ignorant, cowardly, and neurotic.
Imagine, j[ you can, the uncomfortable position of
a \\cstem historian who was to write the history of
Europe\yithout referriJlg to Greco-LatinAntiquity
and try to pass that off as a scientific approach.
The ancient Egyptians were Negroes. The
moral fruit of their civiliz.1tion is to be counted
among the assets of the Black world. Instead of
presenting itself to history as an insolvent debtor,
that Black world is the very initiator of the "west
ern" civilization flaunted before our eyes today.
Pythagorean mathematics, the theory of the four
elements ofThales of J\ililerus, Epicurean materi
alism, Platonic idealism, Judaism, Islam, and
modern science are rooted in Egyptian cosmogony
and science. One needs only to meditate on Osiris,
the redeemer-god, who sacrifices himself, dies,
and is resurrected to save mankind, a figure essen
tially identifiable with Cltrist.
A visitor to Thebes in the Valley of the Kings can
view the Moslem inferno in detail (in the tomb of
Seti I, ofthe Nineteenth Dynasty), 1700 years before
the Koran. Osiris at the tribunal of the dead is indeed
the "lord" of revealed religions, sitting enthroned on
Judgement Day, and we know tilat certain Biblical
passages are practically copies of Egyptian moral
texts. Far be it from me to confuse this brief reminder
with a demonstration. It is simply a matter of pro
viding a few landmarks to persuade the incredulous
Black AIrican reader to bring himself to vcrify this.
b his great surprise and satisfaction, he will dis
cover that most of the ideas used today to domesti
cate, atrophy, dissolve, or steal his "soul," were
conceived by his own ancestors. To become con
scious of that fact is perhaps [he first step toward a
genuine retricval of himself; without it, intellectual
sterility is the general rule, or else the creations bear
1 know not what inlprint of [he subhuman.
46 CHEIKH ANTA DIOP
Ll a \lord, \\c must rcstore the historical con
scjou~ness of the African peoples and reconquer a
Promethean consciousness.
2. Ani hropologically and clilturally spea1.ing,
the Semitic world was born during protohistoril:
times from the mixtw'e of white-skinned and blllCk
skinned people in western Asia. This is \\ hy an
understanding of the Mesopotamian Semitic \\ orld,
Judaic or Arabic, requires constant reference to rhe
underl) ing Blad. reaJjry. If cenain Biblical passages,
especially in the Old Testament, seem absurd, this is
hecause specialist!>, puffed up with prejudices, are
unable to accept docmnentar) evidence.
3. The triumph of the monogenetic thesis uf
humanity (Leake), even at the stage of "Homo
sapiens-sapiens," compels one to admit lhat all
races descended from the Black race, according to a
filiation process tJlat science will one day explain 3
4. In L'A,Fiquc Nllire prCrlllllTIIllfe (1960), 1 had
two objeeti\es: (1) to demonstrate tJle possibilit}
of writing a history of Black Africa free of mere
chronology of c\ eilts, as the preface to that \01
ume clearly indicatcs; (2) to define the laws gm'
eming tbc cvolution of A frican sociopolitical
Structures, in order to explain thc direction that
historical evolution has taken in Black Africa;
therefore, to tr), henceforth to dominate and mas
ter that historical process by knowledge, rathe
than simpl) to submit to it.
These last questions, like those about origins
(Eg) pt), arc among the ke) problems; once the)
are soh ed, a scholar can proceed to write the his
tory of lirica. Consequently, it is e\ ident why we
arc paying particular attention to the solution of
such problems amI of so many otllcrs which t::ran
scend dlc field of history.
The research pattern inaugurated by L'Afrique
N/lire pdcol/l/lillle on the sociohistorical, not on
the ethnographic, plane has since been utilized b)
many researchers. That, I suppose, is wJ};lt has led
them to descrihing the daily life of the Congolese
or enlarging upon the various forms of political,
el:ol1omic, social, militar), and judicial organi7.a
tion in >\frica.
5. To define the image of a modern Africa rec
onciled \\ ith its past and preparing for its future.'
6. Once the perspectives accepted until now
by official science ha\e been re\'ersed, the historY
of human it) will become clear and the history of
THE MEANING OF OUR WORK ~
Africa can be writtcn. But an) undertaking in this the test of chronology, if it can be proYed in the to confirm val'iolls ideas that [ have ad\'anced,
field that adopts compromise as its point of depar tinalanaly is that all the facts noted existed prior to instead of limiting themsehes to a negative, ster
ture all if it were possible to split the difference, or the period of slavery, his research will have surely ile skepticism. The) would soon be dazzled, if
lhe lJ'uth, in hall~ would run the risk of producing contributed solid material to the edifice of histori not blinded, by the bright light of thcir furure
nothing bur alienation. Only a loyal, determined (..-:1ll..nO\\ ledge. disco\-eries. In fact, our conceprion of African
struggle to destro) cultural aggression and bring history, as exposed here, has practically tri
ut the rruth, whate\ er it ma) be, is re\'olutionary I should like to conclude by urging young umphed, and those who write on African hi~tory
and consonalll \\ ith real progress; it is the only .\merican scholars of good will, both Blacks and now, whether \\ illin~ly or not, basc themselves
approach which opens un to the universal. \\ hites, to form universit)' teams and to become upon it. But the American contribution to this
IIumanitarian dcclarations are not called for and invoh'ed, like Professor Lawrence, in the effort finaJ phase could be decisive.
add noming to real progress.
Similarl)', it is not a matter of looking for the
Negro under a m:lgnif) ing gla~s as one scans the
past; a great people has nothing to do with pett) ;-';otes
histor), nor with ethnographic reflections sorel} Rassemhlcmcnt Di:mocral'ique -\.fricain (Democratic in France rallied to the ncw party which lh liS carried
in need of renoyation. It matters little that some \fric;m Rall~), the RD\ founded in 19~6, "was the forward the RD'\ line and popularized the slogan of
brillianr Black individuals ma) have existed else fir~l intcrtcrritorial movemcnt ;n French West national independence that we had laullched.
where. The cssenti:ll factor is to retrace the historv Africa, created oelclrc parties in territories other 3 Cf. Chcikh Anta Diop, "I.'!\pparilinn de l'homo
of rhe ent ire nation. The conlJ'ary is tantamount to than Sencg-,ll or Ivor~ Coast had tatcn roo!." Ruth S. sapicns," Bill/mIl de ['IFFV, XXXII, Series II,
rhinking that to be or not to be depends on whether \1orgemhau. P/lli/it'lll Par/iI''' /III rrenclJ-spl"lkirlg number 3, 1970. Chcil.h Anta Diop, "La Pig-men
or not one is known in Europe. The elTon is cor HUI /{rifa. Oxfclrd: Clarendon Press, 196+. p. 302. tation des anciens Egyptiells. Test par In mdaninc,"
2 Stlrting especially with t.he adminiSTration of Blllletill dc I'IF/\, XXXV, Series B, number 3,
rupted at the base by the presence of the YeT)
Franklin, secretary general of thc RnA students at 1973.
complex one hopes to eradicate. Why not stud)
\1onrpcllier. Cf. thc article by Pcmla i\ larcdle 4 Cf Cheikh I\nta Diop, Les FOlldell/L'llIs <,lIhllrt'l" et
the acculturation of the white man in a Black
Oucgnin: "Cn compte-rem)u du Congres de la indlls/n'ds d'lIl1 IlI/IIr Ela/ fidiml d.1jriqUt Aoire.
milieu, in :In(.;ent Egy pt, for ex'lmple) FEANF organise par les ERDA aux Socictes ,a\':1n 5 In Nil/irills IItgrcs, ))1' Diop translates a page of
7. ] 10\\ does it happen lhat all modern Black tes Ie R a\l'il 1953," in the S:lme bulletin citcu above, Einstein's Theory of Relativity into Wolof, the prin
literature has remained minor, in rhe sense that no .\Iay-Julle 1953. cipallangllage of Senegal.
Negro African author or artist, to my knowledge, Similarl\', with a fe" excepliuns the PAl (African 6 Bamako 1964 coLloquium on the transcription of
has yet posed! he problem of man's fate, the major Independence Party) \las organi7.ed by former RDA African languages, \;lrious measures taken to promote
theme of human leners? students \\ ho had returned toAfrica. Various branches African languages, and so forth.
8. In L'Ul1i/e L'ul/llrelfe de I'.!frilj/le Noire, we
tried to pinpoint the features common to Kegro
I\frican ci\ ilization.
9. In the second part of Nutirl11S Ilegres, we dem
onstrared t hat African languages could express phil
osophic and scientific thoughr(mathematics, physics,
and so fonh)\ and that African culture will not be
rakcn seriously umil their utilization ill education
becomes :I realit). The events of the past few yC'<lfS
prove that lJ'JESCO has accepted those ideas_"
10. 1 am delighted to learn that one idea pro
posed in L' -ljriljlle .\I()ire precoltmit/fe - the possi
bilities of pre-Columbian relations between Africa
and America - has been taken up by an ,\merican
scholar. Professor l-larold G. Lawrence, ofOakland
Uni\'crsity, isin fact demonstrating widl an abun
dance of' proof the reality of lhose relationships
which were merely hypothetical in my work. If the
~Ilm toral of his impressive arguments stands up to
46 CHEIKH ANTA DIOP
In a word, we must restore the historical con
sciousness of the African peoples and reconquer a
Promethean consciousness.
2. .'\nthropologically and culwrally speaking,
the Semitic world was born during protohistoric
times from the minure of white-skinned and black
skinned people in western Asia. This is why an
understanding of the ~lesopotamian Semitic world,
Jud3ic or Arabic, requires constant reference to lile
underlying Black realit) If certain Biblical passages,
especially in the Old Testament, seem absurd. wis is
because specialists, puf!ed up with prejudices, are
unable to elccept docunlenra~ evidence.
3. The triumph of the monogenetic lhesis of
humanity (Leakey), e\en at the stage of "Homo
sapiens-sapiens," compels one 10 admjl tllnt all
races descended from the Bbck race, according to a
filiation process tlut science will one day explain.]
4. In L'AInque Noil"t' pricoloniale (1960), 1 had
two objectives: (1) to demonstrate the possibility
of writing n history of Black Africa free of mere
chronology of events, as the preface to that \'01
unle clearly inrucates; (2) to define the laws gov
errung the evolution of African sociopolitical
structures, in order to explain the djrection that
historical evolution has taKen in Black Africa;
therefore, to try heneefortIl ro dommate and mas
ter tIut hisrorical process by knowledge, ratIler
than sirnply to subDUt to jt.
These last questions, like those about origins
(Egypt), are among the key problems; once they
arc solved, a scholar can proceed to write the his
rory of Africa. Consequently, it is evident why we
arc paying particular attention to the solution of
such problems and of so many others which tra:Il
scend the field of history.
The research pattern inaugurated bv L'/'lfrique
Noire pricoloniltle on the sociohistorical, not on
the ethnographic, plane bas since been utilized by
many researchers. That, I suppose., is what has led
them to descl'ibing the daily life of the Congolcse
or enlarging upon tbe Yalious forms of political,
economic, social, militarv. and judicial organiza
tion in Africa.
5. To define the image of a modern Africa rcc
onciled with its past and preparing for its future.'
6. Once the perspectives accepted until now
by official science have been reversed, the history
of humanity will become clear and the histor\' of
THE MEANING OF OUR WORK 47
Africa can be written. But an) undertaking in this the test of chronology, if it can be proved in the to confirm various ideas that I have advanced,
field that adopts compromise as its point of depar final analyis that all the facts noted existed prior to instead of limitin~ themselves to a negative, ster
ture as if it were possible to split the difference, or the period of slavery, his rese,uch will have surely ile skepticism. They would soon be dazzled, if
the truth, in half, would run the risk of producing contributed solid material to the ed ifice of histori not blinded, by the bright light of their future
nothing but aherultion. On I) a loval, determined c:!! kno\\ ledge. discoveries. In fact, our conception of African
struggle to destro) cuJLural aggression and bring history, as exposed here, has practically tri
Ollt the trulh, whatever it may be, is revolutiol1ol") I should like to conclude by urging young umphed, and those who write on African hislory
and cunsommt \~ilh real progress; it is We only .~l11eriean scholars
of good will, both Blacks and now, whether wil.lingly or not, base themselves
approach \\ h.ich opens on to lhe uni\ersal. Whites. to form university tcams and to become upon it. But the American contribution to this
Humanitarian declarations are not called for and invoh cd, like Professor LlIHence, in the effort final phase could be decisive.
add nothing to real progress.
SImilarly, it is not a marter of looking for the
r-.egro tmder a magnifying glass as one scans tIle
past; a great people has notlling to do with petty Notes
history, nor with ethnographic reflections soreh R:lssemblem~m Democnlljque _~fricain (Democratic in France rallied to the new par!) which thus carried
in need of renovation. It matters hrtle that some African Rally), the RDA founded in 1946, "was the fOf\\ard the RDA line and popularized the slogan of
brilliant Black individuals may have exjsted else fir~t inlerterritorial movement in French West national independence lhat we had launched.
where, The essential faclor is to retrace the histon ("rica, created before panics in territories other Cf Cheikh Anta Diop, "L'Apparition de I'homo
of the entire nation. The contrar\' is tantamount to than Senegal or Ivory Coa~l had taken roo!." Ruth S. sapiens," Blillelill lit" I'/FAl\l, xx.XU, Series 11,
thinlIDg that to be or not to be depends on whether !\ilorgenthau, Politim! P{/~/i~s UII F"fII(h-sp~(J('mg number 3, ]970. Cheikh Anta Diop, "La Pil,"men
or not one is k.nown in Europe. The effort is cor //'t.'I. Ijrim. Oxford: Clarendon Prl'Ss, 19M, p. 302_ talion des anciens Egyptiens. Test par la melaninc,"
Z Sw-tinl!" especiallj with the administration of Blillai" de 1'1F.-tV, JC.xx.'V, Series B, number 3,
rupted at tlle b:lse by the presence of tbe vel')
Franklin, secretary geneml of the RDA students at 1973.
complex one hopes to eradicate. Why not stud)
Montpcllier a. the anide by Penda Marcelle 4 Cf Cheikh Anta Diop, L"s FOl/dell/ems rul/llr('ls et
the aeculmratjon of the white maIl in a Black
Ouegnin: "un compte-rendu du Congrcs de la inrlll.mid.' "'un fillur 1111 federal II'/~rriljue NOIre.
milieu, in ancient Egypt, for example? FEANF organise par 1es ERDA aux Socieres savan In Nu.riollJ I/el'es, Dr Diop translates a page of
7. How does it happen tbal all modern Black tes Ie 8 a\ ril J 953," in the same buUetin cited above, Einstein's Theory of Relativit} into Wolof, the prin
literature has remained minor, in tlle sense that no May-June 1953. cipallanguage of Senegnl.
Negro African author or artist, to my knowledge, Similarly, with a few exceptions the PAl (African 6 Bamako 1964 colloquium on the transcription of
has yet posed the problem of man's fate, the major Independence Pany) was organized by former RDA African langl~1ges, various measures taken to promote
theme of human letters' mldents II ho had returned to Africa. Various branches Afril'an languages, and SO fortb.
8. In ['Unite clllilirelle de 1'_l{rlqw: Noire, we
tried to pinpoint me features common to Negro
African civilization.
9. In the second part of NiltiollS negres, we dem
onstrated tIlat Africl.D languages could exprcss phil
osopruc and scientific thought (mathematics, pbvsics,
and so forth); and that African culture will not be
taken seriously wtil dleir utilization in ed ucation
becomes a reaJjty. The events of the past few years
pro\'e mat UI\~CO bas accepted those ideas."
10. I anl delighted to learn tbelt one idea pro
posed in L .Jl/riqlle Noire prcwlolliale - the possi
bilities of pre-Columbian relations between Africa
and America - has been taken up by an American
scholar. Professor llarold G. Lawrence, of Oakland
Uruversity, is in fact demonstrating with an abltn
dance of proof the reality of those relationships
which were mere]\, hypometical in my work. If the
sum total of his impressive argwnents stands IIp to

3
Europe Upside Down
Fallacies of the New Afrocentrism
Kwame Anthony Appiah
In the last few years, there has been a stream of
publications, especially in the United States,
aimed at establishing a new basis [or the study and
teaching of African and African-American culture.
'Nhether or not they actually use the word
"Afrocentric" on their packaging, these books
which differ cnormously in the quality of their
thought and writing, as well as in their factual
reliability - have a certain common set of pre-oc
cupations, whose persistence entitles one now to
speak of an Afrocentric paradigm.
This has two basic elements. one critical, the
other positiVI; which arc either argued or taken for
granted. The negative thesis is that modem \Vcstern
scholarship on cultural matters, high and low, is
hopelessly Euroccmric. This means, to begin with,
that \-\"cstern scholarship understands European
history, intellectual life and social institutions as an
ideal type, both normathcly and descriptively. But
Eurocentric work also displays an inability, rooted in
prejudice, to cntcr sympathetically into the forms of
life of non-Europeans, and, especially, of black peo
ple of African descent. :\s a consequence, \Vestem
scholarship presupposes, so the story goes, that
from K\\ume "nthuny Appiah, "Racisms" in ."'ntltono' of RI/cism, ed. Dal'iJ Theu Guldberg (1990), pp. 3-17, inc! uded
as "Europe Upside Down: Fallacies of the Nell Afrocenrrism," TiI1It".< Uterar)' S/lppICllIt'fIJ, 12 February 1993, from
L'nilersi()' of Minnesota Press.
01 a lind) body of \Hiting; it is the basis of a
II ilh an Afrocentric education. I lere the argument
\I orst, actively damages the self-esteem of black
'\fricans have produced little of much cultural
worth, and that cultural works of sophistication or
value (like the architecture of Great Zimbabwe or
the Pyramids), t'\cn when they are in Africa, are
unlikely to have been produced by black people. In
support of this Eurocentric thesis, some (and occa
sionally 3 ~n:at deal of) work goes into showing that
European scholars, at least since the Enlightenment,
have concca led facts about the African origins of cer
tain central elements of Westem ci\'ilization; notably
the Egyptian origins of the Greek "miracle" and the
black African origins of the Egyptian "miracle"
This neg;ltive thesis is argued as the pro
legomenon roan alternative, positive, "!\frocentric"
view, in which African cultural creativity is discov
ered ro have been at the origin of Western civiliza
tion, while Western civilization, l.."Spccially modern
Western civilization, is either ~lsserted or implied
to be morally depraved; incapable, in panicular, of
li" ing peacefully with others. We (sometimes all of
us, sometimes just those of us who arc black) are
urged, then, to centre on African history (and par
ticularly the history of the Egypt of the Pharaohs)
and return to African values.
EUROPE UPSIDE DOWN
The~frocentricparadigm is not just the source
many years (beginning in the 1950s), for the thesis
Il1()\'ement in the United States to re\'ise the teach
ing ofAfrican-American children, to provide them
is that the Eurocenrricit) of what is taught in
\merican schools, at best, fails to nurture, and at
I'egyptien pharaolliljuc et des langue.' lIegro-a!rI'cailJes,
child n:n , and that what these children need instead
is ;1 diet of celebratory African history (held to
begin in Eg)pt, and in an Egyprian civili7.l1tion
held to be black) and the transmission of !\frican
Yalues,
Thelle valucs arc often nO\\ taught in rhe ver
sion de"eloped b) Maulana Karenga and associ
ated \\;th the invention ofa feast called "Kwanzaa,"
designed to pro\ ide an African celebration to go
\lith Christmas and Hanukkah. (American chil
dren arc taught Swahili words, naming various
allegedly o\frican virtues, as their proper inherit
ance. Thert: is something of an irony in the usc of
Swahili a~ an Afrocentric language, since hardly
an) of the slaves brought to the New World can
hay c kno\1 n it, amI it was in fact being used in a
lulture in which slave-trading to the Arabian
peninsula was a major clement of the econ0111).)
Thi~ particular brand of Afrocentrism goes under
the h\bel of "Kcmctism" ("Kemet" being a Dame
for ancient Egypt); and the whole package can be
found in a recent book by Molefi Kete Asante, one
of the intcllcctuallcaders of the moyement Kallrl:
Ali-oretl/ritify Imd K/lol7'ledge.
.'\t least as important as any published work is a
hody of Afrocentric lore transmitted in public lec
tures and in discussion groups by figures who havc
tended in recenr years to combine Afrocentrism
with a peculiar anti-S(~mitism, which is preoccu
pied \\ith attributing special responsibility for the
ills of the black world to a Jewish conspiracy. Many
of the leading rap stars seem to subscribe to such
yicl\'~, combining them with their well-known
misogyny and homophobia, to produce a cultural
brew as noxious as any currently available in popu
lar culture. The diagnosis of this particular pathol
ogy is thc subject of much current speculation
among obscrvers of African-American culture.
The scholarly end of the Afrocentric movement
has one major hero: Cheikh Anta Diop, the
Senegalese man of letters, after whom the uniYer-
49
sit) in Dakar is now named. Diop argued, olcr
of the African origins of Greek civilization, In
such works as [' U,lite mltt/relle de l'Afrique /loire,
.1I11cli,mte des civil/sa/iollS negres, Na/iolls IIc!gres et
o~l/Itrt', Fonde1llt'Ii/s ecol1omiq/les 1'1 cuill/reis d'II/1 e/at
federal d'1frlque I/oir, and Parente! geru:tique de
he pursued a complex agendll, in which the splen
dours of Egypt were seen as a reason for contem
porary African pride and the culturalunitj derived
from a common African source as the basis for
modem :\frican political unity. (for a sample of
Diop's \\Titing see Chapter 2, Ihis volume.)
Like most cultural movements at full flood, this
Afrocentrism is a composite of truth and error,
insight and illusion, moral generosity and mean
ness. But the most striking thing about it is how
thorough I) at home it is in the frameworks of
nineteenrh-centur) European thought. (One of
the s)mptomatic features of much Afrocentric
writing is rhat the antagonists it identifies are
largely dead.) Afrocentrism, in short, seems very
much to share the presuppositions of the Yictorian
ideologies against which it is reacting. Take, for
example, the preoccupation with the ancient
world. The academic curriculum of the nineteenth
century traced Western civilization to roots in
ancient Greece. Afrocentrists have simply chal
lenged the old priority of the (white) Greeks, by
replacing them with (black) Egyptians, There are,
of course, genuine issues for discussion here about
the relations between different parts of the ancient
Mediterranean and rhe Greek "miracle." Martin
Bernal (not, by my account, an Afrocentrist,
because he doesn't support the positive agenda of
the movement) is a hero for Afrocentrists because,
in Black Athena (Volume One, 1987), he has taken
up the challenge of refuting dIe modern view that
the Greeks owed nothing of importance to Egypt.
So far as I can see, there is now a consensus that
Bernal has convincingly demonstrated the role of
prejudice against blacks and Jews in classical
scholarship from the Enlightenment onwards, but
has not established decisively his own positive
account of ancient history.
But it is not this quite genteel academic debate
that has drawn Bernal to the Afrocentrists' atten
tion. For it is essential not only to agree with
so KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH
Bernal's account of ancient intellectual history but
also to insist, in Diop's \\ords, that "Ancient Egypt
was a Negro civilization land] ... the moral fruit
of their civilization is to be counted among the
assets of the Black world .... " And on this matter
Bernal has little to say. Forrunately he did not have
to argue for this seeondar) thesis, since it is taken
to be implicit in his title. . ~(riral1 Alhena (the title
Bernal preferred) or Egypri(1I7 Alhello would have
left the racial issue open: Black Alhella (his pub
lisher's choice) does not.
This preoccupation with racial matters is very
much a response to the nintcenth-century formu
lation of the issues, when to the classicism of the
Enlightenmenr there was added the thoug'ht that
the \Vestern heritage was a racial possession.
Which is to neglect not onl) Egyptian influences
on the Greeks, but such minor emb'lrrassments as
the centrality of Jewish contributions to V\Testern
high culture, and the key role of the Arabs in
maintaining rhe intellectual tradition that linked
Plato to the Renaissance. It depends on a wa) of
thinking about culture and biology which i.~ bound
to be discomfited b) those scholars, black, brown
and yellow, who have taken possession of Western
culture in the twentieth cenwl) and mastered it,
at the same time as many of the supposed racial
heirs of the West have been immersed in popula.r
culture "contaminated" by African rhytJlms.
But in our day racialism surd) doesn't need
arguing against in serious company. Do we not aU
know that the interconnections and interdepend
ences of biology and culture are complex and mul
tiple, that the old simplicities of racialism ha\'e not
stood the test of exposlIfe to the evidence' Perhaps,
or, tben again, perhaps not. After aU, Afroccmrist
interest in the colour of the ancient Egyptians pre
sumably derives from the thought that jf they were
black then they were of the same race as contem
porary black Mricans and their New World cous
ins. And unless you eonflate biology and culture,
why should that matter?
It is hard to find in the Afrocentrist literature a
clearer answer to this question than the passage
from Diop r quoted earlier. Racial identity with the
Egyptians makes their achievements a moral asset
for contemporary blacks. (Of course, if Greece
grew out of Egypt and "rhe West" grew out of
Greece, then the \Vest too is a moral asset of con-
temporal') blacks, and its legaey of ethnocentrism
presumably one of our moral liabilities.... But I
digress.) Perhaps tJlis i.s why Black AtIJeua and The
African Ol'l/;in III Ci1'ili:::.atirltl sell so well on thl'
streets of Harlem. And if so, this is a reason
that would have been entirel) congenial to the
nineteenth-eenntr) Euroeentrists whom Afro
centrism aims to refute.
Once we see the essentially re.1ctiye structure of
Afrocelllrism - that it is simply Ellrocemrism
turned upside-dow n - we can understand where
its intelJectlial weaknesses lie. It is not sl.lrpising,
for e.xample, that in choosing to talk about Egypt
and to ignore the rest of Africa and African history,
Afrocentrism shares the European prejudice
against culrures without writing. Euroccntrism,
findulg there a literate culture and a significant
architecture, set about claiming that Egypt could
not be black. Afrocentrism chooses Egypt because
Eurocentrism had already made a claim on it.
Similarly, we should not be supriscd at one of the
most tiresome feamres of Afrocentrism, namely its
persistence in what the Beninois philosopher (and
current Minister of Culture) Paulin Hountondji
has called "unanimism": the view that there is <i/I
African culture to whk'h to appeal. (See Hountondji,
Chapter 20, this \'olurne). It is surely preposrerous
to suppose that there is a single African culture,
shared by everyone from the civilizations of the
Upper J\ilc thousands of yt.':lrs ago to the thousand
or so language-zones of contemporary Africa.
In aiming to identify some common core of
African civilization, the Afrocentrists seem once
again to be responding to earlier attempts to iden
rifya commOn core of Western culture. One can be
forgiven for wondering ho\\ unitary the West
really is today. But it was always a strange idea that
Alexander, Alfred and Frederick the Great had
something in common wit'lI each other and with
the least of their suhjects, which could be called
Western culture. And ill Africa, where whatcyer
continuity there has been throug'h all this time has
not been mediated b) e"en the broken textual tra
dition that in some sense unites "Western cul
ture," it is not onl) a strange idea bur a silly one.
A final irony is Ihat Afrocentrism, which is
offered in the name of black solidarir}, has, by
and large, entire!) ignored the work of African
scholars other rhan Diop. (Thi~ fact tends to be
EUROPE UPSIDE DOWN
concealed because African-American scholars
like Asante and Kareng-d have adopted African
n;lmcs.) Thus, much pIa) has been given to
another major source-book for the Afrocentrists,
Janheinz Jahn's JIII1llIl: Afriw17 cllilures lind Ihe
11eslt'(/1 lVorld, a work that appeared in English
translation in the United States with great eclat
in the carly 1960s. The book revolves around the
concept of 71111, the stem of the Killyaruanda
Bantu words IJJunlu (person), kinlu (thing), IUIIl/II
(place and time) and kJIIltu (modality); "ntll,"
Jahn wrote with the granitas of revelation, "is the
Llniversal force as such."
Rc:lding this, I found myself drawn into a fanmsy
in which an African scholar returns to her home in
Lagos or 0:airobi, with the important news that she
has uncovered the key to Western culture. Soon to
be published: T1llNC: Ifes1I!rJJ cullure ((ltd the
~rriran lJ'orld, a \York that exposes the philosophy
of mg, \\Tillen so clearly on the face of the English
Llllguage. For ing, in the Euro-American view, is
manifestl~ Lhe inner dynamic essence of ule world.
111 the structure of the terms doi/Ig and making and
mc,miug, the English (and thus, by extension all
Resource Guide
1. Joumals \\ hich specialize in African studies,
and jOllrnals which frequently publish essays on
..\liica
'd,l/Ilr~: 1'lll'JiJl/malojilJrAfrimll Developtll~m FOII/uia/iun.
Washington, DC: The Foundation, Superilllendenr of
Documellts, United Stares G. P. 0. 1986-
/!r"m. London: InrcrnarionaJ AfriC:lIl Instirutc. 1928
.'I(rim 7;,day. London: Africa Journal Lid 1981
.Jji'altl ,JI>SIrtUIS. London: International African
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.f{rimll -If]ims. London: RO\'a! African Socicty and
Oxford University Press. ]90J-
.l/rimll /lrIJ. Los Angeles: Universil\' of California
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~(ri((111 Histon'ral Studies. BrooUine, Mass: African
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l/ricull 11/.<igll1. Pretoria: African Institute. 1980-
!/i'ial!t LaJl1 Studies. New York: .\frican Law Association
I)f America. 1969-1980
'I/ri'Oll Social Rrsl'rlrch. M.anch~ster: i\lanchester
Gni I'ersi t)' Press 1966-
51
Westerners) express their deep commitment to this
conception. But the secret heart of the matter is
captured in their primal)' ontological category of
th-ing: every th-ing (or be-ing as their sages express
the matter in the more specialized vocabular) of
one of their secret societies) is not stable but cease
lessly changing. Here we see the fundamental
explanation for the extraordinary- neophilia of
Western culture, its sense that reality is change.
The notion that there is something unitary
called African culture that could thus be summa
rized has been subjected ro devastating critique b)
a generation of African intellectuals. But little sign
of these African accounts of African culture
appears in the writings of Afrocentrism . .\lolcfi
Asante has \\Titten whole books about Akan cul
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Akan philosophers as lB. Danquah, William
Abrahams, Kwasi Wiredu and Kwame Gyekye.
And r am reliably informed that, on one occasion
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52 KWAME ANTHONY APPIAH
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\\tebsler, John 13. et al. 1967. I B/"'io~raph)' 011 Kell.J'a, period of colonization, lasted less than a cenn:]'y. connotations of these words. But it can be admit
Syracuse: Syracuse Universiry Program of Eastern These events, whieh involved the greater part of ted that the colonists (those settling a region), as
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Westerman, R. C. 1994. Fieldn>ork in Ihe Libr(lly: "-I
nineteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries. by dominating a local majority) ha\'e all tended to
lIide 10 Research ill ./lIlhropology (Illd Rcla/i'(1 Arell
.\1though in Mrican history the colonial experi organize and transform non-European areas into
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arliesl Times to Ihe BeKillllillg o/the Treellliah Celllury. controversIal, since, to sa) the least, it signified a is possible to use three main keys to account for
'airohi: Lamu Society. new historical form and the possibility of radicall~ the modulations and methods representative of
Wiley, DJ\ id S. el aI. 1982. Afrim /III Film (Il1d Video/(Lp<,. new types of discourses on African traditions and colonial organization: the procedures of acquiring,
196Q-1981 [a guide TO 7,500 films]. East Lansing: cultures, One might think that this new historical distributing, and exploiting lands in colonies; the
'\fTica.n Studies Center, Michigan State University. form has meant, from its origins, the negation of policies of domesticating nati\'es; and the manner
Willet. Shelagh i\l. and Da,id P. Ambrose. 1980, two contradictory myths; namely, the "Hobbesian of managing ancient organizations and imple
Le.lolho: /1 Comprehensive Bibliography. Oxford and pictllrc of a pre-European Africa, in which there menting new modes of production. Thus, three
Santa Barbara: Clio Press.
was no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no complementary hypotheses and actions emerge:
Williams, GeofTrey]. 1967. ,I Bibliogmp/~)'o/Siam Leo'/t.
Society; and which is worst of all, continued fear, the domination of physical space, the reformation
1925-1967. Ne\, York: AfriL'Una Publishing l.-ompany.
Williams, Geoffre) J. 1984. Jndepelldenl Zambia: .1 and dangerof violent death"; and "the Rousseauian of nalives' minds, and the integration of local eco
Bibliography ~(the Social Scifllw, 1964-1979. Boston: picture of an African golden age of perfect liberty, nomic histories intO the Western perspective,
.K.Hall. equal it) and fraternity" (Hodgkin, 1957: 174-5), These complementary projects constitute what
Withcrall, Julian W, J989. A(rietllla Resources alld ~Irhough generalizations are of course danger might be called the colonizing structure, which
Collerliolls: Tlm'e Decades 0/ De1.'elopnrml (Il1d ous, colonialism and colonizalioll basically mean completely embraces the physical, human, and
;/c!licl'e11lent. MeTUchen, NJ: Scarecrm\- Press. organization, 'lrrangement. The two words deri\'e spiritual aspects of the colonizing experience (see,
from the latin word colere, meaning to cultivate or e.g., Christopher, 1984:27-87). This structure
From \" Y. Mudimbe, The 11I;'enlion of.4fi'ica: Gllosis, Philosophy allff Ihe Order oIA'llOmledge, Indiana University Press
(19ilk),pp.1-2.6-II, l5.-16.

56 V.Y. MUDIMBE
clearly also indicates the projected metamorphosis
em isioned, a1 great imellectmtl cost, by ideologi
cal and thcoretical texts, which from thc last quar
tcr of the nineteenth century to the 1950s ha\'e
proposed programs for "regenerating" thc African
space and its inhabitants.
[ .. )
[T]he great historical tragedy of Africa has been
not so much that it was too late in making contact
\\ ith the rest of the world, as the manner in which
that contact was brought about; that Europe
began to }lropag:ne at a time when it had fallen
inro the hands of the most unscrupulous finan
ciers and captains of industry. (cesaire, 1972:23)
[ .. )
The colonializing stTucture, even in its most
eXU'cme manifestations - such as the crisis of
South Africa (sec, e.g., Seidman, 1985) - might
not be the only explanation for Africa's prescnt
day marginality. Perhaps this marginality could,
more essentially, be understood from the perspcc
ti\'e of wider h)potheses abc)ut the classification of
beings and societies. It would be too eas) to state
that this condition, at least theoretically, ha.s been
a COltSequence of amhropological discourses.
Since Turgot (",ho in the 1750s first classified lan
guages and cultures according to "whether the
peoples rare] hunters, shepherds, or husbandmen"
[1913-23, I: l72] and ultimatel) defined an ascend
ing path from savagery to commercial societies),
non-Western marginality has been a sign both of a
possible absolute beginning and of a primitive
foundation of conventional history. Rather than
retracing an alrC<ldy too well-known evolutjonar~
hallucination (Ouehet, 1971; Hodgen, 1971), let
liS take a different angle by examining both thc
issues derived from a fifteenth-century painting
and the allocation of an "African object" to rune
teenth-cenruJY anthropology.
Commenting upon Llls Mlmi'loS ofVclasquez,
M. Foucault writes: "the painter is standing a little
back from his canvas. He is glancing at his model:
perhaps he is considering whethcr to add some
finishing touch, though it is also possible that the
first stroke has not yet been made ... " (1973:3).
The paimer is at one side of the canvas working or
meditating on how to depict his models. Once the
painting is finished, it becomes both a given and a
reflection of what made it possible. And Foucault
thinks that the order of Las ,Wellllills seems to be
an example of "a representation [which) under
takes to represent itself ... in all its elements, with
its images, the eyes to which it is offered, the faces
it makes visible, the gestures that call it into being."
YCt in the amazing complexit) of this painting
there is remarkable absence: "the person it resem
bles and the person in whose eyes it is only a
resemblance" (Foucault, 1973: I6).
Now let us consider J lans Burgkmair's painting
E,rolic Tribe. Is the paimer sitting back contem
plating his exotic models? Ho\\ mall) ( It is not
cven certain that a model is present in the room
where Burgkmair is thinking about W;lyS of sub
suming' particular 'ersions ()f human beings. The
year is 1508. Durer is ~liJl ali\e. Rurgkmair is by
then a respected master of the new school of
Augsburg he ha~ founded. He would like to please
the fuggers and Welsers and has agreed to illus
trate Bartolomiius Springer's bool.. on his travels
lVerseas (Kunst, 1967). lIe h3)) carefully read
Springer's diary, has probably !>tudied some
clums)' pencil or pen-and-ink sketchts, and has
decided to draw six pictures of "primitives."
The first picture of the series seems to repre
sent a family. Let us imagine the painter at work.
He has just read Springer's description of his V()~'
age, and, possibly on t he basis of ~ome sketches, he
is trying to create an image of blacks in "Gennea."
Perhaps he has decided to use a model, presuma
bly while but strongl~ built. The painter is staring
at ule pa.1c bod), imagining scheme~ to transform
it into a black entity. The model has become a mir
ror through which the painter evaluates ho\~ the
norms of similitude and his own creativity would
impart both a human identil) and a racial differ
ence to his cam as. Perhaps thc artist is already at
work. Yet he has to stop regularly, walk around the
model, leave the luminous space before the win
e1ow, and retire into a discreet corner. His gaze
addresses a point which is a question: how to
superimpose the African characteriHics described
in Springer's narrative onto the norms of the
Italian cOlllrapposlo? If he succeeds, the painting
should be, in its orig'inalit), a celebration and a
rt..'1l1inder of the natural link connecting human
beings and, al the same time, an indication of racial
DISCOURSE OF POWER AND KNOWLEDGE OF OTHERNESS
or cultural differences. It should bear \\ itness to
the truth of similitudes, analogies, and possibly
even the violence of antipathy. At an) rate, Kunst
notes rhat
The nude }\ frican depicted from behind con
forms LO the cbssical rule of contraposto
expres,eJ in the compensatory balance of sym
merrical parts of the body in movement: one
shoulder leaning on one leg and the other, raised
abo\'e the free leg. One guesses that this nude
man was copied from a classic model to which the
artist ga\'e characteri"tics, jewelry and s\vords, of
all c... OI ic people still strongly attached to nature.
(Kunst, 1967:19-20)
It is easy to dismiss my concern about simili
tude in this particular creative process. Am I not
projecting a twentieth-century perspective onto
the pictorial techniques of the early sixteenth cen
mry? The structure of figures is there in the first
s111al1 painting, treated in a t) pical \\a). The fuss
about similitude might just be, after all, anI) a
contemporary hypothesis about the process of
estabhshing links betwecn beings and things from
our present viewpoint. Yet it is possible to look for
issues stemming from Burgkmair's representa
tion. In effect, we can describc his artistic filiation
and his dependence upon the classic ideals of the
Renaissance (l'-unst, 1967:20). We can also
compare the principles of his technique with
those apparent in some conremporar) works
directly or iJldircctly dealing \\ ith black figures,
such as Erasmus Grasser's Moor Dllllcers (1480),
H.ieronymus Bosch's Carden of Delighls (1500),
Klltlcell the A!oor Woman (1521) by Albrecht
DUrer, and at the very end of the century,
Cornelis:!. van Haarlem's Batseba (1594).
Specubting about or analyzing the contrasts
bctween white and hlack figures in these paint
ings, onc could certainl) search for a vision which
refers to historically comentional explanations
for example, the sense of the characteristics and
"the idea of design, that is to S.-IY, of expression by
means of the pure disposition of contours and
masses, and by the perfection and ordering of lin
tar rh)lhm" (Fr), 1940: 165). The complex play of
colors in harmony and opposition, the order of
shades between the white and the black, are ohvi
57
ousl) based on such intellectual and conscious
references. But docs not our understanding of the
colorful cconomics of canvases refer, in a very
insistent manner, to invisiblc traces?
The contrasts between black and white tell
a slOry which probably duplicates a silent but
powerful epistemological configuration. E:x hypo
thesi it might simpl) be a similitude intcrplay:
"CIJI'/veniwlia. at?1II UIII ti/l, analogy, and sympathy
tell us how the world must fold upon itself, dupli
cate itself, reflect itself, or form a chain with itself
so that things can resemble one another. They tell
us what the paths of similitude are and the direc
tions they take; bUI not where it is, how one sces it,
or by what mark it rna) be recognized" (Foucault,
1973:23-4).
Let us ret1.lTn to Burgkmair's finished painting.
The threc black figures - a boy, a man, a seated
woman with a bab) pressed to her breast - have
the right proportions to one another and to the
wider context. All are naked and ha\ e either brace
lets around their arms or a string around their
necks, clear signs that they belong to a "sayage"
universe (Kunst, 1967:20). The little boy is danc
ing, his o\crsiz.ed head turned toward the sky. At
the center of the can\'as, the man, presented in
clear, strong lines, is staring at a faraway horizon,
brandishing an arrow with his left hand and hold
ing two other arrows in his right hand. He incar
nates power, not nnly because he occupies thc
central place in the painting, but also because he is
the most well-defined signifier in this scene. I Ie is
the locus defining the rclatjonship between the
boy at his left and the woman at his right, depicted
with both a touch of hieratic sense and a slightly
instinctual force. At the right, the woman with the
baby is seatcd on a trunk. She seemS to be staring
pensivel) at the pelvic area of the man. The curves
of her bod)' are canonically executed.
The whole picture, in its simplicity and in the
balanced rhythms of its lines, seems a truly charm
ing and decorative painting. Yet what it really
expresses is a discursive order. The structure of
the figures, as well as the meaning of the nude
bodies, proclaim the \irtues of resemblances: in
order to designate Springer's blacks, the painter
has represented blackened whites. This was not
rare during the sixteenth and the seventeenth cen
turies, as a great number of the drawings of the
58 V.Y. MUDIMBE DISCOURSE OF POWER AND KNOWLEDGE OF OTHERNESS S9

period re\'eal. That is the case for example, of the
fifth picrure in Filippo Pigafena's 1591 edition of
his Reiatiolle del Reame di Cougo, represeming
three ltalianized African women, and mat of the
African king in the frontispiece of J. Og'ilby's 1670
book on Africa. What is important in Burgkmair's
painting, as well as in similar drawings, is theiI
double representation,
The first, whose objective is to assimilate exotic
bodies into sixteenth-century Italian painting
methodology, reduces and neutralizes all differ
ences into the sameness signified by the ",hite
norm, which, let us keep in mind, is more religious
history than a simple cultural tradition. )n con
crete language this reference meant a "biblical
solution to the problem of cultural differences
(which) was regarded by most men as the best tJlat
reason and faith could propose" (Hodgen,
1971:254); that is, the same origin for all human
beings, followed by geographical diffusion and
racial and cultural diversification. And it was
believed that the Bible stipulated that me African
could only be tbe slave of his bremren.
There is another level, a more discreet one, It
establishes a second represenration that unites
through similirude and eventually articulates dis
tinctions and separations, thus classifying types of
identities. Briefly, 1 can say that in Burgk.mair's
painting there arc two representational activities:
on mc one hand, signs of an epistemological order
which, silently but imperatiYely, indicate the proc
esses of intcgrating and di fferentiating figures
within the normati\'e sameness; on me other hand,
the excellence of an exotic picture that creates a
cultural distance, thanks to an accumulation of
accidental differences, namely, nakedness, black
ness, curly hair, bracelets, and strings of pearls.
In their arrangements, these differences are
pertinent signs. Because of mc fundamental order
which they reveal, and to which they bear witness,
the virtues of rcsemblance erase physical and cul
tural variations, while maintaining' and pos.iting
surface differcnccs as meaningful of human com
plexity. Diego Velasquez's JUlin de Parejll (1648)
still actualizes this integrating refercnce, whereas
major paintings such as Peter Paul Rubens's Study
1)/ FOllr Blarks' Heads (1620), Rembrandt's 71vo
Negroes (1697), and Hyacinthe Rigaud's Young
Black (1697) explicitly express and relate to
anothcr order. A new cpistemolog:ical foundation
was tbcn functioning in the West. Theories of
diversification of beings, as well as classificatory
tables, explain the origins of constructing taxono
mies and their objcctives (Foucault, 1973: 125-65).
The frame,york of Linnaeus's Svstema Natumc
(1735) is just one of the paradigmatic classifica
tions of species and varieties of Homo SapiellS
(eJlropaelJs, aSi(ltlcus amerirtllll/s, ajer) distinguished
according to physical and temperamental charac
teristics (CrJunt, 1950:355). It would be too easy to
link it, upstream, to discursi\'e formations about
the great chain of being'S and its hierarchy, and,
dOlPlistream, first to Blumenbach's craniology and,
second, to me gcneral anti-African bias of the
philosophical am! scientifIc literature of the eight
eenth and nineteenth centuries (Lyons,
1975:24-85).
Two very different discursive formations - the
discovery ofAfrican art and the constitution of the
object of African Studies, that is, the "invention"
of Africanism as a scicntiJic discipline - can illus
trate the differentiating efficiency of such general
classifying devices as pattern of realiry, designa
tion, arrangement, structure, and character. 1 han:
already suggested that resemblance has been
pushed out of Rubens's, Rembrandt's, and
Rigaud's perceptions of blacks. \Vhat is there,
given in detailed description, might be considered
as a naming and an analysis of an alterity and refers
to a new epistemological ordering': a theory of
understanding and looking at signs in terms of
"the arrangement of idt:ntities and differences
into ordered tables" (Foucault, 1973:72).
Portuguese sailors brought to Europe the first
j'C1tl(IJS, African objects supposedly having myste
rious powers, in the late fifteenth cenrury. One
finds mem mostly in well-organized curio cabi
nets, along with Indian tomahawks or arrows,
Egyptian artifacts, and Siamese drums. Some
interpreters do consider them to be signs of a state
of barbarism (Hodgen, 1971: 162-203), Yet one
can firml) state that more frequently they are seen
as simple curiosities brought back in accordance
witn thc tenth task of the traveler-observcr in thc
table ofVarenius's Gc()graphia gmcralis (1650): to
consider "famous IvIen, Artificers, and InYCntions
of the ?'-latives of all countries" (Hodgcn,
1971:J 67-8), On thc whole, thcse objects are
culturally neutral. Because of their shapes and
styks, sometimes a bit terrifying, mey account for
t1;e mysterious diversity of the Sanle (Bal,
1963:67). It is not until the eighteenth century
thOll, a" strang'e and "ugly" artifacts, mer rea II)
cntt'r into the frame of African art.
The black continent was still on the maps a terra
inmg llita , but its peoples and their material pro
ductions were more familiar to travelers, 'itudems
()f the human species, merchants, and European
~atcs. From the beginning of the eighteenth cen
tUT), there had been a tremendous increase in me
sl;lve lTade and a profitable trans-Atlantic econom!
which inyolved mo,t of c.he Western countries. In
West Africa, Dahomey was a powerful commercial
parmer of European traders. The Ashanti empire
expanded, dominating thc Akans and I'he Oyo
kingdom further to the east lind increasing its
power as it grew. Freed slayes and impoverished
Africans were settled by European-sponsored
organizations in present-day Sierra Leone. On the
east coast, in 1729, Africans expelled the Portuguese
from their fortresses in thc northern region of
,\lozambiquc; and down south,in 1770, there was
the first war between Dutch immigrants and
Hantlls. Two yeals later, James Bruce, traveling
[rom Norm to Central Africa, reached the source
oflhl'. White Nile in the very year that ChicOustice
\ I.ansfie1d declared in England that slayeT) \\ as
against the law (Verger, 19(8).
ill this atmosphere of intense and violent
exchanges, jNf1(OS became symbols of African art.
They \vere viewed as primitive, simple, childish,
lind nonsensical. i"'ary H. Kingsley, at the begin
ning of tbis ccnturv, summed it up wit.b a.n a..xio
matic evaluation: "The African has never made an
CWIl fourteenth-rate piece of cloth or pottery"
(Kingsley, 1965:669). It seems to me that "a process
of aesmet.ization" (Raudrillard, 1972) rook place
from the eighteenth century onward. What is called
savage or primitive art coveTS a wide range of objects
inlToduced by the contact between African and
European during the intensified ,Iave trade into the
classifying frame of the eighteenth century These
objects, which perhaps are not art at all in their
"native context," become art by being given simul
tancolL~h an aestht:tic character and a potentiality
for producing and reproducing other artistic forms.
Taken in their initial function and significance,
might the) have created a radicall11ise en perspali;:e
of the Western culture wedded LO classificalions
(Baudrillard, 1972)? That is precisely an impossi
bility. Arts arc based on criteria, and it is difficult to
inlagine that these standards can emerge from out
side me "power-knowledge" field of a given cul
rure, a field which, at a historical period, establishes
its artistic bible. Therefore it is obvious that fetishes
and oUler "primitive" pieces of art arc wonderful
because their strucrure, character, a.nd arrangement
dcm,md a de,ignarion (Laude, 1979; Wassing,
1969). They arc "savage" in terms of the evolution
ary chain of being' and culture, which establishes a
C()rrespondcnce between advancement in the civi
lizing process and artistic creativity, as wel\ as intel
lectual achie'ements.
At this point, paradoxically, it is a celebration of
the Mrican craftsmanship which confirms my
amllysis. Admiring l11e beauty of a "l\egro sculp
ture," the late R. Fry was puzzled:
It is curious that a people \\ ho produced such
great artiST> did not produce also a culture in our
sense of the word. This shows 1hat two factors are
neces,arv [() produce the cultures which distin
guish civilised peoples. There must be, of course,
the creative artist, but there must also be the
power of conscious critical appreciation and com
parison. (Fry, 19+0:90~ 1)
Fry is, L am afraid, unerly wrong. The two factors
do not and cannot explicate t)'pes of cultures.
They only constitute a basis for the production of
an and its possible modifications over time (see
.aude, 1979; Delang'e, 1967), They cannot com
pletely account for the internal patterns of cul
tures. At an) rate, it is the "power-kIlO\vledge" of
an epistemological field which makes possible a
domineering or humbled culture. From this pcr
spective, the point that Fry makes immediately
after has great sense: "It is likely enough that the
Nearo artist, aJc.hough capable of .. profound
imaginative understanding of form, would acccpt
our cheapest illusionist art with humble enthus
iasm" (19+0:91),
[ ... j
Explorers do not reveal otherness. They comment
upon "anthropology," that is, tbe distance separat
ing savagery from civilization on the diachronic line
60 V.Y. MUDIMBE
of progrcss (sce Rotbcrg, 1970). R. Thornton claims
that "thc discovery of Africa was also a discovcry
for paper. Had the grcat Victorian travellers not
\\ ritten anything it would not be said today that
they h~ld 'discovered' anything." Strictly speaking,
however, it secms difficult to prove in a convincing
way that "Livingstone, Stanley, Burron, Grant,
Speke and others entered into the enterprise for
the sake of thc text" (Thornton, 1983:509). Other
students can invoke other motivcs such as the clas
sical ones of curio~jty, courage, generosity, con
tempt (Killingray, 1973:HI).
At any rate, the explorer's text is not epistemo
logically inventi, e, it follows a path prescribed by
a tradition. Expedition rcports only establish a
References
Bal, W. (1Y63). Le ROJil/l/lllt rill COllgo <iU~ .\"1' el XVI
sikles. Documents d'hisroire. Leopold\ ille(Kinshasa):
InstilUl :'\ational d'Etudes PoJitiques.
Baudrillard, j. (1972). POllr line cri/l,!l1( de ficnn"'nie
putiliqll" till siglle. Paris: cnillimard.
Cesaire, Aime (1972). Dist'o/lfJe on Culonialism. ",CII
York: 1\lonlhly Re"irw Press.
Christopher, A.]. (19R4). Colnt/iol /(fhca. Lanham, i\ID:
ROllman and Littlcfield Pub. Inc.
Count, E.\V., cd. (1950). nits Is Race: All A11Iholu/{).
Sl'IeCfed from lit" Inlemalillnol Lileralllre on lite Races
~r ;Hall. l\'e\l York: Schuman.
Delange, j. (1967). Am t'l pmples "'Afrique .Voire. Paris:
GaJlirnard.
Duchel, M. (197J). /Jlllltropologlt' (I hwoire all siide des
Illmitre. Paris: i\laspero.
Foucault, .1\'1. (1973). The Ortler of Things. Nell Yor\..:
Pantheon (originally us ,Hills t'l les Chases. Paris:
G:1Uimard,1966).
~ry, R. (1940). l'i$ill/ll/l/Il Design. New York: Penguin.
Hodgen, M.T (1971). Earl). Alllltroptdogy ill/he Six/emtlt
and Selimtemllt C<'II/Ilries. Philadelphia: Univer,ity of
PL'1\n~'lva.nia.
Hudgkin, Thomas (1957). XIIIIUlUdisll1 ill .14(ricu. New
York: New York University Press, 1st edn.
Killingmy, David (1973), '1 Pla?;lIe ofEuropeans: IVeslemer;
'II Jfrict/ sinct' lit" Fiftemlh Cmlllr)'. '\Jell Yorl: Penguin.
very concrete, vi"id representation of what paint
ings and theories of social progress had been pos
nilating since the Baroquc period. In what the
Part II
explorer's text does reveal, it brings nothing new
besides visible and recent reasons to 'alidate a
discipline already remarkably defined by the
Enlightenment (Levi-Strauss, 1973: 145-56).
The novelty resides in the fact that the discourse
From Tribe to Ethnicity:
on "savages" is, for the first time, a discoursc in
whjch an explicit political power presumes the
aurhority of a scientific knowledge and vice-versa.
Kinship and Social
Colonialism becomes its project and can bc
thought of as a duplication and a fulfillment of the
power of \Vestern discourses on human varieties.
Organization
[... ]
Kingsley, \l.H. (J96S). Travels in lIeSI Africa. (Abridged
version of 1900 edn.) London: Cass.
Kunst, H.J. (1967). L '/~fri((/ill dwlS /'ilrl eurupim. Cologne:
umunl Pressc
Laude, j. (1979). L'An de I>/friqne Nuire. Paris: Chene.
U:\i-Strauss, C. (1973). Trisies Tropiques, trans. J. and
D. Wci~htman. New York: Penguin.
Lyon;" R.H (1975). To Wash an /Jt/hiop 1I'llIre. l\cw
'c(lrk: Teachcrs College Press.
Rotberg, Robert 1., cd. (1970). ,'((rica arrd lis i'rplllws:
MOlil'es, Ale/hods. alld Impl/fi. Cambridge: Harvard
Cni\ersil) Pre,s.
Seidman, 1\. (1985). The RoolS 0/ Cmis in SOlllhem
.1frim. Trcnton: AfTica World Press.
Thornton, Joho K. (1983). The Kil/gtlOIll of KOT/go: Cinl
11/1/"'lIItI TrQI/.,<lIioli. 1641 1718. Madison: Uni,crsit), of
Wisconsin Prc.s~.
Turgot, A.R.j. (1913-23). Oeuvres tIt TllrgOI el tI"wlllellls
Ie (OT/remllnt. IIWC nnc' hiMlOgmpltie eilloies. G. Schelle,
cd. Paris, 5 Vols. \'01. I, pp. 172.
Verger, P, (I %8). Flux el reJlnx de Iii Iraile til'S lIegm enlre
Ie Colf"u Bellill el Bt/hill de Tudos os SOli/US du XI <ill
XiX siieles. Paris: "lomon.
Wassin~, R.S. (1969). L'An tit' I'Afrique Voire. Fribourg:
Office du li\ reo
 Introduction

\1uch of the history of anthropology, and of social theory in general, has been devoted to
answering a central sociological question: Given that societies are made up of a multiplicity of
indi\ iduab, with diffcrent interests and motivations, how do societies stay together? This is a
question phrased and addressed most explicitly at the turn of the century b) the French soci
ologist Emile Durkheim, and later, in the colonial period of the 19305 and 1940s, by anthro
pologist') of Africa, and elsewhere, such as A.R. Radcliffe-Brown and E.E. E\ans-Pritchard.
They began lO fOCliS on how customs and social organizations contributed to social sojjdarity.
The solidifying role played by a particular custom was said to be its function, and the kinship,
political, and legal systems that benefited from the functions were said to constitute the social
structure. These anthropologists were often referred to as "structural-functionalists" The
readings in this section build upon, elaborate, and reject some of the early concepts, assump
tions, and arguments.
The focus on function was the result of a mo\'emenr in the discipline of anthropology away
from speculative historical reconstructions and broad comparative work (such as evolutionism
and diffusionism), and toward the study of how particular cultures functioned at particular
hi"tori<--al moments. Continuing into the 1940s, many anthropologists continued to study the
mlturcs of the world not "in their o",n right" (Lienhardt, 1976: 180) but to demonstrate the
origins, evolution, or diffusion of cultures and culture traits in history. The new approach
somelimes called "synchronic" because of its focus on a single poinl in time - made anthropol
ogy morc empirical and therefore more scientific. Instead of speculating about history,
anthropologists wrotc about what they actually obserYed. And instcad of studying and compar
ing the parts of many different cultures, functionalists studied the systems of relations of par
ticular cultures, that is, the ways in which the parts of a culture operatcd together to form and
maintain the wholc. "Ieyer Fortes (1953: 22-3) wrote: "A culture is a unity in so far as it is tied
to a bounded social structure. In this sense I would agree that the social structure is the founda
tion of the whole social life of any wutil/uing society" (original emphasis). Emphasizing the
wbolc o\cr thc parts [,'<I\'e new life to the science of society, for anthropology no\\ not only
64 INTRODUCTION
conformed more to the scientific method, but had in the concept "society" its own central object
of study, its 0\\ n raison d'et rc, as w'ell as a unique theoretical perspective to orient the collection
and interpretation of ethnographic data.
Functionalism offered several new directions 10 anthropologil':Jl fieldworkers. First, the focus on
societ) diminished the imporlance of imjjvic!ual behavior and, of course, individual variation. A
major theorttical premise was that behind all individuals' actions, there had to be a social system.
For example, individuals could be free to act only to the extent thaI Ihere was a structure- economic,
legal, political or otherwise - which permitted their acts. Second, since all societies constituted total
working sy stems, all societies, including so-called "primitive" societies, had an understandable,
rational, and \'alid reason for being. Thus, for exmnple, societies without centralized states, such a<;
the Nuer, or societies where witchcraft was the primary explanation for harm-doing, such as the Tiv
or -\zande, \\ere no longer set:n a<; backward, aberrant, or deficient, but rather as communities that
operated according to a certain logic. The anthrupologist's tas!,. was to identify and characterize that
logic, usually ;malyzing one specific s1'stem at a time, such <ll> religion, kinship, or economics, and
publishing each analysis as one of a sequence of monographs (Lien hardt, ]976: 18]). Third, while
functionalism did not help to explain historical change, it did help to explain historical continuity
and social reproduction_ Various institutions, whether belief s~stems, economic or polirical 5) stems,
\\ ere analyzed to detcmline how they contributed to the maintenance and perpetuation of the soci
cty as a whole. Indeed, even where anthropologists wrote a good deal of history, it was synchronic
history: histories tllat focused on reprod uction rather than change.
Kinship was one of the primary mechanisms for social reproduction, especiaUy in stateless
societies. In three c:\traordinaril} important boo!.s, all published in ]940, the contours of British
social anrhropology and kinship studies were established, and a productive period of fieldwork
in Africa was set into motion: j~rrica71 PolifiCi/I Systems (1940), edited by Meyer Fortes and
~d\\ ard E. Evans-Pritchard, with a foreword by A.R. Radcliffe-Bro\\ n; The Viler (1940a) by
Evans-Pritchard; and The Puliticol S)istelll of tIlL' Afluak (1940b) by Evans-Pritchard (Kuper,
1973: 107). Tn the first boo!., Fortes and Evans-Pritchard distinguished two fundamental types
of Africm political systems: the state society, with a centralized authority (such as the Zulu and
Tswana of southern Africa), and the stateless society, a categor)- which encompassed every soci
l) without centralized authority, from the callie-herding N uer of Sudan to the hunter-gatherers,
the !Kung San of southern Africa and the Efe and Mbuti of central -\frica. This distinction had
a profound influence on the development of the anthropology of Africa (see, for example,
Middleton and Tair, 1958). Evans-Pritchard's landmark book, He NlJer, addressed thc problem
of how the \iuer could live togetller without any apparent political structure. But there was a
political structme. Indeed, the answer to the problem was that the political structure and the
kin!>hip structure wcre one and the samc.
Before addressing the details of the relation bCl\\een kinship and politics, it is necessary to put
these Africanists in more historical context. It is important to note that prior to the 19405, few
anthropologists had done intensive fieldwork, learned the languages of the people the) studied,
or lived" ith them for extended periods of time. Up unt il the four-year field-work of Bronislaw
Malinowski in the Pacific Trobriand Islands during World War I, anthropology had consisted, b~
and large, of thc study of customs and myths collected by travelers, missionaries, and explorers,
and the analysis of cultural patterns rather than the detailed workings of anyone particular soci
ety. Intensive fieldwork during the late colonial period among the Nuer (Evans-Pritchard), Zulu
(Max Gluckman), Tswana (Schapera), and L1Uensi (fortes), among others, demonstrated ho\'
fruitful a firsthand knowledge of language and social life could be. Other notable works based on
fieldwork inchlde Audrey Richards' Land, Labour and Diet in Nor/hem Rhodesia (1939),
INTRODUCTION 6S
J\{e" ille Hersko\'its' Daho71ley, an _/~r"'(({11 Kingdol/l (1967 [1938]), Hilda Kuper's All African
An's/m rac)' (1961 l 1947]), and countless articles published in journals such as Africa (the journal
of the International African Instirute) and by the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute.
There \\ere also more problematic uses of fieldwork, especially when colonial administrator~
funded anthropologists. Indeed, anthropology has often been called the "hand-maiden of colo
nialism." At an abstract le,eI, the relationship is not difficult to see. Recent postmodernist
scholarship emphasizes how intellectuals in general are complicitous in forms of domination,
and anthropologists are no exception. First, administration could never be totally separated
from the content and categories of knuwledge. However much anthropologists might like to dis
tinguish themselves, the colonists, administrators, and anthropologists emerged out of the same
inteUectual climat~ using the same intellectual apparatuses, "hether we are speaking generally
about the idea of encountering and mastering an "other," or more specificall) of ho\\ European
categories of race, gender, or class became incorporated into both scholarly anal) sis and colonial
perspectives. And, in as much as anthropologists studied religion, they shared much with and
learned much from the missionaries whose first task was often to learn the rituals and belief
systems of the people witll whom they would work. Second, however different they might hav'e
been, colonialism and anthropology had some similar results. For example, both introduced the
concept of "tribe" to Africa, di\ided the world into a "West" and "others," reified "tribes" and
"traditions," and ended up, often unwittingly, altering Ihe modes of thought of many Africans
so that people began to think of themselves in terms not of their 0\\ n making.
Iloweyer, according to t\\O historians of African anthropology, the colonial administrators'
uses of anthropologists were quite limited. In their accounts of the anthropology ofAfrica, both
Adam Kuper (1973) and Sally Falk Moore (199+) look rather concretely ~lt the rclationshjp
bemeen the two professions, and point out that, despite the fact tllat much funding for antluo
poJObrical work came from colonial administrators, and that many colonial administrators were
themselves engaged in ethnographic work, seldom did the administrators listen to the anthro
pologists. According to Moore (1994: 19), they found, more often than not, tJlat information on
rituals, proverbs, and marriage systems was unimportant to their ability to go,ern, and tllat
anthropologists often looked out for the well-being of the people with whom they lived and
studied, and thus could act counter to colonial interest<;. Yet, there certain I} were important
connections to be made. Among other things, administrators were interested in anthropological
work on African political systems because the methods by which Africans governcd themselves
impinged directly on the abilit) of the colony to gO\ern. For example, the British could invest
chiefs with political responsibilities in those societies with a pre-existing system of chiefs, \\hile
for other societies \\ ithout chief.s, such as the hunter-gatherers and farmers of central Africa, the
Belgians had to create chiefdoms and chiefs.
It is here, in the conjuncture of colonial and indigenous political systems, that we begin to see
the linkage between politics and kinship. The Nuer of southern Sudan, thc topic of E\'ans
Pritchard's chapter reprinted in this section, were scattered o\'er an immense area of land, and
without an~ discernible system of relationships linking them together (more than 200,000 per
sons O"cr an area of more than 30,000 square miles - that is fewer than seven people per square
mile). 1\lorco\'er, according to seasonal changes, including availability of water during the dry
season, and d.lTIgerous flooding during the rainy seaSOD, the Nuer would move often and far, in
and OUI of villages, from inland to ri\-erside camps. Such movement was troubling not only for
cthnographers trying to understand social organization, but for the administrators who wanted
10 pacify, settle, and tax these communities. How could the British pacify and administer people
\\ hose order appeared on Iy as disorder? Although there is no cvidence that the British
 INTRODUCTION 67
INTRODUCTION
66
srructuralism, Marxism and economic anthropology, among otllers, can be u'aced back to The
administration eyer consulteu Evans-Pritchard's works, or C\Tn asked for his advice,
Nllt'r and its theoretical insights and innovations. More specifical1}; !be work established as a
:ovans-Pritchard concluded lhat one could make sense of t.he N uer world, and that the Nuer had
central problematic the complex relations between behavior and structure, actual social inter
a well-organized political system. Uut it was one uniquel~ suited to their ecological a.nd social
actions anu rhe models for patterning them. All of this is not to say that the work is without
needs, and one which operated according to genealogy and kinship relations. criticism (see, for instance, Karp and Maynard, 1983; Gough, 1971; Kelly, 1985; Grinker,
Evans-Pritchard argued that the N uer conceived their political relationships in terms of
199-1-). These criticisms suggest, in general, that Evans-Pritchard neglected social and histori
descent and line-age. According to this vie\\, African societies, like the Nuer, consist of "descent
cal complexities of the Nuer in the sen-ice of his one abstract model, that he focused on line
groups," and these societies are organized and act according to tl1e descent group's corporate
ages when the household was also a major form of social and political organization, and that he
organization. The descent group served as a legal system - a system that defined the norms and
wrongly emphasized tbe Nuer as a homogeneous and internally undifferentiated society, when,
limits of behavior, and established lines of authority - as well as an economic system that g"OY
in fact, as subsequent work has shown, the N uer of his time were differentiated according to
erned the exchange of cattle between individuals and families. (In Part ill Sharon Hutchinson
anI. as well as ethnicity (including aristocrats, Dinka, and other captives). Indeed, anthropolo
highlights the tremendous in1pormnce of cattle to the Nuer.) Anthropologists used the term
gists soon began questioning some of the most basic assumptions of Evans-Pritchard, and
"lineage" to describe descent groups in which the genealogical lines were clearly drawn, and the
other anthropologists of his era, including the concepts of descent, lineage, and tribe. Readings
term "clan" to describe groups in which t.he individuals believed, hut could nat. fully demon
by Southall and Vail speak directly to the ubiquitous concept "t.ribe," and illuminate its com
strate, that [he~ descended from a common ancestor. The Nuer had a segmentary lineage system
plexities and limitations.
that consisted of a nlimber of groups descending from the most inclusive (the tribe) to the least
"Tribe" generally referred to a group of people bound b}' common language, territory, and
(say, t,,~o brothers). Each descending level consisted of groups defined by their opposition to
custom, and more specifically to small-scale agTiculmral societies considered more complex
other like segments. The segmentary lineage was thus a balance of power wit.h no center. At any
than "bands" - lhat is, small autonOmOu<; gTOUpS, usually hunter-gatherers and nomads, with
point in time, however, opposed segments could unite into a more incJusiye segment to take
what were sometimes called "simple" political organizations - but less complex than chiefdoms
action against another set of united segments. Brothers could be naturally opposeJ to onc another,
that is, ranked societies with centralized political organizations. The segmentary lineage W,lS, for
hut if a more distantlv related third parly fought with one of the bro1hers, the t\vo brothers would
Evans-Pritchard, a type of trillal organization well suited for societies thal, for whatever reason,
unite to form a single segment. '10 quote a Nuer man, "We fight against the Rengyan, but when
cannot sustain a fixed and centralized political system. The tribe consisted of descent groups,
either of us is fIghting a third party, \\ie combine with them" (Evans-Pritchard, 19-1-0a: 143).
the basic lInits of collective identity and action.
The s}'stem of oppositions and al1iances may thus change according to social context. Evans
The anthropologists Aidan Southall, Adam Kuper, Philip Gulliver, Morton Fried, Igor
Pritchard (194Oa: 142) says, "Each segmem is itself segmented and there is opposition between
Kopytoff, June Helm, Peter Ekeh, and historian Jan Vansina, are among- those who have leveled
its parts. The mcmbers of any segment unite for war against adjacent segments of the same
the h.ushest criticisms against the use of the term "tribe." These anthropologists challenged the
order and unite with these adjacent segments against larger sections." Analogies to this system
typology that distinguished societies on the basis of authority structures, questioned the criteria
can be found in international law, where there is no official ultimate authority, and where alli
Llsed to hierarchically rank societies in terms of complexity, and pointed out the problems and
ances and oppositions shift according to context; for ex.<'lmplc, though Sy ria was diplomatically
limitations of the terms themselves. "Tribe" was a useful term for anthropologists, sllch as
opposed to the United States, and allied with its Arab neighbor Iraq before the Gulf War, during
"i:yans-Pritchard, who tried to delineate the boundaries of groups with few distinct boundaries,
the war Syria and the United States became allies. and where ethnic identities and loyalties could shift rapidly. For the same reason, "tribe" turned
One ofthe lheorc6cal outcomes of Evans-Pritchard's analysis is that it helped move anthropol
out to be a useful term for administrators and local politicians because it drew the lines neces
og.y away from a strict empiricism and toward the study of more structuraJ, theoretical, organizing
san" for census taking, taxation, and work recruitment. Yet, as Southall and others point out,
principles. The segnleutary lineage is an abstract principle, a way of conceptualizing the world.
boundaries between tribes were often drawn by anthropologists or administrators quite arbi
for this reason, Evans-Pritchard also focused on concepts of time and space and the degree to
trarily, sometimes according to language similarities and differences, and at other times accord
which !bese abstrac60ns wcre impli<:nted in the organization of society. The selection from The
ing to differences in territory, religion, or dress - all, of course, as perceived by the Europeans.
Nller included in this section focuses spec.ificall) on time and space and the manner in which these
(Similarly, the boundaries between colonies and nations in Africa were often constructed more
ostensibly common-sense concepts are social concepts, sociallv constructed and socially enacted.
Ollt of convenience than respect for local ethnic divisions, and so many societies found them
Thus, Evarui-Pritchard tells us that the Nuer words for ecological time (rot, village life, rainy sea
selves virulaJly cut in half. The Azande, for ulstance today live in both Sudan, a former British
son.; mai, dry season) are not words for time reckoning but rather denote the cluster of social
colony and me Democratic Republic of Congo, a former Belgian colony.)
activities characteristic of the seasons. To quote Adam Kuper, "the Nuer do not say, it i.s ({JI, there
There was another serious problem with tribe: it implied a distinction between Africa and
fore we must move to the upland villages; rather they say we are in the villages, therefore it is tol"
Emope. Few Europeans of the twentieth century refer to themselves with the term tribe, vet the
(1973: 89). In other words, concepts of time are determined by society and social life. Tn turn,
word continues to be used today in academic work, and especially- in the mass media, to refer to
social relationships could be construed in terms of time. People and caulc were more or less
'\friea. When there is conflict between, say, the flemish and the French speakers in Belgium, or
related in terms of the genealogical distance, that is their distance in time or generations from a
between lhe Serbs and Bosnians of the former Yugosla\;a, the international media refer to the
cornmOD ancestor. Everyone had a measurable social or structural distance from everyone else.
c(muict as "ethnic", yet, when the Hutu and Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi, or the Xhosa and
Tht' Nuer was thus not simply a book aboul a group of eastern Africans. It was about the
Zulu of50uth Africa, fight with one another, the media refer 10 the conflict as "t.ribal." "Tribe" is
future directions of anthropology. The genealogies of many major theoretical movements in

INTRODUCTION
68
also linked to the concept "tribalism," and for this rcason has a rather pejorative usage in Africa
toda), meaning those affiliations that pit identities against one another at the expense of unified
national, political, and economic development.
In sum, "tribe" hurts more than it helps, and obscures more than it reveals. What it obscures
is identities that are both malleable and dependent upon their relations with other identities. It
masks our ability to see the internal diversity of African communities ami to look for models
other than descent and lineage to account for social and political organization. If wc characterize
a society in tribal terms, including the focus on descent as the key organizing principle of soci
et), we might easily view it as a homogeneous entity. To represent the same society in ethnic
terms, howcver, might lead us to see transformation and diversity as well as continuit) and
similarity. Ethnicity helps us to see how indi\'idual !>ocieties integrate individuals and groups
who are not members of descent groups, \,..ho ma) not speaJ.. the same language, or live in the
same territory.
The focus on ethnicity was a particular advantage for the SUlci} of diverse and rapidly chang
ing communities in African cities, and urban anthropologists such as Clyde Mitchell, \'tax
Gluckman, A.L. Epstein, and Abner Cohen made some of the most important strides in the
transition from tribal to ethnic studies. Unfortunately, rural areas continued to be seen as
unchanging. Moore (1994: 69) wTites:
The fact is, of course, that conditions in the countryside changed at the same time that cities gre\v, often
in related ~a) s. But the "tribal" modd was not changing, since its goal \\ as a reconstruction of a preco
lonial African "type," nut the recording of a full, unexpurgated account of changing events and prac
tices in The countryside aT the time of fieldwork. To be sure, collective cultural differences \lere
important then, and they have continued significance in Africa to this day. In many parts of the conli
nenl, tribal or ethnic idenTities have ongoing social and political sa.lience. But this should not be mis
ta]..en for an unchanging traditionalism.
At a time, in the early twenty-ilrst century, when African cultures are no longer bound by loca
tion, but by migration, displacement, diaspora, travel, telephone, anci the internet, common
territory cannot define identity. And the number of interactions between African societies, as
demonstrated in ancient and modern African history, compels us to employ theoretical concepts
that draw our attention to shifting identities, and to relations bet\\een groups rather than soLely
to rclations within groups. This is, indeed, the direction in which Leroy Vail points us. We want
to stress, howe\'er, that these problems in no way make the previous studies wrong or irrelevant.
Critical approaches, and the deYelopment of new lheoretieal concepts, do not necessarily dis
prove; rather, they sho" us the limits of older approaches and concepts, open up new lines of
inquiry, and lead us to see phenomena that we did not see before.
To understand the concept of cthnicity in African smdies, it is necessary to outline two con
trasting views of ethnicity: primordialism and instrumentalism. The former holds that cthnieity
arises from similarities between indi\ iduals of a group in physical characteristics, language, and
cultural features thought to be "nawral" or "inherited," as distinct from parliClllar social or
historical conditions. These features have the power to impart a sense of group and indi\ idual
identity, a sense of belonging to a community. In contrast, "instrumentalist" models hold that
groups create ethnic identities [or political and economic interests. Ethnicit}', according to this
vicw, is rationally oriented toward the fulfillment of specific goals like nationalism, access to
economic power, or freedom from colonial rule. Primordialism \\ as well suited to the synchronic
tribal studies of the structural-functionalists, and instrumentalism more consonant with dia
chronic, historical analyses.
INTRODUCTION 69
Most scholars today reject these simplistic alternatives and hold the position that neither is
sufficient to explain ethnic group struct ure and sentiment. Primordialism overlooks the fact that
ethnic identity is not a natural feeling that simply emerges mysterious)) in all human communi
ties, but a comple\ and dynamic set of s) mboJic meanings embedded in and patterned by his
tory. Instrumentalists are so concerned \\ith political and economic motivations that they
sometimes ignore the question of how the particular elements or symbols of an ethnic identity
are chosen. Vail stresses that some ethnic features and tics arc of long standing but a great many
others are of recent origin - eyen though people may believe they arc ancient. Moreover, the
llleaning and definition of ethnicitics change over time and differ according to historical circum
stance. Tn other words, all elhnicities have a history. If there is an) ching primordial, it is not any
particular ethnicity but rather the process of symbolic classification, the mechanism by which
people di,"ide the world into a "we" and a "they," and thereb) give meaning to their li\es
(Comaroff, 1984). If we understand that process, we \\ ill better understand not only the people
we study, but also the ways in which anthropolop;ists and historians, past and present, have tried
to make sense of Africa.
References
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I:'IIII/os 52(.3-4): 301 23.
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1940a. 111e J\ uu. Oxford: Clarendon !'ress.
EV:lJ1s-Pritchard, EE. 19-1-0h. n/e Poli/icol System ,,/thf IlIlIak 0/iI,e4"glll-1:.'gyp/iall Sudan. London: P. Lund
Humphries and Co. Ltd, for the LSE.
'ortes, \Ieyer. 1953. "The Structure of Unilineal Descent Groups." -IlIIefiall/ Anth",polliglSt 55: 17-41.
Fortes, ,\ll'}er and E.E. Evans-Pritchard, cds. 19-10. . J/rica" Poli/iad SySUIILt. London: Oxford University Press,
fonhe HI.
ough, Kathleen. 1971. "Nuer K.in,hip: A Reexamination." In T. O. Beidclman, cd., nil' 'frllllsIMi()I/ IifCullure,
PI'. 79 122. L.undon: Tal'istoek.
Grinker, Ro) Richard. 199-1. HOllses ill the Rmlljorest: Etlmi,.ity alld Illequality 0I1/111lf!, Farmen /llld Fora,~l'rs il1
Cmlml ~frl(/. Berkeley: Universit) ofC.llifornia Press.
Hcrskm its, \lel\ ilk. 1967 r1938]. Dullflmey: All Allcimt .4.fril'an Killgdo/ll. Evanston: Northwestern Gni\ ersity
Press.
!<llrp, han and Kent \Ia)nard. 1983. "Reading the Nuer." Currmt Anlltropology 24 (4): 481-502.
Kell), R.C. 1985. Tlte .Vller C/JIII/Uest: The Structure mid Developnu!TIt of an Expallsinllis/ Syst(/II. Ann :\rbor:
nivcrsity uf i\lichigan Prcss.
Kuper, Adam. 1973. 1nlhropology lIlId AlIlhropfllogis/s: The lJ/Jdt'rll Brilish Sd/llol. London: RK.P
Kuper, Hilda. 1961 [1947]. All A/i-iro" ..Iris/ocraey: Rallk aml'l1g the Swazi. London: Oxford Uni\'ersity Press,
forT" T.
LienJ13rtll, Gudfrey. 1976. "Sociall\nlhropology of Africa." ln Christopher Fyfe, ed., AfriclllI S/IIdie.< since 1945,
11]) J79-85. London: Longman.
\liddlcton,John and D. Tait, eds. 1958. 7I-ibes without Rlilers. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
.\100re, SaJl~ Falk. J99-f. Anthropology aJIII Africa: Changillg Pasperlives Oil a CI/llIIgim: S,en.,. CharlollcsviJIc:
University of\'irginia Press.
Richard", Audrey. 1939. Land. Labour and Diet ill .vorthern Rhodesia: All collolllic Stlld)1 of Ihe Beinba Tribe.
London: [lllernntional Institute of African Language and Culture.
Suggested Reading
Bates, R., V. r. Mudimbe, and J- O'Barr, cds. 1993. /~fricc", mllilhe Disciplines: The Contributioll of Research ill
.1ft/ca 10 Ihe Social Sciences alld IllIIlIal/ities. Chicago: Universit' of ChiClgO Press.
C')hen, Abner, 1965. CIIStOIll ami Politics in (/rball Aftica: .4 Srlldy 0/ !fa lisa Mlj!/'alils in Yoru.ba TOlI'lIs. Berkeley:
'nivcrsity uf California Press.
70 INTRODUCTION

Cohen, R. 1978. "Ethnicity: Problem and focus." Anllllal Reliiew oIAlltltropologj' 7: 379-403.
Colson., E. 1962. The P!a/(Iw Tim!,a afNor/hem Rhodesia: Socia! a.ntl Reltgiotls Slttdies. Manchester: l\'1anchestcr
Jniversity Press.
5

Ekeh, Peter. 1990. "Social Anthropology and Two Connasting Uses ofTribalism in 'Hi-iea." Comparative Studies
til So,iety Imd History 32(4): 660-700.
Fortes, Meycr. J949. "Time and Social Structure: An A$hami Case Study." In Meyer Fortes, ed., 50(il1! Structure, The Nuer
pp. 54-84. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
luckman, Max. 1958. "Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zlliuland," Rhode;;-.Livingstone Paper no. 28.
Blmtu Studies 14: 1-30; l47-74. Time and Space
Grayburn, Nelson. 1971. Rl'odi,lgs ill Kit/ship alld Socia! Stn/rtu!"e. Ncw York: Harper and Row.
Gulliver,I>hilip. 1971. Neighbours alld Networks. BerkcJe~ and Los Angeles: Vni\'ersity of California Press.
Gutkind, Peter. 1970. The Pilssillg uJTribal Him ill /1{rica. Netherlands: Brill.
Helm, June, ed. 1968. Essllys nil the Prob!em of iribe. Proceedings of the 1967 Annual Spring Metting of the
.\merican Ethnological Society. Seartle: Universil) of Washington Press.
E. E. Evans-Pritchard
KronenfeJd, David B. 2009. Fllmi Kinship alid the Alla.lysis ofKip/ship Ter/l/nlOlogies. Urbana: University ofIUinois
Press.
Kuper, Adam. 1982. "Lineage Theory: A Critical Rctrospect." -rJl11l1Jill Revim> ofAll/hropology 11: 71-95.
Lubkemann, Stephen C. 2008. Culillre in Chaos: An Anlhropology of the Social COlldiliol1 iii War. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Parkin, Robert and l.inda Stone, eds. 2004. Kinship alld Family: .-III /!mhrnpo!ogictil Reader. 'VIalden: WiJey
Blackwell.
Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1952. Siructllre and Ftmtlioll ill Primitive Soriet)/. New York: The Free Press
Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. and Daryll Forde, eds. 1975 (1950). .~rnclln Systems 'If Killship and .Marriage. London:
Oxford UniYersity Press for The IN.
Sharp,]. 1980. "Can We Study Ethnicity' A Critique ofFieJds of Study in South African Anthropology." Socia! lilTS long enough, can be foreseen. Structural time
DYP/Qmics6(1): 1-16. appears to 311 individual passing through the social
In describing Nuer concepts of time we may distin
Shipton, Parker M. 2009. Mongagillg the Alleesl"rs: Ideologies ofAlTa ch IfJI'1II iTt Aji-ica. New Havcn: Yale Unilersity systcm to be entirely progressi\'e, but, as we shall
Press. gllish between those that arc mainly reflections of
see, in a sense this is an illusion. Oecoiogical time
Stocking, George. 1995. After 1}!nr: Bn/ish Social Alltltropolugy: 1885-1951. Madison: University of Wisconsin their relations to em ironment, which we call oeco appears to be, and is, cyclical.
Press. logical time, and those that are reflections of their
The oeeological cycle is a year. Its distinctive
Sweet, James. 2006. Recreatillg ,1/;ic(/: CII!lUre, Ki,1Ship, and Religion in Ihe c.Jjrimn-PortlJ/!ueu World, 144/-1770. relations to one another in tbe social structure,
rhythm is the backwards and forwards movement
Chapel Hill: UniversiTj of North Carolina Press. which we call structuraltimc. Both refer to succes
from villages to camps, which is the Nuer's
"II
Tumer, Victor. 1957. Sellism and C01lJi/luitj' in A/;iean Society: .1 Siudy of Ndem!m Vil/agt Lift. Manchestcr: sions of events which are of sufficient interest to the
response to the climatic dichotomy of rains and
Manchester UniYersiry Press. community for them to be noted and related to
drought. The year (mon) has two main seasons, to!
each other conceptually. The larger periods of time
and maio Tnt, from about the middle of March to
arc almost certainly structural, because the events
the middle of September, roughly corresponds to
the) relate are changes in the relatjonshi p of social
the rise in the curve of rainfall, though it does not
groups. J'4oreover, time-reckoning based on
cover the whole period of the rains. Rain may fall
changes in nature and man's response to them is
hea\ iJy at the end of September and in early
limired to an annual cyclc and therefore cannot
October, and the country is still flooded in these
be llsed to differentiate longer ptriods than sea
months which belong, neYertheless, to the mal half
sons. Both, also, ha\c limited and fixed notations.
of the year, for if commences at the decline of the
Seasonal and tunar changes repeat themselves year
rains - not at their cessation - and roughly covers
after year, so that a Nuer standing at any point of
the trough of the curve, from about the middle of
time has conceptual knowledge of what lies before
September to the middle of .\1arch. The two sea
him and can predict and organize his life accord
sons therefore only approximate to our division
ingly. A man's structural future is likewise already
into rains and drought, and the Nuer classification
fi'\cd and ordered into different periods, so that the
aptly summarizes their way of looking at the mO\T
tOlal changes in status a boy will undergo in his
ment of time, the direction of atten tion in marginal
ordained passage through the social system, if he
months being as significant as the actual climatic

Frorn E. E. [vans-Pritchard, The Nller (1940), pp. 95-110, 113-17, 135-8, from Oxford University Press.
72 E. E. EVANS- PRITCHARD THE NUER: TIME AND SPACE 73

oy Jun~ July August Sept~mbe' October November December January Fe~,uory March April
middle of September. Jiolll meaning "vind', is the I
to- V. JANlJ~Ry

R
R v
A

R S R
N
S
s
E
D R o u G H T
period in \\hich the persistent north wind begins
!lJ blo\\ and people harvest, fish from dams, fire
the bush, and form early camps, from about the
middle of September to the middle of December. ~
~~ ~
<f>",~t
" \
\
Mai
f(8.f,

~)-
~
R v E R S A L L
It counts as part of the moi half of the year, though .<<" \ ./~
it is contrasted with lIIal proper, from about the ~ \
H o R T c u L T u R E middle of December to the middle of March,
~~ /J1om
\\ ~
Pr~pJ,.. at on of gar Pre paration of gar BURNING OF TH E BUSH
dens for second millet when the main camps are formed, Roughly speak \ ~l-
deM for first millet
iowlns: )nd for m~lle sowing F
BUILDING
I
&
S
REPAIRING
H I N G iu!!:. therefore, there arc t\\ 0 major seasons of six \\ Rwi
I r

Harvest Harvest first Harvest second m~nths amI four minor seasons of three months, e ,
m3;Z!! millet crop millet crop
but these di\ isions must not be regarded too rig ~ wt, \ : ; ~
HUNTING AND ~
COLLECTING
idly since they are not so much exact units of time ;J' \
SCARCITY OF FOOD
F 0 0 D a~ rather vague conceptualizations of changes in \
PLENTY 0 J. \ (
oecological relations and social activities which "I)!},., )~f;\
", Alnf ()
v Older Younger
L L A G E s pass imperceptibly from one state to another.
In [Figure 5.21 a line drawn from mid March to
r
people people
recurn to
CAM
Everyone In
Younger people in
P
main dry-seuon camps
S mid Septcmber is the axis of the year, being an Figure 5.2
retu"n to
"',II~ge:s villages urly camps approximation to a clcaYage between two opposed
Wedding. inItiation, mortuary. and other ceremonies
Main seuon for raiding Dinb sets of cx.'Cological relations and social activities,
though not entirely corresponding to it, as may be
Figure 5.1
seen in lFigure 5.3], where village life and camp life
arc shO\\Il in relation to the seasons of which they
conditions. In the middle of September ;-.Juer turn, their activities in relation to them nor use them as are the focal points. Nuer, especiaUy the younger
as it were. towards the life of fishin!! and callie points of reference in seasonal rime-reckoning, The people, are still in camp for part of tor (the greater
camps and feel that village residence and horticul characters by which seasons are most clearly defined part of rlvif) and are still in villages, especially the
ture lie behind them, They begin to speak of camps arc those which control the movements of the peo older pCQple, for pan of lIlai (the greater part of
as though they were already in being, and long to ple: water, vegetation, movement of fish, &c.; it jiol11), but e\'ery one is in yillages d llTing tot proper ...,
>
~
r
be on the move. This restlessness is e\Tn more being the needs of cartle and variations in food-sup ~U1d in camps during lIfai proper. Since the words
marked towards the end of the drought when, not ply \\ hich chiefl) translate oecological rhythm into 101 and TIIai are not pure units of time-reckoning
ing cloudy skies, people turn towards the life of vil the social rhythm of the year, and the contrast hut stand for the cluster of social acti\"ities charac
lages and make preparations for striking camp. between modes of life at the height of the rains and teru,lic of the height of the drought and of the
;\larginal months may therefore be classed as tor or at the height of the drought which provides the con lreight of the rains, one may hear a N uer saying that
mai, since they belong to one set of acti\'ities but ceprual poles in time-reckoning. hc is going to 'to/' or 'mal' in a certain place,
./$'/)9, ,
"II<,
I / / I ' c:S
.~
presage the Otllt:T set, for the concept of seasons is Besides these two main seasons of rul and 11Iai The }ear has twelve months, six to each of the
Alnf
derived from social activities rather than from the major seasons, and most adult Nuer can state them
~ Part of the ~tilr
Nuer recognize two subsidiary seasons included
spent in v',lIages
climate changes which determine them, and a year in them, being transitional periods between them. in order, In the list of months given below it has
is to Nuer a period of \'illage residence (die,,/!,) and The four seasons arc not sharp divisions but over not been possible to equate each Nuer name with ~ Part of the ~ear spent in camps
a period of camp residence (IVee). lap. Just as we reckon summer and winter as the an English name, because our Roman months have
Figure 5.3
Seasonal mriations in social acU\'ities, on which halYcs of our year and speak also of spring and nothing to do with the moon. It will be found,
Nuer concepts of time are primarily based, ha\ c aUTUmn, so Nuer reckon Jot and mai as halves of however, that a Nuer month is usually covered by
been indicated and, on ule economic side, recorded Their year and speak also of the seasons of rrvil and the two English months equated to it in the list riop (ill) tot Jan.-Feb.
at soml: length. The main fearures of these three jiolll. Rrvil is the time of moving from camp TO vil and general!) tends to coincide with the first rather pet Feb.-Mar.
planes of rhythm, ph}sical, oecological, and social, lage and of clearing and planting, from about the than the second. dll 0 Ilg Mar.-Apr.
arc charted in Figure 5.1. middle of March to the middle of June, before the gIVoak Apr.-May
The mo\'ements of the heavenlv bodies other than rains have reached their peak. It counts as part of tur Sept.-Oct. dlVat May-June
the sun and the moon, the direction and \'ariation of the tot half of the year, though it is contrasted with Icuh (boor) Oct.-Nov. kOT11yllot June-July
winds, and the migration of some species of birds 101 proper, the period of fuU village life and kU/ Nov.-Dec. paiyatm' (paiyene) July-Aug.
are ohsen'ed by the Nucr, bUl they do not regulate horticulture, from about the middle ofJune to the rill/l (i,,) dtt Dec.-Jan, thoor Aug.-Sept.
74 E.E. EVANS-PRITCHARD
Nuer would soon be in difficulties over their
lunar calendar if they consistently counted the
succession of moons, I but there are certain activi
ties associated with each month, the association
sometimes being indicated by the name of the
month. The calendar is a relation between a qcle
of activities and a conceptual cycle and the twO
cannot fall apart, since the conceprual cycle is
dependent on the cycle of activities from which iT
derives its meaning and fUl1ction. Thus a t\\eh'e
monu1 sy~tem does not incommode Nuer, for the
calender is anchored to the cycle of oecological
changes. In the month of kur one makes the tirst
fishing dams and forms the first cattle camps, and
since one is doing these things it must be kur or
thereabouts. Likewise in dnJ{/f one breaks camp
and returns to the villages, and since people are
on the move it must be dTVut or thereabouts.
Consequently the calendar remains fairly st:Jble
and in any section of Nuerland there is general
agreement about the name of the current month.
In my experience Nuer do not TO any great
extent use the name of the months to indicaTe the
time of an event, but generally refer instead to
some ourstanding activity in process at the time of
its occurrence, e.g. at the time of early camps, at
the time of weeding, ar the time of han'esting &c.,
and it is easily understandable that they do so,
sincc time is to them a relation between activities.
During the rains u1e stages in thc growth of milJet
and the steps taken in its culture arc oftcn used as
points of reference. Pastoral activities, being
largely undifferentiated throughout. thc montbs
and seasons, do not provide suitable points.
There are not units of time bemeen the month
and day and night. People indicate the occurrence
of an e\"ent more than a day ort\yo ago by reference
to some other event which took place at the same
time or by counting the number of intcrvening
'sleeps' or, less commonly, 'suns'. There are terms
for to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, &c., but rl1ere is
no prccision about them. When Nuer wish to
define the occurrence of an event severa.l days in
advancc, such as a dance or wedding, the) do so by
reference to t]le phases of the moon: ne\\ moon, its
waxing, fulJ moon, its ''''aning, and the brightness
of its second quarter. Whcn they \\ish to be precise
they state on which night of the waxing or waning
an e\ ent will take place, reckoning fifteen nights to
each and thirt~ to u1e moon. The~ sa) that orrly
cattle and the \nuak can see u1e moon in its imris
ihle period. The only terms applied to the nightly
succession of lunar phases are those that describe
its appearance just before, and in, fullness.
The course of the sun determines many points
of rcference, and a common way of indicating the
tiDle of C\'ents is by pointing to that part of rhe
hcawns the sun \\ ill then ha"c reached in its course.
There are also a number of expressions, varying in
the degree of their precision, which describe posi
tions of the sun in the heavens, though, in my expe
rience, the only ones commonly employed are u10se
that refer to its more conspicuously differentiated
movements: the first stroke of dawn, sunrise, noon,
and sunset. It is, perhaps, significant that lhere are
almost as maI1Y points of reference between -l- and 6
a.m. as there are for the rest of the day. This may be
chiefl~ due to striking conU'asts caused by changes
in relations of earth to sun during these two hours,
but it rna) be noted, also, that the points of refer
ence between them are more uscd in dirccting
activities, such as starting on journeys, rising from
sleep, tethering cattle in kraals, gaze]]e hunting,
&c., than points of reference during most of the
rest of the day, especially in the slack time bet\ycen
I and 3 p.m. There are also a number of terms to
describe the time of night. They arc to a very lim
ired extent determined by the course of the stars.
Here again, there is a richer terminology for the
transition period between day and night than dur
ing the rest of the night and the same reasons may
be suggested to explain this fact. There are also
expressions for distinguishing night from day, fore
noon from afternoon, and that part of the day \\'hich
is spent from that part which lies ahead.
Except for the commonest of the terms for diyi
sions of the day the~ arc little used in comparison
with expressions which describe routine diurnal
activities. The daily timepiece is the cattle clock,
the round of pastoral tasks, and the timc of day
and the passage of time through a day are to a
"Juer primarily the succession of these tasks and
their relations to one another. The better demar
cated points are taking of the callie from byre to
kraal, milking, driying of the adult herd to pas
ture, mill-ing of the goats and sheep, driving of the
flocks and cahes to pasture, cleaning of byre and
kraal, bringing home of the flocks and calves, the
THE NUER: TIME AND SPACE
rerum of the adult herd, the evening milking, and
the enclosure of the beasts in byTes. Nuer gener
.llly use such points of activit), raU1er than con
cr~te points in rhe movement of the sun across t11e
hC1l\'ens, to co-ordinate events. Thus a man says, 'J
shall return at milking", "1 shall starl off when u1e
011ve5 come home', and so forrh.
Occologieal rime-reckoning is ultimately, of
course, entirely determined by' the movement of
the hemenl) bodies, but only some of its units and
notations are directly based on these movements,
e.g. munth, da), night, and some parts of the day
and night, and such points of reference are paid
:lttention to and selected as points onlv because
the) arc significant for social activities. It is the
activities themselves, chief1y of an economic kind,
which are basic to the system amI furnish most of
its units and notations, and the passagc of time is
pcrcei\ cd in t he relation of activities to one
~mother. Since aCli\ ities are dependent on the
mo\'cmenl of the heavenly bodies and since the
movement of the heavenly bodies is significant
(lnl~ in relation to the acti\iries one may often
refer to eit her in indication of the time of an event.
Thus one ma)! say, 'In thejiom season' or 'At eadv
c,lmps', 'The monUl of DII'at' or 'The return to
yiI1:lges', 'When the sun is warming up' or 'At
milking'. The movements of the heavenl~' bodies
permit 1\ uer (() select natural points that are sig
nificant in relation to activities. Hence in linguistic
l1sage nights, or rather 'sleeps', are more clearly
defined units of time than days, or 'suns', because
the) are undifferentiated units of social aCTivity,
and month~, or rather 'moons', though they are
clearly differentiated units of natural rime, are lit
tle employed as points of reference because rhey
arc not clearly differentiated units of activit),
whereas ilie day, the year, and its main seasons arc
complete occupational unit!>.
Ccnain conclusions may be dra\\l1 from this
qualit) of rime among the Nuer. Time has not the
S;lme value throughout the year. Thus in dry sea
son camps, although daily pastoral tasks follO\v
one another in the same ordcr as in the rains, thev
do nOl take place at the same tin1e. They are more
a precise routine owing to rhe severity of seasonal
conditions, especially \\ ith regard 10 water and
pasturage, and require greater co-ordination and
cO-{)perati\e action. On the other hand, life in the
75
dry season is generally uneventful, outside routine
tasks, and oecoJogical and social relations are more
monotonous from month to month than in U1e
rains when there arc frequent feasts, dunces, and
ceremonies. 'Vhen lime is considered as relations
between activities it will be understood thaI it has
a different connotation in rains and drought. JI1
the drought the daily time-reCkoning is more uni
form and precise while lunar reckoning receives
Jess attention, as appears from the lesser use of
names of months, less confidence in stating their
order, and the common East :Urican trait of two
dl'}'-sl"ason months Witll the same name (Jiop III dil
and tillp III 101), 1he order of which is often inter
changed. The pace of time may \',U'y accordingly,
since perception of lime is a function of systems of
time-reckoning, but we can make no definite state
ment on this question.
Though I h;lve spoken of tin1e and units of time
the Nucr have no expression equinlent to 'time'
in our language, and they cannot, therefore, as we
can, speak of time as though it were something
actual, which passes, can be wasted, can be sa\'cd,
and so forth. 1 do not u1ink that the) ever experi
ence the same feeling of fighting against time or of
ha\'ing to co-ordinate activities with an abstract
passage of time, because their points of refcrence
are mainly the activities rl1emsclves, "hich are
generally of a leisurely character. Evcnts follow a
logical order, but they are not cOl1lrolled by an
ahstract system, there being no autonomous points
of reference to which acti\ ilies have to conform
with precision. Nuer are fortunate.
A.lso they ha\'e \'er) lin1ited means of reckoning
the relar i\'e duration of periods of time inter\'ening
bctween events, since they ha\'e few, and not we11
defined or systemati7.ed, units of lime. 1laYing no
hours or 01 her small units of time they l:annot
measure the periods which intervene between
positions of the sun or daily aeti\ ities. It is true that
the year is divided into twche lunar units, but
Nuer do not reckon in iliem as fractions of a unit.
They ma) be able to state in what month an e\'enr
occurred, but it is with great difficult) that they
reckon the relation between evems in abstract
numerical s) mbols. They think much more easily
in terms of activities and of successions of activities
and in terms of social structure and of structural
differences than in pW'e units of time.
i E.E. EVANS-PRITCHARD THE NUER: TIME AND SPACE ii

\\e rna} conclude that the t\uer system of time
reckoning ,,-ithin the annual cycle and parts of the
cycle is a series of conceptualizations of naULral
changes, and that the selection of points of refer
and to changes in his own life-history, but such a
ence is determined by the significancc whieh these
by different tribes, or sometimes by adjaccnt subject bristles with difficulties. Thus an indi\idual
tribes, for these are floods, pestilences, famines,
1'\
/ \ may reckon the passa!!:e of tme by rcference to the
wars, &c., experienced by the tribe. In course of / \ physical appearance and staUls of other individuals
time tile names of years are forgotten and all cYents \
/ /\ \
beyond the limits of ulis crude historical reckon method of reckonin~ time has no wide colk-ctive
/ / \ \

natural changes ha\'e for human activities. ing fade into the dim vista of long long ago. I 1 \ \
yalidil:)' \\-e confess, however, that our observations
I-Lstorical time, in this sense of a sequence of out / 1 \ \
on the matter have been sLight and that a fuller
standing events of significance to a tribe, goes back I / /\ \ \
analysis is beyond our powers. We have merely
II much farther than the historical time of smaller I / I \ \ \
indicated those aspects of the problem which arc
In a scnse all time is structural since it is a concep groups, but fifty years is probably its limit, and the I
/
1 I \ \\ \
directly related to the description of modes of live
tualization of collateral, co-ordinated, or co-oper farther bad. from the present day the sparser and / 1/1\\ \\
lihood which has gone beforc and to the description
ative acti.ities: the movements of a group. yaguer become its points of reference. / I 1/\ \ \ \

of political institutions which foll0\\ s.

Otherwise time concepts of this kind could not
exist, for they must ha.e a Like meaning for every
one within a group. Milking-time and meal--times
are approximately the same for all people who nor
mally come into contact with one another, and the
movement from villages to camps has approxi
mate!) the same connotation every where in
1'\uerland, though it may have a special COOIlOta
tion for a particular group ()f persons. There is,
however, a point at which we can say that time
concepts cease to be determined by oecological
factors and become more determined b) struc
LUral interrelations. being no longer a reflection of
man's dependence on nature, but a reflection of
the interaction of social groups.
The year is the largest unit of oecological time.
Nuer have words for the year before last, last year,
this year, next year, amI the year after next. Events
which took phlce in tile last fe'\ years are then the
point"S of reference in time-reckoning, and these
are different according to the gmup of persons
who make usc of them: joint famil}, village, tribal
section, tribe. &c. One of the commonest ways of
stating the year of an c\ ent is to mention where the
people of the village made their dry season camps,
or to refer to some eyi) that befell their cattle. A
joint family may reckon time in the birth of calves
of thcir herds. Weddings and other ceremonies,
fight~, and raids. may likewise give points of time,
though in the absence of numerical dating no one
can say without lengthy calculations ho'\ many
years ago an event took place. Moreover, since
time is to Nuer an order of events of outstanding
significance to a group, each group has its own
points of reference and time is consequently rela
tive to structural space, locally considered. This is
ob.ious when we examine the names giYen to )'ears
Howeyer, Nuer have another wa) of stating
roughly when events LOok place; not in numbers of
years, but b) reference to the age-set system.
Distance bet\\cen C\ents ccases to be reckoned in
time concepb as we understand them and is reck
oned in terms of structural distance, being the rela
tion bet,\een groups of persons. II is therefore
entirely relative to the social strucUlre. Th us a Nuer
may sa) that an event took place;: after the TIl/II age
set was born or in the initiation period of the Boilor
age-set, but no one can say hem many years ago it
happened. Time is here reckoned in sets. If a man
of the lJul/gl/l/gu set teUs one that an event occurred
in the initiation period of the Tlnlf set he is saying
that it happened three sets before his set, or si.\. sets
ago. Here it need only be said that "e cannot accu
ratel) translate a reckoning in sets into a reckoning
in years, bUllhat ,\ e can roughly estimate a ten-year
iOlen'al between the commencement of successiye
sets. There are six sets in existence, the names of
the sets are not cyclic, and the order of extinct sets,
all but the last, are soon forgotten, so that an age-set
reckoning has seven units coYering a period of
rather under a century.
The structural system of time-reckoning is
partly the selection of points of reference of sig
nifiC<U1ce to local groups" hich give these groups a
common and distinctive history; partly the dis
tance between specific sets in the age-set system;
and partly distances of a kinship and lineage order.
Four generation-steps (lwllI) in the kinship system
are linguistically differentiated relations, grandfa
ther, father, son, and grandson, and within a small
kinship group these relationships give a time
depth to members of the group and points of ref
erence in a line of ascent by which their
relationships are determined and explained. Any
/ / 1 I/ \\ \ \
A '
Figure 5A
kinship relationship must have a point of refer
ence on a line of ascent, namely a common ances
tor. so that such a relationship always has a time
connotation couched in structural terms. Beyond
t.he range of the kinship system in this narrow
sense the connOtation is expressed in terms of the
lineage system. The base line of the triangle in
Figure 5A represents a gi' en group of agnates and
tht.> dorted lines represelll their ghostly agnatic
forebears, running from this base to a point in lin
eage structure, the common ancestor of every
member of the group. The farther we extend the
range of the group (the longer becomes the base
line) the farther back in lineage ~tructttre is the
common ancestor (the farther from the base line is
the ape" of the triangle). The four triangles are
thus the time depths of four extensions of agnatic
relationship on an existentia] plane and represent
minimal, minor, major, and maximal lineages of a
dan. Lineage time is thus the structural distance
between group~ of persons on the line AB.
Structural time thercfore cannot be understood
until structural distance in known. since it is a
reflection of it, and we must, therefore, ,lSI.. the
[(';Ider to forgive a certain obscurity at this point
and to reserve criticism till ,\e have had an oppor
tunit) of explaining more clearly what is meant by
~LructUnJJ distance.
We have restricted our discussion to Nuer sys
tems of time-reckoning ~md have not considered
the \\a) in which an individual perceives rime. The
\\
, \ \ 'Ve have remarked that the moyement of struc
B tural time is, in a sense, an illusion, for the structure
remains f'lirly constant and the perception of time
is no more than the movement of persons, often as
g-roups, through the structure. Thus a~e-sets suc
ceed one another forever, but there are never more
than six in existence and the relative positions occu
pied b~ these six sets at any time are fixed structural
points through which actual sets of persons pass in
endless succession. Similarly, for reasons which we
explain later, the Nuer system of lineages may be
considered a fixed system, there being a constant
number of steps between living persons and the
founder of their clan and the lineages haying a con
stant position relative to one another. Howevcr
when many generations succeed one another the
depth and range oflineages does not increase unJess
there has been structural change.
Beyond the limits of historical time we enter a
plane of tradition in which a certain element of
historical fact may be supposed ro be incorporated
in a complex of myth. Here the points of reference
are the structural ones we ha,e indicated. At one
end this plane merges into history; at the other
end into myth. Time perspective is here not a true
impression of actual dist,lnces like that created by
our datin!! technique. but a reflection of relations
between lineages, so that the traditional events
recorded have to be placed at the points where the
lineages concerned in them conyerge in their lines
of ascent. The events have therefore a position in
structure, but no exact position in historical time
as we understand it. Beyond tradition lies the
horjzon of pure myth which is always seen in the
same time perspective. One mythological event
did not precede another, for myths explain cus
toms of general social significance rather than thl:
78 E.E. EVANS-PRITCHARD
interrelarions of particular segments and are,
thercfore, not slTucturally stratified. Explanations
of an)' qualities of nature or of culturc arc drawn
from this inte]Jectual ambient which imposes lim
its on the "iuer world and makcs it self-contained
and entirely intelligible to Nuer in the relati()n of
its parts. The world, peoples, and cultures aJl
ex.isted together from the same remote past.
It lI'ill ha"e b<:cn noted that the Nuer time
dimension is shallo". Valid history ends a century
ago, and tradition, genel'Ousl)' measw'ed, clkes us
back only ten to twelve generations in lineage
srrucrurc, and if wc are right in supposing that lin
eage srructure never grows, it follows that the dis
tance between the beginning of the world and the
present day remains unalterable. Time is thus not
a continuum, but is a constant stTuctural relation
ship bet"een two points, the first and last persons
in a line of agnatic descent. HOlY shallow is Kuer
timc may be judgcd from the fact that the tree
under which mankind came into being was still
standing in Western :--Juerland a few years ago!
Beyond the annual cycle, time-reckoning is a
concepwalization of the social structure, and thc
points of reference are a projection into the past of
actual relations hetween groups of persons. It is
less a means of co-ordinating events than of co
ordinating relationships, and is therefore mainly a
looking-backwards, since relation~hips must be
explained in terms of the past.
lIT
We have concluded that structural time is a reflec
tion of structural distance, In the following sec
tions we define further what we mean by structural
distmlce, and make a formal, preliminary, classifi
cation ofNuer territorial groups of a political kind.
We have classified Nuer socio-temporal categories.
We nov. classify their socio-spatial categories.
\Vere a man to fly over Nuerland he would see
white patches ,\ith what look like tiny fungoid
growths on them. These are village sites ''O'ith huts
and b) res. He would see that between such parches
arc stretches of brown and black, the brown being
open grassland and the black being depressions
which are swampy in the rains; and that the white
patches arc \\ ider and more frequent in some
parts than in others. We fmd Nuer give to these
THE NUER: TIME AND SPACE 79
distributions certain values which compose their
politi':al structure.
It would be possible to measure the exact dis
tance betwe<.:n hut and hut, village and village,
tribal area and tTibal area, and so forth, and the
space covered by each. This would give w; a
sL'ltement of spatial measurements in bare physi
cal terms. By itself it would have ,ery limited sig
nificance. OecologicaI space is more than mere
hysical di~tance, though it is affected b) it, for it
is reckoned also b) the character of the country
intervening between local groups and its relation
to the biological requirements of their members. A.
broad river divides two l\ucr tribes more sharply
than many miles of unoccupied bush. A distance
which appears small in thc dry season has a differ
ent appearance ,\ hen the area it covers is nooded
in the rains. A village community which has per
manent water ncar at hand is in a very different Figure 5.5 Nucr socio-spatial categories
position ro one I\hich has to tra,el in the dry sea
son to obtain water, pasturage, and fishing. A tsetse
belt creates an impassable barrier, giving wide we 1c;'1\'e territorial values and speak of lineages and segments of a major lineage, and that is less than
oecological distance between the peoples it sepa age-sets, structural space is less determined by the distance between major segments of a maximal
rates, and presence or absence of cattle among emironmental conditions. One lineage is closer to lineage, and so forth. The age-set distance between
neighbours of the Nuer likewise determines the another than to a third. One age-sct is closer segments of an age-set is less than the distance
oecological distance between them and the Nuer. to another than to a third. The values attached t between successive age-sets and that is less than
Oecological distance, in this sense, is a relation residence, kinship, lineage, sex, and agc, differenti the distance between age-sets which are not SllC
between communities defined in terms of density ;lte groups of persons by segmentation, and the cessi"e. As we wish to develop our argument and
and distribution, and with reference to water, Ycg reluti"e positions of the segments to one :mother therefore to avoid analy sis which docs not al1o\\
ration, animal and insect life, and so on. gives a perspective that enables us to speak of the the reader to refer back to statements alread)
Structural distance is of a vel') different order, di"isions between them as divisions of structural made, wc will give immediate consideration only
though it is alwayl> inlluenced and, in its political space. Having defined what is meant by structural to political distance and only to some characteris
dimension, to a large extcnt determined by oeco space we may now proceed with a description of its tics of it.
logical conditions. Oy structural distance is meant, politic-al divisions. Nuer gil'e values to local distributions. It might
as we have already indicated in the preceding sec be thought a simple matter to discQl'cr what these
tion, the dist,lllce bet\\' ecn groups of persons in a ,'alues are, but since they are embodied in words,
social system, expresscd in terms of values. The
IV one cannot understand their range of reference
nature of the country determines the distribution \\'c have noted that structural distance is the dis \\ ithout considerable knO\vledge of the people's
of villages and, therefore, the distance between tance berv'een groups of persons in social SlTUc language and of the way they use it, for meanings
them, but "alues limit and defll1e the distribution ture and may be of different kinds. Those which vary according to the social situation and a word
in structural terms and give a different set of dis concern us in our present account are political dis may refer to a variety of local groups. It is, never
tances. A Nucr \ illage may be equidistant from t\Vo tance, lineage distance, and age-set distance. The theless, possible to differentiate them and to make
other villages, but if onc of these belongs to a dif polit.ical distance betwcen villages of a tertiary a crude formal classification of them, as we have
ferent tribe and the othcr to the same tribe it may tribal section is less than the distance between ter done in Figure 5.5.
be said to he structurally more distant from the tiary segments of a second31'y tribal section, and A single living hut (d,.ril or Ill) is occupied by a
first than from the second. A Nuer tribe which is that is less than the distance between secondary wife anJ her children and, at times, by her hus
separated by forty miles from another l\ucr tribe is segments of a primary tribal section, and so forth, band. They constitUle a simple residential family
slTucturally nearer to it than to a Dinka tribe from The lineage distance between segments of a minor group. The homestead, consisting of a byre and
which it is separated by only twenty miles. When lineage il> less than the distance between minor huts, may contain a simple family group or a
80 E. E. EVANS-PRITCHARD
polygamous family and there arc often one or tw
kinsmen Ji\ ing there as well. Th.is group, "hich \\e
call a household, is often referred to as the gol, a
word which means 'hearth'. A hamlet \,ith gar
dens and waste land around it is called dhor and
e3ch has its special name, often derived from somc
landmark or from the name of the senior kinsman
liying there. A h3mlet is generally oc.::upied hy
close agnatic kinsmen, often hrothers, and their
households, and \\e call this group of persons a
joint family. As these groups are not treated in our
account we say no more about them. It must be
remembered, ho\\e\'er, that a \illage is not an
unsegmented unit but is a relation between a
number of smaller units.
The village is a vtry distinct unit. It is some
times referred to as rhllf, a ridge of high groLU1d,
but generally as CiCIl/{, a word which may he fJ':lI1S
lated 'home" but which has such a variety of
meanings that \\e shall devote a special section to
it. A village comprises a community, linked by
common residence and by a network of kinship
and affinal ties, the members of which, as \\e ha\'e
seen, form a common camp, co-operate in many
activities, and eat in one another's byTes and \\ ind
screens. A village is the smallest Nuer group \\ hich
is not specifically of a kinship order and is thc
political unit of NuerI3nd. The people of the \il
lage have a feeling of strong solidarilY against
other viUages and great affection for their site, and
in spite of the wandering habits of Nuer, persons
born and bred in a village have a nostalgia for it
and arc likely to return to it and make their home
there, even if they have resided elsewhere for man)
years. ,\lemhtrs of a village fight side b) side and
SUPPOTt each other in feuds. When the youths of a
villagc go to dunces rhey' cnter the dance in a war
line (dep) singing their special war cham.
A cattle C<lmp, which people of a \'illage form in
the drought and in which members of neighhour
ing villages participate, is known as mcc. While this
word has the meaning of 'camp' in contrast \\;th
eiCllg, 'village', hath \lords are used in the same
general sense oflocal community. Thus when it is
said of a ccrtain clan that they have no lIIec we are
to understand that they nowhere in a tribal section
or yillage form a dominant nucleus of the com
munity and that, lherefore, no local conununit}
takes its name from tllern. A large camp is called
after the dominant lineage in it or after the village
community \I ho occupy it, and small camps are
sometimes named after an old person of impor
tance \\ ho has erected his \\ indscreen there. \\'e
have seen that the social composition of a camp
varies at differenl times of the drought from the
people of a hamlet to the people of a village, or of
neighbouring vilbges, and thal men sometimes
camp with kinsmen living in camps other than
those of their o\\n villages. Conscquentl)', while
local communities of the rains tend to be also local
communities in the drought their composition
ma)' be somewhat different. We again emphasize
that not only arc the people of a canlp living in a
more compact group lhan the people of a village,
hut also that in camp life there is more fre
quent contact bet\\ een ils members and gre<lter
co-ordination of their actj\ ilies. The cattle are
herded together, milked at the same timc, and so
on. In a village each household herds irs own cat
lIe, if the) are herded at all, and performs its
domestic and I..raal tasks indepenuently and at dif
ferent times. [n the drought tllere is increasing
concenrr:ltion and greater uniformity in response
10 the greater severity of the season.
We sometimes speak of a district LO describe an
aggregate of villages or camps \\hich ha\re cas~' and
frequent intercommunication. The people of tbese
viUages take part in the same dances, intermarr~,
conduct feuds, go on joint raiding parties, share
dry season camps or make eamps in the same local
it), 3ncl <;0 on. This indc1inile aggregate of con
t.:lcts does not constitute a 1\ uer categorv or a
pulitical group, becausc tlle people do not sec
themsch cs, nor are seen b) others, as a unique
community, but 'district' is a term we employ to
denote the sphere of a man's social conlacts or of
the social conlaclS of the pcoplc of a village and is,
therefore, relative to the person or communit~
spoken about. A district in this sense Lends to cor
respond to a tcrtiar) or a secondary tribal segment,
according to the sii'e of the tribe. In the smallest
tribes a \\ hole tribe is a man's district, and a dis
tricr may e\en cut across tribal boundaries in that
in a large tribe a border village may have more
contacts with neighbouring \illages of another
tribe than witll disl'mt villages of its own tribe.
The sphere of a man's social contacts may thus not
entirely coincide with any structural dlvision.
THE NUER: TIME AND SPACE
A number of adjacent villages, \arying in
number and total extension according to the size
of lhe tribe, are grouped into small tribal sections
and these into larger ones. In the brger tribes it is
convenient to distinguish between prima.ry, sec
ondary, and ttrtiary tribal sections. These scctions,
of whatever size, are, like a village, spokcn of as
c1fllg'. Since the neXL chapter is devoted to these
tribal segments no more is said about them hcre.
v him in his tribe what is his Cle7lg, he will name his
In our account of Nuer time-reckoning we noted
that in one departmcnt of time their s)-stem of
reckoning is, in a broad sense, a conceptualization,
ill terms of activities, or of physical changes that
provide convenienl poinLS of reference for activi
ties, of those phases of the oecological rhythm
which have peculiar significance for them. We fur
ther noted that in another department of time it is
~ conceptualization of structural relations, time
units being co-ordinate with units of structural
space. We have given a brief description of these
units of structural space in its political or territorial
dimension and have drawn attention to the influ
ence of oecology on distribution and hence on the
values given to the distribution, the interrelation
between which is the political system. This systcm
is not, however, as simple as we have presented it,
for V'Jlues are not simple, and we now attempt to
face some ofthe difficulties we have so far neglected.
We start this attempt by asking what it is the Nuer
mean \vhen they speak of their czeng.
hlues arc embodied in words through which
they influenec behaviour. When a Nucr speaks of
his eimg, his rihOf, his gol, &c., he is conceptualiz
ing his feelings of structural distance, identifving'
himself with a local community, and, by so doing,
clltting himself off from other communities of the
same kind. An examination of the word cicng will
teach us one of the most fundamental characteris
tic'S of Nuer local groups and, indeed, of all social
groups: their structural relativity.
\\llat does a Nuer mean when he says, '1 am a
man of such-and-such a cieng? Cieng means
'homc', but its precise significance varies \\'ith the
Situation in which it is spoken. If one meets an
Englishman in Germany and asks him where his
home is, he may reply that it is England. If one
81
meets the same man in London and asks him the
same qucstion he will tell one that his home is in
Oxfordshire, whereas if one meets him in that
county he will tell one the name of the town or vil
lage in \\ hich he Iivcs. If q lIestioned in his town or
village he will mention his particular street, and if
qucstioned in his street he will indicate his house.
So it is with the Nuer. A Nuer met outside Nuerland
says that his home is eimg Nalh, .I\;uerland. He may
also refer to his tribal counlry as his ciel1g, though
the more usual expression for this is ro/. If one asks
village or tribal section according to the context.
Generally he \\ill name either his tertiary tribal sec
tion or his village, but he may give his primary a
secondary section. If asked in his village he will
mention the name of his hamlet or indicate his
homestead or the end of the village in which his
homestead is situated. Hence if a man says '{fa
ciengda,' 'I am going home', outside his village he
means that he is returning to it; if in his village he
means that he is going to his hanllet; if in his hamlet
he means that he is going to his homestead. Cicl/g
thus means homestead, hamlet, village, and tribal
sections of various dimensions.
The variations in the meaning of the word cieng
are not due to the inconsistencies of language, but
to the relati\'iry of the group-values to which it
refers. I emphasize this character of structural
distance at an early stage because an understand
ing of it is necessary to follo\\' the account of vari
us social groups which we are about to describe.
Once it is understood, the apparent contradictions
in our account will be seen to be contradictions in
the structure itself, being, in faet, a quality of it.
:\. man is a member of a political group of any
kind in virtue of his non-membership of other
groups of the same kind. He sees them as groups
and their members see him as a menlber of a
group, and his relations with them are controlled
by the structural distance between the gFOUpS
concerned. But a man does not see himself as a
member of that same group in so far as his is a
membcr of a scgmcnt of it which stands outside of
and is opposed to other segments of it. Hence a
man can be a member of a group and yet not a
member of it. Thus a man is a member of his tribe
in its relation to other tribes, but he is not a mem
ber of his tribe in the relation of his segment of it
82 E.E. EVANS-PRITCHARD
to other se~ments of the same kind. Likewise a
man is a member of his tribal segment in its rela
tion to other segments, but he is not a member of
it in the relation of his village to other villages of
the same segmenr. A characteristic of any political
group is hence its invariuble tendency towards fis
sion and the opposition of its segments, and
another characteristic is its tendency towards
fusion with other groups of its own order ill oppo
sition to political segments larger than itself.
Political values are thus always, structurally speak
ing, in conflict. One value attaches a man to his
group and another to a segment of it in opposition
to other segments of it, and the \'alue which con
trols his action is a function of the social situation
in which he finds himself. For a man sees himself
as a member of a group only in opposition to other
groups and he sees a member of another group as
a member of a social unity however much it may
be split into opposed segments.
Therefore Figure 5.5 illustrates political struc
ture in a very crude and formal way. It cannot very
easily be pictured diagrammatically, for political
rclations arc rdati\'e and dynamic. They are best
stJted as tendencies to conform to certain values
in certain situations, and the value is determined
by the structural relationships of the persons who
compose the situation. Thus whether and on
wIDch side a man fights in a dispute depends on
the structural relationship of the persons engaged
in it and of his own relationship to each party.
We need to refer to another important princi
ple of Nuer political structure: the smaller the
local group the stronger the sentiment uniting its
members. Tribal sentiment is weaker than the
sentiment of one of its segments and the senti
ment of a segment is weaker than the sentiment
Note
There is some evidence of an intercalary month
among the Easlcrnjikan\', but I cannot be definite on
of a village which is part of it. Logically this
might be supposed to be the case, for if unity
within a group is a function or its opposition to
groups of the same kind it might be surmised
that the sentiment of unity within a group mUSt
be stronger than the sentiment of unity withjn a
larger group that contains it. Bur it is also eYident
that the smaller the group the more the contacts
between its members, the more varied are these
contacts, and the more thev are co-operatiyc. In a
big group like the tribe contacts between its
members are infrequent and corporate action is
limited to occasional military excursions. In a
small group like the village not only arc there
daily residential contacts, often of a co-opcrati,e
nature, but the members are united by close
agnatic, cognatic, and affinal tics which can be
expressed in reciprocal action. These becollle
fewer and more distant the wider the group, and
the cohesion or a political group is undoubtedl~
dependent on the number and strength of ties of
a non-political kind.
it must also be Slated that political actualities
are confused and conflicting. They are confused
because they are not always, even in a political
context, in accord \\ ith political values, though
they tend to conform to them, and because social
ties of a different kind operate in the same field,
sometimes strengthening them and sometimes
running counter to them. They are conflicting
because the values that determine them are, owing
to the relativity of political structure, themseh'es
in conflict. Consistenc~ of political actualities can
only be seen when the dynamism and relativity of
political structure are understood and the rclation
of political structure to other social systems is
taken into consideration.
this point, and I have not heard it mentioned in other
parL~ of Nuerland.
The Illusion of Tribe
Aidan W Southall
Introd uction
COl1trO\ersiSlI though the matter is, the most gen
cr,\ll~ ;\cceplable characteristics of a tribal society
are perhaps that it is a whole societ)', wilh :l high
degree of self-sufficency at a near subsistence level,
based 011 a relativel) simple technology without
\1 citing or literaLUre, politically autonomous and
II ilh its own distinctive language, culture and sense
of identity, tribal religion being also co-terminous
\dth tribal societ~. Some would insist on further
differentiation of the rriballevcl of social and cul
tural organization, on the one hand, from the very
small scale band level characteristic of hunting and
gathering peoples without agriculture, and on the
other, from state or state-like organizations found
at the upper limit of scale and complexity within
the range of non-literate societies. Thus, Sahlins
(1961: 323) speaks of the "lTibal b'd, as distin
guished from less-developed bands and more
advanced chieldoms." This point of view has not
found much favour and can be criticised on a
number of counts. At the empirical level, tribes
and bands do not appear as distinct as is implied,
and the concept of "chief" and "chiefdom," while
From Aidan W. Southall, "The Illusion of Tribe," in Tht Pa"sing (If Tribal Mew ;n Africa, ed. P. C. W. Gutl.ind,
pp.28-31, 32-5, 39--43, H, 46-50, from E.]. Brill, Lciden, 1970.
6
clear to some writers, is highly variable and incon
sistent in the ethnographic literature as a \\ hole.
The empirical difficulties of distinguishing the
tribal level in the broad sense have been consider
able, and the addition of lWO further levels st:cms
to make them insurmountabk It is not b~ multi
plying global distinctions of this sort that we shall
progress, but by dealing with more specialized cat
egories of phenomena while retaining the general
concept of tribe as a convenient initial descriptive
letbel. Dozens of definitions could, of course, be
quoted from authoritative anthropological writ
ings, but for the most part, tht:y add nothing to
understanding and vary onl} in emphasis, one
stressing language, another politics, another self
identity, and so forth.
for present purposes, to simplify the argumcnt,
we shall use tribal societ)' in the more inclusive
sense of all those societies which exhibit the first
mentioned set of characteristics. On this basis, to
what extent do such societies still exist? In the
strict sense they cannot exist, since tht:rt: arc no
areas of the inhabited earth unclaimed by one so\,
ereign state or another. The)' can onl) exist in
dwindling pockets so remote that such sovereign
84 AIDAN W. SOUTHALL
claims have not yet been made effective and can be
ignored. No tribal society which has lost its politi
cal autonom) can continue to be a tribal society in
lhe full sense of this meaning, although many of
its members may retain vivid and even nostalgic
memories of its former full existence and may
continue to be strongly influcnced by the values
belonging to tllis former state and still ende.wour
to act according to them in thosc fields where new
controls and changed nceds allow them to do so. It
is the melancholy paradox of anthropolog) that
effectil'e study of such social systems dates only
from a pcriod so late that they had already ceased
to exist in this full sense, so that an elcmcnt of
rcconstruction has always entcred into the study
of them in these terms. But it would be foolish to
den) that the cnd of their cxistencc in thc full
sense was the beginning of a long transitional
period in which their membcrs were in varying
degrees becoming incorporated into wider s) s
tems, yet cominued to retain strong elements of
their former state. ~eglect of this has vitiated
much of the work carried out supposedly in their
interests by the del elopment disciplincs.
It is not only political autonomy which has been
lost, though that was fundamental, and it is well to
specify thc changes which have generally occurred
in respect of the other statcd characteristics. The"
arc no longer self sufflcicnt, because I'arious pres
sures from without and then from within have
brought them to depend extensively on goods and
services which thcy cannot produce for them
sehes. Even where their material well being is still
little better than their former subsistence, they
have none the less becomc involved with the wider
market economy in countless seemingly irrevoca
ble ways. By the same token, their technology is no
longer simple. Even whcre it is little improved in
efficiency, it has come to reflcct in its array of tools
and weapons, clothes and elen foodstuffs, the vast,
unscen and distant complex of the industrial
world. Almost invariably some of its members
hal'c become literate, and elTn if thcy have often at
the same time tended to become absentees, they
none the less remain vital members of it and the
very symbols of its passing. Furthermore, they
have often, and necessarily, become literate in a
foreign language. They havc also adopted, of
course under strong external persuasion if not
pressure, new religious heliefs, practices, and
memberships, or at Ie;\st new sets of ideas, which
are incompatible with tribal society. In all these
ways, the close identity of language, culture and
sociel) (if it ever existed) is now blurred and has
become a series of alternatives. To say "I am a
Kilu) u, a Kenyan, an African," means three I'ery
different things. The latter TWO identities did not
exist three quarters of a century ago. What has
been said here is 0\)\ iously onl) a minimal state
ment of the changes that have occurred. It goes
without sa) ing that in many cases the transforma
tion is much greater.
So far we have given a definition of what a tribal
society is, conceptually, and presumably was,
empirically, but have argued that it can no longer
exist in this full sense, ho\\ever potenr nl<lny of its
features rna) remain. The carrying over of such
features into a different system is tribalism.
Tribalism is usually regarded in pejorative light
and the rational basis for this is that to carryover
elements specific to one ~) stem into another is
inappropriate. It is in the political context that
tribalism is regarded with particular disfavor, and
in a number of social and economic contexts also.
But those who rightly stigmatise the carryOl'Cf
which is tri.balism in these contexts 1V0uld in oth
ers often favor it, especially with respect to certain
family values and to aesthetic modes of eXlJres
sion, as for example in music, dancing and plastic
arts. Thu.!> President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania:
"It has been said - and this is quite right - that
Tanganyika is tribal, and we realise that we need to
break up this tribal consciousness among the peo
ple and to build up a national consciousness"
(Nyerere, 1966: 38-9). Yet on the other hand, "I
hal e set up this new Ministry to help us regain our
pride in our own culture. I want it to seek out the
best of the traditions and customs of all our tribes
and make them a part of our national culture" (op.
cit. 187). "The traditional order is dying; the qnes
tion which has yet to be answered is whal will be
built on our past, and, in consequcnce, what kind
of society will eventually replace the traditional
one" (op. cit. 6).
This is the oft discussed problem of trying to
retain the good which was in the old and grafting
it on to the new. But the characteristics of tribal
society which we gave constitute a set of highly
THE ILLUSION OF TRIBE
depend::nt variables. DependeDt variables, whcther
lie like it or not, constitute a fWlctional system.
We sa} "highly dependent" because we reject the
extremc claims of total functional integration
IIhich are II idely recoglliscd as false. Tribal socie
des were not totally integrated. There were areas
of partial integration and partial depcndcnce in
the s}stem, allowing for the possibility of moder
:ltc change from wilhi.n or without. But thev wcre
certainl) lJuite highly intcgratcd systems and to
pick and choose among supposedly desirable and
uniJcsirablo.: elements in them is a fatal misunder
st.1nding of tllCir intrinsic nature. Of course there
is continuity as well as change. There are harder
and softer clements in the system. But the interde
pendence, ahJlOugh partial and not total, is none
iJ1C less real. There is therefore some possibility of
presefl ing somc desirable clements, but it can
onl} be done in submission to the limitations
imposed b) rhe dcgree of interdependence of var
iablL-s. LnJortunatcly, this rcquirement is far from
being taken seriously into account bv the policy
makers concerned.
This is particularly relevant to those formerly
tribal populations which have not lost their demo
graphic I'itality, or will to live, but rather are in
mall) cases on the brink of, or already involved in,
a .l<mgerous population explosion, rapidly enter
ing the modern world and usually forming the
major population component of ncll' nations, or
of colonial territories in their last stages, as in
most ofAfric-a and Ncw Guinea. The other side of
the coin is thc morc tragic situation reponed by
Levi-Strauss in "A World on the Wane" of those
pathetic remnants whieh "had learnt from the
croeious persecutions of the pre\ ious hundred
yC,lrs to keep themselves cntirely hidden from the
outer vlorld" - people who "were neither 'true
Indians', nor, for that mattcr, 'true savages" but
fur mer 'savages' on whom civilization had been
abruptly forccd; and. as soon as they were no
longer 'a dall~er to Society', ci\'ilization took no
furthcr interest in them" (1961: 134-5). This is
the characteristic situation of aborir;inal peoples
throughout the Amcricas, except for those who
hav'e successfully made the transition into peas
antl'ies, or as individuals, become lost in industrial
society. Such tragic situations are also reponed
spof<ldic.1l1y from Africa where, according to
85
Diamond (1964a: 45) the Anaguta of thc Nigerian
Plateau "decided not to join the modern world"
but "move like ghosts on the outskirts of eiyilil..a
tion ... Their culture crumbles, their population
declines, their lands shrink and as an ethnic entity
they change onl~' disintegratively. They accept,
they pursue their decline; for them the 1I'0rld
ends." Or, again, the fragmentary lk of north
eastern Uganda, II here, according to Turnbull
(1967: 70) "social disintegration has gone to the
limit" and "at the present Tatc the Jk are not likely
to sUfI'ive much longer." ...
According to Steward (1958: 44-5) "thc con
cept of primitive or 'tribal' is based on three fun
damental aspects of the behavior of members of
tribal societies". These are, in brief. that it is a
construct representing the ideal, normative aspect
of the behaviour of "all members of a fairly small,
simple, independent, self-contained and homoge
neous societ}" ... "Tribal society is not divisible
into genuine subcultural groups" Sccondly, tribal
culture has pattern, or configuration, some under
I) ing unity and O\'erall integration, and thirdly,
that it is "essentially rclativistic" and unique in
relation to other cultures with which it contrasted.
While it has been "a useful tool for analysis and
comparison, especially when contrasts are sought,
... as a tool lor dealing with culturc change it has
founli little utility." 10 the present writer its defi
ciencies are more fundamental than tllis, for as we
shall see, the cultures which lie at the lower end of
the range in terms of social scale are not in fact
unique and independent entities ",hich can prop
erly be seen as unequivocally distinct from one
another. Indeed, to do so is frequently to misun
derstand their essential nature. On the other hand,
cultures IIhich lie at the higher end ofthc scale are
not as homogeneous and lacking in subcultural
divisions as is implied. These divergences are
mnch too general and glaring to be regarded as
permissible devialions from a consistent core.
The ideal type or analytical model of the tribe
varies a good deal in the versions of different writ
ers, as we have seen, but it is fair to say that these
variations do play round recurring common
themes. However, we shall give examples to docu
ment the fact tllat, whichever particular choice of
uefinilion is made, empirical dil'Crgences are so
gross, widespread and frequent as to render the
86 AIDAN W. SOUTHALL THE ILLUSION OF TRIBE 87

concept of tribe as it exists in the general literature
untcnable. In man) cases, the definitions generally
current actually hinder understanding of the enti
ties to which the) arc supposed to refer. Tbe mmed
tribes which appe,lr in the literature frequently
represent crystallif.ations at the IHong level, usu
all) a level which is too large in scale because for
eign observers did not initially understand the
lower Ic\els of structure or failed to correct the
misrepresentations of their predecessors, or
because some arbitrary amI e\'en artificial emit)'
was chosen for the sake of easy reference, despite a
realisarion that it was fallacious and misleading.
Furthermore., such fabrications of the foreign
obsefl'er hal e often themseh es acquired validity in
the course of externaJl) induced change and am:ll
gamation, while the indigenous peoples concerned
have also become a\\':lte of the need for larger scale
as the modern \\orld dosed in upon them.
The Concept of Tribe in Africa
Since the birth of African nationalism, tribalism
has always heen a sore subject and for rery good
reasons. Some 11.1tionalists have even gone so far as
to claim that tribal divisions were the deliberate
creation of a Machiavellian colonial poliC) of di\ ide
and rule. While it is doubtful whether mOst colonial
administrators most of the time had sufficient
knowledge of the internal structUJ'e of the tradi
tional societies they ruled and sufficient expertise
in social engineering to achieve \\ hat is LTedited to
them by this view, there is a certain element of truth
in it to the extent that many of the named entities
which appear as tribes in the literature appeared for
the first rime during the colonial period and must
in this sense necessarily be considered a product of
it. One of the mo:;l striking and well documented
cases is That of lhe Luhia in Kenya.
When the German ,1I1thropologist Gunter
Wagner went 10 Kenya in 1934, Kavirondo was
simpl) a geographical area, so named from tlle
time of the L'aftiest Arab, Swahili and European
traders and explorers, but not so knowll by any of
its indigenous inhabitants. Wagner notes that
"owing to its constant use bv Europeans, the term
'Knvirondo' has nowadays been to some extent
adopted by the natives, but they use it with
reference to the district rather than to themselves.
When talking to other nati\ es - even outside the
district - they ah\ ays style themselves by the name
of their re.~peclive sub-tribe, such as Wanga,
Vugusu, Logoli, Nyoh:, etc. Among politic-ally
minded natives \\ho for a number of years ha\'\:
been pleading for a politicaJ unification of all
Bantu Ka\ irondo tribes under a paramount chief
according to the lJuganda paneI'D, the word
avail/ilia, meaning 'those of the same tribe', is
propagated as a common designation for all Bantu
Kavirondo. The term 'Kavirondo', on the other
hand, is generally rejected in these quarters as
being of European origin" (Wagner, 19-+9: 20).
I'vt:tn) other writers ha\'e pointed out that the term
Kavirondo was regarded as opprobrious for \T;ui
ous reasons, though agreement has never been
reached as to its meaning or derivation.
Wagner himself, lil.e many another ethnogra
pher, vacillates orer his use of the term tribe,
applying it sometimes to one level, sometimes to
another. "In pre-European da) s the \'arious sub
tribes of Bantu Kavirondo were, for their greater
part, very loosel~' organized politically, each sub
tribe consisting of a number of more or less soyer
eign clans. Since British rule was established in
the middle of the nineties, they haIC been organ
ized into chieftaincies" However, since traditional
groupings varied in size and the colonial adminis
tration aimed at uniformity and convenience in
the size of administrati\'c units, there was the
usual discrepancy between the definition of
groupings on the one hand and administrative
chieftaincies on lhe other. Next Wagner distin
guishes the following tribes, corresponding to
what he referred to as sub-tribes in the previous
passage: Vagusu, Tadjoni, Wanga, Marama, Tsotso,
Tiriki, Nyala, Kabras, Hayo, J\larach, Holo and
Logoli, to which must also be added the Idaxo,
Isuxa, Kisa, N)'ole and Samia. Amung such
acephalous peoples the exact number of groups
properly to be distinguished may be genuinely
ambiguous and debatable in some instances, but
the above list would generall~ be accepted.
Bethwell Ogot (1967: 138) speaks of "the se\en
teen Luyia tribes." Ogot further states (1967: 139)
that "the name 'Ba1uyia' was first adopted by the
North Kavirondo Central Association in June
1935. The elders ,.ejuted rht' flame, (italics mine)
and it was only afler the Second World "Var that it
!!ained general currency." This entirely accords
~\-ith the experience of the present \\Titer, who,
arriling: to teach at 1\lakcren: College in 1945,
founo that the whole group of Bantu speaking stu
dents from l\'orth Kavirondo called themselve~
Abaluy ia and were never know n as anything else.
It may be said that the Luyia people came into
l':-.istence between approximately 1935 and JlH5.
Before rhaltime no such group existed either in its
own or anyone else's estimation. It was clearly due
to the reaction of younger and more educated men
to the exigencies of the colonial situation. It arose
out of previous attempts at intertribal or sup
l'<1Cfibal organization and unity such as the North
Kavirondo Central Association md Bantu
Kavirondo Tax-payers' Association and led to fur
ther import,mt organizations such as the Aba1uyia
nion, which came to represent the Luyia away
from home., especially in the big towns such as
:"Jairobi in Kenya and Kampala in Uganda. This
ne\1 sllperrribe was closcl) linked to the coloniaJ
administrative framework, being in effect based
upon and in part suggested by the administrati\e
and territorial framework of the North Kavirondo
District (subsequenrly renamed North l'\yanza
District because of the already noted pejorative
aura of tile I\ord Kavirondo). Tn language and cul
ture the Samia were just as much Luyia as the
Haro or ;., larach, but the unfortunate Samia were
not only cut in two by the fromier bet\\een Kenya
and Uganda, but e\en their Kenya half was situ
ated administratively in Central and not North
I\;'~a.nza Dislrict. Consequently Samia \1 ere never
considered Luyia, and Samia away from home
their olin separate ethnic association.
In the original conglomeration of the Luria in
rhe 1930s and 40s the Vugusu were the largest
numeriC-,ll component. This in itself favored seces
sionist tendencies on their part, since they occu
pied a compact territory on the north side of the
Luyia area. During the 1950s the) began to agitate
for, and e\ entuall) succeeded in winning, thei
m n administrative district, which hecame known
as Eigon Nranza. With this the integrity of the
Luyia supertribe began to crumble and it is now
arguable whether the Vugusu are Luyia or not. ...
The fact is that many tribes have come into
existence in a similar way to the Luyia, through a
combination of reasonable cultural similarity with
colonial administrative co", enience, which in
more recent times has often coincided with peo
ples' own sense of need for wider levels of organi
zation to enable them to exert mOre effective
pressure 011 events. The I.uyia ne\ er did conform
to the criteria of a tribe with which we started.
Indeed, by the time they first came into existence
they already diverged somewhat from every crite
rion mentioned.
The meaning of the name Lu) ia is instructive.
Wagner explains (1949: 55) that "the stem -hia
means 'to be hot', 'to burn'" and in a concrete
sense the word (J11I-hia means "fire place on a
meadow", hence "the fire-place as the centre of
public life of the clan." "It is at this olullia that the
old men of the clan community ml:et every morn
ing to warm themselves and to discuss the e\cnts
and news of the day as well as to settle all impor
tant manns of the clan." Despite linguistic \aria
tion bet\\'een the different Luyia groups lhe)
nearly all have this term and concept. The case of
the Luyia is instructive because it is comparativcl)
rare that an adequate documentation is available to
demonstrate the process of appearance of nelV
"rl'ibes" with reasonable completent'Ss. But the
Luria arc far from being an isolated case and the
proccss has close counterparts in many regions of
the world.
To take an example from tJle other side of the
continent of :\frica, Labouret (1931), Fortes
(1945), Goody (1957) and Tait (1961) have all
extensively docum~nted thc fact that in a large anu
populous region, including adjacent parts of
Ghana, hor) Coast and UppCI Volta, any single
definitive boundary draw,n bet\\"cen one "tribe"
and another was bound to be relative, arbitral') and
a mjsrepl'esentation of the facts. Colson (1951: 95)
has demonstrated the same point for the Plateau
Tonga of Central Africa (Zambia). It was not that
these peoples were an undifferenti.ated mass, but
that the) were differentiated in many subtle and
complex wa)s for different purposes. An) idea of
the Lobi, Tallensi, LoDagaba or Konkomba as
clearcut, isolated, enclosed tribes is a complete
tr~lI-esty of the facts. Legitimate authority did not
inllere to or flo\\ from an) one unequivocal level of
organization, but was contingent upon the situa
tion .... Much the same process of the picking up,
fixing and generalizing by colonial authorities of
88 AIDAN W. SOUTHALL
names applied to nguely defined peoples by their
neighbors or other foreigners, seems to have
occurred in the case of the Yoruba. "The term
Yoruba is sometimes said to have been derived
hom a foreign nickname, meaning cunning, glven
to the subjects of the Alafin of Oyo by the Fulani
and Hausa. The Hausa word for the Yoruba lan
guage is Yarbonci. Yoruba has been commonly
applied to a larg;e group, united more by language
than by culture, l1'hose members spcl~k oj /hemselves
(italics mine) as Oyo, Egba, Ijebu, Ife, llesha and
the other names of the various tribes" (Forde,
1951: I). However, it is debatable whether the lat
ter named entities are any more jusuy designated
as tribes than the Yoruba as a whole. They might
just as well be called city states. Johnson seem~ to
agree \yith the Hausa or Fulani derivation of the
name Yoruba, suggesting that the counn') wal> first
known to Europeans from the north "for in old
records the Hausa and Fulani names arc used for
the country and its capital; thus we see in Webster's
Gazerteer 'Yarriba'" (1921: xix). This he equates
with Yoruba but attempts no other deriYation. But
he continues "this COlm!r)' comprises many tribes
governed by their own chiets and ba\'ing their own
laws. At one time they were all tribut.aries to one
soverei~, the King ofYoruba, including Benin on
the Easr, and Dahomey on the West, but are now
independent." There appears to be no hisOrical
foundation for this title of "the King of Yoruba,"
except for the supposedly wider influence of the
kingdom of Old Oyo before the eighteenth cen
rury, and the ritual focus of all Yoruba upon Ife. It
is like the legenday crediting of former suzerainty
over Buganda, Ankole and other Inter-lacustrine
states to a supposed Bunyoro-Kitara "Empire."
Here too there has been a persi,tem confusion
between political and ritual relations.
Group nm11es with an ecological referent arc
common all over the world and often show a very
poor correlation with valid divisions between one
tribe and another on the basis of political, social,
culturaJ and linguistic facts. Madagascar is a strik
ing case. There\ve have the following generally
accepted names and m~lDings, which may none the
less be apocryphaJ in some cases: Antana/a (t11<: for
est people), Al1t01ulro)! (the people of the thorny
cactus forest), Antlll1kara/la (the people of the rocks
and caves), At/tanos)! (the people of the islands),
Ant/fasy (the people of the sands), .dntemoro (the
people of the coaST), Antesaka (the people who catch
small fish with the hands),1 Au/sil/lJTIaka (the people
of the lake), Be/rmimentl (the people of the red land),
BezallOZIII/fJ (the bush people), and Sakalcwa (the
people of lhe long valley:" or of the broad and long
plain). A few other Malag'asy peoples have acquired
non-ecological designations: Betsileo (Ule many who
are not conquered), BelSimiSlll'llka (the many who
do nol separate), NII/haft/)' (those who cause joy)
and Tsimihety (those who do not cut their hair). It is
said (hat growing their hai.r long made T:-imihety
men 1001. like women and facilitated their escape
from slave raiders.
L\ en where these ecological terms arc accurate,
as in the case of i\.ntanala, they refer to people in a
particular habirat rather than [0 people with dis
tinct socio-cultural characteristics. Eco10[\ can be
\ ery important, but no one now would hold it
responsible for all social and cultural differences.
Other terms are vague and overlapping. M..1ny
Malagasy live on the sand besides the Antefasy,
vcr) many on the coast besides the A:ntemoro, and
very man~' on red earth besides the Betani.mena.
The Antanos)' do not in fact live on islands.
AII/m/tlro)' is a fair description, but these people
were neither a cultural, hiStoric:a! nor political
unity ... Another common basis of tribal naming
which is in a sense more strucrurally genuine tban
many of those so far discussed is derived from the
names of primal anceStors which appear in gene
alogies, myths and legends as founders of the peo
ple. It is ob\'ious that this kind of eponymy is
particularly to be expected in the case of segmen
tary lineage systems with their strong emphasis on
genealogical reckoning. In such society's concep
tion of itself and its past there is usually a series of
levels which phase into one another as they pro
cetxl further back in time. The nearest level largely
consists of Ll-te ancestors of specific contemporary
groups, whose genealogical rciationshi1Js tend to
express the contemporary relations ()f such groups
and from one or other of whom every full member
of the society can trace himself directly. Beyond
this there is a vaguer level of tribal heroes about
whose exploits, genealogical connect.ions and even
names there are differences of opinion between
different members amI sections of the modern
community, though these are usually recognisably
THE ILLUSION OF TRIBE
common variat.ions upon central themes. Beyond
this is the yet more shadOl\')' realm of figures who
represent the origins of man and societv, the dif
ferentiation of human and divine, the expression
of ultimate cultural meanings in symbolic form.
In these reaches aU is relative, that which is
"first" is. so only in relation to that which followed.
"For the deeper we sound, the further down into
the lower world of the past we probe and press, the
more do we find that ule earliest foundations of
hum:mity, itS histor) and culture, reveal thern
selyes unfathomable ... Thus there may exist pro
visional origins, whieh practically and in fact form
the ftrst beginnings of the particular tradition helel
by a g-i\'en communjt), folk or communion of faith;
and memory, though sufficiently instructed that
the depThs ha\'c not actually been plumbed, yet
nationally rna) fmd reassurance in some primitive
point of time and, personally and hi.storically
speaking, come to rest tl1ere" (Mann, 1963: 3).
;-';ot only is the beginning thus always relative, but
,tlmost invariably there is asymmetry and contra
diction associated wilh it.
In l.he case of the great Somali people, who may
justifiahly be called a nation as forming the basis of
a ne" nation state, among the usual rival deriva
tions one ofrbe most plausible is that which traces
Somali to the eponymous ancestor of most of t.he
northern pastoral Somali. The asymmetry and
conrracliction lies in the fact that "rhe Somali
nation is composed of two parts, the Somali and
the Sab. Strictly, the word 'Somali' dot'S not apply
to the Sab, who say themselves that t.hey are 'Sab'
and are so described and distiIlguished by the
'Somali'; nor is the Sab group subsumed under
the name 'Somali' in the total genealogy of the
Somali nation." (Somali and Sab appear in the
gen~l1ogy in the structural position of brothers,
both of common descent from the Qurayshitic lin
eage of the Prophet Mohammed.) "The Sab stand
opposed to the Somali, and are grouped with them
only at a higher genealogical le\el, when the two
ance:,rors Sab and Somali, are traced back to
.\rabUin origins, in the total genealogy of the
inhabitants of Somaliland" (Lewis, 1955: 15 and
1961: 12). Instances of eponymous tribal naming
arc very numerous among peoples with segmen
taT) lineage organization, such as the Ti\-~ Gusii
a.nd others alreadr ment.ioned earlier.
89
The difficulty of identifying one "tribe" clearly
and distincd) from another is often represented as
a Lroublesome test which the anthropologist must
pass. Thus, of the Australian Tiwi, because they
lived on rwo islands, "fuzziness on the edges of
tribal territory - a chronic headache to anthropolo
gisrs working with mainland tribes- did not e.xist"
(Hart and Pilling, 1964: 11). Or again of the Ti\,
"the Tiy do not presentthat difficulty so common
in Africa: identifying tile tribe" (Bohannan, 1958:
35). The difficulty is undeniahle, particularly in
the case of stateless societies, and meticulous
exploration of Ule distribution, interconnections
and meaning of the various clements in culture ami
social strUCture is of vital importance in such situ
ations, but insistence on defining some global dis
crete entity as a tribe may simply be a refusal to
recognise tile fundamental characteristics of this
ki.nd of society. I have argued ebewhere (Southall,
1968) thal stateless societies have the combined
characteristics of: multi-polities, ritual superinte
gration, complementary opposition, intersecting
kinship and distributive lcgitirnaq. The conrin
gent nature of their structure, subdivisions and
boundaries is of their essence, not something to be
swept away b) penetrating analysis. The represen
tation of adjacent staTeless societies as a neatly dis
crete series of named units is to misunderstand
and misrepresent them.
Despite Bohannan's categorical statement on
Tiv identity, Tiv is in fact a set of contradictions,
as any stateless society must be when mistakenly
regarded as a discrete tribe. ".1\ Tiv is a Ti\' and can
prove it" because "ever) Ti,' can trace his descent
from Tiv himself." Yet this genealogy is "not in
itself a record of ancestry," nor "a portrait of polit
ical structure, for its field of rcleyance is greater
than that of the political while, Oil the other hand,
not all political relationships arc capable of expres
sion in its idiom." For Tiy is actually the ancestor
of non-Tiv peoples also, such as the Uge and
Utange, and "rhe name of a linguistic and Cultll.ral
entiry which never (prior to British Administration)
acted as a political unit." As wilh the Nguru
Luguru-K~<TUru cluster of Ta117.ama, rhe named
emit) is, quite characteristically, at once too large
and toO small.
The Ti\\ i also, despite the apparent clarity with
which they are defined by the accident of island
90 AIDAN W. SOUTHAll
isolation, turn out on closer inspection to ha,e just
that fU7..zincss which JIart and Pilling deny. For
the Tiwi "did little as a member of a tribe. Only
\\hen an outc;ider lurned up did he need to think
of himself as a Tiwi, and outsiders were veT) rare.
For the rest of the time he thought of himself as a
member of his band, thought of his band as hjs
people, and of his band territor) as his country ...
The nine bands thus acted, psychologically, as
small tribelets or scmi-so\ereign groups" (op. cit.
12-13). Thus Tiwi too nuns out to be something
of an illusion. Even the band was "a flexible and
constantly shifting collection of individuab" (op.
cit. J, l2). "The casual way in which people left
om; band and joined another shows that the band
\\as in no sense a tight political or legal group"
(op. cit. 31).
The further illusion seems to be cherished that
at least with language we are on safer ground with
an unequivocal factor defming clcarcut groups.
"A Il Ti wi, ojcourse, spoke the same language" (op.
cit. II, it-.llics mine). Yet among tile Murngin, who
are not so distant from the Tiwi, either culturally
or geographically, "the members of each moiety
nre supposed to speak different languages ... Even
each clan is said to ha\e a 'language'; and some
have a different dialcct, but most \\ithin a given
area speak tIle same one. The clans claim 'lan
guages' of their own b) giving themselves linguis
tic n;lJ1lCS in addition to group names" (Warner,
1937: 30). Rather than assume that language always
defines a cultural entity, even when most other
factors fail, we should assume that language is also
one of the elemcnlS which groups in an acephal
ous, stateless society rna) purposefully and almost
"artificially" use as a basis of distinction and
identification, even \\ hen observed empirical dif
ferences are slight. "Of course," we may add,
"the tribe is almost a non-existent unit among the
Murngin" (Warner, 1937: 9). "The tribes of
northeastern Arnhem Land, of" hich Murngin is
one, are \ er) weak social units, and when
measured by the ordinarY definitions of what
constitutes a tribe fail almost completely. The
tribe is not the war-making group. On the con
n'ary, it is usually within it that the most intensive
feuds are found. Tribal membership of the clans
on the borders of two tribes is uncertain and
changing, or the people may sometimes insist that
they belong to both tribes. Even clans well toward
thc center of a tribe's territory will, under certain
circumstances, range themselves with another
group" (Warner, op. cit. 35). The name t.lurngin
is little used and the moiety names are used much
more commonly.
\Varner's account makes it very clear that the
conventional concept of tribe was quite inappro
priate LO what he nonetheless called his "Social
Study of an Australian Tribe." He uses the name
i\lurngin purely for convenience. "The word
\lurngin (fire sparks) was found as a designation
only after much effort. The people do nor think of
themselves under this name or classification. The
word has been used by me as a generaltcrm for all
of the eight tribes in the area and for the groups of
people located in the central part of the territory
of the eight tribes. I ha\'e seized upon this mme as
a convenient and concise way of talking about this
whole group of people; had any of the other tribes
who possess the particular type of social organiza
tion found in this area bcen located in the center of
the group, I should have used the name of that
tribe rather than :'v'1urngin" (Warner, op. cit. 15).
Thus, Warner constantly uses the term tribe hay
ing said that "the tribe can hardly be said to nist
in this area" (ibid.). Nor, of course, was tlle area of
'Varner's eight "tribes" clearly distinguished from
neighbouring areas. It was simply the area within
which he was able to accomplish field work. The
relativities of the Murngin and Tiwi situations arc
duplicated in other instances too numerous to
mention, such as the Yir Yoront (Sharp, 1958),
which chiefly show that the situation long ago
re\'ealed by Radcliffc-Brown and others is no
peculiar anomaly, but far more prenJent than they
can have realized.
It is not so unlike the case of the Amba in
',",estern Uganda, who include two main groups,
the Bulibuli and the Bwezi, who speak two entirely
different languages. By an asymmetT) which is also
a further characteristic of stateless societies, while
both Bulibuli and Bwezi an.: Amba, the Bulibuli are
also known as the Amba propcr. Lach village is
either Bulibuli or Ihezi, but Bulibuli and Bwezi
villages are interspersed. Each village was an ill de
pendent political unit and "\\arfare between \ari
ous villages was a constant feature" (Winter, 1958:
138). But the village was not a "self-sufficient
THE IllUSIO,' OF TRIBE
li\stem of action" ehief1~ because "the men of the
,;I1'lgC must obtain \\ ives from the outside" there
fore "C\'en the internal organization of the \illage
can only be understood ... in terms of its interrela
Tionship \\ ith the larger structure of which it is a
part" (Winter, op. cit. 139). Each village had a
IM\.imal lineage as its core and yillagcs based on
l11aximal lineages belonging to the samc named
dan and exogamous group werc linked together in
important ways. Thus we have again no one cate
goricallcvel of organization which am properly be
picked out from the rest, but rather a number of
kyels, all equally important for different purposes,
a numbcr of criteria defining essentially overlap-
ping groups and categories, so that "friends on one
basis arc enemies on another" and conllicts hecome
cohesion (Gluckman, 1955: 4, 19).
Needles!> to say, language is cven less necessarily
or obI iously n criterion of tribe where higher ley
e1s of political specialization have been reached
and diverse groups incorporatcd by conquest or
assimilation. Thus, :\Iur society contained Nilotic,
Sudanic and Bantu speakers, of half a dozen dif
ferent hmguilges (Southall, 1956, passim), and
such situations" ere common in more elaborate
~tate systems. The Azande, Lozi and many other
conquering groups incorporated numerous diverse
elements, \\ hieh retained considerable cultural
di\ersily ...
.-\n attractiyel~ precise definition of tribe was
developed by Evans-Pritchard (1940: 122).
\.Ithough he defines ~uer tribes by nine \-cry con
crete and culture bound criteria (Ioc. cit.) the
e~~cnce of the definition, which was adopted and
long retained by many British social anthropolo
gists is contained in the simple sentence: "local
communitics have been classed as tribes or tribal
segments by whetl1er the) ackno\\ ledge the obli
gatiun to pay blood-wealth or nOl" (ibid.). Evans
Pritchard applied the same criterion to the Kenya
Luo and other "Jilotie peoples, Lienhardt applied
it to the Dinka, Middleton to the Lugbara, Tait to
the Konl..omba and so on. }or a while it became an
article of faith in the conte),., of a p'lrticular
approach. It \\ a~ most effccti\'e in relation to the
immediate matter at hand - the e:\position and
clarification of segmentary lineage systems. Its
chief disad\'anrages were that therc were many
other vnriet ies of socio-political structure which it
91
did not fir and that it further confuscd and out
raged the commonsense of the general reader b~
suddenly transforming \\ hat had always been
knm\ n as single "tTibes," "peoples," "societies,"
or "culrures," into tens, dozens and e\en hun
dreds of different distinct "tribe!>." For example,
the Dinka wcre divided by Lienhardt (1958: 102)
into some twenty five "tribal groups," and the
three of these which he happened to J.nm\- well
contained 27, 10 and 6 "tribes" respecti\el), sug
gesting that the total number of Dinka "tribes"
would amount to many hundreds.
As the enthusiasm for segmentary lineage sys
tems passed its peak, this precise but se\erely lim
ited usage of the term lribe lo~t ground and
eventually fell into disuse. In pract icc, the term sub
tribe is now substituted for it in the same context.
Thus \ riddleton (1960: 7) refer~ to the T.ugbara as
consisting of about sixlJ tribes, but subsequently
(1963: 82) changed this to sixty sub-tribes.
Conclusion
The problem of ethnic classification as such is a
special problem which we du nOt altempt to co\"er.
We can only reiterate that no unidimensional clas
sification of socio-cultural groups can provide an
adequate basis for the comparative !>tudy of spe
cific problems, let alone for frequenc~ distribu
tions, because the proper units of classification
and analysis \\ ill var) according to the phenome
non and the problem studied. \\'e must expect thai
comparative and generalizing studies of kinship
systems or specific components of them, religious,
symbolic or identity systems or specific compo
nents of them, political and economic S) stems or
their components, and so forth, \\ ill a1w3)s involye
a plurality of units of analysis and fields of distri
bution. All attempts a1 establishing unequivocal,
all-purpose, unidemensional classifications of
socio-cultural groups im'olve grave danger of mis
representing the nature of societies as anthropol
ogy kno\\s them. To hammer home the importance
of interlocking, overlapping, multiple and alterna
ti\-e collective identitics is one of the most impor
tant messages of social and cultural anthropology
There arc three sets of problems associated
with the tribal concept as we ha\'e examined it:
problems of definition (ambiguous, imprecise or
92 AIDAN W. SOUTHALL
conflicting definitions and also the failure to stick
to them consistentl)); problems of iJlusion (false
application of the concept to artificial or miscon
ei.ed entities) and problems of o'ansition and
transformation (usc of the concept of tribe unjus
tifiably with reference to phenomena \\hich are a
direct product of modern influences). There is a
considerable o\erbp between t11e last two sets of
problems. As lIe have seen, there are many state
less societies where inaccurate de[mition has sim
ply been the product of ignorance, illusion, or
inattention; but "ery often the "definition b) illu
sion" has been a definition of larger scale which
became permanently adopted for administrative
com eniem:e and ultimatel) accepted b) the peo
ple themselves. We rna) rhus say that the problems
of illusion ha\ c frequently been perpetuated b)
those of transition and transformation ...
Problems of nomenclature ma) seem tri\'ial,
except insofar as they breed confusion and misun
derstanding among anthropologists then1selvcs,
while at the same time rendering nugawr) an)
influencc II hich anrhwpology might have upon
the world of scholarship as a whole. Where unre
solved problems remain, ,Igreemcnt upon nomen
clature is unlikel}. What may legitimately be
demanded is that nomenclarure should be clear
and consistent in each discourse, so that the prob
lems of greater moment which lie hehind it can be
tackled. It is simply with this in mind that ~\
would ~uggest c211ing "tribal" that traditional
form of socict) which we described at the begin
ning. Once the empirical facts are recognized there
should he enough consensus for adequatecommu
nication despite many minor differences of opin
ion. Tribal society may be largely a phenomenon
of the past, hut it is stili of enormous intellectual
and human importance.
The distinguishing of indi\idual tribal units is a
different and perhaps misconceived problem as we
h<lvc ~cen. The solution should be ycrv simple.
Where discrete tribal units can be empirically
demonstrated - well and good, where nOl, the
temptation to speak or write as though some
unique and all embracing disc.rete level of (Jrg,mi
zation exi!\ts when the facts belie it should bc
resisted. The analysis and comparative study of
tribal society should proceed on the basis of more
specialized categories in the fields of kinship,
ritual, politics, economics, language and so forrh.
Stateless societies cannot be expected to prescnt
discrete boundaries except where special geo
graphical or historical circumstances I'm-our it.
But chiefdoms and tribal states arc more likely to
do so the greater the dq~rce of Il1eir political spe
cialization. Yet by the same token they are less
hom()~eneous and undifferentiated than bas com
monly been supposed. All our social and cultural
consO'ucts are bound to encounter intermediate
cases when applied to empirical data, but it must
be remembered that the intermediacy is as likely
as not a prod uct of the constructs rather than of
me data. Nonetheless, the distinction of tribal
societies in their lack of writing and records, their
simple technology and direct subsistence econ
omy, the ~lbsence of highl~' differentiated con
sumption patterns, the importance of lhe domain
of kinship and multiple.." relationships with all the
institutional implications of these characteristics
holds fairly well empirically.
When lie mO\'e on from tribal societies in the
full sen-;e, which must increasingly be regarded as
phenomena of the past, to the transitional situa
tions which arc prevalent today, there are again
(WO main empirical types to be distinguished.
There are the tribal societies \\ hich have been
transitional sometimes for long periods, in rela
tion to the dominant influence of ancient pre-in
Justrial states and tbere arc those which are
tran~ilional in relation to the post-industrial states
which arc almost exclusively those of the western
world. This distinction has been important but is
no\\ itself becoming transitory. On another dimen
sion Ulere is the distinction between the transi
tiomll situation of communities, necessarily usually
rural, and the transitional situation of individuals
deril'ed from such communities, which may also
be urban, and indeed industrial. For thc reasons
already stated, it seems required by consisn:nc)
.md also by the human situation itself that the con
dition of individuals and groups in all the transi
tional situations of the contemporary world should
now be described in ethnic and not in tribal terms.
While all formerly tribal peoples arc becoming
increasingl} subject to the ubiquitous pressures of
the modern industrial world, there is the paradox
that the former tribal peoples are mainly to be
found within the confines of the less developed
THE ILLUSION OF TRIBE
nation~, whosc economic condition, radically
transformed though it is, is being left rebtively
further and further behind b) the de\eloped
nations, so that in this sensc one dichotom) is
being suhstituted for another at a higher IClcl.
For anthropologists this involvcs a poignant
dilemma. Their whole discipline has heen reared
upon the discoI'er) and study of forms of culture
and s()ciet~ which held up a contrasting mirror to
their 01111. !\fore recentl~ the~ hal'c been adjusting,
albeit slUllly, to thc prospecti\ e resolution of this
contrast and to joining in the further exploration
uf man and society with colleagues \\ ho have actu
alJ~ emerged from the other side of it. But although
these colleagues from the other I\orld, the 1/1'1'5
mill/tit, can trul) enter an international world of
antlrropoJogit'lll scholarship, their hamls are still
lied b) the fact that their new \Iorld has a meaning
for them and us \\ hich is in unexpected ways as
contrasted to ours as was the old tribal world which
has passed awa). This imposcs a heav) strain and
rcs'Ponsibility of understanding and sympathy.
Anthropology claims to be a universal disci
pline. Commilled above all things to cross--cultural
perspectives and to the transcendence of the cth
nl)centric myopia, it is naturally embarrassed by
the colonialist taint which besmirches it in so much
of the lier.; //IlIlIde. If western, and especially
American, anthropologists are to avoid the charge
tll.1t the) arc prostituting the discipline to assuage
their personality problems, the) lIill have to take
Note
BUI see Deschamps &Viancs (1959) p. 92 for another
intcrpretal ion.
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;l\\arenes~, inveigh against it as a case of "false con the present, weakened anomalies from a fast reced
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dominance, encourage it. De\'e!opment theorists, that were e\cl)'\\here at work. People from all
percei\ ing it as a check to economic gro\\ th, deplore sectors of the political spectrum belie\'ed in this
it. Journalists, judging it an adcquate explanation vision. For those on the Right and in the Centre,
for a m~ riad of otherwi<;c pU7.zling events, deploy it "modernization" would do the job. GrL"ater access
mt:rrilessl~. Political scicnri<;ts, intrigued by its con to education, improved communications, and the
tinuing po\\cr, probe at it endlessly. rf one disap shifting of people from the slLunbering "traditional"
prores of lhe phenomcnon, "it" is "tribalism"; if rural sector of the economy to the vibrant "mod
one is less judgmental "it" is "cthnicity." em" industrial sector by the beneficent forces of
Ethnicity's emergence as a central concern for a. economic gnm th guarantced that ethnic loyalties
\\ ide rangc of students ofAfrican affitirs is relatively would fade awa). In their place would grow a
recent, :Ind its forceful intrusion upon the dominant ne", nation-oriented consciousness which would
nationalist paradigm of the 1950s and carl} 1960s underpin progressive "nation-building," especially
From Len)1 Vail, 77le erN/fiol/ lif 1.".//(//islII il/ SOlllfle", ,'Hi-iell. copyright (9 J988 Lero~ Vail, from Cnil ersi~ of
California Press, pp. 1-19.
96 LERO'( VAIL
if the new nation states could make good their
promises of a better Life tor all their citizens. Africa
would be a continent of new Switzerlands in which
cultural divisions would be of little political impor
tance.
For those on the Left, too, "modernization" was
the key, although it was viewed from a somewhat
different perspective. The breakdown of
"traditioT1\t1" societies by the forces of new, state~
sponsored welfare socialism, with its expanded
facilities in public education, medicine and agricul
tural programmes, would alia\', newly independent
African states to "skip a stage" in the evolution of
their societies towards socialism and to enter
directly into that blessed condition. In effect, social
ism would then prO\-jde the material base for a pan
ethnic class consciousness that would transcend, if
not negate, cululral differences. Africa would bc a
cuntinent of new Yugoslavias.
The general paradigm of "modernization," then,
appealed to almost every political vie\\l)oint. For
almost every observer nationalism seemed progres
sive and laudable, while ethnicity - or, as it was usu
ally termed, "tribalism" - was retrogressive and
divisive.
Ethnicity, however, failed to cuoperate \\ith its
man~' would-be pall-bearers, It soon became clear
that African nationalist movements, ideologically
shaped bv tbe basically negative sentiments of anti
colonialism and with little substantive philosophical
content relevant to the day-to-day lite or ordinary
Africans living in post-colonial states, were simply
unable to provide them with compelling intellec
mal, social, and political visions. Once the attainment
of independence had made most of it~ anti-colonial
message irrelevant, nationalist "tbought" was trans
formed into a gloss for the manipulation of the
institutions of the new nation-states on behalf of the
interests of the ruling political parties in a succes
sion of one parry states,2 Much state activit} was
devoted to the pursuit of variousl) defined forms of
"economic dewlopment," but such development
proved elusive and the much-desired economic
Fruits of Independence generally faiJcd to ripen.
That growth which did occur, moreover, was u!>u
ally to the benefit of the dominant political classes
and possessed little popular appeal.
As a result of this quick reining in ofnationalism's
popular thrust within tIle bureaucratic structures
of essentiall) artificial post-colonial states, ethnic or
reg'ional movements rooted in the colonial era had
fresh life breathed into them and came to be seen as
attractive alternatives to the domirulJ1t political par
ties with their demands for uncomplaining obedi
ence from the governed. In effect, the revit.alization
of "tribalism" was structured into the one-party
system b) the very fact of that system's ex.istence.
Ethnicity became the home of the opposition in
states where class consciousness was largely unde
veloped. Ethnic particularism has consequently
continued to bedevil efforts to "build natiuns" to
the specifications of the ruling party for tlle past
two decades or morc. This hard political fact has
called forth ever more systematic repression of dis
sent b) those in control of the state, thus, in effect,
strengthening the appeal of the ethnic alternati\ e.
Ethnicity's future, nen in countries such as SOUtll
,.\frica, where industriali7~1tion has proceeded fur
ther than anywhere else on the contment, seems
secme because it is Iikel) to provide an important
focal point for whatever opposition to the dominant
political classes that might exist.
With its power to divide people politically, then,
and with its sturdy resistance to erosiun by the
ideological forces of national or class conscious
ness, etlmicity came to demand c1ose- albeit often
\ery grudging -- attention after decades of neglect,
Its source and appeal needed reasonable explana
tions, and interpretations of it have ranged widel~;
reOecting its multidimensional nature.
The most prominent explanation - if only
because of its widespread use - is the one that,
despite the great frequency with which one
encounters it in media coverage ofAfrica, is plainly
the least satisfactory. In effect, this interpretation
is a restatement ofthe old assumption that Africans
are b) nature "tribal" people and that "tribalism"
is little more than an irrelevant anachronism, an
atavistic residue deri\-ing from the distant past of
rural Africa. It should have evaporated with the
passage of time, but, inexplicably, something went
wrong, and it continues to refuse to obey the laws
of social and political change. It thus remains able
to motivate Africans to frequent actions of conflict
and violence. Ethnic consciousness is, in this view,
a form of collective irrationality.
The problems with this interpretation arc clear.
First, it is always dangerous to assume that people
ETHNICITY IN SOUTHERN AFRICAN HISTORY
consIstently act out of mass irrationality. People
tend to act rationally, and there is no reason on the
face of it to accept that Africans are exceptions.
Second, this argument is, in effect, also a tautol
Ogv with no analytical po\\er, arguing as it does
th~t :\fricans act "tribalistically" because the) are
natural!) "tribal." Third, and most tellingl)',
empirical evidence shows clearly that ethnic con
sciousness is ver) much a new phenomenon, an
ideological construct, usually of the twentieth
century, and not an anachronistic cultural artif3ct
from the past. As an offspring of the changes asso
ciated with so-called "modernization," therefore,
it is unlike!) to be destroyed by the continuation of
tbese same processes. For all these reasons, tht:n,
this interpretation must be discarded.
Other, more scholarly interpretations have been
suggested 10 explain the origin and persistence of
ethnicity in Ali-ica. AU these interpretations ha\Ce
TWO things in common. First, they derive mainly
from tJ1C work of anthropologists, sociologists and,
especially, political scientists, obserycrs who have
been primarily concerned ,,-ith the situation in
Africa at the time they actually studied it This has
meant that their interpretations haye usually been
concerned with ethnicity's role at the moment of
obsen'ation and its potential for the future. As
such, they usually give only brief attention to its
h.i~-rOf}, presenting whatcyer history that might be
uncO' ered as mere "background" to cthnicity's
contemporary role.
Second, aU these interpretations are also marked
b~ the fact that they ha\Ce evolved out of the
nationa.list paradigm dominant from the 1950s
into the ]9705. The) implicitly accept a basically
e\'olutionary vie\\ of human history. In this view,
the flllllre ollght to be better than the past, and
"better" has been identified with irnprO\'Cments
assumt:d to flow from an increase in political scale
and the gro\I th of national unity - in short, from
'narion-building." As a consequencc, most such
analyses of ethniciry are concerned with the way it
has traduced the promise of modernizing nation
alism and are thus predisposed to negative judg
menrs. Their emphasis, therefore, has been on
clhllicity's role as a disrupter of the promising
trend!> of secular nationalism that seemed to char
acterize African politics in the late 1950s and early
l460s and to promise a rosy future.
97
The intellectual range of these interpretations
of ethnicity has been wide. One viewpoint cncoun
tert:d frequently - especially within Africa itself
i~ that ethnicity is primarily tbe result of a history
of "divide-and-rule" tactics which colonial gov
ernments can nil) employed. European anthropol
ogists connived at such policies by specifying
"tribes" culturally \\ itbin tlle context of a uniquely
colonial sociology, thereby gi\'ing the "tribe" a real,
but specious, identit), The element of truth in this
explanation has made it superficially attractive,
especially as the South African government today
actively uses both approaches in its Bantustan pol
icies and in its stress on the uniqueness of "tribal"
culture, patent effons to promote political divi
sions among the country'sAIrican population.
Yet whatever its merits, it is an explanation
clearly insufficient to !-'Xplain the persistence of
ethnic consciousness. This is so for several reasons.
First, it fails to explain why, in a particular terri
tory tllfoughout \',~lich rhe colonial state employed
roughl) the same diYide-and-rule policies, ethnic
consciousness de\'eloped unevenly; strong among
certain peoples but not ,unong others, a situation
common throughout Africa. Second, it tends to
depict Africans as little more than either collabo
rat.ing dupes or noi\'e and guUible people, beguilcd
by clever colonial administrators and unrrustwor
lhy anthropologists, a situation which empirical
evidence fails to corroborate. Finall), it docs not
explain ho\\, three decades after the departure of
the colonialists, "tribalism," or its close kin,
"regionalism," tires on as strongly as ever in incle
pendenr African states, tbe governn1ents of which
have been actively trying to suppress it, and why in
some places it is growing up for the first time. The
clever blandishments of subtle European adminis
trators are clearly insufficient to explain either rhe
origins of ethnic consciousness or its continuing
appeal today.
A second interpretation, especially prominent in
the 1950, and early 1960s, arose from the study of
urban sociolog); especially in the mining areas of
Central Africa.1 Intellectually, it was linked to the
Dual Economy model of "modernization" theory,
and it located its interpretation of the development
of new ethnic consciousness in the experiences of
rural people in industrial workplaces, As mcmbers
of various cultural groups left their isolated rural
98 LEROY VAIL
areas and interacted \lith each other in industrial
or urban locales, they formed stereotypes of them
selves and others, and these stereotypes effectively
highlighted and strengthened culturally defined
distinctions among'st peoples. The tendency of
employers to prefer certain ethnic groups for cer
tain types of work and their conscious manipula
tion of ethnic differences to keep the workforce
disunited resulted in competition between ethn.ic
groups being built into the hierarchicall) struc
tured workforce. In ulis \cleW, ethnicit) was a recent
phenomc.non of the modern urban worl..1Jlace in
which boundaries and distinctions between people
had been built up. It was not a phenomenon of tbe
rural areas, where people were assumed to li\e in
accordance with prescriptive patterns derived from
a "traditional" past and where the) were hlfgeJ)
isolated from peoples of differing cultures. As
such, some scholars, as well as most African politi
cians of the time, assumed that the but recently
formed ethnic identities were still malleable and
that the) would prove susceptible to an easy I..r'dns
formation into a nation,tl identity through proc
esses of political mobilization associated with
"nation-building," especially if the labour unions
repr<.>senting such workers could be coopted into
the national politicaJ esrablishment. 4
This inrerpretation is certainly valuable for its
underscoring of the important point that ethnic
stereot) pes were indeed largel) produced in work
situations and in urban settings. Yet it too is unable
to serve as a general explanation of ethnicity's ori
gin or, especially, its persistence. First, b) empha
sizing the boundaries that the creation of ethnic
stereotypes an1Qng urba.n AfTicans produced,
"hicb, in turn, created opposing notions of
"them" and "us," it overlooks the more substan
tive intellectual content contributed by African
intellectuals ro the specification or concepts or
erhnic self-identity within those boundaries.
PositilT viel'-S about one's history, tlle heroes of
one's ethnic past, .md the manifestations of on.e's
culture, especially language, quite simply did nor
spring automaticall) from the \\ ork situation or
the urban centre, yet they have all been central in
defining ethnic identities and ethnic ideologies.
Second, by stressing the essentially non-rw-al
nature of the growth of et hnic stereotypes, this
interpretation implicitly accepts the notion that
rural Africa was presen'cd in some sort of "tradi
tional" pickle, antithetically opposed to "modern"
industria.l Africa and largely untouched by the
forces of change associated with capitalist expan
sion and urbanization. Such a view of tbe exist
ence of "two Africas" with but insubstantial
linkages between them has by now been convinc
ingly discredited. s Quite simply, tllC rural areas of
southern and ccntral Afnca did not remain
unchangeJ in a brine of "tradition," with mean
ingful change restricted to areas of obvious eco
nom ic growth. 1Iistorical change affected the rural
arcas as much as it did the industrial and urban
areas. !\[ore to the point, empirical evidence abun
dantly demonstrates that it is to the rural areas
that olle must look for most of the intellectual con
tent of ethnic ideologies as they developed during
the twentieth ccntury in response to such change.
A tltird interpretation of the growth of ethnicity
is that it resulted from uneven development within
African colomal territories." Certain people were
able to do comparati\'ely well from the educational
and employment opportunities that colonial capi
talism presented unevenl), \....ith aspirant petty
bourgeois groups able to establish themselves in
some areas but not in others. When it bee-ame clear
that the colonial era was ne.1ring its end, these
petty bourgeois groups mobilized support along
ethnic lines so that they wOllld be in a position
to maximize their opportunities for access to
resources and power after independence. This
situation led in turn to tJle continuation of specifi
cally ethnic politics in many countries of Africa,
resulting in a rash of coups d'etat and civiJ lVars as
ethnic fragments of the national petty bourgeoisie
competed for their own advantage. From this
perspecti\'e, ethnicity tends to be seen instrumen
tally, as litde more than an ideological mask
employed by ambitious members of upwardly
aspiring groups as a way of papering over grO\ving
class divisions within their ethnic group so as to
secure thei r o\\'n narrow interests through dema
goguery and mystification. Ethnicity, then, when
ordinary people embrace it, is the very epitome of
"false consciousness." ...
I'-inally, del;ving from a Dutkheimian notion of
the importance of the role of the "community," or
Gemei.oschaft, there is the "primordialist" inter
pretation of ethnicity, an intetpretation which 110\\
ETHNICITY IN SOUTHERN AFRICAN HISTORY
appears to be in the ascendancy amongst many
scholars.'lts attraction lies in its serious attempt to
answer the crucial question as to why the ethnic
message possesses such strong appeal. This inter
pretation seeks the explanation in the realm of psy
chology. Africans, it is argued, were badJy affected
b\' the disruptive socio-economic and political
changc:s of the late nineteentJl and twentieth cen
turies. Pre-capitalist and pre-colonial hierarchies
and elements of order in social life were under
mined by the growth of capitalist relations and the
impact of colonialism, thereb) depri\'ing people of
social and psychological security As a result, in a
hostile world they ha\e instead SOllght security
through the invocation of a lost past of tlrm values
as it way of recreating a life in which they can
achieve emotional and, even, perhaps, physical
safety. Ethnic identity provides a comforting sense
of brotherhood in a world tending towards social
alOmization and rootlessness. Ethnic leaders repre
sent and embody the unity of tlle cultural gToap.
In this view, ethnicity is a kind of romantic rejec
tion of the present. Enduring rather as religious
fundamentalism or faith healing do in western
societies, it is a reaction to the sterility of modern
positivism and has become something akin to a
ei,il religion with great emotional appeal.
Once again, this argument is attractive, particu
larly as the etllllic message, once established
amongst people, does appear to be a p<lrt of the
natural order of the universe. It catcgorizes people
in accordance \\ ith inevitable, largely unselfcon
scious ascription: people belong to tribe X because
they \\ere born in tribe X and are, regardless of
personaJ choice, characterized by the cultural
trailS of tribe X. Thus one is a member of a "tribe"
not by choice, but by destiny, and one thus par
takes of a set of "proper" customs.
Yet there are three serious problems with this
interpretation. First, the mere appeal of, or belief
i~ a generalized idyllic past and the presumed
unily of the ethnic group seem insufficiently defi
nite to explain the relevance to people in specific
histori.eal situations of the statements that com
prise constructed ethnic ideologies. Why have
vague cultural statements about language or a com
mon histor) or a hero from the past succeeded in
"comforting" people or mobilizing them? Docs
ethnicit) appeal because it is intrinsically "prin10r
99
dial," or is it constructed as "primordial" in its
discourse to render it more generall) appealing?
What specific messages within the ethnic ideology
actually appeal the most and to whom' And why?
Tn short, the stress upon the "primordial" aspect
of ethnicity tends to o\'erlook both the actuaJ intel
lectual content of the message, which can vary
from group to group, and its varying appeal among
diffcrent members of the same ethnic group.
Second, b) stressing the backward-looking,
"primordial" aspect of ethmcity, this interpreta
tion fails to answer the central empirical question
of how the most backward-looking ethnic ideolo
gies, with their glorification of long--dead heroes
and their delight in "n'aditional values," have been
able at the same time to contain within them a
powerfuJ acceptance of western education and
skills and a willingness to "change with the times."
The emphasis on the primordial past does not take
into account ethnicity's forward-looking aspect
which, as commentators have frequently observed,
gi\ es it a Janus-like appearance. This is so, I sug
gest, largely because the role of class actors in cre
ating and shaping ethnic ideologies has been
largely overlooked. It is the direct appeal of fresh
ideas and institutions to certain new classes that
appeared in t\ventieth century Africa that has been
translated into rhe progressive face of ethnic iden
tity. The psychological appeal of primordialism
and the concern for specific present-day interests
of specific classes perhaps seem unlikely bed
fellows, but they are real ones nonerneless and
must be explained.
Third, and directly related to the first two prob
lems, the emphasis upon a comforting past projects
upon African people's ideas an uncom-mcing sta
sis. Tr is simply impossible to accept that Africans,
Jiving through some of the most rapid cllanges
that any people have lived through in all human
history, have atl1lched themselves blindJ), like so
many limpets, to a vision of the past that has little
releyance to the present and the future just because
it is "comfortable." .tv, an interpretation, the "pri
mordialist" explanation of ethnicity, on its own, is
simply too ahisrorical and non-specific to con
vince. Tn analY~.li11g ethnicitJ's reaJ appeal one must
instead try to relate its actual assumptions about
the past to the current historicaJ reality of those
accepting them.
100 LEROY VAIL ETHNICITY IN SOUTHERN AFRICAN HISTORY 101

A History
Thus far historians have not devoted much atten
tion to the history of ethnici~ and ethnic ideolo
gies in southern Africa. This is somewhat puzzling,
cspecially as many have been aware for some time
that ethnicity is not a natural cultural residue but
a consciously crafted ideological creation. ~ It is
likely that the explanation for this relativc neglect
lies in the fact that historians were, like other
scholars, caught lip in the nationalist paradigm
that dominated the entire range of African studies
in the 1950s and 1960s. They thus saw- studies of
the growth of ethnic consciousness as parochial,
misconceived, and largely irrelevant ro their main
concerns at Lhat time: the recovery of Africa's pre
colonial past and the exploration of the grmnh of
anti-colonial resistance and its flowering into pro
gressive nationalism. In the optimistic nation
building mood of the time, studies of ethnicity
\Vere also extremely unpopular \\ ith African
opinion-makers, embarrassing e\eD to mention,
and lhey e>.erteo pre:,sure against SLUdies that
might fUrlher divisiveness in the new nalion
srates they thought tJ1ey were "building." Thus,
the history of ethnic identities largely remained
to be writlen ....
The event which sef\ed as the catalyst for Lhe
melding of dil erse peoples into such a unit as
sOllthern .'\frica, a region extending from r\amibia
to Mozambique, was u1e discovery of gold on the
Win\atersrand in 1886. This initiated the building
of Mrica's single most potent economic force and
al.tracled c;lpital investmenl to otl1er, less impor
t.1nt focuses of investment, such as the copper
mines of Zaire and Zambia, the farms and ranches
of Zimbabwe, and the plantations of cemr....J
Mozambique and soutllern Mala\\ i. The links iliat
were rapidly constructed to weld together the vari
ous territories of the region - and lheir societies
included ties of finance, trade, political influence,
and, especially, migrant labour.
'ct the creation of such ties was necessarily (uf
ferential, and great variation is to be found from
one area to another within the region. In some
places, such as Lesotho, the Transkei, southern
Mozambique, northern Malawi, and western
Zambia, links with the Rand's mines were direct
and obvious: large-scale and persistent male labour
migraney organized through the Witwatersrand
Native Labour Association demonstrated clearll
the dependence of these regions. In other places,
such as the Zambian and Zairian Copperbelts,
cenrrall\[ozambique, and southern J\lalawi, local
capitalist interests were able to dominate and the
influence of the Rand was less obl'ious and less
direct. In still other locales, such as parts of cen
tral Malawi, souu1ern Zambia, and parts of Zaire
and Swaziland, successful peasant production
permitted local Africans to avoid both long
distance labour migrancy and working for local
entrepreneurs. Nonetheless, the Rand's influence
was c\'erywhere present, if onl) as a model of
labour relations and a distant, but powerful, eco
nomic presence. Although certainly uneven, the
Rand's influence knil1ed the region's territories
togclher.
As a consequence of the grml'th of capitahst
relations of production both on the Rand itself in
the J 890s ami in other centres of capitalist endeav
our that were established throughout the region
shortly afterwards, the people of virtuall) all its
societies experienced pervasive social, economic,
and political change. The range of such change
was broad, and man) of the changes were clearly
disadl'antageous to the peoplc affected. The capi
talist enterprises of the region were all highly
labour-intensive, requiring large and constant
supplies of cheap African labour. To push Africans
into the service of these enterprises, colonial gov
ernments imposed taxcs, which in many areas
could be paid onl) through men leaving their
homes to participate in labour migrancy. These
ta,es were imposed during, or immcdiately after, a
series of ecological disasters during the 1890s and
the early J900s that greatly weakened the fabric of
local African societies. These disasters included
drought, locusts and famine, but perhaps the key
one was the great rinderpest epidemic of the mid
1890s, which killed livestock through th(; wbole of
southern Africa. Because livestock was widely
reckoned as the embodiment of wealth, rinder
pest'S impact effectively constituted a gigantic
mass bankruptcy for many societies. rvloreol'er, as
the exchange of cattle for women through tlle sys
tem of bridewealth (lobo/a) payments was the
principal way in whith many of the region's socie
ties regulated marriage and the establishment of
nell families, it became socially necessary to work
for moncy, using it eiLher to restock the herds or as
a substitute for callJc in the making of bridewealth
payments.
Later, widespread alienation ofAfrican land, the
esmbltshment of overcrowded "native reserves,"
and the entrenchment of patterns of labour
migranc)' resulted in both impoverished viJlages
ami strained relationships within divided families.
The labour demands of mines, plantations, and
industries, coupled with governmental tax and
hlOd policies and the rising nceds of people to pur
chase discretionary goods, pressed men out of the
rural areas as workers, especially after the outbreak
of World War 1 in 1914. It should be stressed that
this process of rural transformation was not
resll'icted to black Africans. The commercializa
tion of agriculture in large areas of South Africa
also undermined an Afrikaner society that had
hitherto been characterized by paternalistic rela
tions of clientage between Afrikaner grandees and
puor !\frikaner tenants. This commercialization
forccd from the land white Afrikaners who had
long had direct access to it. They moved into the
growing cities of South Africa, where, because of
U1cir lack of education or marketable skills, they
came to constitute a "poor white" problem of star
tling dimensions.
\\ hat was common for all the region's peoples
blacks and wrutes alike - was that many of them
were gradually losing control over their livcs as con
trol over that most basic factor of production, the
land, slipped from their grasp. No longer were rural
commtmitics- wherher black or whi te - able to exist
autonomously, beyond the reach of capitalism and
colonial administration. At the same time that this
rural transformation was occurring, the region's
mixed-race groups, such as the "Cape Coloureds"
of Soulh Africa and the Luso-Africans of
.Moi'.ambique, were suffering an erosion of their
pOSItions. Earlier, through possession of language
and other skills, u1ey had cnjoyed relatively secure
social and economic positions as intermediaries
between whites and blacks. After the 1890s, how
ever, these positions wcre succcssfully challenged
by poor Afrikaners in South Africa and immigrant
POrtugucse whites in Mozambique, botb of which
groups increasingly benefited [rom the support of
racist state institutions. Thus they, like blacks and
some white Afrikaners, were also caught in a process
of declining control over their lives and destinies.
People of all these groups fought against the
erosion of their positions. Fur many involved in
this struggle land, and access to land, came to
stand at the very centre of their consciousness,
being fixed there not only at the beginning of the
process of the undermining of rural autonomy,
but also in succeeding decades. For white
Afrikaners, land ownership was also important,
kept alive as the ide,tl Afrikaner way of life even
among the poor whites of the cities and towns.
For Africans, however, access to land remained
a central issue for a more pressing reason. This
was because, from the very Slart of the industriali
zation process, employers and government offi
cials alike were determined to create a system in
which unskilled workers would oscillate from the
rural villages to work siles and then back to the
villages and in which skilled positions would be
held by whites. In this way, lheir wives and chil
dren would remain permanently behind in lhe
rural areas, while the men would dwell in bachelor
dormitories ,l[ the work sites for the duration of
their contracts. Such a system had many adl'an
tages for bOlh capitalist entrepreneurs and
Europe-an administrators. for the employers it
helped keep the working class fragmented and
unorganized, and it allowed them to pay wages
that were less than what would have had to be paid
if the whole of a worker's family migrated and set
tled permanently as fully proletarianized people.
For the officials it assured that there would be at
least some money brought into the rural areas to
help sustain village life there. In some cases, more
over, the migrant labour system also enabled gov
ernments to collect capitation fees for each worker
recruited.
Migrant labour had less appeal for the workers
themselves, but they had little choice in the mat
ter. The need for money and the official pressures
upon the men to work as migrants on contract,
coupled with the establishment of effective
recruiting agencies, resulted in the rapid institu
tionalization of the system of oscillating migrant
labour as the standard mode of labour mobiliza
tion. But because the system was one in which
Iyorkers were to move back and forth, even rural
areas that were little more than unproductive rural
102 LEROY VAIL
slums necessarily remained of central concern for
the migrants. On Ule one hand, they could not
emain at home to supervise life in the villagc and
oversee rheir wi, es and children. On the oilier
hand, they could not aband()J1 their rural homes.
Laws prevented the relocation of families to work
sites and strictly regulated the length uf COnLTaCrS
,1 \\orler could assume. Thus, it was in the rural
areas that the workers' long-term interests neces
s3rily lay, for they would eventually return iliere
when their working life was over. Even "hile
absent for decades from the rural areas, then, the
workers' concerns typically remained sharply
focused on what was occurring at home. This situ
ation could not but produce profound apprehen
sions in the migrants, and the capitalist era for
tllem was - and still is - truly an age of anxiety.
While the majorit) of people were affected
adversely by the changes produced b)' industriali
zation and capital investment, not everyone suf
fered. Indeed, the establishment of capitalist
enterprises and colonial administrations provided
a range of opportunities that man~ whites and
some Africans could seize. Certain people were
able to respond to ilie grow ing markets for pro
duce, becoming peasant producers or even small
scale farmers, while in Souili Africa, Afrikaner
agriculwralists on medium-sized and large tarms
prospered. Others, especially those able to gain an
education or useful skills, were able to take up
places in the social interstices that the changing
economy opened up, becoming re1ati\e1.\ well
rewarded teachers, ministers of religion, artisans,
p:overnment clerks, or eyen small businessmen. In
effect, then, the economic changes that followed
n the establishment of the Rand's gold industry
and the binding together of the far-flung areas of
southern and central Africa into a regional eco
nomic unit "ere accompanied by a rapid and
increasingly sharp differentiation of the region's
peoples into more favoured and less favoured soci
eties and of the societies themselves into more
fa\oured and less favoured c1asses-in-the-making.
Such rapid social and economic change eroded
rlier political relationships based on clientage
both wiiliin and outside of lineages, social pat
terns, and religious beliefs, all of which had char
acterized societies during the ninereenul century.
This erosion in turn opened the way for ne\\' forms
of consciousness throughout Ule region. Worker
consciousness amongst both whites and blacks
appeared spasmodicall) in situations of localized
stress on the work site. Evidence of such class
solidarity was shown at times of rapid socio
economic change, appearing in such e\enrs as the
RamI Rebellion of 1922, the strike of copper min
ers on the Zambian Copperbelt in 1935, and the
African mineworkers' strike of 1946 on the
Witwatersrand gold mines. But class conscious
ness remaincd exceptional for as long as the work
ing class \\as weak and fragmented and difficult to
infuse with a sense of conmlUnity.
New types of popular religious consciousness
also appeared in the form of mainline Christian
churches as well as separatist churches such as
Walch Tower and a myriad of Zionist sects, and
these shaped their adherents' evolving new self
identities. And ,lmong the educated clerks, teach
ers, clerics, and businessmen who emerged in the
black, "coloured" and mixed race communities a
petty bourgeois consciousness, with an acceptance
ofVictorian notions of respectability, progress and
individual uplift through hard work, gained prom
inence.
One of the most far-reaching and imponant
of these new forms of consciousness was a new
ethnic - or tribal- consciousness that couJd and
did encapsulate other forllls of consciousness.
Etbnicity could coexist with other types of con
sciollsness without apparent unease because it was
cultural and hence based on involuntary ascrip
tion, not on personal choice. People were mem
bers of a particular ethnic group whether they
liked it or not. It was simply a fact of existence. As
such, ethnic identity could inhere in both petty
bourgeois and workcr, in both peasant farmer and
striving politician.
A Model
... The creation of ethnicity as an ideological state
ment of popular appcal in the comext of profound
social, economic and political change in soutllern
Africa was the result of the differential conjunc
tion of various historical forces and phenomena. It
is the very unevenness of their co-appearance and
dynamic interaction that accoums for the unewn
ness of ethnic consciousness in the region. One
ETHNICITY IN SOUTHERN AFRICAN HISTORY
nl a)' discern three such \ariables in the creation
,lod implanting of the ethnic message. First, as
was the case in the creation of such ideologies else
\\ here, for example in nineteenth centur) Emopean
nationalism, it was essential to have a group of
intellectuals involved in formulating it - a group
of eulrure brokers. Second, there was the wide
spreatl use of ,\friean intermediaries to administer
rh~ subllrtlinale peoples, a syslem usually summed
up in the phrase "indirect rule," and iliis served to
define the boundaries and texture of the new ide
ologies. Third, ordina~ people had a real need for
so-cillcd "traditional values" at a time of rapid
suciaJ change, thus opening ilie wa~ for the wide
acceptance of the new ideologies. \\ihat cmerges
perhaps most clearly from these studies is the fact
that intellectuals carefully crafted their ethnic ide
ologies in order to define the culrural characteris
tics of members of various ethnic groups....
The role of missionaries was especially crucial
in atlea.<;t one and sometimes alJ - of iliree ways,
and it is e\ ident that their inl1uence upon the
lk\e)opment of Africm history in the twentieth
cenrury ha~ been far greater Ulan they have been
gin.'n credit for over the past two decades. First,
missionaries themselves were often instrumental
in providing the cultural symbols thal could be
organized into a cultural identity, especially a writ
ten language and a researched written history.
Samuel Johnson long ago recognized iliat "lan
guages arc the pedigree of nations," and mission
aries accepted this dictum wholeheartedly. They
had the skills to reduce hitherto unwritten lan
guages to written forms, thereby delivering the
pedigrees that the new "tribes" required for
acceptance. It was the missionaries who chose
wll:1t the "proper" form of the language would be,
thus serving both to further unity and to produce
divisions 0\ establishing firm boundariesY
Tn ,lddilion to creating written languages, mis
sionaries were instrumental in creating cultural
identities ilirough tlleir specification of "custom"
311d "tradition" and by writing "tribal" histories.
Onee these elements of cuJrure were in place and
available to be used as the cultural base of a distinct
new, ascripti\c ethnic identity, it could replace
older org,mizing principles that dcpended upon
voluntary clientage and loyalty and which, as such,
showed great plasticity. Thus firm, nonporous and
103
relati\'el~'inelastic etlmic boundaries, many of
which were highly arbitrary, came to be con
structed and were then strengthened by the growth
of stereotypes of "the other."
Second, and of considerable practical impor
tance, Emopean missionaries, assuming that
Africans properly belonged to "tribes," incorpo
rated into the curricula of their mission schools
the Jesson that the pupils had clear ethnic identi
ties, backing up this lesson with studies of lan
guage and "tribal custom" in the vernacular. Thus,
mission education socialized the young into
accepting a tribal membership, and to be a mem
ber of a "tribe" became "modern" and fashionable
through its close association with education.
Third, and finally, missionaries educated local
Africans who thcn themselves served as the most
important force in shaping the ncw ethnic ideolo
gies. These people - usually men - were keenly
aware of the forces that were pulling apart their
societies and, with the examples of nationalism in
Europe derived from their own mission education
before them, they sought to craft similar locl1
movements as a means of countering these prob
lems. Despite their own western-style education,
thev realized that such a constrLlcr would best be
understood and accepted if it were pur in a cul
rural idiom easily accessible to the people. Thus,
in formulating their new ideologies, they looked to
the local area's past for possible raw material for
their new intellectual bricolage. 1CI J ,ike thcir
European predecessors during the initial stages of
ni.neteenuJ ccntury narionalism, they "rediscov
ered" the "true values" of their people and so
defined the "ethnic sou]." Their cultural strong
box was the "customs" and "traditions" of the
people, identification \vith which they saw as giv
ing an automatic, ascriptive cultural unity to
"their" people as they confronted the challenge of
colonialism and the impact of industrialization.
Several studies have been made which demon
strate the role of cducated peoplc as key actors in
the creation of such ideology.
In those socictics wherc missionaries did not \\"ork,
or where the)' did work but did not introduce educa
tion along western lines, or where African intellectu
als emcrgcd only at a late period or not at all, thc
development of ethllic ideologies \\"as either stalled
or never occurred. The unevenness of edUt..-at1on in
104 LEROY VAIL
southern Africa largely determined the unevenness
of the development of ethnic const.;ousness. In many
locales it is only today, after the post-independence
expan~ion of educarion and the emergence of local
intellectuals, that rhe process of creating ~;1Jch ethnic
ideologies and "forging traditions" has emulated
\\ hat happened C"arlier in other societies.
It was not sufficient, however, that there should
be local intellectuals - white or black - interested
in the recover) of the ethnic past. A second, more
instrumental factor \\as also required. All of
southern Africa was under direct European
administrntion of various types, and by tJle period
after World War I, "irmally all administrations
were engaged in implementing s)'stems of indirect
rule, using African "traditional" authorities as
intermediaries between the white administration
and the ruled. Thus, if language in the form of
written discourse \\as centTaI in specifying the
forms of culture, indirect rule provided the insti
tutional frmnework for articulating these forms.
~ommunication between the European adminis
trators and subordinate Africans was distinetl)
tribal in its tone and content. Africans were talked
to in terms deemed suirablc, and these terms \1 ere
ethnic. In the cases of rhc "Capc Coloureds" and
the LUl;o-African~ of l\llnambique, and., to some
extent, the Afrikaners, for whom the conventions
of indirect rule" ere not suitable, they \\ere sim
ply denied representation.
There were se\'cral reason~ for the European
polic) of indirect rule. First, there was the realiza
tion that thc usc of so-called "traditional" African
leaders could be markedly less expensive than the
employment of expensive European officials.
Second, administrators assumed that AIricans
were naturall) "tribal" people. If the natural eth
ic units toulJ be strengthened, .it would help
ensure their continual ion as discrete "tribal"
groups and pre\enl tlle emergence of "de
tribalized" Africans of \\ hom \1 hites were deeply
suspicious. This, in rurn, would slow the emer
gence of an~ potentially dangerous territory-wide
political consciousness that might develop. The
remarks of a British War Office official in 191
reflect these divide-and-rule tactics:
IThel spirit uf nationalit~, or perhaps it would be
more correct to say, of tribe, should be cu lrivated
and no\\here can this be done with better chance
of succes~ than in British East Africa and Uganda,
\\ here there arc numerous tribes ethnographicalJ)
quite distinct from one another. It is sugge.sted
that in each ethnographically distinct district the
schools should, as far as possible, form integral
parts of the tribe and centn:s of folklore and tra
dition ....
a method may also be found whereby the
efforts of missionaries rna} also assist in the culti\-a
tion of national spirit. This it seems might be done
b~ allo\\;ng only one denomination to .... ork in each
demogr.lphic area and by not allowing the same
denominalion 10 work in two adjacent areas. If
Third, by the end of \~orld War I it was becoming
increasingly evident that the chronic absence of
men from rural societies was producing great social
stresses. The lldministrators became convinced
that the rural disintegration occurring before their
eyes could be slowed, if not stopped, by the encour
agement of "traditional authorities" to use "tradi
tional sanctions" in exercising control over the
rural areas to counter the forces of social decay.
This acceptance of indirect rule by European
administrations obviously gave opportunities to
African political authorities to augment their per
sonal power. More important lv, r suggest, it gave
opportunities to the intellectuals of thc areas
concerned - both European missionaries and
African members of the educated petty bourgeoi
sie - to implement their ideological programmes
tllfough alliances \\jlh the ne\\ly recognized
chiefs. In this way Ihe cultural ideals contained in
tJlcir new ideologies could be at least paniall~
actualized in the day-to day workings of African
administrations under indirect rule. Ethnic iden
titv, thus, came to be specified not only b\ the
written histories, grammars, and accounts of "tra
ditional customs" produced by local culture bro
kers, but also - and in mam respects, far more
importantly - by the actual operation of the
administrative mechanisms of indirect rule. This
aspect of the development of ethnic identity was
the consequence of the dynamic interaction of
African initiative with the expectations of
European administrators and fon"ard-looking
missionaries. It should be remembered, ho\\el-cr,
that the subordinate peoples did not have a free
ETHNICITY IN SOUTHERN AFRICAN HISTORY
hand in their \\ork as they had to operate within
the sevcre constraints inlposed by racist adminis
trators \\ ho \1 ere ever alert to check initiatives
deemed either unseemly or dangerous.
The presencc of .intellectuals, the socialization
of ethnic itleas through mission schools and
through the actual operation of administrative
S\stcms under indirect rule to strengthen "tribal"
r~t1e wcre, howcver, by themselvcs inadequate to
produce a broad acceptance of an ethnic ideology.
The ideolog) itself needed a raison d'etre and an
appeal, and it was this appeal that constitutes the
third factor in our model of the growth of ethruc
it\ in sOUlhern Africa.
. The ideologies of nationalism have often been
described a.'> "Janus-like." They are in one aspect
profoundly reactionary, looking backwards to a
Golden Past: they concentrate upon its hcroes, its
historical Sllccesses, and its unsullied cultural
punt), and arc decked out with the mythic "redis
em ered" social \'alues of that past. In Africa, the
explicit association of such ethnic idcologies with
chiefs and headmen whose position was often
firml) rooted in the past was an ,Idditional factor
in accentuating the backward-looking face of eth
nicity. Yet these ideologies were also clearly prod
ucts of the present, concerned with current
conditions, and they typically exhibited a forward
!ool..ing concern for the future. Nationalism - and
tribalism have thus appeared uncertain and
amhiguous to man) obsen'ers.
Yet \\ hen one looks closely at the situation in
southern Arrica, one comes to realize that the eth
nic message's backward-looking aspects and its
forward-looking concerns have been in no way
contradictory. The emphases on past \'alues,
"rcJiscO\ered" traditions, and chiefly authority
wcre truly consen'ative - that is, they were calcu
lated to conserve a way of life that was in the
process of being rapidly undermined by the forces
of capitalism and colonialism. Forward-looking
members of Ule petty bourgeoisie and migrant
workers alike attcmpted to shore up their societies
and their 0\\ n positions in them by embracing eth
nicity and accepting tribal identities.
Ethnicity appealed to the petty bourgeoisie
because it~ forward-looking aspects ensured them a
leadership role in the newly defined "tribe" as the
well-informed interpreters of "tribal tradition."
105
Their position as allies of chiefs further legitimized
their role, blunting consciousness of the class divi
sions that \\ere then appearing in local societies. In
this sitillitiun, it was generally accepted that they
also had a duty to improve their own social and eco
nomic positions "for the good of the tribe."
Far more importantly, ethnicity appealed
strongly to ordinary African men, not primarily
because it g-a\e them a sense of psychological com
fort, as the primordialist interpretation argues, but
because it aided ulem in bringing a measure of
control to tJle difficult situations in which they
found themselves in their day-tO-da~' life. The
word "control" is crucial. II was the element of
control embedded in tribal ideologies that espe
cially appealed to migrant workers, removed from
their land and families and working in far distant
places. The new ideologies stressed the historical
integrity of the tribe and its land amI, especially,
the sanctity of the family and its right to land. 12
Land stood at the very centre of ethnic ideologies.
Tbe place of women was also a central issue
dealt with in ethnic ideologies. In the earh dec
ades of the century bridewealth steadily inflated in
value, and women thus represented a greater
"investment" by men in cattle or money. With
most men absent as migrant labourers, women
were also becoming more important to the day-to
day surviyal of the family through their work on
tlle land. Yet such valuable women naturally often
sought to act independently, even to the extent of
seeking divorces or leaving the rural areas illegally
to move to industrial and urban areas. This pro
duced acute conflict between the genders.
Therefore an emphasis on the need to control
women and a stress on the protection of the integ
rity of the family came to be intrinsic to both eth
nic ideologies and the actual institutional practices
of indirect rule. Ethnicity's appeal was strongest
for men, then, and the Tswana prO\crb to the
effect that "women ha\'e no tribe" had a real - if
unintended - element of truth in it.
Ethnic ideologies helped to provide the control
necessary to mirimize migrants' natural anxieties
about what occurred at home. In the system of
indirect rule, the chiefs were of central importance.
It was they, with their new official histories, their
new censuses and lists, their new courts and
records, all of which employed for the first time
106 LEROY VAIL
that most fundamentally powerful invention, writ
ing, who were now able to exercise a greatly
increased degree of surveillance oYer both women
and land in tlle absence of the men. It was they
who brought into daily practice those "rediscov
ered traditions" which emphasized control in the
name of "custom." The old dictum that "all poli
tics is local" was especially \'alid throughout south
ern Africa. African men and their lineages accepted
that it was in their essential interest to support the
new structures of chiefs, their courts, and their
educated petty bourgeois spokesmen and agents. It
was also for this reason that men, when returning
at tl1e end of their contracts from the mines or
farms or plantations, gave chiefs the gifts that con
stituted one of their most importa.nt sources of
income. The good chief I'{as a proxy ~ ho protected
the interests of the migrant workers and, for tIl at,
they were ready - if not eager - to reward him
materially. In effect, the bureaucratized chief of
the newl}- constituted "tribe" had replaced the lin
eage head or independent patron of earlier rimes,
and the old language of kinship camc to be
employed as metaphor to sustain and legitimize
this new, obviously non-kinship relationship. 1.1
It was for very real reasons of exercising' at least a
measure of control over land and women, thereby
bringing at least a measure of peace to their minds,
that African men welcomed the new etbnic ideolo
gies which involved augmenting powers of chiefs in
a situation of rapid social decay. Ethnicity, insofar
as it \Yas a mechanism of sucb control, may be
interpreted, then, as a fonn of popular male resist
a.nce to the forces th'lt were reshaping African lives
throughout southern Af.rica. It was for this reason
also that dle appeal of ethnic ideologies was snong
est among'st those who were migrant labourt:rs.
The ethnic identity that was rooted in the realities
of t11e countryside was, rather incidentally, strength
ened in dle workplace, where migrams found
Notes
.-\s I was preparing to write this Introduction, I \\,1S
fortunate to have made available to me a preliminary
version of Crawford 'l:ou.ng's magisterial summing
up of the literature on "Class, ethnicity md national-
themselves in the company of, and often in compe
tition with, workers from other cultural groups, a
situation which generated sets of largely negative
etlmic stereotvpes.
Men came to think of themselves as belonging
to particular ethnic groups, then, not because they
especially disliked their fellow workers, nor
because being a member of the group made them
feel good, but rather bec,mse the ethnic apparatus
of the rural area - the chiefs, "traditional" courts,
pett\, bou.rgeois intellectuals, and the svstematized
"traditional" values of the "tribe" as embodied in
the ethnic ideology - all worked to preser\'c the
lery substantial interests which these men had in
their home areas. Without ethnicity-or tribalism
the migrants would have been Jess able to exercise
the control th.at was necessary for them to
assure the continuation of tlleir positions in rural
societies and their ultimate retirement in thcir
home areas.
In those situations in which labour migrancy
was not a pressing reality (the Afrikaners, the "Cape
Coloureds," the Luso-Africans of Mozambique
and, to a lesser extent, contemporary Swaziland
and Ciskei) ... or in areas from which men did not
emigTate in larg-c numbers, such as southern
Zambia and centTaI \1aJawi, the ethnic message
has clearly had less popular appeal, reaching no
further than the petty bourgeoisie in most cases. In
the case of the Afrikaners, effective class alliances
between the bourgeois elements of society and the
"poor whites" were brought into being only in the
194{)s and afterw-ards. In the case of the "Cape
Coloureds" and the f\Iozambican Luso-Africans
and possibly Swaziland and the Ciskei - the g'aps
between well-off and poor were too great to be eas
ily overcome by appeals to ethrncity. In these situ
ations, class identity - or at least dass tension - has
tended to overshadow ethnicity.
[ ... J
ism," which has intluenced my approach considera
bly. Young's stimulaTing and I aluable essay was
written for the Social Science Research Council, and
it will be published in a future issue of Call1crd'itudes
ETHNICITY IN SOUTHERN AFRICAN HISTORY
l1(riclIl'ICS Two other studies which influenced my
I~'riling markedly are Anthony Gidd~ns, A
Clllllnnpnrrtrl' Cnlique n!Hislli!1caIMal:l'lsl/1 (Berkeley
fiOlI Los ,\ngc1cs, 1981), and Donald L. Horowitz,
Ill1/le Cmups In Conflict (Berkeley and I"os :\.ngeles,
1985). The literature on ethnicity is immense and J
hale du.:ided to eschew any alt~mpt to produce a
bjbliographi~al essay. I shall attempt to write an
interpretati' e oven iew.
The SitlJ~'lion is reflected in the fact thut mam
politicalleadcrs felt the need to fabricate a "philos
ol'h\" ot' governmcnr in an attempt TO compensate
for the intelleclUal banalin' or the nationalist mm e
ments after independence. These "philosophies"
generally had far greater appeal for well-intentioncd
non-nationals rhan for those dwelling within
the ]1:trticular countries for whieh the', were
composed.
3 Most notablv, A.L. Epstein, Politics in an urban
lFI,lJlI Community (Manchester, 1958), and
].c. )\utchell, The KII/da DiI11ce (Manchester, 1958).
+ For example, L Wallerstein, "Ethnieit) and national
integration," Cl1ltj~r.l ;/'t'tUdl'S lI/i/wlJU:." 1 (1960), pp.
129-39.
\s ;n R. Palmer and N. Parsons, cds., Th~ Roots of
Ruml PIitHly 1/1 5011111 1I1tt/ CClilral Aji-ieu (Berkelcl
:md Los Angeles, 1977), passim.
Ii This poilll was developed at an eurly point of study
in ).S. Coleman, Nigerl,,: Backgrotmd to Natlo/lallslll
(Berkele~ and Los Angeles, 1958) and 111
R. Lcmarchand, Political .AllJllkl?1tltlg ill lite Congo
(Berkelc\ and Los Angeles, 1964). Interest in it has
hecn STimulated moTe rccenlly bl' the publicarion of
such inJluential books as :\1_ Heehter, Illta/wl
Cololliu!lsm (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1975) and
T. ~airn, The Break-lip oj Brill/1ft; Chris aud Nco
NIJ/i,I/lIIh,1/I (London, 1977).
- A5, (or example, ill Horowitz, lll1Iir Croups in
Co/Vliet, pllssilll and A. Giddens, The NIJliol/-S/ale
al/d V;IJlma (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1985), Pf/J
sim, bUI especially pp. 212-221. See also].F Stack,
Jr., I'd., 111" p,.imordl,,1 ClIalll'l1ge: Etlmlnly III the
COlllempO/llIJ' J I'rJr/d (Westport, CT, 1986).
107
8 IlilTc', 1.Hor/cm History (I/Timgallyika (Cambridge,
19i9) con rains much releqnt material regarding
th~ hislOr\ of ~thnicit)' in Tanganyika. For the
Afrikaners of South Africa, one shoilid see D.
Moodie, The RHe ujA(nkl1rJerr/OIf/. Power, Aparllmd
Imd the /l(ld':lwer CiVIl ReilglOJI (Berkeley and Los
Angeles, 1975); H. Adam and H. Giliolnee,
EIIII/ic POIPer ,11o/1ilized (New Haven, 1979); and
D. O'Meara, VlJlkskapllll/iJTl/e: Class, Clpltal IIlld
IdeoloKl' illlhe DI'Vriopment of->~Fikll'ler N'alifJIw/l.~/II,
1934-1938 (Cambridge, 1983). This point has been
made often for EuropeJn nationalism, in such
important studies as Barrington J\loore's Socilt!
OrigillS lij Dlfllllllrship alit! Dmwert/C)': LOI'd /llId
PWSIJ/JI til Ihe }"ltikll1g oj the _Hodel'll World
(HarmondsworrJl,1967).
9 For an interesting, although not wholh cony;ncing,
assessment of the central role of language in the
building of narjonausm, see B. Anderson, Imtlgil/lt!
Cnmmullitles: Re{1eaioll.1 011 the O,.(~ill al1l1 Spread of
NUlimill/ism (London, 1983).
10 It should be noted that intellectuals discussed in
the chapters of this volumc are all literaTe intellec
tuals. The natllre of the: cvidcnce makes it difficult
to ascertain the nature of the thought and work of
non-literate intellectuals, vet it should be kept in
mind that such non-literate intellectuals haye
indeed worked to further ethnic ideologies through
oral genres. This whole topic is the subject of a
forthcoming study b~ L. Vail and L. White.
II .\Il.alawi National Archives, GOA 2/4/12,
"Moha.lllmadanism and Erhiopianism", Circular
letter, Lt. Col. Frcnch to Gov. Smith, 7 Aug. 1917.
12 .'v1. Chanock, Lam, Cunom ,,1111 Soc;1I1 Order: The
Colonial E~'perlell In !vIalawl al/d Zalllbia
(Cambridge, 1985), is an important study thaT goes
far in exploring the role of t.he perceived need to
control wom~n in the development of concepts of
law during the colonial period.
13 The re!c\'ance of the language of kimhip ties to The
dCI e10pment of ethnic identity is exploTed, wiThin
a basically primordia!isl interpretation, In
Horowitz, Elflll;,' G''01111S in Co/!!lw, pp. 55-92.
 Introduction

The e;\traordinary \'arie~- and number of studics on African economics make it virtuall)
impossible for us to summarize them in the scope of this introduction and this \ olume. These
studics incluue ethnographic analyses of households (Guyer, 1981), local and regional eco
nomil: histories, including histories of the slaYe tl"ade and state format ion (Harms, 1981;
Kop)lOfr and :\liers, 1977; Southall, 1974), thc impact of migral1llabor on local communi\:)
life (\-(um!), 1981), Marxism (Coqucry- Vidrovitch, 1978; Donham, 1990; <\leillassoux, 1981),
migralion and urbanization (Cohen, 1969; Epstein, 1958; Mayer, 1962; MitcheJJ, 1956;
Southall, 1973; Watson, 1958), political economy (Berry, 1978, 1984; Hart, 1(82), economic
dc\elopment and transformations in agrarian and pastoral systems (Ferguson, 1990; Frat kin
et aI., 1994; Little and Watts, 1994; Robertson, 1987; Werboer, 1982), and the economics of
gender (Apepuju and Oppong, 1994; Boserup, 1970; Moodie amI l\'datshc, 1994; 1\loore and
Vaughan, llJ94). Giyen the \'ast number of different kinds of economic studies conducted in
.\Jrica, lhe reader may \\ell question whether it is possible, or fruitful, to treat economics as a
distinct domain of analysis. We have therefore limited ourselves in this scction to a few key
texts that illustrate some central perspectives on the study of African economies, and which
quite directly inform, or speak to, the readings in other parts. For example, Hutchinson
(Chapler 10) and E\'3ns-Pritchard (Olapter 5) worked in the same part of Africa, wilh the
same population, and on similar issues, and so each of these articles contributes 10 a fuller
wldcrstanding of the other.
In this Yolume, the texts that make up the chapters on social organization (Part II), hunter
gatherers (Part n'), gender (Part VTIl), colonialism (Part L'\), post-colonial politics (Part X),
and JeYclopmem and globalization (Part XU) are very much concerned \I ith economics;
allhough the putati' e focus is on issues such as sex roles, ethniciry as a social boundary, or the
impact of European domination upon local values, the essays are more broadly concerned \I ith
hl)\I these issues are integrated \lith production and material and social exchanges. All a.r
explicit about how economics relate to other domains. Such attention to integration is, for
many scholars, the hallmark of an anthropological economics, if not of the stud) of social
 Introduction

The c\rraordinary variety and number of studies on African economics make it .. inually
impossible for us to summarize them in the scope of this introduction and this volume. These
srudies include ethnographic analyses uf households (Guyer, 1981), local and regional eco
nomic hisLOries, including histories of the slave trade and state formation (Harms, 1981;
Kopyloff and Miers, 1977; Southall, 197+), the impacl of migrant labor on local communit)
life (1\ I urray, 1981), Marxism (Coquery-Vidrovitch, 1978; Donham, 1990; 1\ leillassoux, 1981),
mi\{ral ion and urhanization (Cohen, 1969; Epstein, 1958; l\ taycr, ) 962; Mitchell, 1956;
SOUl hall, 1973; Watson, 1958), political economy (Berry, 1978, 1984; Ilart, 1982), economic
dc\clopment and transformations in agrarian and pastoral systems (Ferguson, 1990; Fratkin
el aI., 1994; Little and Watts, 191)+; Robertson, 1987; \\erbner, 1982), and the economics of
gender (Apepoju and Oppong, 1994; Boserup, 1970; Moodie and Ndatshe, 199+; Moore and
Vaughan, 19(4). Gi\ en the vast number of different kinds of economic studies conuucted in
ifrica, Ihe reader ma) well qucstion "hethcr it is possible, or fruitful, to treat economics as a
distinct domain of analysis. We ha\ e therefore linlited oursel\ es in this section to a few key
text:. that illustrate some central perspectives on the study of African economics, and which
(juitc directly inform, or speak to, the readings in other pans. For example, Hutchinson
(Chapter 10) and Evans-Pritchard (Chapter 5) worked in the same part of Africa, with the
SGllle population, and on similar issues, and so each of these arl ides contrilmtes to a fuller
understanding of the other.
In this \oJume, the texts that make up the chapters on social organization (part II), hunter
~atherers (Part JY), gender (Part V ill), colonialism (Part IX), post-colonial politics (Part X),
and dc\ elopmel1t and globalization (Part XII) are very much concerned with economics;
although the putati\c focus is on issUl.'s such as se" roles, ethnicit) as a soci;)1 boundary, or the
impact of European domination upon local values, the essays arc more broadly concerned with
h(m these issues are integrated with production md material and social exchanges. All are
explicit about how economics rclate to other domains. Such attention to integration is, for
many scholars, the hallmark of an anthropological economics, if not of the stuJy of social
112 INTRODUCTION
organization in general, and distinguishes anthropology from the economic sciences. LeClair
and Schneider thus write about the anthropologist's emphasis on social and cultural factors in
economics (1968: 7):
Economists traditionally could and did take rhe economic s)'stem as something of an isolate in the total
social system. It could be studied in its o\m terms, and it was simpler to do so. By the same token,
economists did nOt delve too much into ends in themselvcs; operating within a single cultural context,
they could take ends as they were and felt no need for explaining them. Operating \1 ithin a single social
frame\\ork, they could afford to concentrate their attention on the economic system. Thus, the social
and cultural systems \\'ere "given" parameters which did not need to be taken into account in the
analysis.
From an anthropological viewpoint, economics must always be situated in its total sociocultural
eontext.1b illustrate ho\\ anthropologists developed such a perspective, we shall briefly outline
some of the most important works and debates in the history of economic anthropology.
In a seminal work on inter-island exchange in a place far from Africa - the Trobriand Islands
near Papua New Guinea - the earl) anthropologist Bronislaw .\'1alinowski (1922) described a
fascinating exchange system called the Kula ring. His data suggested that Western models of
economic beha"ior were not applicable to all societies, and more specificall}, that the model of
the cconomi7.ing indi\ldual, motivated to employ scarce means for the maximum benefit, might
not be fruitfully applied (0 non-capitalist, non-industrial societies. Malinowski's description of
the Kula ring, in \\'hich the Trobrianders move among a ring of islands to give and receive valu
able armshells and necklaces, supported such a conclusion because the Trobriands expend more
time and energy on the collecl ion of thc valuables than would seem economically "rational" to
many Western observers. The armshells and necklaces were not, at the time of his study, con
vertible to cash or many other goods, nor did owning these goods translate directly into greater
wealth. The meaning of the trade was svmbolic and aesthetic, defined b) cultural "alues and not
b} the standard sorts of maximization models one finds in American economics textbooks that,
"all other things being equal," indi"iduals will maximize their gains with an insufficiency of
means. Anthropological economics thus developed as a perspective that emphasized social \'al
ues and conformity over and above individual choice, utilitarianism, and "rationality."
Of course, all other things are never equal, and so such models may also not be applicable to
all social and economic behavior in Western societies. We knO\..., for example, that in the United
States businesses succeed and fail on the basis of religious holidays, such as Christmas,
Hannukah, Kwanzaa, and Easter, that we often spend far more on our vacations, automobiles,
and children's weddings than is truly "economical," and that, indeed, the whole set of practices
we call gift giving constitutes a system in which we pay for symbols and meanings, prestige, loYe,
fa\'or, and for lhe future, rather than for immediate gratifications of material goods. Economists
would, no doubt, be among the fi.rst to argue that the)' arc always concerned with the non
material questions of economics, such as hO\, much people will pa} for, or fail to maximize for,
leisure, vacations, or prestige and luxury goods. Yet, conventional economic perspectives frame
these questions in terms of maximization and choice, rather than in terms of cultural value.
For many economic anthropologists, howe"er, there can be considerable value in applying
economic theories across cultures if we search (or the fit and non-fit between scientific and local
models. Assessing the degree of fir can quickly bring to light how people define their economic
needs diffcrently, and we may cven learn that certain economic needs are characteristic of par
ticular kinds of societies. Marshall Sahlins (1968, 1972), for instance, has suggested dlat
INTRODUCTION 113
huntcr-gatherer societies in general, and thc !Kung San of Botswana in particular (see Part 1"'),
do not try to maximize their economic benefits. Responding to some conventional assumptions
thai the subsistence economies of all hunter-gatherers, past and present, have been dismal and
"poor," Sahlins calls hunter-gatherer" the "original affluent society":
This lIas, when you come to think of it, the original amuent socicry. By common understanding an
,1f(luent society is one in which all the people's w,mts arc easil) satisfied; and though we are pleased to
wnsider this happy condition the unique achievement of indusuial civilizatiOlJ, a better case can be
made for hunters and gatherers ... For wants are "easil~ satisfied," either by producing much or desir
ing little, and there are, accordingly, two possible roads to aillucnce. The Galbraithean course makes
assumptions peculiarly appropriate to market economies, that man's wants arc great, not to say infinite,
\\hereas his means are limited, although improvable ... Bur there is also a Zen solution to scarcity and
amuence, beginning from premises opposite from our 0\\ n, that human material ends are few and finite
and technic.1l means unchanging but on the whole adequate. (1968: 85)
Sahlins' argument is framed very much in terms of maximization models, but it is, at the same
time, a powerful critique of the assumptions surrounding t11C concept of scarcity in I he eco
nomic sciences (see Bird-David, 1992). The readings in Part IV on hunter-gatherers address
this issue again in the context of a debate aboul the !Kung San, and present the more general
problem of how and why we sometimes group culturally \'ariable societies under single eco
nomic categories, such as "hunter-gatherer," "pastoralist," or "peasant."
We want to stress that practices which do not fit tht: "'estern model of "Economic Man"
(Homo economiclIs) are therefore not irrelevant to more com'entional economic analyses, and
while the kinds of economic activities anthropologists sometimes describe, such as the Kula
ring, or gift-giving, may seem abstract or s) mbohc rather than material and productive, these
acti, ities often have significant effects on matcrial life. For example, recent research in the
Trohriand Islands has shown that when Trobrianders go on trading trips, made ostensibly to
obtain Kula valuables, they actually engage in a wide range of other trading activities, including
trade for foodstuffs and other important materials for house and canoe building. The trade for
Kula valuables functioned to reduce the yariable scarcity of certain foods and other products
over a \\'ide geographical area in the Trobriand archipelago, and the trading activities themselves
helped to solidify partnerships and alliances that could be exploited in rhe event of future crises
such as natural disasters, food depletions, or war (Singh, 1962), Establishing a single determin
ing role is, of course, a chicken and egg problem - whether the adaptive advantages of trading
Kula objects determined the yalues atnibuted to them, the adaptive advantages were an unin
tended byproduct of the Kula system, or the consequent adapti,oe advantages led Trobrianders
to reinforce a pre-existing Kula trade. The point to be stressed here is that economics must be
seen in their total social context, not only because economic behavior is always, already, socially
meaningful, but because it ramifies to all areas of social life, including those we might not assume
to fall under the rubric "economy."
One of the scholars most impressed by Malinowski's Kula data was the French anthropologist
Marcel Mauss, a student and nephew of Emile Durkheim. Like his uncle, Mauss focused on the
society rather than the individual, and was thus interested in answering the questions we raised
in the first chapter. How do societies cohere? In his book, Essal sur Ie dOll (translated as The GijI),
.\1auss (1954 [1925]) concluded that social solidarity is generally achieved by means of gift
exchange, and therefore that gift giving and receiving are fundamental to social life. He argued
that reciprocity, while seemingly a voluntary behavior, involves complex moral and social
114 INTRODUCTION
obligations because the objects that people give are never totally separated from them: gifts bind
people together in social relationships, and so we are sociallv and morally obliged to reciprocate.
If you are an anthropologist and you need to understand a society, looki ng at gifts is a good way
to go about it. Gifts, he said, betray "all the threads of which the social fabric is composed"
religious, legal, moral, economic, aesthetic, and morphological (Mauss, 1954: I).
Gifts may not exactly fit economists' models of "economic rational it}," but they are perhaps
"socially rationaJ," to the extent that gift giving is an economic activit)' that is fundamental to
ongoing social life. Mauss had a profound impact on anthropology, and economic anthropology
in particular, because his focus un gifts led cross-cultural economics away from the study of
individual rationalities and toward the study of social, collective values; moreover, he showed
that exchanges can also involve persons and svmbols.
Marriage, for example, is a common form of social and economic exchange, or gift exchange, in
which two families join together through the "giving" of the bride and groom, the transfer of gift
objects, or the establishment of bridewealth or other debt, between families. There is an old saying
in many parts of the world: "marry your enemies." Thus, in Shakespeare's /-lellr)' V, when England
and France seek to end their war, young Prince HaJ of England marries Princess Catherine of
France, and the result is peace and social solidarity between in-laws and aJso between countries. In
the United States, we often think of marriage as defined by a single en:nt - a wedding - but in many
parts of the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, marriage is a complex political and economic
process of gift giving and payment that can mke many years, if nOt generations, to complete. Some
African men and their families give marriage their higheST priori1); working for years to san~ enough
money or goods for bridewealth, and subsequent payments. Among the Lese of the Democratic
Republic of Congo, for example, a man must pay an initial amount of money to the bride's father or
brother to set a marriage in process, another amount for rights of sexual access, and, over the years,
later payments for rights in his offspring (what we might call "childwcalth," and which the Lese can
an "umbilical cord payment"); if the childwealth is not paid, the father cannot claim the child as his
own, and the child must take his mother's clan identity. The first editor, who worked in a Lese com
munity, could not find a single case in which all the payments had been made in full. When someone
approached completion of payment, the in-laws would raise the price, justifying it on the basis of
inflation, or the wife's fertility and good work. Tn fact, in-laws want their daughter's husband to
remain in debt, fearing dlal if all tlle pa)1nents were made, the husband (and wife) might sever con
nections WiUl them. Monc) rna) be spent, goats and chickens may be eaten; but debts remain. Even
after all of these payments have been made, a man's in-laws may demand gifts to compensate the
wife and her family for all the hard work entailed in raising small children (the Lese c,,1Il this a "feces
and urine payment" because the payn1cm refers to the time of childrearing prior to toilet-training),
or may require a death payment when she dies. On one occasion, a man was denied access 10 land
and wc-alth he thought he had the rights to when it was determined that his grandfather (father's
father) had failed to make the umbilical cord payments for genetricial rights. He and his deceased
father were thus denied full membership in the clan, and rights in the clan's land.
Thal gift giving is a powerful institution with important social and symbolic ramifications is
illustrated by an interesting variation in the sound / gift/ across some different European lan
guages. in English, Igiftl means "present," in German, /giftl means "poison," ami in Danish
and Swedish, Igift/ means both "married" and "poison." The defmitions of "married" and
"present" are by now clear, but what of "poison'" The poison tn the gift lies in its ability to
obligate; it coerces reciprocation and constitutes a relationship into which lhe receiver rna) not
haw wished to enter. Whether we like it or not, when someone gi,-es lIS a gift, we are pm\erfully
affecteJ; depending 011 our culture's values associated with gifts, we may feel compelled to
INTRODUCTION 115
accept it, to reciprocate in some way, to define or redefine tlle social relationship created b,' the
gift, to feel unworthy of the gift, to seek an escape from the relationship, interpret why rhe gift
was given, or why a particular kind or quantity of gift was given. Gifts, like words, communicate,
and they can communicate good things or bad. We may feel burdened and uncomfortable if we
are given a gift larger than what we deem to be socially appropriate, or if we are given a gift from
an inappropriate sphere of exchange. For example, it is generally appropriate in the United
States for parents to give their children gifts of money, but money is not an appropriate gift
between friends or peers. Or, as another example, when an American couple receives silverware
or a toaster as a wedding gift, it is because the gift is intended to symbolize the formation of a
new hOLL<;ehold; were they to receive a crate of lemons, the meaning might be entirely different.
When a Lese man in the Democratic Republic of Congo receives cultivated foods from an Efe
hunter-gatherer, it is a form of denigration meant to highlight the Lese man's inability to grow
his o\m food, yet when he receives meal from the same man, it is a positive and welcome sign for
the Lese man that he and his people are of higher social status than the Efe.
The semantics and spheres of economic exchange are highlighted in scyeral of the articles in
this volume and recognize that all economies contain the "spheres of exchange" articulated by
Bohannon in his pioneering \Iork on the Tiv. As with many anthropological developments, this
concept brings us back ro Malinowski. ]n the Trobriands, Kula exchanges constitute a realm of
transaction distinct from barter or trade, which is called gillllPali. Kula valuables, then, could not
be bought, sold, or exchanged in eYeryday markers, but rather only in lhe series of exchanges of
Kula goods that linked the various islands. Kula valuables, in turn, were made up of several
spheres; the most important one included the armshells and necklaces, while another comprised
axe-blades and lime spoons, and another inyoh'Cd certain foods, such as yams, bananas and taro,
that could be presented or offered as gifts (Gudeman, 1986: 123). As Bohannan tells LIS, among
rhe Til' of Nigeria goods are placed in particular categories or spheres of exchange; goods within
the same sphere are interchangeable, or exchangeable, but goods from different spheres are not.
Chickens, goats, and everyday subsisteT/fe goods constitute one sphere; prestige goods such as cattle,
rituals offices, and medicines constitute a second sphere; and rights i/1 people, such as wives and
children, make up the third. AltllOugh an item in any single sphere was usually exchangeable
only for another item in the same sphere, some movement was possible, even desirable, because
each sphere was differently valued in terms of prestige, status, and morality: the first sphere was
less highly valued than the second, and the second less highly \alued than the third. Many Tiv
looked for opportunities to convert a first sphere good to a second sphere good, while comcrting
a good the other way was considered quite undesirable, even shameful. Indeed, Bohannan sug'
gests that when the Tiv invest their wealth, they invest only if it can convert to a higher category:
eOllverting subsistence wealth into prestige wealth, prestige wealth into rights in people.
The sort of culturally embedded economics we arc describing here, howeYer, does not com
prise the entire field of economic anthropology, for there are many economic anthropologists
who apply formal \Nestern-derived modds to other cultures, and who seek to discern eco
nomic laws, or develop economic hypotheses and theories, that help us understand, and even
predlct, the economic behavior of a large number of different kinds of societies (Burling,
1962; Cook, 1973; Firth, 1967). Such scholars have often been crudely labeled "formalists,"
while those who belieyc that the application of economic theory to non-industrial societies is
limited, if not wrong-headed, have been called "substantivists." The concept of substamivism
comes from the economic historian Karl Polanyi, who argued that organized markets in Europe
are only a ycry recent invention, and that they have detached economics from the rest of social
life. Although classical economic theories are useful for analyzing these markets, he argued,

116 INTRODUCTION
they are not useful for analyzing the economics of other societies; for Polanyi, "market" is nar
0\\ I.) defined as the impersonal, modern market of Europe and North America, whereas other
societies engage in what he called "marketless trade," reciprocit} or redistribution. He thus
excludes from his definition the man) complex marketplaces throughout Africa, with their
various forms of prod uction and c..'\change systems, indigenous currency, and artisan guilds
(Bohannan and Dalton, 1962). Polanyi defined his substantivist position in opposition to
formalism (1958: 243-4).
The substantive meanjng of economic derives from man's dependence for his living upon nature and
his fellows. It refers to the interchange with his natural and social em ironment, in so far as this results
in supplying him with the means of material want satisfaction.
The formal meaning of economic derives from the logical character of the means-ends relationship,
as apparent in such words as "economical" ur "economizing." It refers to a definite situation of choice,
namely, that between different uses of means induced b} an insufficiency of means.
... It is our proposition thar only the substantive meaning of "economic" is capable of yielding the
concepts that are requLred by the social sciences for an investigation of all the empirical economics of
the past and present.
s a named diYision, the debate between substant.ivists and formalists is now largely relegated
to the history of anthropology, and most scholars today employ some mixture of the n'l'o, taking
the cultural embeddedness of economy for granted, but appreciating the roles individual choice
and risk play in economic practices. Still, the tension between these two perspectives continues
to influence anthropological research on economics. Major questions persist about how much
substantive perspectives overemphasize conformity to social values and patterns (or give too
little emphasis to the chuices individuaLs must make in selecting their economic transactions
and social relationships), and how much formalist perspecl ives detach the individual from social
context. In denying the applicability of economic theories designed for industrial societies to the
analysis of non-industrial societies, do scholars with a substantivist perspective risk endorsing
the existence of two separate types of societies, the industrial and non-industrial, market and
non-market, "primitive" and peasant? What is the value of employing a particular definition of
"market" to distinguish among different economies? There are other important questions that
emerge frolll this debate:
Ho'\\" can we use our ()\\ll categories of understanding to comprehend the economies of other
cultures, economics that may be constructed with categories, concepts, and symbolic
schemes very different from our own?
Is it possible that a focus on cultural values might impede some analyses of human economic
behavior?
In its emphasis on social patterns, arc there aspects of economic anthropology that resemble
functionalism?
What is the relationship between individual and social economic patterns? What is the yalue
of making a distinction between the individual and the social?
In light of the readings included in this volume, have Africanist scholars represented the
economies of Africans as distinct from industrial, market economics?
Does European domination, colonialism, and thc emergence of capitalist, class societies
in Africa mean that formal Western-derived models are now applicable to African
economies?
-
INTRODUCTION 1.17
In Chapter 8, l\lu1I) Douglas addresses the problem of poverty among the Lele of the Kasai region
of Ule Democratic Republic of Congo. In a comparati\e analysis of the Lele and Bushong econo
mics, she argues that economies are deeply embedded in social ideas and practices. She takes as her
I,;;)SC twO neighboring groups with starkly different levels of economic productivity: the Lele are
poor, \\ hile the Bushong are rich. To some cxtent, their differences can be explained by the fact that
the Lele have less fertile soil ~U1d less efficient technology, but the) also work less at the production
of goods. However, working less cannot be e>..'plained by environment, but by the social and cultural
values and organization of work. She pays special attention to the interesting fact that Lele men
begin working at age thin}, while the Bushong begin work at age eighteen; and whereas the Lele
retire in middle-age, the Bushong retire only when they are in their sixties, or are unable to work.
Dou?:las earefull} and systematically compares the two societies' authority structures, age of mar
riage, incidence of polygyny, and importance of seniority, to show why and how they produce dif
ferent work schedules, and therefore very different levels of production, scarcity, and wealth.
In Chapter 9, Coqucry-Vidrovitch's .Marxist essay offers a contrasting example of economic
anthropology. Marxism has had an important place in economic anthropology's move toward stud
.\ ing regional and local economic histories. Coquery-Vidrovitch moves beyond the study of any
single community to articulate a pervasive pattern of producrjon throughout sub-Saharan Africa:
an African mode of production. Coquery-Vidrovitch argues that most Africanist scholars have not
taken economic incquality or class relations as central topics of study, and haye instead looked pri
marily at egalitarianism and kinship organization in subsistence and stateless societies. This is
where Marxism becomes relevant. One of the eenrral features of Marxist economics is a focus on
ho\\ power and wealth are tmequally distributed in society. In one of the most f.1.mous works on
inequality and production, for example, Claude Mcillassoux (1981) describes how, among the
Guro of Cote c!'hoire, elders exploit young men by controlling the merms ofreproduCfiw (\\ ives),
cjther through polygynous marriages that depleLe the supply of available women, or by demanding
bridewealth payments so high that young men are coerced into working for the elders. Most
Marx.ist scholars emphasize production as thc building block of other aspects of socicty, which
then in turn support or reinforce production. While the concept of mode of production is complex,
and has been subject to a wide range of interpretations and uses, Marx wrote quite clearly the
following definition in the preface to COlltribuli01ls 10 a Crllique ofPolitiral Economy:
The !tum TOtal of these rclations of production constitutes the economic structure of society - the real
foundation on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of
social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the
social, political, and spiritual processes of life (1983 [1859]: 49).
Coquery- Vidrovitch argues that the social organization of production is not defined by political
organization, such as the commonly used dichotomy of state and stateless societies (see Part II>
but rather by the control over long-distance trade by kinship or other groupings. "-lthough the
particular form of power that obtains in any given society is largely dependent upon the kind of
groups that rise to power, the kinship system, and the general organization of labor and value,
the social system is epiphenomenal, or secondal), to production. The African mode of produc
tion constitutes the basic orga.nization of African societies.
One of Marx's most important contributions was to shed light on the social relations of pro
duction, especially through his conc.cpt "commodity fetishism." For Marx, commodity fetish
ism illustrates the tendency in a capitalist mode of production to attribute value to things (1 he
products of labor) rather than to Jabor (social relations). In other words, the relationships
118 INTRODUCTION
between people appe<lr ,IS relationships between things. Commodit) fctishism refers to the
reification of capital, as in the Nuer case described by IIutchinson in Chapter 10 (see also
Shipton, 1989), in which people attributc moral power and agency to moncy, or more g"Cnerally
speaking when we conceive of money as having an intrinsic value apart from thc actions and
beliefs of human beings. This is not to say that this conception is falsc, since "things" are indeed
meaningfully related to one another; Marx's point is that commodity fetishism conceals the
social relationships that constitute \'alue, and masks the relations of oppression or exploitation
bet ween laborers and tJlOse who control the means of production. Precisely because it hides
these relations from vie\\, workers remain unaware of the nature of their exploitation, and com
modity fetishism thus becomes an instrument of oppression.
Hutchinson elaborates upon Bohannan's work by situating the concept of sphcres of exchange
in the histories of the Luo and Nuer (a group historically related to the Luo) respectiYely, but
they also bring into relief some fascinating aspects of fetishism, and the social meanings of
money. She revcals the ways in I"hich the mcmbers of these IHric3n societies classify mone) in
cultural, moral terms. Just as religions are sometimes shaped in the image of society (see PartVI),
fhe econom) is a metaphor and model of, and for, the moral and sociaJ order. The Luo distinc
tion between good and evil mane) reflects relationships between men and women, youths and
elders, and is fTamcd in terms of ancestorl>, lineage, and marriage payments. For Luo, an osten
sib!) simple good, such as a homestead rooster, should not be sold because it s)mbolizes mascu
linir~~ sexual potency, and the continuity of the lineage, among many other things; thus to sell a
rooster for moncy is tantamount to selling one's masculinity and violating the integrity of the
line.'lgc, and money earned from such a sale is tainted and brings "bitter" blessings.
The Nuer distinction between good and bad uses of cattle and mone) turns about a distinc
tion between blood and non-blood spheres of exchange: because the Nuer equate callie and
people, callie represent the blood of both the animal and the lineage, and should therefore be
used in exchanges that create enduring bonds between people (such as marriage), or that relate
people and the supernatural (in religious ritual); money, in contrast, should be used for imper
sonal transactions such as paying taxes. The Nuer, like the Luo, further c1assif~ money into
good and bad types. Some Nuer beer sellers, for example, separate the monies collected from
uer and non-Nucr clients. They lise mone) from selling beer to non-Nuer to pay taxes, and
usc money collected fTom Nuer to bu) cattle. The Nuer also differentiate cattle into the "cattle
of girls" (usuaJl) acquired as brideweaJth) and the "cattle of money" (usually acquired through
purchase), and dra\\ a parallel between these r-wo kinds of cattle and the blood and non-blood
spheres of exchange. The former cattle ideall) circulate onI) among kinsmen, and the latter are
more freely circulated. However, Hutchinson details the complicateJ ways in which these dis
t.inctions are muted, or in which one kind of cattlc is converted into another - from a blood
sphere of exchange to a non-blood sphere exchange. The symbolic and political import of girls
and \\omen becomes central to these distinctions. as docs the fact that the equation between
people and cattle quite differently affected men and women. These are subjects Hutchinson
takes up in great detail in a larger and more tOmprchensive study (1Iutchinson, 1996).
For our purposes here, the larger significance of these studies is that the European introduc
tion of certain kinds of money and modes of exchange into AfriC<l resulted in their transforma
tion rather than replication. Economists and eyangcJists ha\'e often puzzled over their inability
to introduce Western concepts and practices into _Urica, as if they expected them to be repro
duced perfectly in all times and places. Such a perfect reproduction could occur only if econom
ics were isolable fTom other aspects of society and history. VVhen Islam, Christianity,
European-styled nationalism and democrae)', and other ideas entered into Africa, they entered
INTRODUCTION 119
into a dialogic relation with African ideas. These studies show hO\\ global phenomena, such as
capital, mone), taxes, and war, are given cultural!) specific meanings across time and space.
Indeed, their historical treatments of these pastoralists contrasts with Evans-Pritchard's his
torical treatment of the "'uer in Chapter 5, and represent one of the important changes in inlel
lectual perspective we outlined in the Introduction.
Hutchinson details the ways in Ilhich moral distinctions hetween good and bad ~(mS of com
modities or spheres of exchange arc embedded in a parricular history of cil il war, and other
rurbulence. Such disrinctions serve not only as responses to history, but as history itself, shaping
strategies of resistance to money and capitalism. Indeed, as Hutchinson shows, the Nuer have
!tood reason to fear the encroachment of external political and economic lorces. The attribution
of lifc and moralit) to mone) is one way to symbolicall) (and unconsciously) articulate displeas
ure with social and cultural change. Hutchinson illustrates that the process b) which people
simultaneousl) resist and comply with economic change is marked by extraordinary ambiva
lence and uncertaint). It is a process in which people creatively seek ways of ha\'ing a d) namic
economy that still resonates with loeaJ meanings, and, in the case of the Nuer, preserves the
important equation between humans and cattle.
These sLUdies, and the suggested readings, illustrate the failure of Western categories of the
econom) to account for economic and social behavior. E\'en a brief sun'ey of the economic
development studies in sub-Saharan Africa will show how little economists actually discern of
the econom) when they consider conventional factors such as unemployment rates and official
indicators of economic gro\\lh. As Keith Hart (1973) demonstrated long ago in a study of the
linka!tes among economic development, unemployment wage income, and rural-urban migra
tion, a significant portion of the urban economy in Africa is made up by people who, though
uncmpll)ed in the formal sector for formal wages, actually accumulate a great deal of income,
and have a powerful effect on the total economy, through "legitimate" informal acrivities, such
as farming and lfJrdening, transport, street hawking, laundering, vehicle repair. or begging, and
"illegitimate" informal activities such as t.heft, prostitution, gambling, smuggling, briber}, and
embe7.Zlement. ]n fact, these opportunities may be alluring enough that some people choose to
participate in the informal sector instead of, or in addition to, the formaJ sector of the economy.
Although economists have long argued that the central conOict (or obstacle) in African eco
nomic development is between capitalist/ precapitalist, modern/ traditional economic acti\ ities,
such a distinction is seldom fruitful in the anaJysis of African economies. Many African nations
have dual economies (MacGafley, ]987, 1991) - wage earners and the self-emplo)'ed - and the
economics complement rather l11an conflict with one another (Smith. 1989: 30 I; Gerr), 1987;
Hill, 1970). The profound economic consequences of these two co-existing sectors arc not
revealed in the sorts of data or statistics that form the basis of most economic work, but rather
in the ethnographic studies that describe actual social and individual practices, and that illumi
nate the many ways in which formal and informal sectors articulate \1 ith one another. Economic
anthropologists thus point the way to an especially promising area of research for anthropol()
gists: where econometric techniques fail, the anthropologist often succeeds.
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Sm/lr(j alld Iheir Tntcr-rdatilJl/s, pp. 10-23. Boston: HoughtOn ~limin.
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122 INTRODUCTION

Hill, Polly. 1969. "Hidden Trade in Hau5.lIand." Muu4: 393-409.

Homans, George. J95g. "Social Behavior as Exchange." '/1IIeri(all }oumal of Sociol"f!J1 63: 597-606. 8

each, Jerr) \\'a)ne and Edmund Ronald Leach, eds. 1983. The Kllla: J\rf1' PerSpe(IIVeS oil ,11am1ll Erchallgr..
Cambridge: Cambridge UnhersilY Press.
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Lynn, \<1aTtin. 2002. C01llmerce (1/1" Ecollomi( Clw.lIgc ill /I'm .4ji-iw: The PI/1m Oil Tmde ill II/{: NiI,eleenth Cell/llry.
Cambridge: Cambridge Universitv Press. with the Bushong
Matory, J. ) ,orand. 1994. S/'x (md Ihe EmpIre Ihal Is No Alore: Gellder I/Ild 'he Polili(._ ofAtelapltor in 0)'0 Yorubo
Rellgioll. l'vfinneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
~1ens,lh, Joseph. 2008. Neolibualism uTld Globulimlion /1/ Ifrim: CO/l!fSJa'itJns 011 Ihe EII/balrled Colllille"t. ~e\\
York: Palgra\e. Mary Douglas
Morgan, Le\\is Henry. 1963 [1877). Ancienl Society. Cleveland: Meridian Books, World Publishing Co.
Ortiz. Suttj. 1983. Erolloll/ic AlllhmpolOgjl: Topics al,d ThalTies. Monographs in Economjc Anthropology, no. 2.
Lanham, .MD: Uni\ ersit) Press of America. for ule Society for Economic Anthropology.
Rappaport, Ro) A. 1968. Pigs for 'he ,II/ccstors. Kc\\ 1Lwen: Yale UniYersity Press.
Rigby, Peter. 1969. Call1t lind Ki"ship among the GOf(o. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Robhin~ Lionel. 1935. ,111 Essay on Ihe Nature and Slg'lijirnnce or Economic Science. Ne\\ York: St ~lartins
Press.
Salisbun', Ricl13rd F. 1962. From Stolle 10 Sled Melbourne: Uni\ t'fsity of Australia Press.
Schneider, Harold K. 1964. "A ~lodcJ or African Indigenous Economy and Society." Comparative Stlldies In
SoC/ely 0111/ History 7: 37-55.
Shipton, Parker:\1. 2009., Horrgagil/g rile /Il/ce510rs: lder,{ogifS r{. }lIllthmm/ il/, ~(rictJ.1\e\\ Hayen: Yale Uniycrsit)
Press. The Lele l and the Bushong! are separated only by Nonetheless, a curious uiscrepancy appears in
Soyinka-Airewele and Rita Kiki-Edozie. 2009. Reframing COl/temporar)' .~{rica: Poli/ic.<, },'(O,,0Illi(5, and OJllllre the Kasai River. The two tribes recognize a com their respective assessments of their climate. The
inlltl! Glohal Era. Washington, DC: CQPress. mon origin, their houses, clothes and crafts are Bushong, like the local Europeans, welcome the
Wolf, Eric. 1966. Peasa"ls. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. similar in style, their langu;lges are closely related,3 dry season of mid-~'lay TO mid-August as a cold
Yct the Lele are poor, \\ hile the Bushong are rich. se,lson, whereas the Lcle regard it as danlSerously
The LcJc produce only for subsistence, sharing hot. The Bushong in thc north tend to ha\'e a dry
their goods, or distrihuting them among them season tcn days shorter (Bultot 1954) than most
selves as gifts and fees. The Bushong have long of the Lele (see Figure 8.1), and the Lcle soils
been used to producing for exchange, and their retain less moisture, and the vegetation is thinner,
native economy \Vas noted for its use of money and so that the impression of drought is more severe,
its specialists and markets. E\'erything that the but otherwise there seems no objecti\ ely measur
Lele have or can do, the Bushong ha\e more and able difference in the climate to account for their
can do beller. They produce more, live better, and attitudes.
popubte their region marc densely. There are certainly important differences in the
The first question is whether there are signifi soil, drainage and vegetation. The Lcle are dis
cant differences in the physical environment of tinctly less fortunate. Their soils belong to the
the two peoples. Both Ijve in the lat. 5 Degrees, most easterly extension of the Kwango plateau
in the a.rea of forest park merging into savannah, system, and to some extent share in the sterility
\\ hich borders the south of the Congo rain for characteristic of that region. On that plateau, the
est. The~ both have a hea\ y annual rainfall of soils are too poor to support an) thing but a steppe
1400 ro 1600mm (40 to 60 inches) per annum. like vegetation in spite of thc ample rainfall. The
The mean annual temperature is about 78 OF soils consist of sands, poor in assimilable minerals
(25 0q. As we should expect from their proximity, of an) kind, lacking altogel her in ferro-magnates
the climatic conditions are much the same for or heaY)' minerals, and so permeable that they are
both tribcs. incapable of benefiting from the hea\'y rainfall~

From ~lar~ Douglas, "The Lele: Resistance to Change," in Markers in ,~friw, pp. 211-33, ed. Paul Bohannan and
George Dalton (1962), from North\\estern Universiry Pre"s.
124 MARY DOUGLAS
o I
100
I
MILES
Figure 8.1 Average length of dry season expressed in days (From: F. Bultot - "Saisons et Periodes Seches et
Plu"ieuses au Congo IJelge." Bruxelles, 1954)
(sec Figure 8.2). On the Bushong side of the Kasai
River the soil is altogether richer, and mineral
deposits, particularly of iron ore, occur. \Vhereas
Lele country is characteri.zed b} rolling grasslands
with forest galleries along the river banks, Bushong
country is relatively well-forested, although the
sketch map tends to exaggerate the forested arca
on their side of the Kasai.
With such important differences in their basic
natura) resources, we :ue not surprised that Le1c
country is poorer and more sparse!} populated.
But ho\\ much po\'ert} and ho\\ 10\~ a density can
be attributed to the environmental factor: Can we
leave the matter here?
There is no certain method of estimating the
extent to which environment ilseU' limits the
de\e1opment of an area. The Pende of Gungu,
immediate neighbors of the Lele, inhabit an area
even poorer in soils than the Lele area, and as poor
as those worked by the notoriousl} wretched Suku
-80
of Kahemba and Feshi. The Lele are poor, bur the
Suku are known as a miserable, dispirited people,
incapable of exploiting to the full such resources
as dleir poor environment offers. The Pende are
famous as energetic culti\'ators, \\'ell-nourished
and industrious. All three peoples grow different
staple crops; the Pende, millet; the Suku, manioc;
the Lele, maize. There is ob\'iously no end to the
speculation one could indulg-e as to what the
potentialities of the environment might be,
Congo geographers have been much occupied
b) me question of the rclation between soil and
population density_ The whole Belgian Congo is an
area of vcr) 10\\ density. Fifty per cent of its surface
has a population of Jess than 2.4 to the square kil
ometer (roughl) 6 to square mile) (Gourou 1955: 4).
It is gcneralJy agreed (Gourou 1955 cites Cohen;
Nicolai 1952: 247) that there is a rough correlation
of poor sand} soils with 10'\ densities, insofar as the
small stretch of relatively more populous country
LELE ECONOMY COMPARED WITH THE BUSHONG
.,
! II
o Area of relatively less sparse population
~ Area covered continuously with forest
T11 Approximate extension of the Kalahari Sand
Figure 8.2 Population density and forest cover (Lele and Bushong) (From: N. Nicolai & J. Jacques - "La
transformation du paysage Congolais par Chemin de Fer" 1954 p, 112)
oceur~ in a favored gap between the Kwango "kala
hari" plate-au and sands to the north. However, it is
also agreed that soil poverty in itself is not an ade
quate e"planation of the pockets of extra lo\\' den
sit} \\ hich occur, especially on the second and fifth
parallels of South latitude. Professor GOLlrOU says
emphatically and repeatedly that the sterilit} of the
soils cannot be held to account for all the densities
of less than 2 to the square l;ilometer (5 to the
square mile) in the Belgian Congo (Gomoll 1955:
52,57,109; Nicolai 1952). In Northern Rhodesia
We have an illuminating casco The Ndembu live at
an average density of 6 to the square mile, in many
areas at a density of onJ) 3, but according to a care
ful calculation of the capacit} of their land, worked
according to their own methods, the area should be
capahle of supporting a population of from 17 to 38
to the square mile (6.8 to 15 per square kilometer)
(Turner 1957),
In short, we cannot assume, as some have done,
that there is any universal tendency to maximize
125
N
II
1
100
I I
MILES
food production (Harris 1959), or that the food
resources of a region are the onl} factor limiting
its population,
For the Lele and the Bushong the relative densi
ties are as follows. The territory of M weka, where
the Bushong ]i\'e, has an average density of 4-5 to
the square k.ilometer (11 to the square mile). The
BCK railway running through the area has attracted
an immigrant population of Luba. If we abstract the
railway zone from our figures, we find that the
Bushong proper live at a density of (Gourou 1955:
109) only 3 or 4 to the square kilometer (7-10 to the
square mile), The Lele 5 inhabit Basongo territory,
where tile average density is from 2 to 4 to the square
kilometer (5-7 to the square mile), but since the
Lcle account for only half the population (among
recent immigrants of foreign tribesmen to work in
the Brabanta oil concession, refinery and port, and
among Cokwe hunters), we can suppose that until
recently Lele themsch'es used to live at a mere 1.7 to
the square kilometer (4 to the square mile).
 126 MARY DOUGLAS
When the geographers agree thaI poYerl~ of
soil is not a sufficient e~planarion for the degree
of pO\'crry prevailing in .,imilar areas, we are justi
fied in looking for:1 sociological explanation to sup
plement the effect of environmental factors. For
one thing, it is obvious that the demographic fac
tor works two ways. Low density is partly lhe
result of inferior tcchnology, applied to illferior
resources, but it rna) also inhibit development b)
hampcring enterprises which need large-scale
collaboration.
If we now consider technoIOg), we find many
suggcsti\'e differences In certain processes marked
superiorit~ \\ould be likel) to increase output.
Others are proof of a higher standard of Jiving.
Surve~ing these, \\ e find that ill hunting, fishing
and hOllsebuilding, the Bushong worker uses marc
specialized materials and equipment than the
Lele, and in t:ultivation he spends more energy
,1nd time.
Take huming first, since the Lele are passion
atcly interested in it and pride themseh es on their
skill (Douglas 1954). In the eyes of their neigh
bors, it seems tbat they arc notorious as inefficient
hunters, particularl) because rhe) do not use nets,
and only rarel} make pit traps.
[[unting is the only occupation in \\ hich large
numbers of Lcle men regularly combine. They
reckon that fifteen to Illenty men and ten dogs are
necessary for a good hunt. Using nets, the Bushong
need a team of only ten men, and can hope to do
well with five. In short, the Bushong hunter uses
better capital equipment, and his hours of hunting
arc more producti\e.
Why should rhe Lele not have nets? The mate
rials are present in the forest on both sides of tJle
ri\'er, and the Lele k11O\\ what nets are. J\laking a
net is presumably a long tasl. In view of Ibe local
deforestation and the resulting paucity of game, it
rna} be a case in which cosl1~ capital equipment is
simply not worthwhile. Bushong nets are made b)
their women. Perhaps the rest of the ans\\ er lies ill
the different division of labor between mcn and
women in each tribe, and the larger proportion
of the total agricultural work which Lcle leave ro
their women. \Vhatever the reason, we note that
the absence of nets is consistent Wilh a general
T.cle tcndenc)' not to invest time and labor in
long-term equipment.
The same applies to pit-traps. Lele know how to
make these, and frequentl) talk about them. The
rask requires a sta) in the forest of several days an
nights, or regular early da\\ n journeys and latc
returns. The traps arc hard work to dig with onlY;l
hlunt matchet for sp'lde, and once set, they need to
be warched. In practice felV men ever trouble to
ma\..e them. I suspect that the reason in tlus case is
abrain that the amount of game C<lughl b) pit-traps
tends to be disappointing in relation to the efTon
of ma\..ing them, and that the 1.ele have felt dis
t:ouragecl when using a technique which is more
producti,'c in the thicker fort'Sts on the other side
of the ri\-er,
Lest it be thought that the Lele neglect capital
intensive aids because hunting is ,1 sport, a pleas
un:, and a religious activity, let Ill\: deny any
parallel with English fo~-hunling. The Le1ewould
have applauded the French Brig-'ldier of fiCtion
\\ ho used his sabre to slay me fox. Their eager
purchase of lirearms whenever they can !ttt the
money and the license shO',s that their culture
does not restrict them (0 inferior techniques \\ hen
these do not require long-term collaboration and
effort.
In fishing the Lele are also inferior. Their coun
try is \1 ell watered by streams and riyers, and
bounded on t\\O sit.les b) the greal Kasai, and on
the west b) the s\\ ift-flo\1 ing Loange. Along the
bank.~ of the Kasai arc fishing villagC!4 whose men
dot tl1e ri\ er \\ ilh elaborate traps and fishing plat
fomls. These lishermen are mostly Dinga, or
Bushong, and not oftcn Lele. In one northern \-il
lage, near the Kasai, Lcle women used to go elery
two days to the nearest Dinga village \\here, Jack
ing claims of \..inship, they obtained fish by barter
ing manioc. Compared with the Bushong the Lde
as a whole are not good at fishing, nor at canoe
11l;lking. There is no need to describe in detail the
divcrsity anu elaborate character of Bushong fish
ing equipment, bUI it is worth noting that in some
I) pes of fishing, using sC\'eral canoes nailing nets.
ule team rna) consist of twenty men or more.
These s].,llls may be a legacy trom their distant
ast, since ule Bushong claim to ha\e emered the
territory in canoes along the Kasai river, while the
Lele claim to have tra\'elled overland (Vansina
1956) and to have found the river banks already
occupied by Dinga fishing \ illages.
LELE ECONOMY COMPARED WITH THE BUSHONG
If the Lcle were originally landsmen, and the
Bushong originally fishermen, this might account
for more than the latter's present technic,l superi
orin in fishing. For primiti\'e fishermen are neces
sarily more hc;wily equipped than are primitive
hunters and culti\ators. The need for fishing
rocl.le, nets, lines, hooks, tTaps, curing platforms,
and for watercraft as well as for weirs and UWlS
makes quite a different bal,mce in the allocation of
timc between the consumers' and producers'
goods. If they started in this area with the typical
balance of a fishing economy, this may ha\ e meant
an initial advantage for the llushong in the form of
a habit of \\ orking for postponed consumption.
Oc that as it may, J .ele mostly leave fishing to
tJ1Cir women. Their simple metbod is to block a
sloll moving stream, so as to llIrn the nearest val
lc) into a marsh. In this they make mud banks and
ponds, \1 here they set traps for fish scarcely bigger
than minnO\\s. A morning's \Iork draining out
such a pond and catching the fish !loundering in
the mud yields a bare pint or so of fish. Tn the dry
season they make a two-day expedition to the
Lumbundji, where they spread a saponaceous
legetable poison over the low waters, and pull out
the suffocated fish b) hand, or in baskets.
As to housing, Lele and Bushong huts look
much alike. They are 10\\ rectangular huts, roofed
\1 ith palm thatch. The \\alls are covered with rows
of split bamboos or palm ribs, lashed onto layers of
palmleaf, on a frame of strong saplings. Decepti\e
in appearance, Lele huts when new look much
sturdier than those of t he Bushong, but in practice
the) last less well: the Lele hut is more foughl)
and quickly made. A \\ell-built one will last about
si\ years without repair, lind, as they are capable of
being renewed piecemeal, by the substitution of
new walls or roof t.hatch, they are not replaced
until the whole villllge is moved to a new site, and
the owner decides that he has neglected his hut so
long that it will not stand remo\"3l. A hut in good
condition is transported to a new site, \\;th from
sj); to eight men carrying tlle roof, and four at a
time carrying the walls.
Bushong huts an; also transportable. They arc
made with slightly different materials. For the roof
thatch, the}' use the lea\ es of the raffia palm, as do
the Lelc. For the walls, they use the repute.dly
mOn: waterproof leaves of a dwarf palm growing
]27
in the marshes. Over this, in~tead of palm ribs
split in half, the) sew narrow strips of bamboo,
where :l\'ailable. Lele consider bamboo to be a
tougher wood than palm, but it is rare in their
region. The narrow strips are held in place by
stitching in pleasing geometric patterns (Nicolai &
Jacques 1954: 272fT). :\ rich Bushong man, who
can command labor, can build ;\ hut that will last
much longer than the ordinary man's hut, up to
fifteen years \\;tbollt major repairs. The palace of
the "Iyimi at :\lushenge, \\ hich was still in good
condition in 1956, had been originally built In
1920.
The Bushong usc an ingenious technique of
\-entilation, a movable flap between the roof and
the walls, \\bich lets Ollt smoke. It is impossible to
sa) whether tlley do this because their building is
too solid to let me smoke tllter through the walls,
or \\ hctller they are more fastidious and painsta].,
ing about their comfort than the Lele, \\ hose huts
do certainly retain some of the smoke of their
{ires.
Within the hur, the furnishinb'S illustrate the
difference in material wealth, for the Bushong
ha\ e ,I much greater refinement of domest ic good~.
They sit on stools, lay their heads on caned neck
I'ests (often necessary to accommodate an elabo
rate hair style). The) eat from bas\..etry plates,
with iron or wooden spoons. They have a bigger
range of specializeu basketry or wooden contain
ers for food, clothing, cosmetics. A man who has
more than one hat needs a hat hox and a place for
his metal hat pins. Lcle do not make fibre hats, and
onl) a fe\\ men in the village ma) possess a sJ..in
hat. The beautiful Bushong caskets for cosmetics
are prized objects in man) European museums.
When a Lele woman has prepared some cosmetic
from C,uTI\loocl, she uses it at once, and there is
rarely enough left m'er for it to be worth storing in
a special container. Only a young mother who,
being cared for by her own mother after her deliv
ery, has nothing else to do but grind camwoocl for
berself and the baby, stores the prepared ointment
in a little hanging hasket hookeu into the wall,
enough for a few days.
DrVansina was impressed with the high protein
content of the Bushong diet, \\ ith the large qu:m
tities of fish and meat they ate, anu the variet'} in
their food. The Lele gave an impression of always
128 MARY DOU G LAS
being hungry, always dreaming of meal, often
going' to bed fasting because their stomach revolts
at the idea of a vegetable supper. They tall a lot
about hWlger, and ihilJve, all Wltranslatable word
for meatlessness and fishlessness. The Bushong
cultivate a wider range of crops ,md also grow cit
rus fruits, pineapples, pawpaws, mangoes, sugar
cane and bananas, which are either rare or com
pletely absent in the Lele economy.
In shon, the BlJ5hong seem to be better shel
tered, better fed, better supplied with goods, and
with containers for storing whal they do not imme
diately need. This is whal we mean by saying that
lhe Bushong are richer than the Lele. As to village
crafts, such as carving and smithing, the bcst of the
Lele products can compete in quality \\1lh Bushong
manufacture, but they are much scarcer. The Lcle
arc more used to eating and drinking Out of folded
green lea\es than from the basket plates and carved
beakers common among the Bushong. Their medi
cal instruments, too, are simpler. If, instead of cur
ting down a gourd top, they can-e a wooden enema
funnel for a bab}', the) make il as fine and thin as
they can, but do not adorn it with the elaborate
pattern found on some Bushong examples.
Before considering agricuhm'e, we should men
tion the method of :>toring grain, for this is a rough
index of output. Both Lele and Bushong houses
are built with an internal gr3.in store, suspended
from ll1e roof or supported on pOStS over the
hearth. Here grain and even fish and meat cm be
preserved from the ra\~lges of damp and of insects
by the smoke of the fire. Most Lele women have
no orber gra.iD store. Bushong women find this too
smaU and use external granaries, builr like little
huts, r3.ised a few feet above ground. These grana
ries, of whieh there ma) be nne or two in a Lete
vjJlage, are particularly characteristic of the south
ern Bushong villages, while in the north the huts
which arc built in the fields for a man to sleep in
during tbe period of he,wiest agricultural work are
used as tempc)rary granaries. The Lele are not in
the habit of sleeping in their fields, except to shoot
wild pig while the grain is ripening. This may be
another indication that ther do less agricultural
work than the Bushong.
When we examine the techniques of cultivation,
wc find many contrasts. The Bushong plant five
crops in $\Kcession in a s)'stem of rotation thal
LELE ECONOMY COMPARED WITH THE BUSHONG 129
covers two years. The) grow yams, sweet polatoes,
manioc, beans, and gatJlcr two and sometimes Table 8. I Annual cycle of work
three maize han ests a year. The Lele practice no Bushong Lcle
rotation and reap onl) one annual maize han est.
If we examine the l \\0 agricultural cycles, we sec DryS6rJSO ll
that the Bushong work cOlllinuously all the year, Mid-l\1ay llarvest beans, maize 11, yams. HUIll, weaye, Clear foresl for maize
and that the Lele have one burst of activity, lasting Clear forest dra\\ wine
abOllt si..x weeks, in the heig'ht of the dry season. Burn grassland for hunt
Here is the probable explmation of their dread June Hunt, fish, weave, repair huts
.Mid-Jul} to Aug. 15 Burn forest clearings, gather bananas Women fish in low \\arers
of the dry season. There is, in fact, surprisingly
and pineapple. Plant hemp Burn forest clearings
Iinle range in the average month.!y temperiltures
Hunt, fish, plant sugar cane Sow maize
duoughout the year. For the coldest month, July,
and bananas
it is only 2 C less than the hottest month, Januar~
Send tribute to capital pcriod of
(Van den Plas 1947: 33-8). Nonetheless, the
plenty
Europeans and the Bushong welcome the period
from mid-May to mid-August as the "cold sea WeI SeasQIJ
son," probably because the) enjoy dle cooler \1.id-August Lift ground nuts Fire grassland for h\IJlting
nights and the freedom from humidity. But the Sept. Sow ground nul. Sow maize I Sow vomdleia, plant manioc,
Le1c, enduring the sun beating on them from a CoHeet termites bananas, peppers,
cloud.!ess sky while rhey are trying to do enough Oct, sugar cane,
agricultural work for the whole year, suffer more pineapples (occasional)
from rhe dust and impurities in the annosphere Nov. and raffia palms in
~1id-Dcc. forest clearings \Iith maize
and from rhe greatly increased insolation. The
relatively cooler nights may make them feel the Lillie D~y Season
day's heat e\-en more intensdy. .\1id-Dec. 50\\ maize 11; sow voandzcia Grecn maize cal) be plucked
Apart from the differences in crops culti\'ated, Jan. SO\\ tobacco, SO\\ maize fI Maize han'est
we may nolC some differences in emphasis. Lele
Wei Season
give hunting and weaving' a high priority through
Feb. Lift ground nuts, sow beans, coHect Lift voandzeia
out the year, while tbe Bushong think of them as
termites and grubs
primaril) dry-season activities. Traditionall), the Reap maize I (Maill crop)
Lele used to burn the grassland for big hunts (in .\1 arch Reap maize I. 50;\ tobacco, beans,
which fi\'e or si'{ viJ.lages combined for tbe day) at yams, mallioc
the end of the dry season, when the bulk of their \prillO Mid-May Gather beans, sow voanclzeia and
agricultural work was done. If the firsl rains had lobaeeo
already broken, so much the berter for the pros
pects of the hunt, lhev said, as the animals would
leave their forest watering places to eat the new
shoots. At the end of the dry season is the time in cncouraged to sow maize twice, for harvesting in are now made w work lJ.uder than before, to clear
which tIle firing could do the maximum damage to November, and in April. Manioc is now mainly more land, keep it hoed, grow more crops. They
rJle vegetation, it has been forbidden by [he admin ['nmn in the grassland, inslead of in the forest never complain t.hat eurting oil-palm fruits inter
istration, and if permission is given at all, the firing clearings. There are some changes ill the plants cuI feres with their agTicultural program, only that the
must be over by lhe beginning ofJlIly. The Bushong ti\atecl. Voandzeia has been replaced by ground total of extra work interferes with their hunting.
used to bum the b'T3ssland in mid-Mayor early nuts, sollle hill rice is sown, and beans ill some Tills is not the place for a deta.iled study of
June, at the beginning of the dr\- season, when the pans. These are largely treated as cash crops by t.he Bushong agricultme, It is enough to have shown
sap had not altogether died down in the gTass. LeJe, who sell rhem to lhe Europeans to f-'aTJ1 money that it is more energeticaUy pmsued and is more
The cycle of work described for the Lde is for tax. The other occupation which competes for productive. One or two details of women's work
largely what the old men de;;cribe as lheir tradi rheir time is cutting oil-palm fruits to seU to tbe are useful indications of a different attitude 1'0
tional practice l1able 8.1]. It was Illodified by the 'fmlenes dlJ COl/go BeIge, whose lorries collect time, work and food. LeJe like to eat twice a day: in
agTicultural officers of the Bclg'ian Congo. Lelc are weekly from the yillages. Lelc complain tbat they the morning at about] I o'clock or midday, and in

130 MARY DOUGLAS
Ule eYening. They complain that their wives are
lazy, and only too often the morning meal consists
of cold scraps from the previous night; they com
pare themselves unfavorably with Cokwe, who are.
reputed to have more industrious wiyes. In prac
tice lie Lele women seem to be yery hardworking,
but it is possible that the absence of labor-saving
devices may make their timetable more arduous.
For example, one of their daily chores is to fetch
water from the stream. At the same time, liey
carry down a heavy pile of manioc roots to soak
for a fe'" days before carrying them back to the
village. Bushong women, on the other hand, are
equipped with wooden troughs, filled witb rain
water from the roofs, so dlat they can soak their
manioc in the village, without the labor of trans
porting it back and forth. Bushong women also
cultivate mushrooms indoors for occasional relish,
while Lde women rely on chance gathering.
Bushong women find time to do the famous
raffia embroidery, perhaps because their menfolk
help tbem more in the fields. Lcle men admiring
the Bushong Velours, were amazed to learn that
women could eYer be cle"er enough to use necdle
and thread, stiJlless make this elaborate stitching.
The Bushong culinary tradition is more varied
than that of the Lele. This rough comparison sug
gests that Lele womell are less skilled and indus
trious than Bushong women, but it is probable
that a time-and-motion study of women's and
men's work in the two economies would show that
Lele men leave a relatively heavier burden of agri
cultural work to their women, for reasons which
we will sho\\ later.
Another difference between Bushong and Lcle
techniques is in the exploitation of palms for wine.
Lcle use onl~' the raffia palm for wine. Their method
of drawing it kills the tree; in the process of tap
ping, they cut out the wbole of the crown of the
palm just at the time of its first nawering:. During
the few years before the palm has marured to this
point, they take the young yellow fronds (or \\ea"
ing:, and after drawing the 5.1.p for wine, the stump
is Stripped and left to rot down. Lele have no use
for a tree which has once been allowed to llower,
e:xccpt for fuel and building purposes. The life of a
palm, used in this way, is rardy more than five
years, although therc seems to be some range in the
different rimes at which indi"idual palms mature.
The Bushong also use th.is method on raffia
palm!', but the) have learnt to rap oil palms br
making an incision at the base of rhe large intlo",
rescene, a technique which does not kill the tree.
Presumably this technique could be adapted to
raffia palms, since the Yako of Cross River, Nigeria
use it (Forde 1937). But neither Lcle nor Bushong
attempt to preserve the raffia palm in this way, and
Lele do not draw any wine from oil palms, although
these grow plentifully in the north of their terri,
tory. According to Lele traditions oil palms "ere
very scarce in their countJ'y until relatively recentl},
and this may account for their not exploiting it for
wine. But here again, consistentl) with other ten
dencies in their economy, rheir techniques arc
directed to short-term results, and do not fully use
their resources.
To balance this picture of Lele inefficiency, we
should mention the weaving of raffia, for here, at
least, rhey are recognized as the better craftsmen.
Their raffia cloth is of closer texture th;tn Bushong
cloth, because they use fmer strands of raffia, pro
duced by combing in three stages, whereas the
Bushong only comb once. Incidentally, the fine
Lcle cloth is not suitable for Velours embroidery.
Lele take pride in producing a cloth of a regular
and fine wc<wc, ;'llld they refuse inferior cloth if it
is proferred for payment. A length of woven raffia
is their normal standard of value for counting
debts and dues of a.l.l k.inds. How little it has even
now become a medium of exchange has been
described elsewhere (Douglas 1958). Raffia cloth
is not the medium of exchange for the Bushong,
who freely used cowries, copper units, and beads
before they adopted Congolese francs as an addi
tional currency. Raffia cloth is the principal export
for the Lcle, whereby they obtain knives, arrO\\
heads and carnwood. This may explain why una
dorned raffia cloth holds a more important place
in the admitted.!y simpler economy of tlle Lele
than its equivalent in the diversified economy of
the Bushong.
If we ask now why one tribe is rich and the other
poor, the review of teeJul010gy would seem to sug
gest that the Lele arc poorer not only because their
soil is less fertile, but because they work less at the
production of goods. They do not build up pro
ducer's capital, such as nets, canoes, tnps and gra
naries. Nor do they work so long at cultivation,
-
LELE ECONOMY COMPARED WITH THE BUSHONG
and their houses wear out quicker. Their reduced
eff(Jrt is itself partly a conscq uence of their poorer
environment. It is probable that their soil could
not be worked by the inrensiYC methods of
Bushong agriculture without starting a degenera
tive cycle. IIunring nets and pit-traps are less
worul\\hile in an area poor in forest and game. But
certain other features of their cconomy cannot be
fully e.,,,lained as adaptations to the emironmcnt.
\\'hen Le1e timetables of work are compared
with those of the Bushong, we see no heav), sched
ules which suggest that there 'muld be any short
age of labor. Yet, their economy is characterized
parado~cal1y by an apparent shortage of hands,
"'hich conrronts anyone who seeks collaborators.
When a sick man wants to send a message, or
needs help to clear his fields, or to repair his hut,
or to draw palm wine for him, he will often be hard
put to find anyone whose services he can com
mand. "KIVa itallgU bo - No time," is a common
reply to requests for help. His fields may lie
uncleared, or his palm trees run to seed for lack of
hands. This reflects the weakness of the authority
stfuClure in Lele society, and does not imply that
eycry able-bodied man is fully employed from
dawn to dusk.
Some anthropologists write as if the poorer the
em'ironment and the Jess efficient tbe techniques
for exploiting it, the more the population is forced
to work hard to maintain itself in existence; more
prouuctive techniques produce a surplus which
enahles a part of the population to be ~upported as
a "leisure class."6 It is not necessary to ex;pose the
fallacies of this approach, but it is worth pointing
out that, poor as they are, the Lele are less fully
employed than the Bushong. The) do less work.
"\Vork," of course, is here used in a narrow
sense, relevant to a comparison of material wealth.
Warfare, raiding, ambushing, all planning of offen
sive and defensive actions, as also abductions,
seductions, and reclaiming of women, making and
rebutting of sorcery charges, negotiations for fines
and compensations and for credit - all these
ahsorbingly interesting and doubtless satisfving
acri"ities of Lele social life must, for this purpose
of measuring comparative prosperit)', be counted as
alternatives to productive work. Whether we C<lll
them forms of preferred idleness, or leisure acti\'ities,
or "non-producti"e work," no hidden judgment
131
of value is implied. The distinction bet\\"een
produclive work and other activities is merely used
here as rough index of material output.
If we ",ish to understand 'Ihy the Lele work
less, we need to consider whether any social fac
tors inhibit them from exploiting their resources
to the utmost. W'e should be prepared to fInd in a
backward economy (no less tban in our own econ
omy) instances of decisions inlluenced b) short
term desi.res which, once taken, may block the
rc-alization of long-term interests.
First, we must assess in a vcry general way, the
attitudes shown by the Lele towards the inconven
iences and rewards of work.
For the Bushong, work is the means to wealth,
and wealth the means to status. They strongly
emphasize the value of individual effort and
achievement, and they are also prepared to col
laborate in numbers over a sustained period when
this is necessary to raise output. Nothing in Lele
culture corresponds to the Bushong striving for
riches. The Bushong talk constantly and dream
about wealth, while proverbs about it being the
stepping'stone to high status are often on their lips.
Riches, prestige, and influence at court are explic
itly associated tog'ether (Vansina 1954).
On the other hand, Lele behave as if tbe) expect
the most satisf)ring roles of middle and old age to
fall into the individual's lap in the ripeness of time,
only provided that he is a real man - that is, nor
mally virile. He will eventually marry several
wi"es, beget children, and so enter the Begetter's
cult. His infant daughters will be asked in mar
riage by suitors bearing gifts and ready to work for
him. Later, when his cult membership is bringing
in a revenue of raffia cloth from fees of new initi
ates, his newborn daughter's daughters can be
promi~cd in marriage to junior clansmen, who will
strengthen his following in the village. His wi\"es
will look after him in his declining years. He will
have stores of raffia cloths to lend or give, but he
will possess this wealth because, in the natural
course of events, he reached the proper status for
his age. He would not be able to achieve tllls status
through wealth.
The emphasis on seniority means that, among
the Lele, work and competitiveness ,He not geared
to their longings for prestige. Among the Bushong,
largely through the mechanism of markets, through
132
MARY DOUGLAS
money, and through elective political office, tbe
reverse is true. It also means that Lele society holds
out its best rewards in middle life and after. Those
who ha\e reached this period of privilege have an
interest in maintaining the slalus quo.
All over the world it is common for the privi
leged sections of a community to adopt protective
policies, e\'en against their own more long-term
interests. We find traces of this attitude among old
Lele men. They tend to speak and behave as if they
held, collectively, a position to be defended against
the encroachments of the young men. Examples of
this attitude have been published everywhere
(Douglas 1959a). Briefly, secrets of ritual and heal
ing are jealously guarded, and even knowledge of
the debts and marriage negotiations of their own
clans are ddibercltely withheld from the young
men, as a technique for retarding their adulthood.
The old are realistic enough to know that they are
dependent ultimatel) on the brawn and muscle of
the young men, and this thought is regularly
brought up in disputes, when they are pressing
defense of their privileges too far: "What would
happen to us, if we chased away the young men'
'Vho would hunt with us, and carry home the
game? Who would carry the European's lugg-age?"
The young men play on this, and threaten [Q leave
the yillage until eventllally the dispute is settled.
Although it docs nOl directly affect the levels of
production that we have been discussing, this
atmosphere of jealousy bctween men's age-groups
certainly inhibits collaboration and should proba
bly not be underestimatetl in its long-term effects.
Lele also bclie\'e in restricting competition. At
the beginning of the century, the Lclc chief
NgomaNvula tried to protect the nativc textile
industry by threatcning dtath for anyone who
wore European cloth (Simpson 1911: 310). If a
Lele man is asked why women do not weavc or
sew, he instantly replies: "If a woman could sew
her own clothes, shc might rcfuse to cook for thc
men. What could \\e gilT them instead of clothcs
to keep them happy?" This gives a false picture of
the male contribution to the domestic economy,
but it is reminiscent of some modern arguments
against "equal pay" for both sexes.
Within the local section of a clan, restrictions
on entry into the skilled professions are deliberately
enforced. A young boy is not allowed to take up a
craft practiced by a senior clansman, unless the
latter agrees to retire. Tn the same clan, in the same
\'illage, two men rarely specializ-e in the same skill.
If a man is a good drummcr, or carver, or smith
and he sees an aptitude for the same craft in hi~
son or nephew, he may teach the boy all he knOllS
;md work with him until he thinks the apprentice_
ship complete. Then, ceremonially, he hands mer
his own position, with his tools, and retires in
favor of the yOlUlger man. This ideal is frequentlY
practiced. The accompanying convention, that ~
boy must not compcte with his elder kinsman, is
also strong enough to stop many a would-be spe
cialist from developing his skill. Lele openly pre
fer reduced outpUl. Their specialist craftsmen are
few and far between because they arc expected to
make maners unpleasant for rivals competing for
their business. Consequently the Lele as a whole
are poorer in metal or wooden objects for their
own usc, or for export.
Lastly, it seems that Lele old men have ne\er
been able to rely on their junior clansmen for regu
lar assistance in the fields. As a junior work-matc, a
son-in-law is more reliable than a fellow-clansman.
This is so for reasons connected with the pattern of
residence and the weak definition of authority
within the clan (Douglas 1957). An U1illlarried
youth has no granary of his own to fill, Work which
he does to help his maternal uncles, Llther, or
father's brothers, is counted in his favor, but he can
easily use the claims of one to refuse those of
another, and escape with a mjnimum of toil. Boys
would be boys, until their middle thirties. They led
the good life, of weaving, drinking, and following
the manly spans of hunting and warfare, without
continuous agriculITlral responsibilities.
The key institution in which the old mcn sec
their interests as divorced [rom tbose of the young
men is polygyny. Under the old system, since the
young girls were pre-empted b) the older men,
the age of marriage was early for girls (cleven or
twelve), and late for men (in their thirties). It
would be superficial to suppose that these arrange
ments were solely for tlle sexual gratification of
the old men. One should sec them as part of the
whole economic system, and particularly as one of
the parts which provide social security of the old.
The division of labor between the sexes leaves the
very old men with little they can do. An old woman,
LELE ECONOI,lY COMPARED WITH THE BUSHONG
-
bl' contrast, can earn her keep with many useful
s~T\ices. But old men use their rights over women to
secure neces.~ary services, both from \lomen and
from men. Through pol~'gyn), the principles of
melle dominance and of seniorit;. arc maintained to
thc end. To borrow an analogy from another sphere,
IIC could ;umost &1Y that the Lele have opted for an
ambitious old-agc pensions scheme at the price of
their general standards of living. We shall see that
the whole communi~ pays for the security iJl old
age which polygyny represents.
In the kingdom of ends peculiar to the Lcle,
I"arious institutions seem to receive their justifica
tion bt:C2use the~ are consistent with polygyny of
lhe old ml'n and delayed marriage of rhe young.
The latter were reconciled to their bachelorhood,
pard} by the life of sport and ease, and panly by
the institution of wifesharing by age-sets. They
\\ol;re encouraged to turn their attention away from
the young wives in their own villages by the related
cu~tom of abducting girls from rival villages
(Douglas 1951). Intcrvillage feuding therefore
appears 10 be an essen till part of the total scheme,
lI'hich furthermore commits the Lc)e to small
scale politic;l] life. The diversion of young men's
energies to raiding and abducting from rival vil
lages was a m.ajor cause of the low levels of pro
duction, for its effects were cumulative. The
raiding gave rise to such insccurit} that at some
times half the able-bodied males were engaged in
gi\ ing armed escort to the others. Men said U1at in
the old days a man did not go to the forest to draw
palm wine alone, but his age-mate escorted him
anll stood with his baCh to the tree, bowstring raut,
watching for ambush.
Coming from Bushong country in 1907, TOlday
was amazed at the fortified condition of Lele
villages:
Here, too, we found enclosures., but instead of the
leaf \\ ails II hich are considered sufficient among; the
Bushonga, rhe separatiom were palisades formed by
solid stakes driven intu the ground. Such a wall sur
rounded the whole \'iJlage, and the single enlJ"allce
was 'iO arranged that no more than one person \1 as
able to enter at one time. (Torda)' 1925: 231)
Simpson also remarked that Lele men, asked to
carT) his baggage from their own \'illage to the
133
lle."Xt, armed as if going into Strange country. Such
insccurity is obviously i.nimicalto trade.
We have started 1\ ith polygyny as the primary
alue to which other habits have heen adjusted,
because the Lele themselves talk as if all relations
between men are defined h} rights to women.
The point is the more effectivc since Ule Bushong
are monogamous. We know well that polygyn} else
where does not give risc to this particular accumu
lation of elTects. Are there any features peculiar to
Lcle poly gyny? One is the proportion uf polygy
nous old men, indicated bv the high rate of bach
elorhood. Another is in the solutions the) hal'e
adopted for the problems of late marriage. In some
societies with extensive polygyny, the institutions
which exist for the sexual satisfaction of the young
men; are either wholJy peaceful, or directed to war
fare with other tribes and not to hostilities between
villages. Thirdly, where the chain of command is
more sharply defined (as in patrilineal systems, or
in matrilineal societies in "hich offices are elective
or can) recogniuble political responsibilities, as
among the Bushong), then polygyny of older men
is less likely to be accompanied by attitudes of sus
picion and hostility between men's age-groups.
Having started our analysis with polygyny and
the high rate of bachelorhood, tracing the various
interactions, we find the Lele economy constantly
pegged down to the same level of production.
Something like a negative feedback appears in the
relations of old to young men: the more the old
reserve Ule girls for themselves, the more the
young men are resentful and elasive; the more the
young men are refractory, the more the old men
insist on their prerogatives. They pick on the most
unsatisfactory of the young men, refuse to allot
him a wife, refuse him cult membership; the oth
ers note his punishment, and eidler come to heel
or move off to another village. There cannot be an
indefinite worsening in their relations because,
inevitably, the old men will die. Then the young
men inherit Uleir widows, and, now not so young,
see themselves in sight of polygynous status, to be
defended b) solldarit) of the old.
So we finu the Lele, as a result of innumerable
personal choices about matters of i.mmediate con
cern, committed to all the inseeurit) of feuding
villages, and to the frusu-ation of small-scale polit
icallife and ineffectjl'e economy.
134 MARY DOUGLAS
If we prefer to start our analv~is at the otner
end, not with pol} g) ny but with scale of political
org-anization, we come to the same results. For
whatever reason, the Bushong developed a well
organized political system (Vansina 1957), cmbrac
ing 70,000 people. Authority is decentralized from
thc Nyimi, or paramount chief, to minor chief~,
and from these to canton heads, and from these to
villagc heads. Judicial, legislati\e, and administra
tive powers arc delegated down these channe-Is,
with decisions concerning war and peace held at
the center by the Nyimi. Political office is elective
or by appointment. Appropriate policing powers
are attached to leaders at each point in the hierar
chy. Leaders are checked by variously constituted
councils, whom they must consult. The Nyimi
maintains his own army to quell rebellions. Tribute
of grain, salt, dried foods, and money is brought
into the capitals, and redistributed to loyal sub
jects and officials. The chiefly courts provide
well-rewarded markets for craftsmen's wares so
that regional specialities arc salable far from their
sources. Even before the advent of Europeans
there \\'as a food-market at Musenge, the Nyimi's
capital. No doubt the Kasai River, protecting them
from the long arm of the Bushong Empire, is
p,lrtly responsible for the Lele's never having been
dr,lwn, \\'illy-nill)', into its orbit, aDd aceepting
its values.
The Lcle village, which is their largest autono
mous unit, is not so big as the smallest political
unit in the Bushong system. (The Lele villages
ayerage a population of 190, and the Bushong vil
lages 210.) True, there are Lele chiefs, who claim
relationship with Bushong chiefs. Each village is,
indeed, found within a chiefdom - that is, an area
over which a member of the chiefly clan claims
suzerainty. But in practice his rights are found to
be ritual and social. Each village is completely
independent. The chief has no judicial or mititary
authority. J Ie claims tribute, but here we have no
busy palace scene in which tribute payers flock in
and arc la\'ishly fed by the special catering system
\....hich chiefly polygyny so often represents.
\\'hen a chief visited a village, he was giYcn raf
fia cloths, as many as could be spared. Then the
villagers asked what woman he would gi\'e them in
return. He named one of his daughters, and tbey
settled a day to fetch her. The girl became the
communal \\ife of one of the age-sets, the WhOle
village regarding itself as her legal husband and as
son-in-law to the chief. Son-in-Iawship expreSsed
their relation to him until the day that he claimed
the girl's first daughter in marriage. Then the rela_
tion became reversed, the chief bcing son-in-law
to the Yillage. The raffia gifts and women which
went back and fOrLh between the chief and village
were not essentially different fTom those which
linked independent villages to one another in
peaceful exchange. None of this interfered with
the autonom) of the \illage.
The simple factor of scale alone has various
repercussions. There is no bdder of status up
which a m,ffi may honorabl} climb to satisfy his
competitive ambitions. There is no series of offices
for which age and experience qualif) a man, so
that in his physical decline he can enjoy respect
and influence and materi<ll rewards. The Bushong
lay great emphasis on individual effort and
achievement, but the Lele tr} to damp it down.
They ayoid Oyer! roles of leadership and fear the
jealous) which indiYidual success arouses. Their
truncated status system turns the Lele village in
on itself, to brood on quarrels and sorcery accusa
tions, or turns it, in hostility, against other villages,
so pronloting the general feeling of insecurity. The
latter makes markets impossible, and renders
pointless ambition to produce above home needs.
The old, in such an economy, unable to s,we, or to
acquire dignit} in their declining years by occupy
ing high political office, bolster their position hy
claiming the marriageable women, and building
up a system of rewards resen ed for those who
begat in wedlock. And so we are back again to
polygyny and prolonged bachelorhood.
This picture has been partly based on deduc
tions about what Lele society must ha\'e been like
twent~ years before fieldwork was begun. Before
1930 they could still resort to ordeals, enslave, raid
and cowJterntid, abduct \\'omen, and pursue
blood-vengeance with barbed arrows. The) still
needed to forti f) their villages against attacks.
By ] 949 the scene had cbanged. The young
men had broken out of their restraining social
emironment - by becoming Christians. They
enjoyed protcction, from mission and government,
from reprisals by pagans. They could marry young
Olristian girls who, similarly, were able to escape
-- LELE ECONOMY COMPARED WITH THE BUSHONG
thcil' expected lot as JUnIor wi\es of elderly
h-g\oists. Raiding \\as ended, age-sets were
po. ,._ .
nearl) finished. Old men had less authont\ eyen
than before. The young Christlnn tended to seek
e11lploy ment with Europeans LO eSC<lpe the
reproache!> and suspicions which their abstention
s taining the security and order necessary for pros
fro 111 pagan rituals engendered.
It would be interesting to compare their per
rorn13.Ilce as workers in the new and freer context.
One might expect that, a\\a) from the influence of
their old culture, Lclc performance might equal 0
surpass thaI 01" Bushong. Unfortunately the frame
work for such a comparison is lacking. Neither
tribe has a high reputation for industry \\ ith its
rcspective employers, compared with immigranl
C:ol.we, Luha and Pende \\'orkers. This may sim
pl~ be PL'C:luse lhe nest reput:ltions are earned b)
tribes \\hich have longest been accustomed to
\\a~e-Iabor-
One is tempted to predict that, in so far as it is
due to socia] factors, Lele are likely to change their
name for idleness and lack of stamina before long.
In J9.f9-S0 the) were not forthcoming in numbers
for plantation labor or for cuning oil-palm nuts.
ll\ 1954, when a scattering of small shops through
the lerritor~' had put trade goods within their
reach, the) had become eager to earn mOlley. Tlle
restrictive influence of the old social SySTem was
alreau) weaker.
We rna) now 1001. again at the demographic fac
tor, and distinguish some effects on it of the econ
omy and lhe political system. It is ob\'ious that in
different t) pes of economy, the actiye male contri
bution Illay have different time spans according to
the nature of the work. If there were a modern
community whuse bread\\inners were interna
tional sl.ating champions, footbalJers, or miners at
the coal-f'lce, their period of active \\ork would be
briefer than in economics based on less physically
exat:wlg tasks. A primiti\'e economy is, by defini
tion, one based on rudimentary tcchnology, and
the more rudimentary, the more the work consists
0(" pure!) individual physical effort. \loreovcr, the
simpler the economy, the smaller the scope for
managerial roles and ancillary sedentary work.
The result, then, is that the period of full, acti\'e
contribution to the economy is shorter."
Ifwe compare Lele :md Bushong economies on
these lines, we see that the "age of retirement" is
like!) to be earlier for the Lele. The typical
Bushong man is able, long after he has passed his
physical prime, to make a useful contribution to
production, either by using his experience to
135
direct the collaboration of others or in various
administrative roles whieh are important in main
perilY. The Lcle economy, on the other hand, with
its emphasis on individual work, gives less weight
to experience and finds less productive \\ork for
the older man to do. We can onl) guess at the dif
ferences, but it is worth presenting the idea visu
ally, as in Figure 8.3.
Furthermore, at the other end of the life span,
the same trend is increased because of the late
entry into agricult1lr31 work of Lele men. The
young Le!e is not fully employed in agriculture
unril he is at least thirty and married, the Uushong
man when he is twcnl). Figure 8.4 illustrates the
idea that the acti\'e labor force in the Lele econ
omy, as a proportion of the LOlal population, is on
both scores sm,lller than it is with the Bushong.
The total output of the econom~ has to be shared
among a larger population of dependants.
The comparison of the t\\O economies has
shown up something like the elTects of"backwash"
described by Professor l\ 1) rdal (1957). First we
sec that in the environment there are initial djsad
"amages which limit development. Secondly, we
find that in the socia] organization itself there are
further inhibiting efft~ts \\ hich are cumulative,
and which work one on another and back again on
the economy, technology and population, to inten
sify the initial disadvantages. We haye tried to
present the interaction of these tendencies in a
simplified form in Figure 8.5.
"Nothing succeeds like success." Somehow,
sometime, the Bushong took decisions which pro
duced a favorable turn in their fortulles and set off
interactions which resulted in their political
hegemony and their wealth. The Lele missed the
benefits of this civilization because of their loca
tion on the other side of the Kasai River, their
poorer soils, their history. The decisions they took
amounted to an accommodation of their life to a
lower political and economic level. Their technol
ogy was inferior, so th..:ir efforts were backed with
less efficient equipmenr, and their economy was
le~s produc1ive. Their old social system barred
 I ",

-
~V
"'hRY DOUGLAS LELE ECONOMY COMPARED WITH THE BUSHONG 137

man)' of the chances which might ha\ e faYOTed the river, depend on certain institutions, and
80 80
economic gro\\ tho these again on their history and environment.
Anthropologists sometimes tcnd to discuss the Through economic analysis we can brcak down
70 70
adoption or rejection of new techniqucs in terms the effect of choices, each made reasonably
of a cultural my~tique, as if dealing with irreduc enough in its own restricted context. By follo"l\"
60
60 ible principles, of \\ hich nCI analysis is feasible. 1O ing up the interactions of these choices, one upon
Thc Lelc may be taken as a case in point. Their another, we can sce how the highly idiosyncratic
50 50 preference for their own inferior techniques, in mold of LeJe cltlture is related to a ccrtain low

40 LELE 40 I BUSHONG spile of av. ,IIeness of better methods used across level of production.

LELE I ~ 30 BUSHONG 30
120 :\otes
20 I
The Lcle :Ire a tribe, inhabiring Ibe wesr border of the
Bakuba Empirc. They are divided into three chief
10 I 1-10
dom" of II hich unly the mosr westerly has been
slUdied. The Chief of the eastern Lele, at
Pcromincnge, apcs Kuba fashions in his linle capital;
Figure 8.3 i\gc of retircment [rum work Figure 8.4 Period of full work, showing age of the men \Iear basketry hats held on wirh metal pins,
enrr) into full agricultural responsibility the chief has some of rhe dress and paraphernalia of
the Nyimi. How much deeper this resemblance goes,
it is ImpoSllihle to say, since condirions at the lime of
I ENVIRONMENT fic.ld lIor~ \lere not famrable for study of rhis chief
dom. ElcT\thing that is said here concerning the
Ie rcfers to the western J.ele, whose chief; when
\i,its \\ere made in 1949-50 and 1953, II-as Norbert
Pero Mihondo. The field wor~ was carried out under
Rudimentary techniques of agriculture. Hunting, fishing, building. Low aut put.
rhe gencrous allspices of the International African
\ [ 1
Jnstiwle, and of the 111.<lillll d~ Recherche Seimlijique
IV '/I, ~(i'lqlle Cellimle.
Mobile population. V SOCIAL
ECONOMY The Bushong are tJ'e ruling tribe of the Kuba Kindom.
ORGANIZATION Thc) were'1udied in 195:>--S6 by DrVansina, to whom
Less investment in producers equipment I
5 According to P. Gourou, 1951) the average densit}
of the population of all tribes for the Basongo-Porl
rancqui region, in ",hich the Lc1e nOlI acCOunt for
only half, is 3 to of to the square J..jlometer. This
agrees widl calcuJations based on the total number
ofLeic in thar area, 'lbour 26,000, and the extent of
thcir rerrito!'), abour 63 by 110 miles, which give a
LeJe densit) of roughly of to the square mile, or 1.7
to the sq. km.
6 For thc mosr widely read statcln<:nt of this view, sec
HerskO\ its 1952 (Parr V, The Economic Surplus)
and for a Iisr of reputed subscribcrs ro rhis view, see
Harris 1959.
7 For example, Til' "sister-marriage" of rhe "man
}atta" of I he 'vlasai.
8 This process has been described in Dougbs
1959b
9 This approach was suggesred b) Linton 19ofO.
10 See Benedict (1956: 187): "l\mong primitive peo

Weak authority structure. I am deeply indebted for his collaboration and for ples, this lack of interest in 'progress' has been pro
shelter I tools I storage goods.

!lupplying unpublished informarion for this paper. verbial ... EI'cry primitile tribe has its own culrural
No fixed capitol assets.

According to the Lexico-starisrical survey conducted arrangements \\hich ensure irs survil'al ... They
Importance of seniority.
Shortage of honds for work of all kinds.
by Dr Vansina, there is an 80 per cel1l similarity may be culturally uninteresred in labor-saving
bel ween the mo languages. devices. Often the valuc they put on time is extremely
Little sustoined ecanomic coaperotion.
Polygyny of old men.
of Wc 3fe vcry grateful ro ~1. L. Cahen, Director of the low, and 'wisdom' is far more I alued than ellici<:ncy.
Unfavorable ratia of manual ta sedentary
Our cultural sysrem and theirs are orienred around
,tIllS"" "" CUI/go Be(I((, Tervuren, for guidance on rhe
work j lock of managerial or administrative

Prolonged bachelorhood ond physical em'ironmenl" of the two rribes. different ideals."
roles.

delayed responsibility.
Sexual division of lobor:women do ogriculture
ond women 5 skilled crofts not developed.
Homogeneous production.
Insecurity from intervillage worfare
Restrictions on output and on entry 10 Reference
skilled professions. Lorge percentage of men engaged in
defense. Bencdict, Ruth Douglas, fllary
No money. No markets. Distribution
1951 ''1\ Form of Polyandry among thc Lcle," AfricII,
1956 "The Gro\\th of Culnrre," in Mall, Culture /III"
according to claims of status
Smallness of political scale. Sflc;ely (H. Shapiro, ed.). Ne\1 York: Oxford University Vol. 21, pp. 1-12.
Inilial disadvantages resulting in low pro Pr~'Ss. 1954 "The Lele of rhe Kasai," in ,..Iji-i(all Worlds
"Backwash" effects making cumulat ive
ductivity and small-scale system. - - . .
contribution to law output. - - - __ Bultot, F. (0. Forde, ed.). London: Oxford University Press.
1950f "Saisons er Peri odes Seehes et Plul'ieuses au 1957 "The Pattern of Residence among the Lc1e,"
Figure 8.5 LeJc economy and social organ.izatjoll
C'm1;o BeIge." Brussels. -'Ilire, Vol. II, pp. 818-43.
138 MARY DOUGLAS
1958 "Raffia Distribution in t.he Lele Economy,"
Africa, \'01. 28, pp. 2 ff.
1959a "Age-Status among the Lcle," Zaire, Vol. 13,
8e(~'e J'EruJes Ciograplriqlles, Vol. 25, No.2.
pp.386-m.
Nicolai, II. and Jacques,].
1959b "The Lele oCthe Kasai," in The Church and I hI'
VatiflllS (A. H:1,tings, cd.). London: Sheed & Ward.
1960 "1110od-debts among the Lele," Journa! ~r the
Roya! Allllrropo!ogica! lmlirlt/e, Vol. 90, :-"0. I, pp. 1-28.
Forde, D.
1937 "Land and Labour in a Cross Ri\'('f Village,"
Ceoqrrrphica! Journal, Vol. 40, No. I.
Gourou, P.
1951 Arias general 1111 COllgo: tloli,c de la carre de 1(1
"ensile de I" popII!alioli /111 Crmgo-Belgl' el 1111 RUlillda
l/rrmdi. Institut Royal Colonial Beige.
1955 La Dmsite de !a poplilarioll rurale au COl/go BelKe,
de. Brussels: Acad. Ro). Sci. Col. .\tem. 8,1,2.
Harris, M.
1959 "The Economy Has No Surplus'" AmeriCClII
"Jl/rhmpologlJI, Vol. 61, 'Jo. 2, pp. 185-200.
!-Iers\':O\'its, ~l.
1952 Ecol/olllic AII/lrrupology. T!u EtOliomic Life of
Prilllillt'e Peoples. ~cw York: l\orton.
Linton, Ralph
19+0 "A ~eglected Aspect of Social Organization,"
Jmerican JOllmal ~r Socio!ogy, Vol. 45, pp. 870-86.
;\il)rdal, Gunnar
1957 Ecollomic Tlreory lind {fmlmln:clopcd Regions.
London: G. Duckworth.
Nicolai,H.
1952 "Probl~mes du Kwanl:(o," Bill/din de !a Socii/Ii
1954 La TransformatlOIl till paysage COl/galais POI' !(
C!lt/1II1l d.: Fer, L'E.w/lp!t "liB. c.K. Acad. Rov. Sci.
Col. Brusseb. Sect. des Sci. :'\1alU. ct Met!. Mcm. in
8, .\...'\1 V, L.
Simp.on,H.
191\ Lcmd (I lid Peoples of/Ire Klisai. London: Constable
& Co.
Torday, E.
1925 Oil the Truil of rhe Blis/wngo. London: Seeley,
Sen ice & Co., Ltd.
Turner. Y. W.
1957 Schirlll and Conlhllii/)' in all .tIfriran Society.
.\l~nchestcr: Manchester Uni\ ersiry Press.
Van den Pla~, A.
19+7 La n'lI/pera/llre au Congo Beige. Pub. ]\1inis.
Colon., pp. 33-38
Vansina, Jan
1954 "Les Valeurs Culturelles des Bushong," Zaiie,
No.9, pp. 900-910, November.
1955 "Initiation Riruals of the Bushong," Ajrica,
Vol. 25, pp. 138-52.
1956 "Migration dans la Province du Kasai," Zaiie,
pp.69-85.
1957 "L'Ltat Kuba dans Ie cadre des insritutions poli
tiqucs Afrieaines," 7ai'rt, Vol. 11, pt. 1. pp. 485-92.
9
Research on an African
Mode of Production*
Catherine Coquery- Vidrovitch
Until reccnrly, African traditional societies have one of the stages dcfined for Wcstern Europe:
gcncmll) been studied in isolation and with empha slavery, fcudalism, and capitalism. Sincc Marx and
sis on the particular. Economic anthropologists are Engels h:td outlined another mode of production,
the Asiatic, Marxists naturally thought of extending
only just bcginning to lmderstand the \..inship
SLructures of subsistence societies. I But by concen to Africa this concept hitherto used for societies
Ir,lting on the fact of subsistence, they ha\ e under of the Ncar East (EgYVt and Mesopotamia) and
estimated the importance of the organi'l.ation of Far East (China)3
production and of the social hierarchy. Subsistence, The Asiatic modc of production presupposcs
which is not autarch), does not imply the absence villages based on collcctive production and bound to
of a division of labour or of elementary methods of a "higher unity" in the form of a state capable of
'xchange, in particular, local food markets. These compelling people to work. Behind this "generalized
are not "class societies" as ~ lanists understand the slaveD," a despot "exploits these communities eco
term nowadays, and they difTer from pre-capitalist nomical!) while he rulcs them.'" The State becomes
Western societies in the absence of an) privatc an entrepreneur capable of massive public works
appropriation of the land. IIowever, throughout despite a limited technical capacity: irrigation sys
Mrica, they have gone beyond the ,rage of "primi tems (the liver states of the Near East), military
tivc community." Even the economic organization fence (the Great Wall of China), 01' prestige (the
of the Pygmies in thc forest is based on an exchange pyramids).; In this cxtreme form, the Asiatic mode of
of goods from hunting and gathering for the agri production is clearly not found in Black Afri<.:a. Even
cwrural produce of sedentary tribes. if we could compare certain forms ofAfrican despot
Thus the problem of a mode of production arises, ism with it, we would find ourselves without the
whieh evcn So\'iet historians2 hesitate to compare to dynamic element, the "generalized sl:tvcry," which is
Originall) published a, "Recherches sur un mode de production africain," La Pellsie, 1+4, EclitioI1s Sociales. P'lris,
1969. Tran,lated in M.A. Klein and G. W. Johnson (cds), Perspecrius 01/ rhe Jji-ican Past. I.iule, Brown and Company,
\e\\ )ork, 1972.
Fmm Cllherine Coquet') -\ idrovitch, "Re~earch on an African I\lode of Production". in Relillill/is ofl'rndllcrinn, pp.
261--R8, cd. Dal'id Seddon (1978), from Frank Ca.ss & Co. Ltd.
140 CATHERINE COQUERY-VIDROVITCH
found only perhaps in the massive constructions
of the "Builders of SLOne" in Southern Africa
(Zimbabwe, ele'enth to eighteenth centuries).
Conscious tbn some of the Asian characteristics
mentioned b} Marx are not found in BlackAfrica,
researchers have been generally reluctant to push
their analysis to its limits. Although tht} would be
reluctant to admit it, their problem is an excess of
respect for the master, who could not have analysed
societies which were unJ.."l10Wn in his time.
The most striking effort was Jean Suret-Canale's
attempt to dCS\..Tibc an Asiatic mode of production in
pre-colonial Black Africa in terms of an e\'olution
in three stages: the primitive cOlllllltlllil)' (\~hich has,
in fact, disappeared); the tribal or Irib()-patriardwl
structure of segmentary societies called "anarchic"
or "stateless," where the basic social unit is the
extended famil), and which is the tralLsition to
clearly differentiared dlls$ ,"'cielies, or stales in which
privileged ari~'tocracies seem to have created the
State above the patriarchal village. e
By elimination - since African societies were
neither slave-based (as the term is used in ancient
history) nor feudal - Sw'et-Canale compares their
system to that of Asian societies. He has to recog
nize the absence of derpOliS111, but is anxious to relate
the African mode of production to his general plan,
and hence give.~ a broad defInition of an Asiatic
mode of production: "The coexistence of aJ1 instru
ment of production based on the rural community
. and the exploitation of man by man in diverse
forms ... which consistently use the intermediary
of the commun.ity."
Suret-Canale assigns to the difference between
"a stateless society" and a State an imponance
which is now debated for Black Africa.) In addi
tion, his definition of a surplus exclusively based
upon the privileged class's appropriation of the
products of village labour appears to be erroneous
(we shall return to this later) and his definition of
all. Asiatic mode of production, if not false, is too
general since it omits the essential point: the moti
vating factor of the exploitation of man by man,
that is to say the kind of these "diverse forms."
A similar problem prompted Godelier, in a
study of the Asiatic mode of production,~ to dis
tinguish between "an Asiatic mode of production
with public wor.ks" and "an Asiatic mode of pro
duction without public works" The latter seems
more debatable. Once again this limited definition
omits the dynamic element from a mode of pro
duction, by leaving out its economic foundation at
the level of production. Tn fact, public works,
wllich surpass the means of particular communi
ties, create the conditions of productive actiyity
for these communities: "The State and the ruling
class directly intervene in the conditions of pro
duction, and the connection between productive
capacit) and production lies directly with the
organization of public worh 9 These public works
give rise to a bureaucracy and all. absolute power,
which is cenlTalized and 'despotic'."
Suret-Canale had already noted mat the states
of West Africa were set up differently: "the~ were
deally based on the union of a tribal confederation
(headed b) a 'king', the chief of the land), and a
1//arket to which the king gives security and from
which he takes an important part of his re\enue."j;
Godelicr is also aware that the rise of empires in
tropical Africa (such as mediaeval Ghana, Mali,
and Songhai) was not related to the organization of
public ~works but "to the control by tribal aristocra
cies of inter-tribal or inter-regional trade invohing
all. exchange of precious products - gold, ivory,
skins, etc.... between black and white Africa."11
Tn completing his presentation, Suret-Canalc
unconvi.ncingly eliminates the dynamic element in
African history which stemmed from foreign con
tacts. He resorts 1"0 a loca] example rather than to
scientific reasoning: his proof is the existence of the
lossi States in whose formation "trade appnrently
played no role whatever,"12 - which remains to be
verified. Godelier, on the other hand, accepts the
consequences of his analysis. He proposes "to add a
second hypothesis to that of Marx ... that there can
be another path and another form for the mode of
production, b~ which a minority dominates and
e\'"]1loirs the community without directly interfering
with their conditions of production, but by profita
bly raking a surplus in labour and in products."!.;
We are in complete agreement with this, and the
ubject of this article is to show why. We take excep
tion to the comparison between the ''Asiatic mode
of production" and the mode of production found
in 50me . .\ frican societies, and therefore will usc the
term "African mode of production." The only
thing the two systems have in common is the exist
ence of subsistence \-illage communities, In Asia,
however, it is a question of despotism and direct
exploitation through generalized slavery, whereas
RESEARCH ON AN AFRICAN MODE OF PRODUCTION
in Ali-ira, as we shall see, there is a superimposed
bureaucracy which interferes only indirecrly with
tbe communit). We do not see the necessity of
csamining these two types of production, which
diller in so many respects, together. By consider
ing the original features of both, and analysing the
productive relationships in Africa, it will be possi
ble to discern an ''African mode of production."
Long-distance Trading
Onc characteristic of African societies is that they
were ne\cr truly isolated. The African continent
has Known lWO major phcnomena: the mobility of
its people and the volume of long-distance trade.
\ligrarions - collective movements or progressive
infiltrations - carne to an end only in the colonial
era \Ihen colonial regimes fixed populations for
more effective poLice control or for such adminis
rrati\e goals as tax collection or the allocation of
lots for private property. Previously, dle history of
Africa was indistinguishable from the movements
of its peoples. These were partly attributable to the
existence of low population densities and large,
relatively open areas. Nearly everywhere, except
along the coasts, the land is open to movemem and
even the dense forest is cut by large navigable liv
ers such as dIe Congo.
Examples of movement are numerous. The most
spectacular was the Bantu expansion which over
flmved most earlier populations in the central and
southern part of the continent .14 The Fulbe, who
took refuge in the Senegalese Tekrur after prehis
tOric migrations from the Sahara., moved in the
opposite direction from the seventeenth cenlUlJ.
Today they are scattered from Senegal to Lake
Chad. The history of tbe Fang since the early nine
teenth cell. rury is that ofmovemenr from Cameroon
toward the Atlantic. ls Finally; there were Nilotic
movements which spread south from the Sudan
throughout eastern Africa between tlle fifteenth
and runeteemh centuries and perhaps their supe when C..ape Bojador, opposite the CallaT) Islands,
rior techniques reached tlle Lake Region, Karanga,
and Rhodesia,le [n brief, tbere is no ethnographic
monograph which cannot present for the people
studied a map of their origins marked with criss
crossing arro\\ s, symbols of ll,e complexity of its
successive and often recent migrations.
Follo'l ing these continual upheavals, African
societies were at all times under foreign influence,
1+1
which came from Egypt, from t.he Arab world,
from Europe, indeed, evcn from Asia. The herit
age of ancient Egypt spread into Nubia, to Napata
and then to Meroe (the Kingdom ofKusb, 600 Be
to AD 300), and from there to thum in Ethiopia.
Southwest Asia looked to East Africa, \\ hich
offered a reserve of manpower, a place for immi
gration, and numerous early ties. From the ninth
century on, members of persecuted sects tool..
refuge on the Coast. Kilwa, in Swahili country, is
said to have been founded in the tenth century by a
group of Iranians. Other places along the coast
Mogadiscio, Mombasa, Malindi, Pemba and,
further south, Sofala (opposite Madagascar), \\hich
were great centres of Arab mercantile activity, at
least llntil the Portuguese discovery, had a compa
rable origin. Indian merchants, between the elel'enth
and thirteenth centuries, had enough influence to
introduce their system of weights and measures,
and their money practices to the region, and in
Kilwa, enough to even bring all. advenrw'er oftheir
choice (AI I lasan ibn TalUl) to power in tlle thir
teenth century. In the South, even before Lslam,
Mnlayan canoes opened the way to the Cornaro
Islands and Madagascar, and Malacca had regular
rclations with the wcstern coasts of the indian
Ocean from the nintJl and tenth centuries. Finally,
t.he Chinese ar least twice made cont.act with East
Africa, in 1417-19 and in 143 J-33, and the archae
ulogical discovcries of Chinese and Persian pot
tery are numerous enough for tllis to havc been
written: "From the 10th centur) onwards, the
buried history ofTangan)ika is written in Cllinese
porcelain."I;
In West Africa, contacts with the Maghreb were
even earlier: in 734 an expedition from the SOliS
reached Sudan, Contacts were established which
were nel"er broken: in 757-58 the founding of
Sijilmassa in southern 1\ lorocco opened the Sudan
road for the gold caravans. As for the Europeans,
the) moved along the coasts from 1434 (the date
was crossed) to 1487 (when they doubled the Cape
of Tempests, later the Cape of Good Hope).
These contacts led to long-distance commerce
across the Sahara and the Indian Ocean. This can
not be reduced to external factors: the Arab con
quest, the Portuguese Exploration, or the colonial
impact. The~' profoundly affected the interior too by
encouraging the collaboration of coastal kingdoms
14 CATHERINE COQUERY-VIDROVITCH
(slave-traders, lor example), and of inland tribes
"ho acted as intermediaries. in the Congolese basin,
merchandise got through long before white men
did, preceding the half-breed Portuguese traders,
ule "pombeiros" who had been trickling toward
the Pool along the caravan trails since the end of the
1ifteenth century. In the Gabonese back country, the
people of the Ogooue had European-made textiles,
pearls, and "nepnmes"'" in their possession. The
Fang of \Voleu-Ntem, an aJ"L"'a barely penetrated
before the twentieth century (within the borders of
southern CaJlleroon), had guns from trading before
anyone there had eyer seen a white mm.l~ Likewise,
during his mediaeval Sudanese empires, the people
of the [orest regions, including the Gold Coast,
whose mi.nes were opened in the mid-fourrecnth
century by Mande initiati\'e. had received merchan
dise ofMaghreb origin (glass beads, salt) in exChaJIge
for i.ron ore, ivory, or kola nuts which had been
sent up North.
It was not necessary for trading to achie\e a
large volume in order to exercise great innuence.
History shows, however, that it often reached con
siderable proportions: gold and salt in medieval
West Africa, or the gold and copper e..xported via
the .Monomotapa, rulers of an empire cenued in
the bend of the Zambesi ri\-er and Sofala on tlle
Indian Ocean. Tn addition, there were slave traders.
At least 10 to 20 million were sent to the Atlantic
trade between the sixteenth and nineteenth centu
ries.!" The trans-Sahara trade to the Ottoman
empire was at about 10,000 a year in the ninetcentJI
century (compared to 70,000 sent to Americafl
and in the same period, large numbers were being
shipped from the Congo basin to Zanzibar and dIe
Indian Ocean trade.
A Critique of the Traditional Contrast
in Black Africa: Stares versus Stateless
Societies
The economic life of pre-colonial Mrican soc.ie
ties was characterized by the juxtaposition of two
apparently contradictor) levels: the local subsist
ence \illagc and international, even transconti
nemal commercc. This economic phenomenon is
paralleled by and inseparable from a polltical one
pointed om by Balandier, the conflict bctween a
kinship-based tribal structure and a territorial
organization with centralizing tendencies.'" Does
that mean we must link (as Suret-Canale implic
Itly does) first subsistencc to "tribo-patriarchal"
or stateless society and, second, long-distance
trade and the marc or less despotic state) The
analogy is questionable. In order to show this, We
shall limit ourselves to a few examples. Let histo
rians and anthropologists make the case which
will permit us to verify what in our present state
of knowledge must be considered a research
hy pothesis.
Anthropologists haye certainly proved to what
degree kinship structures are associated with the
economic structures of subsistence. Segmentan
socicties, until recently placed in tllc poorly
defined and poorlv studied category of prirnitiYC
"classless socicTies," show themselves on closer
malysis to be rather diversified. Once again, it j~
Balandier who reminds us that in Black Africa "all
societies are heterogeneous to \arying degrees."';
This primiti\'e community IS madc up of "social
strata" which are invohed in "antagonism, com
petition and conflict"H in its simplest form, it is
the domination of the elder o\er the you.nger, the
elder controlling the means of production because
they can dcmmd that the younger "remit the
product of their labour"15 They can exclusivcly
hoard or exchange "presrige goods," "hich rein
force their position - and, thus, we have a proccss
of accumulation in the \'illages, capable of de\el
oping and accentuating inequalities. This is not a
full outline. It is sufficient to underline the danger
of denying tl1at subsistence is "an economic, sci
entific, and i\larxist category" because "it is only a
\'oid, the absence of a market economy and marker
goods.,,2b Such a ncsrative definition risks the
rejection of "all pre-capitalist societies ... in the
vague concept of traditional soCiCty,21 which
would explain in part the lack of interest shO\\ n I!I
this problem b) Europocentric historians, includ
ing Marxis.ts. We find no such strong refusal in
i\ 1arx himsel f. On the conlrary, he states That
Ihe specific economic form in which unpaid sur
plus lahour is exacted from the (lirect producers
... is Ihe basis of any/orm o./l!trmo7/l;c community
and, at the same time, the basis of its spa;li,
poli/;(al Joml. It is always necessary to seek the
hidden foundation of any sorial cdijire, and
RESEARCH ON AN AFRICAi, MODE OF PRODUCTION
consequently, of any political form which draws
its relationship from soYcrcignry anti depenuence
in the immediate relationship between the man
ager of rhc means of prouuction and the direct
manager (a connection whose different aspects
nMuralI~ correspond ... to a fer/alII degree of pro
ductive social force).1'
Is it necessar), on t1le contrary, to associate long
distance trading and centralized power? Tbis
seems much more dubious. To be sure, the most
,triking examples have been studied within states:
Ghana and .'>[ali were tied to trade with Maghreb;
Benin and Dahomey experienced a similar dcvcl
opmcnr with the slave-trade; Zanzib,lr flourished
in the nineteenth century Ilith slave and ivory
trading in East Africa. But recent studies prove
that long-distance trade influenced the most
di\'erse societies. Along the Congo River and its
main tributaries (the Oubangui, Sangha, Likouala,
.\Iima, to mention only the north bank), trade was
the only medns of existence for certain segmentary
peoples. In the sixteenth centur) trading took
place between ilie Porruguese and tbe Kongo
Kingdom ,ituated on the south of the Congo. But,
by 1850, the Iattcr no longer existed. Beyond the
Bakongo ()f the coastal zone, trade had reached
the Battke of Stanley Pool, and, fLUther up-river,
the Bubangi who lived \1 here tbe Sangha and
Oubangui rivers met the Congo.?? There, the
pawer of the chief rarely extended beyond the vil
htgc or fraction of a \iUage. Nonetheless, these
river people, isolated on knolls along a complex
s~ :item of lagoons, constjtuted a dynamic whole;
unable 10 earn a living from the marshy soil, they
IUmed to !Tade in local food products and in slaves.
n the upper Alima, the Bubangi (locally called
Lakuba) set up temporary enC1tmpments for the
dry season and traded abnut 20 tons a da) of
manioc from the Batekes of the plateau anti the
\'lboehi of the river. In rerum the) offered the
fruit!> of their acti vity: mats, potrery, paddles, nets,
harpoon.-;, md dried fisb \\ hich the)' produced in
large amoullIS.
With these activitie~, which were indispensable
to thc maintcnance of their position in this srrate
gil;, though harrcn area, they combined dle.i.r role
as agents for long-distance Congolese trading: in
exchange for Europem merchandise, thcy received
143
ivory from Likouala. Further upstream came
slaves, wood, ivory and, before long, rubber from
thc Sangha and the Oubmgui. Important m,trkets
developed arolmd Pool and along tbe rivers. These
products were provided by similar segmentar)
g-roups operating further upstream. The inhabit
ants of the forest knew that the ri\u came from
"the land of \\hite men" armed \I;th guns, who
were certainl) Arabs. This fact, a.J1longst ot1lers,
confirms the extent of Congolese trade which
handled products and men over great dist'Ulces.
No marter what societ) is examined, the perma
nence of Trade transcends the tnditional contrast
between states and stateless societies. Balandier
has already ShOll n the coexistence of apparent!)
contradictory elements at the heart of all African
politics, state or stateless. In both, all forms of
transition can be discovered. To be sure, there is
a progress toward centralized organization, but
the difference is qualitati\e rather than essential;
even in Ihe most "despotic" societies (mediaeYal
Sudanese kingdoms, the Kongo in the sixteenth
century, and Dahomey in the nineteenth century),
the authorir) of the sovereign never replaced rhe
tribe-patriarchal organization. At most, it involved
a su.perimposed hure,lUcracy, which respected the
structures of rural life. To recognize tIlls trait
common to all African societies is, at the same
time, to seek its economic basis. One of the motives
of African histor) is to be found in t1le dialectical
interplay, or the absence of interplay, between
apparently heterogeneous socio-economic levels
within the same unit (the coexistence of corrunu
nal clan structures and territorial entities, the
superimposition of subsistence and long-distance
trade). At any given moment, their history reveals
a certain stage of development in these relation
ships, whose contradictions were perpetually g-en
erating disequilibrium and conflict.
Toward an "African Mode of
Production"?
By taking into account these specific traits it
becomes possible to discern an African /I1ode IIJ
prodlloi(JTI distinct from the classic model of the
Asiatic TIll/de ulprodu(/;r!l1.
Black Africa, ,IS we have stated, never had m
!\siatic type of despotism. That does not mean
JH CATHERINE COQUERY-VIDROVITCH
that there were no aristocracies or privileged
classes. But the rulers who had power in ,arious
places were hastily identified as "absolute mon
archs" by Ewopcan obseryers. The demands
which they made with the aid of the ruling class
were neither, nor exclusi,cly, wrought on "the
hard-working peasantry, made up both of free
men and captives," which was, in Africa, as else
where, "the fundamental exploited class."3o To be
sure, there were exceptions. In pre-colonial
Senegal the families which had power also pos
sessed rights to land and to work from the peas
ants (as a collectiYity, however, with neither the
exploiters nor the exploited considered as
individuals).ll In Burundi, property (livestock and
pastures) was controlled by the 1/l/si at the expense
of the 1111111. This suggests a relationship of a feudal
nature. l2
IIowevcr, it seems excessive to seek the only
motive for this dc, elopment ofAfrican societies in
the productiYc forces of a subsistence economy.
Such a statement, which seeks within African
society thc opposition of exploiters and the
exploitcd re,eals a lack of observation of the actual
data. Black Africa is the one place in the world
\\here agriculture was least liable to produce a sur
plus. Agricultural and craft techniques were par
ticularly rudimentary (no wheel nor plow: the only
tool was the hoe). The necessity of improving pro
duction with the aid of new tools or large public
works was never felt. A rather sparse population
was able to meet its needs \\-ithout too much effort
from land which was abundant, though not fertile.
No ruler, in order to live, ever needed to take food
from villagc production ill quolltily. At most, he
was content to organize for his own benefit the
labour of his wives (the case of Dahomey, for
example), and "domestic" slaves, but this was not
comparable to what has been called the "slavery
mode of production." The tribute levied by the
hest-organized despots (the kings of the Kongo
,1l1d Dahome) ) does not seem to have been used as
payment for services or to prO\ ide labour needed
on tasks of public utility. It is not certain th.:Jt trib
ute was regularly used to feed the people of the
court, and nothing indicates that it was even used
as a public aid fund to which those in need could
appealY In the Kongo, the King and the nobles
redistributed what they had received among vassals
who requested it H In Dahomey, the "customs
festival," an annual ceremony celebrated since the
eighteenth eentur} in honour of the royal ances
tors, fulfilled the same function. It was an occasion
for the sovereign to collect the tribute but, abo\e
all, to danle his assembled subjects for several
weeks with the dynasty's wealth and boum~; either
by the public sacrifice of hundreds of sla\es;\5 or
by the distribution of spirits, poured out itl grt'at
quantities, or of cowries (local money) and cloth
cast out from public platforms. Of, In brief, the fees
demanded were, above aU, of symbolic value, a
guarantee of the social structure. Not that the rela
tionship of exploiters to exploited did not exist;
rather the African despot exploited his subjects
less th:1O the neighbouring tribes. In fact, it W.\S
long-distance trading which provided the majM
part of his surplus. From this point of vie\\", the
customs festival was not a retrograde institution
which limited or paralysed European contacts
on the contrary, it stimulated the economic lite of
the country and encouraged the intense trading
acti\'ity necessary to supply this "fair" with all
sorts of products (slaves in exchange for European
merchandise). Let us not be reproached here for
excessively favouring the mode of cireulalioll oj
good.l at the expense of the mode ofprodllctioll; the
fundamental problem was not to transport mer
chandise but to procure it - in a certain sense to
"prOduce" it. It was e\idemly a bastardized form
of production, both immediate and apparent,
which was in fact ruinous, since, in the long run, it
sterilized tbe country instead of enriching it.
There were two ways of procuring goods: war (in
the case of sla\e raids),37 or peaceful exchanges
witb neighbouring peoples (the case of salt and
gold in the Sudan), a type of externallv oriented
exchange comparable to a form of production and
opposed to circulation within a given society.
Suret-Canale noted the basic role of trade in
Black Africa, "the decisive element in the consoli
dation of the first states in tropical Africa."J8 He
has not sufficiently explored its significancc, how
ever, because of his concern to establish direci
domination of the aristocracy over the peasantry.
The control of long-distance trading demanded
the subordination of the bulk of the population to
those who benefited from it. Yet the comrul exer
cised by the ruling class was manifested i17direcIO"
RESEARCH ON AN AFRICAN MODE OF PRODUCTION
b\ the exclusive possession of goods which were
a~eumulated in a process analogous to the way
"prcslige goods" are often amassed by the elders
in .1 subsistence society: for example, red cotton
!;I\)ric from Europe which the Bateke chiefs kept
tor their funerals iY and weapons accumulated in
the arsenals of the Sultans of Haut-Oubangui.
Furrhermon:, indirect domination did not exclude
its coroll,II'Y, direct domination, especially in the
case of the gun trade, which conditioned them
both. In acquiring arms, the sovereign assured
himself of control of military enlistment, tbe pay
ment of tributes and the work of the plantations
"hich in turn promoted the accumulation of an
exportable surplus (for example, palm oil culti
\"iltetl by the king's plantations in Dahomey since
the mid-nineteenth century). But, let us repeat,
the major revenues came not from \illage commu
nities, but from outside the territory, from the
annual raids or from peaceful commercial transac
tions \\hich secured products at rates much lower
than their actual value. Thus, life in the kingdom
of Dahomey was marked by military expeditions
launched each dry season towards the Ashanti in
the West or the Yoruba cities in the East, in order
to bring b,ICk the slaves required by the economy.
Tbjs was also true in the Kongo and probably ill
Benin. In central Africa, the Likouba (Bubangi)
obtained manioc from the Bateke and the Mbochi
'\n ridiculously low prices."~1J At Stanley Pool they
resold the red wood, the ivory and the slaves
brought upstream at five or six times, indeed, per
haps ten times the price.~1 Even in the case of tbe
empires founded on mineral wealth (gold from the
Sudan or from southern Africa), the ruler's prob
lem was not to impose on his subjects a collective
effort to extract the ores. It was to obtain, at a low
price, a metal sometimes located far from his ter
ritory. Neither the King of Ghana, nor the
Emperor of Mali controlled the producers who
probably operated within a hunting and gathering
economy, They knew even less about them because
of silent barter. This oft-described process forbade
the two parties to enter into direct contact. The
mercha.nts who came from the North displayed
their merchandise (salt) in a specific place and
then they withdrew. The next morning, opposite
each object they wanted to sell, they found an
amount of gold-dust. If they thought tbe offer
145
sufficient, they took the gold; if not, they touched
nothing, until a supplementary amount was added
or, if their demand was too high, it was all taken
away. When the Emperor of Mali had one of the
traders carried off in order to discover "wh.1t kind
of men did not allow themselves to be seen or to be
spoken to," the only result \I as the suspension of
trade for three years.'z In addition, Arab "Titers
reported absurd stories about cannibals or
deformed savages who worked the veins of gold
after the rains.... H In southern Africa, the ore
bearing sites spread from Katanga to the Limpopo
arc more extcnJ>ive than the ruins of the "stone
builders," which testify to a political organization
around Zimbabwe and :'v1apungubwe (South
Rhodesia) and seem to corroborate an analogous
hypothesis of "production" by trade rather than
by direct exploitation.+!
The African mode of production is based then
upon the combination of a patriarchal-communal
economy and the exclusive ascendancy of one
group over long-distance trade. The form of power
at any given moment depends upon the nature of
this group. If political authority was in the hands
of the heads of kinship groups at the village le\cl,
their preeminence was then uncontested. In the
case of the Fang or the Bubangi, it was onl) threat
ened bv the ri\"aJry of small groups involved in the
same trade. Tn the middle Congo, the system col
lapsed only under the pressure of externa.l factors:
the intrusion of Europeans who seized control of
trade for their own profit and eliminated the tradi
tional middlemen.
If, on the other hand, in a more differentiated
political system, a privileged class succeeded in
controlling long-distance trade by means of a
hereditary caste or because of an accumulation of
capital, the regime combined the tribo-patriarchal
system and a new kind of territorial ambition. The
mediaeval Sudanese empires, for example, were
characterized by the utilization of traditional ani
mist structures by an Arabized aristocracy which
controlled trade. It would be an error to imagine
these to be Islamic states (especially since Ghana
was already declining when Islam took root). The
function of these empires was to control and
exploit trade between the western Sudan and
North Africa. Their gmtl was domination for profit
and this economic objective allowed them to
146 CATHERINE COQUERY-VIDROVITCH
realizc their political form. The ruling class was
interested in presenting a M.oslem facade, through
the organization of its Courts ,md the pilgrimages,
which would favour good relations \\ith the
Maghreb, a client and supplicr. J Jowever, Islamic
proselytizing woulu have thn.-atened internal sta
bility. We have no evidence tbat Islam had a solid
base outside of the large cities; on the comrary,
even within monarchical institutions the Jescrip
tions left by Arab geographers show that the lead
ers felt the neeu to graft their power onto a
typically pagan structure, probably of Mande ori
gin. Hence dIe pomp \\ bich surrounded the King,
the rites he had to follow (not to drink in public,
not to conversc directly with his subjects ... ), and
the submissi\c demonstrations of his dignitaries
(who prostrated themselves in the dust or per
formed sacramental dances in honour of the sov
ereign). To abandon these traditions would have
provoked hostility, since the masses were anached
to patriarchal forms. The e\'olution of the empires
resulted from the equilibrium bemeen these two
antagonistic currents: in Songhai, for example,
Sonni Ali (H64-92), a champion of militant
paganism, aroused a ]\loslcm reaction against
himself. To be sure, he subdued the whole loop of
the Niger river, but tbe history of the Empire
became a con~tant competition between pag:ms
and tv loslems, which weakened the state and
encouraged the :'\Ioroccan conquest in 1591. This
rC50hed the conflict by uniting all in resistance in
the name of the animist cause - but at the price of
economic supremacy.4S ...
When a pri\ ilcged group or a despot lost con
trol of long-distance trade this eventual I) led to
the decline of his political power: this was the case
in the Kingdom of the Kongo. At first it ()\\,ed its
cohesion to the King's monopoly of long-distance
trade which prohablyexisted within central Africa
'rom the twelfth century: lumps of sea s,t1t were
carried inland, as well as lhe "zimbu" ~helllish
from the isle of Luanda which was useJ as money.
On the other hand, raffia mats and ivory \vere
received at the Pool from forest areas. When the
ruler lost control of trade \\ith Europe, he also lost
control of outlying provinces. Chiefs on the coast
from Loango and Soyo north of the river's mouth
to Angola in the south profited by the Jistance
from the capital to seize control of markers, with
the aid of Portuguese merchants from Sao Tome.
From the sixteenth century on, these peripheral
coastal peoples gradually freed themselves. The
vassals became brokers, and from this tTade theY"
tool.. a power \vhich pcnnitled them to compet~
with the authority they henceforth rejected. 4b
The examples presented do not in themselves
claim to establish a general law. In the present State
of our knowledge, they arc si.mply an effort to
explain the coexistence of contradictory political
and economic elements. This coexistence \\as
undoubtcdl~ explained by the preference of lhe
minorities in power to exploit their neighbours
rather than their subjects. No African political
regime, no matter how despotic, fell the need to
liminate communal yillage structures within their
borders which did not interfere with their exploi
tarion. As long as the \ illage transmilled its tribute
to the chief of the district or of the province, it ran
Lhe life of the collectivity as it pleased. The elders
assured the worship of the clan's ancestors; the
chief of the land allotted arable land to each family
and to each generation; groups of women domi
nated the local food markets. There was no need to
supply the ruler with a contingent of plantation
labourers or porters, tasks generally performed by
royal slaves seized in toreign countries. The most
frequent obligations were limited to military scn'
ice, or, as in Dahomey, the selcction of some girls
for the harem of the "Amazon" corps, the elite
female warriors of the King.
To be sure, in many African societies trade
played a lesser role; this was the case of the Gouro
of the hory Coast, evcn though kola markets
existed and played a dynamic role. Trade was a \vay
for the younger Gouro, who controlled it, to chal
lenge the supremacy of their c1ders.~; In any C,tse.
wherever trade was limited, it seems that nothing
endangered the "tribe-patri<ucbal" structures
because nothing was capable of assuring enough of
a surplus. As to the "military hegemonies" which
prevailed elsewhere, were they as extraneous to a
long-distance trade economy as is said? For exam
ple, it would be necessary to study further the role
played by the little knO\\11 merchant class in the
'v1ossi kingdoms. Elsewhere, pastoral occup~llinns
encouraged thc development of lhe Fulbe. hy
favouring the accumulation of wealth in the form
of livestock. \\ hate....er might be said of them. their
RESEARCH ON AN AFRICAN MODE OF PRODUCTION
prosperity lust manifested itself in active cattle
murkers. The Fulbe States, heirs to Ousman don
Fodio. especially, controlled in the nineteenth
centur), and no doubt before that, the slave lrade
which supplied all of Sudan \\ith slaves.4~ It is not
nece.ssar~, however, to require identification of
ever} thing. We admit that in Africa tnere were
SC\cralrypes of ascendency by a ruling class over
the rest of the population: control of long-distance
trade olien implied militarv power (for example,
the sla\'e-trade kingdoms). -"10 doubt the latter
prc\~liled, sometimes by itseJf in certain "parasitic
milit3r~ States" (Buganda, for example, where the
State appeared to be a war machine designed to
plunder slaves.. cattle, and prestige objects destined
for the chiefs, the military officers, and the bra\'est
warriors, thereby making possible the mobilization
of 3 lar!-re part of the population for two annual
campaigns).'? It would also be necessary to distin
!;uish between West Africa and the inter-lacustrine
;onc. In the former, land was controlled collec
rive!) bv Ule village community (only the King of
Dahome~ in the nineteenth century asserted his
right of eminent domain, when he took O\'er land
tor the palm plantations sought b) Europeans).
In the laner, phenomena akin to the appropriation
orland by tbe ruling class are diseemeu quite early
(the case of Ruanda, for example).
These examples prove the need for more case
studies. ft woulJ be equallv desirable to begin a
comparison with other so-called subsistence soci
eties, beginning with the Maghreb. There we also
find this juxtaposition of two economic systems
impenious 10 each other on the village and on the
State level. Perhaps we could then also clarif) the
reasons for a dichotomy which has struck all
'\friean historians: the invariability of the commu
nal bases of subsistence as opposed to the illstabil
ilY of the socio-political level. The second term,
ahhough inseparable from tJle first, could be
explained b~ other factors. It might arise from the
complex imerpby of diverse elements. Among
these, lon!!-<lislance trade was among the most
dynamic, but also the most vulnerable, since it was
suhject to external as well as internal factors.
WI: Can see how much the "-friean mode of
production, which cannot be reduced to the pre
capitalist modes of production in the West, is also
radicall) different from those of Asia, because
147
there is no true despotism directly exploiting a
peasant class.\ fmal problem remains: the possi
ble evolution of this mode of prouuction. It h,IS
often been suggestcd that the Asiatic mode of pro
duction was doomed to stagnation. Godelier. on
the contrary, insists tbat the movement of a societ\'
toward an Asiatic mode of production, revealing
the emergence of a fluid class structure "is the
greatest advance of producti\c forces possible on
the basis of carlv communal forms of production."
Evolution beyond this stage (providing that it is
not petrified at this stage), could onl} come frolll
the working our of it.s internal contradictions.
Class structures would progressively take prece
dence mer communal ones, through the de\"clop
ment of private property.;11
Can a comparable evolution of the African mode
of production be concci\ed? Stagnation is more
frequent than elsewhere, for the productiv'e forces
are not real forces. Founded upon war or trade,
production is sterile. To be sure, a surplus is guar
anteed for the privileged class. but it is an apparent
surplus, whose long-term price is the impoverish
ment of the country. The Sudanese Empires dis
appeared without leaving a trace, as soon as
commerce was rev ersed, the trade to the North of
gold for salt, being redirected to the Guinea area
discovered by the Portuguese, \\ here gold and
then sla\'es were traded for European merchan
dise. The States founded upon the sla\e trade were
finally overcome by that which created their pros
perity: the Kongo, starting in the seventeenth cen
tury, Den in, even before the eighteenth century,
and the Ashanti Confederation (Gold Coast) in
the ninctecntll century. Is that to say that the
'\Erica mode of producti.on \\as condemned 10 be
engulfed, or to be disintegrated? In one case at
least, that ofDahomey, it was capable of evolution:
King Ghezo agreed to renounce the increasingly
uncertain slave trade in the middle of the nineteenth
centur) in favour of a "legitimate commerce,"
encouraged by Europeans and b;l.sed upon actual
production: palm oil and palm kernels.
Sufficient accumulation of capital allowed him
to de\'elop huge plantations under his direct
control. It was the beginning of the passage to a
mode of production hay ing some characteristics
of the {wrien regime (most labour was servile,
supplied by annual slay e raids), and certain
 CATHERINE COQUERY-VIDROVITCH
148
forms akin to feudalism, but with monarchy
increasingly claiming the right of eminent
domain oyer property. By the carefully main
tained confusion between "lands of the king
dom" and "lands of the king," he proceeded to
the private appropriation of land. The peasants
were compelled to maintain trees and collect oil;
the IOpO lOok care of applying strict regulations.
Those who possessed palm groves were obligated
to take care of the soil and han est the fruit,
7 to more archaic forms to the gre,lter profit of the
under penalty of a fine or loss of land. They
could not cut a palm tree without royal authori
zation. Palm oil made the kin~ wealthy through
taxes levied on trade. His subjects owed him a
tax in kind on the oil sold, estimated at one
eighteenth of lhe harvest. Special officials, sta
tioned in the various cities, collected the taxes
which multiplied in Dahomey. In Allada, the
former capital, every vessel which passed through
SI
"the large and the small," \\as taxed
Notes
Espccially Claude Meillassoux "Essai d'interpretation
du phenomene Cconomiquc dans les societes lTadi
tionnellcs d'autosubsislence." CI/hins rrill/drs
-,'lJi-irailtes, 4, pp. 3-67, 1960, and AlllhTllpolligit'
cClI/llllllique lies GOlJro de Ciitr-d']vllirr (paris 19(4).
2 On Ihe openin~ of the debare on rhe Asiatic mode of
production in the So\iet Union, see J. Chesneaux
"au en cst la discussion sur Ie mode de production
asiatique.lJ," LII Pel/sce, 129 (1966).
3 On this, sec the synthesis of J, Chesneaux: "Le mode
de production asiatique. Quelqucs perspeclives de
rL'Cherchc." 1,,1 Ptnsee, 114 (I96-l). "Ou en cst la dis
cussion sur Ie mode de product.ion asiatique?," La
Pensce, 122 (1965). "au en cst ... 11," 129 (1966). "au
en est ... III," 138 (April 196R), pp. 21-42.
4 J, Chcsncaux: "Lc IVI.P.A. quelques perspectives ... ,"
La. Pensie, 114 (196-l).
5 eh. Parain: "Protohisto;re mediterraneenne el mode
de production asialique," La Prns/:e, 127, pp. 26-27
(1966).
6 Jean Surer-Canale: "Les societes traditionnelles en
Afrique noire et Ie concept du mode de production
asiatique," La Pm.lee, 177, Pl'. 19-42 (1964).
7 Whate\u type of society is considered, political
institutions are based upon principles of descent
and (WO categories of relationships - lineage and
political - always appear both complementary and
Would this development have been possible
elsewhere? Tt seems to be outlined, at least, in the
inter-lacustrine area - a system with feudal ten
dencies in Ruanda, based on the capitalization of
(,illlle. All this was shattered by the conquest, which
altered relationships between the colonizers and
the colonized and caused African societies to mo\e
toward a capitalist system which was "adulterated
in that capitalist relationships were closely linked
privileged.";z However, these examples indicate
that one A.frican society was no less capable than
any other of assimilating elements from the 'Vest,
and of overcoming its contradictions, provided
that she could control herself the transformation
of her economy. By substituting the exploitation of
the palm groves for the destructive slave trade,
Dahomey was integrated into a new economic sys
tem without a shattering of its equilibrium. It
began by altering the mode of prod uction.
antagonistic. G. Balandicr: .'lnrltr(Jplllogi~ poliliC/lle,
Paris 1967, p. 61.
8 M. Godelier: 1.11 lIn/illll de mode rle prorluClion asia
lique rIles schill/as mat.l'isl,s d'el'fl/Illioll des soril'ri.<.
C.E.R.M., Paris, 1963.
9 Godelier, liP. Cil., p. 29.
10 Surel-C1I1ale: "Les soeietes uaditionnelles
op. cil., p. 37.
11 Godelier,op. CII., p. 30.
12 "This h)pOlhesis is ima1idated b) the e).jstence of
rhe 1\lossi States ... ," Surct Canale,op. cil., p. 37.
13 Godelier,op. cil., p. 37.
H J, H. Greenberg: DI/7/guagesofAfriC/l (Bloomington,
1962).
15 P. Alexandre: "ProlO-histoire du groupe bero-bulu
fang: essai desymhcse provisoire," Co/iicrsd'EllId,'s
A/rimilles, V, 1'1'.503-60 (1965).
16 Oliver and Mathew: HiSlllry 0/ Easl A/nea, chap.
VI. "Discernible dc\ elopmenrs in the interior. c.
1500--1840" (London, 1962), PI'. 169-211. It
Oliver and J. D. Fage, A shurt hiSIOl)' ~r /~Fic"
(London, 1962), p. 52.
17 Sir Mortimer Wheeler, "Archaeology in East
Afr;ca." Ttwlfllnyika nlltes fwrl rccords, -lO p. -+6
(1955). G.S.P Freeman-Grenville has done impor
tant studies of mane) found on the coast, which
confirms commercial contactS with Yemen, Arabia
RESEARCH ON AN AFRICAN MODE OF PRODUCTION
and Asia. Cf. "East African coin finds and their
historical significance," JOllrnal o/.JJi-ican Hislory,
I, PI' 31--14 (1960). On the history of the contacts
between East Africa and the Indian Ocean see
Auguste Toussaint: jJi.llOry of Ihe Inrlian Oceall. Tr.
bv lane Guicharnaud (London, 1960); 1\. Villers,
[It; JntliOlI Ocean (Lundon, 1952); J. M. Gray,
J/iJlof)' o/Zallzibllr[rom lite Middle Ages (London,
J 962); G.S.P. Freenl<1n~GTell\'ille, The medille-oal his
M)' of Ihr 7imgllllyi{'a masl (London, 19(2); J.-L.
Du) \cnda~, Cltina's disco1"e(Y 0/ Africa (London,
19-19).
JS Grt'ilt plates of embossed copper which were used
for money, L"Spcciall) for the payment of dowries
(originally produced by the Purtuguese, they were
in use untillhe 20lh ccntur~).
19 C1therine Coquery-Vidru\'itch (ed.), Bmzza er 1
pme /h posS"..\Sillll dll CllllglI (Paris: V1outon, 1970).
20 For a long time it was estimated at 20--50 million.
Philip Curtlll cstimates that 10 million would
be the maximum. See The Alltllllic slave lrade
(:\Iadison, 1970).
21 A \du Boahen: Brillli", I"" Saluna lind lite J+'esurn
Slid/Itl (London, 1965).
22 G. Balandier: ,1nrhmpologie polilique, 01'. ci/.
21 Ibid. p. 93.
H Ibid 1'.93
25 Cf j\\eillassoux: .'Illlhropolllgie fmuomiqlletles COl/re,
op. (1/., p. 217.
20 Surcl-Canalc: "Structure et anthropologic
economique," La Pcnsel', 135, p. 99 (1967). In say
in!Z tlus, Suret-Cwale evidently !!OCS beyond his
0\\ n line of thought, since he has deyoted himself
to an analysis of the "tribe-patriarchal" society and
has defined the prodUClit'e forces based on commu
nal agriculture: "Les societcs traditionnellcs .. ,"
Lu Pel/sie, J17, pp. 19-42 (1964).
21 Hence Godelier's contradiction: he reproaches
Meillassoux while accusing him at the same rime
nf oYer-emphasizing "the fact of inequality ... m
most classless societies." "A propos de deux textes
d'anlhropologie economique," L'hollltt/c (1967),
p.86.
2S \ Ian: Le capital, III, Ed. Soc., PI'. 171-2. On this
SUhjL"Ct see Parrain: "Proto-hiswire mediter
ranecnne ... ," 1,1/ pcnsee, 127, p. 26 (1960).
2<) G. Sautrer: De rAllantique all jleuve COtl/!o (Paris,
1965), pp. 2l5-325.Alsosee: C. Coquery-\,idro\itch
(cd.), Bmzza rt la prise dr possessiull till Congo, op. cil.
and J. \'ansina: "Long-distance trade routes in
Cenrr~1 Africa," JOim/ai ~r/IFical/ HiSlllr)', lll, 3,
375-90 (l900).
30 J, Surcl-Canale: "Les soci6tcs traditionnclles .. ,"
01'. cil., La Pensee, 117, p. 30 (19M). Godelier
149
cxpresses the same thing in an analogous, although
less categorical, form: the aristocracy, "assures the
bases of its class exploitation by the deduction of a
part of the communities' product (in work and
goods)," L/l tllllion de M.P.,1. .... lip. Cil., p. 30.
31 KaJidou Deme: "Les classes sociales dans Ie Senegal
pre-coloni'll," La Pel/See, 130, p. 17 (1966).
32 J,-J. Maquet: nle premise 0/ inequality ill Ruallllfl
(London, 1961).
33 Peter C. Lloyd: "The political structure of African
kingdoms," Polilical s)'slems /II/d lite disiribulillll IIf
pon>cr (London, 1965), p. 78.
34 W. G. L. Randles: L'allcim rll.J'alJmc: dll COllgo des
mgine.l Ii la jill dll XIX siccle, Chap. 5, "La fiscalite"
(Paris, 1969).
35 About a hundred each year, and more than five
hundred for the grand Customs Festi,al celebrated
the year of rhe King's funeral.
36 Coquery-Vidro,itch: "La fete des contllmes au
Dahome), historiquc et essai d'inrerpretation,"
AnI/ales, -l, pp. 096-716 (l96-l).
37 "War, ijJhicil is olle o/Ille forms 0/ prodllCljOll, in a
characteristic fashion generates what is called
'parasitic-military States' found in f\ncient limes
as \\cll as in the .\liddleAges." G.-A. Mclekechvili:
"Esclavage, feodalisme et mode de production
asiatique dans rOricnr ancien," La Pensee, No. 132
(J967). p. 41.
38 Suret-Canale: "Les societes trad;tionnelles .,"
LII Pellsee, No. J 17 (1904), p. 30.
39 G. Sautter: "l"e plateau congolais de Mbe," Ci,IIicrs
d'Etudes,-Jfricuilles, No.2 (1960), p. 37.
40 From the testimony of European observers. C.
Coquery-Vidro\ itch (ed.), Brazzil ella pri$( de pos
sessiol/ rill Crwgll.
41 A knife bought for 3 bars of copper in lkelemba
was resold for 60 bars in Bonga; a s!<l\c bought for
20 bars was resold for 400--500 bars. Ibid.
42 A. Col' da 1\losO: TIle r~)lagcs o/CadulllosllI. Tr. and
ed. G. R. Crone (London, 1937).
43 See the evidence in: AI-Bahi, 1068: DeSmpI/lnT de
L'./frifjlll, trans. (Algiers, 1913), p. 381; Al-Omari,
1338: D'/Jfriqlle //Ioil/s I'Ef!,yple, trans. (Paris, 1927),
pr. 70-1; A. Ca' dOl r- tosto, TIre VO)'lIges ...
44 See R. Summers: AI/ciellt .I1millg il/ Rhodesia
(Salisbury, 1969).
45 J. D. rage, "Some thoughls on state formation in
the Weslern Sudan before the 17th cenrury," 8Mlon
UI/iv. Papers ill AJi-ica.n J1istll/y, I, pp. 17-34,
1964.
40 W. G. L. Randles, Chap. IV, "1.'conol11;c"; Xl,
"Les consequences de I'ouverture de la nouvelle
frontiere," of!. cil.
47 Meillassoux: AlIlhrllpolllgie (oll/Olt/ique ... , op. cil.
150 CATHERINE COOUERY-VIDROVITCH
-Ill C. Coquery-VidroYitch: "La politi que fran~aise en
I lame-Sangha," Rt1'llejhm(l~isc d'hiS/lliIT d'outre-lIIer,
186, pr. 29-31 (1965).
49 D. Spcrber: Lcs pa)'slllls-clicrlt5 au Bugallda, Com
munication au Colloquc du Groupe dc Recherche
en :\l1lhropulogie el Sociologic Politique (eRASP)
(Paris, 29 \1arch 1968). 1I0wc\'cr, this thesis
assumes that lluganda was more independent of
commercial relationships with the coast than
Dal10mC) or l\shanri, \~hich C:Jn be debated.
10
50 M. Godelier, lip. cir., pp. 31-33.
5J C. Coquery-Vidro\~lch: "Lc blocus de \Vhydah
(1876-1877) et la ri\alite fr,mc-anglaiseau Dahome\ "
Cahiers (I'Etlldes .,1Iricaines, n, p. 38+ (1965). .,
The Cattle of Money and the Cattle of
52 Y. Lacoste: Cillgraphi,' dll sens-dinloppemelll, pp.
230-31, Paris, '965.
Girls among the Nuer, 1930-83
Sharon Hutchinson
\lone~'s uniqueness, Simmcl suggests, lies in its
ability 10 extend and diversify human interde
pendence while excluding everything personal
and specific (1978[1900]:297-303). r-.loney dis
tances self from other and self from object, gener
ating within the individual dissident feelings of
self-sufficiency and alienation, powerlessness and
personal freedom (Simmel 1978[1900]:307-11):
In as much as interests are focused on money and
to the extent that possessions consist of money,
the individual will develop the tendency and feel
ing of independent importance in relation to the
socia.l \\hole. He will relate to the social whole as
one po'" er confronting another, since he is free to
rake lip business relations and co-operation wher
ever he likes. (SimmeJ 1978[1900]:343)
The "close relationship between a money
economy, individualization, and enlargement of
the circle of social relationships" enables the indi
\'idual 10 buy himself not only out of bonds with
specific olhers but also, Sirnmel notes, out of those
bonds rooted in his possessions (1978[1900]:3+7,
+031T.1. As "the embodiment of the relativity of
From Sharon Hutchinson, "The Cattle of Mone} and the Carrie of Girls among the Nuer 1930-83," America 11
EIJIIlOlo~isl (1992),19(2): 294-316, reproduced with permission frornAAA.
existence," money drives a wedge between "pos
sessing" and "being": "through money, man is no
longer enslaved in things" (Simmel 1978[1900]:
409,307,404).
While Simmel welcomes elimination of the
personal element of exchange as the gateway to
"human freedom" (1978[19001:297-303), he is
acutely aware, nonetheless, of the potential insta
bility, disorientation, and despair generated by
money's perpetual wrenching of the personal val
ues from things. The development of a money
economY, he notes, encourages avarice and other
socially detrimental forms of possessive indi,-idu
alism (Simmcl 1978[1900]:247). Moreover. as
money's empty and indifferent character \\-cars
away the "direction-giving significance of things,"
individuals strive, Simmel observes, to reimest
their possessions with "a new importance, a deeper
meaning, a value of their own":
If modern ma n is free - free beca use he can sell
ever} thirrg, and free because he can buy every
thing - then he now seeks (often in problematical
vacillations) in the objects themsehes that vigor,
stability and inner unity which he has lost because
152 SHARON HUTCHINSON
of the changed money conditioned relationship
that he has "ith them, (SimmclI978[1900]:404)
For Marx, in contrast, money is a "privileged com
modity" to the extent that the congelations of
human labor embodied i.n all other commodities
come to express their values in it (1967[1867]:93),
The dc,'elopmem of "a 'money-form' of commod
ity exchange" is thus critical, he argues, for the
recognition of human labor and producti"e pow
ers as an abstract totality and, concomitantly, for
the creation of a universal labor market
(1967[1867]:35-84), Yet in making possible the sale
of human labor as a general commodity, "a 'mon
ey-form' of commodity exchange" also facilitates
relations of exploitation and alienation \\ithin the
production process by effectively disassociating
the ,'alue of concrete labor from the value of the
products it can produce (Marx 1967[1867]:167ff,
195-8), The monetization of production relations,
in other \\ords, tends to intensif~ the "fetishism'
inherent in simpler forms of commodit) e.xchange
by further obscuring the subjective relatization of
the contribution that the producer males to the
product. For it is "just this ultimate money-form
of the world of commodities," \1an states, "that
actually conclC'als, instead of disc!osi.ng, the social
character of private labor, and the social relations
between individual producers" (1967[1867J:76),
]n brief, money plays privileged symbolic as well as
material roles in the transformation of "direct
social relations between individuals at work" int.o
"material relations between persons and social
relations between things," a transformation that
lies at the heart of Marx's analysis of capitalism
(Marx 1967[1867J:73),
In this article, I draw on the theoretical perspec
tivcs of M.arx and Simmel in an effort to under
stand how a particular came-raising people in
Africa, the Nuer of southern Sudan, ha\e creatively
incorporated "a 'money-form' of commodity
exchange" into their culture and social life over the
last half century. Following Marx, I highlight social
and economic processes connected ~ith the spread
of colonialism and of capitalist relations of produc
tion unded) ing the gradual empowerment of
money in I\uer eyes, Yet I also aspire to a more phe
nomenological wlderst:mding - a la Simmel - of
money's enigmatic qualities as variously perceived,
experienced, and evaluated by Nuer, lIow have
tht.'lle people been grappling with the allegedly
"liberating" and "alienating" potentials of a rap
idly expanding regional money economy?
In exploring thC!>e issues, I will concentrate on
hO'1 Nuer have gradually interdefined cattle and
money so as to create a unique system of wealth cat
egories, Significantly, this systcm appears to exceed,
both in complexity and in inncr dynamism, any
thing pre' iously reported in the burgeoning litera
ture on the "commoditi7..ation" of human/cattle
relations in other parts of Africa (see, for example,
ComarofT and Comaroff 1990; Ferguson 1985;
jI"lurray 1981; Parkin J980; Sansom J976; Shipton
1989), Unlike the "one-" and "two-way barrier"
systems recorded among the Basotho (Ferguson
1985) and the Luo (Shipton 1989) respectively, this
system of wealth categories docs not pivot on a sim
ple opposition between "cattle" and "cash," Nor
may it be characterized as an unambiguous attempt
to dam the corrosh'c flow of cash, as appears to be
the case among the southern Tswana (Comaroff and
Corn.1Toff 1c)90:2 I2), Rather. '\Tuer attitudes toward
money appC'ar far more ambi"alcnt and contextually'
differentiated, Although individuals may "resist"
equating money with cattlc in SOme contexts, they
actively seek out and use money in others as a means
of tempering instabilities and inequa.lities within
the c."<lttle econom) itself Tn developing these points
here, [ tJ') to show how the various wealth catcgories
collecti,'ely devised b) Nuer facilitate movements of
money and cattle between "market" and "non
market" spheres of exchange at the same time as
they affirm the existence of an axiological boundar)
between these spheres, I also reflect more generally
on how the increasing use of money b) Nuer has
contributed o"er the last half century to a profounJ
reevaluation of the place of cattle in their !i,'es, All in
all, it is hoped that this article will enrich our appre
ciation of the myriad ways in which market and
non-market forms of consciousness and sociality
are empirically ennl ined in the world today,
On the Oneness of Cattle
and People: 1930
According to Evans-Pritchard (1940,1951,1956),
the Nuer of the early 19305 were almost totally
absorbed in the care, exchange, and sacrifice of
THE CATTLE OF MONEY AND THE CATTLE OF GIRLS Ai,iONG THE NUER
their beloved cattle, few Nuer at that time under
stood the concept of currency; fewer still under
stood the impersonal principles of market
exchange; and literally no one parted willingly
with;) cow for money, Wage-labor opportunities
were uni\ersally spurned as being tantamount to
slavC!), Rather, people at that time were bound to
thcir herds in an intimate symbiosis of survival
([';lns-Pritchard J 940: I 6-50), "Iutual "parasites"
is hO\I Evans-Pritchard characterized them
(19.J.(1,36), Whereas cattle depended on human
beings for protection and care, peoplc depended
on c,lttle as insurance against ecological hazards
and as vital sources of milk, meat, leather, and
dung, let cattle were value far beyond their mate
rial contributions to human sun'i"al: cattle were
the principal means by which Nuer created and
affirmed endurmg bonds among themsehes as
well as between themselves and divinity, In sacrifi
cial and exchange contexts, eattle were considered
direct extensions of the human persona, Their
,itality and fertility were continuously being
equated with, and opposed to, those of human
beings, This human/cattle equation was perhaps
most obvious in moments of bloodwealth and
bridewealth exchange, However, it permeated
myriad other contexts, saturating, as it were, the
whole of Nuer social life at that time,
What is perhaps less evident from Evans
itchard's descriptions is that something was
definitely gained by Nuer communities as a whole
through the cultural assertion of a fundamental
identity bet\\een cattle and people, Because cattle
and people ",ere in some sense "one," indi"iduals
were able to transcend some of the profoundest of
human frailties and thereby achie"e a greater sense
of mastery over their world: death became sur
mountable, infertility reversible, and illness some
thing that could be acti"e1y defined and cured,
This equation ga"e "life," as it were, a second
chance, Were a man to die without heirs, his rela
tives were 'lble indeed obliged - to collect cattle
and marry a "ghost wife" to bear children for him,
ikewise, were a woman to prove infertile, she was
"free" to become a social man, gather cattle, and
marry a wife to produce children for her, And
were it not for rites of cattle sacrifice, people would
have stood condemned at that time to a passive
forcbcarance of severe illness, em'ironmenta]
153
crises, and countless other difficulties, But because
human and bovine vitality were identified in such
contexts, all thesc cxpcriences of vulnerability and
hardship could be lifted to a collective plane where
they could be given form and meaning and actively
coped with, Lastly, the ever-present possibility of
translating human values into c.'lttle values
enhanced people's abilities to achieve lasting peri
ods of peace among themsehcs, Although cattle
werc frequent subjects of dispute among kinsmen
as well as non-kinsmen, there is a well-known say
ing that runs, "ThilE duer mi baal yary" ("No
[human] error exceeds the co\\ "), Cattle, in other
words, were - and to a large f'xtent continue to
be - the conflict resolvers par excellence,
It was thus thc ideological assertion of a funda
mental "onencss" between cattle and people that
enabled people to extend the potency of human
action in tempering the perplexing vicissitudes
and vulnerabilities of life, In a society where pro
creation, physical well-being, and communal peace
were - and continue to be - among the highest
cultural values, these "extensions" or "augmenta
tions of life" should not be underestimated, To
ignore them or to gloss over them by thinking of
cattle exchange and sacrifice solely in terms of
"reciprocity," "compensation," and "restitlltion"
would be to reduce, 1 think, the creative potency
of Nuer culture as a whole at that time, [",]
The Creation of Cattle and Labor
Markets in Nuerland: 1930-83
The experience of British colonial conquest (1898
1930), swiftly followed in some regions by that of
famine, made the early 1930s deeply disillusioning
years for many Nuer. Effectively barred from
replenishing their stock through raiding, men
stood idle as successive waves of rinderpest deci
mated their herds (see Johnson 1980:469), For the
conqucring Anglo-Egyptian regime, in contrast,
this 'las a period of optimism and of rapid political
and economic advances, The radical administrative
measures imposed as part of the "Nuer settle
ment" of 1929-30, which required among other
things separation of the (Lou and Gawaar) Nuer
from their Dinka neighbors, appeared to hcrald a
new era of interethnic peace, Similarly, the suc
cessful elimination or caprore of all major Nuer
]54 SHARON HUTCHINSON
prophets seemed to clear the way for the birth of a
nell' breed of tractable government chiefs Oohnson
1979, 1980:403-67). Such optimism, though short
li\ed in most instances., also sparked off scores of
go\crnment \lork projects - carried out with con
scripted Nuer labor - which included the con
struction of roads, steamer stations, administrative
centers, and the like (END 66.A.2, 22 February
1934, "Assistant District Commissioner to Gov
ernor"). Conditions formerly hindering the expan
sion of northern trade into the region also ended
abruptly (cf. hans-Pritchard 1940:87-8).
Improvemcnts in public secunt) and transport
greatly facilitated the penetratjon of seasonal mer
chants, while cattle epidemics and food shortages
ensured the rapid development of a hide export/
grain import trade....
Although seasonal markets and local British
administrative officiaL~ were frequentlv at odds,
thcse two groups nevertheless sh31-ed a common
anomie objecti\'e: the creation and maintenance
of a profitable export tl-ade i.n Nuer canlc. The
grc-ateo;t difficulty they faced in this regard was to
advise adequate ways to tempt, force, cajolc, or oth
erwise pressure N uer into handing over their largest
and fattest oxen tor sale to meat markets in tile nortl,
(WND 64 R.I., 25 MnrcJl 194I, "J. Wilson, Assistant
District Commissioner, to Governor"). [... J
B) 1933, seasonal Arab merchants had takcn
the k'ad by establishing two modes of cattle cxtrac
tion, born of thcm circuitous. The first, a sort of
cow / ox conversion racket, took advantagc of
interethruc cycles of trade men dcveloping
between the western Nuer and tlleir Twic Dinka
and Baggara Arab neighbors:
The Nuer ... ha\'c no desire to sell bulb [oxenJ for
money but they will exchange them for cow
c:llves. (B:lggaral Arabs [bordering the Leek and
ul Nuer in the west] and l\vij Dinka are \\jlling
to sell cow cal\es. Thus ... the merchants buy cow
calves for money from the former and exchange
them to the Nuer and (other1Dinka for big bulls.
(WND 6-l RI., c. 1933, "Assistam District
Commissioner to Governor") [... ]
In eastern Nucrland, where neighboring ethnic
groups were both more distant and more cattle
poor than in the west, merchants relied instead on
seasonal fluctuations in local grain supplics to
generate a cattle cxport trade:
The agems go out to various trading posts in
September and October [al harvest timc] and buy
grain and hides in exchangc for trade goods [such
as fishing hooks. beads, spears, a.nd cloth] mostly
though occasionallv money is used. A second
series of post's along the rivers catch the more dis
tant tribes on their way to the dry weather camp.
From FebruJl'y to April trade is practically at a
standstill but then the reverse flo\\ l)egins and
grain is sold back to the impro\ idem at enhanced
prices for animals. Generally speaking, the grain
bought from the Nuer is sold for Province require
ments, i.e. police, Army, mt:rka~ [town] require
ments, and the grain resold to the natives is
imported. This naturally depends hugely upon
prices but fe\\ merchants can afford to keep their
capital locked up. The turnover is small but the
pn)fits are large as the grain and hides, etc.. are
bought cheap for tTade goods acquired at trade
prices and imported grain is sold al a profit for
animals valued cheaply. (SAD 212113/3, 1930,
"Eastern ~ uerland, Prm ince Ilandbook")
Add to these extractive strategies the confiscation
of cattle in annual tribute collections and in court
fines and it's not surprising that the oxen export
trade gre\v rapidly during the 1930s and 19+0s.
But indi\'idual Nuer were still neither buying
nor selli.ng their cattle with money. The mutual
convertibility of these two media had simply not
been established for them. This situation contin
ued, moreoy-er, despite post-1935 administratiYe
etfons to shift the hasis of tribute collection in
eastern Nuerl311d from cattle to cash (officials dis
covered carlyon rhat this "changeover. nearly
always ends in more cash for Government" [t.:.\l
11..J.5/332, 1939, "E. G. Coryton, Handing Oyer
Notes"] J: ... ] as well as to provide conscripted
Nller labor with "a small pecuniary reward." [... ]
Barter continued to dominate the private sector,
and governmen t wages remained far too lo\y to
permit a ready conversion of coins into cattle. 1: ... ]
The situation changed dr:unatically, ho\\c\'er, fol
lowing the introduction during the late 19+0s of
goYernment-sponsored cattle auctions for the dis
posal of livestock acquired through court fines. By
this time, government chiefs' courts were well
THE CATTLE OF MONEY AND THE CATTLE OF GIRLS AMONG THE NUER
established throughout Nuerl311d and were gener
ating increasingly \'ital administrative revenues.
r...] 'lore important for our purposes, govern
ment tines' cartle, unlike tribute oxen, often
included a large proportion of heifers. [... ] Thus,
fl)r thc first time "iuer men were able to purchase
\1 hat the) desired most: young, fertile heifers to
increase their herds. And it was this opportunity
that morinted them to emer the cattle marker as
buyers and as money-paying ones at that.
Because these auctions were carried out strictly on
a cash basis, indi\'iduals wishing to participate
were normally forced to sell an ox to a priyate mer
chant before the auction in order to have the req
uisite cash. I.J Hence from the government's
perspeclile, these auctions had the addcd benefit
of stimulating the export trade in Nuer oxen.
Eventually, tJle administration established dry
season public auctions (to which 3llyone could
bring-cattle) in various district centers ofN uerland,
{irst on a weekly and later on a daily basis_ ...
)\e\'ertheless, the (\\0 basic extractive strategies
established by itinerant merchants during the
19305 had rcally changed very linle. Famine con
tinued to fuel the grain import/cattle export trade,
though coinage had replaced barter to some extent.
The cow/ox conversion racket, in contrast, had
been effectivel)' captu.red by the government, with
man) local export merch.mts benefiting from this
"takc()\'cr" as well. The net result was that inru
"ioual :'-Juer were now replenishing: thcir herds at
one another's expense rather than at the expense of
outlying neighbors. As far as Nuer were concerned,
money remained in such contexts Ijttle more tJ,an
,1 me-ans or swapping cattle with the government.
In orher words, cattle only became money in order
to become c..mle again: C~M~C.
... By 1959, these schemes required an esti
mated 15,000 seasonal pickers in addition to per
maneill' tenant labor (UNPAR, 1959-60). And
thus each year the government would relay
increasingly urgent appeals for additional "Nilotic"
labor to migrate to I hese sites through local
inka, Shilluk, Nuer, '\tuot, and AnuaK chiefs.
Significantly, "iuer mcn were consistently singled
OUI b) scheme owners and by g:O\'ernmenr admin
iStl-ators alike as the most desirable "backwater"
recrujt~, for reasons made clear in the following
quotation:
155
1'\uers proved the best of the lot. They usually
arrived in high spirits and spent the hours pro
cceding to their sration, dancing and singing in
me field; they shOl\ enthusiasm and inrerest in
their work. Unlil.c comers from other localities
who started grumbling the moment they arrived
and when they arc transported to the fields it
necds a miracle to make them refrain from going
on strike lsic]. (\\':-..'D 57 ..\., ]959-60. "Eastern
Nuer Disrrict Annual Report"
Before long, howe\'cr, Lhese unwitting strike
breakers began venturing farther and fanher north,
encouraged by the promise of higher wagcs. By
1960, scores of young Nuer men had reached
Khartoum, where thev commonly obtained employ
ment as day laborers in the constructions indusuy.
Becausc of t11ese increasingly lucrati\'e wage-labor
opporturuties, it actually became possible for a man
to cam enough money during a dry season to pur
chase a CO" calf or two on his return to Nuerland.
Hence a new relationship bet\\ een cattle and money
was forged: no longer was it necessary for a man to
!J;ive up a cow in order to get one. Money could
yield cattle directly: M~C [... J
With the cxplosion of the civil war in NuerlJlld
in 1963-64, all this economic activity gTound to a
sudden halt. Regional cattle and grain m;lrkets
collapsed as their northern Arab controllers
retre;ned to hea\'ily garrisoned towns. Scores of
vilhlges were razed by rebel-seeking army battal
ions while local herds were plundered mercilessly
by both parties to the conflict. Families living
within reach of govemment roads and towns scat
tcred deeper and deeper into the bush. 1Iundreds
of young men working or studying in the north
flocked b'lck to join southern secessionist forces
while others fled in the opposite direction. The
eastern Jikany and Lou Nuer suffered most
intensely. And thus, by the time a negotiated peace
settlement was signed in 1972, some +0,000 east
ern :'-Juer had abandoned their homes to seek ref
uge in Ethiopia.
As part of the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972,
thousands of southern rebels (including an
unknown number of Kuer) were integrated into
the national army and police forces. 1Iundreds of
others were offered civilian posts in the newly
established southern regional government, only to
156 SHARON HUTCHINSON
be laid off a fe\1 months later due to inadequate
funds. These new posts, though temporary in
man} cases, injected large amounts of paper cur
renc~ into the regional economy, currenc~ "hich
Nuer were increasingly willing to accept in
exchange for their cattle. Bachelors hoping tu
replenish their war-ravaged herds and thereby
achieve a quicker road to marriage adopted short
term, seasonal labor migration to northern cities
on a massive scale. Following employment pat
terns set by their predecessors, most of these
youths became day laborers in the Khartoum con
struction industry. [oO.] After working some four
to 18 months, many of them returned laden with
colorful clothes, mosquito nets, plastic shoes,
blankets, marrresses, sunglasses, a11d other highly
valued goods and courting paraphernalia. Indeed,
failure to obtain imported display items left young
men in parts of eastern Nuerland vulnerable to the
coordinated insults and rejection of m,lrriageable
girls. "If he comes bad. from the north and his
dog recognizes llim, don't com erse with him!"
runs the famuus dictum of Nyabuth Nguan)
Thoan, an influential Lou girl leader. Among
Nucr communities west of the Bahr ai-Jabal,
where during the early 1980s a fat stately ox was
still more likel) to catch a girl's eye than the Oanl
boyant dance leggings so avidly adopted in lhe
cast, most migrants prefclTed to invest their earn
ings in bride\\ealth cattle.
During the post- (or, rather intcr-) civil "ar enl
between 1972 and 1983, the economic I'acuum
created by tile hasty departure of northern mer
hants during thc war began to ';uck in Nucr
ad\'enturers desiring to tr) their luck al Irading.
A!though some of these \I au Id-be mercha.n ts man
aged LO start their businesses with funds g"ained
through wage lahor or the ~;ale of fish, grain, croc
odile s\..ins, and other local resources, most relied
on a sale of famil) liv~toek. Elentuall), the more
prosperous of these succeeded in penetrating the
long-distance ~rain import/cattle export trade
formerl) monupolized by their northern Arab
counterparts. And as more and more :-.Jucr began
to appreciate the enormous profits that could be
reaped by driving cattle overland to Kosti or b)
founding a modest "bush shop," it became easier
for a young man to persuade his ciders to sell a few
head of cattle in order that he might bccome a
part-time trader. This is not to say that the local
customcrs benefited from the changeover. On the
contrar), many of the newly established :-.Juer
merchants -proved to be C\'en more rapacious than
their Arab predecessors. Marl,ups of 0\'Cr 200 per
cent on rrade goods were standard in many outly
ing "bush" shops throughout the early 1980s.
Furthermore, it was not uncommon at that time to
hear ordinary people complain that the newly
emcrging class of Nuer merchants had begun to
adopt novcl attitudes toward money. As Da\'id Kek
~1oin~det, an eastern Gajiok Nuer, explained:
The trouble with these young [Nuer) merchants
is that they treat their money like cattle. In the old
days, you didn'r give a cow to just anyone. An
[unrelated) man might have to live and work in
)our homestead for vears before recei\ ing a cow.
Well, now, these yelLlng merchants are raking this
same altitude toward their money: if you're not
close enough to be "counled" a co\\' [in marri'lge),
you're not close enough to be leIlt mllneyl
I !ollever, tllese merchants were not the onJ~ ones
who began to view mone)' in a new light. During
the same inter-civil war era, scores ofNuCf com
munities iJJitiated, under the auspiccs of local
chiefs, "self-help" projects, including the con
struction of primary schools, veterinary facilities,
and medical dispcnsaries as well as the repair and
extension of local roads. These projects were
imariably funded by local cattle contributions
some being more voluntary then othcrs. Tragically,
mOSI of the buildings later remained idle owing to
the central government's failure to pro\'ide prom
ised staff and supplies. Yet even so, these develop
menlS would seem to reflect a definite attitudinal
shift. Increasingly, cattle were being viewed, in
some contexts at least, as potential sources vf cap
itallo be invested in specific projects, some private
and others collective: C~~l.
And thus, by the time I began investigating
Ihese issucs ftrsthand in 1980, moncy had become
a part of everyday social life. Or as one \uy old
e.astern Gajaak man quipped: "Today e\'eryone
wal1ls to die with a piaster in his hand!"
The dlfee basic stages I ha\'e identified in the
gradual forging of the eatde/money cquation
namely C~M~C, M-)C and C~M) are helpful,
THE CATTLE OF MONEY AND THE CATTLE OF GIRLS AMONG THE NUER
J think, in understanding the nature and limits of
the mutual comertibility of cattle and money as
these are revealed through a half centur~ of archival
records. They do little justice, ho\\'e\'er, 10 the
intricacy of cattle/money ties as more recently
dl.'fined by Nuer. For the various l\ls and various Cs
of which they consist are b) no means inter
changeable. Rather contemporary Nuer, as \Ie shall
sec, regard neither money nor canle as ''things in
themselves. "
The Circulation of Blood, Cattle,
and Money: 1980-83
Hrsl formulation: "//loney hilS I/O blood" To whal
extent did Lhe increased mutual conwrtibilit) of
cattle and money stimulate Nuel' to reassess criti
call.v the inherent logic and general significance of
the carrIe/human equation so central to their cul
lure during the early 1930s? I begin V..ilh the
observation that by 1983, money (you) had pene
trated some fields of exchange more thorough1~
than others. In exchange for grain, fishing hooks,
clOlh, guns, and medicines, as well as in the pay
ment of taxes, court fines, school fees, and tbe like,
people gladly substituted money for caule when
eler they could. Indeed, the giving up of a cow in
such contexts was regarded as a truly lamentable
loss: ideall), Nuer n::served cattle for more impor
tant occasions such as marriage, initiation, and
sacrifice, or - as I would summarize Nuer state
ments in I his regard - for the creation and affirma
tion of enduring bonds among themseh'es as well
as between themselves and divinity. In contrast,
the role of carrie as sacrificial victim and a~ Lhe
indispenS:lble exchange object at times of initia
tion, feud settlement and, to a lesser degree, mar
riage had scarcely been affected by the massive
introduction of currency. This is not to say that
people's attitudes toward these rites remained
constant between 1930 and 1983. On the cOnlrar),
the significance of caltle sacrifice, for i.nstance, was
steadily undermined by mounting \1 aves of
Christian conversion, by increased Nuer accept
ance of Western medicines and concepls of illness,
and by growing expectations that a host would
provide meat for guests. Even so, money could not
replace cattle in these contexts. Nor could it
replace the gift of a "personality ox" at initiation,
157
though the overall significance of this ox also
declined in regions where increasing numbers of
Nuer youths rejected scarification. Furthermore,
most people actively resisted the idea thal money
was an adequate substirute for cattle in bridewealth
and bloodwealth exchange - although small
amounts of money, as I noted, had begun to infil
trare some marriage psymen ts by Lhe early 1980s.
I hasten to add that this characterization of thc
unequal penetration of money into Nuer social
life - based as it is upon a distinction beLween
"blood" and "nonblood" associated spheres of
exchange - is entirely my 0\111 construction: Nuer
would not use such terms. This idea developed,
rather, out of numerous comments made b) indi
vidual Nuer (during general discussions about cat
tle sacrifice, feuding, marriage, incest, pollution,
and other issues) to the effect that "cattle, lile peo
ple, hal'e blood" but "mone) has no blood." I
interpreted these comments to mean tbat money
was an "inappropriatc" medium of exchangc in
certain contexts because it could not bind people
together like ,-iem, "blood" - whether thaL "blood"
were conceived as buman, bovine, or both in rela
tion to particular types of enduring ties.
For instance, I was once asked b~ a highly intel
ligent and unusually well traveled eastern Gajaak
youth, who had ventured at one point as far as Iraq
in search of profitable employment, whethcr I
kne\\ the ultimate source of money (YOII). After
remarking spontaneously to the effect that he real
ized different countries used different currencies,
Peter Pal Jola II'cnt on to say:
But there's something I still don't understand
about moncy. I\'!oney's not like the cow because
the cow has blood and breath and, like people,
gi\es birth. But money does not. So, tell me, do
you knoll' whether God rku.:>d/I) or Man [raan)
creates money?
Widespread as these uncertainties may be or h.1\e
been among Nucr, Lhey in no way pre\'ented people
from appreciating and using money as an everyday
medium of exchange. Indeed, individual musings
aboUl money's ultimate origin were in many ways
extraneous to tllC immediate feel of the various bits
of metal and paper ever passing through their
hands.lL was not the mystery of money's generative
158 SHARON HUTCHINSON
powers that colored the give-and-take of daily life
but rather, as we shall see, money's "sterility" as
compared with the self-generating capacity of cat
tle. Similarly, it was the immediate, not the ulti
mate, source of money that defined what Nuer
considered to be very different sorts of money. In
order to understand \yhy this was so, we must delve
into the symbolism of "blood."
Although not equated with "life" (tl~k) itself,
blood or riem is the substance with which each and
every human life begins. Conception is under
stood by Nuer as a mysterious merger of ma.le and
female "blood" tlows, forged by the life-creating
powers of ku?dh (divinity). Without the direct
participation and continual support of divinity, no
child could be born or survive long enough to
bring forth another generation. Mnreo\'er, since
procreation is the pammount goal ofljfe for every
one and the only form of immortality valued,
"blood" may be understood as that \\ruch fuses
the greatest of human desires \\ ith that profound
humility with \yhich Nuer contemplate the tran
scendent powers of divinity. A ne\\born child is
"blood" and is referred to as such during the first
month or two of life. ;"lilk, semen, sweat - these
too (Ire "blood." [t is as if riem were the mutable
source of all hrnnan - and hence all social
energy.
As an clement of life, blood converges with tv-'o
other powerful forces of "itality: yiey(breath) and
ti;ylriel (awareness). Blood, however, is uruque
among' these cardinal principles of life in that it is
eminently social. Unlike either "breath" or "aware
ness," blood passes from person to person and
from generation to generation, endowing inter
personal rela60ns with a certain substance and
fluidity. Both the coming of manhood and the
corning of womanhood are marked by passages of
blood. For a girl, the blood that flows during her
first childbirth ushers her into adulthood; for a
boy, it is the blood shed during the ordeal of scari
fication at initiation. The perpetual expansion,
union, and contraction of kill groups arc likewise
spoken aboLH in terms of the creation, transferral,
and loss of riell/. And thus, by emphasizing the fact
thar cattle, like people, have "blood," individuals
were calling attention to the fact that cattle and
people are capable of a parallel extension of
vitality through time. Monej, of course, is not
augmentative ill that sense. If an)'thillg, it appears
condemned in Sudan to a continuai loss of force,
to a perpetual withering in the face of mounting
inflation.
Now, insofar as indiYiduals actually succeeded in
resTricting their use of cash to "nonblood" as
opposed to "blood" associated fields of exchange,
money was less a challenge than a support for the
life-affirmed and life-affirming "truth" r11at "cattle
and people arc one." As Nyacuol Gaai, an clderl}
Leek woman, put it: "~loney protects cattle"
("GangE pk piny"; literall), "[Money] delays them
on the ground"). People with money, in other \yords,
could keep their cattle with them longer.
Yet why, one might ask, all this emphasis on
"blood" when there were so man} other differ
ences between cattle and money that people could
have stressed as well' Mone) is not anI) "blood
less" (and hence milkless) but also de\oid of
"breath," "awareness," and indi\'idualizing names,
colors, temperaments, exchange histories, and so
forth (cf Comaroff and Comaroff 1990:211).
,\1oney is an utterly depersonalized medium in
this sense. ~loreo\"Cr, unlike cattle, money can pass
in relativc secrecy from one locked metal foot
locker to another. In my experience, ne\lcrtheless,
Nuer mcn and women did not mention these ele
ments of contrast whcn deba6ng the nature and
limits of convertibilit) between cattle ~Illd money.
This is not to sa) that th<:)' did not appreciate or
take advantage of them from time to time; it is to
say, rather, that the symbolism of "blood" \\"hich
so pervades their cuJture had been taken up and
elaborated once again - this timf'~ it would seem,
so as to den} the possibility of a direct equation
between money and people. It was as thougb peo
ple were attempting to reassure tbemseh-es that,
though canle and people were equated in some
contexts and cattle and money in others, money
and people were - and always would be - incom
mensurate. The gulf tbat divided them rau as deep
and broad as Nuer images of "blood" in thc gen
eration of life and in the continuation of the social
order. By stressing the lmique "blood" linkage
between cattle and people so as to exdudc .the
intrusive medium of money, ma.ny Nuer, it "ould
seem, \vere also rallying to the defense of those
"augmentations of life" made possible by the ide
ological truth tllat "cattle and people are one."
THE CATTLE OF MONEY AND THE CAiTlE OF GIRLS AMONG THE NUER
Everything 1 have said thus far presumes lhat
c.1ttlc" and "money" are discrete units of com
parison. But for Nuer, as I runted, these were not
"things in ulemselves." Rather, Nuer successfully
crossbred the concepts of "money" and "cattle,"
bringing forth a generation of hybrid categories
tbat proved exceptionally adaptable to an increas
ingl) unstable social and economic environment.
And nowhere did these hybrid categories uuive so
\Iell as in the vast field of bridewealth exchange.
For it was here, in an open environment, \\ here
nego1iations ranged freely and where t.here were
no rigid rules to mar t.he horizon, that these cate
gories first came into their own. It was here, too,
that m) initial observation regardillg the differen
tiltl penetnltion of money into "blood" and "non
blood" associated spheres of exchange could be
exposeu as excessively static. For in reality, money
and cattle were tlowing increasingly OUl, in, and
between these opposed spheres of exchange.
Serrmdjimmtfalion: the cattle olmoney (llId the cat
rle 01 girls T should, perhaps, first check the
;lSsllmption that "money" and "cattle" were
\\h01ly interchangeable: not aU money was good, I
was told, for buying cattle. There \Vas something
called you eiflh - literally, the "money of shit"
thal allegedly could not be invested fruitfully in
callJe. Strikingly similar in some ways to the
cattle-harming money of the Kenyan Luo (Shipton
1989), the "money of shit" \\"as, nevertheless,
defined differentl~c [ ... ] Whereas the "biner
money" of the Luo originates in the sale of spe
cific resources such as land, tobacco, cannabis, anu
gold, yflll rlctll was quite literally mane) people
earned in .local towns by collecting and dumping
the waste of household bucket latrines. Following
the colonial administrauon's introduction of
bucket latrines during the 19-1-0s, it was difficult,
of enurse, to find people willing to empty them
each day - or rather under the cover of night.
ventually, the administration came to depend on
prisoners for tllis service. In the interim, however,
IlSeems Nllerwomen and men collectively rejected
this type of work by convincing one another that
"a COI\ bought with 'shit money' cannot live"
')/01] lIIi ri kok ke yOIl (l.Ih. tcEbi tiiy'). What
began, T suspect, as a prideful stat.emem that "we,
the people of the people, will not do such work"
159
soon became an accepted fact of social life.... In
this \\.1)', indiyiduals sought to prevent the con
taminating source of this money from polluting
their cherished cattle, which were, after all, con
sumed as well as exchanged.
In addition to the "money of shit," there were
five basic Cltegories of monetary and cattle we-alth
prevalent during the 1980s - all of them important
for lmdersTanding contemporary patterns of
bridewealt.h circulation. [... -I The first of these,
y?k lIyid, "ule cattle of girlsldaughters," referred
to bridewealth cattle received by specific relatives
of the bride on the basis of a system of "inheritable
rights" (eu?1]) and "obligations" (If/ad; singular,
fat) (cf. E\'ans-Pritchard 1951:74-89; Howell
19':;-1-:97-122; Hutchinson 1985). [... ] Although
nominally owned by the official recipient, these
cows formed part of "the ancestral herd" from
which close agnates ideall) dre\\ in order to marry,
ha' e sons, and thereby extend the parriline (see
Evans-Pritchard 1951:83, 1956:285).
In contrast, purchased cattle, y?k younl or "the
cattle of money," were less subject to the claims of
extended kinsmen. They circulated between
extended kinsmen, I was told, more as a "privi
lege" - that is, as a mile (a "free gift") or a 1011]' (a
"free" releasing) - than as a [11 ?1], or in heritable
right. Their purchaser, in other words, wa;, some
what freer to dispose of them as he wished - espe
ciall) ifhe acquired them after having married and
established a household of his own. In contrast, it
was far more difficult - though by no means
impossible uuring the early 1980s - for an unmar
ried youth residjng in his father's household to
differentiate effectiyely between cattle acquired
through his own labor and those gained through
his sister's marriages, for the father retained for
mal rights of disposal over all cattle entering h.is
household throug'hout his lifetime. He could, if he
desired, redistribute cattle purchased by his sons
among various '., ives' households as well as draw
freely upon them in meeting cattle obligations
t()ward extended kin. Indeed, during the 1980s it
was commonly expected in some parts of
NuerJand - most notably in regions west of the
Bahr al-]abal - that bachelors engaged in seasonal
labor migration would reaffirm their kinship soli
darity upon their return home b) freely giying one
of the first bull calves purchased with their wages
160 SHARON HUTCHINSON
to a favorite maternal uncle, paternal uncle, pater
nal cousin, or other dose relative. This gesture of
solidarity was often complemented with a special
sacrifice, carried am bv a distant patrilineal kins
man (p;IIQII !Jiil!mi) , which was intended botb to
bless and to integrate other cattle purchased into
the familial herd. The "cartle of money," in othcr
words, could be ritually transformed in these
regions into the "cattle of girls." Significantly,
these expectations and concomitant rites were not,
to the best of my knowledge, pre\alent among the
Nuer groups caSt of the Bahr ai-Jabal before the
eruption of the second civil war (1983 to the
prescnt).
Following the father's death, there was con
siderabl) morc room for negotiation and dissent
among brothcrs - particularly paternal half
brothcrs - over shared rights in the familial
herd. Hence, when I questioned various men
and women on this score, I received a wide range
of opinions - each expressed with an air of
uncompromised certainty. A. group of middle
aged castcrn Gajiok men, for instance, assured
me that following the father's death, "catrle of
mone)" passed only as a "privilege" bet\\cen
paternal half brothers; fuil brothers, the) argued,
would normallv be more supportive of one
another and would thus \\ illingly pool all cattle
wealth. 1n contrast, several other GajioJ. and
western Leek men and women argued that half
brothers retain cd full rights to one another's
cattle, however acquired. until suc.h time as all
had married. A third opinion ran that a married
man could own purchased cattle indi\idually,
regardless of the marital status of his half broth
ers. Finall), there were some Nuer (notably sev
eral western youths in the process of collecting
sufficient cattle for their own marriages) who
boldly declared: "A cow of your wages is a cow of
your sweat and no one has rights in it other than
)ou." In brother!) tlisputes oyer "rights" and
"obligations" held in catrle, the abilit) to assert
one or an other of these interpretations of "cat
tle of money" would thus seem crucial. r ..)
Indeed, from this perspective it would seem that
the concept of y:Jk yo/wi had added a new twist
to what was otherwise a longstanding "zone of
contestation" among patrilineal kinsmen by giv
ing hardworking; younger brothers and sons a bit
of turf from Ilhich to begin negotiating for a
greater share of status and autonomy within the
family foIJ.l ... J
But nOt all money could be turned into the "cat
tle of mone)." Only money earned as wages or
through the sale of grain, gum, fish, crocodile
skins, or other goods ohtained by self-exertion
could become y:JkyOlmi. Money acquired by these
means \\as closely associated with lelll PUll ny,
"hLUnan sweat," and was referred to as you lad,
"the money of work." [... ) This t) pe of money
stood opposed to that gained by the sale of colll:c
tively owned cattle: YIIU yJ:Jk, or "the money of
cattle." Whereas the former was intli\idually
owned, the latter carried with it all of the collec
rive rights held in the caule sold. Being an indi
vidual possession, the "money of work" could be
"requested" (illiei) or "begged" (liilll) from its
0\1 ncr by persistent rehl1 ives in need of school fees
or simply desirious of a refreshing bowl of beer in
the marketplacc. The "mone) of cattle" \\as of a
different order. Ideally, it was never squandered
on small requests or projects but was instedd
resetlcd to purchase younger, fertile cartlc to
expand and upgmde tlle familial herd.
It is notewortll) that this distinction often
worked to the disadvantage of Nuer whose imme
diate livelihood depended less on cattle than on
wages. As a poorly paid, junior admi.nisrrative offi
cial in Bentiu lamented:
When a man goes to sell a cow (o>.J at market, we,
the relativcs, lIsually don't. bother him becausc we
knO\1 thal he is going to use that money to buy
[female] cattle that \\ ill increasc the herd. But
then thaI same man can come and pester me here
[in Benliu] to give him money for beer. He may
h:l\c a lhousand pounds in his pocket from the
calllc he has just sold. But that money is differ
ent; he \~ouldll't think of using it for beer. ]\lIr
could il be begged from him like the money of
work. That's why it is so difficult for us who now
live in town.
This fifth and fina.l wealth category \yas also
referred to as y:Jk JlQlllli "the cattle of money."
However, these were not real cows at all bUl rather
sums of mane) substituted for a usually quitt:
small portion of bridewealth cattle rcquested.
THE CATTLE OF MONEY AND THE CATTLE OF GIRLS AMONG THE NUER
here was no possibilit) during thc earl) 1980s of
Iinguisricall) eliding the distinction hetween
monev parading as cattle and real cattle purchased
in the marketplace in such contexts, despite the
act thar both could be referred to as yJk YOIII/i,
.'the cattle of mone)." For real cattle, regardless of
rheir exchange origins, were invariably identified
duri.ng bridewealth negotiations on the basis of
their sex, color, age, horn shape, and other distin
guishing features. Hence an)' reference to "canle
or mone)" in such contexts \yas unambiguously
understood to mean "money cattle" as opposcd to
"purchased caltle." (For clarity's sake, I "ill usc
the term "cattle of mone)" here to mean onl)~ pur
chased cattle and \1 ill usc the inverse term "money
cattle," \1 hen referring to cash passed in lieu of
bride\\ealth cows.)
1\0\\, whether or not a young man could pass
mone) in lieu of a bridel\ealth COllar two
depended entirely, I \Ias told, on the will of his
would-be lather-in-law. The latter could always
refuse, demanding that the young man take his
mane) and buy a real CO\I inste.1d. Hence only a
"g-enerous" father-in-law, I was told, would accept
sllch a "eel\\." And for this reason, tlle number of
"moncy callie" transferred in Nuer marriages
before the reeruption of civil war in 1983 was
remarkably small.
The first thing to note about the rarious wealth
categories outlined is that they facilil.;1ted move
ments of cattle and moncy between "blood" and
"nonblood" spheres of exchange at the s.une time
as they confirmed the presence of a conceptual
boundar) bet\leen these spheres. Social principles
characteristic of "kinship" exchange were contin
uousl) being drawn, together with cattle and
mom:y, into the marketplace and vice versa.
Consider the follo\\ing hypotlletical - tllOugh by
no means at)pical - series of callie and money
exchanges.
Imagine that an ox, originally obtained as
bridewealth, is sold at market and the money so
acquired is later invested in a young heifer: "cattle
or girls" -7 "money of cattle" -7 "cattle of girls"
(Cg-7,\1c-7Cg). 1'\ow, in this sequence, the collec
tire rights and privileges held in the original
bridewcalth ox arc not lost as it is transformed into
money and later bad, 'lgain into cattle. As a con-
eept, then, the "money of cattle" b0t11 affirms and
161
protects these collective cartie rights based as the)
are on shared "blood," as cattle pass in and out of
the marketplace, a "nonblood"-associated sphere
of social rclations and exchange. Conversely, a
successful migrant who invests his savings in cat
tle ("mone) of work" -7 "cal tie of money"
[l'"lw-7Cm)) is able to smuggle principles of per
sonal autonomy and private o\ynership associated
\\ ith market exchange into the realm of kinship
relations via the concepts "money of work" and
"cattle of money." [... ) In this system, there ,Ire no
absolutes: it is always a matter of specific callIe and
specific sums of money, defined in terms of their
immediate sources.
The relativity with \\ hich different sortS of cattle
and mone) are classified is readily apparent in
bridewealth exchange. For whether or not a partic
ular cow is collectively defined as a "cow of money"
or a "CO\I of girls" dependb enlireJ) on the negoti
ating position of rJle exchange panners. Whereas
the groom and his part) are normally quite con
scious of which cuws are "cattle of money" and
which are "cattle of girb," from the perspective of
the bride's family, all catlle recei\ed in marriage are
"cattle of girls" (see Figure 10.1)....
But what interests, one might ask, has this sys
tem of cattle/mone) distinctions really sened?
What has been its role, if an), in pal terning rela
tions of autonomy and dependence between men
and \\omen, young a.nd old, kin and non-kin,
wife-takers and wifegi\ers, :lnd canle-rich and
cattle-poor, wage earners and non wage earners,
and so on?
With respect to fanlilial and extended kin ties,
this system of wealth distinctions certainly
enham:ed individual possibilities for autonom~ by
weakening feelings of mutual dependence among
agnatcs and among cognates. With the expansion
of the market economy, young men became far less
dependent on the good will of their fathers, older
brothers, and paternal and maternal uncles in the
collection of bridewealth cattle than they were,
say, during the 19305 and 1940s. The abilities of
senior men to amass pO\ler in the form of cattle
wealth declined accordingly - though, as I noted
earlier, western Nuer elders developed ritual
mL-JnS of muting the "callIe of money" /"cattle of
girls" distinction. Although one might suspect
t.hat these developmenrs may contribute in the
162 SHARON HUTCHINSON THE CATTLE OF MONEY AND THE CATTLE OF GIRtS AMONG THE NUER 163

GROOM'S FAMILY BRIDE'S FA:"YIILY fJmily - that is, ulOse that had been used to solid one could earn money and purchase callIe
if' a second marriage, nullify a famili:ll debt, or although, a~ 1 have explained, tbc rights of
n;hef\\isc further the bride's family's objectives bachelors and married women \Iere far more

IMARKET~ before dying in other people's homesteads. As a

result of these rather srringent court-s:1nctioned
interpretations of the callIe obligations of the
"CATI1.E OF MONEY"
wife's family vis-a-\'is the divorcing husband, the
circumscribed in this regard tl1an were those or
married mcn and unmaJ'Tied women.
At the same time, howevcr, "cattle of money"
were continually being transformed into ",,-ante of

'" I "CATILEOFGIRLS" ~ ruplure of one marriage sometimes weakened oth girls" via bridewealth transfers and special sacrifi

~
"eATILE OF GIRLS"
Figure 10.1 The relatiYity of the "c:mle of money "/"cattle of girls" distinction
long run to the development of sharper inequali
ties of weallh among men, it would bc difficult, [
think, to convincc many contemporary ~uer of
this. In fact, several men and women argued that
the introduction of money and the <;reation of
local cattle, grain, and labor markets had signifi
cantl) cased social inequalities inherent in the cat
tle economy itself - most notabl}, inequalities
based on birth order and on relative family size.
'\/hereas a sisterless man was often condemned ro
a bachdor's life during the 1930s md 19-fOs, he
was "free" during the earl) 19805 to tale up rrad
ing and wage labor in order to obtain marriage cat
tle. The money economy, in other words, \las
,alued b) many for ha\ ing provided industrious
individuals with additional opportunities to tran
scend PO\ ert) and misfOrtunc. As one optimistic
eastern GajioJ. youth exclaimed, Ci (lUl1l 1]1)::>k
("Poverty [misfortune] has ended").
With regard to affinal ties, this system of \I ealth
categories had :1n additional advantage, for it pro
vided a farsighted individual with an opportunity
to reduce the risk that his 01\ n marriage would
someday be negari\el) affected by the divorce of a
close female relati\e. When one considers the fact
that di\'orce rates among l\uer nearly tripled bet
ween 1936 and 1983, this was not an insignifie.1llt
advantage. Indeed, for reasons described in detail
elsewhere (Hutchinson 1990), :--Juer men and
\\omen of the 1980s were di\orcing not only more
frequently than earlier generations but also at later
and later poims in the marriage. Whereas E\ans
Pritchard claims that during u1e 1930s dil'otu "as
"highly unusual" after the birth of a child to the
union and "impossible" after tht: birth of a second
(1951:9-f), during the 1980s it \\a5 not uncommon
for government courts to sever unions im-oh-ing
IWO, three, or even four children (Hutchinson
1990:-f02--1) Recovery of the original bridewealth
catth: and their offspring II as especially arduous in
such cases since the cattle bad usually' long bet:ll
dispersed through a multitude of othcr marriagl:s.
If they had not spread too far afield and tbe \\om
an's husband knew of their whereabouts, he \\ilS
likely to push in court for the return of those CO\\s
and their calves. If not, the couns maintained that
substitutes be provided. Yet somctimes the family
of the wife was unable to muster suitable substi
tutes without recalling cattle used in other mar
riages. Although the bride's people WCl'e not
responsible for replacing COWl> that had died natu
rail) in their own homestead, they were expected
to replace all those that "h:1d accomplished
something" ("1111 r; t/I/;Jr 1(/11 t") for the bride's
ers. If the marriage secondarily affected was a rela
ti\'e1) recent one, it too could end in divorce. [... ]
\"hat must be realized, however, is that these
potential difficulties could be avoided by far
sighred individuals through the skillful manipula
tion of the cattle/money categories outlined above,
\ \ (lung man could attempt to reduce the risk that
his own marriage \\-Quld someday be weakened by
the divorce of a female relative by including as
many "carrIe of money" in his bridewealth settle
ment as possible. For, unlike the "cattle of girls,"
purchased canle did not conduct shock waves cre
nted by other people's divorces. Since they came
li'om the market, rhey could only be reclaimed, in
principle, by the groom himself. During the 1980s
this marriage strategy was especially favored by
IIcstern Nuer men. [... 11 often heard men ad\'O
catc the advama~es of marrying with "cattle of
mOlley" as opposed to "cattJe of girls" with the
expression" Ya 17 lIli ri kat ke you, Ihile rick" (''A
COli bought with money is risk-free").
For all of these reasons. many men and women
h:1d come to regard "cattle of money" as a more
sccUJ'e form of wealth than "cattle of girls." Hence,
contra!") to what one might have expected, the
growth of cattle and labor markets in Nuerland
actuall) contributed in some ways to the stability
of marital alliances: the more rapidly "cattle of
girls" were transformed via market exchanges into
"cattle of money," the less likely it was that the
rupture of one marriage would adversely affect
others. In other ways, of course, the expanding
market economy had a profoundly negative impact
n Nuer marriages, During the 1980s, marriages
were often strained to breaking point by the
extended absences of husbands striving to cam a
bit of cash in Khartoum. [ .. ,] Age- and gender
ha~ccl as) mmetries within the community were
also reduced to some extent by the continual trans
formation of "cattle of girls" into "cattle of
monc)" \ia the marketplace. For in principle, any-
cial offerings. As "callie of girls," they could be
used to justify and support the same age and gen
der asymmetries th:1t the) would tend 1'0 under
mine as "cattle ofmone}." In this way, Nuer were
able to integrate and, in some sense, even s) nthe
size practices and principles of monetary exchange
with those characteristic of more enduring
bonds of kinship and community. The synthesis
achieved, however, was based on a perpetu~ll alter
nation between, rather than a definitive fusion of,
the conflicting social principles concerned_
From a slightl) different perspective, one might
argue that Nuer fused the concepts of callie and
money in such a way as to permit certain market
values to bleed into brideweallh exchange \I ithout
threatening the uniqueness of the cattle/people
equation so fundamental ro their social order. One
did not actually need to use money in bridewealth
transfers in order to take advantage of principles
of private properly and of limited liabilit) associ
ated with money: a few "cattle of money" would
do. Thus, the self-generating aspect of bridewealth
cattle, so central to Nuer images of perpetuation
of aLuances, was preserved and all those "aug
mentations of life" rooted in the cultural assertion
of a.n identity bet\\een cattle and people were
protected.
Yet money, as 1 noted, had begun to make some
imoads into the field of bridewealth ("(change via
the concept of "money cattle." Though these
inroads were still limited during the early 1980s,
there is e\ery reason to believe that the tremen
dous hardships of war, famine, and disease Nuer
are currently suffering will so decimate their herds
that more and more people will be reduced to
marrying with "money catrle" in the future. [... ]
A major shift from cattle to cash as the dominant
medium of bridewealth exchange would require,
however, a r:1dical rethinking of the nature and
logic of alliance. The notion that alliallces are
founded on an equation between human and
161 SHARON HUTCHINSON
bovine "blood" and perpetu.ated through a parallel
extension of carrle and people through time would
have to be totally reformulated in order to take
accolmt of money'~ "bloodl~s" nature. It remains
to be seen whether or not the Nuer communities
will transcend the overwhelming hardships they
are currently experiencing to create more radical
reformulations of their concepts of alliance,
descent, and personhood in the future.
Conclusions
As of 1983, money had not developed into a gen
erilized medium of exchange among Nun. Nor
had its introtluction OI'er tbe previous half century
precipitated the emergence of a "unicentTic econ
omy" (Bohannan 1959:501). Rather, Nuer incor
porated money into a weighted exchange system
in which carrie remained the dominant metaphor
of \"alue. The eJabOf<ltc system of cattle and money
wealtll categori~ the) devised provided them Witll
a sense of stability in the midst of change. Cattle
and money were able to move freely between
'market" and "kinship" spheres of exchange
without threatening the cattle/human equation so
fundamental to culrural concepts of personhood
and transgenerational alliance. !vlone)"s powers of
effacement were largely checked by an ideological
elaboration of the unique "blood" links binding
people and carne. At the same time, the hybrid cat
rIc/money categories developed greatly enhanced
the abilities of \"Dung Nuer mignmrs, ill particular.
to understand and come to tenus wirh the noncat
tIe, "nonblood" forms of sociality increasingly
binding them to the world at large.
Although me emergence of the cattle/money
equation did not sunder the strong human bonds
of identification with cattle, it contributed to a sig
nificant contraction of Nuer concepts of selihood
and sociahty. Before the introduction of currency,
the sense of self people cultivated in and through
their relations \\-;th c.attle invariably implied the
support and participation of a collectivity of per
sons, including ancestors and divinities as well as
numerous contemporaries. c.1ttle's role in creat
ing and maior-aining tl1is socially enriched sense of
self was subsequently weakened, as we haye seen,
by the emerging opportunities for indi\idually
acquiring and owning cattle made possible by "a
'moneyform' of commodity exchange." Although
cattle could now be convened into money and vice
versa, the "cattle of money" and the "money of
work" could not be used to augment self and soci
etv in the same way as the "carrie of gjrls" because,
as Nuer put it, "money has no blood."
While the wealth system that Nuer devdop
would appear, from tllis perspective, to be an ingen
ious compromise berween market and nonmarkct
forms ofconsciollsness and sociality, it also reflected,
as I ha\"e shown, major socioeconomic transforma
tions in the relati\'e auwnomy and dependence of
senior men versus junior men, cattle owners \ersus
those without cattle, full brothers versus halfbroth
ers, wage earners versus non wage earners, men ver
sus women, husbands versus wives, married women
versus unmarried women, wife-takers versus wife
[rivers, and merchants versus nonmerchants. I have
pointed our, for insrance, how this system of catego
rics contributed to a marked decrease in the abilit~
of senior men to amass power in the form of cattle
wealth. "Cattle of money" and "money of worl"
plaved key roles in this power shift by givin.g wage-
earning younger brothers and sons a potential basis
from which to assert greater autonomy and status
within the family. With respect to patrilineal con
nections, this system also aggravated conflicts of
interest, inherent in the \ery structure of agnatic
descent, bet\\een the collective and tl1e indil'idual
procreative goals of lineage members. Nevcrtheless,
older men and women continued to maintain strong
moral pressure on the younger generation to reject
formal division of the family's "energy" before
marriage and the establishment of an indcpendent
household. [... ]
These issucs, however, were far from resohed
in 1983. lVloreoYer, :--ruer <It rhat time were pro
foundly aware of the increasing precariousness of
their social world in general and their cattle wealth
in particular with respect to the \1 idening vortex
of violence then gaining momentum tbrough\lut
the southern Sudan. More recently, (he traumas
of an increasingly brutal civil war have been exac
erbated by encroaching rinderpest epidemics.
slave raids, disease, and unprecedented famine.
Thousands upon thousands of Nuer have been
forced to seek refu!,e in northern cities or acrn"s
the international frontier (see Hutchinson 1991).
Their herds are being steadily decinlated, their
THE CATTLE OF MONEY AND THE CATTLE OF GIRLS AMONG THE NUER
communities and families severed and destroyed.
This continuing rragedy 1\ ill undoubtedly pro-
References
Archiles and manuscript collections
DAK Dakhlia (Interior) Files, National Records Office,
Khartoum, Sudan
END Easrcrn Nuer Districl Files, Nasir, Upper '\Iilc
PrOl ince, Sudan
SAD Sudan Archile, Oriental Library, Universit) of
Durham, England
eN Upper Nile Prm"ince Files, Nalional Records Office,
Khartoum, Sudan
NPAR l:ppef Kile Province Annual Reports, Western
Kuer Disuicl files, Bentiu, Upper Nile Province,
Sltdan
P.\1D Upper Nile Province Monthly Diarv,
nilersiry of Khartoum Library, Khartoum, Sudan
WND \Vestern NUCf DistTicl Files, Bemiu, Upper Nil.c
Prol,jncc, Sudan
hann:l.ll, Paul
1959 The lmpaet of Money on an African Subsistence
Economy. Journal ofEconomic liis/ol)' 19:491-503.
ComarofT, Jean, and John L. ComarofT
1990 Goodly Beasts, Beastly Goods: Cattle and
Commodities in a South African Context. AmeriwlI
Ellmolo!!J'117:195-216.
Evans-Pritchard, Edward E.
19-J Tlte !\l.Ier. Oxford: Oarcndon Press.
1951 Kil/ship (II/(I Mllrriage fit/lOrlg lite Nt/er. Oxford:
C1.ilrendon Press.
1956 Vlitr Rt'ligion. Oxford: Oxford UniversiTy
Press.
Ferguson, James
1985 The Bovine Mystique. Man (n.s.) 20:6-+7-74.
HllwelJ,PaulP'
1954 .II Malll/al of NI/er LafIJ. London: Oxford
UniversiTY Press.
Hutchinson, Sharon
1980 Relations between the Sexes among the Nuer:
J930. .-I{rira 50:37l-8
165
voke further reexaminations of their notions of
selfhood and sociality in the yea.rs to come.
1985 Changing Concepts of Incest among the Nuer.
A11Ifrimll Elllllologl$1 12:625-41.
1988 Tlte NI/n iI/ Crim: Copillg I11i1h MOlley, IVrI1; allll
rlu Slare. PhD dissertation. \nlhropolog)
Department, University of Chicago.
199iJ Rising Divorce among the Nuer, 1936-83. A-Jan
(n.s.) 25:393-411.
1991 War through the Eyes of the Dispossessed:
Three Stories of Survival. Disaslers 15: 166-71.
Johnson, Douglas
1979 Coloni'll Policy and Prophets: The "Nuer
SelllemelJ t," 1929-1930.]lIImll/ll~fllte Alllltropologiwl
Somly oIO:rjord 10:1-20.
1980 lliJlorv and Prophn)" among rhe Nller 0/SOli/hem
SlIdllll, PhD dissertation. Uniyersity of California,
Los Angeles.
Man., Karl
1967[1867] Capital: A Crillql/t of Polilical ceol/om)'.
Vol. I. New York: wternat1nnal Publishcrs.
Murray, Colin
191H Families Divided: The Impart o(Mlgral1l Labour
ill Lesotho. Nell York: Cambridge University Press.
Parkin, David
1980 Kind Bridewealrh and lIard Cash: EI'cnting a
Srrucrttre. In Tit" ,Wealling o/Marri(lge Paymoll.'. J. L
Comaroff, ed. pp. 197-200. New York: Ac.1demic Prcss
Sansom, Basil
1976 A Si~al Transaction and its Currency. In
Tr(lfIsll"lir/ll (lnd tl1ea1JlIIg. B. Kapferer, ed. pp. 141-61.
Philadelphia: lnstirute for the Study of Human
issues.
Shipton, Parker
1989 Bill,,, ,Wolley: Cullural Ecollomy alld 5011/ ;lInean
Meal/lIIgs of Fflrl'iddeu COII/modilies. Washington, DC:
American Anthropological Association.
Simmel, Georg
1978[1900] Philosophy ofJHM/'Y. London: RourJedge
and Kegan Paul.
 Introduction

Because cultural anthropology is defined, in large part, b~ the writing of ethnographies, we tend
to associate major ethnographic topics with certain authors and societies - for example, "lineage
theory" with ~eyer Fortes and the 1allensi, witchcraft with Edwan.l Evans-Pritchard and the
Auntie, and ritual with Yictor Turner and the ;'\dembu. When we think about the study of
hunter-gatherers, the first name~ that come to mind are Colin Turnbull and Richard B. Lee, the
Mbuti Pygmies of central Africa and the !Kung San of southern Africa.
Turnbull's accounts of the Mbuti Pygmies of the lturi Rainforest of Zaire, and Richard B.
Lee's analyses of the !Kung San of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana and Namibia, have had a
profound impact upon the teaching and study of cultural anthropology. Throughout the world,
Turnbull's two major publications, The Forest People (1961) and 1#1)I11Jarcl Servants (1965), have
been standard reading in courses on anthropology and African cultures, and have been the basis
for a significant number of comparative studies on economic, political, and gender egalitarian
ism. His data have been cited, analyzed, and incorporated by hundreds of authors in anthropol
ogy books and articles on subjects as varied as cultural and biological evolution, sex roles,
riolence, and political economy.
One reason these ethnographies can be considered among the great works in the history of
anthropology is that they have stimulated dialof,rue and debate between anthropologists of dif
ferent sub-fields. Cultural anthropologists have studied the San and the Mbuti to learn about
key features of all hunter-gatherer societies: these features include egalitarianism, sharing, few
exclusive rights to resources, and the absence of food surplus. Cultural anthropologists have also
addressed 1he question of how and why these groups maintain a hunting and gathering lifestyle
in the face of political, economic, and social change in Africa. Paleontologists and archaeologists
have been especially interested in the San as a model for humanity'S pre-agricultural past; many
of these specialists argue that since 99 percent of human existence has been spent hunting and
gathering' (agriculture is a mere 10,000 years old), contemporary hunter-gatherers provide us
with a window, albeit an imperfect one, into our past. As Sherwood Washburn writes in his
foreword to Richard Lee and Irven De Vore's Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers:
170 INTRODUCTION
The importance of lhe Sail comes from the fundamental role which hunting has played in human
history. Large-brained humans (Homo erecrus and subsequent forms) supported themselves by hunt
ing and gathering for at least a million years prior to the advent of agriculture ... Before tbe onset of
agriculmre man had evolved into his present form, and all the basic pancrns of human behavior had
appeared: language, complex saci'JI life, arts, complex technology. It was during this span of abOllt
99 percenl of the duration of the genus Homo that hu.nting was a major f.,etor in the adaptation of man.
If w'e are to umlerstand Ihe origin of man, we must understand man the hunter and woman the garherer.
(Washburn, 1976: xv)
As we shall see in the readings below, the use of hun ter-ga LJ,crer societies as analogies for human
life in the distant past is highly problematjc.
Indeed, since the 1970s an enormous number of critical questions have been asked abour the
San and the Mbuti, and the extent to which contemporary peoples can teach us about human
history:
Can these societies tell us something meaningful about human nature and e\'olution~
To what degree does the study of these societjes separate hunter-gatherers from the total
cultural and historical context in which they are embedded'
Is it useful to group culturally variable societies unJer tbe single category "hunter-gatherer"
simply because of their subsistence strategy?
By defining societies in these terms, does the category itself favor certain Lheoretical
approaches, such as l\1.arxism, cultural evolutionism, or cullural materialism, that account
for social and cultural differences in terms of technology and economy'
Since archaeological evidence now shows that ancestors of the San have eng-aged in regional
trade as far back as'\D 500, to what extent have the S:m, and other hunter-gatherer groups,
been embedded in regional interactions or in world political and economic systems?
Is it possible that the people we assume to have been hUDter-gathercrs for hundreds or even
thousands of years have long oscillated hetween a varie.l.) of subsistence strategies, incl uding
herding anJ agriculture?
If the archaeological evidem:e cited by recent authors is accepted, are hunter-gatherer socie
ties therefore misrepresented in tbe literature as ahistorical primitiye isolates?
So-called "revisionists," such as Edwin Wilmsen and James DenbO\~, find these to be compel
ling questions and want to challenge previous representations of hunter-gatherers in general,
and Lee's characterizations of the San, in particular. They claim that Lee treats the San as pure,
isolated, and timeless hunter-gatherers.
The chapters by Turnbull, Grinker, Wilmsen, and Sol\\'3) and Lee reveal the complexity of
this debate. Turnhull describes how the Mbuti Pygmies divide their universe into two spheres: a
forest world, that is completely good, and a village world that is malevolent. He analyzes the
many social and economic relationships between the Mburi Pygmies and Bila farmers in the Ituri
forest, Democratic Republic of Congo, but argues that they can be "iewed as autonomous
societies. He also claims that, despite the many social arenas in \'\hich the two groups interact,
and the ostensible dominance of the fanners over the hunter-gatherers, the .\J1buti are independ
ent actors who, in the village world, merel) pretend to be subordinates so rhatthq can exploit
the farmer's foods. In Chapter 12, Grinker argues, in contrast to Turnbull, that the separation of
forest and village worlds is an ethnic classification, and that the two groups are integral parts of
the same bur differentiated social system. Whereas Turnbull explores the hunter-gatherer/farm
INTRODUCTION 1;1
re!:ltionships primarily from the hunter-gatherer perspective, Grinker takes the farmer perspcc
ti\e. In his study of the Lese farmers and Efe (Pygmies), who live just to the north of the Mbuti
,\ ith whom Turnbull worked, he finds that both groups depend upon one another for their own
distinctive sociul and cultural identities. In addition, he argues that previous hunter-gatherer
,auwes focus so much on economics that the) often o\crlook the role that symbols, ideas, and
social organization pia) in structuring relations of inequality between hunter-gatherers and
farmers. Grinker elaborates the Lese house as one of the mechanisms the Lese and the Efe use
to integrate themselves into an asymmetrical social system defined by both ethnicity and gender.
The focus on the house stands in contrast not only to Turnbull's portrait of the Mbuti, but also
ro t he work of other authors who have taken the clan and lineage as the central organizing prin
dples of society and economy (see Parr I, for e:mmple). The house helps us to comprehend cer
ram kinds of relationships - ethnic anJ gendered relationships - that remain virtually invisible
from dle perspective of descent models. Elsewhere, Grinker (1994: 197-8) writes:
It is in light of inequality Lh;llthe house holds promise for a critical anthropology of Africa, a field that
has relied so heavily on analyses of clans, descent groups, and other units that a.re, sometimes by defini
tion, egalitarian social organizations, and ofren have little to do with gender or ethnic relarions .. CJaIJ~
tell us something ver) important about the ideologies framed b}' men about men, bur the) often rell us
main!) ahout sameness and equaliry, egalirari:lJ1ism and 50lid'lrity. It is in the context of egalitarianism,
tlf course, tlutt the clan, descenl and lineage become 50 important to the Lese. The organizarion of
Jesccllt lines intO clans is especially important in times of conflict ... for collecti"e action in the case of
dispute or illness. Out while the clan is essential to Lese socia] life, it is simply one level, one location,
from \\hich to an:l1yze social organization. One location is not more important than the other, but an
accurate anthropological picture depicts society as the product of the relationship between these two
co~existing modds.
Richard Lee has addressed some of the critica.1 questions we listed above in his 1979 book Th~
/KlIllg Sail: Men, WOlllell, {lilt/Work in (1 Flrragillg S()(ie~y. Lee attempts to show that the !Kung
data., especially those concerning demography, mobility, food acquisition, and the division of
lahor, are directly relevant to the stuJy of human evolution. One of Lee's more profound and
influential conclusions is that our human ancestor~, like the !Kung and other hunter-gatherers,
forged a relatively peaceful collective existence in which human beings shared thei.r resources,
and suppressed antisocial individualism. He suggests, "a truly communal life is often dismissed
as a utopian ideal ... but the evidence of foraging peoples tells us otherwise" (1979: -uil).
The 1980s was a fertile time for huntcr-gatherer studies, especially for Lee's critics. ="Tumerous
authors, such as Edwin Wilmsen and James Denbow (1990), provided their own data to challenge
Let's conclusions. Among other things, they argued aggressively that the 'Kung were contempo
nu") people who should not be compared with hmnans livi.ng in the Stone Age. As Wilmsen states
dc-aIly, the !Kung that we observe toda) are thc product of a long history inOuenced by complex
intcrnational and regional forces, Solway and Lee respond to these so-called "revisionists" by
showing how problematic the concept of history can be, First, in many of the works that situate the
San in regional and international systems, the history ofthe San has been defined as "contact," dillt is,
as social change moti\'ated by forces external to the group itself. Contrar) to the revisionist's
intentions, this vic",, Solwa) anJ Lec argue, perpetuates the idea of the hunter-gatherer as fragile,
pristine, and Imable to produce or adapt to innovation and change. Hunter-gatherers can mal~
their own histories in a complex process that includes exogenollsly and endogenously produced
forces. Tn argujng that conract between groups does not always lead to relations of domination and
172 INTRODUCTION
subordination, they also suggest that hunrer-gadlerers have the agency, resistance, and resilience to
remain relatively autonomous C\'en in 1he face of powerful outside influences.
Second, histor) is as variable as culture. The historical processes that affect just one area of the
Kalahari desert (an area roughly the si);e of France) may not affect another. Following up on this
point, the authors show, through oral history, archacology, and ethnography, that thc Dobe San
(among whom Lee conducted most of his fieldwork) and the Western Kweneng San have had radi
call) different historical experiences. Whereas me latter were intimately involved with Bantu pasto
ralists and fur traders for several hundred years, and were direct!) affected by both the Difaqane
wars of the early 18005, and British colonial rule, the Dobe San have remained isolated and inde
pendent of other edmie groups even to this day. Anthropologists, tlley argue, cannot generalize from
one San area to the other without taking into account dle total historical contexts of each group.
fhese arguments are hotly contested by Wilmsen and by Schrire (1992), and hy Wilmsen and
Denbow (1992). In sharp contrast to Solway and Lee, Wilmsen and Denbow claim that the San of
the Dobe region were subordinated to a dominant Early Iron Age society in the first millennium .'1).
The San, they claim, are Botswana's underclass. San identity is the result of a long and compli
cated past in which they werc marginalized from the centers of economic and pobrical power, and
forced into poverty and occasional isolation. The category "San," they suggest, is an invented
anthropological category that O\'erlooks the realities of S,mljfc, and masks their true history.
The Kalahari debate draws our attent ion to se\ era1 important methodological and theoretical
issues in anthropology: as discussed above, these include the problems of (I) how to situatc the
local communities anthropologists often study in the larger social, economic, and historical con
te~lC; in which they exist, (2) how to conceptualize history and contact. and (3) how anthropolo
gists interested in human and cultural evolution can find fruitful ethnographic analogies among
contemporary peoples. Thcse readings also force us to consider the problematic relationship
between ethnographic cases and analytic categories. Argument over the San is in many respects
an argument O\'er the very nature of amhropological classification because the comparative cat
cgories we employ are often only as good as the individual ethnographies that constitute them.
"Hunter-gatherer," as a category, is equated so often with Lee's specific presentation of the San
that criticisms of Lee's ethnography rna." apply equally well to the general study of hunter
gatherers as a cross-cultural type. This debate thus illustrates the theoretical perils encountered
when, as we noted in the opening paragraph of this introduction, certain societies become the
quintessential examples of particular topics, theories, or classifications.
References
Grinker, Roy Richard. 199.f. Houses il1 the Rail/foresT: EthniciTy lIlIIl Inequa/it)' lImong Farmers and f'o1'agers ill
'mtml A/rica. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lee, Rit:hard B. 1979. The !KIII/g Sail: II Iell, Womtn, allli Wurk ill a Foragillg Society. Cambridge: Cambridge
niversity Press.
Washburn, S. 1976. "Foreword." In R. B. Lec and 1. DeVore, eds., Kalahari Hllnter-Catherers: Studies of the
!KIII/g Sail a,1d their Neigh/lOTS. Cambridge, Mi\: Hmvard University Press.
WilmscD, E. and Denhow, J. 1990. "Paradigmatic History of San-5pe.lking Peoples and Current Attemprs at
Revision." Cllrrel/t Alllhropology 31: 589-24.
Suggested Reading
Bahuchet, S. and H. Giullaume. 1982. "Aka-Farmer Relations in the Northwest Congo Basin." In Richard Lee
and Eleanor Leacock, eds., Poli/ies ami lIislory in Bund Sueieties, pp. 189-212. Cambridge: Cambridge
Un i"ersiry Press.
INTRODUCTION 173
Bailey, R.C., G. Head, ~'1. Jenike, B. Owen, R. Rechtman, and E. Zechenter. 1989. "Hunting and Gathering in
Tropical Rain Forest: Is it Possible?" AmcTiall/ .1uthropologist Y1(I): 59-83.
Barnard, Alan. 1992. HUllters and limlt,'rs o/Soulhm/ A{ri{{/: /1 Comparatit-e Elll/logmphy o/tlie Khursllll Peoples.
C-Impridge: Cambridge Uni\'ersiry Press.
Bird-D'I\ id, :--rurit. 1992. "Beyond 'The Original Aftluent Society': A Culturalisr Reformulation" Currellt
.-lntltroJlolugy 33(1): 25-47.
Ca\'alli-Sforza, L. 1987. African Pygmies. Orlando: Academic Press.
Harr. J. A. and T. B. Hart. 1984. "The MbUli of Zaire: Political Change and the Opening of the lruri Forest."
ClIllIIml Surt.it'alQ}wrterl)' 8(3): 18-20.
Hewlett, Barry. 1991. Il1limate Fa/ltas: The Nature and COlltext of Aka Pygmy Patemal Care. Ann Arbor:
L:ni,'crsiry of l'vlichigan.
lchikawa, ~1. 1978. "The Residential Groups of the Mbuti Pygmies." SenTi Ethological Studies J: 131-88.
khikawa, M. 1981. "Ecological and Sociological Importance of Honey to the Mbuti Net Hunters, Eastern
Zaire." /l/i-icnli S/IJI{V MO/lugraphs I: 55-68.
1ngokl, T, D. Riches, and J Woodburn, cds. 1997. Hunters arid Gatherers, 2 vols. New York: Berg.
Johnson, ~ 1. 1931. Congorilla: All1:entures I/Jith Pygmies and Gorillus ill AfriCll. :'Jew York: Bewer, Warren, and
Purn'lm.
Johnston, Sir 11.1 I. 1903. The Pygmies of the Grear Congo Forest. Allllulil Repor/ ofthe Board ofRegenls ofthe
SmithSO/lial/ Im/itutiul/. the Year ending 1902, pp. 479-91.
Katz, Richard. 1982. Boiling Energy: Co/mnll/li~), Healing among the Kulahllri !KuJlg. Cambridge, MA: Har\'ard
Universiry Press.
Kuper, Adam. 1993. "Post-Modernism, Cambridge, and the Great Kalahari Debate." Sociill Anthrupology 1(1):
.--71.
e, R.B. and I. DeVore, eds. 1968. ,Hal/the //unler. Chicago: Aldine.
Lee, R.B. and E. Leacock, eds. 1982. Polrtics and Hi,<t(lry in Bond Sooeties. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Lee, Richard B. and Richard Daly. 2004. The Cambridge Encyclopedill o( HI/liters and Catherers. Cambridge:
Cambridge Universiry Press.
MJrshaJl, Lorna. 1976. The !Kll11g 0/ 'vYUf IIIylle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Panter-Brick, Catherine, Robert H. Layton, and Perer Rowley-Com,,\', eds. 2001. Hl/tUer-Ca/ha.:rs: .'111
llltmiiseipli/Ulry Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sehebesra, P. 1933. Among COl/go Pygmir:s. London: Hutchinson and Co.
Schebesta, P. 1936.. Uy Pygmy (ltlll Negro Hos/s. London: Hurchinson and Co.
Schebesta, P. 1952. "Les Pygmees du Congo Beige." Mem. Illst. Roy. Colonial Beige, ser. 8, vol. 26, fase. 2.
Sehrire, C. 1984. Paslantl Present ill HUllur-Carheur Studies. Orlando: Academic Press.
Shostak, Marjorie. 1981. Nisa: The Life ~(a !Kullg Homall. London: Allen Lane.
Tanno, T. 1976. "The Mbuti Net-Hunters in the Ituri Forest, Eastern Zaire: Thejr Hunting Activities and Band
Composition." Kyuto Ur/iversrly /~(rica'l Stlldies 10: 101-35.
Terashima, H. 1984. "The Struerure of the Band of Mbuti Archers." In J. ltani and T. Yoneyama, eds., Afl/rikl/
BunJ:a 110 KmkJII/, pp. J-4I. Kyoto: Academiea Shuppan-kai.
Terashima, H. 1985. "Variation and Composition Principles of the Residence Group (Band) of the Mbuti Pygmies
Beyond aT) picall Atypical Dichotomy. " .1fri(11II Study MOllographs, Supplementary Issue, 4: 103-20.
Terashima, H. 1987. "Why Do Efe Girls Marry Farmers' The Soeio-eeological Backgrounds of Inter-Ethnic
Marriage in rhe Iruri Forest of Ccnrral Africa." African Sllldy Jl10l/ographs 6: 65-84.
Turnbull, Colin. 1961. The Foresl People. Ne\\ York: Simon and Schuster.
Turnbull, Colin. 1965a. Tlte Mbuti Py~mies: An Ethnographic SlIrvey. Allthropological Papers of the American
Museum of Natural History 50(3): 139-282.
Turnbull, Colin. 1965b. H~Y1Pard Sertmt/s: The Two H'(lrlds of Ihe /~(rican Py?mies. New York: Natural History
Press.
Turnbull, Colin. 1983. The Mb/lti Pygmies: Change (llld ,Idapta/ioll. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
\'ansina, Jan. 1990. Paths ill the Rail/forest. Madison: Universit) of Wist:onsin Press.
Yellen, John E. "The Present and the Future of Hunter-Gatherer Studies" In c.c:. Lamberg-Karlovsh, ed.,
/llCllrleological Thought ill Amt,nccl. Cambridge: Cambridg'e University Press.
 11

The Lesson of the Pygmies

Colin M. Turnbull

It has long been assumed that these inhabitants of the African rain forest had adapted
to a kind of serfdom in villages. The discovery that they have not has implications for
the problems of Africa today.

1n the welter of change and crisis confronting the
lives of the peoples of Africa it would seem diffi
cull LO work up concern for the fate of the 40,000
Pygmies who inhabit the rain forests in the north
eastern corner of the Congo. The very word
"pygmy" is a term of derogation. According to
earl) explorers and contemporary anthropolo
gists, the Pygmies have no culture of their O\\'n
not even a language. They became submerged, it
i~ said, in the village customs and beliefs of the
Bantu and Sudanic herdsmen - cultivators who
occupied the periphery of the forest and reduced
them to a kind of serfdom some centuries ago. By
the testimony of colonial administrators and tour
ists they are a scurvy lot: thievish, dirry and
shrouded with an aura of impish deviltry. Such
reports reflect in part the sentiments of the village
trioes; in man) villages the Pygmies are regarded
as not quite people.
To argue that the Pygmies are people - even to
show that they maintain to this day the integrity of
an ancient culture - will not avert or temper the
fate that is in prospect for them. The opening of
the rain forests of Central Africa to exploitation
threatens to extinguish them as a people. The
Pygmies are, in truth, bamiki nde lIdllra: children
of the forest. AWOl) from the villages they are hunt
ers and food gatherers, The forest provides them
with e\erything they need, generally in abun
dance, and enables them to lead an egalitarian, co
operative and leisured existence to which eviJ, in
the sense of interpersonal malevolence, is so for
eign that they have no word for it. After centuries
of contact with the "more ad\'anced" cultures of
the villages and in spite of all appearances, their
accultufiltion to any other mode of life remains
almost nil. They have fooled the a11thropologists
as they have fooled the villagers. For this reason if

From Colin Turnbull, "The Lessons of the Pygmies," St'ienlijic .-lmmCl//l, 208-22 (1963), pp. 28-37. Copyrighl 1963
bj Scientific American, Inc. from Scientific .werican, lnc.
176 COLIN M. TURNBULL
for no other, Lhe Pygmies deserve the concerned
attention of the world outside. Their success
should make us pause to reconsider the depth of
acculturation that we have taken for granted as
existing else\~here, as industrial ci\"ilization has
made its inexorable conquest of the earth.
The reason for the prevailing erroneous picture
of the Pygmies is now clear, It had hitherto been
generally impossible to have access to them except
through the offices of the village headman, \\'ho
would call the local Pygmies in from the forest to
be interviewed. To aJi appearances they lived in
some Sort of symbiosis, if not serfdom, with the
village people, subject to both the secular and the
religious authority of the village. The fact that
Pygmy boys undergo the village ritual of initiation
in a relation of subsen'ience to village boys was
cited as evidence of ritual dependence, and it has
been held that the Pygmies are economically
dependent on the \'illages for metal and for planta
Lion foods, presumably needed to supplement the
meat they hunt in the forest. The fe\\ investigators
who got away from the villages did not manage to
do so without an escort of villagers, acting as por
ters or guides. Even in the forest the presence of a
single yillager transforms the context as far as the
Pygmies are concerned; therefore all such obser
vations were still basically of Pygmies in the vil
lage, not in their natural habitat.
My own initial impression was just as errone
ous. By good fortune my contact wilh dle Pygmies
circumvented the \-illage al1d was established from
the outset on a basis that identified me with the
world of the forest. Seeing them almost exclu
sively in the context of the forest, I saw a picture
diametrically opposed to the one generally drawn.
Instead of dependence, I saw at first independence
of the village, a complete lack of acculturation - in
fact, little contact of any kind.lt was onl) after two
additional stays in the Iluri Forest, the home
ground of the Congo Pygmies, tlult I was able to
put the two contradictory pictures of their life
together and to see the \\hole. It turned out that
neither is \\'rong; each is right in its particular
context. The relation of the Pygmies to the villag
ers is a stroke of adaptation that has served their
survival and even their convenience without
apparent compromise of the int.egrity of their
forest-nurtured culture.
THE LESSON OF THE PYGMIES 177
The Ba\-lbuti, as the Pygmies of the Ituri Forest I
I I
are known to themselves and to their neighbors, I I
I I
may be the original inhabitants ofthe great st.retch I
I I
I
of rain forest that reaches from the Atlantic coast
,
/
,,'
,
--'I
right across Central Africa to the open grassland
:
~
'
country on the far side of the chain of great lakes ~- ,-_.... '''-'''-' ,. I
I
that divides the Congo from East Africa. Their \, "
origin, along with that of Negrito peoples else ," , ~ ,
where in the world, is lost in the prehistoric past. I" I \ ... __, \ t
I
' .. J ,- .... ,' I
Most Pygmies have unmistakable features other " '\, .. --,-" .. , ,,...
I
~\
", .. ,
I " ,
than height (they average less than four and a half
'" ,
feet) that distinguish tl1em from Negroes. They I
I ,
I I
I
" ,
' , ..
,,~ ,~ ,
are \vell muscled, usually sway-backed and ha\'e
legs that are short in proportion to theil' torsos. .'~ ~
I '
" .... -..
~,. ,
~,
' .. -, ..
_""'\ '--~' '......
\
,_ .....",J ,.-
Their faces, with wide-set eyes and flat, broad ~ - - I
t f
noses, have a characteristically alert expression, , I
I I
direct and unafraid, as keen as the aaitude of the
body, which is always poised to move with speed " Lake ~f
and agilitv at a moment's notice. They do not envy Victoria I
their neighbors, who jeer at them for their puny ' ......
stature; in the enclosure of the forest, where life ",
may depend on the ability to move s\viftly and ' ....
silently, the taller Negroes are as clumsy as ele
phants. For his part the Pygmy hurner \vins his , , ..... - ...\
Spill'S by killing an elephant, which he docs by I
running underneath the animal and piercing its I ,
bladder with a succession of quick jabs from a
shortshafted spear. ~, . . . l'-\
I
A Bal\lbuti hunting band may consist of as I
,---
many as 30 families, more than 100 men, women I
I
and children in all. On the move from one encamp I
ment to another they fill the ~urrounding fore~r
with the sound of shouted chatter, laughter and
Figure 11.1 Ituri Porest inhabited by the Pygmies occupies an area of roughly 50,000 square miles in the
song. Along with the venting of high spirits, this
northeastern corner of the tropical rain forest of the Congo, in Central Africa
ensures that lurking leopards and buffaloes \,ill be
flushed into the forest well ahead of the band and overlapping tiers. Before nightfall, with the first mushrooms springing to the surface, the exact
not be accidentally cornered on the trail. The arrivals helping the stragglers to complete their moment when termites S\\'arm and must be har
women, carrying or herding the infants, dart from tasks, the camp is built and the smoke of cooking vested to provide an important delicacy. The men
the trail to g"llther food, and the men scout the for fires rises into the canopy of the forest. The enLire hunt with bows and poison-tipped arrows, with
ests for gClme on rhe flanks and in the 'an of the enterprise serves to demonstrate a salient feature spears for larger game and with nets. The last
ragged procession. Arriving at the campsite in no of Bai\1buti life: everything gets done with no inl'olves the Pygmy genius for co-operation. Each
particular order, all join in the task of building direction and with no apparent organization, family makes and maintains its o\'n net, four feet
huts. The men usually cut the saplings to make the A morning is usually all that is needed to secure high and many vards long. Together they string
frames and sometimes also the giant Phrynium tbe supply of food. The women know just where to the nets across a strategically chosen stretch of
leaves to cover them; the women take charge offhe look for the wild fruits that grow in abundance in ground. The hunters, often joined by the women
actual building. The saplings are driven securely the (orests, although they are hidden to outsiders. and older children, beat the forest, driving the
into the ground around a 1O-foot circle, then defdy The WOmen recognize the undistinguished ilaba game into the nets.
bent and intertwined to form a lattice dome; on vine, which leads to a cache of nutritious, s\~eet By afternoon they have brought enough food
this structure the lea'es are hung like sJlingl'es, in tasting roots; the kind of weather that brings into camp and sometimes a surplus that will enable
178 COLIN M. TURNBULL THE LESSON OF THE PYGMIES
In the crisis festival of the motimo, tJ1e closest
approximation to a ritual in the un formalized life
of the BaMbuti, the men of the band "ill sing,
night aftcr night, through the night until daw n.
The function of the sound now is to "awaken the
'orcst" so that it will learn the plight of its chil
dren or hear of their joy in its bounty.
The spirit of co-operation, seen in every activ
ity from hun ring to singing, takes the place of for
mal social organization in the BaMbuti hunting
band. There is no headman, and individual author
iTy and individual responsibility are shunned by
all Each member of the band can expect and
dcmand the co-operation of others and muSl also
give iT. In essence the bonds that make two broth
ers hullt together and share their food ;1fe not
much greater than those that obtain bct \\ een a
member of a band and a visiting Pygmy, even if he
is lotall) unrelated. An) adult male is a father to
anY' child; an) woman, a mother. They expect the
same help and respect from all children and they
o\\e The same responsibilities toward them.
When the Pygmies encamp for a while near a vil
lage, the charactcr of tJ1e band and its acti\'ities
undergo profound and complete transformation.
This happens e\ en when a lone villager pays a visit
to a Pygmy camp. Not only do such acti\ ities as
singing and dancing and even hunting change, but
so also do the complex interpersonal relations. The
Pygmies then be.Jlave toward each other as they
would if the) were in a village. They are no longer
a single, united hunting band, co-operating closely,
Figure 11.2 Detail map of the lturi Forest sho\\s the Pygmy camps visited by the author (small open but an aggregate of individual families, Ilithin
circles), villages (black dots) and various rivers (thin lines). The camps are connected by forest paths (mcdium which lhere may even be disunity. On periodic vis
lines). tJle villages by roads (heal'y Jines) its To the village with which their hunting band is
associated, the Pygmies occupy their own semiper
them to stay in camp the next day. Time is then intricate musical culture. Their music is essentially manent canlpsite between the village and the forest.
spent rcpairing the ncts, making new hO\"\5 and vocal and non instrumental. It display s :1 rchnively Each family usually has ;) particular \'iJlage family
arro\\s, haskets and other gear and performing complex harmonic sense and a high degree of with which it maintains a loose and generally
various other chores. This stilllt:a"es a fair amount rhythmic virtuosity. With the harmony anchorcd friend I) exchange relation. At such times the
of frce time, which is spcnt, apan from eating and in the dominant and therefore all in one churd, the Pygmies not only supply meat, the) may aJso sup
sleeping, either in playing with the chihlren and singing is often in canon form, with as many parts ply some labor. Their main funclion, as the villag
teaching them adult acti\ ities or in gathering in as there are singers and wilh irnprO\ isations and ers sec it, is to provide such forest products as meat,
impromptu groups for song and dance. elahorations contributed freely b~ each. A ~ong huney and the Ie-.wes and saplings needed for the
Thc B:u\tbuti have clc\ cloped little talent in may have some general meaning, but it ma~ also be construction of viJiage houses. The villagers do not
the graphic arts beyond the occasional daubing totally de\oid of words and consist simply of a like the forest and go into it as seldom as possible.
of a bark cloth with rcd or blue dy~ smeared on succession of vowel sounds. The real meaning of It j~ on these occasions that tra"elers have seen
I'ith a finger or a twig. The} do, however, have an the song, its imporlance and power, is in the sound. the Pygmies and decided thal the) are vassals to
179
the \ illagers, with no cultural identity of their
own. It is true that this is how the Ba\![buti appear
whilc they are in the villages, because in this for
eign world their own code of beha\'ior does not
apply. In the village they behave with a shrewd
sense of expediency. It in no way hurts them to
foster the villagers' illusion of dominalion; it even
helps to promote favorable economic rrlations. As
far as the B;u\1buti are concerned, people who are
not of the forest an; not people. The mixture of
respect, friendship and cunning II ith which the)
treat their village neighbors corresponds to the
way they treat thc animals of the forest: they lise
them as a source of food and other goods, respect
ing them as such and treating them with tolerant
affection when they are not needed. The Pygmies
have a saying that echoes the proverb of tJle goose
and the golden egg, to the effect that lhey nel'er
completely :tJld absolutely eat the villagers, they
just eat them.
Jn the mistaken interpretations of this peculiar
relation the fact that the Pygmies seem to have lost
their original language is often cited a~ e\ idence of
their acculturation to the village. Linguists, on lhe
other hand, see nothing surprising in this fact.
Small, isolated hunting bands, caught up in the
intertribal competition that must hne attended
the Bantu invasion that began half a millennium
ago, could well have lost their OWl) language in a
couple of generations. It is by no means certain,
howe\'er, that the Pygmy language is extinct.
Certain words and usages appear lO be unique to
the Pygmies and do not occur in the languages and
dialects of any of the numerous neighboring tribes.
What is more, the Pygmies' intonation is so dis
tinctive, no matter which of the languages they are
speaking, as to render 1heir speech almost unintel
ligible to the villager II hose language it is supposed
to be.
Some authorities maintain that the P~ gmies
rely on the ,illagers for food :tJld metal. As for
food, my 0\\J1 experience has shown that the
llaMbUli huming bands arc perfectly capable of
supporting themselles in the forest without ;my
help from outside. The farther away from the vil
lages mey arc, in fact, the better the) find the
hunting and gathering. If anything, it is the \-illag
ers VI ho depend on the Pygmies, panicularly for
meat to supplement their protein-deficient diet.
 THE LESSON OF THE PYGMIES
AUGUST 1957 DECEMBER 1957 FEBRUARY 1958
It is more difficult to determine to what extent
tbe BaMbuti are dependent on \'illage metal.
A fell old men speak of hardening the points of
their wooden spears in fire, and children's spears
are still made in this way, Except for elephant
hunting the spear is mostly a defensive weapon,
and the loss of metal spear blades would not be
serious. Knife and ax blades are more important;
the word !n{/(heul - for the long, heayy-bladed
brush-slashing knife - is well established in the
pygmy vocabulary. There are thom) vines, how
c~er. that can serve adequately as scrapers and
VILLAGE others that when split give a sharp if temporary'
CAMP cutring et.1ge, like that of split bamboo, When I
have pressed the question, it has been stated to me
MAY-JUNE 1958 that, in the absence of metal blades, "we would use
~I~
HONEY slones." On the other hand, I haye never suc
CAMPS ceeded in persuading a Pygmy to show me how,
~15
The answer to such a request was invariably: "Why
should I go to all that trouble when it is so easy to
MILES get metal tools from the villagers?"
Tltis is in fact the core of the Pygmies' eco
nomic relation with the villagers, and it renders
the teml "symbiosis" inapplicable. There is noth
ing they' need badly enough to make them depend
VILLAGE CAMP
ent on the villagers, although they use many
artifacts acquired from them. Metal cooking uten
sils are a good example: the Pygmies can get along
AUGUST 1958 NOVEMBER 1958
without these comfortably. They use them only for
the cooking of village foods tllat require boiling,
such as rice; forest foods call for no SUdl utensils.
The na..\1buti will exchange goods with the villag
ers and cven work for them, but only as long as it
suits their conyenience and no longer. ~o amount
of persuasion will hold them. if a yillager attempts
coercion, the Pygmy simply packs up and goes
r:>:
;:,;,I
back to the forest, secure in the knowledge t.hat he
"ill not be followed. On the next occasion he will
o~ offer his goods in another village, Tribal records
are full of disputes in which one villager has
accused another of stealing "Itis" Pygmies.
In the absence of effectiYe economic control the
Figure 11.3 Fores't camps chang!; structure and constitution in cyclical fashion as Pygmies move from one yillagers attempt to assert political ant.1 religious
campsite to another; they become increasingly fragmented at the approach of the honey season (May through allthoril)'. The villagers themseh'es are the source
June), break up during the season (figures show number of families) and re-form afterward. The disposition of the myth that they "own" the Pygmies in a form
of huts, direction in which they face and their shapes are as shown; some were later abandoned (broken lines), of heredil:lT\' serfdom. They appoint Pygmy head
Of the clans constituting the group with which the author stayed during the period, the main one was the men, each responsible for his band to the appro
Bapuemi (solid-coloured areas). A quarrel resulted in a split camp (lower left), which gradually re-formed, priate I ilhlge headman. Because the bands not
181
only shift territorially but also change as to their
inner composition, however, a village headman
can no more be sure which Pygmy families com
prise "his" band than he can tell at any time where
the band has wandered. In his appointed Pygmy
headman he has a scapegoat he can blame for fail
ure of the band to fulfill its side of some exchange
tra.nsaction. But the Pygmy has no wealth with
wllich to pay fines and can rarely be caught for the
purpose of enforcing any other restitution.
The villagers nonetheless believe themselws to
be the masters, They admit it is a hard battle and
point out that tlle Pygmies are in league with the
powerful and tricky spirits of the forest. The fear
the viJJagers have of the forest goes beyond a fear
of the animals; it is also a respect based on the
knowledge that they are newcomers, if of several
hWldred years' standing. This respect is even
extended to the Pygmies. Some villages make
offering to the Pygmies of the first fruit, acknowl
edging tllat the Pygmies were there before them
and so have certain rights over the land. This
offering is also expected to placate the forest spir
its. Ultimately, however, the \'illagers hope to sub
ject the Pygmies to the village spirits and thereby
to assume total domination,
In carrying the contest into the realm of the
supernatural, the villagers imoke the full armory
of witchcraft and sorcery. To the villagers these
methods of social control are just as scientific and
real as, say, political control through armed force.
Moreover, although \I'itchcraft and sorcery gener
ally get their resul ts by psychological pressure,
they can sometimes be implemented by physiolog
ical poisons, There are strange tales of illness and
of death due to sorcery, and no Pygmy wants to be
cursed by a villager, On receiving threats of this
kind the hunting band takes to the forest, secure in
the belief that village magic is no more capable of
following them into the forest than are the villag
ers themselves,
More subtly, the villagers engage the Pygmies
in the various important rituals of the village cul
tu.re. A Pygmy birth, marriage or death, occurring
when t.he hunting band is bivouacked near a vil
lage, sets in motion the full village ceremonial
appropriate to the occasion. The "owner" of the
Pygmy in each case assumes the obligation of pro
viding the childprotecting amulet, of negotiating
 182 COLIN M. TURNBULL
the exchange of bride wealth or of paying rhe cost
of the obsequies. Such intervention in a Pygmy
marriage not only ensures that the union is regu
larized according ro village ritual; it also gives the
owners in question indissoluhle rights, natural and
supernatw'al, O\U the new famik The Pygmies
",illingly submit to the ritual because it means a
rhree-dav festival during which they will be fed by
the villagers and at end of which, with luck, they
will be able to make 0[[ with a portion of the bride
wealth. On returning to the foresl the couple may
decide that it was just a flirtation and separate,
lcaving the viLlag'ers to litigate the expense of the
transaction and the wedding feast. Although they
are economically the losers, the villagers nonethe
less believe that by forcing or cajoling the Pygmies
through the ritual they have subjected them, at
least to some cxtent, to the control of the village
supernatural.
The same considerations on both sides :Jpply to a
funeral. The ritual places certain obligations on
the family of the deceased and lays supernatural
sanctions on them; death also involves, almost
invaria bly, allegations of witchcraft or sorcery.
Once again, therefore, the villagers are eager to do
what is necessary to bring the Pygmies within the
thrall of the local spirit world. And oncc again the
Pygmies are willing to co-operate, kno\"'ing that
the village funerary ritual prescribes a funerary
feast. Even though their custom calls for quick
and unccremonious disposal of the dead, they are
glad to let the villagers do the disposing and even
to submit to head-shaving and ritual baths in
return for a banquet.
By far the most elaborate ritual by. which the
villagers hope to bring the Pygmies under control
is the initiation of the Pygmy hays into manhood
throug'h the ordeal of circumcision, called nkumbi.
AII village boys between the ages of nine and 12
are subject to thjs practice, which takes place every
three years. Pyg'my boys of the appropriate age
who happen to bc in the vicinity are put through
the same ccrcmony with the village boys. A Pygmy
boy is sent first "to clean the knife," as the villagers
put it, and then he is followed by a village boy.
These two boys are thereafter joined by the blood
they shed together in the unbreakable bond of kare,
at blood brotherhood. Any default, particularly
on the part of tlle Pygmy, will invoke the wrath of
the ancestors and bring all manner of Curses On
the offender. So once more the Pygmies are placed
under the control of the village spirits and the
putative bonds between the serfs and their Owners
are reinforced. Some villagers also see this prac
tice as a means of securing for themselves an
assured complement of Pygmy serfs to serve them
in the afterworld.
As in all t.he other ritual relations, the Ba,\lbuti
have their own independent motivation and ration_
alization for submitting their sons to the pain and
humiliation of Illmmbi. For one thing, the Pygmy
boys acq uirc the same secular adult status in the
village world as their village blood brothers. The
Pygmies, moreover, have tlle advantage of know
ing that the bonds they do not consider unbreak
able nonetheless tie their newly acquired village
brothers; they made usc of this knowledge by
imposing on their kare. Finally, for the adult male
relatives of the Pygmy initiates the ceremony
means three months or so of continuous feasting
at the expense of the villagers.
Once the lIkumhi is over and the Pygmics have
returned to the forest, it becomes clear that the
ritual has no relevance to the inner life of the fam
ily and the hunting band. The boys who have gone
to such trouble to become adults in the village ~t
on the laps of their mothers, signifying that they
know they are really still children. In Pygmy soci
ety they will not become adults unliJ they have
proved themselves as hunters.
Back in the forest the Pygmies oncc again
become forest people. Their counter to the villag
ers' efforts to bring them under domination is to
keep the two worlds apart. This strategy finds for
mal expression in the festival of the molimo. The
mo!imo songs are never sung when a band is mak
ing a visit<ltion to a village or is encamped near it.
Our in the forest, during thc course of each night'S
singing, the trail leading off from the camp in thc
direction of the village is ceremonially blocked
"ith branches and leaves, shutting out the profane
world bcyond.
The relation between Pygmy and the villagc cul
tures thus resolves itself in a standoff Moti\-ated as
it is by economics, the relation is inherentIv an
adversary one. The vi.lJagers seek to win the contest
THE LESSON OF THE PYGMIES
bv domination; the Pygmies seek to perpetuate it
b~ a kind of indigenous apartheid. Because the
r~lation is one of mutual convenience rather than
necessity, it works wilh reasonable success in the
ec()nomic realm. The villagers ascribe the succcss,
!towe\'Cf, to their spiritual domination; any break
0.0\\ n they cannot correct they are content to leave
to rectification by the supernatural, a formula that
works within their own sociery. The Pygmies hold,
on the other hand, that thc forest looks after its
own, a belief that is borne our by their dajly experi
ence. In the nature of the situation, each group is
able to think it has succeeded, as indeed in its own
e~cs it has. The very separateness of the two worlds
makes this dual solution possible. But it is a solu
tion that can work only in the present context.
A breakdown began when the Belgians insisted
that the villagers plant cotton and produce a food
surplus. The villagers then needed the Pygmies
even more as a source of manpower. At the same
time, with roads being cut through the forest, the
Illovement of game became restricted. if the proc
ess had continued, the Pygmies would have found
it increasingly difficult to follow their hunting and
food-gathering way of life and would indeed have
become the economic dependants of the villagcrs.
The present political turmoil in the Congo has
given the Pygmies a temporary reprieve.
In some areas, however, thc Belgians had decided
to pre-empt the untappcd Pygmy labor force for
themselves and had already set about "liberating"
the Pygmies from the mythical yoke of the villag
ers, persuading them to set up plantations of their
own. The result was disastrous. Used to the con
stant shade of the forest, to the purity of forest
water and to the absence of germ-carrying Hies
and mosquitoes, the Pygmies quickly succumbed
to sunstroke and to various illnesses ag'ainsl whieh
the villagers have some immunity. Worse yet, \vith
the abandoning of hunting and food gathering the
cntire Pygmy social structure collapsed. Forest val
ues were necessarily left behind in the forest, and
there was nothing to take their place but a pathetic
183
and unsuccessful imitation of the ne" world
around them, the world of villagers and of
Europeans.
This whole problem was much discussed
among the Pygmies just prior to the independ
ence of the Congo. In almost every case they
re:Jched the determination that as long as the for
est existed they would try to go on living as they
had always lived. More than once I was told, with
no little insight, that "when the forest dies, we
die." So for the Pygmies, in a sense, there is no
problem. They ha\-c seen enoug'h of the outside
world to feel able to make their choice, and their
choice is to preserve the sanctity of their own
world up to the very end. Being what they are,
they 1\ ill doubtless continue to playa m:Jsterful
game of hide-and-seek, but they will not easily
sacrifice their integrity.
It is for future administrations of the Cong'o
that the problem will be a rea1 one, both moral and
practical. Can the vast forest area justifiably be set
aside as a reservation for some 40,000 Pygmies?
And if the forest is to be exploited, what can one
do II ith its inhabitants, who are physically, tem
peramentally and socially so unfitted for any other
form of life? If the former assessment of the
Pygmy-villager relation had been correct and the
Pygmies had reaUy been as acculturated as it
seemed, the problem would have resolved itself
into physiological terms only, serious enough but
not insuperable. As it is, seeing that the Pygmies
have for several hundred years successfully
rejected almost every basic element of the foreign
cultures surrounding- them, the prospects of adap
tation are fraught with hazards.
Traditional values die hard, it would seem, and
continue to tllrive even when they are considered
long since dead and bmied. In dealing with any
African peoples, I suspect, we are in gra\'e danger if
we assume too re-adily that they are the creatures we
like to think we have made them. If the Pygmies are
any indication, and if wc realize it in time, it may be
as \\'ell for us and for Africa that they are not.

12
forest, hunt and gather, have only temporary set
Houses in tlle Rainforest
Gender and Ethnicity among the
characterizing the Efe; Lese men and women fre
Lese and Efe in Zaire
quently characterize the Efe, and the forest in
Roy Richard Grinker
We [the Lese] gained our independence from the Belgians in 1960, but the Efe lPygmies]
haw not gained their independence from liS.
A Lese llW/l at the jimao/ olhis tfe partner
At night in Lese villages. men sit outside their by only if he licb the blood and pu~ hom her
houses in their pasa, the roofed meeting places in lesions. Even after he agrees, she transforms her
the village plaza, and tell stories. At the center of self into a knife and impales him. A third story
the pasa is a fire. The nights arc chilly in the rain teUs of an Efe spirit named Befe who comes from
forest and children may come to warm themselves the forest into the village, exllumes and rapes the
by the fire while their mothers sit on makeshift corpse of a Lc.'Se girl, and then rapes the \illage
chairs on the edge of the pasa. At these times, men houses by penetrating the doors with his large
and ,vomen will talk about the forest, of its dan phallus.
gers and darkness, and of the tricksters and other This chapter is about the village and the forest.
spirits that harass and torment the farmers who Bm it is more generally about the opposition
try to enter. It seemed to me that the stories were between the Lese and the Efe. 11' is d.ifficult to
directed toward the children and even intended to imagine oppositions that are marc sharp and fun
frighten them. One story tells of a man who goes damental than those which the Lese make betwcen
to the forest and is seduced by a female forest themselves and the Efe: village versuS forest, cul
spirit. She forces her way into his body and rips ture versus nature, the civilized versus the savage.
open his skin, disemboweling and killing him. male versus female, white versus red, light verSUs
Another story tells of a farmer who goes to the for dark. The Lese hold that they are civilized and
est to set an animal trap. He meers a female forest cultural, because, among otJler things, thcy live in
spirit with leprosy who tells him that he can pass viJlages, cultivate food crops, and go to school and
From Roy Richard Grinker, Houses in the Rainfnrest: Elhmcil)" and il/cq/lality IITl/Mlg FQrll/ers and Forllgas ii/ Celllr,,11
.~r"ca (l99-l), pp. 73-109. Cop\Tight 199+ The Regents of the Unj\,crsilv of Califomla, from the Uni\Crsit~ of
California Press.
HOUSES IN THE R.".lt!FOREST
church, whereas the Efe are sa\ages who live in the
dwell, spirits the Lese call tore, and translate into
tlements, and know nothing of God, mathemaries,
and the French language. Through metaphor, the
Lese seek both to define themselves and to deni
grate the Efe.
Gender is perhaps the most salient metaphor for
construction of inequality, in which the village is
which the Efe live, as female. I The Lese, in con
trast, characterize themselves, and the village in
\1 hich they li\'e, as male. In fact, the distinctions
they make between themselves and the Efe, as
groupS, can be seen to parallel those between men
and women in general, and between Lese men and
their v. j,es in particular. The Lese sec the Lese
He relationship as pa:rt of a series of male-female
opposirions, which. b) implication, puts the Efe in
the subordinate female position The metaphor
als!) implies a more specific relationship between
the Efe and Lese men's wi\'es and draws an ana
logic equivalence between them. In the Lese house,
these twO groups of people are subordinate to Lese
men, and nre thus culturally represented in similar
ways. The central argument of this chapter is that
the symbolic incorporation of the Efe into the Lese
hOllse is made possible by a particular Lese dis
COUISe about Lese-Efe differences ..
The Forest and the Village
Although both the Lese and the Efe live in the
lturi forest, the Lese of MaJemhi with whom I
lived Jeny that they themselves live in the forest.
They say they live in the ,illage and the Efe !il'e in
the forest. TIllS dichotom), repeated time and time
aga.in in Turnbull's work, is as fundamental to the
Lcse .IS was the opposition between Europe and
the "dltrk continent," the white and the black. The
forest for tJ1C Lese is analogous to the "jungle" for
the European, conceived as impeneu'ablc, dark,
and dangerolls. Stanley's description of the "green
hell" (Vansina 1990:39) he traveled through "hi Ie
crossing the hur; forest is echoed in the experi
ence of otIler explorers, missionaries, and admin
istrators in the Congo. And the Lese of \1alembi,
recalling the missionaries and other Europeans,
are proud that tl1Cy are "of the village," whereas
the Efe are "of the fares!." The forest is the place
185
where the hostile ancestral spirits of the Lese
Swahili as shuilani (Satan), and the attributes asso
ciated with the forest - darkness, wetness, danger,
and uncertainty, among other things - are there
fore also associated with the Efe. The construction
of ethnic boundaries goes hand in hand with the
made to represent everything good, while the for
est represents everything bad. Th.is d.ivision of the
'world is echoed by Bahuchet and Guillaume
(1982) in their account of Aka-Bantu relations, as
well as by E. Waehle (1985:392), who writes: "The
Efe are savages and sub-humans (likened to chim
panzees or forest hogs); they are thieves; the forest
is thc contradiction to the village (almost as nature
to culture)."
The two worlds are diametrically opposed, and
the different:e between tbem represents one of the
most significant .md basic markers of ethnic dis
tinction. For example, when an Efe woman mar
ries a Lese man, and moves, as she must, to the
village, the Efe and the Lese say that she has mar
ried the villagc (anga-ni IIbll-ke); the groom is said
to have "married La girl] of the forest" (allgo-lli
mefi-ba). Lese men insult other Lese men who
engage in extensive hunting with the term "forest
people," and any man who behayes in a maImer
believed by the Lese to be stereotypical of the Efe
will be referred to by the Lese, dispnragingly, as
either a "foreSt person" or an "Efe."
For both the Lese and the Efe, the forest begins
and ends with areas cleared for Lese houses and
pasa. The forest is where the cleared land sur
rOlmding the "illage becomes wild and overgrown.
Even a sma]] patch of wild foliage creeping into
the village area will be called forest, and tIle Lese
may say that the forest "is corning closer," With
the exception of forest paths, any area in which
trees and shrubs have not been cut down and
weeds and vines ha,'c not been removed will be
considered forest.. .. Efe camps, el'en when they
are situated onl) a few hundred merers ii'om the
\'iIJage, sometimes within the garden of their Lese
parmers, are said to be in the forest.
Even with this close proximity, there is a notice
able difference betwcen Lese and Efe settlements.
Though the Efe usually cut down some trees and
"ines, their camps are not cleared of all plant life,
 186 ROY RICHARD GRINKER
as arc the Lese villages. The borders of Efe camps
form a circle, or at least a highl~ cun'ed and
ambiguousl} defined domain. The huts are hemi
spherical, made of leaves ;md sticks, and the land
of the camp area is black, bra\\ n, green, moist, and
full of plant and insect life. Because the land is
rarely weeded and so many trees are left standing,
the sun cannot penetrate the canop) of the fores!,
and the land on which the Efe li\'c remains damp
and soft. The J .ese \jllages, in addition to being
well-defined and impeccably cleared areas of land,
contain square or rectangular houses that arc
placed s~mtnetrieally in relation to the road and to
underarms smell and they sleep on old banana
oU1er houses.
The Efe also lind the opposition between the
forest and ule village to be significant. During my
fieldwork, the Efe complained, in particular, about
the insects in the Yillage. Echoing Turnbull's
reports of the Mbuti attitude toward tbe village
0965: I8), Efe lold me that thc mosquitos are far
more common in the villages, and mat when Efe
live in the villages for a long time the) become ill.
Indeed, outside the \ illages mosquitoes remain in
the higher levels of tbe forest, where the trees
have not been cut, and because the mosquitoes
feed upon the monke}s and other arborial organ
isms, they are less irritating to huma.n beings.
[n addition, ~hen Efe camps become poUuted
with refuse and hegin to attract fleas, me Efe can
abandon the C'<lmp and quickly build another
one nearb~. The Efe would surely agree with
Turnbull's charaeterization:
Where in the \'illages, and in the plantations that
surround them, the midda~ temperatures soar
well into the nineties, and the ground is covered
with a dry, choking dust that quickly turns to
mud, in the shade of the forest the world is cool
and fresh. with only rare places, such as along
river banks or at salt licks, where sunlight reaches
the ground without first being filtered through a
leaf~ roof Also fro 111 the point of vie\\ of comfort,
and of health, where \ illage conditions lead to
gatherings of flies and mosquitoes, these disease
bearers are seldom it evcr seen in the depths of
the forest, except at such sites as are easily avoided.
The Mbuti frequently col11pare their lot, in these
respects, with that of the Yillagers, who in tum
grudgingly admit to some admntages of forest
life. (1965:18)
Yet Lese men, women, and children asserted that
the~ could not live in the forest, that they would
be cold, hungry, wet, and prone to disease; they
might be bitten by snakes or insects, or, \\Or5e,
the) might encounter trouble from supernatural
forces. The Lese often complained about the
insects of the fore!>t, namely, fleas and other crea
turcs that are atu'3cted b) the garbagc that collects
in Efe camps.
Lese Representations: Hygiene
fatness. Whereas the Efe have little body fat and
and Sexuality
For the Lese, then, Efe camps represent a whole
set of ideas about dirt, health, bodily odors, and
secretions. Lese children \I ere particularly illumi
nating about these ideas. Once when 1 accompa
nied a Lese family through an area of foreSt to
check on a fish trap in a river, we found ourselves
in an Efe camp that had been abandoned for about
a year. Onc hut was still standing, and I held the
hand of a six-year-old boy to whom Twas espe
ciall) close as 1 went to look inside it. He pulled
away from me suddenly, and when 1 askcd him
wh) he was afraid, he said tha1 he did not want to
go inside the hut. I told him [ only wanted to look
inside, and he said that he did not even want to
look, that he might get lice or fleas or become sick
and die. The huts, his father explained, still con
tain bod) products, "things of their bodies," as he
put it. The same little boy once shrieked with dis
gust after he smeUed the scent of my shaving
(Team; he said that it smelled like the Efe, and that
tbe odor "made [his] stomach unhappy." Lese
adults, especially women, spoke to me about EtC
h~giene, and citcd Efe body odor as one of the
main reasons wh) they would not engage in sexual
intercourse \I ithEre men (indeed, 1 kno" of no
cases, and on.ly a few rumors, of this). Moreover,
mough under spccial circumstances somc Lese
may eat food out of the same cooking pot as an Efe,
the) \\ ill not eat food off me same plate, or banana
leaf, as the Efe. This is more than a simple display
of inequality. SetTing food on the same plate is
considered to be an unclean and unsafe act. ...
When I asked one \loman whemer she "liked"
Efe, her answer moved from comments about
manners and habits to comments about cleanli
ness and dirt:
HOUSES IN THE RAINFOREST
I like Efe.1'o problem if the) steal from me. I \\ ill
not beal rhem. I gel angr~ just to frighten them.
The) are not like 1111110 (people). They hale no
"kir; (inlt.'!ligence, in KiSwahili). Our heart is the
same, but their a.kiri is not the same. Their
thoughts arc different. They forget quickly, like
conflicts with other people, they forget them
quickly. But their eres arc the s;tme as the e\(.'5 of
peopk. They ha\e lhe same sweal, but it smells
different It is pungent (iklJclri). They sleep [Ii\e]
for 1\10 months sometimes \Iithout bathing, or
m:lybe they don't bathe for two weeks. Their
leaves, and the olel banam leaves smell too. They
do not like to \13sh; thC) arc used to old things-it
is their custom (des/llri in KiSwahili). And their
chests get vcr) dirtj, and if you give them ~oap,
the~ do not \\;lsh their bodies, the~ will onl~ wash
their clothes.
Finall~, the Lese of Malembi often spoke among
tllemsel\'es about hO\\ Efe defecate. Lese build
outhouses, but me Efe do not, and, according to
m~ informants, Efe will defecate an) where in the
forest. One Lese legend tells of an Efe girl \\ho
drO\\ ns in her own relative's diarrhea, and many
other legends about the Efe incorporate excre
mental or anal themes. Two Lese men tried to
help their Efe partners build outhouses, but said
their attempts were in \ain because the Efe are
not "ciYilized" (civilisi), that the) still live like
"animals" (lira).
The excremental theme is used primaril) to
characterize the Efe, but it can be used b} the Lese
self-referentially in joking contexts. One joke con
cerning the physical differences between the Lese
and lhe Efe asI..s: When someone defecates the
fece!> falls and can be heard hitting the ground, but
\\ hen someone urinates, the urine falls lightl~ onto
the ground, and is silent-what am J talking about?
The answer is: the Lese and tlle Efe. The Lese arc
fatter, taller, and heavier; the Efe arc lea11er,
shurter, and lighter. But \1 hereas height may be
the most signific;Ult difference for American or
European observers, the Lese pay closer attention
o weight, skin color, the shajle of the bo<l\ odor,
the hair, and the eyebrows. The joke iL~df con
cerns the differences between the weight of Efe
anti Lese. One aspect of tbe joke that is not obvi
ous is the analogy of color between the pairs,
18
feces-urine, and J,ese-Efe. Born the Efe and urine
arc considered w be red in color, since Efe sk.i.n
color is IighteT and more reddish than Lese skin
color, and urine is also red (there is no \\ord in
either the Lese or Efe dialects for yelIO\\). Likewise,
both feces and Lese skin color are considered to be
black. The Lese admire the Ere's lighter skin color,
find it more beautiful, and value high!) reddish
skin color among themselves.
Lese also note tile variation in muscle tone and
are ver) mU$cular, the Lese arc fatter and appear
less robust. The Efe arc light-footed, an adYanta.ge
for hunters, whereas the Lese are hea\ y-footed
and make noise that frightens off the animals. In
addition, the Efe arc more hirsute. Their eyebrows
arc much fuller than those of the Lese, and the
Lese say thar when the~ travel in areas where there
has been cxtensi\'e intermarriage bet\\ccn Efe and
Lese, where some of the physical distinctions are
U1US blurred, and \lhcre differences between the
Lese and Efe dialects are not as clear, U1C)' can dis
tinguish between Ere and Lese by looking first at
the eyebrows. _\II.orcO\ er, Ere women have more
chest hair than Lese women. Another joke told by
Lese to refer to body hair as well as duplicity and
shiftiness is The following: Efe haye hairy chests
\\hat am I talking about? The an.swer is: an me ani
mal trap, a large trap hole covered and hidden by
leaves, sticks, \'ines, and other wild plants.
Lese men are extremely attracted to their stere
otypical characterization of Efe women, specifi
c'llly Efe women '5 body hair Thirty-three out of
forty men J interviewed (83%) on the subject of
sexual attraction reported that during their lives
they had engaged in c;exual intercourse witl1 an Efe
woman; onl~ frye (12.5%), the youngest men in
the sample. had never had sex with an Efe woman
(two men did not \\ ish to answer my question). In
faet, lhe one ph) sic-al attribute of the Efe women
that the Lese men consistently reported as the
most distinctiye, attracti\e, and sexually arousing
was body hair. Lese men speak among themselves
of hoI\' exciting tOrJImbaka (or public hair) is to
them. 71lrumbakll literall) means "hair from tlle
crotch," but it is lIsed specifically to refer to hair
around the navel, or between me breast~; il is said
to be unique to the Efe and is also said to have tll
PO\I er to produce instant erections in men.
lR8 ROY RICHARD GRINKER HOUSES IN THE RAINFOREST 189

COnLrolling Nature and Culture
Lese men project their o\\'n anxiety about control
of their sexual desires for Efe women onto tbe Efe,
whom they perceive to be sexually wild - like the
forest in which they 1i\C. Indeed, the issue of
contra] is central to Lese conceptions of the Efe
and of themselves. From the Lese point of ,iew,
the Efe are uncontrolled, unrestrained; the) act
without planning or meditation, and their social
organizarion is turbulent and disorderly and per
mits sexual relationships that the Lese consider
incestuous. Efe men, according to Lese men, are
addicted to sex and must engage in intercourse at
least once a day_ Lese men also sa) rhat the Etc's
desire for marijuana predisposes the Efe toward
violence and disorder. Lese men place a high \ alue
on their own self-control and for this rC"Json very
seldom smoke marijuana in adulthood. In addi
tion, rhe Lese want to control the Efe. What
Turnbull \HileS ofthe Bila and the Mbuti (1965:42,
8J-4) applies somewhat to the Lese and the Efe,
since the Lese do nOl use physical force and rard)
go into lhe forcl>t lC1 <.:ontro! the Efe: "The villagers
themselves admit their inability [Q exert physical
force to bend the.\ Lbuti 10 their will, for the Mbuti
always have the ultimate escape of flight to the
~anctuar) of the fl)rest. The villagers arc com
pletel~ unequipped to pursue the 1\lburi into the
fore>t and never altempt it" (1965:8-+). On one
ecasion \\hen I was tf<l\eling 10 an Efe camp, an
excited Lese villager named Filipe ga\'e me a note
be had \Hillen in S" ahili ordering hi~ Efe partner,
Abdala, to come to the village,. The Efe who li,-e
near .Malembi do not kno\\ how to read, so I read
the note to them. Abdala then asked me ro tell
Filipe thar be "auld come soon. When 1 relurned
to the \ illage and reported Abdala's reply, Filjpe
became irate and asked, "But when? \"hen will he
come' J do not kno\\ where he is." In fact, Filjpe
knew yery well \\ here Abdala w,\.<" but he was per
haps expressing outrage at being unable to control
his Efe's mo\-emenls. Indeed, the desire to control
the Efe seems to be not a desire for political domi
nation so much as an expression of anxiety about
Efe mobility. Lese men and "omen often seemed
disturbed when rhey heard, sometimes by word of
mouth, that their Efe partner had moved from one
camp to another or had gone to a plantalion to sign
up for w:Jge labor. They also seemed worried when
the} learned that their Efe were traveliJlg or living
near the Lese gardens - p<lrtl) because of tht
unpredictahilir) of their Efe's whereabouts, partJy,
LOO, because they were afraid the Efe would steal
their cultivated food. Like the forest growth that
encroaches upon the swept earth of the village, the
Lese sa) the Efe encroach upon the village gar
dens and threaten to ruin the carefully tended
fields of cultivated food ....
In contrast to the Efe, the Lese consider them
sehes to be predictable and stable, controlled,
restrained, organized, and thoughtful. They also
helie\ e that they have a greater llkirl (intelligenll~)
than the Efe. For the Lese, somcone wirh akiri is
educated, speaks several languages, can offer
ad\ ice, em be trusted, is dependable, and is nor
self-desuuctive. At one Efe funeral, a Lese man
simultaneousl) criticized and complimented the
Efe in m) presence by sa) ing, "The Efe of before
had no ailli, bUl now they do. Look at this" hite
person l the author] who doesn't go to the forest
everyday, but resides more ofren with the Lese. He
has akiri. To go to the forest ever) da) is bad and
without akiri." In addition TO being morc seden
tary, someone \1 ith akiri is also \\ell-liked and dip
lomatic: "Someone with akiri doesn't say what he
\1 ants very quickly; he "airs, and when he thinks
that the person he is with 1.ikes hilTl, and is calm, he
\1 ill sa) \\ har he \1 ~mts." In contrast, the Efe are
unwilling to "sooth" (iTl/ka) their partners, and
,\ ill let their desires be knO\\ n at the Slart of a con
\-ersation "ith.m exchange partner....
One of the most common and explicit \\'ays that
the Lese disparage the Efe is to accuse them (If
stealing ("like baboons") foods out of their garden
and destroying (iIllO-/l;) lhe garden, e\ en after they
have been given food by the Lese partner. Lese
make a connection between the Efe, a specific kind
of insect, and rainbows, all three of \\'hjeh are
believed to damage or destroy- the Lese crops. FJc
arc frequently called kO/lgll, the name for a species
of large nir.s that can alway s be seen buzzing near
the prized /ljef/( variety of bananas, and that, in
legend, inhabits the far end of rainbows (raba -for
the Lese, an extremely dangerous phenomenon)
amI helps the rainbow to enter into the yillage
from outside amI destroy cultivated foods. The
Lese also spcak of the Efe as gluttollous in their
appctite for food, tobacco and marijuana, and sex.
The Efc, the Lese say, cannot farm for themselves
hecause lhey have no sibosibo (patience), and
because they lack the capacily to engage in a pro
ductive activity that does not offer immediate
b'rnti fication ....
As noted earlier, the Efe and Lese speak differ
ently. In addition to some differences in \"ocabu
!.aJ:, \\ here the Lese use glottal consonants, the
Efe inslead place faucial gaps. But many Lese say
rllal U1C difference is not so much in the words and
grammar as in the organization of ideas. The Lese
say that Efe speech is oftcn incoherent and bab
bling, that when they speak they jump from one
idea to the next, Ulat their "ideas have no straight
path" (ide-ba lodi a Upll kikik/:o ell/bi-a1l1}
Paralleung what some Lese secm to thiJ1K is an
attenlion deficiency, Efe men arc also said to have
shorr and violent tempers and to murder WiUlOut
much provocation. These perceptions have their
basis in the angry and sometimes violent fights
that punctuate the daily life of many Efc C'Jmps,
bUl actual murders arc extremely' rare. In addition,
1l1e Eli: arc the most fierce and frenzied actors at
funemls. The fact that Efe always carry lheir bow
'Uld arrows and/or spear also contributes to ule
perception of the Efe as wi td or say-age...
1n terms of the chlssification of living tllings, in
bolll the Efe and the Lese dialects, the Lese are
called 1111110 and the Efe are called E/e. MillO means
"person," as I was called a IIllltoll~fe (whjte per
son), and African.s are in general called /Il1ltokosa
(black person). In terms of classification of ethnic
it~, the Lesc are called Lese or Desc, and ule Efe arc
called Efe. Thus, while the Lese have three terms,
one to distinguish themselves from the Efe and
animals (mUlo), one to distinguish themselves
from other groups (Lese), and another to djstitl
guish themseh-es from other Lese (DeIC), tbe Efc
have only one term. The term Efe tbus denotes
nothing other than the archer Pygmies, and, unlike
the word 1111110, has no other usage. The term Efe is
not subsumed within the term TlllIlo. Linguistically,
then, one might think that the Eft arc not consid
ered to be pcople. However, there is little uniformity
regarding lhe location of the Efe in humanjty; itl
the Lese language, Efe arc under no circumstances
called TllII/O, nor do Efe refer to themselves as 71111/0.
In the KiNgwana form of Swahili, however, I was
told, "yes rhe Efe arc !paW ['people,' in Swahili J
but they are not muto repeople,' in Lese]." It is
entirely possible that the Lese word for person,
mlli/), also means "farmer." ..
Nonetheless, the extent to "hich the Lese hope
to surpass the Efe in terms of status call not be
overemphasized because this ideology of inequal
ity beaTS directly on the argument that the two
groups must be considered as one. It is easy
enough to simply record denigrations. The Lese
are quick to say that they belic\ e the Efc should be
lI/nu-ba-n; kllnHa (under our feet) as the Efe have
always been 11I1lU kll/ulu-"i Rartt-Ia (under our
ancestor's feel). The more difficult task is to ,ma
l)"7.e the various denigrations of distinct contexts
for symboljc patterns amI associations. Indeed,
analysis of Ule characterizations tells us something
more general, something central to the very fabric
of Lese idenLity. What all thesc characterizations
of inequality suggest is that the Efe are not wholly
"ouler" to the Lese because the) are such a strong
component and dcfIning characteristic of Lese
representations of themselves. For exanlple, for
the Lese, ule dirtiness of lhe Efe is paired with
their own cleanliness, the \\ ildness of' the Efe is
paired with lJleir own wish for self-control. The
Lese and the Efe are thus less in conflict than they
arc muruall) constitutive. According to the Lese,
Efe men and women act according to physical
instincts involving food, sex, and aggression, and
they are driven prinlarily by somatic influences
They are unable to harness their anger and are nor
capable of logical or rational thinking; they live
with the forest rather than against it and, as repre
sented iJl mythoLogy, are closer to nature. The
Lese believe themselves to be capable of mediating
between their (lrives and lhe exigencies of proper
and ordered social life. They represent rationality
and reason, whereas the Efe stand for untamed
passions. The Lese and the Efe are two interre
lated organizalions, and the Lese lind meaning in
their contrasts.
The contrast between the Lese as cultural and
the Efe as natural is highlighted ill a SIOI) that can
serve as an introduction to the way in which the
Lese establish unconscious symbolic oppositions
about themselves and tile Efe. This is one of many
stories about the origin of Lese-Ere contact; every
Lese phratry preserves a legend about the first
190 ROY RICHARD GRINKER
meeting. Here, the narrator teUs of how the Efe
taught the Lese the difference between male and
female genitals, and how to bave sexual inter
course; the Lese in turn uught the Efe ingenuity
and the \ alue of tool use.
The Efe of long ago were Andisarnba, my Efe.
Andis;mlba's great grandfather was named Abeki.
Ill' was the Efe of Andali, of aU the Lese-Dcsc.
J lis wife's name was Matutobo. His grandmoth
er's name was also ~latutoho. Abeki went to the
forest and returned. I-lis grandmoLher came to
'\;pe her anus on the top of his thigh. Abeki had
many children, a boy here, a girl there. One day,
Abeki took off to the forest, and arrived at a gar
den where there were ripe bananas. Efe ruin
(deplete) our gardens, so the Efe went to take the
bananas. He rhought a lot about \I hat his grand
mother did to him, and so he thoug'ht a lot about
the feces un his thigh. Hl: had never seen bananas
before, and he tried one, and he liked it. So he
took bananas for his children. I Ie now returned to
the garden a third time. The villager left his vil
lage and saw footprints. The man saw the Efe sit
ting there, and rhen they sa\1 each other. The man
called our "ungbatuc!" and the Efe said "ung
batue!" and the man asked the Efe 10 eome to his
village. "Do not be afraid! I will not hurt vou."
The~ went together.
The man was named Aupa. The Efe said again
"ungbarue! See it is stupid, tbe feces on my thigh,
it is by the hand of my grandmotheT LnnJu]. Every
day she does this." The man said, "Soon we \\ill
sharpen m} knife [to kill the woman]." The man
said he would rip open [ilIl/ital the Efe's thigh and
i.nsert the knife inside it. Then her anus \\ould
rip, and the corpse would faJ} to the ground. The
Efe returned until he reached his camp, and his
grandmother said to Abeki's wife, "So your man
returns'" The children said yes. Then she came
to ask him to straighten out [iwll his leg. She
Wiped herself, and Lhe knife cut her. Corpse. They
destroyed her house, and then the Efc \lHJved \I;th
his \I-ife to the villager's garden.!
From there, the Efe man came to the village
woman, and her man was waiting tbere. "She is ill
my woman." The Efe asked "\,vhere is she?" "She
is lying down in the pasa." The man wem to get
some alcohol, and with the Efe, the tWO of them
drank togethet. The Efe asked, "Am I not able to
see tl]is illness'" The man told the Efe to go and
look. He said, "t\ly wife has no penis or testicles,
only a wound in her crotch, and every 1110ntJl she
bleeds [rom it, and J cannot stop the hleeding for
se\eral days.") The Efe said, "I \Iill teach yuu."
So he had SC:I. with rhe village woman, and she
became pregnant, and a child came, the first child.
Lawr he gave her another pregnancy. The \'illager
got mad at the Efe and said, "You will have sex
with my \yoman' 1 will try myself." From there
the Efe and Lese were together."
By illustrating sex between a Lese woman and all
Efe man, the characters reverse the conditions of
the prcsent day, in which intercourse between
Lese women and Efe men is prohibited. But the
origin story dramatizes the fact that it is the Efe
who symboliealh' contribute knowledge of the nat
ural world, while it is the Lese who contribute
knowledge of the cultural world, to the Lt:se-Efe
relationship. The forest, and the Efe \-vho inhabit
it, represent the wild and lmconrrolJab)e aspects of
humanity, while the village, and the Lesc who
inhabit it, rcpresent (he civilized and controlled
aspects of humanity. The Lese-Efe relationship
binds the Efe to the Lese village. ConceptuallY, the
'illager's power lies in his exclusive knowledge of
farming teclmique, and in the Efe's i.ntractable
and glun:onous desire for cultivated foods. The
production of these foods attract~ the Efe to the
village :md thereby controls rhem.
The nature/culture dichotomy so pronounced
in this story appears to para~lIel the distinctions
between men and women noted by S. B. Ortner
(1974) in her well-known essay on the lmivcrsal
subordination of women. Through their social
roles and reproductive functions, women are iden
tified with the natural world, while men arc identi
lied witb the cultural world. Correspondingly,
sexual ideologies hold that women's crcati\ity is
expressed through childbirth while men's creatil
ity is expressed throllgh the development of tech
nology. Ortner's dichotomy has been subject to
criticism, primarily on the grounds that it is nut
uni"ersal, and that conceptions of namre and cal
mre are \Vestern caTegories whose releva.nce in eth
nographic analysis is \jmited (H. Moore 1981\.
MacCormack and Srrathern 1980; Mathieu 1978).
More precise and meaningful criticisms emerge
from the analysis ofgender in detailed ethnographic
HOUSES IN THE RAINFOREST
studies (MacCormack and Strathem 1980). Do
the Lese pair Efe and women together as represen
mtions of nature? If so, what is the nature of the
relationship between these two categories of per
son? The Lese and Efe case appears to support tbe
applicability of such a dichotom) to male-female
relations in general, but it does not. For, as we shall
see., the idiom of gender used to denigrate the Efe
docs not derive from women qua woman, but from
wivcs. :\nd wi\'cs are denigrated not because they
arc women but because the) are outsiders.
To answer the questions posed in the preceding
paragraph, let us now look more deepl~ into the
construction of Lese identit) to examine the sym
bolic organiz<ltion of the images of the Efe as
women. We will find not only that Lese identity is
formed through the conjw1Ction of gender and
ethmcit) but also that the house is a basic locus of
the gender and ethnic differentiation that encom
passes man) of the symbolic representations....
\1etaphor and the House
We can discern an analogy whereb) Lese is to male
as Efe is to Lese men's wives. BlIl this docs not
mean that wives and Efe h;l\'e sexual similarities.
The analogy juxtaposes village insiders (Lesc men)
and village outsiders (wives and Efe); wi\'es and Efe
'lre structurally similar as \-illage outsiders. More
specifically, gender S) mbolism cre:Jtes an ana logic
equivalence between the Lese men's wives and the
Efe by stressing the parallels between the relation
ship the Efe have to the residences of their J .ese
partners, and the relationships "ivcs have to their
husband's residences. There is a paradoxical usage
of the gender idiom b)' Lese women; Lese women
denigrate Efe 'homen in the same way as thc)' deni
~rate Efe men - as "female." This usagc highlights
the point that tbe most culturally saline aspect of
the idiom is not differentiation between male and
female, but differentiation between "outsiders"
and "insiders." The Lese femini7..a.tion of the Efe
arises not out of perceived similarities hetween
WOmen and Efe, but rathet out of the structural
similarities established by the use of gender as a
metaphor of denigration.
The gender metaphor is an "external" or "ana
logic" metaphor which, as defined by Aristotle in
the Poe/irs, is "when one thing is in the same
191
rdationship to another as a third is to a fourth"
(Sapir 1977:22-3). Metaphor is" ordinaril~ con
ceived as the juxtaposition of two tcrms from sepa
rate domains, such that the~ share certain features.
To use Sapir's example, "George is a lion" conveys
the sense that, although George is nor really a lion,
he and the lion arc alike because the~ share courage
or ferociousness (1977:23). Efe and women are not
alike but are arranged in metonymic jlLxtaposirion.
As Sapir phrases it, "The similarit~ now derives
from the relationship t..-ach term has to its proper
domain" (1977:23). rn the case of the Lese deni
gration of the Efe, the (\\0 terms "woman" (which
we have already seen is more accurately defined as
"wife") and "Efe" are linked not because they are
similar but because they share a common \jnk to a
third domain: the Lese' illage and house.
What appears to he the characterization of the
Efe as W0111en is actual!) the characterization of
the Efe as Lese men's wives. Both the Efe and
wives are outsiders in relation to any Lese house
or village.
Conceptually, Efe partners and wil'es are brought
together in the Lese house. !\Ilarriage and the Lese
Efe relationship are the basic constituents of the
house, and ideally they are formed at the same t.ime.
A man sets up a house only after he is married, and
all married Lese men should have Efe partners that
tbey inherited foUowing the marriageS In a man's
first marriage, the arrival of his wife should be
within a year or t\\'O of the inheritance ,md estab
lishment of a parmership with an Efe man. 6 ln fact,
on a few occasions, Lese men described their rela
tionship to their Efe parmers with the term Il11ga-fli,
which means "marriage" bUl also rerers to the join
ing togethe.r of twO separate things. J\!l.arriages and
houses, like husbands and wives, Lese and Efe, go
hand in hand in social life. H()1.L~es are tllllS places
for the coming together of things from the outside
and things from the inside.
Marriage is considered to be in process [rom
the earliest negotiations of bridcwealth or classifi
catory sister exchange, bur the un.ion is not fully
legitimized umil the bride actually comes to the
husband's village to stay in a house with him.
Children born to a woman nOl li\ ing in the house
of the father arc thus frequently the subject of
custod) disputes berween the families of the future
bride and groom. The house is also the symbol of
192 ROY RICHARD GRINKER
the dissolution of marriage. When a woman arrives
at her husband's house she brings with her a
membo, Ihe collection of materials also called
"things of the house" - such things as utensils for
food gathering, processing, and cooking, and blan
kets, baskets, combs. The presence of the membo
in the house represents the continuity of the
union. }\ woman who wishes to leave her husband
permanentl) will collect her membo and leave
",ith it, thus "destroying" Uma) the house, and
therefore the marriage. }\ woman "ho wishes to
frighten her husband will take hcr membo and
hide it in another place in the village, and a woman
\\ ho simply wishes to separate from her husband
for a short time will leave her membo imact, thus
assuring her husband that the separation, even if
carried out in the wake of a fight, is not perma
nent. Similarly, an .Efe man identifies himself with
a particular house by aligning himself specifically
with his partncr, rather than with other men in the
\ illage. Before the actual inheritance of the part
nership, Efe men .md women will perform sen-
ices and provide goods for a number of Lese within
a village, but once the Efe man is "shown," he is
e~pected to limit his vilh\ge interactions to the
house of his partner. One \Va) that the alliance is
expressed is h) the giving of products designated
as "foresl goods" to his Lese partner. These
include things such as arrows designed for mOIl
ley hunting, termites, and fruits. The Lese part
ner may in rurn give his parmer the dog from the
house, to be used by him when hunting. The Lese
panner will also give his Efe kitchen items, such as
metal pots and pans for cooking. Just as a marriage
dissolves \1 ith the removal of kitchen items from
the Lese house, the Lese-Efe partnership is seen
to dissolve \1 hen the Efe man returns I...itchen
items to the Lcse house. While these two actions
may seem to be the opposite of one another, the
difference between taking and rerurning the goods
reflects differences in resideJlce. Efe men are
members of the house, although they do not actu
ally livt' in the house. They arc incorporated, in
pan, by possessing "goods of the house." The
rerurn of these goods separates the Efe partner
from the house, just as the removal of the goods b)
wives separ:ltes women from the house.
The terminology used to characterize marriage
parallels the terminology used at the onset of the
Lese-Efe relationship. 1\ Lese man may establish a
rclation with an Efe partner by inheritance or by
some other sort of arrangement. Bur even in the
case of a direct inheritance passing from fatber to
son, the recipient must ha\'e been "shown" Ule Efe
either by his fatller or by another Lese in his O\ln
village. The term for "to show" is itadu, a word
that is used to describe personal interactions in
only two other contexts: that is, the "sho\\ ing" of
a wife to her futltre husband, and the "showing"
of an unmarried woman to a man as a real or clas
sificatory sister to exchange lor a wife. The person
who "shows" someone either a wife, or an Efe
parlner, is caJled lukudu, and the use of this term
in Lese-Efe society is exclusive to these two con
texts. This points to an equi\Oalence, from the Lese
men's perspective, between relationships with EtC
men and relationships with wives. "Showing"
establishes the dominance of the Lese men in both
marriage and ethnic relations. 1 should also adu
that, just as some few Lese men marry polyg)
nousl)', so too is it possible (although it is rare) for
a Lese man to be shown and to maintain partner
ships with more than one Efe....
Aku-Dole: The Denigration
of Lese Men
Lese men who arc outsiders are also frequently
denigrated in the form of "feminization_" Lese
men, \lomen, and children who come to villages as
visitors arc not explicitly denigrated, but Lese
men who have come from far away to live in a par
ticular village to which they arc distantly related
arc often treated badly. They are asked to help
wi\'es in some of their chores, a humiliating task
for most men, because, they say, they arc asked to
he have like Efe men and like Lese men's wiles, sit
ting and working with women in the kitchen.
These men are then criticizt.;d for doing precisel~
what they arc asked to do and are referred to pejo
ratively as aku-dole, literally "man-woman" - that
is, a man who is like a woman (or like an Efe man).
Village agnates also refer to such immigrants as
l/Icremere, a pejorati\'e term meaning specificall~
someone who has come to the village but is not a
direct patrilineal descendent. Thus, outsider Lese
men are denigrated with the same idiom used to
denigrate Efe men and Lese men's wives.
HOUSES IN THE R';INFOREST
Red uTul'T'hilt!, j;!I1U1le and mule
Ha\ing demonstrated the saliency of gender as a
metaphor for relationships between insiders and
'lucsiders, we can now explore the metaphors of
"red" and ''v\ hile." Doth "red" a.nd "white" are
open-ended in that they have a \-ariety of different
meanings. But the meanings together constitute a
speCific p"ttern of metaphoric relationships. The
colors red and white are related to one another in
tbe same way as female and male; wives (as a gen
der) and the Efe (as an ethnic group) are symbol
ized b) redness, VI hereas men (as a gender) and me
Lese (as an ethnic group) are symbolized by white
ness. Red, \\hitc, Efe, Lese, female., male are all of
a piece, as we shall see in the symbolic constitution
of human bodies, the Lese-Efe pa.rulership, and
house construction.
Lese relate lack of control, wildness, anger, and
Yiolenl:e directly to the color red (ikomba), and
more specifically to blood (kuru). Someone who is
angry has hot blood (kll(ukemu); he is "with blood"
or his blood is "traveling fast" Anger stimulates
the circulation of blood within the internal organs
and promotes a loss of control. When Lese
describe the intcrna I organs, they say that the heart
should ideall) he \\ithour blood, that blood should
remain in the stomach; a hean that is filled with
blood will cause death. Blood is also a lifegi\'ing
subst;U1ce. The patriline, as a life-gi\ ing force,
passes to its members the same blood. J .ong ago,
opposing clans fused :lnd became "brothers" after
the leaders of the two clans made incisions in their
palms and then shook their hands, thus "mixing
the blood." When an elderly man was on his
cbthbed in J987, members of his clan reported to
me that he confessed to murdering seven Lese
1\ itches during the 1<)50s after he administered
sUTIIl/(/St/ poison to them at a witchcraft ordeal. He
,las reported as feeling remorseful and saying,
"Their blood made our clan strong, bur blocked
my path to God."
The colors are also related to fertility. .\lenstrual
hlood is said to be the (isi, or semen, of the woman.
Women are thought to be most fecund during, and
just after, menstru'ltion because the blood has
begun to Oow and can mix VI ith the lisi, or semen,
of the men. The tlleory of conception is thus
~ncompassed within the red (ij,'ombn) - white
193
(ill((e) categories. When a child is born, its white
aspects, the bones, bone marro\\, and brain, are
attributed to the contribution of lhe father's (I~,I,
VI hile its red aspects, the organs and blood, are
attributed to the contribution of the mother's tisi.
The bones are said to protect the organs, as a man
protects a \\oman, as a Lese protects his Efc part
ner by feeding him and raising his children VI itiLin
the structure of the Lese partner's house.
]. W. Fernandez (1982:122-3) notes a nearly
identical theory of conception for the Fang of cen
tral Africa and similar!) describes how Fang wom
en '5 symbc)lic role in house building parallels u1e
Fang UleOr) of conception: "The extension and
replication of corporeal experience ",hich was
invol\ed in the older procedure [of traditional
house building] lay in the Fang belief that in the
creation of the infant the red drop of female blood
containing the homunculus was surroundcd by
the protecti\'e and fostering shell of VI hite male
semen. In Ihe adult person the male element was
the skeletal structure and tissues and tendoru" all
white, within which the sources of \ irality - the
blood and bloody organs - carried on their pri
mary activil)." Turner (1967) has also \\Titlen of
the red-I\hite dichotom), stating thai, for the
Ndembu, red is directl) related to women's blood,
the blood of murdering or stabbing, the blood of
circumcision, and, in general, to pOller, anger, and
danger. \Vhite, on the other hand, relates to semen,
life, goodness, fcnilit), health, and good fortune.
In addition, Turner notes that although the colors
red and white are not ah\ays sex-JinJ"ed, the incor
pOI'ation of the fIIO colnrs in ritual contexts often
stand!. for the opposition of the sexeS. The main
contrast \\ ith the Ndembu is that, for the Lese,
red and white together, I/S IJpposed I{I (phill: {III its
OIVII, represent fertility.
Blood flo\\ signifies life, but the excessive 00\\
of blood can lead to death and must be stopped
with whitt: bark powder. In the most common
Lese origin myth, u1e SLOr~ of 1lara, the crcaror,
the deceased are brought back to life when white
bark powder is placed on their bleeding sores; in
the I-lara story, the main chamcter Akireche starrs
life by first causing a man's tongue to bleed, and
then stOpping the flo\\' of blood with \\hitc bark
powder, thus separating him as a human being dis
tinct from the trees and plants of the forest; finally,
194 ROY RICHARD GRINKER
in Lhe origin myth presented above, the Lese man
fears that his wife will bleed to death, and the Efe
m,m stops the woman from menstruating by
inseminatin~ her \\ ith semen [white IISIT
The symbolism extends to house building. When
Lese buiJd houses. men travel into the forest, or
recruit their F.fe to tr.l\ c1 there, to find the appropri
ate small n'ccs and \ines for building material. Lese
men take the {Tees and build the walls (1I1ba) and
doors (ai-tl) of the house (ill). After the walls are
complete, Lese men and women and Efe men begin
digging up the reddish iron-rich earth at the edge of
the Yillage, arrange barrels or pots with which to col
lect water, and \1 ait for a rain) da). The water or rain
turns the earth into mud, and, on the day of mud
ding, women and children begin to mud the walls.
\ludding is considered to be women's work 'lIen
contribute the sticks -- the skeleton - while dle
\lomen contribute the mud. The mud is wet and
red, as oppo~d to the dr), hard, light-colored n'ees,
and must be supported b) the structure of the walls.
The notion that one element supports the other
resembles the statements of the earliest obsen'ers of
the Lese and the Efe (Schweinfurth in 1918 and
Schebesta in 1938-19-l8) that their rebtions \\crc
haractemed by dependency (Waehle 1985:391).
Indeed, the dependenq rehltions of both concep
tion and the construction of the house parallel tb e
relations het ween the two ethnic groups. The mud
and the organs depend on (lIgbi) the structw'e, as the
Lese say that the Efe dept:nd on (og/JI) them for their
subsi51ence. 7 The house is thus a combination oftbe
male and the female, in which the female depends
upon and is encompassed by the male, just as the Efe
depend upon and are encompassed by the Lese.
The Efe are indeed described as being red in
color, and their hahitat is described as being clark
and wet and diny. In contrast, the sunny village is
bright, dry, and clean. The goods [bat the Efe are
supposed to give to the Lese (meat and honey) are
called red; rhese are, of course, also wet goods
bloody, sticky, moist. Thus meat and honey are red
like the Efe who acqujre those goods, and wet and
dark, like the forest. 'The village, and the Lese, rep
resem the production and accumulation of white,
ury goods - eassal-a, potatoes, com -which arc cul
ti\'atecl, cultural products. Iron, also given by the
Lese to the Efe, is referred to as white. 1 would even
suggest thal the reel-white dichotomy .1150 irlCludes
sex ual relations and Illtermarriage between the Efe
and the Lese: Lese men give white Ilsi to the Eft
women, who contribute red tisi to the production
of a child \\ithin the village context. ...
The red-white dichotomy contains within it
symbolic oppositions of social relations, sexual
relations, bouse building, anu exchange relations,
and constitutes a specific pattern of me-aIling. The
Efe, as (J) red, (2) hot-blooded partners contribut
ing (3) red and bloody goods are integrated sym
bolically into a pattern of Lese beliefs. MOremL'T,
eac:h of the oppositions presented above (Efe
Lese, fertile infertile, dark light, red-white,
meat-eultivatcd foods, \let-dry, wet goods-dn
goods, dirt) -clean, natural-eultural) arc functions
of the ide-as about the differences between the
inside and outside of rhc village, and between men
and women. The oppositions also bring us back to
the symbolic material our of which ethnic relations
are constructed. 'Ve can imagine a series of nesting
Slructures, each encompassing and encompassed
by another. Blood is encompassed by semen,
organs by the skeleton, the body by the house,
female and Efe b) Lese and male.
European Images
The consistenl use of metaphors of gender to dit=
ferentiate between tht: two ethnic groups is strik
ing in its similarity to the use of metaphors of
gender in European consrTuctions of Africans and
Africa. ln an e1uquent description of the place of
Africa and Africans in the European scientific and
religious discour,e of the eighteenth and nine
teenth centuries, Corn::troff and Comaroff note
that the "thrust into rhe African interior likened
lhe continent to a female body" (l99l:9R). Gender
was as salient a Dllegor) as race, a lens through
wbich domination al home could be projected
onto domination abroad; a, the Comaroffs put iI,
"In bite eighteenth century images of Africa, the
feminization of the black 'other' lias a potent trope
of devaluation. The non-European \1 as to be made
as peripheral to the global axes of reason and pro
d uction as \\ omen had become at home" (Comaroff
and Comaroff 1991: 105). Mrica was imagined as
female in a number of \\a)s: as a body to be
penetrated by Europe, as mysterious and erotic,
deprived of power, nawn)l rather than cultural,
HOUSES IN THE RAINFOREST
.1I1d irrational and labile rather than rarional and
stable. These characterizations grew our of fUllda
Il1cntal chan~es in gender ideology in Europe;
whereas in rhe eighteenth century, maleness and
femaleness were often thought of as fluid and
imprecise categories, nineteenth-century scientific
discourse held that a single sex could be discov
ered (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991: 106). The sci
enust's challenge was to discover the true nature
of women, which, it was imagined, was embedded
ill the body in general, and the uterus in particu
lar. The uterus became the center and cause of
emotional and neurological disorders (Sulloway
1979:23-69), such as hysteria (from the Greek
word for womb or uteHls, hystera). Men, in con
trast, I\ere driven not by their organs or sexual
j1ature but by reason, sensibility, and rationality.
As \\e saw above, Lese distinctions between male
and female are grounded upon distinctions in
mental capacity, and between culture and nature.
I would not argue that the Lese appropriated the
European metaphor; there are no data to support
such an argument. But Europeans and the Lese
ma~ have formed simiJar characterizations because
they use the S,lme cultural material for their sym
bolic representations of the denigrated other.
"Female," a meaningful category of domination in
both local European and Lese contexts, becomes
the basis for domination in other areas as well. The
caregory served both colonists and the I,ese as a way
to define and maintain both difference and social
boundaries (see Cooper and Stoler 1989:610).
Certainly there is some similarity between the
esc dehumanization of the Efe and the European
dehunlill1ization of all Africans and of foragers
such as the Efe in particular. In an early example,
the physician Edward Tyson presenteu the bodv of
a chimpanzee as the body of a "Pygmy."
Chimpanzees were not named until 1816, soTvson
believed that his chimp specimen was an ancient
dwarf, not quite monkey and not quite human.
Tyson's title placed the Py gmies squarely withjn
the animal kingdom: The Allaloll~Y of II Pygmy
Compl/red Wilh thai of a ,\lJonkey, (III Ape, alld a
Hall, milh all Essay concerning the Pygmies 0/ the
lmic11fs. Whereill It II)ill appear Ihlll they are all
either Apes or ;\l101lI.:il's, alllinot /Ht'1l, as ./imllc,.(y
Pretellded, to which is addl'd Ihe Allaf01I~)1 alld
Dt'srripfirIT/ 0/ a Rall/csl1a~'e: also 0/ tht' Musk-hog.
195
TVilh a Discourse upoll/he Jointcd aud ROUTul-/f/orm
(Tvson 1751 lI699J). But if Africans were not
human, then tlle missionaries had their work cut
Ollt for tllem; they were in the business of saving
souls, and only llllman beings had souls. However,
nineteentll-cencury scientists appreciated the idea
of a chain of being, within which a variety of dif
ferent kinds ofhLUnan beings were organized hier
archically (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991:98).
Biologists were mapping the mind of God, and
every new discovery of different, and supposedly
inferior, human beings led to further knowledge of
the greatness of Western civili~ation, and the intri
cacies of God's creations (DeVore 1989). Thus,
even when it was concludeu that Africans, includ
ing Pygmies, were human, writers continued to
describe these peoples using nonhuman images.
Sir I-larry 1 L Johnston, for example. reported to
the Smithsonian Institution (1903) that tlIe
"Pygmies of the Great Congo Basin" were "ape
like negroes" (p. 481) with "baboon-like adroit
ness" (p. 482) reminiscent of the "gnomes and
fairies of German and Celtic tradition" (p. -l82).
The mctaphor of the Efe:ls children also echoes
the way that Europeans denigrated Africans.
Alongside the popuJar European image of the
noble savage ran the arrogant and patronizing
image of Mricans as children - children who were
pure and wladulterated by an existence outside
the Western world, and childlike in their nall'ete.
The ComaroCfi> note of Lhe Tswana (1991: 117),
By the time our missionaries encountered the
Tswana and began to write their own texts., the
infantilization of Mricans was firmly established.
dult black mal~ were the "boys" whom the civi
lizing mission hoped one day to usher into "moral
manhood." And "boys" the)' would remain well
into the age of apartheid, whether or not they actu
ally became Cbrist.ian. Even at their most subtle and
well meaning, the various discourses on the J1.1tltre
ofthe savage pressed his immaturity upon Europe.1n
consciousness, adding to his raoe and S) mbolic gen
der yet a third trope of devaluation. This was no less
true of the abolirjonist mOl'emenr, rhe mosl self
consciously compassionate voice of the age.
If adulls were seen as children, one wonders what
Ail-ican children were likened lO. In his report on
196 ROY RICHARD GRINKER
Lhe "dwarfs" of the Congo, Johnston described
"a slrrvival in the adult of that hair which appears
in the fetus in all human races, a soft brownish
down" (1903:488). Martin Juhnson (1931), in his
popular accuunt of the Pygmies of the Ituri,
COllgonIla: Advelltures wi/It Pygmies IlIId Corillils in
Africa, continued the image:
The pygmies lead happy lives of carcti'ee slavery
in their Utopian forest homeland. The) are mere
children mentally as \\ell as physicaJ1), always
ready to sing, dance and make merr). They spend
their days like youngsters at an endless picnic and
there is nothing mean or malicious about Them.
They arc truly unspoiled children (If nature.
(1931 :62).~
Even today, the image of Africans as children runs
through much of the literarW"e on the Pygmies, such
as K. Duffy's recem book, Chift/I'CII oJtlre Rainfrll'est
(1984), and Turnbull's romantic dcpiction of the
Mbuti as carefree, happy, and playful (1961).
Metaphors of Denigration in
the Lese kitchen, arc frequently denigrated by
the Lese House
forms of teasing reserved for children. Many Efc
The Lese view of the Efe as children extends
beyond the level of ever)rday discourse to the sym
bolic representatiun of Lese houses, into which
lhe Efe are sYmboJicaJl) incorporared .L~ children.
Tllis view is directly connected \\;th Lese concep
tions of the house as a reproductive domain.
Lese clans present a contradiction. One's mem
bership in a clan depends on one's descent as reck
oned patrilineally, and though every woman is a
member of a clan, clans arc idealized as groups of
men. But social relationships reckoned thruugh
the mOTher are just as important to every Lese
man or wom,Ul. Like clans, houses are constituted
by bOTh males and females, despite the fact that it
is men who found and give identity to the house.
Clans and houses are, in fact, conceived ill a way
that mediates the contradiction between their
character and composition. They are both per
sonified as mothers, and are said to be f!cI/iani, to
contain birth potenti,11, or more literallv, a uterus
or wumb (ochi). Clans and houses are reproductive
organs. \i1arriage creates the uterus for the house
and therefore also for the clan. Conflicts within
the house, from dispute to divurce, dismrb the.
uterus and produce infertility. To increase the fer
tility of the uterus, the Lese bury the placentas of
the live births of Lese men's wives and sometimes
Efe partners' wives inside the house into which
the child was born. SriJJbinhs, the placentas of
stillbirths, and the remains of miscarriages are all
buried outside the house. The house is also said to
contain a specifically Efe uterus, meaning dlar the
house can produce Etc children and eYentualJ~
Efe partners [or one's family.
In addition to making children from adults,
houses also make adults out of children. As one
informant phrased the ideal, "most people in a vil
lage are either parents or children." People are
"children" until they marry and ha\e their own
house, at which time they should become parents.
The few Lese men who are thirry or forty years
old but still unmarried and childless are in fact
considered to be children. Although Lese men
refer to their Efe partners and others of his gen
eration as imamungu, literally; "my mother's child,"
or "sister/brother," Efe partners are considered to
be the "children" of a particular house and, as in
although the Efe work for them in their g-ardens,
lhey know little or nothing about horticultural
parrners at some time during their childhood liYcd
in their father's Lese partner's houses, and an:
then said to be the children of the yillage, and to
have been "raised" (ire) by rhe Lese. E\-en Lese
children tease Efe men. One three-year-old boy
was chasing a chicken around the periphery of the
kitchen when he looked up and said to a member
of his father's Efe's camp, "I won't ler you take care
of my chicken because it would get sick and die."
It was a childisWy innocent remark, perhaps, but
an insult nonetheless. Children also denigrate Efe
children as objects for manipularion and control.
In children's play, Lese girls treat Efc girls as if
thev were dolls, braiding their hair and adorning
them with beads, ea.rrin~, and other forn1S of
ornamentation.
Are rhe Europeans who came to the Ituri forests
ultimately to blamc for the Lese treatment of rhe
Efe as children? The Lese were likely introduced
to some of the European images of denigrarinn,
and, I would suggest, the Lese were often rhe oneS
denigrated. But where the Lese were treated like
children, they in turn tre:ued the Efe like children.
HOUSES IN THE RAINFOREST
B) lIsing images provided b)r Europcans, the Lese
111:n have been able to construct a more positive
iJl1~ge of themselves. Frequently during my stay in
Zaire, my Lese informants justified their denigra
tion of the Efe by referring to their experiences
with colonial administrators, and it seemed to me
more than just an attempt to speak to me in a lan
guage they tbought I might find meaningful; in
;everal contexts in which I was <l. distant observer,
I heard that tbe Lese had "colonized" (co/rlnise) the
Efe, that the Efe were "savage" (sau'vage) and
needed to be tamed. One informant said, "We
[Lese] gained oW" independence from the Bell,rial1s
in 1%0. hut the Efe have not gained their inde
pendence from us." To some extent, these Lese
are merel~' saying that the Efe cannot live without
rhe Lese because they are culturalJ) and materially
deficient. informants cited the fact that the Efe
do not speak French and speak Swahili poorly;
i.n situations that demand communication with
~tt11e authorities, such as the settlement of disputes,
rhe paying of taxes, and participation in state
organized work groups Lese men represent their
Efc before the authorities. The Lese also say that
liberation from say-age Ways. The missionaries
under the colonial administration, like the Lese
reehniqucs and cannot even feed themselves; the
Efe can become independent, according to these
informants, but only after they learn to govern
themselves.
The Efe's inability to govern themselves is
shown, my informants say, in the absence of Efe
houses. While the Lese stay pur i.n villagc houses,
the Efe do not ha\'c houses and may move their
residence many times a year. Houses, my Lese
informants said, could bring the Efe into civiliza
tion, bur the Efe refuse to build them. Permanent
s~ttlements, they insisted, could also "civilize" the
Efe, but again the Efe refuse. The Lese themselves
Notcs
Feminizing the subordinate or subordinating by
feminizing is extremely common. Two of the mOSl
compelling examples are Jean and John Comnroff's
discussion of the feminization of Africa and Africans
h) nineteenrh-ccmury Europeans (Comaroff and
197
were, of cuurse, ,-cry mobile until they were relo
cated by the Belgians, who hoped the Lese would
remain in their villages at least seven years, and
did their best to restrict mobIlity by allotting
stricti) delimited areas of land to each cbn with a
chiefdom. Toua)', the Lese say that the Efe need to
be settled, and one of thc best ways to do that is to
make Sltre they are imegTated into Lese life. If the
Efe ever separate from the Lese, m) infonnants
said, the Efc would be in a situatiun of chaos or
disorder (ovio). The integration into I he Lese
social world gives the Efe a "place" (fazi).
The question of independence raises two other
issues: the relation between the Efe and humanity,
and the relation between the Lese as the saved, and
the Efe as the heathen. It is commonplace in Africa
for intergroup comparisons to invoh e mythical
represent:ltions of one group as nonhuman, or else
descended from the nunhuman. Lese origin stories
tell of how the Lese came from a mOWltainous
region ravaged bv wars and famine) to flOd the Efe
alread) Jiving in the forest; other stories teJl uf the
Efe's relation to narurc. The story in which the
Lese free rhe Efe froDl a life in trees is a story of
today, argued that membership in a civilized com
mupjty like a mission was dependent not only on
conversion to Christianity but also on the forma
tion of permanent houses and gardens. Sa\'ages are
accepted as mobile, but the civilized are always
permanent. In the Lese language, a church is
"God's House" (1I111I1g11-bu ai): hea"en is called the
"giant hou..,;e" (ai-fur/II), echoing another Lese
notion that in ancient times aU Lese lived ill one
house anu the men garhered under one pasa. The
fe are thus the heathen (paien) who have not been
adm.itted to the house of God and therefore have
little hope of attaining sah'ation and humanity.
Comaroff 1991) and Jean Jackson's description of
the Tukanoan denigrarion of the i\lbku in the central
Nonhwest Amazon (1983:227-239).
2 Tbe content of the story, ill which I.he Efe and Lese
partner collude ro murder the Efc's grandmother,
198 ROY RICHARD GRINKER
deserves some anention. The term alldl/, llsed for the
grandmother, is a term of reference and addrl.'Ss tor
an) woman of a given Ego's grandparems generation
reckoned either matrilineally or patri1ineally (includ
in~ the biological grandmothers). Here, (m,11I mal'
refer simply to an elder!) woman living in the same
residence as the Efe man, Abeki. We c,1n assume
coresidence, since lhtc man and woman have frequent
and inl imate contact. Most of the listeners to this
story believed that the woman was unmarried, or
widowed. Elderly women, especially widows, are not
enjoyed hy the Lese, and tht') arc rarelv encouraged
to remain with their chi.ldren. Widows whose ch.il
dn:n hal'e died arc encouraged even more strongly to
leave the affinal village and return to their naral vil
lage. They are thought to be dangerous as witches
and to he needy and unproductil e drains on the
econom). Infertile II idows are pS)'chologically ahused,
and sometimes physica1J) abused, until they pack
their belongings and rerum to their IJaraJ village.
Thus, listeners to this stor) did not consider Abeki
and his Lese partner's murder of the ~andmorher ro
be unmotivated. She ofTer~ the Lese and Efe panners
a common t.lsk: for the Efe, the removal of a nuisance
and an unproductive consumer; for the Lese, the
removal of someone who would be unable to recipro
cate hi~ gifts of food. The story is esscntiall) about
the ideal relationship between Lese and Efe partners,
a relationship that can be enjoyed when the partners
arc free of intragroup burdens and responsibilities,
potenti.l1 competition, aud the envy of others.
3 Blood is equared \I it h being wounded, and young
Lese children will often ma.ke the mistake of saying
''I'm bleeded" (bE kllfll) or "the knife bleeded me"
instead of using the proper verb for "to wound"
4 Joset (I9~9) repons a similar story among the Lesc
Obi. "The origin of this friendship bctllcen the
lambuli and the WlI.Lese is gil"en to us b~ a knO\Vl1
legend: One da)', a MoLese was in the forest. On .he
trail, he met a J\1ambuli who was II'alling Iv;th his
daughter. In honor of this meeting rhe Mambuti
p:ave his daughter as a gift. However, [rhe MoLese]
did nOI knuw II hat to do. For hint, the scxual parts of
the woman were a wound, whicb he tried, in vain, to
cure with medicines. Some years later the Mambuti
References
Bahuchet, S., and H. Guillaume. 1982. '~\~Farmer
Relations in the r-:orth-west Congo Basin" In Polilics
alld JJislory ill Balld Sociflies, ed. Richard Lee and
Eleanor J ,eacock, pp. 189-212. C'Imbridge: Cambridge
niversit) Press.
returned and asked his son-in-lall II here were the
children. The MoJ ,ese [sic] declared 10 his father-in_
law cllat he didn't know II hat to do to have lhem. Thl'
Mambuti stopped the medicarion, and fornicated
wirh the woman. Nine months later, the first child
was born" (my translation from French).
5 Maurice Bloch (1991) makes a similar point for the
Zafimaniry of Madag-J.<;c;lr. "Marriage wirhout a houl;C
is a contradiction in terms, simply because the
Zafimmiry norion which I choose to lr.U1slate as
'marriage' is distinguished from other forms of sexuul
uni(JIl preci<;ely b) the existence of a house, and becausc
the normal way of asking the question corresponding
to our 'are you married" is phra!>ed, literaU), To mean
'Have you obtain a house with a heanh'''' (p. 3).
6 All of these Lese ofMalembi claimed to havel:fe part
ners. !\lthou~h most men inherit their .Efe partners
from their Elthers, variations in demography pre,",'nt
e\cry man from inheriting in rhis way. A man's t:~ther's
Efe may be childless, or he may have fathered bolr!s
only. Still more problematic, a Lese man may hale
1110re brothers than his father's Efe has sons. As a
result, older sons inherit parmers, and the other SOI1\
must try to establish partnerships elsewhere, usually
by inheriting a partner from a patriJineall\ rehled
man, such as a f:uher's brother, or, as in a few C;ISeS,
by reaching a parmership agreement with an Efe man
who was not inherited, or whose IIIl1fo died. These
partnerships, far from the ideal, lack the trust aUlI
permanenc) of those that arc inherited.
7 Curiously, the term ogbi is Tarely used, and 1 ha\c hC:ITd
it used only IIiul reference to contextS of dependence,
i.ncluding all} situation in which someone cannot cart)
out ,t task without the help of someone else, on whom
he/she therefore depends. It follo"s, then, rhat the
s) mbolic meanings Lese anach to the Efe parallel
those attached to the idea~ of depende-nce inherent
in conception and house building.
8 To these images one might add that of Ota Beng:l,
the African Pygmy man, from Kasai, Congo Free
State, brought to lhe United States in 190~ b)
Dr. Samuel P. Verner. Ota Benga W.1S displa\ cd ar the
1904 SI. Louis World's Fair, and later, in the l\lonkcy
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1'I'Is., Departmental Seminar; Dept. of Anthropology,
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Bradford, P. v., and 1-1. fllume. 1992. 0/(/ Bengo: Til,
Pygm)' illtl:( ZOI/. New York: 51. .Marlin's Press.
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marolT, Jean, and J. 1.. Comaroff. 1991. 0/ Revelati01l
IIl1d Revoilitioll, vol. I: Chrisliallily, CoIOllialiJII1, ,ll1d
COllsC/O/lSlleJ.' In Slil/th Africa. Chicago: Gnil'ersity of
Chicalt'0 Pre",.
Cooper, I~, mdA. 1.. Stoler. 1989. ''Tensions of Empire:
Colonial Control and Visions of Rule." American
Hrl1tI1/iogisi 16 (4):609--621.
DeVore, 1. 1989. "The Human Place in Nature."
\'{HT-1JolinlaI15 (1):35---46.
DulTy, K. J9lH. Childrm of the Rainjnrest. Nell' York:
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Fcrn.mdez, J. W. 1976. Ftmg ,lrehite<"ll/Ilics. II'tirl:itlg
Pupas ill Ih,' Tradifiollal Arts. Philadelphia: Institute
for the Stud) of Human Issues.
Fernandel, J. W. 1982. Oll'iti. Princeton, :'\.].: Princeton
L1nil ersir) Press.
fackson, J. J983. Tlif Fish People: Lill/l,lI;sl/( Exogamy
. al/d 7Jtl:allOall fdmflfy ill NorthlPest Aml/zoma.
:'1Tnbridge: Cambridge UniH:rsil) Press.
.Iohn'ilJll, M. 193 I. COllgorilll.l:1ti"eIllllres with Pygmies and
Goril/(Jj ill /l[rica. 1\ew York: Bcwer, Warren & Putnam.
John,lOn, H. II. 1903. "The Pygmies of the Great
Congo Forest." Annual report of the Board ofRegents
of the Smithsonian Institution, for the year ending
1902, pp. -n9-9J.
Jo>N, PI:::. I 9~9. "Notes erhnographique sur la sous
lribu de~ \\'alese i\bfunkotou." Blllletill de Juridicl;rllls
ll/d(v;clles 17: 1-97.
~lacCorm3ck, c., and 1\>1. Strathern, eds. 1980. NOII/re,
Clilfure, "lid Gemla. Cambridge: Cambridge
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\lathieu, N. 1978. "Man-Culture and \\'oman-l\:ature'"
ffom~u's Stlldies J :55-65.
.\loore, H. 1988. Femillism and AJllhropoiogy.
Minneapolis: Unil'ersity of Minnesota Press.
199
Ortner, S. B. 1974. "Is Female LO ~ble as Nature Is
to Culture'" In 11imtall, Clllture, IIl1d Sociefy, cd.
M. Rosaldo and 1.. Lamphere, pp. 67-88. SLanford,
Calif.: Stanford Unilersity Press.
Sapir, J. D. 1977. "The An:ltomy of l\letaphor." In The
Social UJes 0/ Alrraphor, cd. ]. O. Sapir and]. C.
Crocker, pp. 3-33. Philadelphia: Uni"ersity of
Pennsylvania Press.
Sc:hebesta, P. J933. Amolll( COllgo Pygmies. London:
Hutchinson & Co.
Sehebesta, P. 1936. My Pygmy aud Negro Ilo.(t.1. London:
Hurchinson & Co.
Schebest3, P. 1952. "Les PI'gmces du Congo Beige."
\I1emoire de I'institut Royal Colonial Beige, ser. 8,
vol. 26, fasc. 2.
Schweinfurth, G. 1874. The Heart 0/ Aji";ca, Vol. II.
1\ew York: Ilarper & Brothers.
Sulloway, Frank. 1<)7<). Frmd: Diologi.,t o/the Mil/d. I\ew
York: Basic Books.
Tumbull, C. 1961. The Foresl People. Nell York: Simon &
Schuster.
Turnbull, C. 1965. W"YI1'ard Sumnls: The Two /1Inrlds 0/
lIt( -/(ricall Pygmies. Nell' York: Natural Hi$tory Press.
Turner, Y. 1967. The Form of SymIJfi/s. 1t11aca, N..:
Cornell Universiry Press.
Tyson, E. 1751 [1699]. The ."1//(/(/1111)' 0/ a Pygmy
Compared Tl'ith Thai 0/ a IHollkey, 01/ Ape, alld (/ Man.
Second ed. London: T Osborne in Gray's Inn.
Vansina, ]. 1990. Paths in 'he Rai/1[oml. Madison:
iniversity of Wisconsin Press.
Waeble, E. J985. "Efe (Mbuti Pygmy) Relations to
Lese-Dese Villagers in the ltu.ri Forest, Zaire:
Historical Changes during the last 150 Years." Paper
presented ,It the International Symposium: African
Hunter-Gatherers, Cologne, January.
 LAND FILLED WITH FLIES 201

13

Land Filled with Flies

The Evolution of Illusion

Edwin N Wilmsen

The world of humankind constitutes a manifold, a totalit) of interconnected processes,

and inquiries that disassemble this totality into bits and then fail to reassemble it falsify
realilY. Concepts like "nation," "society," and "culture" name bits and threaten to tum
names into things. Only by understanding these mmes as bundles of relationships, and
by placing them bac\.. into the field from which they were abstracted, can we hope to
avoid misleading infen:nces and increase our share of understanding. (Eric Wolf, Europe Figure 13.) '\1ap of southern Africa showing the countries mentioned in the text; L is Lesotho, S is
and the People withoul History, 1982) SW3Ziland. In colonial times Botswana was known as the Bechuanaland Protectorate or simply the
Protectorate; Namibia was South-West Africa to the British and Siidwestafrika to the Germans. Ngamiland is
the part of northwestern Botswana west of the Okavango Delta and north of Lake Ngami, in which the
none have been able, in this century, to accumulate location of CaeCae is marked by a triangle; the asterisk marks the location ofUarrow's 1797 obsen-ations
Ylan the Hunter: A Nineteenth-centur)
sufficient capital to maintain significant cattle
Legacy
herds of their own ... ,
In company with many others called foragers in t the same time, in this century in Botswana pastoralisr economies of the region through kin and its aftermath_ Their appearance as foragers is a
faraway corners of the earth, the San-speaking and Namibia, an overwhelming majority of peo ship and material production networks. Despite function of their relegations to an underclass in the
peoples of southern Africa haye been relegated to ples so labeled ha\-e pursued a substantially pasto this, during this century few contemporar) San playing out of historical processes that began before
an existential remoteness in time and space and ralisl \\'a) of life in symbiosis with, employed by, or speaking herders have been able to establish the current millenmum and culminated in the early
being (fig. 13.1). This remoteness, as it is con enserfed to Bantu-speaking cattle owners, prima livestock-based domestic economies independent decades of this century. The isolation in wh.ich they
ceived to exist for the Kalahari, is represented as rily Batswana and O\aherero. As we shall sec, this is of Bantu-speaking pastoralists until this decade, are said to have been found is a creation of our view
having been bridged only in recent decades, and equall) true of earlier centuries, with the modifica when some arc managing to do so. None have yet of them, not of their hi.story as they lived it. This is
that bridging itself is said to have been accom tion that some proportion of San-speakers them been able to enter into commodit) production of as true of their indigenous material-social systems
plished as often as not by social scientists seeking selves then owned herds of respectable size. :\nd all callie for readily available commercial markets now as it is of their incorporation in wider spheres of
the wellspring of human existence. There is a basis "Bushmen for3gers," no matter how far out into the dominated by Ts\\'ana and Herero producers. What political economy in southern Africa.
for this perspective: unlike all other natiYe peoples Kalahari they m3j have been found at an) par arc the reasons for this state of affairs? A false dichotomy has crept in, a line drawn
of southern Arrica, among those called "Bushman" ticular moment, were in those previous eenturies As we shall see, the current status of 5an bet\\'een those who produce their means of exist
(most, but not all, of whom speak San languages) and remain now - enmeshed in the dominant speaking peoples on the rural fringe of African ence and those who supposedly do not, between
economies can be accounted for only in terms of those who live on nature and those who live in it,
From Edwin Wilmsen, Land Fillu/ mllh Flies (1989), from the Lniversilj of Chicago Press, pp. 1-32 the social policies and economics of the colonial era between those ",hose social life is motivated
202 EDWIN N. WILMSEN
primarily by self-interest and tllOSC guided by
respect for reciprocal consensus. Both ecologists
and m,lterialists locate foragers in an el'olutionar
ill' prior history; we still hear contemporary for
ager societies spoken of as living in nature, bound
together in prepolitical community. [. _.] An end
less, aboriginal continuity of social rclations is
envisioned, its alterations wrenched from resist
ance by external impositions in the form of drastic
changes in a fickle environment or of imperati\e
direction - usuall) technological or economic at
base - [rom a hostile outside world_ Foragers, in
this scenario, arc assigned the role of passive
receptor and becoming the testing laboratory for
our own ide<"Jlogical preoccupations regarding his
torical transformations of social forms.
In the prevailing paradigm of anthropology
applied to the Kalahari, that of evolutionary ecol
ogy, the questions posed above have been non
questions, never asked, without answers. This is
because a distinction drawn by Levi-Strauss
(1967:47) has fundamentally informed all anthro
pological approaches to San-speaking "foragers";
that distinction is between "societies, which we
might define as 'cold' in that their internal envi
ronment neighbours on the zero of historical tem
perature, [and] are, by their limited total manpower
and their mechanical mode of functioning, distin
guished from the 'hot' societies which appeared in
different parts of the world following the Neolithic
revolution." In fact, Lee (1979:6) goes so far as to
believe that it is ule very act of ethnograpllic fi cld
work itself that "can begin to place this '<lhistori
cal' society into history." Ethnogr:.lphers of
San-speakers llave assumed that these peoples
were quinressential aboriginal hunters :md gather
ers whose wav of life had changed little for
millennia - those "cold" societies of Le\i-Strauss
(1966:23J.--..+), "'peoples without history' .. , seek
ing, by the institutions they give themselves. to
annul the possible effects of historical factors on
their equilibrium and continuity"
Both geographic isolation and cultural consen'
alism were j[lvoked to account for this static con
dition. it was asserted, without investigation, that
neidler Ali-iean agropastoralists nor any other
external influence had impinged significantly on
their isolation until the middle third of this cen
tmy. As a conseq uence, San-speakers werc
declared to be socially and culrurally uninterested
in and unprepared for participation in independ_
ent pastoral economies. Oddly, at the same time
they were acknowledged to be se;l.soned herdsmen
for others. We shall discover the re;l.sons for this
discordance.
These reasons lie in the epistemological dis
course of Euroanlerica's representation of its own
past. Once established in scholarly and scientific _
and of parallel importance, popular -lexicons, the
events, peoples, and altegories thal become the
objects of this discourse are transmuted into
"indexical signs which perpetually point to their
status as realities constituted independentlY of
the process of representation itself" (Alonso
1988:36). The categories "Bushman," "San,"
"hunter-gatherer," "forager," and so forth are
products of just such transmutation; they become
objects and function to illuminate and legitimize a
crucial area in Euroamerica's symbolic recon
struction of its own ontology.
It was just this discourse, Pratt (1985) tells us,
that formed "what "'''{r. Barro\\ sa\\ in the land of
the Bushmen" in 1797 (fig. 13.1). In what follows.
1 shall tracc the form that this discourse continues
to dictate for modcrn ethnographies of"Bushmen."
These ethnographies serve to authenticate our OIl"n
subjective ontology by fitting an iconic "Bushman"
into a prefigured category labeleu "primiti\e." By
displaying objectificd peoples as examples of this
categoI) \\ ho exist "in a timeless present tense ...
not as a particular historical event bUl as an inst,lOce
of a pregiven custom or trait" (Pratt 1985:120),
ethnograph) validates the epistemological pro
gram. Consequently, the intrinsic realities of these
objects are, as themselves, of liule or no inte.rest to
this program. \Vhat is important is that its objects
conform to a discursive narrative; willie ,10\ of the
parts may be questioned at any time, tbe ontologi
cal reconstruction itsel f becomes increasingly
unchallengeable as a whole.
Since aoout ]960, most students of "forager"
social formations have self-consciously espoused
either some form of ecological or Marxian model or
some combination of such models as The foundation
of their work. This may be especially true of th\Jse
whose attention is on A1i-ican "foragers" and their
relation to 'food producers"; the g-eneral formul:J.
tions of Meillassoux, 'lerray, Dupre and Rey, and
LAND FILLED WITH FLIES
Goddier in France, ofHindcss and I lirst in Enghmd,
and of Sahlins in the United States along with ,he
particular field of studies of Lee, Silberbauer, and
T.1naka in the Kalahari corne readily to mind and
will be examined in the COurse of our discussion. It
is rrue that tenets of f\ tarxian theory figure promi
nently in the presentations of the first five of dlcse
authors and infiltrate in decreasing degree those of
the OUlers. It is equally true that ecological paranlC
ters are recognized as important by all (at IC"<1st to the
extent that dle) are among- the forces of production
defined by Marx) and are invoked as primary explan.
~1Of) factors by the last four of these \\Titers. But the
inrelleclual basis upon which I hey all construct their
theoretical fouudations has a far more ancient pedi
gree and is to be found in two corollary trajectories
of nineteenth-cenrur) European thought. The first
()[ these was an antiquarian and ethnological interest
aroused bv the realiz"<1tion th;tt The bihlical accoum of
hi'itOT) could no longer accommodate accumulating
t'lTlpiriCll obsemltions of geological, biological, ,md
social processes made both ;It home and in e..'l:oLic
parts of the hitherto unknown world. The second
II-as an idealist sociology that in pan arose to answer
questions about human society thus exposed.
It has often been remarked that these trajecto
ries have long histories irl Western Thought (see,
for example, Worsaae 1849:138; Sorolin
19571 i i-viii; Leacock 1972:8; Stockin g 1987:9-10,
passim), and this is true, with the proviso that nei
ther their referems nor Lhe problematic engage
ment with those referents has remajned constant.
1L is nevcrthcle..~s worth quoting brielly from
Uesiod (Athanassakis 1983: 7~1), whose words
on the suhject resonate in many rationaliz<1tions of
tbe sLUJy of "primitive foragers" today:
AI first the immortals who dwell on Olympus
cre.llcd a golden race of mortal men,
That was when Kronos was king of the sky, and
they lived like gods, carefree in their hearts,
They knell no consrraint and lived
in PC;lce and abUlJdance as lotds of their land.
Then. lIfter recounting lhe second, sih er, :mel
third. bron%e. races and the fourth, "divine races
of heroes," Hesiod continues:
203
I wish 1 were not counted among the fifth race
of men,
but rather Iud died before, or been born after it.
This is the race of iron_ Neither da) nor night
will give them rest as they waste away with toil
and pain
(1Vuris lind Day.l, lines 110-13,119-20,17-+-8)
These theme~, of an early era of ease and cqualit)
contrasted wilh an ever more baneful present
existence, recur regularly again in post-World
\Var II ethnographies of African foragers, as they
did in lhe eighteenth century. Leslie ''\'hitc, who
helped inspire a renewed anthropological quest
for human anthenticity in the evolutionary "prim
itive" cullLlres, gave voice to a common feeling
when he declared that the.se cultures - crudc and
limited as they n13) be - were infinitely superior in
meeting human needs to an) other ever realized,
including our (J\~ll (1959:23).
In the nineteenth century, especially after about
1860, the same bi-polar eras were identified, but
their attributes were reversed by evulutionists of
that time, for whom foragers lived as savage brutes
(Guenther] 980 assembles many of the more lurid
details), a condition from I\hich the peak of
Euroamerican civilization had long- ago escaped.
Those who pursued a sociological search for the
nature of human nature were not so sure.
Even so, two fundamenra.l constants run through
both conceptions: first, an era of pure hunters (we
no\\ say hunter-gatherers, of course) did exist sepa
rately from other eras; second, iliat era - although
its roots ]a) in the prehistoric past - is represented
by "hunting" peoples who lire at any time, prcbjs
toric, historic, or present. Thus, peoples living
today II ho may be classified as foragers bear witness
not onl) to their Own lives but lO those of prehis
toric foragers as well. That is, not only are living
peoples conceived to be fil models for the remote
past, but that remote past itsel f is said to establish
the parameters of life of these li\ ing peoples.
Lee and DeVore arc unequivocal on this point.
Reporting the difficulties in defining "hunters"
encountered at Ule 1966 Man me Hunter confer
ence, they Slate (1968:{): '~-'\n evolutionary defini
tion would have been ideal; thi~ would confine
hunters to lhose populations with strictly Pleistocene
economies - no metal, firearms, dogs, or contact
 20-+ EDWIN N. WILMSEN
with non-bunting peoples. Unfortunately sueb a
definition would effectively eliminate most, if not
all, of the peoples reported at the symposium since,
as i\Iarshall Sahlins pointed out, nowhere today do
we find hunters living in a world of hunters."
The Received Past
Tlte presell/ ,Pitholtl (I Pllst
The history of the Kalahari, as written, reads like a
kaleidoscope of unconnected slide shows thrown
up on segregated screens. That southern African
savanna called a desert still functions for many as
an imaginary map - almost in tbe tradition of
medieval geographers - on which names of \'arious
exotic peoples are entered or erased in accordance
with some historiographic need of the moment to
segreg-ate those peoples conceptually - more
urgent tban spatially - from each other..
Until recently, historians of the region were
concerned primarily with tracing the emergence
of first tribal, then modern, national states througb
the colonial nineteenth century and its aftermath,
They did not find it necessary to elaborate tlle
roles played by peoples considered marginal to
this process. In BotS\Yana, Tlou (1972: 147) [... ]
began the move to broaden historical interest when
he asserted that "the history of an area is mOfe
than just that of the ruling groups." He has taken
his own admonition seriously and written exten
sively on all the Bantu-speaking peoples of
Ngamiland, not just Bamwana, but even he has
relatively little to say about San-speakers (and
Bakgalagadi) except that they were there first and
live in the sandvcld. Parsons (personal communi
cation) has suggested that these peoples have been
ignored because it has been too difficult to incor
porate them into the narrative center of state
political historiography, owing in large measure to
a supposed lack of historical sources.
Recent interest in specific issues - the politics
of traditional land tenure (Hitchcock 1978;
Wilmsen 1982a, 1989) and a reevaluation of the
nature of slavery and serfdom in the Kalahari
(Tlou 1979; Miers 1983; Mautle 1986; Miers and
Crowder 1988) - has stimulated research into
the historical relations between San-speakers and
the other peoples of the region. In Botswana,
the establishment of the Bushman Development
Programme in 1975 (later the Remote Area
Dwellers Programme) at a ministerialleYei of gOY_
erument led to the first significant inyestigations
into relations among San and Bantu peoples since
the League of Nations inspired investigations of
the 1930s (Wily 1979). And for Namibia, Lau
(1979, 1981, 1984) has begun to correct the histo_
riographic imbalance in that country. l\;'oncthel ess,
in general San-speakers are still set at the thresh_
old of history and then effectively lost from sight.
Even in as encyclopedic a work as A NelP His!r.,:J'
of Sou/Item AJi'im (Parsons J983), Khoisan peo
ples are discussed - uncommonly fully but none
theless mainly in terms of Stone Age and Iron Age
development - in an opening chapter and then
rarely mentioned again ....
Such remoteness from the flow of history - a
remoteness in the mind, as we shall see - was fclt
to be necessary in order to SUPPOTt the professed
research goals of generating new insights into cul
tural evolution and reconstructing the properties
of societies and economies of earlier human popu
lations. Lee and DeVore tell us they chose to work
in the northern Kalahari because "the research
goals required a population as isolated and tradi
tionally oriented as possible" (Lee 1965:2). For as
they will say when we examine their motivation for
joining Leslie White in a renewed search for lost
authenticity in human relations, "The human
condition was likely to be dra\vn more clearly here
than among other kinds of societies" (Lee and
DeVore 1968:i..;). I (Wilmsen 1983) haye noted
that most students, including myself, of Bushmen,
as thev were then still called, were swept into this
intellectual stream and the evolutionary paradigm
from which it flows ....
It is, as a consequence, still too easy to follow
Van Der Post (1958) into The Lost 1tJforid of Ihl'
Kalahari and to suppose that The Harmless People
ofThomas (1959) are not only enchanting but fac
tual. These authors, to be sure, wrote partly
fictionalized travc!ers' accounts for a popular
audience, but they had a serious purpose: '~'"
search for some pure remnant of the unique and
almost vanished First People of my native land,
the Bushmen" (Van Der Post 1958:3); and "study
ing the life and customs of the people of the
Kalahari, who are called the Bushmen ... the ear
liest human inhabitants still jiving in southern
LAND FILLED WITH FLIES
----
-\.frica" (Thomas 1959:6-8). This purpose was in
~une with the anthropology of their time: "To find
,ll1d study Bushmen who were living in their o\\n
way ... we observed a way of life that had not
changed radically in ages," as .'Vlarshall (1957: I;
reprintcd nnchanged in ]976: 14) thought, echo
ing i\lurdock's (1959:61) inf1uential text, which
concluded that Bushmen were Paleolithic people
"ho represented "actual remnants of that ancient
population and their cultures [who] have survived
into lhe historical period." To which Herskovit,
(1962:61), in his equally praised The Hilma II PM/or
ill ClulIlgillK .1f;ica, added of the Khoisan that they
had a "negligible degree of participation in influ
encing the course of events in the territories they
inhabit." One wonders, then, if they were indeed
part of the hunlan factor.
Anthropology was itself in tune with the his
tory of the region: "There are also the orig'ina!
people of the land, the Bushmen ... moving about
their traditional hunting grounds from water hole
to water hole. ... sometimes one may be lucky
enou!!h to come across a family group" (Sillery
1952:xii). Later historians, even those sensiti\-e to
the colonia] destruction of indigenous societies,
also spare little concern for San-speakers. Bley
(197l:xxii) could write, "Like the Bushmen and
Berg-Damara, the Saan were displaced by the
arrival of later, more powerful tribes, and by 1830
none of the original inhabitants occupied a posi
tion of any importance in the territory." And this
from Clarence-Smith (1979:8): "In between [agri
cultural and pastoralist groups] livc rO\'ing bands
of Khoi or l\\'a hunter-gatherers, who have been
of little or no historic importance." ...
Ethnography and historiography, thus segre
gated from each other, are linked with fiction in
perpetuating a conceptual isolation of San
speakers, a conceptualization that tautologically
justifies its own fictitious state. Paradoxically, these
peoples, who are universally considered to be the
longest-term living residents of the Kalahari, are
permitted antiquity while denied hisrory.
Lile the rest of southern Africa, the political
and economic structures of the Kalahari in the
nineteenth century were differentiated in recog
nizable terms. A number of diverse social groups
were articulated with what appears to ha\'C been a
degrec of relative autonomy for each in the early
205
years of the century. There \\ere Tswana agropas
toral incipient states on the southern and eastern
margins of the Kalahari by the mid-eighteenth
century, but what the economics of dIe peoples
they encountered may have been has not yet been
made so clear. It is usuaJly assumed dIal these !at
ter were stricti) Coragers, or at most kept small
stock, but this is poorly founded speculation. The
situation was not so simple.
It is clear, however, that as the ninetcenth cen
nIry progressed the various Tswana groups were
able to consolidate their positions and gain hegem
ony over the other Kalahari peoples and to appro
priate an extractable surplus [rom them in the
form of tribute. In the process, they incorporated
these weakened indigenous peoples into their own
social formations as a servile class. In the last quar
ter of the nineteenth century and the first half of
the twentieth, Batswana were actively abetted in
this process by a British colomal administration
acting, abo\e all, in its own interest. Gadibolae
(1985; see also Wiley 1985), on tlle basis of previ
ously unexamined archival records and recently
acquired oral histories, reaffirms that even the
minimum efforts made to control the conditions
of San serfdom were initiated by the Colonial
Office primarily to forestall ad\'erse world opinion
of their administration of the Protectorate_
The first question that begs to be asked, then, is
to what extent these indigenous Kalahari social
f(lrmatjons were altered, initially by African state
expansion alone and later by colonial capital acting
through those established states. It was, as it hap
pened, at precisely the end of this period of hege
monic consolidation that tbe subjugated peoples
of the Kalahari - especially those called Bushmen,
San, or foragers - became the focus of anthropo
logical attention. Consequently, a corollary ques
tion that must be asked is how this historic
coincidence has led to a distortion of the ethno
graphic record of these peoples.
The uneven penetration of European merchant
capital into the region is a second crucial factor.
European traders were well established in eastern
Bots\\ ana by the mid-1940s and only ten years
later had saturated the farthest corners of
Ngamiland in northwestern Botswana as well
as adjacent Namibia (Parsons 1977: 117; Tlou
1972; Tabler 1973). These traders, however, only
206 EDWIN N. WILMSEN
consolidated to themselves what had been in
effect long before they arrived. Marks (1972),
Clarence-Smith and Moorsom (1975), Elphick
(1975, 1977), Kienetz (1977), Lau (1982), Nangati
(1980), and practically all the authors in Gray and
Birming:ham (1970), Palmer and Parsons (1977),
Marks and Armore (1980), and Birmingham and
Martin (1983) provide overwhelming evidence
that European-inspired market factors were felt
in every part of central and southern Africa before
the actual appearance of white men in those parts.
As Wt: shall see, European trade items were
received into Namibia-Ngamiland more than
(\\ 0 hundred years before the first white man set
foot there.
To be sure, the preponderance of the new
wealth thus generatt:d in the nineteenth century
went directly to European traders, while the small,
hut still significant, remainder available to indige
nous economies flowed mainly to, or at least
through, chiefs and local headmen who retained
the lion \ share for themselves. An example en cap
su lares the process:
Khama's income, now apparently freed from bur
densome political reciprocities, came from his
measure of monopolistic control over the market
between internal and external trades at Shoshong.
The income of the Ngwato king was estimated at
3,000 in 1874 and at 2,000 to 3,000 in 1877,
though it is not clear whetber this was in cash or
cash value. The cash income was due in large
measure to predominant royal ownership of the
means of production - the king "owned" the land
and the elephants and employed or hired out his
serf hunters. IIe e:-.t:racted a 50 per cent le\') on
i\ory production - the "ground rusk" of every
elephant shot in his domains, a common and ven
erable royal prerogative in Southcm-Central
Africa. (Parsons 1977: 120)
There were exceptions, of course, but even where
most rigidly true, the subjugated peoples - San
speakers and others - actually produced much of
the surplus product channeled into commercial
trade. This suggests that these peoples lived in
societies already structured in such a way that
thc) could organize themselves very quickly to
produce an extractable surplus beyond what they
had been providing as tribute to Batswana for
decades and to earlier Iron Age chiefdoms for
cenmries.
Thus this Case echoes others in southern ~'\frica's
colonial history. San traditionalism, so called, and
the culUlral conservatism uniformly attrihuted to
these people by almost all anthropologists \\'ho
ha\'e worked with them umil recently, is a
consequence - not a cause - of the way they ha\c
been intcgrated inro the modern capitalist econo
mics of Botswana and Namibia. The trajectory of
this inte~ration can be traced in the written and
oral records.
Sellirlg Ihe sflvage slltge
[n 1819, Christian Jurgensen Thomsen, secretary
of the then recently established Danish National
\J1useum of Antiquities, synthesized rhe work of
his predecessors and arranged the museum's col
lections b) "classifying them into three ages of
Stone, Bronze, and Iron on tbe basis of the mate
rial used in making weapons and implements,
dividing the specimens into three groups repre
senting what he claimed were three chronologi
cally successive ages" (Daniel 1950A 1).
Contemporary, living peoples entered as mod
els into this scheme from the beginning; J. J A.
Worsaae, Thomsen's student, wrote in his Prime;al
Alltiifllilies (}f Delllllark (1849) that "having rC4td
bow ~tone implements were at present used b)
Pacific islanders, and knowing that the Goths
made no such use of stone implements, he con
cluded that there must ha\'e been a Stone Age"
(Daniel 1950:44). Worsaae had been anticipated
by Nilsson in 1834:
As witnesses throwing light upon ancient times I
count not only antiquities, monuments, their
different shapes, and the figures engra\ed on
them, but also popular lilIes, which most fre
quently originate from traditions, and :lI'e there
fore remnants of olden times.... [We ought [Q be
able, by collecting] the remains of human races
long since passed away, and of the works which
they have left behind, to draw a parallel betweell
them and similar ones which srill exist on earth,
and thus cut out a way to the knowledge of cir
cumstances which may have been, b) comparing
them with those which still exist. (Nilsson,
quoted in Daniel 1950:49)
LAND FILLED V'iITH FLIES
following his own recommended procedure,
~ilsson distinguished four stages in man's devel
opment. The Grst - naturall) - was the savage
stage, when man was still a hunter.
Lubbock's Prehistoric Times ([1865] 1913) not
r...
ani) g:l\'e a n.illle to tJlis time before history J in nil1t stone and bone implements, b~ his ca\'e
but set the savage Stone Age on bedrock by sepa
r.lling a Paleolithic hunting stage in prehistor)
rrom its Neolithic fishing and ceramic-making
,uccessor. Lubbock devoted fully a third of his
lonL'! book to "the consideration of modem savages
[because] if we wish clearly to understand th
antiquities of Europe, we must compare them with
the rude implements and wcapons still, or until
lately, used by the sa\age races in other parts of the
"orld" (Lubbock [1865] 1913:430-1). Lubbock
not only made it e1ear, as in this passage, that
Europe was the center of interest in all these staged
scenarios, he also anticipated another modern
concern that troubled Lee and DeVore in 1968
that there were no longer any hunters living in a
world peopled exclusivel) b) hunters: "The
prescnt habits of savage races, ",hile throwing, no
doubt, much light on those of our earliest ances
rors, are not to be regarded as represellting them
exactly, because they havc been to some extent
modified by external conditions, influenced by
national character, whjch, however, is after all but
the result of externaJ conditions which have acted
on previous generations" (Lubbock [1865] wrote. Lubbock (LI865] 1913:431) could say that
1913:544).
[n other words, if foragers were to be lIseful, it
would be necessary to filter out from them what
rna) have sifted down from the contamination of
contact. Nevertheless, WiLh suitable precautions in
the employment of what we now call ethnographic
~nalogy, "the archaeologist is free to follow the
methods which have been so successfully employed
in geology - the rude bone and stone implements
of bygone ages being to the one what the remains
of extinct animals [in relation to living species] are
to the other" (Lubbock [1865] 1913:430).
The stage having been set, some action was
called for. Morgan's Ancienl Sorielj' (L 1877 J
1964:41-2) pro\'ided this:
Sa\'agery was the formati\'e period of the human
race. Commencing at zero in kno\\ledge and
e>.pcrience ... our savage progenitors fought the
20
great battle, first for e>.istence, and then for
progress, until the~ secured safety from ferocious
animals, and permanent subsistence.... the inte
riority of savage m,m '" is, nevertheless, substan
tiall) demonstrated by the remains of ancient art
life in certai]) areas, and by his osteological
remains. It is still further illustrated by the present
condition of tribes of savages in a 10\\ state of
development, left in isolated sections of the earth
as monuments of the past.
Tylor ([1881] 1909:24) added a mobile element:
"The lowest or savage State is that in which man
subsists on wild plants and animals, neither tilling
the soil nor domesticating creatures for his food ....
[in some] regions they have to lead a wandering
life in quest for the wild food which they soon
exhaust in any place. In making their rude imple
ments, the materials used by sa\'ages are \.\ hat they
find ready to hand, such as wood, stone, and bone,
but the) cannot extract metal from the are, and
therefore belong to the Stone Age."
There were confusions about just who fit where
in these schemes. \Vorsaae's deduction from
Polynesians using stone tools was one sllch,
although this might be reconcilable with the fact
that a distinction between a paleohwlting and a
neopotting Stone Age had not been made when he
"in some savage tribes we even lind traces of
improvement; the Bachapins, when visited by
Burchell, had just introduced the art of working in
iron."
These Tswana-speaking Batlhapa of southern
Africa were possessors of vast herds of cattle and
other domestic stock, long accustomed to lron
smithing. In the same breath, Lubbock asserts as
proof of the eternal constancy of forager life that
Bushmen, among others, 'lived when first
observed almost exactly as the) do nO\\," although
it is unlike!) that he was acquainted with more
han the latest thirty or forty of the then three
hundred years of European reporting on these
peoples. These confusions are hardl) to be won
dered at, given the embryonic staLe of ethno
gTaphic reporting at the time.
Yet by 1880 the basic defining characteristics of
a sa\'age, foraging stage of human existence were
 EDWIN N. WILMSEN
LAND FILLED WITH FLIES 209
208

these San peoples are on the "threshold of thl: CVOIUTion in itself. Loomis and ~1cKiruley (1957;) in Euroameric,1n thought and its authenticating
in place. These will seem faJlubar to any survivor
l\eolithic, stripped of the accretions and eompli pointoutthatTannies(p887) 1957),in CelT/eil/scha}1 agent, ethnography.
of a standard l.:Qntemporary introducIOry course
c.lti()ns" of later evolutionary stages, aJld further "lid Ccsel/schaji (translated by them as CrJII/llll/1/ity Later, in a convoluted passage - resonant of
in anthropologJ : (I) the foraging 1\ ay of life has its
more that this condition retards their social olld Society), was concerned to address the ques German mystical painters ancl architects of the
roots in a Paleolithic past that occurred long before
incorporation into and economic participation in tions "What arc we? Where are we? Whence did we time - conrerning centers of clCI'c1opment radiat
recorded history; (2) this way of life depemh
modern nation,'l stales. It is taken as axiomatic that come? Where are Ill" going?" These are, with per ing toward new nuclei spawning yet others in the
exclusively on hunting and gathering \\;ld foods
peoples in a "lower SInge of evolution" will eagerly haps the exception of the last, the classic antiquar e\oll ing chain, Tonnies (rt887J 1957:252) says
regardless of when in time (Paleolithic or later)
grasp at the I ices of tJleir betters while remaining ian and evolutionary questions: posing tJlem that thjs "refers only to different stages and types
and where it is found; (3) its technology is simple
ignorant of those benefits that could raise them pre~upposcs a recognition of, if not an intent to of colleeti\e life." But the Gemeinschaft stage, at
Jnd based cntjjely on naturally occurring Tall
materially amI morall) to nell heights. Implicit in jnlcstigatc, the proposit.ion that there are problem least, carmot change without external stimuli, par
materials; (4) social groups, limited by these con
this is the norion lhat forager social formations are atic historical aJlleeet.!ents to where it is we are. ticularly trade; it continues to ell ist in Yarying
straints, arc necessarily small and are virtual reli
incapable of change on their 01\ n. Furthermore, Tannies \las aware of this and wished to merge forms today. There is a vague, unstated suggestion
cates of each other; (5) these groups are usuall)
change, in the event Lhat it is sumulated by exter formal and historical sociology in order to better that it cannot change because it is pure.
compel1ed to be highly mobile in their search for
nal agencies, \\ill be gradual. Contrarily, those on address his questions. He is quite clcar on this point I am unable to find that Tiinnies specifically
food. There was also already the caution that the::
a "higher plane" never wish to fall beneath them ([1887J 1957:34, 42, 252), although he docs not attributed Gemeinschaft to a savage - or any other
effects of contact with higher cultures had to be
sehcs, althuugh they may sometimes be compelled dwell on historical, let alone prehistoric, referents: kind of - Stone Age, but the passages quoted
accounted for before inferences about the evolu
to do so by a eapriciolls natme. "Gemeinschaft is old ... the natural relationship is, above, along with his occasional references to the
tionar\' significance of any particular gTOUp of for
All of this rai~es a fundamental question: by its \ery essence, of earlier origin than its subject primeval core of spouses, the tents of nomads, and
agers could be justified Engels ([1884J 1972:97)
Before there were peoples on a higher plane, how or members.... Gemeinschaft by blood, denoting other tllen-current elhnographie attributes of that
added some now quaint speculations on stage \ ari
did anyone e\ er become anything other than a for unit) of being, is de\eloped and differentiated into primitive stage, plus the fact that we know Tonnies
ations in sexuality and marriage, noting, ho\\e\er,
aging sa\age? The answers offered pointed to that emeinschaft of locality ... a furtber djfferentia was conversant \I ith the ethnology of his day,
that some things arc just too bizarre to exist any
!>ame capriciou~ nature, which either e1cyated tion leatls to the Gemeinschaft of mind, which seems to suggest that he had in mind something of
longer, elen among savages: "The primiti"Vt social
por u lar-ion numbers above the sustaining capacity implies onI) co-operation and co-ordinated action the kind. He says, for example <r 1887J 1957:37),
stage of promiscuit), if it ever existed, belongs Lo
of resources or depressed resources below the for a common goal." That is to say, original kinship that Gemeinschaft is characterized by a "perfect
such a remote epoch that we can hardly expect to
requirements of populations. Eiuter condition among indiliduals is natural and unanalyzable unit) of human \\"ills as an original or natural con
prove its e:l.istence dircrl~)' by discovering its social
forced innOlation. '\fter "higher levcl.s" \\Tre eidler by tJlOse in it or b) those observing it - but dition," that is, by a collective conscience. Perhaps
ossils among backward savages."
aLlained, Ihe answer was obvious: those in a lower this kinship eventually becomes identified with ter more tellingly, he quotes copiously from Maine's
Bur it was Pin-Rivers ill 1875 who sounded a
condition would naturally aspire to the higher ritory and ll1tjmately emerges as an ideology of Ancienl Liw> ([1887J 1957:182-183) wherein the
note \\ ho~e echoes we will hear a full century later
once it. was made known LO them. But they could socialit) through which individuals recognize their condition of the modern family is traced through
(p. 159). Borrowing frool Lubbock the analog) of
reach this apotheosis only through a "break in the communit) of interests. Or, "all three types of reverse evolution to its simple roots in prehjstory.
etlmologicalto paleontological materials, he asserts
sequen.. . e" - th,lt is, 11) escaping their intrinsic Gemeinschaft are closely interrelated in space as Durkheim too eschewed evolutionary inten
the by now unremarkable dogma that "amongsL
primiti\eness. Morgan ([1877) 1964:)40) was weLl as in time.... the earlier type im'olyes the later tions, but he called upon historical transformation
the arts of existing savages we find forms which,
,unong the fell who thought rhat savages might one, or the later one has developed to relative inde processes in aboriginal societies that in the words
being adapted to a low conilltion of culrure, have
sometimes rise, "for it was by this process [of imi pendence" (Tonnies [1887) 1957:42). of mid-twentieth-century anthropologists sound
sun'ived from the eartiest times, and also Ihe rep
t.ltionJ constantly repeated that the most adyanced Gemeinschaft is the earlier, simpler stage of very familiar today. He followed Tannies in
resentatives of many suec.essive stages Ihrou~h
tribes lifted up those belo\\ them, as fast as the soeialit) when all associations of persons were contrasting simple, original society to complex,
which development has taken place in times past";
latter were ablt to appreciate and to appropriate replic:ate segnlents, the polar opposite of modern derived society such as he saw his contemporary
he adtls, howcl'er, that "twO nations in very differ
the means of progress." Gesel1schaft, characterized by atomization of Europe to be. This original, simple society \Vas
ent stagcs of civihzation may be brought sidc by
social forms and alienation of individuals. The based upon mechanical solidarity, an unproblem
side, as is the case in many of our colonies, but
crucial theme here is that small-scale, earEer, atic cultural unity. Its attributes are (I) aggrega
there can be no amalgamation bct\leen them.
Prill/itivt: critique liJ civili:::atilil1 "old" Gcmeinschaft is the authentic, "natural" tion of replicate segments composed of relatiyely
Nothing but the vices and irnperfel;tions of the
We musL tum to the second intellectual trajectory statl' of human sociality, whereas large-scale, cur undifferentiatcd individuals; (2) common beliefs
superior culture can coalescc with the inferior cul
f nineteenth century Euroamerica to unraYc\ the rent, deri\ativc society is artificial. The key and sentiments; (3) communal, collective prop
ture without brca.k of sequence" (pilt-Riwrs
reasoning behind these rather odd propusitions. attribute making Gemeinschaft the center of focus erty; (4) uninhibited mobility within the group's
[18751 1906:18-19)
The architects of Lhe developing Continental soci is this authenticity - the true state of human exist domain; and (5) self-sufficiency of segments....
It is in fact precisely this latter argument Lhat is
logy uf the bller half of the ninetecnth century ence, one that may be regained by study and effort. Mechanically solidary societies continue to exist
invoked bl both anthropologists and administra
tors in decrying the present condition and future shared man) of the precepts of thcir ethnolo~;iC'al I argue that it is this quest for authenticity that throughout time essentially unchanged from
contemporaries, although tbey had different agen fuels the fascination with foragers - with true, their initial state; indeed, they cannot change
prospects of southern African San-speaking peo
das and were genentllyr not preoccupied with lIntrammeled "primitives" - that exists to this clay except through external stimuli. Such societies are
ples. In the next chapter we shall hear it said that
210 EDWIN N. WILMSEN
incapable of generating any other social form from
within themselves (Hirst 1975: 132), for "we lnow
that the segmental arrangement is an insunnount
able obstacle to the division of labor, and must
have disappeared at least partially for the di\'ision
of labor to appear ... [and this is contingenr upon]
an exchange of mo\ements between parts of the
social mass which, until then, had no eITect on one
another" (Durkheim [1893] 1964:256). For such
change to occur, "relationships must ha\Oe formed
where none previously existed, bringing erstwhile
separate groups into contact ... [thus breaking
do\\ nJ the isolated homogenciry of each group"
(Giddens 1971:78).
Before such contact went too far, one could still
turn to "the simplest and most primitive" peoples
to snJdy the origins of human instinltions. For
Durkheim these were the Australian aborigines to
whom he turned - apparently after reading English
ethnologi~ls (Giddens 1971:105) - to "disco\er
the causes leading to the rise of the religious senti
ment in humanit"}." Such a tum seems to contra
dict Dur\..heim's avO\ml that "man is a product of
history. If one separates men from history, if one
tries to conceive of man outside time, fixed and
immohile, one takes awa) his narure" (quoted in
Giddens 1971:l06). It is a turn from which fe\\
have retraced u1cir steps.
Earlier, with Engels in Tlte Germall Ideology
([1846] 1977:68-69), Marx hlld spccified the social
conditions of the prior 'lgC.~ - conditions, more
oyer, mat survived in the "antagonism between
town and countr) [whichJ begins with the transi
rion from barbarism to ci\ ilization, from tribe to
State, from locahr)" to nation, and runs through
the \\Thole of history to the present day." Those
aboriginal conditions were (I) individuals united
b) bonds of family, tribe, and land; (2) human
individuals as themselves instruments of produc
tion subservient to nature; (3) landed property
relations those of direct natural domination and
communality; (4) me premise of locality; (5)
exchange chiefl) thllt between men and nature.
In Capital, Marx (LI867] 1906:366-67) elabo
rates on this theme: "C<H>peration, such as we
find it at the dawn of human development, among
races \\ ho live by the chase, ... is based, on the one
hand, on ownership in common of the means of
production, and on the other hand, on the fact
mat in those cases, each individual has no more
torn himself off from thc na\'e1-string of his tribe
or communi!), Ul;m each bee has freed itself from
connexion with the hive." Such individuals and
such "tribes living exclusively on hunting or fi~h
ing arc beyond the boundary line from which real
development begins" (Marx and Engels [1846]
1977:146)..
The im:entiofl of "Bushmen"
11 fell to the nineteenth century to imoenr its
nati\'it) in ancient hunting savagery, which is
quite a different tbing from Simply gaining aWare
ness of its ancient hunting ancestors. IIobsba\\"nJ
(1983:3,8) has remarked that in tile profound and
rapid social transformation of the later nineteenth
ccntur), with its attendant need to accommodate
the aspiring political ambitions of an cxpandi.ng
bourgeoisie, invented traditions served a reassur
ing function. In this atmosphere, constructions
of evolutiomry stages ,md sociological forms
molded in imaginable configurations pla~ed
important roles. To paraphrase Hobsba\1 m
1983:2), these stages and forms esrablished their
own past ulat, in contrast to the constant change
and innovation of the current world, offered .10
unchanging, invariant strucnJrc for at least some
parts of social life; they provided "sanction of
precedent, social continuit) and natural la\\ as
expressed in history."
"Bushmen" were inverted in this intellectual
environment. They, or something like them, had
to be made available to cerrify the ontolog1t:al
quest. The historical dimensions of this im e.ntion
are the subject of "the past recaptured," but first
we must grasp the ideological components. in
extension of the foregoing discussion, that tlic
tated the modern shape given the "Bushman"
image. Gilman (1985) points om that it \1 as physi
ognomy tha.t fIrst aroused scientific and popular
interest - the black body as opposed to the \\ hite.
But the mere noring of difference VIas not enou~h
for "the radical empiricists oflate eightcenth- ,md
early nineteenth-century Europe. To meet their
scientifiC standards, a paradigm was needed
rooted in some type of unique and observahle
physical difference" (Gilman 1985:212). The
antithetical position to the white body \Ias found
in the black, especially the Bushman-Hottentot
LAND FILLED WITH FLIES
female, with her "primiti\'c" steatopygous
physique, her "primitive" genitalia, and her "prim
iti\Oe" sexual appetite. Gilman (1985:229) notcs
tbat Hegel and Schopenhauer believed that all
blacks remained at this most primitive stage and
that their contemporar~ presence scrvetl to indi
cate hO\1 far Europeans had exrricated themselves
from [his swamp. Bushmen were pbced at the
nadir of this scale of humanit). Bacnofen drew on
these ideas to construct this primiti"e promiscuou
horde as the initial stage of human sociali!).
But "Bushmen" as social beings rather than
lJaLUral hi~tory specimens tlid not )et figure prom
inentl) in those formulations. Although various of
tbese peoples were mentioned in many travelers'
accounts, official reports, and dispatches from
1761 onward (e\'en much earlier at the Cape), the
first full-scale ethnographic field investigation of
an) "Bu~hmen," that by the German Siegfried
Passargl: among the Zhu, was conducted in the
1890s. The resulting publications did not appear
until 1905 and after; though of considerable merit
considering their time, they appeared LOO late to
have much influence on theoretical constructions,
which in any case were by then moying in new
directions. "Bushmen" did not )ct carry the
ethnographical authority accorded the orten-cited
~merican Indians, Australian Aborigines, and
:skimos, among omers.
That did not, howel'er, shield "Bushmen" from
heing categorized along with these other colonized
peoples, or from being isolated conceptually as an
undifferentiated enclave among more "advanced"
'\fricans (those at a "higher" cvolutionar) stage).
This conceptual isolation was a prcrequisite to their
administrative isolation and was a major contribut
ing factor in their deepening social and economic
isolation in the emerging co.lonial social formation
that has left its legacy in Botswana and :'-Jamibia
today This was the pau) to the divided present; it
led from an indigenous past that was very different:
"The colonial reification of rural custom produced
a sinllltion vcr) much at variance with the pre
colonial situation" (Ranger 1983:254 and also
Chapter 31 mis volume) and had replaced prior
relations among peoples with a created microcos
mic societ). Iliffe's (1979:324) obsen":ltion that
T.1nganyikan natives cre-dted tribes in order to func
tion within the colonial framework applies very
211
much to t1le Kalahari. It was also in the interests of
colonial administration to codif) and reify custom
as a means of consolidating its control.
Ethnographers "ere recruited to provide ulis codi
fication and to help ensure that this colonial "orlll
was manageable by certifying that it was divisible.
Their own words on the matter arc revealing.
Radcliffe-Brown (1923: H2-3), nel\ l~ appointed
first head of the Scbool of African Life and
Languages at the University of Cape 1'0\\ n, wrote
in the SOlllh J~Ficllli Jourl/a! 0/ Sfiella, "LTh
study of African culture] call afford great help to
the missionary or public servant who is engaged in
dealing with the practical problems of the adjust
ment of the native civilization to the new condi
tions that ha\'e resulted from our oceupatiol1 of
the counrry."
Seven years later, in their "introductory Note"
to The KhoislMl Peoples 0/ Soulh /~rriCIJ, ule first
volume in a series on native peoples published by
that very same school, Driberg and Schapera
(1930:v) reiterated Radcliffe-Brown's thesis:
To l11e administrator, the missionary, the econo
mist, and tbe educationist, each in his own way
now moulding the life of the Native inro con
formity with me standards of EuropeaJl civiliza
1ion, a thorough knowledge and undersranding of
the people with \Ihom he is concernetl is an indis
pensable preliminary to the completion of his
task. It is the hope of me editors th'lt applied
anthropology no less than me academic science
will in this serics Ule !\"roundwork upon which it
may huild ror the future. [... ]
This anthropological program was designed t
serve the emerging segregationist solution to the
harsher effects of domination; it was a "s~-ntbesis
of liberalism and 'scientific racism,' which would
hold out the prospect of evolution for individual
blacks while avoiding genetic degeneration lof
whites]" (Marks and Trapido 1987:8). "An intel
lectual organizing principle was rcquiretl to vali
date this synthesis or compromise. Th
development of an anthropological notion of 'cul_
ture' came to serve tbis purpose admil-ably"
(Dubrow 1987:80).
Wright (1986: 1O~) draws the inescapabl
conclusion that this ideological context in which
212 EDWIN N. WILMSEN LAND FILLED \,-/ITH FLIES 213

anthropologists operated "served to orient their
critical faculties in a wa~ which made for the exist
ence of an intellectual blindspot as far as question
ing the notion of tribe was concerned." He goes
on to obsen'e that the thus reinforced continuance
of a system of administration that emphasized
"tribal" divisions was one of the major structural
reasons why collective terms - such <L~ "Bushmen"
and later San (Wright, however, referred specifi
call) to Nguni) - sun'j\ ed so long without being
called into question ....
The lIeed to 1lame
In the invention of the requisite categories of tribal
administration, considerable effort was devoted to
investing names with meaning. The epistemologi
cal status of these names, as of all categorial names,
is consLituted in U1e ideological valuation of their
predicates. For example, living in a "state of
nature" was savagery to nineteenth-century evolu
tionists, so much so that Say,lgery was considered
to be the defini.ng characteristic of the initial stage
of human existence. In the later half of the twenti
eth century, however, Jiving in this same state is
again considered by some to be utopian (or at least
quasi-utopian), so much so that it could be called
the original affluent existence. In both cases the
terms arc applied attributively to anyone (or any
group) who satisfies the predicate requirements of
the concept "initial stage of human life"; these are
the defining criteria mentioned several times in
the preceding discussion of nineteenth-century
evolutionary and sociological schemes. Everything
else but such indi\"iduals or groups is contingent,
both as empirical fact and as obsef\'ational object;
those things that in the next chapter we shall find
Howell and Burchell avoiding are examples (cf.
Schwartz 1977: 13-41). In this investment process,
language - not only the names that as labels encode
the predicates of the categories of discourse but
the specialized lexicon of the discourse itself
carries the burden of the work of reifying those
categories and "helps to establish the authority
which re-presentations require if they are to be
seen as representative" (Alonso 1988:35),
By now it is well known that the term "Bushman"
is anglicized from Dutch/Afrikaans "Bosjesmans/
Bossiesmans" in its many spellings. The etymology
of the Dutch term is in constant and somt:times
contentious debate, revolving around the ideologi_
cal investment of this term itself. It is important to
emphasize thaL "Bushman" came into use during
the 1680s in the Cupe area only after thirty years
of Dutch applications of other "terms ob\ioush'
derived from nati\e usage" (Parkington 1984: 156),
"Within a few years it had, along with 'Bosjesman
Hottentot,' become dIe slandard Dutch equi1a
lent of the older [indigenousJ Khoikhoi terms"
(Elphid.. 1977:24). Those terms were Soaqua or
Sonqua (Elphick 1977:24; Parkington 19!>4:151),
which some authors derive from a root common to
San of current usage; 1 shall take up this term in a
moment.
Parkington (1984: 156) sets "Bushman" in its
original context of use. Within a few years of the
founding of ilie Cape senlement in 1652, local
pastoraJist groups were called b) their generic
self-referents or by the names of thcir leader~;
\\hen explorations into the interior beyond thc
Cape boundaries became frequent, unknown
peoples - many without domestic stock - \\cre
encoulllered. Europeans relied on their interpret
ers to supply names for these peoples, and "a new
link in the chain of terminology was added. Before
the end of the seventeenth century the term
Islrmen or Bushmen IJOt/CIIIO! complemented and
replaced S01l1flla f1ollm/ot to describe these
peoples" (Parkington 1984: 156-57). These
changes occurred at a time "when increased Dutch
interference was causing massi\"e, and irreversible,
changes in indigenous group relations. Buslrmm
relates more clearly to these changes" (Parkington
198+ 164). Parkington suggests that Soaqua
should be understood to refer to the aboriginal
hunter-gatherer social formation of southern
Africa, whereas Bushman refers to pastoralists
and foragers whose social and material fabric had
been disrupted by Dutch intervention. As these
dispossessed groups - along with escaped s)a\'es
and deserters from the Cape Colony, some of
whom were white Europeans - sought to establish
a mode of existence away from Dutch control,
"Bushmen," as applied to them, "became a waste
paper basket term for all those who lived by hunt
ing, gathering, and stealing" (Goodwin and van
Riet Lowe 1929: 147). Or as Gordon (1984: 196),
ciLing Nienaber (1952), glosses it, "'bandit.'"
Iphicl (1975:23~2), howe\er, ma1'l.5 the much
broader indigenous use of the term "San":
"J.,:hoiKhoi them~e1ves made no such clear and
S\slI:matic distinction bet\l'een peoples, their term
-San' having wide reference to both hunter and
small-scale pastoral groups" (Elphicl. 1975:41).
Gurdon contributes to the man~ confusiolJs to
found in the literature of the region Ihat per
pelll.lle distortions in the applic.1tion of this term.
He sa~'" (1984:216, citing Moritz 1980:21) that the
mission<lr~ Carl Ilugo I1ahn, in 1851 O\1e of the
first EUrOpC3\1S 10 enter the northern pan of" hat
is no\\ Namibia, recorded in his diary that "his
HereTO servants referred to the BUShmen as
'Ozumbushman;l' [sic], a term cleaI'l~ derived, as
he rewgnized, from Dutch." But Hahn recog
nized ;I gr~ll deal more; his original published
account (Pelerlllall1ls 1859:299 [reprinted in Moritz
1980:2J) reads: "Our people call the Bushmen
Ozombusumana (Sing - Ombusumana), a corrup
tion of the Dutch name. The true name, b~ which
tbe~ have other\\ ise been I.no\l'n to the Ovaherero,
is 0\ aguma [Lau tells me this is "rillen ovagu
rllha in IJahn's diaT) J. The new name will surely
displace the older, and its ctymolog~ \\ ill perhaps
later give philologists a headache." [... 1
Gordon is eager to show that penetration by
outsiders (in this case, Ovaherero) is recent; he
therefore overlooks the ob\'ious - llahn\ Herero
semmlS were employing pidgin language forms in
Cflnn:r~ing" ith a European. This is an instance of
the expellienq \I ith \\ hich, in the early ycars of
their .lssociation, '~"-fricans as a rule adopled the
restricted jargon of their immediate European
masrcrs" (Fabian 1986: 139).
Hahn'~ Herero servanrs no doubt did say to him
that certain "Bushmen" werc ozombusumana.
Tiut \\ hal \\ erc they telli ng hinl? The form of the
tt:rm lIsed prO\ides a clue: tJ1e Otjiherero noun
prefix (class 10) ozo- is applied to livestock as \\cll
'1\ to most animals in general. The usc of ow- in
this case thus carried the meaning "those Bushmen
are our chanel," hard!) an indication of unfamili
arity. Hahn was clear!) aware of this; in his own
uicli()nary (1857:15)) he gives omu-I..una (1'1. 01'3
kuna) as "Buschmann." The first full study of
Otjihercro, that b~ Brincker ([1886J 1%4:145),
"ho \\orked among Oval1erero from 1863 to 1889,
has omukuru as "einer, del' verlangst gcwesen ist
die Alten. Ahnen": "one who formerly existed
. the ancient~, ancestors." ~lore recently,
Katjavivi (1988: I) writes O\"akufUvehi, "the
aIlcient (or original) ones." Irle (1917:16), in his
German-Otjiherero dictionary, translates Ahne
(ancestor) as "omukuru," These glosses are in
keeping with Guthrie (1970, 3:310), who attaches
the notions of ancestor and grandparent to his
proto-Bantu root '"-kliliku. ~lodern ethnogra
pher~ note the same term applied by Ilerero
speakers to specific peoples. Marshall (1976: 17)
says that Ovnkuruha is the Herero term for Zhu.
Vedder (1938: 136) restricted Ovakuruha to those
people he called Saan, the Heixum (I lai-II 'om) of
current terminology, whom he disringuished frOIll
other Bushmen.
Otjiherero has another term, ovama, derived
from the proto-Bantu root "'-tui (Guthrie 1970,
4: 122): "The most likely original meaning: \\as
probab1) either 'pygmy' or 'Bushman,' and
presumably referred to thc indigenous inhabitants
originally encountered by the speakers of the
proto-Bantu." This root aho has the apparently sec
ondarily acquired connotation "member of neigh
boring despised tribe." Hahn (1857: I SO) has the
form omukoatoa, \\hich he glosses "Einl/:ebo1'ener":
"native." Rrincker ([188fiJ 196+:157) has omutua,
"Volker vorzukommen": "people who came before"
and notes that it appears as such in many Bamu lan
guages; these glosses reflect Guthrie's first mean
ings. Brinckcr, however, captures the derogatory
connotation a~ well: "Die Grundbedeutung scheint
'Buschmann' im ,er~iehtlichen Sinne zu sein":
"The original meaning appears to be 'Bushman'
with its contemptuous connotations." Local usage
conforms to these dictionary glosses. The
Olambandru people with \\ hom I wor),; in Botswana
insislthat Zhu - who are Ihe archeryp,1] "Buslmlen"
of ethnography - are not O\'ama (that is, not
"Bushmen" or "member of despised tribe") but
O\al..uruha (that is, "ancestral," "those who came
before"). Ovatua do exist, they say, but in distant
places.
Setswana elides the common Bantu root as r\l'a;
with the plural prefix (class]) ba-, designating the
noun elass pertaining to humans, this becomes
Bama. Brown ([1875] 1979:16) renders this term
"Bushmen." However, the root with the locative
prefix (class 7) bo- becomes "borwa": "the country
214 EDWIN N. WILMSEN
of the Bushmen, hence the south to people Jiving
farther north" (Brown [1875J 1979:34); and "kwa
ntlha ea Borwa" refers to the south. Digging
deeper, we find "batho ba ntlha": "the first people"
(Oro\\n [I875J 1979:231); hence, except for the ref
erence to the south, this term is cognate with other
Bantu forms meaning aborigines. In practice, as we
shall shortly see, it was applied to all sorts of people
in particular circumstances, not only to those we
today identify as San-speakers. The current form
in use in Botswana is Basarwa, but this form does
not occur in the nineteenth century and begins to
appear only in the I960s. A related form, Masarwa,
v. as commonly used from the early ninetcenth
century or perhaps somewhat earlier to denote
"Bushmen of the Bechuanaland Protectorate"
(Brown [1875J 1979:183), that is, of the Kalahari;
[... J this form employs the plural noun prefix (class
3) ma-, which is applied to non-Tswana and to
persons of undesirable characteristics or social
inferiority (Cole 1975:81). This term appears to
derive from the secondary, acquired meaning of
the root "'-ttta, "despised neighboring tribe."
Thus we find three sets of contrasting
pairs: Dutch, Sonqua/Bosjcsmans; Otjiherero,
Ovakuru/Ovatua; Setswana, Barwa/Masarwa. In
each case the first term referred to known peoples
of proximate location and carried neutral or posi
ti\'e connotations of aboriginality in some sense.
The second term referred to newly encountered
frontier peoples or rumored peoples of distant
location and carried negative connotations of
despised foreigner. In Dutch and English these
transformations in usage occurred during the
period - late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries - when those groups were rapidly
expanding geog-raphically and consolidating their
gains. These changes in nomenclatural referents
were ideological impositions by newly hegemonic
powers upon subordinated peoples who were thus
imcrpellated as subjects in a new order of social
relations. No longer a serious threat to Europe-an
power, San-speakers acquired "characteristics that
the powerful commonly find in those they have
subjugated: meekness, innocence, passivity, indo
lence coupled with physical strength and stamina,
cheerfu Iness, absence of greed or indeed desires of
any kind, internal egalitarianism, a penchant for
living in the present, inabdity to take initiatives on
their own behalf" (Pratt 1986:46). This appears to
be the first transition toward "bushmanness";
these same characteristics are attributed ethno_
graphically to "Bushmen" today.
At the beginning of this transition the "arious
Tswana groups were not yet dominant o\'er other
groups, but as tJleir hegemony solidified during
the course of the nineteenth century, the predicatc
attributes of San-speakers in Tswana ideology
changed from original inhabitant to bloodthirsty
marauder to childlike dependency. On the other
hand, Ovaherero never established lasting hegem
on) in their sphere of influence; as a consequence,
ovatu:J for them are situated somewhere over the
horizon, and this term, \\hen it is used at all, has
only \ague referents. Ovaherero usually refer to
most local groups by their generic self-referents.
This brings us back to San. As noted already,
Parkington derives this term from the same
Khoikhoi root as Soaqua, \lhich he says (1984: 164)
"should be referred to not as a title but as a
description of a set of strategies that varied from
almost complete independence [from hestock
keepingJ to clientship [of livcstock keepers)." He
says further (1984: 158) that it seems certain that
Soaqua was not originally meant to be capitalized
"in the sense of referring to named communi
ties" but referred to a particular and widespread
life-style, which depended heavily - but appar
ently not exclusively - on foraging. Indeed,
'edder (1938:124) derives San from the Nama
verb "sa": "to gather wild foods." Sixty-five years
earlier, howe\'er, Theophilus Hahn ([ 1881)
1971 :3) - although confessing that he was uncer
tain of the dcri\'ation - traced this term to the
root "SA, to inhabit, to be located, to dwell, to be
senled, to be quiet. Sa(ll) consequently would
mean Aborigines or Settlers proper. These Sa-n
... as they are styled in the Cape Records, are
often called Bushmen ... a name gi\'en to indicate
their abode and mode of living.... Sa(b) has also
acquired a 10\\' meaning, and is not considered to
be very complimentary"
This Khoikhoi/Nama term, now written San,
thus seems to be fully parallel in meaning and his
tory to Ba.ntu rwa/tua-kuruha, moving from
proteneutrallpositive to acquired negative value..\5
we shall sec, however, Nama-speakers in northern
Namibia seldom used San but usually addressed and
LAND FILLED WITH FLIES
referred to peoples by their generic self-referents,
by leader names, or by borrowed terms such as
Bosjesmans.
Thus, before the emergence of ethnicity as a
central logic, which began toward the end of the
sCl'enteenth century at the Cape but not in the
Kalahari until the nineteenth centw-y was well
beg-un, Khoikhoi "sa" and Bantu "tau/rwa" fomls
\\ere primarily epithets of origins with economic
annotations. Group identification followed the
self-usage of individual social units. As a conse
quence of struggles to control, first, commodity
production for the European mercantile market
and, later, units of labor for industrializing South
Africa, ,til of these native terms acq uired negative
connotations and became categorical denomina
tions that replaced group denotations in general
reference. Their origins aside, all these forms are
Relcrences
Alonso,:\.
1988 The effects of truth: Re-presenrations of the
past and the "imaging of community." JOlll'll,,1 of
lfislon,'/I1 Sociology 1:33-57.
Athanassakis, A.
1983 I1e.<iod: Theogony, f'/til/'I!s <lild Days, Sllicld.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Cnivcrsity Press.
Birmingham, D., and P ?vlanin, eds.
19831Jistory ofcetltl'lll Afnw. London: Longman.
Bley, II.
1971 SOlJlh-ll'est /'~fric" I//ld~r Genl/au r"le 1894-1914.
Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press.
Brincker, H.
1964 Wiirurbuch uud I",rzgejasste Crammlltik des OJji
1Ilmo. Ridgewood, ~.].: Gregg Press. Fascimile
r~print of 1886 original.
Brown, T.
1979 SeISTPallIl-E71g!ish c/iClioIllJrY. 3d ed. Brall.m
fontein: Pula Press. Originally published about 1875.
Clarence-Smith, W.
1\179 510;;es, peasanls, (//11 ((Iflitll/isls il/sol/tltcm A'/gola.
1840-1926. Cambridge: C1mbridge University Press.
Iarence-Smith, w., anti R. l\loorsom
1975 Underdevelopment and dass formation in
O\'amboland, llHS-191 5. Jourtlal of /~fricall !-listol]'
](17365-81.
Cole, D.
1975 All i",roc!'lIcli'illIO Tswal/a gramlll'1'. Cape Town:
Lonb'1l1an.
215
impositions upon peoples to whom 1hey are foreign;
they retain their acquired derogatory signification
and are intensely disliked by those to whom they
are applied. This dislike is gaining recognition in
Botswana's popular press (LeepiJe 1988:9), reflect
ing a growing Ilwareness within the country of the
pejorative connotations of llasarwa as well as of
Bushman. These terms should all be relegated to
archives, and the use of self-referents of self-de
fined social groups should be reinstated ..
Primitive, sa\'age, hunter-gatherer, forager,
Bushman, Basarwa, San; the names ha\'e changed,
their predicates and the premises from which these
are drawn ret,un their negation of historically con
structed objects. An analytical discourse that unques
tioningl) accepted these homogenizing categories,
appropriate only to the needs of its own moment,
has left us nothing but a stereo[) pe of its subject.
Daniel, G.
1950 /1 Itutldred years of archaeology. London:
Duckworth.
Dribcrg,]., and 1. Schapera
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Jacqueline S. Solway and Richard B. Lee
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Traill,A. J'183 The ecology of illusion: Anthropological forag_

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I. Johannesburg: African Studies Institute. 1989 Those who havc cach other: Land renurc of San

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1909 .llIlhTopology. New York: Appleton. Originall~ IU/ld tenure, ed. E. Wilmsen, pp. 43-67. Berkeley and

published 188\. Los Angeles: Univcrsity of C..alifornia Press.

\ian D~"I' Post, L Wily,L.

1958 The 10sIworld oflhe Ka/nllilri.l\ew York: \\iilliam
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1938Soulh II'w Africa il/ early limes: Being Ihe SI01)1
~rSollth Wesl Africa up 10 Ihe lIme o/jHal/lm~To's denlh
ill }890. London: Frank Casso
Vossen, R.
198-1 Studying the linguistic and cthno-history of the
Khoe-spca.king (cenrral Khoisan) peoples of
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Research.
Worsaae, P.
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Ro)al Danish National Museum.
\Vright, J
19156 Politics, ideology and the invention of ':\gurri.
In Resislll/lU (II/I! ideology in Sellier societies, ed. [
Lodge, pp. 96-118. Johannesburg: Raven Press.
nc of the dominant themes of critical anthro
pology in the 1970s and 80s has been the critique
of cthnographic modcls that depict societies as
isolated lind timeless. Whcrc an older generation
of JJlthropologists tended to see societies as auton
omous and self-regulating, the ne\\er generation
has discovered mercantilism and capitalism at
work in societies hitherto portrayed a~, if not pris
tine, then at least well beyond the reach of the
"world s)stem" Thus the Nuer (Gough 1971;
\'cwcomer 1972; Sacks 1979; Kell) 1985),
Samoans (Freeman 1983), Tallensi (Wors1e) 1956),
Kachin (Friedman 1975, 1979; "ugent 1983),
\bya (Le\\is 1951; Wasscrstrom 1982), and many
other "cbssic" cases have been the subject of crit
ical scrutiny. These studies have sought to resiLU
ate these peoples in the contcxt of wider regional
and international economies, polities, and his to
ri~ (see Wolf 1982).
Studies of hunting-and-gathering peoples ha\'e
bern strongly inOuencl:d by this revisionism (see,
e.g., Endicott J 988; Woodburn 1988; Ingold,
Riches, and Woodburn 1988; Headland and Reid
1989; Howell, cited in Lc\,in 1989; Bower 1989;
Lewin 1989). It was in the spirit of this endeavor
that \\c produced a critical analysis of the impact
of the fur trade on the 19th-century Kalahari San
(Solway and Lee 1981)..'\ number of other schol
ars have focussed on the San, uncovering the carly
interactions between San foragers and Bamu
farmers, herders, and traders within the complex
historiclll dynamics of the Kalahari Desert (Schrire
1980, 198J.r1; Wilmsen 19R3; Gordon 1984;
Denbow 1984, 1986; Parkingron 1984; Denbow
and Wilmsen 1986). [... ] In their zeal to discover
links and to dispel myths of pristinity, however,
these scholars are in danger of erecting ne\\ straw
men and of doing \ iolence of a different kind to
the data - imputing links where none existed and
assuming that where evidence exists for trade it
implies the surrender of autonomy. What is per
haps most troubling about the Kalahari revision
ism is its projection of a spurious uniformity on a
vast and diverse region.
In this paper \\e present tWO case studies that
demonstrate the varied nature and consequences
of San contact \\ ith non-San in the Kalahari. By
examining the different historical experiences of
two San groups, one largely dependent on its
Bantu-speaking neighbours and the other (until

from Jactludine S. Solway and Richard B. Lee, "Foragers, Genuine or Spurious? Situatin~ the Kalahari San in
History," CUl'rertl Anthropology, 31:2 (1990), pp. 109--17.
220 JACQUELINE S. SOLWAY AND RICHARD B. LEE
recently) substantially autonomous, we intend to
mal-e clear that contact may take many forms, not
all of which lead to dependency, abandonment of
foraging, or incorporation into "more powerful"
social formations.
The attribution of dependency to societies for
merly considered autonomous rcsonates II ith
otheT themes in the culture of late capitalism.
Borrowing an image from the popular film The
GMis jlfusl Be Crazy, we call this viell the "Coke
Bottle in the Kalahari Syndrome," \\ hereby
modemity falls mysteriously from the sky, setting
in motion an inelitable spiral of cultural disinte
gration tbat can only be checked by rhe removal of
the foreign clement. This is clearly a caricature,
but it rClcals the common and unstated percep
tion of foraging societics as so dt:licately balanced
and fragile that the) cannot accommodate innova
lion and change. Sahlins' (1968:2) summary law
"Cultural dominance goes to technological prc
dominance" could be the foragers' epitaph. The
"Coke Bottle in the Kalahari" imagery abo bears a
subtext, the rueful recognition of the unlimited
capacity of "advanced societies" to consume e\'e
jlhing in Iheir path.
We challenge the notion that contact automati
cally undermines foragers and that contemporary
for:lgers are 10 be understood only as degraded
cultural residuals created through tJleir marginal
ity to more powerful systems. We consider tlle pos
sibility that foragers can be autonomous without
being isolated and engaged ",ithout being incorpo
rated. And we fol1o11 ,\fan (1977 [1887]:89-92) in
proposing that exchange l;an occur in the absence
of "exchange ~~uue." Furtller, our argument caLIs
into question any model of social change that
implies linearity; the historical record reyeals pro
rracted processes, I~ilh fits and starts, plateaus and
relersals, and laried oUlcomcs. While many his
torical foragers bal e assimilated to other societies,
a number, such as the African Pygmies and The for
agcrs of South and Southeast Asia, hal e devcloped
stable forms of illleraction II ith agricultural neigh..
bours and persisted alongside them, sometimes for
centuries (see, e.g., Leacock and Lee 1982; Endicott
1988; Peterson 1978). The fact that foragers have
coe",isted with farmers for so long is testimony to
Lhe resilience of their way of life. The position
adopted here is that 20th-cent ur) foragers arc nei
ther pristine nor totaJly degraded and encapsu_
lated. The historical staws of African foraging
peoples must be seen as the complex product of the
dynamics of the foraging mode of production
itself, of long interaction between foragers, farm_
ers, and herders, and finally of dYI1lUTJics gTO\l ing
out of their linkages with world capitalism.
The Problem
By the mid-20th century, San societies in Botswana
t:xhibited a 1\ ide range of "adaptations." Along the
1\ata, Botletli, and Okalango Rivers therc were
"black" San who fished, owned cattle, and prac
ticed agriculture (Cashdan 1987; Tlou 1985;
Hitchcock 1987); in the Ghanzi freehold zone of
II estern Botswana many San had become farm
labourers, dependt:nt squatters on their traditional
lands (Guenther 1985, Russcll 1976); in thc Game
Resefl e areas of Khurse and the Central Kalahari,
the /GII i and other San groups Jived relatively
independent IiI es, hunting and gatheri.ng, raising
small stock, and gardening (Kent 1989a; Tanaka
1980; Silberbauer 1981); and in the central sand
veld many San lived clustered around Tswana cat..
tie posts, where the men wcre employed as herders
(1 Iitchcock 197il).
The historical anteccdents of this dilcrsity have
been difficult to discern. Until thc 1970s the alail
able archaeological evidence indicated that lhe
Kalahari had been a stronghold of hu.l1tcr-gatherer
societies and the diversity was the producr of the
last fcw hundred years (Phillipson 1977). Recent
excavations, however (Denbow 1980, 198-l, 1986;
"ilmscn 1983, 1989b; Denbol\ and WiJmsen 1983,
1986), have demonstrated a much earlicr Iron .\ge
presencc, in parts of the Kalahari as early as \n
500. Later Stone Age (LSA) sites, commonly
associated with populations anccstral to San
hunter-gathcrers, are present as well and in some
areas remain predominant, hut a number of these
sites have Iron Age materials indicating contact
bet ween farmers and foragers. Thus the rime dC]'1 h
of contact with non-hunters has increased from a
few centuries to a millennium or more, and the
presence of "exotic" go()ds is el'idence for rcgional
trade bet\leen hunters and non-hunters.
" second linc of evi dence for the rev'isionists
springs from rercadings of 19th-<:enrury accounts
FORAGERS, GENUINE OR SPURIOUS?
or exploration and trade in the ~alahari interior.
Gordon (1984), for one, has argued that the interior
San M:re so deeply involved in trade, Ivarfare, a.nd
diplomacy that they bore little reselllbhmcc TO the
"Juronomous" societies described by 20th-eentury
cthnogn1plll:rs. A closely related issue is the ques
rion of San servitude for black ovcrlords. Indeed,
nun) 19th- and 20tll-cenrury source.s describe the
San as lil'jng in a condition close to serfdom, a per
ceptiun that has coloured observations of them.
The revisionists hale lIsed these lines of evi
dence to call into question the claims to authen
ticil} of a number of foraging peoples studied by
.\tarshal1 (1976), Lec and Devore (1976), Lee
(1979), Silberbauer (1981), Tanaka (1980), and
others. Schl'ire (1980, 1984b), for cxample, aTgues
thJI the San arc not hunter-galherers at all but
hiled pastoralists who oscillate between herding
and foraging from centur) to century. r.]
Labelling recent ethnographics of the San
"romantic accounts of Bushman isolation and
independence," DenbOlv (1986: 1) dismisses them
as "an ahistorical and timeless caricature." He
suggesls that whatevcr hunters pcrsisted through
the long period of contact did so not as autono
mouS socicties but as "part of long-standing
regional systems of interaction and exchange
involving neighboring peoples with quite differ
ent economic and socio-political orientations"
(p. 27). Wilmsen (1983), the most outspoken
critic, referencing the perspective pioneered by
'\'olf, challenges the idea that the flexible egalitar
ian sharing documented for SCleral San groups
has any-thing to do with the dymmics of a forag
ing mode of production, concluding that "it is
more than merely possible that the San are class
less today pn.:cisely because they arc the under
ebss in an intrusive class ~tructurc" (p. 17).
The questions raised by the rev isionists are
challenging ones, and the claims the) make go
lIell beyond the reinterpretation of Kalahari
archaeology. Yet it is an open question hOIl much
of their reI ision arises from the data and how
much rests on unexamined inference and a.'sump
rion. It \\ ill be useful to SCI out their chtims as a
series of proposit ions in order to c1arif~ the
boundary between fact and interprctation. They
propose that (1) the Iron Age sel tlemcnt of the
Kalahari is earlier Ihan previously thought, and
221
therefore (2) hunter-gatherers \\ ere absorbed into
regional economic networks and (3) ceased to
exist as independent societies well before the his
toric period. They go on to argue that (-l) if these
societies continue to exhibit characteristics asso
ciated "ith hunting and gathering it is because of
(a) their poverty (Willmen) or (b) their resistance
to domination by stronger societies (Schrirt). Of
rhese only Point I can be considered well estab
lished; Points 2 and 3 drall ul1\larranted conclu
sions from scanty data \\ hile Point 4 relies heavily
on discourses that arc as ideological as lhey are
analytica I.
What kinds of questions need to be asked in
order to evaluate the conflicting claims of the
Kalahari ethnographers and rheir critil;s' It is
necessary, first, for both panics to attend to issues
of rq"rional \ariation. Some foragers certainly
were drawn into farming and herding centuries
ago, and some of these became part of regional
conomic systems, but, as we spell OUI beloll, both
archaeology and ethnohistor) contradict the liew
of a uniform grid of economic interdependency
throughout rhe Kalahari. Second, \\e need to sen
sitize oursehes to the assumptions we mal-e about
the nature of 'contaet." For some "contact"
appears to he unconsciously equated with "domi
n,nion." The possibilit) of trade ()r excha.nge
withollt some form of domination is excluded
from Ihe range of outcomes. When considering
the Kalahari lie need 10 as!.. furl her whether the
conditions for domination existed there before,
sa), 1850. Were the societies with which the forag
ers came in contact after ~D 500 sufficiently pow
erful to compel San sen il ude? "-gain the el idenee
sho"s that outl:Omes \\ere variable and that in a
number of areas the foraging life persisted. Third,
and related, we need to examine our assumplions
about the lransformaljl'e power of the commodity
the I iell that when a society is linked to anolher by
trade or tribute that linl-age "ill necessarily Irans
form social organizal ion and create dependency.
Are there other outcomes possible in which
exchange relations do not undermine existing
relations of production' finally, we need to assess
the evidt'nce for San servitude; the contradictions
in rhe literaltlre suggest that appearances may be
deceiving and in some cases San subordination
m<1) be mure apparent tllcn real. ...
222 JACQUELINE S. SOLWAY AND RICHARD B. LEE FORAGERS, GErWINE OR SPURIOUS? 223

during the trek. These new immigrants chose a 200[ 24E

Case Studies
Tire lVestenr Krve1lmg Sail
M.any S,m peoples roday live on the fringes of
Bantu communities 01' white-owned farms; [... ] the
Western Kweneng San are one example. Jn contTast
to the Dobe San, whose contact with non-San ha
traditionally been intermittent, these Southern San
have lived amongst Bantu-speaking peoples for at
least 200 years. The peoples of the Dutlwe area, in
the southern K..1lahari 250km west of Gaborone
(fig 14.1, include three intermarrying San groups
(Tshassi, Kwa, and Khute) and the Bantu-speaking
Kgalagadi. The Kwena, a Tswana chiefdom, occupy
the better-watered eastern edge of the desert. [... J
The dominant Tswana-Kgalagadi cultural model
posits a hierarchical social order in \\-Ilich the San
and other servile peoples occupy the social and
physical margins. This "Tswanacentric" model
docs not, however, fit everywhere with the same
precision, nor has it fiT equally through time. The
historical record reveals a variety of linkages
between San and their neighbou.rs, with a variety of
consequences. San encapsulaTion within the orbit
of Bantu-speaking peoples and loss of autonomy
more sedentary life than their predecessQrs, and
the pans on which they senled were also San Water
sources. In a l'vlokgalagadi's words, "The Basarwa A/NGOLA
[San] were already here. They just move around a
lot. ... The.) \\ere not driven away."
TIll' fur-lratie perlnd Jn the period following 1840
the Kwena, \\ho themselves had fared badly dur
ing the Difaqane (Thompson 1975:396), were
attempting to reassert and consolidate their hold
on the Kalahari periphery. Threatened from the
cast by the Boers, they were eager to accumulate
Western trade goods, particularly guns
(Li\ingstone 1857:39). [... ] To do so they needed
uesert products such as furs, ostrich feathers,
skins, and ivory, and vast quamities of t.hese were
btained from the peoples of the area as tribute;
Livingstone writes (p. 50) that while he ".-as living
among the Kwena he obsened "between t\l"ent~
and thirty thousand skins ... made up into
brasses; pan of them were worn by the inhabit
ants and part sold to traders."
The San participated only indirecrly in the trib
ute system; they and the Kga.lagadi were the pri GERMAN

have been neither automatic nor, irl most instances,
complete. The San of "{estern KKeneng have not
always worl..ed for their Bantu neighbours, nor, in
spite of the pronouncements of currem Kalahari
residents, is there anything "natural" about the
state of affairs that exists today.
The pre- alld prolllhistoric period Oral traditions
obtained from current residents indicate that rela
mary producers, hunting and preparing skins, but SOUTH-WEST
in most cases it was the Kgalagadi (and usually AFRICA
1882 245
only the elite among them) who dealt with the
24"5
~wena. [... J The San hunted with dogs and occa
I
sionally with guns OI~ ned by others; tbey brought
the hides and often some of the me-at to the owners
and kept a portion of the meat for themselves (see,
~
1 ...
e.g., Silberbauer and Kuper J 966; Hitchcock 1987;
Schapera and van der !\lerwe 19-1-5; Stow 19M
_ _ WOVOft rooCh

- - 18!lOs-90s

I ~\
tions between Kgalagadi and San were largely [1905]). Tobacco, grown and/or obtained by trade,
symbiotic in the earlv period. [... J All were was a central commodiry in the system, exchanged /~,-

nomadic and lived primaril} by hUllting and gath
ering, although the Kgalagadi may hal'e practiced
some horticulture. After 1820 new wal'es of
Kgalagadi, refugees of the wars of the turbulent
period known as the Difaqane, retreated into the
desert with their goats, sheep, and dogs. Th
Kgalagadi credit the San with having taught them
desert skills, and the San made m;c of Kgalagadi
animals, especially hunting dogs. According to the
Kgalagadi, their ,mcestors were able to migrate to
\~ estern K\\eneng with their goats and sheep in
the early 19th century because the animals could
obtain \'irtually all of their moisture from melons
for skins and labour. Contact between Kgalagadi
and San was concentrated in the \\ inter months,
when [he fur-bearing anin131s were most desirable
and water most scarce. In this period there was lit
lIe difference in the objeclive conditions of life of
San and Kgalagadi. Thei.r relations \~ere less coer
cive than Kwena-Kgalagadi relations and resem
bled trade 1110re than tribute.
Towards the end of the 19th century the
Kwena '<; control ()ver the periphery began to break
down. The desert was difficult to police; K\vena
rule was thin and maintained largel) t.hrough peri
odic displays of force. The Kgalagadi as a resull
o ---"
'00
IULOIITIlES
= ORANGE
I FREE STATE
1 ISS"
20 0 E 280
2SOS
Figure H,1 The 19th-century Kalahari, with relevant contemporary boundaries and political divisions
superimposed
were able to begin to accumulate property, espe among the K\\eneng San. Inequalities between the
cially cattle (see Okihiro J 976; Schapera and van San and some Kgalagadi also began to grow. The
der \ lerwe 1945:5), thus laying the groundwork Kgalagadi attempted to replicate in their relations
for an agro-pastoral base that did not develop with the San the Tswana hierarchical model that
224 JACQUELINE S. SOLWAY AND RICHARD B. LEE
subordinated them to thc Kwena, but the material
conditions for institutionalized senitude were
ahsent.
in 1885, with u1e imposition of British colonial
rule, the tribute s) stem was officially disbanded;
the Kgalagadi were allowed to trade their goods,
and instead of tribute a tax. of which Kwe1l3 chiefs
reccived 10%, was collected (although in practice
the transition from tribute to tax was not auto
matic) (Schapcra and van der Men\<: 19~5:6). The
colonial state was intrigued by the San and voiced
concern over their condition, bur in fact Lhe ncw
government h,ld little direct impact on u1eir life.
A colonial officer travelling through western
Kweneng in 1887 considered the San the
Kgalagadi's "sla\es pure and simple," but at tbe
same timc he reported, "They have no fixed resi
dcnce, often living miles from water and living on
thc melons and roots, changing their abode, as
thesc arc sC<lrce or plentiful" (Botswana National
Archi\es I 887n: 17). (If the San had truly becn
sJa\'es they would not have been following the mel
ons but would havc been working for the
Kgalagadi.) This apparent contradiction emerges
repeated I) ; the San <lrc described <IS sla\'Cs and yet
as "scoundrels, snake!>, and rascals" who will not
sta) in one place and move about as thc) wish
(BoL'i\\ana "t':ationalArchives I877b;cf. ~ lacKenzie
187t:t28-32 for the Central district). Again, an
1899 report states that the Masarwa (San) "lives a
nomadic life in a \\ ild state and hunts for the mas
ters" (He. 2~, quotcd in Schapera and van der
Mer\\c 19-1SA), thus portraying them as simulta
ncously enserfcd and nomadic foragers.
Agro-pa5l11ralislII The fur trade remained for
some time the primary link between San and
Kgalagadi. The Kgalagadi elite who 0\\ ned callJe in
the earl)' 20th century relied upon their poorer
relatiYes rather than San for herding laboltI'. At the
same time, the de\'e1opment of agro-paston11 pro
duction was beginning to lmdermine the San's for
aging base. Permanent settlement, population
increase, cattle herding, and agriculture combined
to reduce the emironmenr's hunting-and-gathering
potential. The desertification noted by elderly resi
dents amI by ecologists alike can be traced not sim
ply to ovcrhlmting but to human habitation
(Campbcll and Child 1971; Leistner 19(7). Every
bush or tree cleared to make way for cultivation,
especiall) plm\ ing, reduces the !,'Tound cover, dis
rupts root systems, facilitates erosion and rcduces
the soil's ability to absorb <lnd retain moisture. It
was increasingly onl) in the bush, away from the
better water sources, that the San could maintain
their autonomy. The Central Kalahari has
remained (by la\\) free of large-scale \illage and
liveSTOck dc\elopment and served as a "hinter
land" for the San, a place \\ here their culturc and
mode of subsistence ha\'e pcr~isted and w'here
many Wt:~tern K\\eneng San claim roots, refuge,
and restoration ....
The organi" link B) the 194{)s, local agrop~toral
ism was well established. With trading re\-enues
and migrant labourers' \\ages, the Kgalagadi accu
mulated cattle and plows and imported ne\\ \\elJ
digging techniquCl, that permined expansion of the
livL'Stock sector. Cultivated water sources such as
wells and boreholes came to be considered the pri
vatc propert) of the group tbat dug them, [... J and
cventually many of the beller-watered pans (\lbich
probably had been dry-season homes of the San
[\'ierich 1977J) were associated with the Kgalagadi;
no\\ to obtain drinking water the San had to enter
into unequal relations with the Kgalagadi. Plow
agriculture and animal husbandry increascd the
workload at precisely the time when able-bodied
young Kgalagadi men were leaving for contract
\\ork on the South African mines, and it was San
labour that filled the gap (Solway 1987). By the
1950s the San had become thc Kgalagadi's casual
labour force. The Kgalagadi today frequently try to
minimize the importance of San labour and like to
think of u1emsehes as humanitarian for "helping"
them, but when pressed many will quietly admit,
""Ie arc lud.y, we ha\ e Bushmen."
That the Kg',llagadi's grC'ater demand for labour
occurred in concert with the growing precarious
ness of foraging in the area was not a result of con
scious conspiracy, but neither was it a coincidence.
The Kg'alagadi's new productive base altercd the
em ironment; it changed their labour demands,
transformed property relations over water sources,
and increasingly distinguished the Kgalagadi from
the San. Tn the 19th centur) differences in material
conditions between Ihe groups were small. but by
the mid-20th century the hierarchical modcl in
FORAGERS, GENUINE OR SPURIOUS?
IIhich Ihe San occupy a marginal and servile posi
tion more closel~ matched reality than it had in the
past. (Iunting for the Kgalagadi had not under
mined the San's foraging subsistence strategy; it is
doubtful whether the Kgalagadi of the 19d1 cen
!Un' had the resources or power to compel San ser
\'it~,dc, except in the vct:' short tcrm. The
h:.l'alagadi of the 20th century, in contrast, bad
control of water, milk, grain, and purchased items
,uch as tobacco, clothing, guns, and wagons, and
these resources, in the face of diminishing returns
from foraging, tied the San to them more thor
oughl~ than in tile past. New kinds of work that
followed the rhythm of the agricultural and live
stock cycle resulted in more intimate and regular
association than th~tt created by the hunting
atf'Jngements. With the expansion of Kgalagadi
agriculture, San women entered thc workforce in
gre-ater numbers, \\bich mea.nt that San social
reproduction increasingl) lOok place in the
Kgalagadt's domain. Toda), a few San lin: perma
nent.l~ as domestic servants with Kgalagadi; the
I'.galagadi claim to "take these San as our chil
dren," but they are children who never achieve
adult status. There arc a number of San home
~teads on the pcripher~ of the villages, their popu
lations waxing and waning with the s('".Isons. The
spatial marginality neatly ref1ects the San's social
marginality ~U1d positioning somewhere between
\'illage and bush.
.Vthough the hinterland persists and some San
forage fujI-time in it (Kcnt 1989b; Silberbauer
1981), most Westcrn Kweneng San work for the
Kgalagadi at least during the agricnltural season,
arriving "after the f10wers appear on the melon
plants." Sixty years ago, coming to the village and
working for the Kgalagadi was seen as a "break"
from foraging in an increasingly unproductive
envIronment. Now the village end of the cycle has
('.Iken precedence, and most San arc resigncd to
the fact that thev can make a living only by work
ing for the Kgalagadi, begging, or accepting gov
emment aid. Foraging offers only an occasional
supplement. Some San still return to the bush in
the wet season. According to one woman, "We are
happy to be away from tlle Kgalagadi. Therc are
water roots and berries. If we come upon a tortoise
or a dead animal we will eat and dance all night.
We only come back bccause of thirsl."
225
The Dolle S (/ n
The Dobe area, 700 km north of Duu\\e, was far
from the turmoil of 19th-ccntllT) coloni~lJ south
ern JUrica.[ ... JThe Dobl' people were not affected
by u1e Dlfaqane, though thc) had heard about it,
and u1ey were not subject to tribule. More impor
t.Ult, the \Iave of black settlement did not reach
them untiJ 1925. Surrounded by a waterlcss belt
0-200km in depth, the Dobe area is d,ifficult of
access even today; it would have been accessible to
irOIl Age peoples with livestock for only a few
months in years of high rainfall, and even tJlen
only after all arduous journey. It would be risky to
assume that contemporary patterns of contact (or
lack of cont,lct) were characteristic of all periods
of prehistory. Fortunately, the data of archaeology
can be brought to beRr on thi~ kind of question.
The pre- alld prolOhi5/ori" period Despite u1e abun
dant evidence of Tron Age settlement clsewhere in
northwestern Bots\vana dating froIll :\0 500 or
earlier and dcspite concerted efforts to find tllC
same in the Dobe area, there is no archaeological
evidence of Iron Age occupation of the area until
the 20th century (Brooks 1989; YclJen and Brooks
IY88). What does exist in Later Stone .\ge archae
ological deposits, along \\~th a classic stone tool
kit, is a few fragments of pottery and a few iron
implcments, items best interpreted as cvidence of
intermittent trade with Iron Age settlements to
the east and north.
!Kung oral traditions rein force this view. Elders
speak of their ancestors' maintaining long-term
trade relations with "Goba" wh.ile maintaining
their territoral organization and subsistence as
hunter-gatherers in the Dobe arca and to tlle west
of it. Some ha\'e gone as far as to insist that tile
first visitors on a large scale to their area were
whitcs rather than blacks. According to !Xamn!a,
who was born at Ihe turn of the ccntury, "Thc first
outsiders to come to IXai/Xai were ITon
lEuropean] huntcrs.... They used to shoot guns
with bullets one allLl one-half inches th.ick. But
this was before ( was born. My wife's father,
Toma!gain, worked for the ITons." '" hen asked
which of the Tswana ruling clans had first arrived
in the Dobe area in the last century, a !Goshe
elder emphatically replied, "None! The !Tons
226 JACQUELINE S. SOLWAY AND RICHARD B. LEE FORAGERS, GENUINE OR SPURIOUS? 227

[Europeans] \\ ere first." And \\ hen asked if his
"fathers" knew of blacks of an) origin in the arca,
he replied, "No, we only knew ourseh"cs."
The picture that emerges from the archaeologi
cal, ethnohistorical, and oral-historical e\ idence
can he sketched as follows: The Dobe area has
been occupied br huming-and-garhcring peoples
for at least se\eral thousand years. The evidence of
unbroken LSA deposits 100cm or more in depth,
with ostrich eggshells and indigenous fauna from
bonom to top, with a scanering of pottery and
iron, and with European goods in surface levels
supports a picture of relative continuity. [... 1 At
some poim between -\D 500 and 1500, the intcrior
!Kung established trade relations with "Goba" to
the east and northeast and carried on rrade with
them in which desert products - furs, honey, ami
ivor) - were exchanged for iron, tobacco, ceram
ics, and possibly agricultural products. It is unclear
whether the Goba made reciprocal visits to the
Dobe area or even \\hether the ceramics that are
f<lUnd are of outside origin....
The jiJr-trade period 'f\\oo kinds of economic net
works were imoh ed in the San articuhltion with the
"world systcm": indircct involvement tJu'ough black
intermediaries - the Goba and later the Tswana
and direct COntact WiUl Europl.':ln hunters and trad
ers. The indirect form resembled the precolonial
African trade that the San had carried on for centu
ries and therefore invoked no basic resrrueturing of
relations of production. The direct European trade,
while intense and disruptive, did not bst vcr) long.
It was not until the 1920s and 30s, wilh the arrival of
black senlers in the Dobe are-a, that basic produc
tion relations began to be modified and incorpora
tive processes set in motion.
Sevcral accounts exist of the lively trade that
went on in Ihe"Gaamvc1d" between the "Bushmen"
and '\frikaner, German, and English hunter-traders
in the period 1870-90 (Lee 1979:78; Solwa~ and
Lee 11)81). The first European knO\\1l to ha\"c \'is
ited the Dobe-l'\yae/Nyae area was Hendril van
Zyl, \\ hom Ramadjagote Harry, a Tswana born in
1903, describes as "the hunter who was responsible
for killing all the elephants and rhinos in the west."
Tabler (1973: I H) confirms that in 1877 alone van
Zyl's parry killed 400 c1eph.rnts in the Gaamveld
and took out 8,000 Ihs of ivory. !Kung recall the
period \\;th a great deal of affection as a time of
intense social activity and economic prosperity.
The) \\ ere provided with guns and ate enormous
quantities of meat. One could find no trace ofregret
in these accounts for the carnage and diminution of
wildlife; elephants, regarded as pests by the IKung,
are rarely hunted loday. The leg'acy of thjs brief but
intense irruption for the Dobe-area people can be
briefly set OUL One small family of !Kung, fully
integrated into the Dobe community, is acknowl
edged to be descended from a member of \-an Zyl's
party and a local !Kung woman. Few other impacts
arc e\ident. Eyen though firearms were widely dis
tributed to African populations (Marks and Atmore
1971) and though many 19th-century-vintage
weapons remained in African hands into the 1960s,
only a single IKung man, a tribal constable who had
purchased his weapon with wages, possessed a gun
in 1963.
A second instance of European presence, also
short-lived, was the cattle drives sent by a group
ofAfrik,mer trekkers from Angola to the Trans\aal
via Lewisfontein (!Kangwa), a large perennial
spring in the centre of the Dooe area. The
"Dorsi and" Trekkers reached Angola only in 1880,
and according to Clarence-Smith (1979:59-60)
the trek route had fallen into disuse by 1900 (see
also Gordon 198-l:202).
Since most European goods - iron pots, beads,
etc. - continued to be obtained through Bantu
intermediaries, one would be hard put to argue
that the sporadic European presence from 1870 to
1900 had transformed !Kung society On the other
hand, it is likely that the European penerration of
he !Kung interior was the catalyst for incursions
b) Tswana and others.
!Kung call dlC period after the departure of the
Europeans and before the arrival of permanent
bbck senlers koloi (\\agon), a reference to the
ox-carts used by the Tswana from the 1880s to
about 1925. A number of Tswana had been
employed on the European huntjng pa.rties as
hunters, trackers, and gun bearers. After 1880
Tswana hWller-trac1ers with wagons began mak
ing their own trips to the Dobe area; this was part
of the general expansion of the Tawana state after
1874 (Tlou 1985:49). In the !Kung oral traditions
it is the !Kung and not the Tswana who are the
initiators of this trade. As lXarnn!a tells it,
When the Europeans left, the Zhulrwasi were all
alone. 1"'1) '*111111 [father-in-law] said, "Let's go to
the Tswana, bring their cattle here and drink their
milk." So then my '*llIm organized the younger
men and 'l'l'cnt "aSI to collect the cattle.... Then
they chopped a brush-fence kraal under the camel
thorn trees and kraaled them there. The Tswana
came up to \ isil and hunt, then Ihey \\ent back
leaving the San drinking tht.: milk. Then my *fUll!
got .111111'0 [tobacco] from the Tswana and s1110ked
it. When the shoro was all finished The young men
collected all the sTeenbok skins and went east to
bring back more shomo The boys shouldered the
tobacco and brought it back. Later they drove Ihe
l.'attlt: out to Hxore Pan where they built a kraal
and ate the Isil/ beans of I-hore \\h.iJe the cattle
drank the water. So they lived, eating (sin, hunt
ing steenbok and duiker, and drinking milk. When
llxore water was dry, they loaded the pack oxen
with sacks of (sin [for the !Kung to eat] and drove
them back to IXai/Xai. \t The end of the season
the canIe boys loaded the pack oxen with bales
and bales of ebnd biltong and went east with it to
collect the balls of shol'o and sometimes bags of
corn. These the.) would deliver to my ;etulIl.
This account provides a good description of two
forms of economic linkage: the barter system, in
which desert products are exchanged for agricul
tural and manufactured products, and the mafisn
system, "hereby well-to-do Tswana farm out cat
tle to Others - fellow tribesmen or members of
subordinate groups. The first form of lin.kage does
not lead to incorporation and loss of autonomy,
cspecjall~ \I hen the level of trade is modest and
the clement of coercion is absent. Mafiw, by con
trast, does alter the character of production at the
levels of bOUl forces and relations. Animal hus
bandry places foragers in a different relation to
land and to predators and necessitates a shift in
the patterns of labour deployment. Energy is
drawn awa~ from hunting and reallocated to herd
ing, and in rerum the producers are rewarded with
a more secure food source, at least in the short
run. At the level of production relations, majisa is
a form of loan-cattle-labour exchange set in the
context of a patron-client relationship.
Briefly, the majisa system in northwestern
Ngamiland operated as follows (see also Tlou
]985:52): The San client maintained the herd on
behalf of the Tswana patron, who retained owner
ship of the beasts. In return San could consume all
the milk the herd produced and the meat of any
animal that had died of natural causes, including
predation. i\ tally was kept of bC':lsts lost, and all
animals had to be accounted for when the patron
made a periodic visit. If he was satisfied with th
performance of the mojiso holder he might pa~
him a calf, but this was not obligatory. If he was
not satisfied he could wilhdraw his animals and
seek another client. Similarly, the client was free
to withdraw his sen"iccs - with notice - and either
lea\"e mojisa entirely or seek another patron and a
new herd of cattle.
On the face of it, mnjisa appears to resemble a
system of agrarian dependency: ownership of the
means of production, in this case cattle, is in the
hands of the o\erlord who at his whim can with
draw the herd and thus deprive the client of his
livelihood. Clients therefore existed, it would
seem, in a highl) vulnerable state of dependency.
Only a minorit~ of Dobe-area people became
involved in 1I/I/jisa, however, and families with cat
tle retained links with families fully immersed in
hunting and gathering, which remained viable as
an alternative economic strategy throughout the
kolni p!aiod and beyond. Had mafisn been the onI)
means of subsistence for the people of the Dobe
area, then the withdrawal of the cattle would have
caused a crisis in subsistence and the threat of it
\\'Ould have been sufficient to produce a condition
of virtual serfdom. But tbe majisa families were
not peasants; they were islands of pastoralism in a
sea of hunting and gathering, with benefits flow
ing in both directions. When cattle were with
drawn, as the) often were, the bush \\'as there to
fall back on, and that same bush beckoned as an
alternative if the responsibilities of keeping cattle
grew too onerous.
Thus we have to consider seriously the !Kung's
view of majisa as something that operated in their
favour. Far from haying lhc system forced upon
them or being forced into it by circumstance,
!Kung who entered into it did so voluntarily, for
the opportunity it provided to supplement a forag
ing diet with milk and occasional beef. Some of the
men who WCnT into lIIujisa did become "big men"
of a sort, acting as brokers in transactions between
San and black. But a large majority of !Kung
228 JACQUELINE S. SOLWAY AND RICHARD B. LEE
remained hunter-gatherers and never relinquished
their claims ro foraging Il'ures, rhe collectively
owned hunting lands that were the fotmdations of
their communal mode of production (see Lee
1979:333-69; 1981). In fact, many of the ranges
where cattle were grazed \\erc superimposed on
these /I !ores, and the herds were managed by mem
bers of the groups that held them. Thus the niche
that had sustained the communal foraging mode of
production was modified and expanded to encom
pass majisa carrIe husbandry without destro} ing
the preexisting adaptation. [... ]
Agrn-pastoralislJ/ Permanent setllement by non
S:m came htte to the Dobe area. Starting in
the mid-1920s, Herero pastoralists mm-ed into the
area at cattle posts both cast and west of
the Namibian border. [.. ] The Herero began to
deepen the waterholes and dig new ones to accom
modate increased numbers of cattle.... By the late
1950s the job of herdboy had become normati\e
for Dobe-area !Kung men between the ages of 15
and 25 .... Eventually most men returned to their
camps to marry and raise families, but some mar
ried men stayed on in a semi-permanent arrange
ment with Herero families.
By (he 19605 an alternative economy had begun
to crystallize, and the Dobc !Kung were found dis
tributed between two kinds ofliving groups. About
70% lived in camps - bandlike multifamily units
whose members engaged in a mixed economy of
foraging, maJisa herding, and some horticulture.
The rest lived in client groups consisting of retain
ers and their families attached to black carue posts.
Despite the V:lriet} of economic strategies that
supported ulem, camps continued to exhibit the
characteristic patterns of collective ownership of
resources and food sha.ring that have been docu
mented for hunter-g;atherers <lroll11d the world
(Lee 1979; Leacock and Lee 1982)....
The stage was now set for the final act in the
transformation of t.he Dobe-area IKung from a
relatively autonomous people with longstanding
bur non-decisi\e linkages to the larger regional
pastoral, tributary, anJ mercantile econom) to a
people bound to the region and the world by ties
of dependency. Haling survived long-distance
trade, contacts with European hunters, Tswana
overJordship, majisa herding, direct cmployment
on cattle posts, even forced resettlement in
amibia, the !Kung became dependent largely as
a conseq lienee of the inability of their land to sup
port a foraging mode of production. The bush had
always been the backdrop to economic change,
giving the !Kung security and a degree of freedom
not available to the great majority of the agrarian
societies of southern Africa. Tlou (1985:54) speaks
of the Tswana's difficulties in exacting tribute or
service from the "BaSarwa" (San) and conclude",
"The sandbelt BaSarwa rarely became serf,
because the) could easily escape into the Kgalagadi
Desert." By J970, however, four decades of inten
sive and expanding pastoralism had begun to take
their roll on the capacity of the environment to
support hunting and gathering. Cattle grazing and
Iile pounding of hoo\-es had destroyed the grass
cover over mallY square kilometres and reduced
the available niches for dozens of species of edible
roots and rhizomes. Goat browsing had destroyed
ulousands ofberr)' bushes and other edible plants.
The reduction or removal of these food sources
placed added pressure on the remaining human
food sources; for example, mongollgo nut harvests
noticeably diminished in the 1980s. The drilling of
a dozen boreholes in Bushmanhnd, Namibia just
to the west of Dobe, in the early I980s aggra\ated
tllcse trends by lowering the water table. Hunting
remained viable but became subject to much
stricter controls by the Game Department, and
many men fearing arrest, stopped hunting. [. -1
The eHect of these changes was seriously to
undermine the foraging option and to force to
Dobe-area !Kung into dependency on the cattlc
posts and particularly the state. The latter
responded with large-scale distribution of food
relief between J980 and 1987, which further deep
ened dependency
Discussion
\Vh:1t common and contrasting patterns uf change
can be discerned by a comparatiYe analysis of the
t\\O case studies?
In the earliest period for which we ha\"C infor
mation, the pre- and protohistoric (ca. 1820), th~
Western Kweneng San were already sharing their
land with Bantu-speaking Kgalagadi, who medi
ated their cont.act with the wider world. The Dobe
FORAGERS, GENUINE OR SPURIOUS?
San, by contrast, were in unmediated tll0ugh
distant and intermittent contact with ri\uine peo
ples to uleir east and north. A second point of dif
ference concerns the nature of social formations on
the San peripheries after 1830. The Kwena in the
south became more mobile and expansive, ranging
widely in search of trade and tribute, while the
neighbours of the northern !Kung were sedentary,
ri\er-oricntated peoples who did not expand into
the and interior.
The fur-trade period (mid-19th cenrury) was
marked by social, political, and economic turbu
lence, yet by the time its ripple effects reached the
inlerior or the Kalahari the impact was often
~lttenuated. If in Parsons's (1977: 119) terms the
19th-century Ts\yana economics were becoming
the "periphery of the periphery" of European
lllpiralism, then surely the Kalahari must have
heen the "deep periphery." Driven by trade and
e>.1ernal threat, strong chiefdoms arose in the
south. The Kwena's need for guns to defend them
selves against the Boers was a powerful impetus
le)r the articulation of tributary and mercantile
systems. Guns could only be obtained in exchange
for desert products. The Kwena subjugated the
Kgala!f<ldi, who in turn cnlisted the San to aid in
primary production. \Vhile unequal exchange
characterized British-Kwena and Kwena
Kgalagadi relationships, the Kgalagadi-San rela
tionship was symbiotic if not entirely equal. In
contrast, Dobe was part of a much more tenuous
nnd c:..tended trade net\york. The Ngwato occu
pied the pivotal position between mercantile and
triblltan networks. Their junior partners were the
Tawana, nominal ovcrlords of Ngamiland, who, in
turn relied on Yei and Mbukushu (,'Goba") inter
mcdiaries to aeculumate desert products from the
San, including the distant !Kung. The Tawana's
po\\er was contested by other chiefs, and they
were ne\u able to consolidate their hold on the
hinterland as effectively as the Kwena (Parsons
19Ti; Livin!fStone 1857; Tlou 1985: 66-7). As a
consequence there was less pressure on the !Kung
to enter tlIe system, and when they did they were
able to retain more control over the terms of trade.
In neither instance, however, did the fur trade
have much impact on the internal organization of
San societies. San exchanged their products after
the completion of the productive process. Linkage
229
was predominantly through the sphere of
exchange, not production, anc! intervention in San
society remained limited (see Bonncr 1983 and
Harries IlJ82 on similar processes elsewhere).
The expansion of herding and farming to the
remoter Kalahari did not signal the end of the fur
tr::tde, but the incorporation of cattle into the
desert economy shifted the priorities in the
deployment of land and labour. Western Kweneng
San and Dohe San entered the cattle economy
under different circumstances and with different
statutes. In Duuwe, Kgalagadi acquired cattle and
rendered them as 11I{/fisa to their poorer relatives;
eventually San became their herdboys. Because
cattle were kepI in the village, not at distant cattle
posts, San herders were in regular interaction with
their cmployers and had tbeir subordinate ~tatus
frequently reinforced. In Dobe it was the San
themselves who entered into majisa, a pri\'ilcge
they held exclusively until the 1920s. The Tawana
were absentee cattle owners; the Dobe San bore
responsibility for tile productive enterprise, made
routine decisions, and determined their daily
actiyities. This arrangement was much more com
patible with foraging than tile Western Kwencng
San's situation. In neither case did even a majority
of the San enter into cattle service. Many relatively
.independent groups remained on the peripheries
of viJlages and cattle postS, subsisting on wild
foods and continuing to provide furs for the trade.
Reciprocity between foraging and non-foraging
San allowed each group to enjoy the fruits of the
other's labour. In lean years the foraging San
would provide a safety net and alternative subsist
ence for their "employed" relatives, and even in
good years San contact with pastoralisrs was
largely limited to certain seasons. At all times the
hinterland provided a cultura'! point of refcrence
and locus of reproduction. Thus in both cases the
complete incorporation, as dependants, of the San
into tile agro-pastoral system was delayed as long
as the bush held the possibility of an alternatiYe
livelillood. [... J An important source of the con
tinued viability of tlle San's foraging Qption was
the strength of the egalitarian and reci procal com
munal relations of reproduction that characterized
life in the bush. A.~ even the revisionists (c.g.,
Wilmsen 198%:66) acknowledge, this wa) of life,
while far from ideal, provides an extraordinarily
 -
230 JACQUELINE S. SOLWAY AND RICHARD B. LEE FORAGERS, GENUINE OR SPURIOUS? 231

rich and mc-aningful existence for those who
pracrjce it. Communally based societies offer their
members a sense of social securiry, entitlement,
and empowerment (l_ee 1988, n.d.; Rosenberg
n.d.). Aspects of this quality of life persist in both
Dut1we and Dobe even today. [... ]
Several factors combined to undermine the
viability of the dual subsistence econom~ of the
Dutlwe and Dobe San. Expansion of the numbers
of cattle through natural increase, purchase with
wages from other arens, and migration of cattle
keepers (as in Dobe after 1954), along \yith expand
ing opportunities for migrant wage labour, espe
ci:lll) in the 1960s, created a rapidly increasing
neeo for San labour....
The retreat from foraging by the San began as
the agro-pastoral complex drew larger and larger
numbers of labourers, male and female, into its
employ. In the last analysis, however, a critical fac
tor in mo\ ing the San into a position of depend
ency has been environmental degradation, which
has, like an unintended scorched-earth policy,
deprived them of an alternative means of liveli
hood. In the south, dependency increased
throughollt the ccntur)', and many San entered
into a relationship of perpetual minor status....
Foragers Genuine and Spurious:
The Limitations of World Systems
What kinds of socioeconomic arrangements char
acterized the Kalahari San in the 19th and 20th
centuries, and what kinds of explanatory frame
works best account for them' These questions
must be approached at two levels: the level of fact,
in which the archaeological, ethnohistoric, and
ethnographic evidence is set out and interrogated,
and the level of discourse, in which the explana
tory frameworks themselves become the focus of
interrogation.
The archaeological record shows a diversity of
economic adaptations in the 19th century and earlier.
The interaction of Stone Age with Iron Age cultures
rcsulted in dramatic economic shifts in some areas,
while in other areas the effects were more subtle.
Kalahari trade was widespread, and in many
instances when tributary formations emerged in the
19th century ties of domination/subordination were
superimposed on preexisting linkagcs. But not all
San groups experienced this pattern of early linkage
and later subordination. Interrelationships \lL'Te
strongest on the ri\'er systems and the margins of
the desert and wc-aker as one moved into the interior.
Thus there were large areas of semi-arid southern
Africa that lay outside trihutary orbits, where trade
was equal, non-coercive, and intermittent and Where
independent -- but not isolated - social formations
persisted into the 20th century.
1n attcmpting to explain this situation, it is
important, first, to recognize that trade and
cxchange cannot simply be equated with domina
tion and loss of autonomy. Exchange is a funda
mental part of human life and appears in all
cultural settings (l'vlauss 1925; U\'i-Strauss 19~9).
Hunter-gatherer peoples have participated in
excha.nge with farming and market societies for
hundreds of years (in India, South-east Asia, and
East Africa) while maintaining a foraging mode of
production (Leacock and Lee 1982). E\en with
"hunters in a world of hunters," exchange '"as
part of social life (sec, e.g., Thomson 19~9;
v,i.lmsen 1974; Earle and Ericson 1977; Ericson
1977; Torrence 1986). The evidence for long
established trade relations between foragers and
others has been glossed by some as evidence for
[he fragility of the foraging mode of production.
But if it was so fragile, why did it persist'
Throughout these debates about the status of
Kalahari ~1nd other foragers there has been a lack of
attention to the meanings of key terms. Just what is
mea.nt by "autonomy," "dependency," "independ
ence," "integration," and "servitude" is rarely
made clear. Without consistent, agreed-upon defi
nitions it will be difficult or impossible to resolve
the issues with whjch we are concerned.
"Autonomy," for example, has a wide range of uscs.
Given its cunency, it is remarkable how unreflcx
ive its anthropological uses have been. We will con
fine our discussion to economic autonomy, since
much of the debate in hunter-gatherer studies
seems to revolve around it. One of the rhetorical
devices of the re\'isionist view of hunter-gatherers
is to equate autonomy with isolation - a definition
so stringent that no society can possibly satisfy it.
But autonomy is not isolation and no social forma
tion is hermetically sealed; we take it as given that
all societies are involved in economic exchan~s
and political relations with their neighbours.
.\s an economic concept, autonomy refers to
economic self-sufficiency, [... ] and self-sufficiency
in turn hinges not on the existence of trade - since
,1)\ societies trade - but on whether that trade is
inJispens,lblc for the society's sunrivaL To
demonstrate autonomy one must demonstrate
self_reproduction. Dependency therefore may be
defined as The inability of a society to reproduce
itself \\ irhout lhe intervention of another. [... ]
politically, t"o kinds of autonomy ma) be pro
risionall~ defined: imposed and asserted. [.'OJ In
th.: former, the economic autonomy of a subject
group may serve the interests of the dominant
grou p. Subord inates are encouraged to p urs ue their
habitual activities at their own pace while providing
<Toods or services - often on equitable tcrms - to
~he dominant group. In the latter, the autonomous
group asserts its claims through its own strengths
and politic"l will. In practice these two forms may
be difficult to distinguish, and which form is con
sidered to be present will depend heavil) on sub
jecti\e judgements both by the peoples im'olved
,md by obsen'ers. ['O.J Thus the \:lbuti pygmies
obscned by Turnbull (1962) appear to be entirely
subservient to their black neighbours while they
are in the villages but quite autonomous in the
forest.
Autonomy is best regarded not as a thing or a
property of social systems but as a relationship
between socia.l groups and between a group and its
mean:. of production. At any given moment a soci
ety may exhibit elements of both autonomy and
dependency, and it should be possible to assess the
degree of each through empirical investigation.
The camp-dwelling people of the Dobe area
wcre economically self-sufficient during the 1960s.
They owned the bulk of their means of production
and paid no rent, t6bute, or taxes in money or
kind. They hunted and gathered for the large
majority of their subsistence requirements and for
the rest [ended majistl cattle or worked as herdboys
for their Herero neighbours. The latter tasks pro
vided income that was a welcome supplement but
not essential to survival. How can we demonstrate
its non-essentiality~ first, San mafisa holders and
herdboys were observed to leave "sen'ice" without
\'isible detriment to their well-being. In fact, it was
common for young men to work on cattle for a few
lears and then return to tbe bush at marriage (Lee
1979:58,406-8). i\lore compelling, in the drought
of 1964, Herero crops failed and cows were dry,
yet the San persevcred without evident difficulty.
In fact, the Hereru women were observed gather
ing wild foods alongside their San neigh hours
(Lee 1979:255). Since the San carried on through
this period without visible hardship (Lee
1979:437-41) despite the withdrawal of Herero
resources, it is clear that the latter were not essen
tial to their reproduction.
These lines of evidence argue for the economic
autonomy of some Dobe IKung in the I%Os.
Obviously a great deal more couJd be said on the
question of autonomy, especially from the cultural
and political points of view. Even the simplest
historical judgements will involve a series of mediat
ing judgements concemjng economy, polity, volun
tarism and coercion. Automatically classifying
second-millennium San societies as dependent,
incorporated, or "peasant-like" seems no more legit
imate than classifying them as "primiti\'e isolates."
Turning to "servitude," we arc confronted with
a literature replete with reports of San "depend
ency," "serfdom," "s1.a\cry," "vassalagc," and th.e
like. [... J in contrast to the early sources cited
above (and see Wilson 1975:63), which tended to
portray all San as dominated, recent ones such as
Silberbauer and Kuper (1966), Tlou (1977), Russell
and Russell (1979), Hitchcock (1987), and Motzafi
(1986) employ these terms more critically, but (yen
here usage tends to be imprecisc. Silberbauer and
Kuper (1966), for example, use the term "serf
dom" but note its inapplicability - the San being
bound neither to the soil nor to a particular master.
Guenther (1986:450) reinforces the ambiguity
when he speaks of a "benignly paternalistic form of
serfdom" that departs from the European pattern.
Tlou (1977), Wilson (1975), and Biesele et .11.
(1989) use the term "clientship" to refer to a loose
association between peoples with unequal access to
resources that they distinguish from the classic
patron-client relationship. Russell and Russell
(1979:87) further qualify the term "c1ientship" by
contrasting the rights and obligations of
"emploved" San with those of "client" San. The
latter are said to maintain a "foot in both worlds,"
one in the bush and one on the farm. Thus in their
tcrms clicntship is a partial relationship from
\\'hich San can disengage.
232 JACQUELINE S. SOLWAY AND RICHARD B. LEE
Difficulties on several levels are encountered
\\ hen we try to pin down the forms and content of
San servitude and dependence. First, it is obvious
that terms such as serfdom and chattel slavery,
developed in a specific European context, arc not
easily grafted onto Kalahari social relations. More
specifically, the language that is used in the
Kalahari itself appears to overstate the degree of
dependence. Both Vierich (1982a) and Solway
were struck by the exaggerated dcscriptions of
sen itude by San and black alike. The cultural
yocabulary of superior/subordinate relations fur
ther illustrates the difficulty of translating words
that lack cognates in the language of the obseITer.
Silberbauer and Kuper, for example, show that the
Sekgalag'adi term rIIUT/yi, used for "master" in
San black rclations, is also lIsed for the senior in
asymmetrical k.in relations, i.e., "elder brother" It
denotes authority but falls short of our concept of
mastership or ownership. Similarly, they note that
the Tswana "jural model" of bola/a (hereditarv
sen itude) si~ifies something stricter than acru
all) exists. This misunderstanding, they assert,
rna) be the reason social commentators from 19th
centuf) missionaries to 20th-century anthropolo
~sts have assumed that bolrlla was worse in the
past and only recently has become more humane.
They ar~'Ue that "the practice of serfdom in
Bechmmaland is much more humane than the
indigenous jural model would lead one to expect:
in lhe past some obsen'ers may have been led into
assuming that the jural model represented lhe
past, while the eas~'-gojng acrualit) V\'as equated
with the enlightened present" (p. 172).
At the level of concrete social rclations, there is a
puzzling incongruit) between the exaggerated
de!!ree of inequaJit) described by Kalahari resi
dents a.nd the relatiVt: ease (and frequency) with
which the San "serfs" disappear into the desert for
periods of time, leaying their "masters" high and
dry. \ ierich (1982a:282) has argued that "interde
pendence" more accurate!) describes the relation
ship between San and non-San and that San simply
"pia) the beggar" to get handouts. Wh.ile this may
be overstating the case, dearl) there is a disjtillction
between model and practice. In no instance in
which hereditary serfdom has been asserted by
Kgalagadi in theory has it been observed in prac
tice. The Dutlwe-a.r~ San may be dependent and
have to work for someone at some time, but the\'
retain some choice of when to work and for \'h(l~.
An obsen'er \I ill find some Sm in relations of
dependency and others not, but closer examinati()n
\I ill reve-a! that the same indil'iduals wiU mOle into
clientship, out to the bush, and back ag,lin to clienr_
ship. Weahh) blacks will have full-time San labour_
ershving in their compounds while tl1eir neighbours
rarely or never retain San clients. l...l The full
time labourers living with blacks \\ill be the most
conspicuous to casual observers, and this may
account for the prevalence of this kind of report in
both the early and the more recent literature, but
such reports fail to do justice to the complexity an~
fluidity of the situ.nioH. We certainl) do not Want
to minimize the degree of San dependence and
subjection 10 discrimination, but we would suggc.,l
that this is best seen a$ a product of underden:lfljl
ment and not a primordial condition.
Hunter-Gatherer and Agrarian
Discourse: Making the Transition
We have traced in some detail the historical path
ways follo\\ed by the Dutlwe and Dobe San as
they cha.nged from autonomous foragers to clients
and labourers increasingly subject to and depend
ent upon local, national, and world economies. In
order to understand these processes it is neecssat)
to make a second transition, hom discow-se about
hunter-gatherers to discourse about agrarian soci
cries and the emerging world systelll.
In agrarian discourse structures of domination
are mken as given; it is the/ol'//Is of domination and
the modes of exploitation and surplus e:XTraction
that arc problematic (Amin 1972; Ilindess and
Hirst 1975; Shanin 1972). In the literature on the
agrarian societies of Lhe Third World, stratification,
cJas~ a.nd class struggle, patriarchy, acculllulation,
and immiseration constitute the basic descriptin:
and analytical \'ocabular~. In hunter-gatherer dis
course it is not thc forms of domination that arc at
issue but whethel' dominrlliOIl is prt'SI:1J/. This ques
tion is often side-stepped or ignored.
\Ve are not a.lone in our concern about the ten
dency for the discow-se of domination to be imposed
on precapitalist societies. Beinart (1985:97), for
example, dealing \vith the Eastern C<J.pe - an area
under far greater pressure than the Kalahari
- FORAGERS, GENUINE OR SPURIOUS?
caurions ag-.linst granting omnipotence to capir.wsm
or the state or assuming tl1al the migrant-labour sys
v;m automatically destroys the integrity of rural
socierics:
Even in so coercive an environment .lS South
Afril."<l, the patterns of domination were con
strained - in part - b) fear of tl1e consequences of
\lthet routes and in part by tlle defensive responses
f the dominated. CertainJy, capital and the srate ...
bad onl} limited power to shape social relationships
in those areas \Ihieh Ilere left under African occu
parion ... lhe fact that a migrant works for a wage,
l:\en for a number of }curs, does nor necessarily
determine lhe totalit} of his, much less his famill"s,
c1as~ position and consciousness. The importance
of detensil'e struggles in the rural areas, amongst
communities \Ihich included seasoned migrants,
bols generally heen w1derest;m.1led.
Silberbauer (1989:206-7) challenges the viev. that
hunter-gatherer contacts with other societies nec
essarily preclude autonomy:
[The] concept of coexisting Slates, rribes, and
hunter-gatherer bands can be found accuratelr
documented in any authoritative hislory of the
appropriate part of Africa. It does not require that
,my of the coexisting societies be in a state of com
pulsory, day-to-day mutualism with all others.
Interaction can occur at sufficiently low intensity
.lOd he of such a quality as to allo\l' hunters and
gatherers (for in,lance) to retain cultural, social,
and political, and economic autonomy (i.e., in the
philosophical sense, not in that of isolated, com
plete independence). At least in southern _'\.frica
and Australia that state of affairs persisted only
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233
to be largely ... self-sustaining.
Perhaps the most serious consequence of impos
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 Introduction

The re~tdings in this section are organized around the topic of witchcraft beliefs among the
Azande uf southern Sudan and northern Democratic Republic of Congo. We chose these read
ings because, as a whole, they define tbe parameters and content of one of the most intluential
debates in the history of anthropology: a debate over the differences and similarities between
;uropean and African modes of thought.
The debate began after the publication of Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft, Oracit's. aud .Magic
(//I1,mg the AZill/de (1937), a work that had a profound impact on both the cross-cultural study of
modes of thought and rhe philosophy of science and rationality, and led man) scholars to reflect
critically upon some of the most important issues in the history of anthropology. Stanley
J. Tambiah (1990: 3) poses the questions raised by the rationality debate:
How do we understand and represent the modes of thought and action of other societies,
other eu ltures?
2 Since we have to undertake this task from a Western baseline so to say, how are we to achieve
the "translation of cultures," i,e. understand other cultures as far as possible in their own
terms bur in our language, a task which also entails the mapping of the ideas and practices
onlO Western categories of understanding, and hopefully modifying these in turn to evolve
a language of anthropology as a comparative science'

Evans-Pritchard was forced to address these epistemological questions because he wanted to

explain one mode of thought, that of the Azande, in terms of another, that of science. In other
words, Evans-Pritchard understood that the translation of culture is a fundamental task of
anthropology.
In !>outhern Africa, nearly 80 years before Evans-Pritchard published his study, the British
explorer Da' id Livingstone confronted the problem of ho\\ to understand a wa) of thinking
radically different from his own. For the purpose of explaining the Tswana belief in rainmaking,
Li, ingstone constructed the dialogue included in this section, a dialogue between himself
240 INTRODUCTION
(a medical doctor) and a Tswana "rain doctor." As the dialogue proceeds, we come to appreciate
the intelligence, logic, and coherence of rainmaking beliefs; "e also come to question the long
standing assumption that science is "rational" and reflects truth while magical beliefs arc irra
tional and mystify reality. In Livingstone's \\Tilings, we can also discern the roots of one of
Evans-Pritchard's most important arguments: that if we understand the cultural premises and
social contexts of thought and action, then beliefs in supernatural causation no longer seem
bizarre, irrational, or fallacious. Indeed, the~ may seem perfectly reasonable.
Evans-Pritchard takes the appreciation of an '\.frican mode of thought a bit further than
Livingstone by anal) zing in great detail the principles upon which Azande explanations are
based, and by attempting to adopt for himself the Azande way of thinking. He finds that, in
contrast to science, the Azande overlook certain inconsistencies in logic because they do not
have an integrated theory of supernatural cause and effect. For example, the Az:mde believe
that witchcraft substance is hereditarily transmitted do\\n the male line. The substance predis
poses people 1"0 carr) out acts of witchlTaft, and can be re\ealed through pustmortem autopsy.
For E\ans-Pritchard, a positi\e finding of \\itchcraft substance in a person would implicate his
whole clall, since the clan is a group of people biologicall) related through a patriline. Ho\yever,
despite their biological model of \\itchcraft inheritance, the Azande do not generalize from
single cases of \ritchcraft to whole groups. This apparent contradiction would pose serious
problems for a scientific theory, but the Azande do not formulate their beliefs as abstract and
logically coherent and sustainable theories. Rather, witchcraft beliefs are produced and repro
duced continuously as the A7..ande tl! [() explain nc\\ misfortunes. Witchcraft is not a "thing"
in and of itself, or a state of being, but ralher an action (Ulin 1984: 24). Beliefs arc realized
through practice.
In trying to adopt Zande thinking for himself, Lvans-Pritchard suggests that Zande
thought can be reasonable even for the scientifically trained European. \Vhile living with the
Azande, he says, "I too used to react to misfortunes in the idiom of witchcraft" (1937: 45). He
realized that societies can havc multiple rationalities, and that, cvcn in England, people do
not alw3) s thin\.. scientifically. Evans-Pritchard thus warns US not to characterize societies in
terms of single modes of thought. As Tambiah puts it, "we should avoid caricatures of both
primitive and modern mentalities, and sbould not represent Westerners as thinking scientifi
cally all the time when scientific activit) is a special one practiced in very circumscribed cir
cumstances. One must compare like with like, our everyday thought with their everyday
thought" (1990: 92).
Despitc his apparent cultural relativism, Evans-Pritchard is unequivocal that scientific
explanations of misfortune are superior to those of the Azande. He writes: "Witches, as the
Azande conceive them, dearly cannot exist" (1937: 18). In other words, though witchcraft
beliefs are logical, the) arc wrong. Because the Az:mde do not form hypotheses nnd test them
against an empirical reality, their explanations arc necessarily unacceptable to the Western sci
entist. Peter ,"Vinch claims (in Chapter 17) tbat Evans-Pritchard's comparison of scientific and
Azande thought is a "category misL,ke." Winch argues that Azande and scientific thought
operate according to very different rules and premises, and so cannot be used to evaluate one
another. To employ the categories of sciencc, as Evans-Pritchard does, distorts Azande thought.
Not only does the scientific explanation of witchcraft reify beliefs embedded in practice, it also
makes Zande thought into a reflection of science. In a remarkable passage (1'.263, this volume),
Winch quotes E\ans-Pritchard at length and then repeats the quotation with the \yords
"Azande" and "mystical" transposed to "Europeans" and "scientific." The meaning and logic
INTRODUCTION 241
of both quotations are the same. The cle"er parody makes the Azandc into scientists, thus
revealing Evans-Pritchard's category mistake. LivingSTone falls into the same trap as Evans
Pritchard, for his dialogue imposes onto the rainmaker the categories and logic of scientific
,houghL The medical doctor forces the T~maDa rainmaker to debate not only as a "doctor" but
in the terms of positivism, rather than in terms of his own making (Comaroff and Comaroff,
1991: 254). For Winch, both Livingstone and Evans-Pritchard are guilty of perpetuatjng the
hegemony of science, of dictating the manner in which thought is represented. Cultural trans
lation is possible, Winch suggests, but only if scientists arc willing to modify and extend their
0" n categories. "Since it is we who want to understand the Zande category, it appears that the
onuS is on us to extend our understanding so as to make room for the Zande category, rather
than to insist on seeing it in terms of our uwn read) -made distinction between science and non
science" (Winch, 1970: 102).
\\'illch'~ argument did not go uncontested. In a provocative article in the same volume in
which "inch's work was published, Robin Horton argued that what he calls "African thought"
and "Western science" call be fruitfully compared with one another. He proposed that African
societies are "closed," meaning that people do not look critically at their ideas, or search for
alternative explanations, about the world. According to I lorton, scientific societies, on the other
hand, arc "open" to the extent that they ne\'er accept, absolutel), a giyen theory of the world,
and ah\a)s look for alternati\cs. The former societies take their orthodox modes of explanation
to the Ic\ el of sacred belief~, \\ hile the latter minimize tbe role of belief, faith, and certaint.y. Of
importance to all of the chapters in this part is an implicit argument that there is such a thing as
a "mode of thought." However, Horton went much further. He assumed that there are patterns
and essences to be found among the modes of thought of different populations, that a multitude
of different societies can share a common way of thinking, and that groups of societies can be
compared to other groups of societies. Only then is it possible for Horton 10 juxtapose "Africa"
to "western science"
Social anthropologists working on systems of belief today (Comaro(f and Comaroff, ] 993;
Rowlands and Varnier, 1988) continue to emphasize the continued salience of idioms of witch
craft ,md sorcery in sub-Saharan Africa but depart somewhat from the confines of the debate
begun about the Azande by exploring the ways in which the social relations of supernatural
belief become implicated in local politics and ewnomics (see both Lubkemann, Chapter 40, and
West, Olapter 45, in tlus 'olurne). Geschiere (1992), for example, in an important work on
Cameroon, sho\ys that markets and market beha\ iors do not constitute spheres of social activity
distinct from spiritual beliefs, and urges us to rethin]' ho\\, even in so-called "Western" econo
mies, religion, politics, kinship, and culturally distinctive rationalities play vital and constitutive
roles. (This is a point raised in many of the chapters of this volume on economics, where we
discuss the issue of economic "rationality".) Another schohr, Ashforth (2005), shows that in the
context of violence, chaos, and uncertainty in urban South Africa, the formation of a democratic
state in South Africa is integrally related to witchcraft beliefs. And in the final chapter of this
section, Ralph A. Austen compares witchcraft in Africa with the rise of witchcraft in early modern
Europe in the context of different trajectories of modernity. He shows that in contemporary
economic context.s, new forms of witchcraft emerge in Africa. Witchcraft in Africa today, he
says, exists in ambivalent relation to the concepts of the market economy, individualism and
individual accumulation. While pushing the smdy of witchcraft and rationality into analyses of
contemporary social issues in Africa, all of these authors demonstrate the power, legacy, and
usefulness of Eyans-Pritchard's foundational work.
242 INTRODU CTION INTRODUCTION 243

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Univ('rsit) ofEdinbttrgh Press.
\larwid, ,\Iax, cd. 1970. ITitellrraIr al/ll Sr/rmy: Sdwed Readillgs.l\liddlcscx: Penguin.
l-lorton, Robin. 1970. "African Traditiona.l Thoup:ht and Western Science," in Bn'an Wilson, cd., Rlltiflllalil)'. pp.
\Ibiti, ].S. 1969. ,l(i-ifllll Rel(~il>lls rind P/lilMOphy, New lork: Praegcr.

131-71. Oxford: Blackwell.

\liJdleron. john. 1963. 1I1li'heraji and Sormy ill EasJ Africa. London: Routledge and KCF:an Paul.

Rowlands, R. and JP Vamier. 1988. "Sorcery and the State in Cllmeroon." '111111 23 (I): 11&-32.
Tambiah, Stanle)' Je)araja. 1990..Hag;f, Sfimfe, Religio" lind tlu St'Ope 0/ Ratiflnality. Cuubridge: Cambridl!e
lli~ry~~
'lin. Robert C. 198-L ['ndastl/lullllg Cultun's: Pcrspertlt'Cs in'/nlltropnlogy "lid So(/al Thm~J" Ausrin: lInivcr;ity
ofTl'xas Pres~.
Winch, Petcr. 1970. "Understanding a Primiti\ c Sociel)," in Bryan Wilson, cd., Rutiol/{dity, pp. 71l III. Oxforu:
Blackwell.
Suggested Reading
Adorno, Theodor, et aL eds. 1976. Tire Pos;tit'ist D;spll/t' in Cmllu/I Sociology. l\ew York: Harper anu Row.
Agassi, joseph and Ian Charles Jarvie, eds. 1987. Ratiollulity: Th,' Critiml /II:W. Boston a.nd Dororccht:
M. /'IrijhofT.
Batcs, R., V. .\ludimbe, and]. O'Ban. cds. 1993. A/ricu ullllth" Dimplillfs: Th~ C'II/tnlmliml nIRese"rch ill
Afrirll to th,' SlIcial Seimus and !llIlI/allities. Chicago: Un;\ er~ity of Chicago Pre~s.
Benn, S.1. ancl G. \V. Mortimore. 1976. RMillIIality (/tId the SOfial Sciences: COlltribwiol/S to th~ Philosophy ,I"d
\Ioore, Henrietta and Todd Sanders. 2002. ,lIagirlll interpretatlOlls, .\larerilll Reubty: :Hlldufllt)', Wrtchcraji allli
Ihe Gault 111 Poslrnltlllwi Afrira. ,ew York: Routledge.
'adel, S.F. 1952. "Witchcraft in Four African Societies" AmericiJlI.lllthmpologist 54: 18-29.
Packard, Randall M. 1980. "Social Change and the Histor\' of Misfortune a.mong the Bashu of Ea,lern Zaire."
In I"an Karp arld Charles Bird, eds., Expioralio1lS 111 Afrimn s,)'SIeI/lS o/Thrlllglil, pp. 237-66. Bloomington:
Indiana LJnivcrs;l~ Press.
Parrinder, Geoffrey. 1970. Witd/atlp: J:uropeU71 urn/ Afri((j/J. London: Faber and Faber
Popper, Karl. )966. lYle Opm SorictJ' and its ne/ll'e.1. 5th edo. London: Hutchisnn.
Ranger, 'f. O. 1982. "The Dc.1th of Cham inuk a: Spirit Mediums, Nationalism and the Guerilla War in Zimbabwe."
.-lfriClllI-Jffillrs, pp. 349-69.
Riesman, Paul. 1977. Freedom ill Fultwi Social Life. Chicago: Universit' of 01icago Press.
Sanders. Todd. 2003. "Reconsidering Witchcraft: Postcolonial Africa and Analytic (Un)Certainric,." Amaican
Amhmpnlogm 105(2): 338-52.
Smith,Jame, Howard. 2008. Bewitdling DevelOPIMllt: IVilfhcrajr Imd the Reint'eNtion ofDt'7:elopmellt ill Nfl/liberal
;':~II)"I. Chie:tgo: Unhersity of Chicago Press.

l1ellwdNlogy ~fthe Social Scimres. 1.0noon: Routledge and Kegan P,tul. Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja. 1985. Cllllufe, TlrvlIgh, all/I Sowd ,lImO/I: All /1llthropological Persperri;e. Cambridgc,
B1oombill, Greta. 1962. Witdlcraji ill Africd. Capetown: 11. Timmins. MA: Harvard University Press.
Comaroff, Jean. 1984. Body fPIHPU, Spin't 0/ Resi,/(/flee. Chicago: Univcrsity of Chicago Press. Turner,' icwr. J967. Tilt' Forest 0/ Symbols: Aspects ofNdl!mbu Ritl/ui. Ithaca: Cornell Uni\ersit~ Press.
DC\'isch, Rene. 1993. 71le Khilll CY/l-Efo-Logiral [-J~alillg CIII, IIJ!lOII~ the lid'a. Chic.1lW Univcrsity of Chicago Turner, "jeror. 1969. Tlte Ritl/I/I Process: Structure and Am;-StrU(/lire. London: Routlcdge.
Press. Wilsoll, Br)an. 1970. Ratlonalrry. Oxford: Blackwell.
Durkheim, Emile. 1965. The EI~",t'nI"ry Fomls o/tltl' Rrligiolls Liff. Nl'w York: Frec Press. Winch, Peter. 1958. Tit" Idea of /I SOClul Srtmce and its Rt'latirm lu P/lllosophy. London: Routledge and Kegan
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1937. I/';tdlcraji. "tagic (/lId Oracles alllll1l~ rhe .'1::'0",11'. Oxford: Clarendon Yress. Pall!.
Evans-PriTchard, E.E. IlJ56. Nller Rdigiml. London: Oxford Uni\crsity Press. \\'ittgens-rein, Ludwig. 1953. PhilosophiclIl Inustigatillns. New York: ~\acmillan.
Fra7.er, Sir Jamcs G. 199-+ L1900j. The C"ldel1 Bllllgh: ,1 Stlld)' III l1agl(llIId Rdrgill/l. London: Oxford Cni\'er'IT~
Press.
Geertz, Oifford. 1973. Tltl' IlIterpw/lJiollll/ Cllllllres. New ):orl..: Basie Dooks.
Geschiere, PelCr. 2009. ,Hagical Interpretations, "'Tlllerial Realr~)': Modemity, 1I'IIdlcraji and tlte Oaull iI/
Pnslmlo/J;al 'lfriCII. ChicllgO: University of Qljcago Press.
Good, Byron. 199~. Hl'dieill/', Rationfllity Imll EXPI7'ifllce: All Afllhrop,,!c,g;((ll Perspective. Camhridge: Cambridge
niversit) Press.
Han"ood, Alan. 1970. "ll/cheraJi, S"rcery alld Social Categories o/the Sa/lPa. London: Oxford Uni\ersit\ Prc.'"
for the 1'\J.
I!L>ald, Suzette. 1982. "The "laking ()f~len." ./ji-it'll 52: 15-35.
I lonon, Robin and RUlh Ferguson, eds. 1973. Alodl's 0/ TlwlIglzt: Essays UII Thillking ill Wesltm 111/11 NOII-lIeslt'r,
Sodetie.'. London: Faber.
Jarvie, Jan Charles. 198-+. Rlltillli/llity alld Rt/mit'ism: ill Sl'tJrrll of " Philosliphy alld Ilistor)' I{, IlItltropolagy.
London: Routlcdge and Keh"Oln Paul.
jules-Rosettc, Benetta. 1978. "The Veil of Objectivity: Prophecy. Di\'ination and Social Inquiry." dlllailim
Allthrnpoiogisl 80: 549-71.
 15
Conversations on Rain-making
David Livingstone
The place where we fir~t settled with the Bakwains
is called C..honuane, and it happened to be visited,
during the lirst vear of our residence there, by one
of those droughts which occur from time to time
in c,'cn the most favored district~ of Africa.
The belief in the gift or power (If raill-mllking is
one of Ihe most deeply-rooted articles of faith in
this country. '1'he chief Scchele was himself a noted
rain-doctor, and belie~ed in ;t implicitly. lIe has
often assured me that he found it more difficult to
give lip his faith in that than in any thing else which
Christianity required him to abjure, I pointed out
to him that the only feasible way of watering the
gardens was to select some good, neyer-failing
river, make a canal, and irrigate the adjacent lands,
This suggestion was immediately adopted, and
soon the IIhole tribe was on the mOlT to the
Kofobcng, a stream about forty miles distant. The
experiment succeeded admirably during the first
ytar. The Bakwains made the canal and dam in
c\change for my labor in assisting to build a square
hOllse tor their chief They also built their own
school under my superintenucnce, Our house at
the River Kolobeng, which gave a name to the
settlement, was the third "hich 1 had reared with
~rom Ihvill Livingstone, 1858, "Conversations on Rain-:'I1akini;", pp. 22-7. In IHiH;olJary Tflit'ds and Reset/rehes ill
SOIlII, 1(ri{(/. Lonllon: Ylurray.
my own hands. A native smith taught me to weld
iron; and having improved by scraps of infonna
tion in that line from Mr \10ffat, and also in car
pentering and gardening, I was becoming handy at
almost any tradc, besides doctoring and preaching;
and as my wife could make candles, soap, and
clothes. we came nearly up to what may be consid
ered as indispensable in the accomplishments of a
missionary family in Central Africa, namely, the
husband to be a jack-of-all-trades without doors,
and the wife a maid-of-all-work \\ ithin, But in our
second year again no rain fell. In the third the same
extraordinary urought followed. Indeed, not ten
inches of water fell during these two years, and the
Kolobeng ran ur)'; so many fish werc killed that
the hyenas from the \\hole COlll1tr) round collected
to the feast, and were unable to finish the putrid
masses. A large old alligator, which had never been
known to commit an) depredations, was found left
high and dry in the mud among the victims, The
fourth year was equally unpropitious, the fall of
rain being insufficient to bring the grain to matu
rity. Nothing coulu be more trying. We dug uown
in the bed of the riyer deeper and deeper as the
water receded, striving to get a little to keep the
246 DAVID LIVINGSTONE
fruit-trees alive for better times, but in \'ain.
Needles I) ing out of doors for months did not rust;
and a mixture of sulphuric acid and water, used in
a galvanic bauery, parted with all its water to the
air, instead of Imbibing more from it, as it would
have done in England. The leaves of indigenous
trees Ilere all drooping, soft, and shriveled, though
not dead; and those of the mimosa: were closed at
midday, the same as they are at night. In the midst
of this dreary drought, it was wonderful to see
those tiny creatures, the ants, running about \\ ith
their accustomed vil'acity. I put the bulb of a ther
mometer three inches under the soil, in thc sun, at
midday, and fOlUld the mercury to stand at 132 0 to
1340 ; and if certain kinds of beetles were placed on
the surface, they ran about a fev, seconds and
expired. But this broiling heat only augmented the
activity of the long-legged black ants: they never
tire; their organs of motion seem endowed with the
same power as is ascribed by ph~iologists to the
muscles of the human heart, by which that part of
the frame never becomes fatigued, and which may
be imparted to all our bodily organs in that higher
sphere to which we fondly hope to rise. Where do
these ants get their moisture? Our house was built
on a hard ferruginous cong:lomerate, in order to be
out o[ the way of dIe white ant, but they came in
despite the precaution; and not only were they, in
this sultry weather, able individually to moisten the
soil to me consistency of mortar for the formation
of galleries, which, in their way of working, is done
by night (so that they are screened from the obser
vation of birds by day in passing and repassing
toward any I'egetable matter they rna) wish to
devour), but, when their inner chambers were laid
open, these were also surprisingly humid. Yet there
was no dew, and, the house being placed on a rock,
they could have no subterranean passage to the bed
of the river, which ran about three hundred yards
below the hill. C.1n it be that they have the power of
combining lhe oxygen and hydrogen of their veg
etable food by vital force so as to form water?
R;lin, howel'er, would not fall. The Bakwains
believed that I had bound Seehele with some
magic spell, and I received deputations, in the eve
nings, of the old counselors, entreating me to allO\I
him to make only a few showers: "The corn will
die if you refuse, and we shaH become scattered.
Only let him make rain this once, and we shall all,
men, women, aIld children, come to the schaal
and sing and pray as long as you please." It was i~
vain to protest that I wished Sechcle to act just
according to his own ide-as of what was right, as he
found the law laid dow n in the Bible, and it was
distressing to appear hard-hearted to them. The
clouds (/[ten collected promisingly over us, and
rolling thunder seemed to portend refreshing
showers, but next morning the sun would rise in a
clear, cloudless s\"y; indeed, e\'en these 101\ ering
appearances lVere less frequent by far than da) s of
sunshine are in London.
The natives, finding it irksome to sit and wait
helplessly until God gives them rain from heaven,
entertain the more comfortable idea that they can
help themselves by a variet) of preparations, such
as charcoal made of burned bats, inspissated renal
deposit of the mountain con) - Hyrax ca/JellS;;
(which, by the wa), is used, in the form of pills,
as a good antispasmodic, under the name of
"swne-sweat"),! the internal parts of different
animals - as jackals' livers, baboons' and lions'
heans, and hail] calculi from the bowels of old
cows - serpents' skins and \enebrae, and every
kind of tuber, bulb, root, and plant to be found in
the country. Although you disbelieve their efficacy
in ch:uming the clouds to pour out their refresh
ing treasures, yet, conscious that civility is useful
everywhere, you kindly state that you think they
are mistaken as to their po" er. The rain-doctor
selects a particular bulbous root, pounds it, and
administers a cold infusion to a sheep, I\'hich in
five minutes afterward expires in convulsions. Part
of the same bulb is converted into smoke, and
ascends toward the sky; rain follows in a day or
two. The inference is obvious. Were I\'e as much
harassed by droughts, the logic would be irresist
ible in England in 1857.
As the Bakwains believed that there must be
some connection between the presence of "God's
Word" in their town and these successivc and dis
tressing droughts, the) looked y,'ith no good \nll at
the church bell, but still they invariably treated us
with kindness and respect. ] am not aware of ever
haying had an enemy in the tribe. The only a\'owcJ
~use of dislike was expressed by a \'eryinfluential
and sensible man, thc uncle of Scchele. "We like
you as well as if you had been born among us; you
a.re the only white man we can become familiar
CONVERSATIONS ON RAIN-MAKING
with (thoaela); but we wish you to gil'e up that
everlasting preaching and praying; we can not
hecome f;~miliar with that at all. You see we nel er
17t:( rain, while those tribes who never praj as
~e do obtain abundance." This was a fact; and we
oftcn saI'l' it raining on the hills ten miles off, while
it would not look at us "even with one eye." If the
prince of the power of the air had no hand in
scorching us up, 1 fear] often gal'e ]um the credit
of doing so.
\s [or the rain-makers, they carried the sympa
thies of [he pcople along with them, and not with
out rC:lson. With the following arguments they
were all acquainted, and in order to understand
their force, we must place ourselves in their posi
tion, and believe, as they do, that all medicines act
h) a mysterious charm. The term for cure m,ly be
translated "charm" (alaha).
.l1ediCll! DOClor. HaiJ, friend! Ho\\ very many
medicines you have about you this morning! \Vhy,
you have every medicine in the country here.
Rain Doclor. Very true, my friend; and I ought;
for the whole country needs the rain which r am
making.
11.D. So you really believe that you can com
maml the clouds? I think that can be done by God
alone.
R.D. We both believe the same thing. It is God
that makes thc rain, but I pray to him by mcans of
these medicines, and, the rain coming', of course it is
then mine. It was J who made it for the Bakwains for
many years, when they were at Shokuane; through
my lIisdom, too, their lIomen became fat and shin
ing. Ask them; they will tell you the same as I do.
II.D. But we .lre distinctly told in the parting
Inlrcls of our Savior that we can pray to God
acceptably in his name alone, and not by means of
medicines.
R.D. Trulyl but God wid us differently. Hc
made black mcn first, and did not love us as he did
the \Ihite men. He made you beautiful, and gave
I'OU clothing, and guns, and gunpowder, and
horses, and wagons, and many other things about
which IIC kno\\ nothing. But tOwards us he had no
heart. He gavc us nothing except the assegai, and
cattlc, and rainmaking; and he did not give us
heans like yours. We nevcr love each other. Other
tribes place medicines about our country to
prcvent. the rain, so that we may be dispersed by
247
hunger, and go to them, and augment their power.
We must dissolve their charms hj our mcdicines.
God has given us one little tiling, which you l..now
nothing of He has given liS the knowledge of cer
tain medicines by which \1 e can make rain. lVe do
not despise those things which you possess, though
we arc ignorant of [hem. We don't understand
your book, yet we don't despise it. You ought not
to despise our little kno\\ ledge, though you are
ignorant of it.
W.D. 1 don't despise what I am ignorant of; I
only think you are mistaken in saying that )oU have
medicines which can influence the rain at all.
R.D. That's just the way people speak when
they talk on a subject of which they have no knowl
edge. When we first opened our eyes, we found
our forefathers making rain, and we follow in their
footsteps. You, who send to Kuruman for corn,
and irrigate your garden, may do without rain; Tr>e
cannot manage in that way. If lie had no rain, the
cattle 1\ ou ld have no pasture, the COli s give no
milk, our children become lean and die, our \\ ives
run away to other tribes who do make rain and
have corn, and the whole tribe become dispersed
and lost; our fire would go out.
M.D. I quite agree with yOll as to the value of
the rain; but you can not charm the clouds by
medicines. You wait till you see the clouds come,
then you use your medicines, and take the credit
which belongs to God only.
R.D. I use my medicines, and you employ yours;
we are bolll doctors and doctors are not deceivers.
You give a patient medicine. Sometimes God is
pleased to heal him by mcans of your medicine;
sometimes not - he dies. When he is cured, you take
the credit ofwhat God docs. I do the same. Sometimes
God grants us rain, sometimes not. When he does,
we take the credit of the charm. When a patient dies,
you don't gile up trust in jour medicine, neither do
I when rain [ails. If you wish me to leave ofT my med
icines, why continue your own?
A-1.D, 1 give medicine to living creatures within
my reach, and can sec the effects, though no cure
follows; you pretend to charm the clouds, "hich
are so far above us that your medicines never re.1eh
them. The clouds usually lie in one direction, and
your smoke goes in another. God alone can com
mand the clouds. Only tTy and wait patiently; God
will give us rain \\ ithout your medicines.
248 DAVID LIVINGSTONE

R.D. Mahala-ma-kapa-a-a!! Well, 1 always

thought whitc men were II ise till this morning.
The above is only a specimen of their way of
reasoning, in w'hich, IIhen the languagc is well
16

Who ever thought of making trial of starvation? Is understood, they are perceived to be remarkahh'
death plc;\s:mt, then? acute. Thesc argumcnts arc gencrally known, and'I
M.D. Could you make it rain on one spot and ne\'cr succeeded in com'incing a single individual The Notion of Witchcraft Explains

not on another? of their fallacy, though I tried to do so in e\'cr~ \1 a\"

R.D. I wouldn't think of trying. I like to sce I could think of. Their faith in medicines as charm's Unfortunate Events

the whole country green, and all the pcople
gll1d; the women clapping their hands, and giv
ing me their ornaments for thankfulness, and
lullilooing for joy.
Al.D. 1 think you deceive both them and yourself
R.D. Well, then, there is a pair of us (meaning
bOTh are rogues).
is unboundcd. The general effect of argumcnt is to
produce the impression thal you arc not anxious lor
rain at all; and it is vcry undesirablc to aUoII the idea
to spread that you do not take a generous interest in E.E.Ev s-Pritchard
their welfarc. An angry opponent of rain-making in
a tribe would be looked upon as were some Greek
merchants in England during the RussiaJ:J liar.

Note
The nallle arises from its being always voided on one rhinoceronlinc family; Jnd, hy the action of the sun,
spot, in the manner practiced by others of the it becomes a black, pitch) ~ubstance.

when their swarming is due and a cold useless

\\"itchcs, as the Azande concei\'e them, clearl~
cannot exisl. None the less, the concept of witch
craft pro\ides them with both a natural philoso
phy by which the relations between men and
unfortunate eyenls are explained, and, also, a ready
and stereotyped means of reacting to such events.
Witchcraft beliefs also embrace a system of values
II hich regulate human cond uct.
\\ itchcraft is ubiquitous. It plays its part in
eler~ aetilit) of Zande life; in agricultural, fishing,
and huntmg pursuits; in domestic life of home
steads as \Iell as in communal life of district and
court; it is an important theme of mental life in
which it torms the background of a vast panorama
of oracles and mtlgic; its inOuence is plainly
sramped on lall and morals, etiquette and religion;
it is prominent in technology and language; there
is no niche or corner of Zande culwre into which it
docs not til ist ilseU~ lfblight seizes the ground-nut
crop It is witchcraft; if the bush is vainly scoured
for game it is Witchcraft; if women laboriously bale
lIater out of a pool and are rewarded by but a few
small fish it is Witchcraft; if temlites do not rise
night is spent in waiting for their flight it is II iteh
craft; if a wife is sulky and unresponsive to her
husband it is witchcraft; if a prince is cold and dis
tant with his subject it is witchcraft; if a magical
rite fails to achieve its purpose it is witchcraft; if, in
fact, any failurt: or misfortune falls upon anyone at
any time and in relation [0 any of the manifold
actiYities of his life it may be due to witchcraft. The
ande anributes all these misforrunes to witchcraft
unless there is srrong: evidence, and subsequent
oracular confirmation, that sorcery or some other
evil agent has been at work, or unless they arc
clearly to be attributed to incompetence, breach of
a taboo, or failure to observe a moral rule.
To say that witchcraft has blighted the ground
nut crop, that witchcraft has scared away game,
and that witchcraft has made so-and-so ill is
t:quivalent to saying in terms of our own culture
that the ground-nut crop has failed owing to
blight, that game is scarce this season, and thal so
and-so has caught influenza. Witchcraft partici
patt:S in all misfortunes and is the idiom in which
Azande speak about them and in which they
explain them. To us witchcraft is something which

Prom E. E. l:.vans-Pritchard, lVilc!lcra[r, Ora el,'S {/lid Magic lllnO"lIg II" Azallde (1937; abridged edition 1976), li'om
Oxford University Press.
250 E.E. EVANS-PRITCHARD
haunted and disgusted our credulous forefathers.
But the Zande expects to come across witchcraft at
any time of the day or night. lIe would be just as
surprised if he \yere not brought into daily cont,lct
with it as \IC wouJd be if confronted by its appear
ance. To him there is nothing miraculous about it.
It is expected that a man's huntin/C will be injured
by witches, and he 11.1s at his disposal means of
dealing with them. When misfortunes occur he
does not become awestruck at the pia) of super
natural forces. He is not terrified at thc presence
of an occult enemy. He is, on the other hand,
extremely annoyed. Someone, out of spite, has
ruined his ground-nuts or spoilt his hunting or
given his wife a chill, and surely this is cause
for anger! lie has done no one harm, so what right
has anyone to interfere in his affairs? 1t is an
impertinence, an insult, a dirty, offensive trick! It
is the aggressiYeness and not the eerieness of these
actions which Azande cmphasize when speaking
of them, and it is anger and not awe which we
observe in thcir response to them.
\\ itchcraft is not less anticipated than adultery.
It is so intertwined with l:veryday happenings that
it is part of a Zandc's ordinary world. There is
nOLhing remarkable about a witch - you may be
one yourself, and ccrtainly many of your closest
neighbours are witchcs. Nor is there an) thing
awe-inspiring about witchcraft. We do not become
ps)'chologically transformt:d when we hear that
someone is ill- we expect people to be ill- and it
is the same \."ith Zande. They expect people to be
ill, i.e. to be bewitched. and it is not a matter for
surprise or wonderment.
J found it strange at first to live among Azandc
and Jistcn to naive explanations of misfortunes
which, to our minds, have apparent causes. but
after a while I learnt the id.iom of their thought
and applied notions of witchcraft as spontancousl}
as thcmselves in situations where the concept was
relevant. /\ bo) knocked his foot against a small
stump of wood in the centre of a bush path, a fre
quent happening in Africa, and suffered pain and
inconvenience in consequence. Owing to its posi
tion on his toe it was impossible to keep the cut
free from dirt and it began to fester. He declared
that witchcraft had made him knock his foot
against the stump. I always argued with Azande
and criticized their statements, and I did so on this
occasion. I told the boy that he had knocked his
foot against the stump of wood because hc had
been carcless, and that witchcraft had not placed
it in the path, for it had grown there naTUrally.
He agrecd that witchcraft had nothing to do with
the stump of wood being in his path but added
that he had kept his eyes open for stumps, as
indeed ever) Zande does most carefully, and that
if he had not been bewitched he would ha\e scen
the stump. As a conclusi\c argument for his view
he remarked that all cuts do not take days to heal
but, on thc contrary, close quickly, for that is the
nature of cuts. Why, thtn, has his sore festered and
remaincd open if there were no 1\ itchcraft bchind
it? This. as I discovered before long, \Ias to be
regarded as the Zande explanation of sickness.
Shortly after my arrival in Zandeland \ve were
passing through a government settlcmcnt and
noticed that a hut had been burnt to the ground 011
tbe pre\ ious night. Its owner was overcomc with
grief as it had contained the beer he was preparing
for a mortuary feast. He told us that hc had gone
the previous night to examine his beer. He had lit
a handful of straw and raised it abo\'c his hcad so
that light would be cast on the pots, anl' in so
doing he had ignited the thatch. He, and nlY com
panions also. were convinccd that the disaster lIas
caused b) witchcraft.
One of my chief informants, Kisanga, \\as a
skilled woodcarver, one of the finest caners in thc
whole kingdom of Gbudwe. Occasionally the
bowls and stools which he carved split during the
work, as one may well imagine in such a c1imatc.
Though the hardest Imods be selected they some
timcs split in process of carving or on completion
of the utensil even if the craftsman is carcful and
well acquainted \\ ith the technical rules of his
craft. When this happened to the bowls and stools
of tbis particular craftsman he attributed the mis
fonune to witchcraft and used to harangue mc
about the spite and jealousy of his neighbours.
When I uscd to reply that J thought he II-as mis
taken and that people wcre well disposcd tOll"ards
him he used to hold the split bowl or stool to\\ards
me as concrete cvidence of his asscrtions. If peo
ple were not bcwitching his work, hOl\ ,,ould I
acc<>unt for that? J .ikewise a potter will attributc
the cracking of ills pots during tiring to witchcraft.
An experienced potter need have no fear that his
THE NOTION OF WITCHCRAFT EXPLAINS UNFORTUNATE EVENTS
pots will crack as a result of error. He selects the
proper clay, kneads it thorough I) till he has
e.\tnlcted all grit and pebbles, and builds it up
slo\\ l~ and carcfully. On t he night before d.igging
out hlS clay he abswins from se:-ual intercourse.
So he should have nothing to fear. Yet pots some
timl:'s bn.'ak, even when the) ,Irc the handillork of
expcrt potters, and thi~ can only be accounted for by
\I ltchcraft. "It is broken - there is \1 itcheraft," sa~ s
thc potter simply.
II
In spcaking to \zande about II itchcraft and in
observing their reactions to situations of misfor
tune it was obI ious thai the) did not attempL to
account tor the existcnce of phenomena, or cyen
the action of phenomena, b) mystical causation
alonc. What the} explaincd b) witchcraft were the
particular conditiollS in a chain of causation which
related an individual to natural happenings in such
a Ilay that he sustained injuT). The bo) who
knockl.'d his foot against a stump of wood did not
account for the stump b) reference to \\itchcraft,
nor did he suggc~t that whenever anybody knocks
his toot against a stump it is necessarily due to
witchcraft, nor yet again did he accounL for the cut
by sa} ing that it was caused by witchcraft, for he
knell quite well that it was caused by the stump of
\Iood. What he attributed to witchcraft was that
on thiS particular occasion, when exercising his
u,ua.l care, he struck his foot against a stump of
wood, \\hereas on a hundred other occasions he
did not do so, and that on this particular occasion
the cut, which he e"pected to result from the
knock, festered \\hereas he had dozens of culs
\\hich had not festered. Surel) these peculiar con
ditions demand an c"planation. Again, every year
hundreds of Azande go and inspect their beer by
night and the) always takc with them a handful of
strall in order to illuminate the hm in which it is
fermenting. Why then should this particular man
on this single occasion hal'c ignited the thatch of
his hut? o\f;.Iin, my friend the woodcarver had
madc scorcs of bowls and stools without mishap
and h\: knew all there was to know about thc selec
tion of wood, usc of TOols, and conditions of carv
ing. Ilis bowls and stools did not split like the
products of craftsmen who were unskillcd in theiT
251
work, so why on rare occasions should his bowls
and stools split when they did not split usua.l1yand
when he had exercised all his usual knowledge and
carc? He knell tlle answer well enough and so, in
his opinion, did h.is em ious, back-biting neigh
bours. In the S,lme way, a potter IIams to know
wh~ his pots should break on an occasion when he
usc:> the same material and technique as on other
occasions; or rather he already knows, for the
reawn is kno\\n in advance, as it were. If the pots
breal.. it is due to witchcraft.
We shall give a false account of Zande philosophy
if we sa) that they believc witchcraft to be the sole
cause of phenomena. This proposition is not con
tained in Zandc patterns of thought, which only
assert that wiLchcraft brings a man into relation
\\ith events in such a \Va) that he sustains injury.
In Zandeland sometimes an old grana!'y col
lapses. There is notlling remarkable in this. E\-cry
Zande knOll s that termites cat thc supports in
course of time and that even the hardest woods
decay after years of service. NOlI a granary is the
summerhouse of a Zande homestead and people
sit benearh it in the heat of the day and chat or play
the African hole-game or work at some craft.
Consequently it may happen th,lt there arc people
sitting beneath the granary whcn it collapses and
they are injurcd, for it is a heavy structure made of
beams and clay and may be stored with eleusine
as well. NOlI why should these particular people
have been sitting under this particular granary at
the particular moment when it collapsed? That it
should collapse is easily intelligible, but Ilhy
should it have collapsed at the particular momcnt
when thcse particular people \Iere sitting beneath
it? Through years it might have collapsed, so II hy
should it faU just when certain people soughl its
kindl) shelter? We sa) that thc granary collapsed
beeausc its support:> were ealen away b) termitcs;
that is the cause lhal explains thc collapse of the
granary. We also sa~ that people Ilere sitting under
it at the time because it was in the heat of the day
and the) thought that it would be a comfortable
placc to talk and work. This is the cause of people
being under the granar) at the time it collapsed.
To our minds the onl) relationship betwecn these
two indepcndentl) caused facts is their coinci
dencc in time and space. We have no explanation
of why the IWO chains of causation intersectcd at a
252 E.E. EVANS-PRITCHARD
certain time and in a certain place, for there is no
interdependence between them.
Zande philosoph} can suppl} the missing link.
The Zande knows thal the supports were under
mined by termites and that people were sitting
beneath the granary in order to escape the heat
;U1d glare of the sun. l3ut he knows besides why
1Jlese two eYents occurred at a precisel) similar
moment ill time and space. It was due to the action
of witchcraft. If there had been no \\ itchcrafl peo
ple would have been sitting under the granary and
it would not ha\'e fallen on them, or it would have
collapsed but the people would not have been:
sheltering under it at the time. Witchcraft explains
the coincidence of these two happenings.
III
1 hope I am not expected to poim out that the Zande
cannot analyse his doctrines as 1have done for him.
It is no use sa) ing: to a Zande "Now tell mc what
)OU Azande thin.!. about witchcraft" because the
subject is too general and indeterminate, both 100
vague and too immense, to be described concisely.
But it is possible to extract the principles of their
thought from dozens of situations in which witch
craft is called upon to explain happenings and from
dozens of other siruat;ons in which failure is anrib
uted to some other cause. Their philosophy is
explicit, but is not fonnall) stated as a doctrine. A
Z:mde would not say "I believe in natural cau<;;ll;on
but I do not think that that fully explains coinci
dences, and it seems to me that the theory of \1 irch
craft offers a satisfactof) explanarion of rhem", but
he c.\:presses his thought in terms of acrual and par
ticular situations. He i>3)S "a buffalo charges", "a
tree falls", "termites are not making their seasonal
f1ight when they are expected to do so", and so on.
Herein he is stating empiricall) ascertained facts.
But he also says "a buffalo charged and wow1ded
so-and-so", "a tree fell on so-and-so and killed
him", "my termites refuse to make theiT night in
numbers worth collecting but other people are col
lecting theirs all right", and so on. I-Ie rells you that
these things are due to witchcraft, saying in each
instance, "So-and-so has heen bewitched." The
facts do not explain themselves or only' partly
explain themselves. They can only be explained
fully if one takes witchcraft into consideTarion.
One can only obtain the full range of a Zandc's
ideas about causation by allo\\;ng him to fill in the
gaps himself, other" ise one will be led astray bl
linguistic conventions. He tells you "So-and-s~
was bewitched and killed himself" or even simph
that "So-and-so was killed by witchcraft". But h~
is telling you the ultimate cause of his death and
not the secondary causes. You can ask him "Ho\\
did he kill himself?" and he will tell you that he
committed suicide by hanging himself from lhe
branch of a tree. You can also ask "Why did he kill
himself?" and he will tell you that it was because
he was angry with his brothers. The cause of hi~
death was hanging from a tree, and the cause of his
hanging from a tree was his anger with his broth
ers. If YOll then ask a Zande why he should sa) that
the man wa~ bewitched ifhe committed suicide on
account of his anger with his brothers, he willtclJ
l'Oll that onl) crazy people commit suicide, and
that if e\ eryone who was angry with his brothers
commined suicide there would soon be no people
left in the" orld, and that if this man had not been
bewitched he would not have done what he did do.
If you perse\ere and ask why witchcraft causcd
the man to J..ill himself the Zande will reply that he
supposes someonc hated him, and if you ask him
Ilhy someone hated him your informant will tell
you that such is the nature of men.
For if A7.ande cannot enunciate a theory of cau
sation in terms accepL1ble to us they describe hap
enings in an idiom that is explanatory. They arc
:Jware that it is particular circumst:mces of e\ cnts
in their relation to man, their harmfulness to a
particular person, that constitutes evidence of
witchcraft. Witchcraft explains ",IIy crents arc
harmful to man and not how the) happen ..\ Zandc
percci\es how they happen just as we do. Ile does
not see a witch charge a man, but an cleph~mt.
lle does not see a witch push over a granary, but
termites gnaw ing away its supports. He does not
see a psyehil."'Jl flame igniting thatch, but 'lIl ordinary
lighted bundle of straw. TTis perception of hO\I
cvems occur is as clear as our own.
IV
ande belief in witchcraft in no way contradicts
empirical knowledge of causes and effect. The
world knmnl to the senses is just as real to them as
THE NOTiON OF WITCHCRAFT EXPLAINS UNFORTUNATE EVENTS
it is to us. We must not be deceived by their way of
expressing c;lUsation and imagine that becau~e
thev sa) a man \Ias killed by \\ itchcraft they
entirel) neglect the secondary causes that, as we
judge them, were the true causes nf his death.
They are foreshortening the chain of el ents, and
in a particular social sjtu~ltion are selecting the
cause th,lt i~ socially relevant and neglecting the
rest. If a man is killed by a spear in "ar, or by a
,,,ild beast in hunting, or by the bite of a snake, or
from sicJ..ness, witchcraft is the socially relevant
C:luse, since it is the only one \\ hich allows inrer
vemion and determines social beha\iollf.
Belief in death from natural causes and belief in
death from witchcraft are not mutually exclusive.
On the conrrary, they supplement one another, the
one accounting for what the other docs not account
for. Bt:sides, death is not only a natural fact hut
also a social fact. It is not simply that the heart
ceases to beat and the lungs to pump air in an
organ~m, but it is also the destruction of a mem
bcr of a famil) and kin, of a community and tribe.
Death lcads to consultation or oracles, ma~ic rites,
and revenge. Among the causes of death witch
cmfl is the only one that has any significance for
social behaviour. The attribution of misfortune to
11 itch Cf<l ft dnes not exclude what \1 e call irs real
causes but is superimposed on them and gives to
social events their moral value.
ande thought expresses the notion of natural
and mystical causation quite clearly by using a
hunting metaphor to define their relations. Azande
always sa) of "itchcraft that it is the /llflbaga or
second spear. When .-\zande kill game there is a
dil ision of meat between the man who first speared
the animal and the man who plunged a second
spear into it. These rwo are considered to have
killed the beast and the owner of 1J1e second spear
is called the IIl11baga. Hence if a man is killed by an
elephant Azande say that the elephant is the first
spear and that witchcraft is the second spear and
that together they killed the man. If a man spears
;1I1other in \I ,Ir the slayer is the first spear and
witchcraft is the second spear and together they
killed him.
Since Azande recognize plurality of causes,
and it is the social situation that indicates the
relc\'ant one, we can understand why the doctrine
of \I itchcraft is not used to explain every faiIttre and
253
misfortune. Tt sometimes happens that the social
situ'llion demands a commonsense, and not a mys
tical, judgement of cause. Thus, if you tell a lie, or
commit adulter), or steal, or deceive your prince,
and are found out, you cannot elude punishment
b) sa)ing that you \\ere be\\itchen. Zande doc
trine declares emphatically "Witchcraft docs not
make a person tell lies"; "Witchcrafr does not
makt: a person commit adultery"; "Witchcraft
docs not put adultery into a man. 'Witchcraft' is in
yourself (you alone are responsible), that is, your
penis becomes erect. It sees the hajr of a man's wife
and il rises and becomes erect because the nnly
'" itchcraft' is, itself" ("witchcraft" is here used
metaphorically); "Witchcrah does not makt: a
person steal"; "\\'itchcraft does not make a person
disloyal." Onl) on onc occasion hale T heard a
"ande plead that he was bewitched \I hen he had
committed an offence and this was \lhen he lied to
me, and even on this occasion everybod) present
laughed at him and laId him that \I itchcraft does
not ma.ke people tell lies.
If a man murders another tribesman with knife
or spear he is put to death. 11 is not necessary in
such a case to seek a witch, for an objective towards
which vengeance may be directed is already
present. Tf, on the other hand, ir is a member of
another tribe who has speared a man his relatives,
or Ilis prince, will rake steps to disco\'er the witch
responsible for the event.
It would be treason to say that a man put to
dC<lth on dIe orders of his king for an offence
against authority \1 as killed by \I;tchcrafr. If a man
were to consult the oracles to discover the witch
responsible for the death of a relative who had
been put to death at the orders of his king he would
run dle risk of being plltto death himself For ht:re
the social situation excludes the notion of witch
craft as on other occasions it pays no attention to
natural agents and emphasizes only witchcraft.
Alsn, if a man were killed in vengeance because the
oracles said that he was a 1\ itch and had murdered
another man \lith his witchcrafl then his telatives
could not sa) that be had been killed by witchcraft.
Zandc doctrine Jays it down that he died at the hand
of avengers because he was a homicide. If a man
were to have expressed the view that his kinsman
had been killed by witchcraft and to have acted
upon his opininl1 b) consulting the poison oracle,
254 E.E. EVANS-PRITCHARD
he might have been punished for ridiculing the
king's poison oracle, for it was the poison oracle of
the king that had given official confirmation of the
man's guilt, and it was the king himself who had
permitted vengeance to take its course.
In ll1ese situations witchcraft is irrelevant and,
if not totally excluded, is not indicated as the prin
cipal bctor in causation. As in our own society a
scientific theory of causation, if not excluded, is
deemed irrelevant in questions of moral and legal
responsibility, so in Zande society the doctrine of
witchcraft, if not e:..c1uded, is deemed irreleyant in
the same situations. 'We accept scientific explana
tions of the causes of disease, and e\en of the
causes of insanity, but we deny them in crime and
sin because here they militate against law and mor
als which are axiomatic. The Zande accepts a mys
tical explanation of the causes of misfortune,
sickness, and death, but he does not allo\\ this
explanation if it conflicts with social exigencies
expressed in la\\ and morals.
For witchcraft is not indicated as a cause for
failure when a taboo has been broken. If a child
becomes sick, and it is known that its father and
mother have had seAual relations before it was
weaned, the cause of death is already indicated by
breach of a ritual prohibition and the question of
witchcraft docs not arise. [f a man develops lep
rosy and there is a hi~,ory of incest in his ease then
iJ1Cest is the cause of leprosy and not witchcraft. In
these cases, however, a curious situation arises
because \\ hen the child or the leper dies it is nec
essary to avenge their deaths and the Zande sees
no difficulty in explaining what appears to us to be
most illogical behaviour. He does so on the same
pri.nciples as wben a man has been killed by a wild
beast, and he invokes the same metaphor of "sec
ond spear". [n the c-ases mentioned above there
are reall) three causes of a person's ueath. There is
the illness from \\ hich he dies, leprosy in u1e case
of the man, perhaps some feyer in the case of the
child. These sicknesses are not in themselyes
products of witchcraft, for they exist in their OW11
right just as a buffalo or a granary exist in their
own right. Then there is the breach of a taboo, in
the one case of \I eaning, in the other case of incest.
The child, and the man, developed fe\er, and lep
rosy, because a taboo was broken. The breach of a
taboo was the cause of their sickness, but the
sickness would not have killed them if witchcraft
had not also been operative. If witchcraft had nol
been present as "second spear" they would ha\1;
developed fever and leprosy just the same, but
the)' would not have died from them. In these
instances [here are two socially significant causes,
breach of taboo and witchcraft, both of which arc
relative to different social processes, and each is
emphasized b} different people.
nut where there has been a breach of [;1boo and
death is not imohed witchcraft will not be emJ..ed
a$ll cause of failure. Tf a man eats a forbidden food
after he has made powerful puniti\ e magic he may
die, and in this case the cause of his death is knO\\n
beforehand, since it is con rained in the conditjons
of 1he situation in which he died even if witchcraft
\\as also operative. But it docs not follow that he
"ill die. What does inc' itab!y loUow is that the
medicine he has made will cease to operate against
Ihe person for whom it is intenued and will base to
be desrroyed lest it turn against the magician who
sentif forth. The failure of the medici.ne to aehie\~
its purpose is due to breach of a taboo and not ro
witchcraft. If a man has had sexual relations with
his \\ ife and on the ne"\t day approaches the poison
oracle ir \\ ill not reveal ule truth and irs oracular
efficacy \1 ill be permanently undermined. If he
had not bruken a taboo it would have been said
U13t witchcraft had caused the oracle to lie, but the
condition of the person who had attended
u1e seance pro\'ides a reason for its failure to speak
the truth \1 itbout hay ing to bring in thc notion of
\\itchcraft as an agent. No one will admit that he
has broken a taboo before consulting the poison
oracle, but when an oracle lies everyone is pre
pllred tu admit that a taboo may have been broken
by someone.
Similarl}, when a poner's creations break in .fir
ing, \I itcherafr is nor the only possible cause of the
ealanlity. Jnexperience and bad workmanship may
also be reasons for failure, or the potter may him
self have had sexual relations on the preceding
night. The potter himself will auribute his failure
to witchcraft, but OUlers may not be of the sam~
opinion.
Not even all deaths arc im'ariablY and unani
mously attributed to \\ itchcraft or to the bread! of
some taboo. The deaths of babies from certain dis
eases are attributed vague!) to the Supreme Being.
THE NOTION OF WITCHCRAFT EXPLAINS UNFORTUNATE EVENTS
\lso, ira man falls suddenly and violently sick and
dies, his relatives ma) be sure that a sorcerer has
made magic against him and that it is not a witch
\\ho has killed him. A breach of the obligations of
hlood-brotherhood may swcep away whole groups
of kin. and whcn one after another of brothers
and cousins die it is the blood and not witchcraft
10 "hich their deaths <Ire attributed by outsiders,
though the relatives ohhe dead will seek to a\enge
them on \\ itches. When a \ery old man dies,
unrelated people say that he has died of old age,
hut they do nor say this in the presence of kins
men, who declare that witchcraft is responsible for
his c1eath.
Jt is also thought that adultery may cause mis
fortune, though it is only one participating factor,
and witchcraft is also belie\ed to be presem. Thus
is it said that a man may be killed in \larfaIe or in
a hunting accidcnt as a result of his \1 ife's infideb
Lies. Therefore, before going to war or on a large
scale hunting expedition a man might ask his wife
10 di\ ulge the names of her lovers.
Even \\here breaches of law and moral, do not
occur witchcraft is not the onl) reason given for
fiiluTt:. Jncomperencc, laziness, and ignonUlce
may be selected as causes. When a girl smashes her
water-pot or a boy forgets to close the door of tile
hen-house at night they will be admonished
se\erely by their parcnts for stupidity. The mis
takes of children are due to carelessness or igno
rance and they are taught to a\oid them while the)
arc still young. People do not sa} that they are
effects of witchcraft, or if they are prepared to
concede thc possibility of \\ itchcraftthe) consider
stupidity rhe main cause. Moreover, rhe Zande is
not so nahe that he holds \\;tchcrafr responsihle
for the cracking of a pot during firing if subse
quent examination shows that a pebble \\ 'IS left in u1e
ChI), or for an animal escaping his net if someone
frightened it awa) b) a mo\'e or a sound. People do
nOI blame \1 itchcraft if a woman burns her por
ridge nor if she presents it undercooked to her
husband. -\-nd "hen an inexperienced craftsman
makes a slool which lach polish or which splits,
this is put do\\ n to his inexperience.
Tn all these cases the man who suffers the mis
fortune is likely to say that il is due to \\ itchcraft,
hut others II ill not sa) so. We must bear in mind
nevertheless that ,I serious misfortune, especially
255
if it results in death, is normally attributed by
everyone to the action of \I itcheraft, especialJy b)
tbe sufferer and bis kin, however much it ma) have
been due to a man's incompetence or absence of
self-control. If a man falls into a fire and is seri
ously burnt, or faUs into a game-pir and breaks bis
neck or his leg, it would undoubtedly be attributed
to witchcraft. Thus when six or seven of the sons
of Prince Rikita were entrapped in a ring uf fire
and burnt to death when hunting cane-rats their
dealh "as undoubtedly due to \"itehcrafl.
Hence we see that witchcraft has its own logic,
its own rules of thought, and that these do not
exclude natural causation. Belief in \\ itchcraft is
quite consistenr with human responsibility and a
rational appreciation of nature. First of all a man
must carry om an activity accurding to traditional
rules of technique, which consist of knowledge
che.cked b} trial and error in each generation. It is
onl) if he f;lils in spite of adherence to these rule~
that people \\ ill impute his lack of success to
\\ itch craft.
v
It is often asked "hether primitivc people distin
glJisll between the natural and the supernatural,
and the query may he here answered in a prelimi
nary manner in respect to the A7.andc. The ques
tion as it stands may mean, do primitive peoples
distinguish hetween the natural and the supernal
ural in the abstract? We haye a notion of an ordered
world conforming 10 "hat we call naturalla\\s, but
some people in our society believe rhat mysterious
things can happen \\ hich cannot be accounted for
by reference to natural laws and \\hich therefore
are held to transcend them, and we call these hap
penings supernatural. To us supernatural means
ver) much rhe same as abnormal or extraordinary.
Azande certainly haye no such notions of reality.
They have no conceptions of "natural" as we
understand it, and therefore neither uf the "super
natural" as we understand it. Witchcraft is to
}\.zande an ordinary and not an extraordinar),
e\en ulOugh it may in some circumstances be an
infrequent, e\'ent. h is a normal, and not an abnor
mal, happening. But if they do not give to the.
natural and supernatural the meanings \\ hich edu
cated Europeans giYe to them the}' ncrerrheless
256 E. E. EVANS- PRITCHARD
distinguish bet"cen them. For our question may
be formulated, and should be formulated, in a dif
ferent manner. \\ie ought rather to ask whether
primitive peoples perceive any difference between
the happenings ,\ hich we, the observers of tlleir
culture, class as natur,ll and the happenings which
we class as mystical. Azande undoubtedly percei"e
a difference between what we consider the work
ings of natUJ'e on the one hand and the workings of
magic and ghosts and witchcraft on thc other
hand, though in the absence of a formulated doc
trine of natural law they do not, and cannot,
express the difterencc as we express it.
Thl.; Zande notion of \\ irchcraft is incompatible
\\ il h our ways of thought. But even to the Azande
there is somethin~ peculiar about the action of
witchcraft. Normally it can be perceived only in
dreams. It is not an evident notion but transcends
sensory experience. They do not profess to under
stand witchcraft entirely. They know that it exists
and ,\orks evil, but they have to guess at the man
ner in which it works. Indeed, I have frequently
been struck when discussing witchcraft with
Azande by the doubt they express about the sub
ject, not on.ly in what they say, but even more in
their manner of saying it, both of which COntTast
with their ready knowledge, fluently imparted,
about social events ancl economic techniques.
They feel out of their depth in trying to describe
the way in which witchcraft accomplishes its
ends. That it kills people is obviou~ but bo\\ it
kills them cannor be "no\\ n precisely. They ttll
you that perhaps jf you were to ask an older man or
a witch-doctor he might gi"e you more informa_
lion. But the older men and the witch-doctors can
tell you linle more than youth and laymen. They
only know what the others know: that rhe sOlll of
witchcraft [1;oes by night and devours the soul of
its \ictim. Only witches themseh'cs understund
these matters fully. In truth Azande cxperience
feelings about witchcraft rather than ideas, for
their intellectual concepts of it arc weak and they
know better what to do when attacked by it than
how to explain it. Their response is action and
not analysis.
There is no elaborate and consistent represen
tation of '\-itchcraft thar will account in detail for its
,..,orkings, nor of nature which e\pounds its con
formity to sequences and functional interrelations.
The Zande actualizes these beliefs ratller than
intellectualizes them, and rlleirtenets are expressed
in socially control1l:d behaviour rather than in
doctrines. Hence the difficult) in discussing the
subject of witchcraft with Azande, for their ideas
arc in1prisoned in action and cannot be cited to
explain and justify act.ion.
17
Understanding a Primitive Society
Peter Winch
The Reality of Magic
.\n anthropologist studying a primitiye people
with beliefs that we cannot possibly share and
practices we cannot comprehend wishes to make
tllose beliefs and practices imcJligible to himself
and his readers. This means presen611g an account
of them that will somehow satisfy the criteria of
r~lionabt) demanded by the cultw-c to which he
and his readers belong: a culture whose concep
tion of rationality is deeply affected by the achieve
ments and methods of the sciences, and one which
treats such things as a belief in magic or the
practice of consulting oracles as almost a paradigm
of the irrational. The strains inherent in this situ
ation are very likely to lead the antllropologist to
allopt tlle followin[1; posture: 11 e know that Zande
beliefs in the influence of witchcraft, the efficacy
of magic medicines, the role of oracles ill revealing
\1 h.lt is going on and what is going to happen, are
mistaken, illusory. Scientilic methods of investiga
tion h3\c shown conclusivelv tllat there are no
rebtions of cause and effect such as are implied bv
these beliefs and practices. All we can do then is to
From Pcter Winch, "Understanding:1 Primitive Soeiel}", Amaici/ll Philo.\(lphic(/1 Qllllrfff{)I, I(19M), pp. 307-24, rrom
.\mcriean Philosophic:ll Quarterly.
show hm, such a system of mist.1ken beliefs and
inefficacious practices ca.n maintain itself in the
face of objections that seem to us so obI iolts. 1
Now although E,.l11s-Pritchard goes a 'cry great
deal further than most of his predecessors in trying
to present tl1e sense of the institurions he iR dis
cussing as it presents itself to the !\zande them
selves, still, the last paragraph docs, I believe, prelly
fairly describe the auitude he himself took at the
time of writing this book. There is more than one
remark to the effect that "ob, iously there are no
witches"; and he writes of the diflicllity he found,
during his field work with the Azande, in shaking
off the "unreason" on which Zande life is based
and returning to a clear view of hO\\ things really
arc. This attitude is not an unsophisticated one but
is based on a philosophical position ably developed
in a series of papers published in the 1930s in the
unhappily rather inaccessible Billie/iII ,~{Jht' Fimtl~)1
of- 1r/s of the Uni,ersity of Eb'YPt. A.rguing against
Levy-Bruhl, E''lOs-Pritcha.rd here rejects the idea
that the scientific understanding of causes ~Uld
effects which leads us to reject magical ideas is
e"idence of any superior intelligence on our part.
258 PETER WINCH
Our scientific approach, he points out, is as much a
function of our culture as is the magical approach
of the "savage" a function of his:
The fact that we atrributc rain to meteorological
calL';es alone while savages believe that Gods or
ghosts or magic can inOuencc the rain-fall is no
evidence that our brains flmeuon differently from
their brains )t docs not show lhat \\c "rhink more
logically" than savages, at least nOI if this expres
sion suggests some kind of hereditary psychic
superiority, It is no sign of superior intelligence on
m~ part that I attribute rain to physical causes, I
did not come to this conclusion myself by observa
tion and inference and ha\ e, in fact, little knowl
edgc of the mcterological process that lead to rain,
I mcrely accept what evcrybody else in my societ)
accepts, namedy lh:lt rain is due to nalllrdl causes,
This particular idea formed part of 01) culture
long before I was bam into it and linle more was
required of me Lhan sufficient linguistic ability to
karn it, Likewise a savage \\ho belie\es that under
suitable naliral and ritual conditions the rainfall
can be influenced by use of appropriatc magic is
not OTI account of this belief to be considered of
inferior intelligcnce. I-Ie did not build up this belief
from his own observations 'lOd inferences but
adopted it in the same way as he adopted the rest of
his cultural heritage, namely by bcing born imo it.
I Ie and r arc both thinking in panerns of though t
provided for us by the societies in which WI;; live,
It would be absurd to sa) that the sa\age is
thinking m~~tica]Jy and that we are thinling sci
entificallyaboul rainfall, Jn either case like mental
processes are involved and, moreover, the content
of thought is similarly derived_ But we can say
that the social content of our lhought about rain
fall is scientific, is in accord with objecti\-c facts,
whereas the social content of sa\agc thought
abollt rainfall is unscientific since it is not in
accord with reality and may also be mystical where
it assumes thc existence of suprasensib.!e forces. ~
In a subsequent article on Pareto, Evans-Pritchard
distinguishes between "logical" and "scienrific,"
Scientific notions are those which accord with
objecti\-c realit) both with regard to thc validity
of their premisscs and to the inferences drawn
from their proposiTions ,., Logical nodons are
rhose in \\ hich according to thc rules of thoughl
inferences would be true were the premisses true,
the truth of the premisses being irrelemnt '"
A pot has broken during tiring. This is probably
due to grit. Let us examine the pot and see if this
is the cause. That is logical and scienrific thought.
Sickness is due to witchcraft. A man is sick. l.et
us consu h the oracles to Jiscover whu is the witch
responsible, That is logical and unscientific
thought:1
Ilhink t11at Evans-Pritchard is right in a great deal
of what he says here, but wrong, and cruciaU_I
wrong, in his attempt to characterize the scientific
in terms of that which is "in accord with objecti\ c
reality" Despite differences of emphasis and phnl
seolog}, Evans-Pritchard is in fact hereby put into
the same metaphysical camp as Pareto: for both (ll
them the conception of "re.ality" must be regarded
as intelligible and applicable olllsidt' the context of
scientific reasoning itself, since it is rh:tt to \1 hieh
scientific norions do, and unscientific notions do
not, have a relation, Evans-Pritchard, although he
emphasizes that a member of scientific culture has
a different conception of reality from that of a
ande believer in magic, wants to go beyond merely
rqristcring this fact and making the differences
explicit, and to say, finally, that the scientific
conception agrees \1 ith \Ihat reality actually is like,
",here,]S the magical conception docs not.
It would be eas~, at this point, to say simply that
the difficulty arises from the usc of tlle unwieldy
nd misleadingly comprehensivc expression
"agreement with reality"; and jn a sense this is
true, But we should not lose sight of the fact that
the ide-a that men's ideas and beliefs must be check
able by reference to something independent
some reality - is ,m important one, To abandon it
is to plunge SlTaight into an extreme Protagorean
relati\'ism, \\ ith all the paradoxes that im ohes,
On the other hand great care is certainly necessary
in fixing the precise role that this conception of
the independentl) real docs play in men's thoughl
There are twu related points that 1 should like to
make about jt at this stage,
In the first place we should notice that the chL'Ck
of the independently real is not peculiar to science,
The trouble is that the fascination science has
for us makes it easy for us to adopt its scientific
form as a paradigm against which to measur,'
UNDERSTANDING A PR:'.,:TIVE SOCIETY
lhe intellectual n:spectability of other modes of
discourse, Consider whilt God says to Job out of
(he whirl" ind: "Who is this that darkeneth counsel
b\ words \\ ithout kno\\ ledge? ,', Where wast thou
\I'hen r laid the foundations of thc earth? declare, if
Ul0U hast understanding, Who hath laid the meas
ures thereof, iftholl knowest' or who hath stretched
Ule line upon it ,,' Shall he that contendeth with
the .-\lmighty instruct him? he that repro\-eth God,
let him an~wer it," Job is taken to task for having
gone astra) by having lost sight of the real if)' of
God; this does not, of course, mean that Job has
made an) sort of theoretical mistake, which could
he pm right, perhaps, by means of an experimenL.~
God's reality is certainly independent of what any
man may care to think, but what that reality
amounts to can only be seen from the religious tra
dition in which the concept of God is used, and
[his u,e is \er) unlike the use of scientific concepts,
sa~ of theoretical entities, The point is that it is
/IIi/it ill the religious use of language that the con
ception of God's reality has its place, though, I
repeat, thi~ does not mean that it is at the mere) of
\1 hal anyone care~ to say; if this were so, God would
ha~e no realit~,
My second point follows from the first, Reality
is not \\ hat gives language sense, What is real and
II'hat is unreal shows itself in the sense that lan
guage has. Further, both the distinction between
the real and the unreal and the concept of agree
meTJl with reality themselves belong to our lan
guage, I \1 ill not sa) that they are concepts of the
language lile any other, since it is clear that Lhey
OCCUp) a commanding, and in a sense a limiting,
position there. We can imagine a language with no
concept, of, say, welness, but hardly one in which
there is no wa) of distinguishing the real from
the unreal. Nevertheless we could not in fact
dislingui~h the real from the unreal without
understanding the \\ ay this distinction operates in
the language, 1f then we wish to understand [he
significance of these concepts, we must examine
the use the) actually do have - in the language,
~\ans-Pritch;lrd, on the contrary, is trying to
Ilork \Iith a conception of reality \\ hich is not
determined by its actual usc in language, He wants
something against which the usc can itself be
appraised. But this is not possible; and no more
possible in the lase of scientific discourse than it is
259
in any other, We may ask whether a particular sci
entific hypothesis agrees with rea.!ity and test this
by obscn-ation 'Uld experinlent, Giyen the experi
mental methods, and the established usc of the
theoretical terms entering into the hypothesis,
Lhen the question \I hether it holds or not is set tkd
by reference to something independent of what I,
or anybody else, care to think. But the general
nature of the data ren.:aled b) the experiment can
only be specified in terms of criteria built into the
methods of experiment employed and these, in
tum, make sense only to someone who is conver
sant with the kind of scientific activit) within
which they are employed. A scientific illiterate,
asked to describe the results of an experiment
which he "obscn es" in an advanced physics labo
r,ttory, could not do so in terms relevant to the
hypothesis being tested; and it is really only in
such terms that we can sensibly speak of the
"results of the experiment" at all. "Vhat Evans
Pritchard wants to be able to say is l-har the criteria
applied in scientific experimentation constitute a
true link between our ideas and an independent
reality, \I hereas those characteristic of other s~ s
tems of thought - in particular, magical methods
of lhought - do not, It is evident that the expres
sions "true link" and "independent realit)" in the
previous sentence cannot themselves he explained
by reference to the scientific uni\' erse of discourse,
as this would beg the question, We have then t
ask how, by reference to what established universe
of discourse, the use of those expressions Is to be
explained; and it is clear that Eyans-Pritchard has
not answered dlis question,
Two questions arise out of what T have been
saying, First, is it in fact the case that a primitive
system of magic, like that of the A'~ande, consti
tutes a coherent universe of discoursc like science,
in terms of which an intelligible conception of
reality and clear ways of deciding what belie(s
are and are Tlot in agret:ment with this r<oalit) can
be discerned! Second, what arc we to ma\"e of lhe
possibility of understanding primitive social insti
tutions, like Zande magic, if rhe situation is as
I have outlined? I do not claim to be able to give a
satisfactory :lllswer to tbe second question, It raises
some very important a.nd fundamental issuCi> about
the nature of human social life, which require
conceptions different from, and harder to elucidate
260 PETEA WINCH UNDERSTANDING A PRIMITIVE SOCIETY 261

than, those I have hitherto introduced. I shall offer
some tenrative remarks about these issues in the
second part of this essay. At present 1 shall address
mysclf to the first question.
It ought to be remarked here that an affirmative
answer to my .first question would not commit me
to accepting as rational all beliefs couched in mag
ical concepts or all procedures practiced in the
name of such beliefs. This is no more necessary
than is the corresponding proposition that all pro
cedures "justified" i.n the name of science are
immune from rational criticism. A remark of
Colling-wood's is apposite here:
Savages are no more exempt from human folly
than civilized men, and are no doubt equallY
liable to the error of thinking: that they, or the
persons they regard as their superiors, can do
what in fact cannot be done. But this error is not
the essence of magic; it is a perversion of magic.
.\TId we should be careful how we attTibute it to
the people we call savages, who will one day rise
up and testify against us 5
lr is important to distinguish a system of magical
beliefs and practices like that of the Azand~ which
is one of the principal foundations of their whole
social life and, on the other hand, magical beliefs
that might be held, and magical rites that might be
practised, by persons belonging to our own culture.
Thcse have to be understood rather differently.
Evans-Pritchard is himself alluding to the differ
ence in the following passagc: "When a Zande
speaks of witchcraft he docs not speak of it as we
speak of the weird witchcraft of OlLr own history.
Witchcraft is to him a commonplace happening
and llC seldom passes a day without mentioning it
To us witchcraft is something which haunted
and disgusted our credulous forefathers. But the
Zande e-xpects to come across witchcraft at an)
time of the day or night, He wou Id be just as sur
prised ifhe wen: not brought into dail) comaci with
it as we would be if confronted by its appearance.
To him there is nothing miraClllous about iL"fi
The differenc.: is not merely one of degree of
familiarity, however, although, perhaps, even this
has more importance than might at first appear.
Concepts of wirchcraft and magic in our culmre,
at least since the advent of Christianit}, have been
parasitic on, and a perversion of other orthodox
concepts, both religious and, increasingly, scien_
tific. To take an obvious example, you could not
understand what was involved in conducting a
Black Mass, unless you were familiar with the
conduct of a propcr Mass and, therefore, with
the whole complex of religious ideas from which
the mass draws its sense. Neither would you
understand the relation bet\\een the-se without
taking account of the fact that the Black practices
are rejected as irmziri/lO! (in the senSe proper to
religion) in the sYStem of beliefs on which these
practices are thus parasitic. Perhaps a similar rela
tion holds between the contemporary practice Ill"
astrology and astronomy and technology. It is
impossible to keep a discussion of rile rationality
of Black Magic or of astrolog) within the bounds
of concept~ peculiar to them; they have an essen
tial reference to something outside themselves.
The position is lile that which Socrates, in Plato's
Corgios, showed to be true of the Sophists' con
ception of rhetoric: namel), that it is parasitic on
rational discourse in such a way that its irrational
character can be shown in terms of this depend
ence. Hence, when we speak of such practices as
"superstitious," "illusor)'," "irrational," \\ c have
the weight of our culture behind us; and this is not
just a matter of heing on the side of the big' bat
talions, because those beliefs and practiccs belong
to, and derive such sense as they seem to ha\e,
from the same cultllte. This enables us to shOll
that the sense is only apparent, in terms which are
culturall) rele\ant.
It is evident that our relation to Zallde magic is
quite different. If we wish to understand it, we
must seek a foothold elsewhere. And while there
may well be room for the use of such critie;U
expressions as "superstition" and "irrationality",
lhe kUld of rationality with which such terms
might be used to poiIlt 0 contrast remains to be
elucidated....
Early in his book Evans-Pritchard defines cer
tain categories in terms of which his descriptions
of Zande customs are couched.
MYSTICAL NOTIONS ... are patterns of thought
that attribute to phenomena suprasensiblc quali
ties which, or part of which, are not deri\cd from
observation or cannot be logic..u) inferred from it,
IIlId Il'hich Ihey do 1/01 possess.' CO~L\tO"-SE.~SE
:"Jonoxs ... attribute to phenomena only whal
men observe in them or what can logically be
inferred from obsenation. So long as a notion
docs not assert something which has nOI been
observed, it is not classed as mystical even Ihough
it is mistaken on account of incomplete observa
lion .. SetL"'] LFTC NonoNs. Science has de\'c1
oped our of common sense but is far more
melhodical and has hener techniques of obsen'a
rion and reasoning. Common sense uses experi
ence and rules ofthwnb. Science uses experiment
and rules of Logic ... GlIr botiy o.(.melltijii- ('/lOW/-'
edge (/1/(/ Lugic arc the sole arbiters (If what are mys
lica/, wmmon .<ense, and sde11lific /lUliolls. Their
judgments are never absolute. RlTtJiU_ BEIIAVrOL'R.
_\ny beha\-iour that is accounted for by mystical
notions. Then is 170 u!J]eclive nexus between the
behaviour and the e\'em it is intended to cause.
SUdl behaviour is usuallj intelligible to us only
\\-hen \Ie knO\\ the mystical notions associated
willl it. EMPlRlC.,I ~EHt\VIOLR.Any behaviollf that
is 3ccomlled for by common-sense notions.
It will be seen from the phrases which I have itali
cized that Evans-Pritchard is doi.ng more here
than just defining certain terms for his own use.
Certain metaphysical claim.s arc embodied ill the
definitions: identicallll substance with the claims
embodied in Pareto's way of distinguishing
between "logical" and "non-logical" conduct 9
There is a very clear inlplication dlat those who
use mystical notions and perform ritual behaviour
are making some sort of mistake, derectable with
the aid of science and logic. I sl1:t1I now examine
1110re closely some of the illStitutions described by
Evans-Pritchard to determine how far his claims
are justified.
Witcltmifi. is a power possessed by certain indi
viduals to harm other individuals by "mystical"
means. Irs basis is an inherited org.mic condition,
"Witchcraft-substance", and it does not involve any
special magical ritual or medicine. It is constantly
appealed to by Azande when tiley are afllicted by
misfortune, not so as to exclude explanation in
terms of natural causes, which Azande are per
fectly able to offer themselves within the limits of
their not inconsiderable natural knowledge, but so
as to supplement such explanations. "Witchcraft
explains wltylll e\'ents are harmIul to man and
not IIOW IO they happen. A Zande perceives how
they happell just as we do. He does not see a witch
charge a man but an elephant. He does not see a
witch push over the granary, but termites gnawing
away its supports. He does not see a psvchical
flame igniting thatch, but an ordinary lighted bun
dle of straw. His perception of how events occur is
as clear as our own."1!
The most important way of detecting the influ
ence of witchcraft and of identif) ing witches is by
the re\e1ations of oracles, of which in turn the
most important is the "poison oracle". This name,
though convenient, is significantly misleading in
so far as, according to Evans-Prilchard, Azande do
not have our concept of a poison and do not think
ol~ or behave towards, benge- the substance admin
istered in the consultation of the oracle - as we do
of and towards poisons. The gathering, prepara
tion, and administering of bmge is hedged with
ritual and strict taboos. At an oracular consulta
tion bmge is administered to a fowl, while a ques
tion is asked in a form permitti.ng a yes or no
answer. The fowl's death or survival is specified
beforehand as giving the answer "yes" or "no".
The answer is then checked by administering
benge to another fowl and asking the question the
other way round. "Is Prince Ndoruma responsible
for placing bad medicines in the roof of my hut?
The fowl DIES giving the answer 'Yes' ... Did tlle
oracle speak truly when it said thar Ndoruma was
responsible? The fowl SURVIVES giving the answer
'Yes'." The poison oracle is all--pervasive in Zande
life and all steps of any importance in a person's
life are settled by reference to it.
A Zande would be utterly lost and bewildered
without his oracle. The majnstay of his life would
be lacking. It is rather as if an engineer, in our soci
ety, were to be asked to build a bridge without
mathematical calculation, or a military commander
to mount an extensive coordinated ottack without
the usc of clocks. These analogies are mine, but a
reader rna\' well tbink that they beg the question at
issue. For, he may argue, the Zande practice of
consulting the oraclc, unlike my technological and
military exanlples, is completely unintelligible and
rests on an obvious illusion. I shall now consider
this objection.
First I must emphasize that I have so far done little
more than note the .(ael, conclusivcly established
262 PETER WINCH
by E\ans-Pritchard, that the Azamle do in fact
conduct their affairs to their 0\\11 satisfaction in
this way and arc at a loss when forced to abandon
the practice - when, for instance, they fall into the
hands of European courts. It is worth remarking
too that Evans-Pritchard himself ran his house
hold in the same way during his field researches
and says: "I found this as satisfactory a way of run
ning m) home and affairs as any other I know of."
Further, J would ask in m) turn: to whom is the
practice alleged to be unintelligible? Certainly it is
difficult for us to understand whar the Azande arc
about when the) consult their oracles; but it might
seem just as incredible to them that the engineer's
motions with his slide rule could ha\'e any con
nection \\ ith the stability of his bridge. But this
riposte of course misses the interntion behind
the objection, which was not directed to the
question whether anyone in fact understands, or
claims to understand, what it going on, but rather
whether what is going on actuallv does make
sense: i.e., in itself. And it may seem obvious that
ande beliefs in witchcraft and oracles cannot
make an) sense, however satisfied the Azande
may be with them.
What criteria have we for saying that something
does, or does not, make sense? A partial answer is
that a set of beliefs and practices cannot make
sense in so far as they il1\'olve contradictions. Now
it appears tbat contradictions are bound to arise in
at least two ways in the consultation of the oracle.
On the one hand two oracular pronouncements
may contradict each other; and on the other hand
a self-consistent oracular pronouncenlent rna) be
contradicted by future experience. I shall examine
ch of these apparent possibilities in turn.
Of COLUse, it does happen often that the oracle
first says "yes" and then "no" to thc same ques
tion. This does nOl convince a Zande of the futil
ity of the whole operalion of consulting oracles:
obviously, it cannot, since otherwise the practice
could hardly have de\'eloped and maintained
itself at all. Various explanations may be offered,
whose possibility, it is important to notice, is built
into the whole nel work of Zande beliefs and may,
therefore, be regmded as belonging to the con
cept of an oracle. It may be said, for instance, th:1l
bad benge is being used; that the operaror of the
oracle is ritually unclean; that the oracle is being
itself influenced by witchcraft or sorcer)~; or it
may he that the oracle is showing that the ques
tion cannot be answered straightforwardly in its
present form, as with "Have you stopped beating
your wife yet?" There are variolls ways in which
the behaviour of the fowl under the influence of
benge may be ingeniollsly interpreted by those
wise in the ways of the poison oracle. We might
compare this situation perhaps with the interpre_
tation of dreams.
[n the other type of case: where an internally
consistent oracular revelution is apparently con
tradicted by subscquent experience, the situation
rna) be dealt with in a similar way, by references to
the influence of witchcraft, ritual uncleanliness,
and so on. But there is another important consitl
eration we must take into account here too. The
chief function of oracles is to reveal the presence
of "mystical" forces - I use Evans-Pritchartl's
term without commining myself to his denial that
such forces really exist. Now though there arc
indeed ways of determining whether or not mysti
cal forces are operating, these ways do not corre
spond to what we understand by "empiriul"
confirmation or refutation. This indeed is a tautol
og), since such differences in "confirmatory" pro
ced ures are the main cri teria for classifying
somcthing as a mystical force in the first place.
I [ere we ha\'e one reason why the possibilities of
"refutation by experience" are very much fewer
than might at first sight be supposed.
There is also another closely connected reason.
The spirit in which oracles are consulted is very
unlike that in which a scienlist makes experimenrs.
Oracular re\elations are not treated as hypotheses
and, since their sense deri\'es from the way they
are treated in their context, they therefore are no/
hypotheses The) are not a matter of intellectual
interest but the main way in which Azande decide
ho\\ they should act. If the oracle reveals that a
proposed course of action is fraught with mystical
dangers from witchcraft or sorcery, that course of
action will not be carried out; and then the ques
rion of refutation or confirmation just docs not
arise. \Ve might say that Lhe revelation has the
logical status of ;In unfulfilled hypothetical, were it
nor that the context in which this logical term is
generally used ma~' again suggest a mis1eadinly
close analogy \~;th scientific hypotheses.
UNDERSTANDING A PRIMITIVE SOCIETY
100 not think that Evans-Pritchard would have
disagreed with what I have said so far. Indeed, the
follo\\ jng comment is on very similar lines:
!\Z,1I1dc obscne the action of the poison oracle as
Ill' observe it, but their observalions are always
subordinated to their beliefs and arc incorporated
into lheir beliefs and made to explain them and
justify Ihem. Let the reader consider any argu
mcnt that would utterly demolish all Zande
claims for the power of the oracle. If it were
translated into Zande modes of thought it would
serve to support their entire structure of belief
For their mystical notions are eminenLly coher
ent, being interrelated bv a network of logical
ties, and are so ordered dlat they never roo
crudely contradict sensory experience but,
imtcad, experience seems ro justify them. The
~ande is immersed in a sea of mystical notions,
and if he speaks about his poison oracle he must
speak in a mystical idiom. 1l
To locate the point at which the important philo
sophical issue does arise, 1 shall offer a parody,
composed by changing round one or two expres
sion in t.he foregoing quotation.
Europeans observe the action of the poison oracle
just as Azande observe it, but their observations
are ah\ays subordinated to their beliefs and are
incorporated into their beLiefs and made ro explain
lhem and justify them. Let a Zande consider any
argument that would utterly refute all European
scepticism about the power of the oracle. If it
\\ere translated into European modes of thought
it would serve to support their entire structure of
belief. For their scientific notions are eminently
coherent, being interrelated by a network of logi
cal tics, and are so ordered that they never too
crudely contradict mystical experience but,
instead, experience seems to justify them. The
European is immersed in a sea of scientific
notions, and if he speaks about the Zande poison
orach: he must speak in a scientific idiom.
Perhaps this too would be acceptable to Evans
Pritchard. But it is clear from other remarks in the
boo].. to \1 hich I have alluded, that at the time of
writing he would have wished to add: and the
European is right and the Zande wrong. This
263
addition I regard as illegitimate and my reasons
for so thinking take us to the heart of the nutter.
It may be illuminating at this point to compare
the disagreement between E\ans-Pritchard and me
to that between the Wittgenstein ofthe Philosoplrirol
II/vestigations and his earlier alter ego of the Traelatlls
Log/ro-Philosophicus. In the TruetalllS Wittgenstein
sought "the general form of propositions": what
made propositions possible. He said that this
general form is: "This is how things are"; the prop
osition was an articulated model, consisting of cle
ments standing in a definite relation to each other.
The proposition was true when there existed a cor
responding arrangement of elements in reality.
The proposition was capable of saying something
because of the identity of structure, of logical form,
in the proposition and in reality.
By the time Wittgenstein composed the
1wrest/gat/ollS he had come to reject the whole idca
that there must be a general form of propositions.
He emphasized the indefinite number of diffcrent
uses that language may have and tried to show that
these different uses neither need, nor in fact do, all
have something in common, in the sense intended
in the Traclallls. He also tried to show that what
counts as "agreement or disagreement with reality"
takes on as many different forms as there are
different use of language and cannot, therefore, be
taken as given prior to the detailed investigation of
the use that is in question.
The Tractll//lS contains a remark strikingly like
something that Evans-Pritchard says.
The limils of 1/1)' Itmguage mean the l/mi/s of 111)1
world. Logic fills the world: the limits of tile \Iorld
are also its Limits. We cannot therefore sa) in logic:
This and this there is in the world, and that there
is nor.
For that would apparently presuppose that
we exclude certain possibilities, and this cannot
be the case since otherwise logic must get outside
the limils of the world: that is, if it could consider
these limits from the other side also. 1J
Evans-Pritchard discusses the phenomena of belief
and scepticism, as they 1ppear in Zanue life. There
is certainly widesprtad scepticism about certain
things, for instance, about some of the pO\\"ers
claimed by witchdoctors or about the efficacy of
26-1 PETER WINCH
certain magic medicines. But, he points out, such
scepricism does not begin to overrurn the mystical
way of thinking, since it is necessarily expressed in
terms belonging to that way of thinking.
In this web of belief every strand depends on
every other strand, and a Zande cannot get
outside its meshes because this is the only world
he knows. The web is not an extemal structure in
which he is enclosed. It is the texture of his
thought and he cannot think that his thought j;,
wrong. H
Wittgcnstein and Eyans-Pritchard are concerned
here with much the same problem, though the dif-
ference in the directions from which they approach
it is iJnportant too. Wittgenstein, at the time of the
7'rac/{/fus, spoke of "language", as if all language is
fundamentall y of the same kind and must have the
same kind of "relation to rcality"; but Evans
Pritchard is confronted b) two languages whicb he
recognizes as fundamentally different in kind,
such that much of what may be expressed in the
one has no possible counterpart in the other.
One might, therefore, have expected this to lead to
a position closer to that of the Philosophical
Jllvesfigofio11S lhan to that of the 1i{/((atus. b'aIlS-
Pritchard is not content with elucidating the dif
ferences in the two concepts of reality im-olved; he
wants to go further and say: our concept of realit)
is the correct one, the Azande are mistaken. But
the difficulty is to sec what "correct" and "mis
taken" can me-.w in this context.
Let me return to the subject of contradictions. I
have alre~ldy noted that many contradictions we
might expect to appear in fact do not in the con
text of Zande thought, where provision is malic
for avoiding them. But there are some situations of
which this docs not seem to be true., where what
appeal' to us as obvious contradictions are left
where they are, apparently unresolved. Perhaps
this may be the foothold we are looking for, from
which we can appraise the "correctness" of the
Zandc system.
Con<;ider Zande notions about the inheritance
of witchcraft. I haye spoken so far only of the role
of oracles in establishing whether or not someone
is a witch. But there is a further and as we might
think, more "direct" method of doing' this, namel)
by posnnortem examination of a suspect's intes
tines for "witchcraft-substance". This may be
arranged by his fami!) after his de.1dl in an attempt
to clear the family name of the imputation of
\\itchcraft. Evans-Pritchard remarks: "To our
minds it appcars evident that if a man is proven a
witch the whole of his clan an: ipso jiwo witches,
since the Zandc clan is a group of persons related
biological!) to one another through the male line.
Awnde see the sense of this argument but they do
not accept its conclusions, and it "ould im-ohe
the whole notion of \\ltchcraft in contradiction
were the) to do so."\' Contradiction would pre
sumably arise because a fe" positi\ e results of
post-morrem examinations, scattered among all
the clans, wou.ld very soon prove that cYerbody
was a witch, and a few negatj\'e results, scattered
among the same clans, \\ould prove that nobody
was a witch. Though, in particular situations,
individual Azande may a\oid personal implirn
tions arising out of the presence of \\ itchcraft
substance in deceased relatives, b) imputations of
bastardy and similar de\'ices, this would not be
enough to save the generally contradictory situa
tion I have sketched. Evans--Pritchard comments:
"Azande do not perceive the contradiction as we
perceive it because they have no thenretical inter
est in the subject, and those situations in which
they express their belief in witchcraft do not force
the problem upon them."16
It might nO\I appear as though we had clear
grounds for speaking of the superior rationality of
European over Zande thought, in so far as the
latter involves a contradiction which it makes no
attempt to remove and does not even recognize:
one, however, which is recognizable as such in the
context of European ways of thinking. But J(leS
Zande thought on this matter really Ul\'ohe a con
tradiction? It appears from Evans-Pritchard's
account that Azande do not press tbeir ways of
thinking about witches to a point at wbich they
would be in\oh-ed in contradictions.
Someone may no\\ \\alll to sa) that the irration
ality of the Azande in relation to \\itchcraft ShOlIS
itself in the fact that they do not press their
thought about it "to its logical conclusion"'. To
ar>praise this point \\e must consider whether the
conclusion we arc trying to force on them is indeed
a logical one; or perhaps better, whether someone
UNDERSTANDING A PRIMITIVE SOCIETY
II ho docs press this conclusion is being more
rJtionallhan the AZlmde, who do not. Some light
is thrown on this question b) Wittgenstein's dis
cussion of a game.
such that whoever begins can always win by a
particular simple trick. But this has not been
realized - so it is a game. Noll' someone draws our
3uenrion to it - and it stops being a game.
What turn can ] give this, to make it clear to
111) self? - Por I want to say: "and iT stops being
a game" - not: "and nOlI lIe see that it wasn't a
game."
That means, I want to say, it can also be taken
like this: the other man did not draw our atiClulorr
to an) thin~; be taughl us a different game in place
of our own. But how can the new game have made
the okl one obsolete? We now see something dif
fCTl'nt, and can no longer nai'vcly go on playing.
On the one hand the game consisted in our
actions (our play) on the board; and these actions
I could perform as well now as before. But on
the other hand it was essential TO the game that
1 blindl} tried to win; and now r can no longer
do thal. l ;
There are obviously considerable analobries bct
ween Willgenstein's example and the situation we
are considering. But there is an equalJ) important
difference. Both Wittgcnstein's games; the old one
I\ithout the trick d13t enables the starter to win
and the new one with tlle trick, are in an ul1portant
sense on the same level. The) are both games, in
the form of a contest where the aim of a player is
to beat his opponent by the exercise of skill. The
nell' t.rick makes this siruation impossible and this
is why it makes the old game obsolete. To be sure,
the situation could be saved in a way by introduc
ing a new rule, forbidding the use by the starter of
the trick which would ensure his victory. But our
intellectual habits are such as to make us unhappy
about the artificiality of such a device, rather as
logician~ have been unhappy about the introduc
tion of a Theory of Types as a dey ice for avoiding
Russell's paradoxes. It is noteworthy' in my la:;I
quotation from Evans-Pritchard hO\lel'er, that the
:\zaude, when the possibility of this contradiction
about the inheritance of witchcraft is pointed out
to them, do lUi! then come to regard their old
beliefs about witchcraft as obsolete. "They have
265
no theoretical interest in the subject." This
suggests strongly that the context from which the
suggestion about the contradiction is made, the
context of our scientific culture, is not on the same
level as the context in which the beliefs about
witchcraft operate. Zande notions of witchcraft do
not constitute a theoretical system in terms of
which Azande tr~' to gain a quasi-scientific under
standing of the wor1d.l~ This in its turn suggests
that it is the European, obsessed with pressing
Zande thought where it would not naturall) go
to a contradiction - "ho is guilty of misunder
standing, not the Zande. The European is in fact
committing a category-mistake.
Something else is also suggested by this lIiscus
sion: the forms in which rationality expresses itself
in the culture of a human society cannot be eluci
dated simply in terms of the logical coherence of
the rules according to \\hieh activities are carried
out in that society. For as we have seen, there
comes a point where we are not even in a position
to determine what is and what is not coherent in
such a context of rules, without raising questions
about the point which foIIo\\;ng those rules has in
the society. No doubt it was a realization of this
fact "'hich Jed EY'ans-Pritchard to appeal to a
residual "correspondence with reality" in disl in
guishing between "mystical" and "scientific"
notions. The conception of reality is indeed indis
pensable to any understanding of the point of a
way of life. But it is not a conception which can be
explicated as Evans-Pritchard tries to explicate it,
in tcrms of what science reveals to be the case; for
a form of the conception of reality must alI'ead} be
presupposed before we can make any sense of the
expression "what science rC\'eals to be the case."
2 Our Standards and Theirs
In a discussion of Wittgenstein's philosophical
use of language games 19 Mr Rush Rhees points out
that to try to account for the meaningfulness of
language solely in terms of isolated language games
is to omit the important fact that ways of speaking
are not insulated from each other in mutually
exclusive srstems of rules. What can be said in
one context by the use of a certain expression
depends for its sense on the uses of that expres
sion in other contexts (different language games).
266 PETER WINCH
Language g;.tmes arc played b) men who have lives
to Jive -lives involving a \1 ide variety of different
interests, which have all kinds of different bearings
on each other. Because of this, what a man says
or does may make a difference not merely to the
performance of the activity upon which he is at
present engaged, hut to his lije and to the lives of
other people. Whether a man sees point in \\ hat
he is doing will then depend on whether he is
ahle to see an) unity in his multifarious interests,
activities, and relations with other men; what sort
uf sense he sees in his life will depend on the
narure of tJlis unity. The ahiliry to see this sort of
sense in life depends not merely on the individual
concerned, though this is not La say it does not
depend on him at all; it depends also on the pos
sibilities for making such sense which the culture
in which he lives does, or does not, provide.
~rhat "e may learn by studying other cultures
are not merely possibilil ies of different ways of
doing things, other techniques. Morc importantly
we rna) learn different possibilities of making
sense of human life, different ideas about the pos
sible importance that the carrying out of certain
activities may take on for a man, trying to contem
plate the sense of his life as a whole. This dimen
sion of the matter is precisely what MacInlyre
misses in his treatment of Zande magic; he can see
in it only a (misguided) technique for producing
consumer goods. But a Zande's crops are nOl just
potential objects of consumption: the life he lives,
his relations with his fe11o\\-s, his chances for act
ing decently or doing evil, may all spring from his
relation to his crops. Magical rites constitute a
form of expression in which these possibilities and
dangers may be contemplated and reflected on
and perhaps also thereby transformed and deep
ened. The difflclnty we find in understanding this
is not merely its remoteness from science, but an
aspect of the general difficulty we find, illustated
by MacIntyre's procedure, of tl1inking about SllCh
matters at all exccpt in terms of "efficiency of
production" - production, that is, for consump
tion. This again is a symptom of what Marx called
thc "alienation" characteristic of man in industrial
societ~, though J\1arx's own confusions about the
relations between production and consumption
are further symptoms of that same alienation. Our
blindness to the point of primitive modes of life is
a corollar~ of the poindessness of much of OUr
own life.
r have nO\1 explicitly linked my discussion of the
"point" of a system of conventions \1 ith concep
tions of good and evil. My aim is not to engage in
momlizing, but to suggest that the concept of
leilming/rom which is involved in the study of other
cultures is closely linked with the concept of mis
dllll/. We are confronted not just with different
techniques, but with new possibilities of good and
evil, in relation to which men may come to terll1,\
widl life. An investigation into this dimension of a
society may indeed require a quite detailed inquirr
into alternalive techniques (e.g., of production),
but an inquiry conducted for the light it throws on
those possibilities of good and c\ it. A ycry g-uod
example of the kind of thing I mean is Simone
Weil's analysis of the techniques of modern factory
production in Oppressiol1 and UberJy, which is not
a contribution to business management, but part of
an inquir) into tlle peculiar form which the c\il of
oppression takes in our culture.
In saying thjs, however, I may seem merely to
have lifted to a nell' level the dimcult)' raised by
MacIntyre of how to relate our own conceptions
of rationality 10 those of other societies. Here the
difficulty concerns the relation hetwecn our own
conceptions of good and evil and those of other
socicties. '\ fuJi investigation \\ould thus require a
discussion of ethical relativism at this point. I hal'e
tricd to show some of the limitalions of relatil'ism
in an earlier paper. 211 I shall close the chapter with
some remarks which are supplementary to that.
I wish 10 point out that the vel') conception of
human .life involves ccrtain fundamental notions
"hich I shall call "limiting notions" - which ha\e
an ob\~ous ethical dimension, and \\hich indeed in
a sense determine the "ethical space", within IIhich
the possibilities of good and evil in human life can
be exercised. The notions which I shall discuss Icry
brieOy here correspond closely to those which \'ico
made the foundation of his idea of natural la\l, on
which he thought the possibility of undcrstanding
human history rested: birth, deaUl, sexual relations.
Their significance here is that they arc inescapably
involved in the life of all known hum.m socicties in
a wa) \1 hich p;ives us a clue where to look, if \Ie are
puzzled about the point of an alien sy stem of insti
I ulions. The specifiC forms which thesc concepts
UNDERSTANDING A PRIMITIVE SOCIETY
take, [he particular institutions in which they are
c:vprcssed, vaf) \er~ considerably from one societ)
to another; but their central position within a soci
en's institutions is and must be a cons13nt factor.
In- trying to understand the life of an alien society,
then, it II ill be of the utmost importance to be clear
about the wa) in which these notions enter into it.
The actual practice of social anthropologists be.lfs
this out, although I do not know how man) of them
lI'ould attach the same kind of importance to them
as 1do.
I spe-ak of a "limit" here because tJlcse notions,
,llong: no doubt with otJlers, gi\'e shape 1O what we
understand by "human life," and because a con
cem \, ith questions posed in terms of them seems
to me constitutive of what we understand by the
"morality" of a socict). In saying this, J am of
course, disagreeing \1 ith those moral philosophers
IIho hal'e made attitudes of approval and disap
pro\"al, or something similar, fundamental in eth
ics, and who ha\ c held that the objects of such
atTitudes were conceptually irrelevant to the con
ception of moralit). On dlat view, there might be a
society where the sorts of attitude taken up in 0111'
society to questions about relations between the
:.e.\CS were reserved, say for questions about the
length people wear their hair, and vice versa. This
seems to me incohcrent. In the first place, there
lI'ould be a confusion in wllil/g a concern of that
sort a "mora!" conccrn, boweyer passionately felt.
The stor) of Samson in the Old Testament con
firms rather than refules this poin t, for the inter
dict on the cutting of Samson's hair is, of course,
connected there \1 ith much else: and pre
eminently, it should be noted, with questions
ahout sexual relations. But secondl), if that is
tlH)ught to be merely verbal quibbling, J will sa)
tIm it does not seem to me a mere]) comentional
matter that T. S. Eliot', trinit) of "birth, copula
tion and deub" happen to be such deep objects of
human concern. 1 do not mean that the) are made
sllch hy fundamental PS) chological and sociologi
cal forces, lhough lhat is no doubt [rue. But I want
10 say further that the very notion of human life is
limited b) these conceptions.
Unlike beasts, men do not merely UI'e but also
have a conception of life. This is not something that
is simply added to tJleir life; rather, it changes the
I er~ sense II hich the word "J.i1e" has, when applied
267
to men. It is no longer equi"valent to "animate exist
enee." When \1 e are speaking of the life of man, we
can ask questions about what is the right way to
live, what things are most important in life, whether
life has any significance, and if so what.
To have a conception of life is also to have a
conception of death. But just as the "life" that is
here in question is not the same as animate exist
ence, so the "death" that is here in question is not
the same as the end of animate existence. M)
conception of the death of an animal is of an
even I Ihat will take place in rhe world; perhaps I
shalt ohser\'e it - and my life will go on. But when
I speak of "111) death," J am not speaking of a
future e\'ent in my life;,1 I am not even speaking
of an event in anyone else's life. Tam speaking ()f
the cessation of my world. That is also a cessation
of my ability to do good or evil. It is not just that
liS 1/ mill/a II/jiw I shall no longer be able to do
good or e\ il after J am dead; the point is that m)
very rOl/rep' of what it is to be able to do good or
('viI is deepl) bound up with m) concept of m~
life as ending in death. If ethics is a conc('m with
the right way to Jive, then clearl) the nature of
this concern must be deeply affected by the con
cept of life as ending in death. One's attirude to
one's life is at the same time an attitude to one's
death.
This point is very well illustrated in an anthro
pological datum which MacTnt)Te confesses him
self unable to mal.e any sense of.
.'\ccording 10 Spencer and Gillen some aborigines
carry abour a stick or stone which is treated liS ifit
is or embodies the soul of the indilidual who car
ries il. If Ihe stick or stone is lost, the indi....idual
anoints himself as the dead are anointed. Does
the concept of "carrying one's soul about with
one" make sense' Of course we can redescribe
1\ hal the aborigines arc doing and transform it
into sense, and perhaps Spencer and Gillen (and
Durkheim \1 ho follows them) misdescribe what
()CCllr~. But if their reports an: not erroneous, we
confront a blank wall here, so far as mC'dI1ing is
concerned, although it is easy to give the rules
for the use of the concept. 22
MacInt~ re docs nOl sa) why he regards Ihe con
cept of carrying one's soul ahout with one in a
268 PETER WINCH UNDERSTANDING A PRIMITIVE SOCIETY 269

stick "thoroughly incoherent." He is presumably form taken by man's relation to women is of elaborate ceremonies and more sacred solemnity began among them all, and therefore the) must
inf1ucnccd b) the fact that it would be hard to quite fundamental importance for the significance than the rites of religion, marriage and bmial. For be most de\omJ) guarded by them all, so that
make sense of an action like this if performed b) a he can attach to his own life. The vulgar idemifitil_ b\ the a..xiom that "uniform ideas, bom among the world should not again become a bestial
twentieth-centur) Englishman or American; and tion of mora.Jiry with sexual morality certainly is p~oples unknown to each other, must have a com wilderness. For this reason we have taken these
by the fact that t he soul is not a material object like vulgar; but it is a vulgarization of an important mon ground oftrufh", it must have been dictated to three eternal and universal customs as the tirst
a piece of paper and cannot, therefore, be carried truth. all nations that from these institutions humanity principles of this Science 2i
about in a stick as a piece of paper might be, But it The limiting: character of the concept of birth is
does not seem to me as hard to see sense in the obviously rehned to the points I have sketched
practice, even from the little we are told about it regarding death and sex. On the one hand, 111\'
\'otes
here. Consider that a lover in our society may carry birth is no more an event in my life t.han is 1l1~'
about a picture or lock of hair of the beloved; that death; and through my birth ethical limits are S~t :\t this point the anthropologist is VCr) likely to 15 Ibid., p. 24
,tart speaking of the "social function" of the insti 16 Ibid" p. 25.
this may s) mbolize for him his relation to the for my life quite independently of my will: I am,
!lnion under examination. There are many impor 17 L. Wittgenstein, Remarks 011 Ihe Foulldaliolls of
beloved and may, indeeJ, ehmge the relation in all from the outset, in specific rel:ttions to other peo
lantquestions lhat should be raised about functional ,Halhell/tllies, PI. II, Para. 77. Willgenstein's \\ hole
sorts of ways: for example, strengthening it or per ple, from which obligations spring which cannot
e""lanat ions and their relations tel the issues dis discussion of "contradicrion" in muthematics is
verting it. Suppose that when the lover loses the but be ethically fundamenta].!4 On the other hand, usscd in this essay; bur these questions cannot be directly rcle"'lIlt to the poim I am discussing.
locl.et he feels guilty and asks his belm'ed for her the concept of birth is flmdamentally linked to pursued funher here. 18 Notice that I have lInt said that Azande conceptions
forgi\ eness: tJlere mighl be a parallel here to the that of relations between the sexes. This remains E. E. E\ans-Pritchatd, "Lev) -Bruhl's Theory of
of witchcraft havc nothing 10 do wit h understanding
aboriginal's practice of mointing himself when he true, however much or little mar be kno\\ n in a Primitive Mcnta.lily," Bullelill oflhe FIICIIlly of .IrIs,
the world at all. The point is rhat a different form uf
"loses his souL" And is there necessarily anyt.hing society about the contribution of males and Uni\ersit) of egypt, 1934.
the concept of understanding is im'olved here.
irrational about either of these practices? Why females to procreation; for it remains true thaI "Seience and Sentiment," Blllletin ofIhe FilmllJ' of
19 Rush Rhees, "\\'illgenslCin's Builders," Proeert/tIIg;
IriS, ibid., 1935.
ofl/Ie Ari.<IOld/i1/1 SUfie/y, \uJ. 20, 1960, PI'. 171-86.
shou Id the 1m er not regard his carelessness in los rnm is bom of woman, not of man. This, then,
ing the locket as a sort of betrayal of the belm-ed? adds a new dimension to we ewical institutions in
Indeed, one \\a) of expressing the point of the
20 Pel~r \"inch, ","Jalure and Com"Ctltion," Proel'l'I/illj(s
SlOT) ofJob is 10 sa) that ill it Jub is sho\\ n as going
o/the ,A,.,:llotciian SlJriflJ', \'01. 20, 1960, pp. 231-52.
Remember how husbands and wives may feci which relations between the sexes arc expressed,
,lstra) by heing induced 10 make the realit) and
21 Cf. Wiugcnstcin, TraclalllS Logieo-Philosnphims,
about the loss of a wedding ring. The aborigine is 1 have tried to do no more, in these last brief
goodne,s of God contingent on what happens.
6.431-6.4311.
clearly expressing a concern with his life as a remarks, than to focus auention in a certain direc R. G. Collingwood, Prilldpks of Arl, Oxford 22 AJasdair MacIntyre, is Ulld"I'Sll1l11lillg Religion
whole in this practice; the anointing shows ule tion. I have wanted to indicate that forms of tht'Se (Galaxy Buoks), J958, p. 67. ("olllpfltib/( wilh Beliel'illJ(? read to the
close connection between such a concern md con limiting concepts will necessarily be an important (, /Vi/c/'rraji, Oradt?s 0/1(1 /Hagir among Ihe A:::.aJldc, Sesquicentennial Seminar of the Prineel'on
templation of death. Perhaps it is precisely tbis feature of any human society and that conceptions 1'.64. Theological Seminar (1962).
practice ~\ hich makes such a concern possible for of good and evil in human life \ViII necessaril~ be 7 The ilalics arc mine throughout this qUOlarion. 23 Th~se relations, howcver, are not simple converses.
im, as religiou..~ sacraments make certain sorts of connected with such concepts. In any attempt to X 01'. cit., p. J 2. See Georg Simmcl, "Das Relative und dasAbsolUlc
concern possibJe. The point is that a concern with understand the life of another society, therefore, for further criticism of Pareto see Peter Winch, im Gcschlcchter-Problcm" in PIII/osophisrhe
me's life as a whole, invoh ing as it does the limit an investigation of the forms taken by such 71t( Id"11 ofa Soria/ Sciellre, PI'. 95-111. Kullll/', Leipzig, J 911.
10 Evans-Pritchard's italics. 24 For this reason, among others, I think A.1. Melden
ing conception of one's death, if it is to be concepts - their role in the life of the sociel)
11 01'. ciL, p. 72. is \'rong to say that prest'nt-child obligations and
expressed withill a person's life, can necessarily must always take a central place and prm'ide a basis
12 IbId., p. 319. righb have nothing directl) to do with physical
only be expressed quasi-sacramentally. The form on which understnnding may be built. 1:1 Wingcnslcin, Trl/etll/II.! LfJgiro-Philo.!opmem, 5. genealogy. Cf. Melden, Rights 11IIt! R(~ht ("oad,lel
of the concern shows itself in the form of the 6-5. 6l. Oxford (Blach'ell), 1959
Now since the world of nations has been made by
sacrament. 14 Evans-Pritchard, 01'. cil., p. 194. 25 Giambattists "ico, Fhe NeTT> !:leil'l/Cf, paras 332-3.
men, let us see in what institutions men agree and
The sense in which I spoke also of sex as a "Jim
ah\ays have agreed. For these institutions will
iting concept" again has to do with the concept of
be able to give us the universal and eternal princi
a human life. The life of a man is a man's life and
ples (such as e"ery science must ha\"(;) on which
the life of a woman is a woman's life: the masculin
all nations were founded and still preserve them
ity or the femininity are not just componellls in the
selves.
life, they are its mode. Adapting Wittgenstein's We obsene thar all nations, barbarous as well as
remark about death, 1 might say that mymasculin civilized, though separately founded because
ity is not an experience in the world, but my way remote from each other in time and space, keer
of experiencing the wortd. Now the concepts of these three human customs: all haY(: some reli
masculinity and femininity obviously require each gion, all contract solemn marriages, all bury their
other. A man is a man in relation to women; and a dead. 1\ nd in no nation, however savage end crudc.
woman is a woman in relation to men n Thus t.he are any human actions performed with more

18
The Moral Economy of Witchcraft
An Essay in Comparative History
Ralph A. Austen 1
In a recent study of slave rrading, the Beninois his
torian Abiola Felix lroko (1988:199) notes with
some embarrassment an oral tradition about the
provenance of cowry shells, a major currency
in this commerce. According to indigenous
informants, cowries were obtained by killing
sJayes, 11001ting their bodies in the Atlantic Ocean,
and pulling them back after cowries bad adhered
to the corpses. 1
Such local knowledge not only clashes with our
empirical information on tbe origin of cowry
sheils -lroko reminds us that they were imported
to West Africa [rom the Indian Ocean via Europe
but also contradicts the entire body of analysis
built around recent economic studies of the slave
trade. Precisely by focusing on a commodity like
cowries, these studies have argued (or the rele
vance of market principles in understanding
African development. First of a.1l, it can be dem
onstrated that the movements of cowries and slaves
across a complex international market operated
according to predictable patterns of supply and
demand; second, in tbe interior of Viest Africa,
largc-scale imports of shell currency a]]owed the
From Ralph A. Austen, "The Moral Econom\ of'Witchcraft: An Essay in Comparative Historv", AIod~'IIllJ' ({lid Iii
ed. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff (1993), University of Chicago Press, pp. 89-110.
/YlalcfJrllmll,
ufsla\'c-cowry transactions. The concluding section
and African culture both rd1ects and mediates
monetization (and thus market expansion) of
transactions in foodstuffs and other local con
sumer items (Hogendorn and Johnson 1986).
The equation of cowries with sla\C corpses
derives from a very different view of what such
commerce meant both within Africa and in African
relations with the wider world. It does not take
much imagination to underst2nd why death should
be the metaphor for a traffic built upon the remmal
of human beings from their home conti.ncnt, nuny
to a literal death but virtually all to "a bourn from
which no traveller returns." The more challenging
task is to consider how fully the perception embod
ied in such terms represents an alternati\e to the
concept of market rationality and its encompassing
discourse of modernization.
[ ... ]
Witchcraft, as used here, is [... ] an abstraction,
[... ] intended to represent directly the terms used
by African and other societies to describe their
own belief., and practices. The introductory sec
tion of this chapter will attempt to identify an
African witchcraft idiom which giYes broader
meaning to texts such as the Beninois oral account
THE MORAL ECONOMY OF WITCHCRAFT
of this chapter \\-ill examine the early modern
European "witch craze" in order to consider hoy
the elaboration of common elements in European
Africans, the competition of witchcraft idioms
c1itIcring trajecrories into the modem world.
anti witchcraft beliefs:
:\frican Witchcraft Idiom as a
Discourse of I listory and Power
The \'anous issues surrounding witchcraft,
including the comparison ofAfrican and European
cases, have long been a staple of Africanist anthro
pological research"; All these discussions share a
general definition of" itchcraft as the use of pre
ternatural power b) one person to damage others.
\Imost aU have focused on beliefs about such
practices and the means used to Couilter them
rather th;tn on the pract ices thernseh es. i\ll assume
that beliefs of this k.ind have important social con
sequences and reflect the manner in which the
peoples concemed understand their broader his
TOrical eJ\perience.
For purposes of the present analysis, nlo issues
in African witchcraft studies are to be emphasized:
(I) the kinds of social relationships invoh-ed in
\vitchcraft accusations; and (2) the role of repro
duction, sexuality, and gender in these beliefs.
Virtuall) aLI existing work, at least in rural Africa,
ill(hcates that witchcraft efficae) is held to be a direct
function of the intimacy between witch and victim.
Thus The vast majorit')' of accusations and rituals
im'oh'e relations between peers, kin, and co-wives:
the corollary being that, with greater social distance,
such accusations would decline (Douglas 1970:
'\XJ\-Xlexi; ""lamiek 1982:377ff.). Recent research,
hm..-e\'er, shows African turban elites to be afraid that
those left behind in their villages are bewitching
either them or the state projects \\ ith which r..'1ey
idcntify (Geschiere 1988; Ciekawy 1990 [... J). Also,
\rbile formal witchcraft accusations against the pow
erful and wealth) are rare, it has "become a common
place observation in African studies" (Rowlands and
\\'amicr 1988: 12 I) that such ascendent individuals
are perceived. to be witches.
Commonplace as it may be, the equation of
witchcraft with the attainment of power and
wcaltb has been neglected in the anthropological
literature, which has mainly focused on the sociology
171
of formal witchcraft accusations. However, it IS
witchcraft beliefs tJ13t cross hierarchical bounda
ries that enter most directly into the concerns of this
chapter: the contemplation of historical change by
with Ule discourses of markets and modernization,
;1.Jld their comparison with early modern EUJ'opcan
For this purpose, van Binsbergen (198 L 1+ 1-2)
provides:l very useful distinction between "imper
sonal" and "anri-personal" \\ itchcraft. The laner
consists of misfortunes attributed to the ill will of
peers with whom some identifiable tension already
exists. it is this category which Marwick (1982:330)
probably had in mind when he asserted that
"increased tensions attendant upon urbanization
are not necessarily e>.pressed in the idiom of
witchcraft" Impersonal witchcraft, on the other
hand is defined by van Binsbergen (1981:163) in
terms all too easily linked to modem situations as
"the rcckJcss manipulation of human material for
strictly individual purposes."
In rural Africa the human material manipUlated
by witchcraft is frequently identified with control
over tlle forces constituting rhe reproduction of
everyday life. Tn the most unproblematic circum
sta.nces, these forces are contained "ithin the
domestic sphere of conjugal sexuality and food
cultivation and consumption. Congenital witches
are almost always described as insatiably hungr);
they seek to "cat" others by imbibing their repro
ductive powers in the form of corpses, children,
sexual fluids, and so on.
A number of studies (Goody 1970; Gottlieb
1989) have noted a distinction between female
witches, who are totally stigmatized, and males
who are recognized as both witches and legitimate
figures of political and rimal authorit}. The dis
tinctions do not lie in the activities or immedi.ate
relationships to reproduction and producrion
which identify each categor) as wirches: all rna) be
guilt) of killing and consuming close relatives, and
the males may procure wealth only by predation
upon sltrrounding societies. Rather it is the pubftc
positions held by the mcn in question that makes
their witchcraft somehow more tolerable and even,
in some ca.ses, celebrated. This accepta.nce of
"official" witchcraft is generally explained as a
form of resignation: anti witchcraft measures are
272 RALPH A. AUSTEN
ineffective against such concentrations of po\\er
(Rowlands and Wamier 1981\: 121). nut it is also
recognized that many Africans tllke the existence
of \\ itchcraft to be inevitable and ubiquitous; there
is thus positive \ alue in the fact tMt some fi~res of
authority have the mystical power to ward orf the
malignancy of others. This need is particularl)
strong \\ hen the dangers come from outside the
community and can onl) be combated by kings and
diviners of one's own (Goody 1970; Austen 1986).
The conception of witchcraft as an ambiguous
attribute of power wirhin -\eric-a is often presented
in ahistorical terms, as a (imelt'Ss reflection of the
tension between communal values and selfISh indi
vidualism and 'Ulxietit-s about natural threats t()
subsistence. Our data on witch belieF;, howe\'er, are
all relatively recent; with little exception they are
dnlwn from societies that had long been inmlved
with either the Islamic or European out.side world.
It is stTiking thaT several West Central African cos
molobries linl witchcraft \\ itb the deployment of
vic-tims in a nocturnal and/or distant "second
uni\erse," echoing, in morc or less explicit
terms, the experience of the Atlantic slave trade
(llagenburcher-Sacripanti 1973:143-63; Rosny
1985:58-63; McGaffey 1986; Miller 1988:4-5).
The Beninois explanation of cowry imports
should now appear more familiar, not only as a
metaphorical accounr of t.he slave trade but also a~
the expression of a discourse equating the acquisi
tion of ,,"ealth and power with (I) the consumption
of human life and (2) links to a more powerful out
side world. But if we are to assert the relevance of
this discourse for understanding the wider African
experience of hi~tOrical change, \"'e need to con
sider it in more general terms. The witchcraft idiom
in Afi-ica echoes perceptions elsewhere in the world
of relationships between communal norms and
externally centered market economies. The com
parison of these perceptions and relationships by
social scientists has produced its 0\1 n metadiscourse
around the concept of moral econom1
The Moral Economy Debate:
Microeconomics and Culture
The ccntral trope of the yarious efforts to define
moral econom) has been an opposition between, on
the one hand, the ma.:,imjyjng individual and
everexpand.ing market of cbssieal political econOmy
and, on U1e other, a communjty governed by norm's
of collective survival and believing in a zero-Sum
universe - that is, a world where all profit is gained
t someone else's loss. The communallzero-sum
side of this equation is broadly consistent \\ ilh
African beliefs idcnti fying capitalism and Witchcraft
a_, the dangerous appropriation of limited repro
ductivc resources by sellish individuals. The great
danger of such a set of dichotomies is that it mil\
remain trapped \Ihere it first originated, withjn the
discourse of capit:l.!jsnl itself. Exotic economies thus
become constructed around eithcr a market/non_
market opposition or a subsistence-based nriam of
market rationality_ In analyzing the hjstory of socie
ties confronting capitalism, even from the outside
of the bottom one cannot reject out of hand all ref
erences to capitalist terms. [... ]
The term "moral economy" actually came into
wide scholarly usc through the study of early
capitalist Emope, specifically with E. P.
Thompson's writings on eighteenth-century Britain
(Thompson 1968:225-6, 1971); its application to
the Third World awaited the somewhat later book of
]an1es Scott (1976). Scott, according to his refer
ences, was indeed inspired by Thompson; yet
Thompson had predecessors who were more con
cerned than he wiu1 non-Western economies and
remain more directly rclc\-ant to the genesis of moral
economy u1eory and its role in studying Africa.
It was the substantivist economics ofKarl Polanyi'
and his associatcs (1957) that initiated a sophistic.tted
argument among anthropologists and historians
about the rele\'3ncc of nlarkct models to the study of
economies outside of the modem West (LeClair and
Schneider 1968; Hopkins 1973; Dalton 197-+). The
substantivists, who questioned those models ulti
mately lost most of the arguments. On an abstract
level, their "non-market" terms (deri\cd from a
some\,hat nai\'e rcadi.ng of structural-functionalist
anthropology) v.ere easily converted into "collectiyc
lJlilitics": more concretely, what substantivists
defined as uniquely Western market behavior could
be documented in large portions of "primitive" and
The Moral Economy of [he European
"archaic" Africa. Polanyi's explicitly Aristotelian cri
Wirch Craze
tique of profit seeking is a perfect example of what
Parr) and Bloch (1989:2-3) identjl) as a fat;ll ethno
centrism in intcrprctin~ "the momlity of exchange"
in societies outside Europe. [... ]
THE MORAL ECONOMY OF WITCHCRAFT
The more robust notion of a zero-sum universe
as the basis for "traditional" economic behavior
deri\cs from the cthnograpllic work of George
Foster (1965). Foster argued thllT peasants e\uy
II here experience a world of "the limitcd good,""
bUI he regarded such attitudcs as obstacles to hoth
progress and true communal cohesion, much as did
the more acerbic Edwnrd Banfield (1958). Foster
and Banfield are rarely cited in moral econom) lit
erature because their dc\ elopmenralist outlook fits
ill \Iith the ideological stance in most of this writ
ing; however, Their vision of negariYe utilitarianism
statCS most c1earl) its underl) i.ng premises.
us, 111 his original formulation of moral econ
omy, Scott arrributes 10 Third \Yorld (and even
European) peasants a formal economic logic hlr
more akin to the approach of the unnamed Foster
than to the acknowledged Thompson and Polanyi.
]-1a\'ing decidcd that these cultivators maintain a
"subsistence ethic," Scott undertakes what he con
siders a S} mpathetic anal) sis of their action~ by
replacing the motive of profit ma,imi7;ltion with
one of risk aversion (Scott 1976:4ff). Ir was thus
po~sible for Popkin (1979) to produce a work osten
sibly criticizing Scott for neglecting e\ idence of
profit-<lricnred entTepreneurship in peasant com
munities, while actually providing a very similar pic
ture of the calculations underlying rural Southeast
Asian responses to colonial capitalism (Hum 1988).
[ ... ]
:--ionelheless, the moral economy school has a
good tit-aI to teach those more seriou~ly concerned
II ith culture. ~lo~t obviously, it demands that
attention be paid to the conditions of access to
material resources that determine, with somc
degree of autonomy, the understandings of capi
tali,m possible within any communiT).
Furthermore, in the revised versions it provides
detailed, socially sensitive accounts of political
and economic strategies that illuminate any
discussion of ideology.
[.. 1
[...J
he comparison of African and European
Witchcraft studies is complicated by the fact that
273
the former are mainly based on ethnographies
of contemporary village culture, while the latter
focus on the written records of no\\-v-anished
urban clites who imposed themsehcs upon rtlral
society. '-:onetheless, the two sets of cases share a
base of rural beliefs in interpersonal witchcraft as
well as a confrontation with capitalist moderniza
tion. The comparison can thus, at the very least,
help to historicize further our understanding of
<\frican witchcraft and add cultural eontextto our
understanding of European capitalism. In pursuit
of these goals, my discussion of European witch
hunting will focus on three issucs: the relationship
between urban/elite and rural/popular culture in
defining witchcraft, lhe role of reproduction and
female sexuality \1 ith.in these definitions, alld the
process by which European witchcraft beliefs gave
way to both capitalisl utilitarianism and various
forms of moral economy / socialist anticapitalism.
The earl) modem European persecutions allow
us, far more easily than do the African cases, to
identify two social!) distinct sets of beliefs about
witchcraft and the vectors of its operation.
Corresponding to the Africanist notion of inter
personal witchcraft was the European terll1l11alc
fie/11m, literally referring 10 the use of preternatural
powers as an expression of malice among \ illage
neighhors. At the center of the formal witch trials
\\ hich resultcd in the tens of thousands of public
executions for witchcraft lay the elite concept of
the sallbal, an orgiastic sacrificial ritual presided
oyer by Satan.
Although the difference between these defini
tions of mystical evil is critical to understanding
the persecutions in earl) modem Europe, it is also
necessary, particularly for purposes of comparison
of Africa, to recognize the ideological and practi
cal links benveen them. ,walejie/ll1n accusations,
from what \Ie know of them, seem remarkably
similar to local witchcraft allegations in Africa.
\Vhat we cannot easily see through existing records
is the larger systems of popular beliefs v.ithin
which such ideas functioned!
The .Iabbal, on the other hand has no real parallel
in African witchcraft belief or even "syncretistic"
Christianity, because it was imagined as a specifi
cally counter-Christian cult. U ndoubted!y the
content of this putative ritual, jf not its structure,
derived from European folk culture. J\loreovet,
274
------------------------------------------
RALPH A. AUSTEN
the condemnation of indi\Oiduals as partlclpants In
a II itches' sabbath required that they (or at least
their immediate accusers) fIrst be charged by
neighbors \Iith ma!ejinulII. Confessions of con
gress with thc ucvil usualJ) depended upon sug
ge:.tions from the prosecutors, reinforced hy
torture. But there are significant cases in \Ihich
\illagers provided such statements spontaneously,
indicaLing that they, too, had come to believe in Lhe
stibbat. >\s will be seen below (this chap.), this
belief may have rested upon European under
,tandings of sexuality" hich rum out to be critical
for comparison" ith t\fricl.
The attrihufion of EUJ"opean witchcraf[ perse
cution to the rise of capitalism emerged from the
srudy of trials in England, where both torture and
sab!ltll beliefs were largely absent (Macfarlane
1970:195-97; Thomas 1971:553-67, 581-2). The
argument here is that the direction of malejicilil/l
accusations from wealthier members toward
more impolerished members of the communit~,
reflected a shift from a redistributive to an accu
mulative (i.e., capitalist) mode of property control.
This thesi, has recentl) been called into question:
it seems not to explain the scale and Liming of
accusations found throughout Europe in Lhe early
modern period.~
However, comparison with recemAfrican mate
rial (Geschiere 1988 [oo.)) suggesrs that such fears
by nc\\ I) emergent clites - and even the usc of
witchcraft threats by their rural neighbors or ex
neighbors - are indeed a common phenomenon in
times of economic transition. But, in any case, if
our aim is to understand the cultural content
rather than the behavioral patterns of witchcraft
accusations in these circumstances, we must give
more attention to the Jflbbtll than to mlllfjici/ll/l.
In rhe sa/Jbal, as in African ideas of "official"
"i1.chcraft, the deployment of preternMural m'llig
nanc~ against individuals is equated with concen
tr:lIions of power in the publicareJ13. The European
soMal, however, was formulated mainly b) dite~
among the clergy and judicial') \1 ho accused poor
and marginal individuals of aJlying themsclvc.;
"ith Satan, the unamhiguous antithesis of all
legitimate temporal and spiritual aLithority. Before
spelling out the contrasts with Africa, it is useful
to consider the interpretations by historians of
I\hat, for them, is a puzzling similaril) between
early modem Europe and prullltlye soeict\'
I Tow could some of the most educated of o~;
post-Renaissance ancestors, on the verge of thc
Enlightenment ,md the industrial revolution, hale
subscribed to, and worse still, acted \"iolcntl\'
upon, such "primiti\ e superstitions") . cr'tZ e. i\lost commentators have stressed the \ ul
For Trevor-Roper (1968:90-192), \Iho poses
the ljuestion in just these terms, the answer lay in
some irreducible substratum of irrational hu';'an
hatred which, during the period in qUL':>lion
was inspired b) the rclihrious riYalries of th~
Reformation and counter-Reformation. Reformed
religion is cerrainly critical to understanding the
witch persecutiom, but its role must be under
stood through a more serious social and cultural
analysis than Trevor-Roper even hegins to em'is
age. "\'luchembled (l987) and Ginzburg (1983)
attempt such analyses b) presenting the sabbul as a
device by which the newly emerging centers of
urban power stigmatized the autonomous culture
of the countryside, thus promoting the estahlish
ment of a single hierarchy within each EuropL'an
state. This last argument, with its populist and
Foucaullian overtones, has more contemporary
appeal! han the intellectualis1. approach of l'reI'or
Roper. But it suffers from an indifference to the
content of elite wirchcraft belief.s and their contra
dictory relationship to the rationalizing project
they were apparently sen ing. An Hricanist mi~hl
further ask \\ hy in Africa, b) contrast, neither
indigenous intelligentsias (e.g., Iroko), mission
based churches, nor the colonial or postcolonial
state hal'e ever been yery comfortable with recog
nizing the entire concept of \\ itchcraft." If \I itLh
craft persecution was merely an unfortunate
detour or an opportunistic strategy on the routc to
modernilation, perhaps such discomfort is justi
fied. But if it bas some more intimate relationship
\I;th the genesis of capitalism in Europe, further
questIOns need to be asked. One line of in4uiry
emerges from the obvious and discomforting linh
between \Iitchcraft, gender, and se),uality.
[n both Europe and Afrie-a 3ccusations of /lid/(
/itilll/l or its equiYalent fall most he'1\ ily upon
Ilomen. [n "-frica, ho\\e\'er, t11e more elahorate
beliefs about the use of II itchcraft to attain mate
rial power lend to focus upon m'lles or ~omen
active in the public sphere of lhe market place
[...J. In Europe, on the olher hand, \lomen-u.,u'llly
- THE MORAL ECONOMY OF WITCHCRAFT
1\ ith link power - still constitute the vast majorit)
of those impliL'ated in the most complex allega
tions of sdbbll/ practice.
rhere h3, been no shortage of explanations for
this misogynistic aspect of the European witch
nerahiliry of women, particularly the older ones
\I ithout husbands who were frequently charged.
)d, [his i~ a universal condition that tells us little
about the distinct situation of Europe in the six
teenth and se\,enteenth centuries. Muchembled
(198/:67-9) pro\ ides a more historical argument
thar connecLs the rising modernism of this period
Ilith a "de\1\lorization" of women who functioned
as the main bearers of embattled rural/popular
eullUre through their roles as healers, midwives,
'l1ld puneyors of established norms and oral leam
illf? There is much to be said for this last claim, as
it suggests \1 h~ speci.fic aspects of rural culture
,hould be so much under attack: it also helps us
understand rheir later relegation to tbe realm of
folklore with its gendered aura ofltold wives' tales"
and the nostalgic infanrilization of the rural "moth
erland " 1101\ ever, elen here l\\uchembled (to say
nothing of less nuanced feminist versions of this
interprenltiun) reduces the specific sabba/ charges
under II hich womcn were convicted of witchcraft
to mere devices of the learned urban elite for sub
jugating a competing source of power. The inten
sit~ \\ ith which sl/bbal ideas lVere apparently
bclieled, and their high load of sexual content,
suggests that they haye to be taken more seriously
if \Ie want to explain the relationships ben\een
gender, \I itchcraft accusations, and the emergence
of a modern capit'llist order in Europe. III
From an Africanis1. perspective, the connection
that immediately suggests itself is that of repro
duction. For cases within Africa, it must be
recalled, a central trope of witchcraft beliefs is the
misappropriation of scarce reproductive resources
from households or communiries for the selfish
use hy accumulating indi\iduals. Similar themes
are found in EW'ope-an 1111/ lejirjwll accusations,
which frequend) imolye attacks on the fertility of
fields, li\estock, and other human beings (Briggs
19R9:91; Le Roy Lldurie 1981). Such actions were
SOll1eLimes attributed to the demands of Satan,
and the rites of the stlbbal regularly included the
~onsumption of babies and fetuses. At a more
in both European and African representations of
the sexuality of" itches, a common concern with
275
abstract level, it also seems possible to identify,
the escape of female reproductive power from the
enclosed domestic space in which it serves male
dominated communal norms to the open nocturnal
realms of self-contained female power (Levack
1987: 126fT.).
A comparison of these representations and their
historical contexts suggests, however, some impor
tant distinctions precisely around the issues of
reproduction, gender politics, and accumulation.
Tn rural Africa, reproduction (whether sexual or
agricultural) and its potential misappropri3tion,
that is, the zero-sum eCOn0111), remains a central
cultural issue right through contemporary times.
''.'v[odernization'' has not solved these problems;
rather it has created a new category of witches in
the urbanized "femmes Jibres," witches who liter
ally use market control over their domestic repro
ductive capacities (sex, food, and e\'en baths) for
individualized accumulation (White 1990b). ill
the early modem European salibal accounts, on
the other hand, female sexuality seems to be sev
ered from the issue of reproduction; these night
mare women are less independent of male
authorit~ than submissive to an alternative vision
f masculine pO\ler, a \ ision opposed to the accu
mulatlvc process with which the persecutors
themselves identified. In short, European anti
witchcraft beliefs represent a moral economy oj,
and not opposed to, capitalism.
The frequent references to antireproductive acts
in /Iltlleficill1ll accusations suggest that European
rural communities had concerns oyer maintaining
the basic forces of life similar to those ofAfrica. As
historians have regularly noted, however, the witch
craze occurred in a period \Ihen popubtion and
food production capacities had reco\wed from
earlier crises. j\10teoyer, e\ en in the more sponta
neous rural European accounts, there is little echo
of the classical African equations of witchcraft
with e-ating and insatiable hunger. 1\loreo'o'er, the
women accused were usually beyond reproductive
age, and the striking fe-ature of their sexuality was
its continuation at this point in their liYes. The
many contemporary woodcut illustrations of the
slIbbttl - irself a kind of licensed pornograph) for
this era - focus on the sexual power of female
276 RALPH A. AUSTEN
\\ itches; here they are often depicted as far
younger than in the statistics of accusations, but
in almost all cases they display firm brcasts and
buttocks, frequently being fondled in foreplay
Ilith the devil. I I
The centrall'ole of Satan in the sobbal contrasts
sharply with the modern African vision of witch
craft as a realm of autonomous female power.
Women in the European accounts subject them
selves to an alternati\ e male authority through a
conscious inversion of Christian ritual. The killing
of children is a sacrificial act parodying commWl
ion (and recalling "blood libels" a~ainst Je\\ sand
other heretics) in \\hieh it is not the female witches
who are nourished but rather thc male anri-Christ.
The sexual acts portrayed or reported sometimes
include women cavorring among themselves, but
more commonly concentrate on Sllbmission to
Satan in acts that give no real pleasure; the del'i1's
penis is always described as cold and pain induc
ing, and often it is his buttocks that arc embraced.
\\'ith reference to broader social processes then,
we may interpret the sabblll fantasy .IS a vision less
of female reproductive power escaping male con
tTOl than of l1111le control in a mode diametrically
pposed to the self-image of a reformed Christian
elite. The terms of this opposition seem better
understood through the categories of Max Weber
than those of Muchemblcd. The question is not
"hether female sexuality, as a surrogate for rural
culture, should be autonomous or subdued LO an
absolutist hierarchy but is, instead, wheth(;r the
ethos of this subjugation should be one of orgiastic
consumption or worldly asceticism. The issue of
accumulation is not addressed directly in the dis
comse of witchcraft; however, the construction of
female se:\-uality as a force liberated from reproduc
tive imperatives implies a nonzero-sum universe in
which both accumulation and reckless consump
tion of vital resources are now historical and equaUy
"rational" possibilities. In the long-run de\'elop
ment of European capitalism, the limit".Ition of
consumption was a critical choice, but no one could
think in such terms at the time. Hence, we have the
"non-rational" obsession with salvation in the
afterlife - linked by Weber to capitalist accumula
tion - and the even more inational pr(;mise of a
satanic witch cult connected here with the repression
of alternatives to such accumulation.
Unlike in Africa, therefore, the European \\ itch
in her most powerful form was the antithesis of
the accumulator. If we look for a popular moral
econom) to oppose the reformed religious ethos of
the witch hunts, we do not find it in rural witch
craf! beliefs, which onl} fed the repression.
Instead, such a counterculture expressed itself in
the org,lruzations and carnivals of misrule used
duriIlg the earl) modern period to maintain tradi
tional domestic order, mock the rich, and play
publicly and oftell quite joyousl) with issues ~f
sexualityantl gender (Davis 1975:97-187). These
practices, unlike the movements of Thompson's
eighteenth CeIllUr), did not directly address capi
talism and could even, as ]\;atalie Zemon Da\ is has
noted, be channeled into the \ iolcnt s(;r\ice of
reformed religious intolerance. But ill the rampant
quality of e' en their religiosity they gave \ent to
energies 1hal were cultural I) articulated along
lines of communit), reproduction, and the f~tive
eonsllmption of accUmUlal(;d r~sourccs - thereby
pro\ iding an antithesis to the spirit of Il'itchcraft
perseclltion. 11
Historians of the European witch craze, who
have differed so much over the analysis of its
meaning and causes, disagree far less in rheir
explanations of its demise in the late 1600s. ;\lost
scholars concur that the procedural rationalitl of
witch-hunting finally 0\ en\ hcrnlcd the antira
tional premises upon which it had been based. For
Tre\~or-Roper it was the combined destructi\eness
of religious warfare and the altemati\'e worldview
of thc scientific revolution - previously commit
ted to its own NeopJatonist demonology - that
brought the shift. For Muchembled and some of
his critics, the key was the successful erection of
the absolutist state whose agents prol'ided both a
ne\l, external enemy to rural populations and a
self-critique of judicial operations based upon tor
ture and rural folk beliefs. But again, it is Weher
who provides the most useful insight into the
political economy of the shift through his conten
tion tllat the decline of ascetic capitalism was ine\-
itable once its own success had made the abundance
of goods so e\ ident (Weber 1930: 174ff.).
To develop this last point we must go well
beyond Weber, who never himself either explicitly
addressed the issue of wiTchcraft or explored the
culture of the earl} eighteenth-century "consumer
THE MORAL ECONOMY OF WITCHCRAFT
rel'olution" (\J\cKendrick et a1. 1982) which linked
the era of the Protestant eth.ic to that of industri
aliz;.ltion. However, if we accept the equation made
abo,'e between the witch craze and the anticon
sumprion ethos of early capitalism, we can simi
larh associate the abandonment of witchcraft
beliefs II ith Enlightenment liberalism's attacks
upon Europe:m versions of zerO-Silln economics.
The laller were expressed not through the idiom
of witchcraft but rather by merC<1ntilist Lrade poli
cies, sumptuan-Iaw restrictions on who could
purchase \I hat, and assumptions that increased
wages would decrease labor incentives. From an
;\fricanist perspective, it is more than ironic that
this emergence of classical market ideology in
ci~hteenth-century Europe depended upon the
low-cost import from the Third World of com
modities previollsly seen as luxuries - not least
among them sugar produced by black slaves
(.!,usten and Smith 1990). In Africa, it should be
recalled, tlle export of those same slaves provides
tbe major historical reference for the equation of
capilal accumulation, zero-sum economics, and
witchcra ft.
The Jec!ine of European witchcraft beliefs in
tbe eighteenth centur} becomes more complicated
if Ill' contemplate the connections between the
construction of women in witch-hunting doctrine
and the cult of domesticity that accompanied
nineteenth-century capitalism. The latter trans
formed woman from the devil's mate of the sabbat,
a sexual force threatening both religious ortho
do\'~ and productiYe enterprise, to the angel of the
bouse, <1 desexualized guardian and reproducer of
lalues endangered by the amorality of the sur
rounding marketplace (Cott 1977). Recent studies
of rural women spinners in the protoindustrial
textile industTy (Medick 1984; Schneider 1989;
Stone-Perrier J 989) suggest an interesting transi
tional phase of reyalorized female pr(lduction and
reproduction. Capitalists of this era explicitly cal
culated the benefits of women's labor both to rlleir
Own factor costs and to the marriage opportunities
of their emplo}ecs. For their part The women,
gathered together in semi-public spaces, spun not
onl~ flax but. also rich and ambi\"alent narratives
which used the idiom of witches and other preter
natural forces to define the moral econom) of their
new situation.
277
This is not the place to trace such developments
any further or to explore the dialectics of self
COnSC10u.s domesticit) in the transition to female
ctil ism in the modern public sphere. The impor
tant point for Africanists is to recognize lhat the
middle-class domestic ideal - so heavily promoted
by colonial missionaries - has its own histOry and
moral economy; one that is not totally alien to the
'liriC<1n idioms of reproduction and sexuality
along with concerns over their relationship to
market commerce.
The elite preemption and then exhaustion of the
idiom of witchcraft in Europe did not - an) more
than the ,cry imperfect functioning of the
eighteenth-century grain markets - break dO\~'l all
barriers bel-ween capitalist politil.'a1 economy md
popular moral economy. However, the latter nOI~
dcveloped along the lines laid out by Thompson md
Magagna, either negotiating the terms of capitalist
exp;lOsion on the basis of existing contractual rights
and obligations or converting to some version of
modern socialist doctrine. In short, moral economy
doctrine in Emope, even at a relatively earl) stage in
the de' elopment of capital~sm, constituted an
opposing (and not always ineffectual) \oice \\ ithin
the larger discourse that produced capitalism itself
African effons at socialism, 011 the other hand,
have both aroused and deployed a continuing
witchcraft idiom. To the extent that this socialism
draws upon its colonial heritage and Eastern
European models rather than local popular dis
courses, it has inspired a.n image of "I'{~tat sorcier"
in which public autJ10rities exercise arbitrary con
trol over such \ ital resources as medicine (Hours
1985). In one of the fell' tropical African cases
where capitaJism, both local anJ international,
rather than the state is seen as the dominant force,
the Kenyan nOI e1ist Ngugi wa Thiongo (1982) has
produced a socialist I'ision which draws heavily
upon an equation of indiyidual wealth with the
appropria.tion and exportation of indigenous life
forces. I lowe\'er problematic may be Ngugi\ pre
scriptions for cultural authenticity and socia.lism,
his \ ie\~ of foreign capitalism thriving on African
blood not onl) resembles the Beninois view of the
slave trade but also draws upon long-standing
Kenyan popular beliefs concerning vampirous
collaboration between European technology and
indigenous urban prostitutes (White 199011).
278 RALPH A. AUSTEN THE MORAL ECONOMY OF vVITCHCRAFT
Conclusion
This essay offers two rather opposing arguments
about the relationship between culture and capital
ism in Africa and Europe. On the one hand, it
insists that, in both cases, there is a shared embed
dedness of market rationality in a much wider dis
course on moral economy, a discourse most
dramatically demonstrated by the concern with
"";tchcraft. In so doing, it seeks 1O subvert the
hegemonic Wesrern dichotomies between self!
rarional! modern ,\TId other/ inationall primitive
and evoke greater empath) with African struggles
to make sense of their contemporary predicament.
On rhe other hand, rhe comparison of AfTica and
Europe within the common terms of moral economy
and witchcraft suggests some very profound differ
ences. The Afiican conception of the witch is tied to
various forms of belief in a world where rhe apparent
production of new wealth depends upon appropriat
ing the scarce reproductive resources of others while
collaborating with an arbitrary and destructive
external power. The European vision of witchcraft is
no less frightening, bur it assumes an abundance
rather than scarcity of the sexual energies required
for reproduction. It could be, and eventually was,
transcended and transformed by the same political
and economic forces responsible for domestic witch
hunts, industrialization, and overseas imperialism.
In sJ10rt, the innovative common road though witch-
Notes
John Comaroff and Perer Geschiere provided
very helpful comments on earlier versions of this
essay.
2 Following the initial presentation of this essay, col
leagues have reportcd similar traditions from various
parts of the West African coast.
3 [... ] For older accounts, sec Douglas 1970; Marwick
1982 [1970]. For more reccnt ones, Rowlands and
Wamicr 1988; Geschicre 1988.
4 For a comparison ofJ\frican and European witchcraft
concepts rhat stress the clislinccion between "primi
ti\'e" and "complex" societics on rhe basis of whal
sort of malevolent behavior individuals acmall)' con
fessed to, sec Rowland 1990.
5 Cited by SCOlf (1976:6n) as "formative for my own
work."
craft branches off into the conventional separate
destinations of capitalist modernization and hegem_
ony for Europe and marginalized domination tor
Africa. Il is difficult, despite an Ngugi, even to
depict African witchcrafl idioms as a weapon flf
Afrialn resistance. Their immediate moral targets
are other Africans while they lea\e the European
bases of power mystified to a point where they l'an
anI} be avoided, not effectively invaded.
What, finally, can be said to rescue the African
vision from its subordinate position? AbO\e all else,
it represents a telling, truthful insight into the
modern experience of the continent, especially at a
moment when European concern for Africa
becomes ever more remote and AIDS threatens
local populations precisel)' in the realms of sexual
ity and reproduction. If this kind of truth is valid
on I) for Africa, then it remains a badge of subordi
nation. But it also may provoke a self-critique of the
capitalist West (and oeocapitalist Asia and Eastern
Europe) in an era of massive ecological decay, of
increasingly uncieaT links between production and
the accumulation of wealth through the manipula
tion of stock markets, banks, and electronic media.
Comparative history of tlus kind thus may show us
not only how capitalism emerged from the unique
circumstances of Europe but also hO\v the self-pro
claimed universal logic of capiralist discourse may
have to subject itself to tbe mor-al and cultural
inlerrogations of a new genre of witch unders.
6 "Limited good" was translated into Ihe more
economislic "zero-srun" by one of Fosrer's commen
tators, but Foster accepred Ihe lerm (Ben nell 1966;
FOSler 1966).
7 I do not wish here to pursue the debate among either
radical feminists (see Muchembled 1987 bibliogra
phy) or the more sober (bm not enrirely convincing)
Carlo Ginzburg (1990, 1991) on the reconstruclion
of such a residual "pagan" culture.
8 Nonerheless, Muchemb1ed (1987:17511), a critic of
the M.acfarlane/Thomas thesis reues on similar
funclionalist arguments (about disintegraling com
munal bonds) to explain the increase of mulel;,.illll/
accusations among Cambresis viUagns.
9 Fiisy and GeschieTe (1991) have examined recent
efforts by the Cameroonian state to in\olve itself in
"itchcraft accusarions, but the practice seems
rcstricted to one region of the country aad resem
bk'S Ihe classic British cases of alleged lIIa!ejiciwlI
bv the poor and marginal against relatively wealthy
fcllow villagers.
10 Whal !allows is perhaps the most speculative argu
ment in this paper and can uitirrunel) be defended
onb by far more empirical work Ihan 1 have }<:I
undertaken. The argument is supported, howel'cr, by
the sharp contrast drawn in the work of, among oth
en., _\1anin (1989) bel ween the kinds of charges laid
againsl wilches by the Italian and Spanish Inquisition
and Northern European accusations of maleficiulII
and suMar participation. This geographical and insli
tutional distinclion does not touch upon issues of
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 Introduction

In 1931 French anthropologist Marcel Griaule, together with eight colleagues affiliated with th
~lusee de I'Homme in Paris, set out on a 21-month expedition, known as the Dakar-Djibouti
Mission, which crossed the continent ofAfrica from the Atlamic Ocean to the Red Sea along the
lower perimeter of the Sahara (Clifford, 1988: 55). The aim of the mission was to collect and
record, as thoroughly a.s possible, local knowledge and material culture in order LO document
full} the arts, cultures, and religious beliefs of the vast territories in sub-Saharan Africa which,
at the time, were under French colonial rule.
Tn rhe course of this extensive "scientific" expedition, Griaule first came in contact with the
Dogon people who inhabit the rocky cliffs of the Bandiagara escarpments in what is today the
Republic of Mali. Following his initial visit, Griaule returned to the Dogon region on many
occasions, writing extensively on their masking and ritual traditions, on their concept of the
body and soul, and on indigenous nomenclature and systems of classification and taxonomy.
Sometime in the late 194-0s, Griaule was introduced to an elderly sage named Ogotemmcli
who had lost his sight many years earlier in a hunting accident. This wise, blind Dogon man
from the village of lower Ogol opened Griaule's eyes for the first time to the complexity and
inteUectunl "depth" of African religious beliefs by recounting in a long series of interviews the
elaborate creation myth of the Dogon universe. Written in the form of a series of object lessons,
Griaule published Conversations wilh Ogote/lll1leti in 1948 as an attempt to present to the outside
world a unified Dogon cosmology and complete philosophical system of thought (Van Beck,
1991: 139).
Griaule's writings on the Dogon wcre preceded just a few years earlier b) the publication of
a boo!.. CI1titled Banlll Philosophy (194-5) writtcn by a Belgian missionary named Placide Tempels.
In this detailed and extensive volumc, Tcmpels presented Bantu notions of magic and \I itchcraft
as a rational and highly sLructured philosophy operating within a unified s)stem of thought.
Both Tempels (writing about a Bantu-speaking people) and Griau!e (\I riting about a non-Bantu
speaking people) werc battling Euroeentrie stereotypcs of African religious beliefs which, at
the time, saw them as largely disorganized superstitions characterized by animism and
286 INTRODUCTION
ancestor-worship. Making his case for the complexity and sophistication of Dogon religion,
Griaule wrote in the preface to his book that "these people live by a cosmology, a metaphysic,
and a religion \\ hich put them on a par \\ ith the peoples of antiquity, and which Christian theol
ogy might indeed study with profit" (1965: 2).
Griaule's contribution to the study of Dogon cosmology came to typify French scholarship
on African systems of thought. It differed from the British school- such as Evans-Pritchard's
ALande ethnography for example (sec Part V in this volume) - in two fundamtntal ways. First,
Griaule argued that Dogon religion and ontology werc just as complex and rigorous as any
European belief system, and that therefore it should be accorded equal weight in an anthropol
ogy of world cosmologies and indigenous intellectual btliefs. Evans-Pritchard, in contrast,
argued that Azande witchcraft was rational within the logic of its own universe of meaning, but
that the Azande were not "rational" "hen judged by European values and standards of "objec
tive" truth. The second aspect of Griaule's \\ork which makes it typical of French writing on
African systems of thought is his emphasis on intellectual coherence and narrati'e symbolic
meaning. Unlike Evans-Pritchard ancl other British anthropologists of the early to mid twenti
eth cenrury, thc focus of Griaule's Dogon cthnography is not on ritual behat,ior or the practia of
belief systems in the course of daily life (cf. Richards, 1966).
In his discussion of Western writings ~bout African systems of thought, l'vlalian philosopher
Paulin]. Hountondji criticizes both Tcmpels and Griaule. According LO Hountondji, these authors
present African "philosophy" as an unarticulated intellectual system about which African people
themselves are uncritical and largely unaware. Houncondji argues that Western obseners of
African societies have often assumed that "everybody always agrees with everybody else" (1983:
60). Griaule, for example, spins the words of a single Dogon man into the cultural fabric of an
entire ethnic group's philosophy and cosmology. Contrary to this, however, men and women in
African societies, like individuals everywhere, have widely di\crgcnt perspectives and contentious
worldviews. l\leanings are arrived at through debate and dialogue - and not simply through
monolithic consent and the putative unanimity of collective opinion (Gyekye, 1995: xvii).
This false, essentialist construction of Urican systems of thought arises, according to
Hountondji, out of a certain Western pcrspectivc which assumes that critical knowlcdge about
Africa can only comc from outside - "here the \Vestern observer somehow "sees" more than
indigenous Africans can possibly sec themselves. Whilc Griaulc argued that Dogon cosmology
was highly complex and formed a comprehensive system of belief, he suggested at the same time
that this unity was apparent onl) to the dctached, "scientific" gaze of the outside obsener.
While insiders were able to recite myths and dwell upon certain isolated philosophical problems.
the broader structures and implications of this universal system of thought largely eluded
them.
The seminal work ofTempels and Griaulc set forth a framcwork of investigation which was
followed for years to come not only by subsequent European authors but also b) an emerging
group of African philosophers and scholars. Thus, in his critique of the lit.erature 011 African
philosophy, Hountondji takes issue not only \\ith Tempels but also with Alexis Kagame, a
Rwandan (Tutsi) historian and philosopher, whose book La phi/lJsophie bfllltoue-rWfllldaise dl'
rEl1"e (J 956) is a direct follO\\-up stud) of 'Iem pels' work on Bantu ontology. Rather than begin
from his 0\\ n kno\\ ledge of Bantu culture, Kagamc simply clarifies points made b) Tempels, and
corrects errors of fact here and there. An authentic and meaningful African philosophy, accord
ing to Hountondji, must spring from African intellectual discourse and must not simp!) refine
and build upon Western models ofAliica. But where, then, is this philosophy to be found today?
According to l-Iountondji, this kind of African philosophy is "yet to come." In a comparison of
INTRODUCTION 287
the current dialogues on Mrican philosophy, anthropologist Andrew Apter notes that for
1lountondji, "So-called traditional African thought with its oral forms of expression and trans
mission may constitute a wisdom, but it lacks the power of sustained critical reflectiflll that real
philosophy demands" (1992: 90).
An important question, howe\'er, remains as to whether or not such a philosophy is indeed
possible. What is all "authentic" A frican knowledge or philosophy? Who has the authority to
consu'uct or discern an African philosophy? Can African scholars, trained for the most part in
European academic institutions, shed Western models of representation and intellectual prece
dents in order to create a pure, genuine Africanist discourse? And, furthermore, did authors like
Tempels and Grialile do more harm than good in our understanding of African ontology and
religion? These arc difficult questions which remain at the heart of any discussion of African
systems of thought.
The problem with the reproduction of European-derived models of African religious beliefs
is that concepts and phrases often take on assumed meanings which arc quite misleading and
vcry different from the phenomena they are intended to describe. This point is clearly addressed
in Igor Kopytoff's article "Ancestors as Elders in Africa" wherc the author presents a critical
rethinking of the category "ancestors" in the religious beliefs of the Suku people of south
western Democratic Republic of Congo.
Contrary to Western beliefs about life and death, Kopytoff argues that there is a continuum
between the categor) Ii\ ing "elders" and that of deceased "ancestors," and that the structural
relationship between elder and junior is more important to tile Suku than the existential bound
ary which separates the Jiving from the dead. Kopytoff argues that concepts \\hich commonly
appear in African studies lit.erature, such as "ancestor worship" and "ancestor cults," imply a
po\\crful spiritual and religious clement which simply is not found in Suku relationships \\ith
the dead. Ancestors are considered to be thc eldest members of the lineage who are appealed to
in times of crisis and misfortune. The fact that they are deceased and living in the other worlds
is less critical to their power of redemption than tile fact that they are elders and therefore the
most senior members of a particular lineage. Kopytoff's article maJ..es clear that African religion
docs not operate in a realm which is separate from society, but rather religion is modeled on
society itself.
This important point would subsequently be picked up by numerous other authors in the
field of African studies (see the suggested readings) to show that social changes inmhc reor
ganuations of belief. Many scholars clearly echo Kop~'toIT, while others appear more indebted
to the British anthropologist, ~Ieyer Fortes. In a classic essay entitled Oedipus alld Job ill Iflest
.~{ricul1 Religion, published in ]959, Fortes examines the way in which the Tallensi people of
Ghana use religious concepts to order and explain ke) aspects of an indi\idual's passage through
the cycle of life. I Ie identifies two sociological concepts, abstracted from African religions in
general, "hich help explicate differenl types of structural relationships between humans and
gods. In the first relationship, which he calls the Oedipal principle, human actions are go\uned
by fate and destiny. Individuals are believed to take no personal responsibility for their lives, and
thus place all actions and consequences in the hands of omnipotent gods and spiritual forces
which are outside the rea 1m of human influence.
In the second t) pe of relationship, which Fortes calls the Jobian principle, individuals a$sume
responsibility for their lives and believe that events are shaped by human actions \\ hich are only
mediated in part by supematural forces and djvine justice. Throughout the course of their life,
men and women can forge "contractual relationships" with the god~ and, in so doing, try to
sub\crt and overcome the clements of fate and destiny that other\\ ise govern the unfolding of
288 INTRODUCTION
rheir existence (Fortes, 1983: 4--{i). Fortes argued thai \\ ithin ever) religion and system of
thought there is a delicate balance hetween the principles of di\ inely imposed destiny, on the
one hand, and self-determination, on the other, a point made cle.!rl)' by the anthropologist
Karin Barber in a well-known essay on the Yoruba of Nigeria (Barber, 1981). Barber, howe\'er,
emphasizes the agency of the Yoruba, their ability to actively shape their ov,n destinies. She
shows that in their search for spiritual guidance and protection, the Yoruba did not limit them
selves to gods in the Yoruba religious universe, but explored with confidence and case the poten
tial benefits of other religions. Because Yoruba beliefs are continually produced and reproduced
through indiviuual action, L~lam and Christianity were not taken as a Ihreat to a pre-existing or
eStablished order but were viewed as complementary systems of worship and belief. Kwame
Anthony Appiah has written that "wlostAfricans, now, whether converted to Islam or Christianit~
or not, still share the beliefs of their ancestors in an ontology of invisible beings" (1992: nl).
Thus, because Islam and Olfistianity did not overthrov. existing religious belie(<;, any study of
J'vluslim and Christian religions in Africa must begin \\iLh the roots of African religious thought.
Although the readings for this book do not cover specifically I he emergence or presence of Islam
and Christianity in Africa, bibliographic suggestions for reading in these areas are listed at the
end of t.his introduction.
References
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1992. III ,Hv Father's fIousf: Africa ill the Philosop'o' of Cullur~. New York: Oxford
nil'ersit~ Pres".
\pter, Andrew. 1992. "Qp,. Faire? Reconsidering Imcnrions of Africa." ("'I/wllnquir)' 19(1): 87-104.
Barber, "-arin. 1981. "I low Man ~hlkc.~ God in West Africa: Yoruba Anil.Udes to\I':lrds the 6rl~a." /~fri{{/ 51 (3):
724-14.
Clifford, James. Jl)81:i. "Power and Dialogue in Ethnography: Marcd Griaule's Initiation." IJl The Predicalllent nf
Culluft': Tivelllielh-Certiury Etll/lography, Lilmllure. alltl,JrI. Cambridge, .\1A: Harvard Unil'crsir) Pre~s.
Fortes, 1\Jcyer. J 983 [19591. O~dipus alldJob ill West /({rit"illl R,ligi(iIl. Cambridge: Cambridge Univcrsity Press.
Griaule, 1\larcel. 1965. Collt'ersaliol1s 11>1/11 Ogo/tll1mili: .1n Illtrodllction 10 Doglil/ Religious Ideas. London: Oxford
uni\ersity Press for tbe International African Institute.
Gyek,e, "-wame. 1995 [1()87J- An Essajl on Aji-iC/l1I Pllilllsnplllt'tli 71IO/I/[ht: The Ak/JII COIICl'plllnl Schell/e.
Philadelphia: Temple Uni\"ersit~ Press.
Hounrondji, Paulin J- 1\183. . lfrical1 Philosophy. illylh and Realil)l. Bloominbrton: lndiana University Press.
Kagame, Alexis. 1956. La philosophic ball[(JI/(rJ1)(IIlt!lIise d, 1'Elre. Bru"els: Academie ro}ale des sciences
coloniales.
Richards, A. L 1966. "Afri<::ln Systems of Thought: An Anglo-Frcnrh Dialogue." MiJll (NS) 2: 286-98.
Tempel>, Placide. 1945. La PhilQsophie bml/Olie. Elisabethville: I ,ouvania. English edition 1959; BlIll/ll Philosoph)'.
Paris: Pre,ence.A, fricaine.
Van llee~, Walter LA. 19Y1. "Dogon Restudied: A Field Evaluation uf thc Work of Marcel Griaule." Current
Allthropology 32(2): 139-58.
Suggested Reading
'\shforth, Adam. 2000. MtldllT/lO, a Mall BelPitdlet!. Chicago: Cnivcrsity of Chicagu Prcss.
Katongole, Emmanuel M. 2005. A Flliure .for AIi'ica: en'lical Essays ill Christiall Social Imagillatioll. Chicago:
Blakel), Thomas D., Walter E. A. van Beek, and Dennis L Thomson, eds. 1994. RdigiOlI il/ ,Ifrim. Portsmouth,
University of Chicago Press.
'\!H: I Ieinemann.
Bro\\ n, T.ee \>,. 2003. Afnrt/ll P/1I10.wplzy: N~1l' tllld Tradllianal Perspulncs. Oxford: Oxford Unil'ersity Press.
Forde, Dar)l1, ed. 1954. Afrirtl/1 /l'orlds: Stllain ill tIlt Cosmological ld/'/ls alld SQcitll va/lies of African Peopl.:.'.
London: Published for the International AfriclI1 Institute by the Oxford University Press.
Fones, Mcyer. 1987. Religion, Momlit)', alit! the Person: The ESS4)'S OIl Tul/ellsi Religion. Nc\\ York: Cambridge
University Press.
INTRODUCTION 289
Fortes, ~Ic~er, and Germaine Dieterlen, eds. 1965. Afi'iuw Systems 0/ Thouglu. London: Oxford Lnivt:rsit)
Press for the International African Instirute.
ood, Charles .\1. 200+. Steamer Parish: The Rise aud Fa!1 o/.Wissiouary ,Wedirille 011 all Afi-jaw Fmll/ier. Chicago:
University of Chic:lgo Press.
Goody, .lack. 1962. Death. Propet"ly, (md the Anrestors: '1 51l/'6' 0/ the ,Hurt/InIJI CUS/OIIIS of the Lodagga of Hest
.,J('rlca. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Karp, han, and Charles S. Bird, eds. 1980. Eyploratiolls il1. Jfricl1n Systems of 'I'//{Jughl. Bloomington: Indiana
Ul1ilersifY Press.
La\\al, BJbatunde. 1977. "The Living Dead: An and Immortality among the Yoruba of Nigeria."4/rica 47(1):
50-61.
Lal\50n, E. Thomas. 1984. Religious ojAji-ica: Tmditiolls in Tran.gomllltioli. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
J\!acGalTey, W) alt. 1986. ReligiQ/1 and Society in Celltral AfriCtl: The BaK07lgo of l.owCI" Zaire. Chicago: The
Um\ ersity of Chicago Press.
Marshall, Ruth. 2009. pQ/itical Spiritualities: The PentccoslIIl R.'Volulioll in jl.'igt'rill. Chicago: Cni\'ersity of
Chic<lgo Press.
Mbiti,]ohn S. 1991. IlIlroduclion/o.1jrican Religio7l. Portsmouth, NH: Heinem~nn.
Mjddleton, John. 1960. Lughllra Religion. London: Oxford Unil'ersity Press.
Oru~a, I-I. Oder~, ed. 1990. Sage Philosoph)': IllIhgmous Tlnllkers tlllrl \!Jodall Debate 011 A,frit"tlll Philvsoph)'. New
Yor~: E-J. Brill.
Ranger, Terence 0., and Isaria X Limambo, eds. 1972. The llistorical Siudy of Aji-icOlI Religion. London:
Heinemann.
Itl~, Benjamin C. 1976. Aji-ican Re/~f!,i(lI1s: SYI/lbol. Rill/til, tlwl CiJl/llI/lJIlil)'- Englewood DilTs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Thomas, Linda E. 2007. (:Iida lilt, Calt()py: Ritl/al Process and Spiritul1l R"siliCllre ill South .~fi'iCt1. Columbia:
vnivcrsity of South Carolina Press.
T\\csig~e, Emmanuel K. 1987. COII/IIIOIl Gm/lllt!: Chrislianily. "1frimll R~ligioll, OIld Philnsoph)'. '\!ewYork: Peter
ng.
Van Binsbergen, \Vim. 1981. Rdigious Chrll//(e ill Zambia. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Further Reading on Islam and Christianity in Africa
.'\sanre, Molcfi Kete and Emeka '\Jwadiora. 2007. Spear Maslers: /111 IlIlrotlucti()lllO Africall Rdlgioll. Lanham,
i\ tD: University Press of America.
Bond, George, Wahon Johnson, and Sheila S. Walker, eds. 1979. A,frica/l Christianity: Pal/aIlS of Religio/ls
ColI/illl/il)'. 1'<cw York: Academic Press.
Br~\mann, Rene A. 1974. Islam and Tiibl1l Art ill West AjTica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clarke. Peter Bernard. 1982. Wesr .1frica I1l1d Islam: A Stlldy 0/ Religious Det'elQpmellt frOIll Ihe 8th to the 20th
Crt/tllry. London: Edward Arnold.
C1<lrke. Peter Bernard. 1986. lIi-st Africa alld Christianit),. London: Edwa.rd Arnold.
Cruise O'Brien, Donal B., and Christian Coulon. 1988. Charisma and Brotherhood il1 Africall Isla/ll. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
FaIola, Toyin, and Biodun Adedirm. 1983. Isll1m alld Chrisrialli'-l' ill West ,({rica. Ife-Ife, I'\igerin: University of
Ife Press.
Hanretta, Sean. 2009. Islfllll alld Sncial Ch01lge ill FI'l'I1Ch H-esl A,fi'ica: Histol)' 0/ all t:moncipa/ory COlllmlini/y.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kalu, Ogbu. 2008. A(i-iClln PellleCMItI!tsm: /b/IlltrodllrtirJll. O:-.ford: O~ford Uni\ ersity Press.
Kritzeck, James. 1969. /sll1m II/ /~frica. '\!e\\ York: Van .:\Iastrand-Reinhold.
Lewis, I.M. 1980. Islalll in Tropical /slall/. London: [nternationalA[rican Institute in association with Hutchinson
Uni\'crsity Library for Africa.
~~ang, Sulayman S. 1984. /slam. Christl/Illily. ant! Afi'iCtln JIlt!lIstry- Brattleboro, VT: .'\mara Books.
Olupona,Jacob K. and Sula) man S. Nyang, eds. 1993. Religiolls Pluraliry ill ({ricu: Essllys ill HOl/nllr o/Johll S
Albili. Berlin; New Yor~: Mouton de Gru}'ter.
290 INTRODUCTION
Phiri, Is.lac. 2001. Prorlaimlllg Poll/lca! Pluralism: Chl/rrllls alii! Poll/it'll! 7;lIlIsil/(lns In Afrifa. New York:
Praeger.
Sanneh, Lamin. 1983. "h/ Afn'am Chris/ialli/y. London: Allen Unwin.
Sanneh, Lamin 0. 19119. The Jaklwllke AIuslim Clerics: A Re"~lOus olld l/is/IJrieo! Sludy of /shllli ill Senega/llbi,/.
Lanham, MD: Univcrsity Press of America.
Smith. Mary F 1981 [195.f). Baba of Karo: A WOllllln of Ih~ ;\fuslilll Ilausu. Nc\\ 1..!J\,en and London: Yale
Conversations with Ogotemmeli
nlversi!' Press.
Trimingham, John Spencer. 1962. .J /-lislOI)' of lslr/lu III /1:eSI A/hell. 1.ondon: Oxford Uni\'crsity Press.
Trimingham, John SIlencer. 196-1. IslulJI 11/ Easl Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Trimingham. John Spencer, 1968. The 1nj1l10l(( ~f Islallll/pOII .ifriea. New York: Praegcr. Marcel Griaule
Zoghby, Samir M. lens. islam ill Sltb-Saharall Afnca:.4 Partill/()I. III/IO/llud Guide. '\-ashington, DC: J.ibran of
Congress.
First Day: Ogotemmeli
Lower Ogol, like all Dagon Villages, was a collec
tion of houses and granaries all crowded together,
flat roofs of clay alternating with cone-shaped
roof.~ of straw. Picking one's way along its narrow
streets of light and shade, between the truncated
p)Tamids, pri~ms, cubes or C) linders of the grana
ri~, and houses, the rectangular porticoes, the red
or white altars shaped like umbilical hernias, one
felt like a dwarf lost in a maze. Everything was
mottled b) the rains and the heat; the mud walls
wcrc lissured like the skins of pachyderms. Over
the walls of the tin) courtyards might be seen,
under the floors of the granaries, fowls, yellow
clog" and sometimes great tortoises, symbols of
the patriarchs.
.'\t a turn of the street t.here was a door, shaped
with an axc, but, evcn when new, it could never
hal c fined the entrance built of earthen pillars
Ilith a pediment of wooden blocks. The door was
.15 wide as a man's mo shoulders; winter rains had
ploughed wave-like furrows in the wood hetween
which the knots looked like open eyes. Drought,
clutching hands, and the mULZles of goatS had
From '\.\. Griaule, CO/wasll/iam 11'illl 0liu/ell/Tlleli (1948), Oxford Universiry Press, pp. 11-32, from Internarional
.\friC:ll1 Instilute.
19
worn it away so that it grated on its hinges and
swung back against the wall \\ ith a bang like a gong,
revealing a squalid courtyard, which belonged \0
the most remarkable man of the plains and rocks
from Oropa to Nimbe, Asakarba and Tintam.
The white man steppet.l over the scanty midden
of an old man with no family. A row of cabins, hro
ken by a low door on the ground floor and a flat
panel on the floor above, stood in the middle of the
courtyard forming a fa<;ade which concealed the
main building behind it. In the pediment were ten
swallows' nests, and the edge of the roof was adorned
hy eight cones \\"ith flat stone tops. To right and left
were six granariL'S in a 1'0\\ like big dice, two of them
facing the neighbouring house, to which they
belonged. Of the other four one was empty, another
rickety, and the third split across like a half-bitten
fruit. Only one of them II as in use: it was half full
of grain.
Opposite, between the main building and the
granaries, a low house, in which there were faint
sounds of life, completed the enclosure of the
courtyard. On the right in a store-room open to
the sky there was a perpetual whirl of down blown
about by a light breeze.
292 MARCEL GRIAULE CONVERSATIONS WITH OGOTEMMELI 293

The man accompanying the European pro
nounced the usual words of greeting. Immediately
a voice replied clearly and distinctly:
"God brings you! God brings you!"
"Greetings! 110\\ is your health?"
Slowly the voice drew nearer. From the shadows
of the interior came the sound of hands feeling
their way along walls and woodworl... A stick
tapped on the noor: there was a sound of hollow
earthenware: some lin) chickens made their way
out one by one through the cat-hole, thrust out by
the great being who was approaching.
At last there appeared a bwwn lunic, drawn in
at the scams and frayed by long use like the stand
ards of the warriors of old. Then a head bent
beneath the lintel of the door, and the man stood
up to his full height, turning towards the stranger
a face that no words can describe.
"Greetings!" he said, "Greetings to those who
arc athirst!"
The thick lips spol..e the purest Sanga language.
So ali\e were they that one saw nothing else. All
the other features seemed to be folded away, par
ticularly as, after the fust words, the head had
been bent. The cheeks, the cheek-bones, the fore
head and the eyelids seemed all to have suffered
the same ravages; they were creased by a hundred
wrinkles which had caused a painful contonion as
of a face exposed to too strong a light or battered
by a hail of stones. The eyes were dead.
The two visitors came from outside, and might
therefore be supposed to have been working in the
heat. Accordingl) the old man leaning on his stick
greeted them with the words:
"Welcome! Welcome after weariness! \Velcome
from the sun!"
The longest task of the first day was the choice of a
place for the conversations. The space in front of
the dwelling-house, even if the aged Ogotemrneli
remained indoors, and even if the white man bent
his head towards him and spoke in low tones as if in
the confessional, was, according to Ogotemmeli,
open [Q the objection that interviews there might
e..'\cite rhe eterna.l curiosit) of the women. The
minute courtyard on the other side of the building,
on the other hand, which \\as exposed to all the
winds from the north, might be watched by chil
dren hidden in the ruined granary. There remained
the courtyard itself with its wretched dung-heap,
its hollow stone, its ashes and its dilapidated wall
with a gap in the middle of it just high enough for
curious eyes to look through.
Ogotemmeli still hesitated; he had much to say
about the inconvenience of the courtyard for the
purpose of conversations between men of mature
years. The European for his part did not open his
mouth except to agree; he even stressed the indis
creet nature of walls and the stupidity of men and,
naturally, the unconscionable curiosity of women
and their insatiable thirst for novelties. All these
precautions interested him: the) seemed so out of
proportion to the simple sale of an amulet.
In the end Ogotemmeli sat down on the thresh
old of the lower door of the main faryade; doubled
up, with his face bent downwards and his hands
crossed above his head, his elbows resting on his
knees, he waited.
The white man was beginning to realize that the
sale ()f the amulet was only a pretext. There was no
reference to it in the subsequent conversations, and
the underlying reason for the old man's action
ne"er transpired. Out from various details it
appeared, as time went on, that Ogotemmeli wished
to pass on to the foreigner, who had first \"isited the
country fifteen years before, and whom he trusted,
the instruction which he himself had received first
from his grandfather and later from his father.
But he was wailing. lIe was perplexed by the
result of his own approaches to this man whom he
could not see. r--;ot t11at the man was unknown to
him: for fifteen years he had been hearing about
groups of Europeans, who came, under this man's
guidance, to live rough and to ride about the coun
try studying the customs of the people.
He had even followed their work since the
beginning, for he had been closely associated \nth
Ambibe Babadyc, the great dignitary of the masks
and the white man's regular informant, who had
only recently died. Many times in the last fifteen
years Ambibe had come to Ogotemmeli for infor
mation and advice. From what Ambibe had told
him, and from the reports of a munber of other
persons, he had formed a correct idea of the aims
and objects of his interlocutor and his unwearying
passion for research.
But the siluation was unique. ITow was one to
instruct a European? I low could one make him
understand things and rites and bdiefs? l\ loreover
this white man had already found out ahout the
masks, and lnew their secret language. He had
been all over rhe counrry in every direction, and
about some of its institutions he knew as much as
he knew himself. How then to set abour it?
The European relieved him of his embarrass
ment.
"When your gun exploded in your face, what
II ere you firing at?"
".AI a porcupine."
The white man was tr) ing by an indirect
approach to lead the con\'ersation ro hunting and
rhe altitude towards the animal world, and so to
totemism.
"It was an accident," said the old man. "But it
\Ias also a last warning'. 1 knew by divination that
1was to give up hunting if 1 wanted to protect my
children. Hunting is a work of dear11, and it attracts
death. 1 have had twenty-one children, and no\\
only live are left."
!\ll the tragedy of African mortality was in his
words, and all the deep questionings of these men
about death and their defencelessness in the face
of it. They clung to their belief." as do all men
every\\ here, but though beliefs may console and
explain, they cannot avert the experience.
It was on this plane of suffering that Ogote
mmcli's personality was re\'ealed, in itself and in
its rehuion with supernatural powers. From the
age of fifteen he had been initiated in the myster
ies of religion by his grandfather. After the lat
ler's death his father had continued the instruction.
It seemed that the "lessons" had gone on for more
than twenty years, and that Ogotcmmeli's family
was not one rhat took these things lightly.
Ogotemmcli himself, no doubt, had from a very
earl) age shown signs of an eager mind and con
siderable shrewdness. Until he lost his sight, he
was a mighty hunter who, though one-eyed from
childhood as a result of smallpox, would always
come back from the chase with a full bag, while the
others were still roiling in the gorges. His skill as a
hunter was the fruit of his profound knowledge of
nature, of animals, of men and of gods. After his
accident he learnt still more. Thrown back on his
0\\ n resources, on his altars and on whatever he
was ahle to hear, he had become one of rhe most
PCl\\erful minds on the cliffs.
Indeed his name and his character were
famous throughout the plateau and the hills,
known (as the saying was) to the youngest boy.
People came 10 his door for advice every da) and
even by night.
Phrygian caps were even no\\ showing above I he
walls, and the women were making signs from a
distance. It was time to go, and make room for
the clients. But contact had now been made, and
the conversations thereafter came about b) tacit
consent, according to a sort of programme and at
convenient times.
Second Day: The First Word
and the Fibre Skirt
Ogotemmeli, seating himself on his threshold,
scraped his st.iff leather snuff-box, and put a pinch
of yellow powder on his tongue.
"Tobacco," he said, "makes for right thinking."
So saying, he SCt to work to analyse the world
system, for it was essential to begin with the dawn
of all things. He rejected as a detail of no interest,
the popular account of hO\\ the fourteen solar
systems werc formed from flaT circular slabs of
card! one on rop of the other.
He was only prepared to speak of rhe serviceable
solar system; he agreed to consider the stars,
though they only played a secondary part.
"It is quite rrue," he said, "that in courSe of
time women took dO\\ n the stars to givc them to
their children. The children put spiJldles through
them and made them spin like fiery tops to ,how
themselves how the world turned. Bur that was
only a game."
The stars came from pellets of earth Oung
out into space by the God Aroma, the one God.
He had created the sun and the moon b) <1 more
complicated process, which was not the first
known to man but is the first attested illYention of
God: the art of polter). The sun is, in a sense, a pot
raised once for all to white heat and surrounded by
a spiral of red copper with eight turns. The moon
is the same shape, but itl> copper is \yhite. It was
heated only one qua.rter at a time. Ogotemmeli
said he would explain later the movements of these
bodies. For the moment he was concerned only to
indicate the main lines of the design, and from
that to pass to its actors.
294 MARCEL GRIAULE
He was an"(iou~, howe\er, to gi\'e an idea of the
size of the sun.
"Some," he said, "think it is as large as this
encampment, which would mean thirty cubits.
But it is really bigger. Its surface area is bigger
than the whole of Sanga Canton."
And after some hesitation he added:
"It is perhaps even bigger than that."
He refused to linger over the dimensions of the
moon, nor did he ever sayan) thing about them.
The moon's function was not important, and he
would speaJ. of it la[er. 1Ie said howe\"er that, while
Africans were creatures of light emanating from the
fullness of the sun, Europeans were creatures of
the moonligh[: hence their immature appearance.
lie spat out his tobacco as he spoke. Ogotemmeli
had nothing against Europeans. He was not even
sorry for them. He left them to their destin) in [he
lands of the north.
The God Amma, it appeared, took a lump of
clay, squeezed it in his hand and f1ung it from him,
as he had done widl the stars. The clar spread and
fell on the north, which is the top, and from there
stretched out to the south, which is the bottom, of
the world, although the whole movement was hor
izontal. The earth lies f1at, but the north is at the
top. It extends east and west with separate mem
bers like a foetus in the womb. It is a body, that is
to say, a thing with members branching out from a
central mass. This body, lying flat, face up\\ards,
in a line from north to south, is feminine. Its sex
ual organ is an anthill, and its clitoris a termite
hill. Amma, being lonely and desirous of inter
course with this creature, approached it. That was
the occasion of the first breach of thc Clfder of the
ulllverse.
Ogotemmeli ceased speaking. His hands crossed
above his head, he sought to distinguish the differ
ent sounds coming from the courtyards and roofs.
He had reached the point of the origin of troubles
and of the primordial blunder of God.
"If the) overheard me, I should be fined an ox!"
At God's approach the termite hill rose up, bar
ring Ule passagc and displa);ng its masculinity. It
was as strong as the organ of the stranger, and
intercourse could not take place. But God is all
po\\erful. lTe cut down the termite hill, and had
intercourse with the excised earth. But the original
inciden twas destined to affect the course of things
for e\'er; from this defecti\'e union there was born,
instead of the intended twins, a single being, [hc
TIlliS al/rellS or jackal, symbol of ule difficulti~ Ill'
God. Ogotemmcli's voice sank lo\\'er and lower. It
was no lunger a question of women's cars listening
to what he was saying; othcr, non-material, ear
drums might vibrate to his important discourse.
The European and his African assistant, Sergeant
Kogucm, were leaning towards the old man as if
hatching plots of the most alarming nature.
But, when hc came to the beneficent acts of
God, Ogotemmeli's voice ag:lin assumed its nor
mal tone.
God had further intercourse with his earth
wife, and this time without mishaps of any kind,
the excision of the offending member ha\ ing
removed the cause of the former disorder. \hter,
which is the divlne seed, was thus able to enter the
womb of the earth and the normal reproducti\'e
cycle resulted in the birth of twins. Two beings
were thus formed. God created them like water.
The) were green in colour, half human beings and
half serpents. From the head to the Joins they werc
human: below that they were serpents. Their red
eyes were wide open like human eyes, and their
tongues were forked like the tongues of reptiles.
Their arms were f1exible and without joints. Their
bodies were green and sleek all over, shining like
the surface of water, and co\'ercd with short green
hairs, a presage of regetation and germination.
These spirits, caJled Nllmmo, were thus two
homogeneous products of God, of di\'ine essence
like himself, conceived without untoward inci
dents and developed normally in the womb of the
earth. Thcir destiny took them to Hea\-en, where
they recei\'ed the instructions of their father. l\ot
that God had to teach them speech, that indispen
sable necessity of all beings, as it is of the world
system; the Pair were born perfect and completc;
they had eight members, and their number was
eight, \\hich is the s:rmbol of speech.
They were also of the essence of God, since
they were made of his seed, which is at once the
ground, lhe form, and the substance of the life
force of the world, from which derives the morion
and the persistence of created being. This force is
water, and the Pair are present in all \\ ateI': they lire
water, the water of the seas, of coasts, of torrents,
of storms, and of the spoonfuls \\'e drink.
CONVERSATIONS WITH OGOTEi,liviELI
Ogotemmcli used the terms "\Vatcr" and
"Nummo" indiscriminately.
"Without Nummo," he said, "it was not even
possihle to create the earth, for the earth was
moulded cJa~ and it is from water (thaI is, from
"iunllno) that its life is derived."
"", hat life is there in the earth-" asked the
Europt:'Jn.
"The Iire-Iorce of the eartb is water. God
moulded the ~rth with water. Blood too he made
out of watcr. Even in a stone there is this force,
for t1lere is moisture in everything.
"But jf Nummo is water, it also produces
copper. \Vhen the sky is overcast, the sun's rays
mJ) be seen matcrializing on the mist)' horizon.
These rays, excreted by the spirits, are of copper
and are light. The) are water too, because they
uphold the earth's moisture as it rises. The Pair
excrete light, because they arc also light."
While he was speaking, Ogotemmeli had been
searching for something in the dust. He finally col
lected a number of small sranes. With a rapid move
ment he flung them into the courtyard O\'er the
heads of his two interlocutors, who had no time to
bend down. The stones fell just where the Hogon's
cock had been crowing a few seconds before.
''That cock is a squa.lIing nuisance. He makes all
eOI1\'ersation impossible."
he bird began to crow again on the other side
of the wall, so Ogotemmeli sent Koguem to throw
a bit of wood at him. \Vhen Koguem came back,
he asked whether the cock was now outside the
limits of the Tabda quarter.
"He is in the Hogon's field," said Koguem.
"I have set four children to watch him."
"Good!" said Ogotemmcli with a little laugh.
"Let him make the most of what remains to him of
life! They tell me he is to be caten at the next Feast
of Twins."
He returned to the subject of tbe N ummo spirits,
or (as he more usually put it, in the singular) of
\ummo, for this pair of twins, he explained,
represented t1Je perfect, the ideal unit.
The Nummo, looking down from Heaven, saw
their mother, the earth, naked and speech less, as a
consequence no doubt of the original incident in
her relations with the God .I\mma. It was neces
sary to put an end to this state of disorder.
The 1"ummo accordingly came down to earth,
295
bringing with them fibres pulled from plants
already created in the heavenly regions. They took
ten bunches of ulese fibres, corresponding to the
number of their len fingers, and made t\\O strands
of them, one for the front and one for behind. To
this day masked men still wear these appendages
hanging down to their feet in thid. tendrils.
But the purpose of this garment was not merely
modest}. It manifested on earth the first act in
the ordering of the universe and the revelation
of the helicoid sign in the form of an undulating
broken line.
For ule fibres fell in coils, symbol of tornadoes,
of the windings of torrents, of eddies and whirl
winds, of the undulating movement of reptiles.
They recall also the eight-fold spirals of the sun,
which sucks up moisture. They were themselves a
channel of moisture, impregnated as the} were
\\ ilh the freshness of the celestial plants. They
were full of the essence of Nummo: they mere
Nummo in motion, as shown in the undulating
line, which can be prolonged to infinity.
When Nummo speaks, what comes from his
mouth is a warm vapour which conveys, and itself
constitutes, speech. This vapour, like all watcr, has
sound, dies away in a helicoid line. The coiled
fringes of the skirt were therefore the chosen vehi
cle for the words which the Spirit desired to reveal
to the earth. lIc endued his hands with magic
po\\er by raising them to his lips \I"hile he pla; led
the skirt, so that the moisture of his words was
imparted to the damp plaits, and the spiritual rev
elation was embodied in the technical instruction.
In these fibres full of water and words, placed
over his mother's genitalia, Nummo is thus always
present.
Thus clothed, the earth had a language, the flrst
language of this world and the most primitive of
all time. Its syntax was elementary, its verbs few,
and its vocabulary without elegance. The \Yords
were breathed sounds scarcely differentiated from
one another, but nevertheless \'ehicles. Such as it
was, Ihis iII-defined speech sufficed for the great
works of the beginning of all things.
In the middle of a word Ogotemmcli ga\'e a loud
cry in answer to the hunter's halloo which U1C dis
creet iUundyo, priest of women dying in child
birth and of stillborn children, had called through
the gap in The wall.
296 MARCEL GRIAULE
Akulldyo first spat to onc side, his eye riveted
on lhe group of men. He was wearing a red
Phrygian cap \\ hich covered his ears, with a raised
point like a uraeus on lhe bridge of the nose in the
fashion known as "the wind blows". His cheek
bones were prominent, and his teeth shone. He
uttered a formal salUf<ltion to \\hich the old man at
once replied and the exchange of courtesies
became more and more fulsome.
"God's curse," exclaimed Ogotemmeli, "on any
in Lower Ogo] who love you nor!"
With grO\\ing emotinn Akundyo made shift t
out-do the \'igour of rhe imprecation.
";vIa)' God's curse rest on me," said lhe blind
man at last, "if I love you not!"
The fom men breathed again. They exchanged
humorous comments on the meagreness of the
game in the I valley. Evemually Akuntlyo took his
lea,e of them, asserting in U1e slang) French of a
nati,e soldier that he was going to "look for porcu
pine", an animal much esteemed by these people.
The con\'erS,ttion revened to the subject of
speech. It~ function was organization, and there
fore it was good; nevenheless from the start it let
loose disorder.
This was because the jackal, the deluded and
deceitful son of God, desired to possess speech,
<lnd laid hands on the fibres in which language was
embodied, that is to say, on his mother's skirt. I lis
mother, the caTth, resisted this incestuous action.
She buried herself in her own womb, lhat is to say,
in the anthill, disguised as an ant. nut the jackal
followed her. There was, it should be explained, no
other woman in the world \\hom he could desire.
The hole which the earth made in the anlhill was
never decor enough, and in the end she had to
admit defeat. This prefigured the even-handed
struggles bet\\een men and \\omen, which, how
e\'er, always end in the victory of the male.
The incestuous act was of great cOrtSequence.
In the first place it endowed the jackal with the gift
of speech so that e\er afterwards he was able to
re\'eal to diYiners the designs of God.
It was also the cause of the Oow of menstrual
blood, which stained the fibres. The resulting
defilement of the earth was incompatible with the
reign of God. God rejected that spouse, and
decided to create living beings diJ"ectiy. M()delling
a womb in damp clay, he placed it on the C'arth and
covered it with a pellet flung out into space from
hea\'en. He made a male organ in the same way
and ha\'ing put it on the ground, he flung out ~
sphere \\ hich stuck to it.
The lWo lumps forthwith took organic shape;
their life began to de\'e1op. ]\,Iembers separated
from the central cure, bodies appeared, and a
human pair arose out of the lumps of earth.
J\t this point the Nummo Pair appeared on
the scene for the purpose of fUTlher action. The
Nummo foresaw that the original rule of t)\in
births \\:1S bound to disappear, and that errors
might result comparable to those of the jacl.al,
\\ hose birth was single. For it was because of his
solitary state that Lhe first son of God acted as
he did.
"The jackal was alone from birth," said
Ogotemmeli, "and because of this he did more
things than can be told."
The Spirit drew t\\O outlines on the ground,
one on top of the other, one male and the other
female. The man stretched himself out on these
t\\O shadows of himself, and took both of them for
his o\\'n. The s-.une thing was done for the woman.
Thus it came about that eaeh human being from
the first was endowed with t\\ a souls of differem
sex, or rather with two principles corresponding
to two distinct persons. In the man the female soul
was loc,lted in the prepuce: in the woman the male
soul was in the clitoris.
nut the foreknowledge of the N ummo no douot
re\e'dled to him the disadvantages of this make
shift. "Ian's life was not capable of supporting
both beings: each person wou ld ha\'e to merge
himself in the sex for which he appeared to be best
fitted.
The NUlTImo accordingly circumcised the man,
thus removing from him all the femininity of his
prepuce. The prepuce, however, changed itself
into an animal which is "neither a serpent nor an
insect, but is classed with serpents". This animal
is called a nay. It is said to be:l sort of lizard, hlack
and white like the pall which covers the dead. Its
name also means "four", the female number, and
"Sun", which is a female being. The lilly symbol
ized the pain of circumcision and the need for the
man to suffer in his sex as the woman does.
The man then had intercourse with rhe IIOman,
\\ ho later bore the first two children of a series of
CONVERSATIONS WITH OGOTEMMl'LI
eighr, who were to become the ancestors of the
Dogan people. In the moment of birth the pain
of parturition \",as concentrated in the woman's
cliroris, \\hich was excised by an imisible hand,
clct:lched itself and left her, and was changed into
the form of a scorpion. The pouch and the sting
s}mbolized the organ: the venom was the water
,lOci the blood of the pain.
The European, returning through the millet field,
found himself wondering about the significance
of all these actions and counteractions, all these
sudden jerks in the thought of the myul.
llcre, he reflected, is a Creator God spoiling his
tirst creation; restoration is effected by the exci
sion of thc earth, and then by the birth of a pair of
spirits, inventive beings who construct the world
anti bring to it the first spoken words; an incestu
ous act destroys the created order, and jcopardizes
till' principle of twin-births. Order is restored by
the creation of a pair of hum.Ul beings, and twin
births arc rcplaced by dual souls. (But why, he
asked himself: twin-births at all?)
The dual soul is a danger; a man should be male,
,1I1d a woman female. Circumcision and excision
arc once again the remedy. (But why the lillY? Why
the scorpion?)
The answers to these questions wcre to come
later, and to take their place in the massive struc
tme of doctrine, \.-hich the blind old man was
eausin~ to emerge bit by bit from the mists of
time.
Oyer the heads of the European a.nd Koguem
the daTk millet clusters stood out against the
leaden sky. They were passing through a field of
hea\")' cars, stiffly erect and mot.ionless in the
brc.:eze. When the crop is backward and thin, the
cars are light and move with the slightest breath of
\\ indo Thin crops are therefore full of sOlmd. An
abundant crop, on the other hand, is weighed
down by the wind and bows itself in silence.
Third Day: The Second Word
and Wea, ing
.'\nyone entering the courtyard upset its arrange
ments.1t \\as so cramped that the kites, most cun
ning of all the acrobats of the air, could not gCI at
the poultry. In a hollow stone there were the
29
remains, or rather, the dregs of some millet-beer,
which the poultry, cock, hen and chickens, were
glad to drink. So was a yellow and white sO'iped
dog \\ ith rail erect like an Ethiopian sabre. When
the door ban~ed, all these creatures dispersed,
leaving the courtyard to the humans.
gotemmeli, ensconced in his doorway, pro
ceeded to enumerate the eight original ancestors
born of the couple created by God. The four eld
est were males: the four others were females. But
by a special dispensation, pcrmitted only to them,
they were able to fertilize themseh-es, being dual
and bisexual. From them are descended thc eight
Dogon families.
For humanit~ \\as organizing itself in this make
shift condition. The permanent calamity of single
births was slightly mitigated by the grant of the
dual soul, which the Nummo traced on the ground
beside women in childbirth. Dual souls were
implanted in the new-born child by holding it by
rhe thighs abo\'c the place of the drawings with its
hands and feet touching the ground. Later the
superfluous soul was eliminated by circumcision,
and humanity limped towards its obscure destiny.
But the di\'ine thirst for perfection was not
extinguished, and the Nummo Pair, who were
gradually taking the place of God their father,
had in mind projects of redemption. But, in order
to improve human conditions, reforms and
instruction had to be carried out on the human
level. The l\ummo were afraid of the terrifying
effect of contact betll'een creatures of flesh and
blood on the one hand and purely spiritual beings
on the other. There had to be actions that could be
understood, taking place within the ambit of the
beneficiaries and in their own environment. Men
after regeneration must be drawn towards the ideal
as a peasant is drawn to rich farmla.nd.
The :--Jummo accordingly came down to earth,
and entered the anthill, that is to say, the sexual
part of which the~ were themselves the issue.
Thus, they were able, among other tasks_ to defend
their mother against possible attempts by their
elder, the incestuous jackal. At the same time, by
their moist, luminous, and articulate presence,
they were purging that body \\hich was for ever
defiled in the sight of God, but was nevertheless
capable of acquiring in some degree the purity
required for the activities of life.
298 MARCEL GRIAULE CONVERSATIONS WITH OGOTEMMELI 299

In the anthill the male Nummo took the place
of the masculine clement, which had been elimi
nated by the excision of me termite-hill clitoris,
while the female Nummo took the place of the
female element, and her womb became part of the
womb of the earth.
The Pair could then proceed to the work of
regeneration, wnich they intended to carry out in
agreement with God and in God's stead.
"Nummo in Amma's place," said Ogotemmeli.
"was working the work ofAroma."
in those obscure beginnings of the evolution of
the world, men had no knowledge of death, and
the eight ancestors, offspring of the fIrst human
couple, lived on indefinitely. They had eight sepa
rate lines of descendants, each of them being self
propagating since each was both male and female.
The four males :md the four females were couples
in consequence of their lower, i.e. of their sexual,
parts. The four males were man and woman, and
the four females were woman and man. In the case
of the males it was the man, and in the case of the
females it was the woman, who played the domi
nant role. They coupled and became pregnant each
in him or herself, and so produced their offspring.
But in the fullness of time an obscure instinct
led the eldest of them towards the anthill which
had been occupied by the Nummo. He wore on his
bead as bead-dress and to protect him from the
sun, the wooden bowl he used for his food. He put
his two feet into the opening of the anthill, that is
of the earth's womb, and sank in slowly as if for a
parturition a lergo.
The whole of him thus entered into the earth,
and his head itself disappeared. Bm he left on the
ground, as evidence of his passage into that world,
the bowl which had caught on the edges of the
opening. All tbat remained on the anthill was the
round wooden bowl, still bearing traces of the food
and the finger-prints of its vanished owner, sym
bol of bis body and of his human nature, as, in the
animal world, is the skin which a reptile has shed.
Liberated from his earthly condition, the ances
tor was taken in charge by the regenerating Pair.
The male Nummo led him into the depths of the
earth, where, in the waters of the womb of his
partner he curled himself up like a foetus and
shrank to germinal form, and acquired the quality
of water, tbe seed of God and the essence of the
[\yO Spirits.
And all trus process was the work of the Word.
The male with his voice accompanied the female
Nummo wbo was speaking to herself and to her
mm sex. The spoken Word entered into her and
wound itself round her womb in a spica! of eight
turns. Just as the helical band of copper round the
sun gives to it its daily movement, so the spiral of
the Word gave to the womb its regenerative mo\'e
ment.
Thus perfected by water and words. the new
Spirit was expelled and went up to He:nen.
All the eight ancestors in succession had to
undergo this process of transformation; but, when
the turn of the seventh ancestor came, the change
was the occasion of a notable occurrence.
The seventh in a series, it must be remembered,
represents perfection. Though equal in quality
with the others, he is [he sum of the feminine cle
ment, which is four, and the masculine clement,
which is three, He is thus the colllpktion of the
perfect series, symbol of the total union of male
and female, that is to say of unity
And to this homogeneous whole belongs espe
ciaily the mastery of words, that is, of Janguilt:;e;
and the appearance on earth of such a one was
bound to be the prelude to revolutionan' devclllp
ments of a beneficent character.
In the earth's w~)mb he became, like the othcrs,
water and spirit, and his development, like theirs,
followed t.he rhythm of the words uttered by the
two transfonning; i'Jummo.
"The words \1 hich the female Nummo spoke to
herself," Ogotemmeli explained, "turned into a
spiral and entered into her sexual part. The male
N ummo helped her. These arc rhe words II hich
the seventh ancestor lea.rnt inside rhe 11'0mb."
The others equally possessed rhe knowledge of
these words in vinue of l.heir experiences in the
same place; but tile) had not attauled the ma,rery
of them nor \1 as it given to them to del'elop their
use. What the sevenul ancestor had rl't.cived.
therefore, was the perfect kno\l ledge of a "oro
the second Word to be heard on earth, clearer than
the first and not, like the first, resen'Cd for partic
ular recipients, but destined for all mankind. Thus
he was able to achieve progress for the ~orld. In
parricular, he enabled mankind to take precedcnce
orer God's wicked son, the jackal. The Lmer, it is
trUe, still possessed knowledge of the first Word,
'lnd could srill therefore reveal to diviners certa.in
hc:3vcnly purposes; but in the future order of
thiJlgs he was to be merely a laggard in the process
of revelation.
The potent second 'Word developed the powers
of its nell possessor. Gradually he came to regard
his regeneration in the womb of the earth as
cqui"alcnt to Ule capture and occupation of thaL
110mb, and hule by little he took possession of ule
whole org-anism, making such usc of it as suited
him for the purpose of his activities. TTis lips began
to merge with the edges of the anthill, which wid
ened and became a mouth. Pointed teeth made
rheir appearance, seven for each lip, then ten, tll
nllmher of the fingers, later forty. and finally
eight), thaI is to say, len for <''3ch ancestor.
These numbers indicated the future rates of
increase of the families; the appearance of tlle
teerh was a sign that lhe time for nell' instruction
\,";1S drawing near.
But here again the scruples of the Spirits made
themselves felt. it was nOl directly' to men, but to
the ant, a\-atar of the eartJl and native to the localit)',
thaI Ihe seventh ancestor imparted instruction.
"It sunrise on the appointed day the seventJl
ancestor Spirit spat out eighty threads of cotton;
these he distributed between his tipper teeth which
acted as Lhe teeth of a weayers reed. In tlus '>lay he
made the uneven threads of a warp. IIe did tJle
,arne with the lower teeth to make the even weads.
Ih opening' and shulting his jaws the Spirit caused
the threads of the \I arp to make the moyements
required in weaving. His whole face took part in
the work. his nose studs ser\'ing as the block, while
the stud in his lower lip \lias the shuttle.
'Is the threads crossed and uncrossed, the [\1'0
tips of the Spirit's lorked tongue pushed the
thread of the weft to and fro, and the web look
shape from his mouth in the breath of the second
relealed "ord.
For the Spirit was speaking while the work pro
ceeded. As did the Nummo in the first revelation,
he imparted his \Vord by means of a technical
process, so fhat all men could understand. By so
doing he sho\lcd the identity of material actions
and spi.ritual forces, or rather the need for their
cll-operation.
The words that the Spirit uttered filled all the
inrerstices of the stuff: they were woven in the
threads, and formed part and parcel of rJle cloth.
The) were the cloth, and the cloth was the Word.
That is wh) woven material is called soy, II hich
means "It is the spoken word". Soy also means
",e\en", for the Spirit who spoke as he wove was
seventh in the series of ancestors.
\Vhile the \1.ork was going on, the ant came and
went on the edge in the opening in the breaUl of
the Spirit, hearing and remembering his words.
The new instruction, which she U1US received, she
passed on to the men who lived in those regions,
and who had aJready followed the transformation
of the sex of t he earth.
Up to the time of the ancestors' descent into tJ1C
anthill, men had lived in holes dug in Ule level soil
like the lairs of animals. When their attention \\as
drawn to the bowls which the ancestors had left
behind them, they began to notice the shape of tJle
anthill, which they thought much better than their
holes. The) copied the shape of the anthill accord
ingly, making passages and rooms as shelters from
the rain, and began to store the produce of the
crops for food.
They were thus advancing towards a less primi
tive way of life; and, when they noticed Lhe growth
of teetJl round the opening, they imitated Lhese too
as a means of protection aginst wild heasts. They
moulded great teeth of day, dried them and set
them up round the entrances to their dwellings.
At themoment of the second instruction, there
fore, men were living in dens which were already,
in some sort, a prefiguration of the place of revela
tion and of tJle womb into wluch each of them in
due course would descend to be regenerated. And,
moreOI'er, the human anthill, WiUl its occupants
and its store-chambers for grain, was a rudimen
tary image of the system \\hich, much later, was to
come down to them from I-leaven in the form of a
marvellous granary.
These dim outlines of things to come predis
posed men to take ad\ice from the am. The laner,
aner what it had seen [he Spirit do, had bid in a
SLOre of corron-fibres. These it hall made into
threads and. in the sight of men, d.rew them
hetween the teeth of the anthilJ entrance as the
Spirit had done. :\s the warp emerged, the men
passed the rhread of the weft, ulrowing' it right and
300 MARCEL GRIAULE
left in time to the opening and shutting movements
of the jaws, and the resuJting wcb I,'as rolled round
a piece of wood, fore-rUlmer of tJle bcam.
The ant at tJ1C same time revcaJcd thc words it
had heard and the man repeatcd them. Thus there
was recreated by hwnan lips the concept of life in
motion, of the u'ansposition of forces, of the effi
cacy of the breath of the Spirit, which the seventh
ancestor had created; and thus the interlacing: of
warp and weft enclosed the samc 1V0rds, the new
instruction wh.ich became the heritage of mankind
and was handed on from generation to generation
of weavers to the accompaninlCl1t of the clapping
of the shuttle ~md the creaking of the block, which
they call the "creaking of the Word".
All these operations took place by daylight, for
spinning and weaving are work for the daytime.
Working at night would mean weaving webs of
silence and darkness.
Fourth Day: The Third Word and the
Granary of Pure Earth
Ogoremmeli had no very clear idea of what hap
pened in Hea\'cn after the transformation of the
eight ancesrors into N ummo. It is tIue that the
eight, after leaving thc earth, having completed
their labours, came to the celestial region where
the eldest Pair, who had transformed them,
reigned. It is true also that these elders had prec
edence of the others, and did not fail to impose on
them at once a form of organization and rules of
life.
But it was never quite clear why this celestial
world was disturbed to the point of disintegration,
or why these disorders led to a reorganization of
the terrestrial world, which had nothing to do WitJl
the celestial disputes. What is certaln is that in the
end the eight came down to earth again in a vast
apparatus of symbols, in which was included a
third and definitive Word necessary for the working
of the modern world.
All that could be gathered from OgotemmHi,
by dint of patient attention to his words, was the
e\"asive answer:
"Spirits do not fall from Heaven except in anger
or because they are expelled."
It was obvious that he was consciolls of the infi
nite complexity of the idea of God or the Spirits
who took his place, and was reluctant to explain it.
However an outline, slight but nevertheless
adequate, of this obscure period was nentualh
obtained.
The :-.Jummo Pair had received the translormed
eight in Heaven. But though they were all of thl:
same essence, the Pair had the rights of the elder
generation in relation to the newcomers, on whom
they imposed an organization with a network of
niles, of which the most onerous \\as the one
which separated them from one another and for
bade them to visit one another.
The fact was that, like human societies in which
numbers are a source of trouble, the celestial soci
ety would have been heading for disorder, if all ih
members had gathered together.
Though this rule was their security, the nell
generation of Num.mo, howeY-er, proceeded to
break it and thereby o\-erthre" their destiny; and
this was how it came about.
God had given the eight a collection of eight
different grains intended for their food, and for
these the first ance~tor was responsible. Of the
eight, the last was the D,gjlana, whicb had been
publicly rejected by the first ancestor when it lIas
given to him, on the prete.xt wat it was so small
and so difficult to prepare. He e",:n went so far as
to swear he would never eat it.
There came, howe\'Cr. a (.Titical period when all
the grains were nearly exhausted except the l:lst.
The first and second ancestors. who incidentally
had ahead) broken the rule about separation, mel
togerher to eat this last food. Their action was the
crowning breach of order, confirming as it did
their first offence by a breach of faith. The 1'11'0
ancestors thereby became unclean - that is to sa~,
of an essence incompatible with life in the celesti.ll
world. They resolved to quit that region, where
they felt themselves to be strangers, and the six
other ancestors threw in their lot Ilith them and
made the same decision. Moreover, they proposed
to take with them when they left anything that
might be of use to tlle men they were going to
rejoin. It was then that the flrst ancestor, no doubt
with the approval and perhaps with the help of
God, began to make preparations fOJ his own
departure.
He took a woven basket with a circular opening
and a square base in which to carry the earth amI
CONVERSATIONS WITH OGOTEMMt:L1
puddled clay required for the construction of a
world-system, of which he was to he one of the
counsellors. This basket served as a model for a
basket-work structure of considerable size whieh
he buill' upside down, as it were, with the opening,
[wenry cubits in diametcr, on rhe ground, the
quare base, with sides eight cubits long, formed a
lht rool: and the height was ten cubits. This
framework he covered with puddled clay made of
Ihe earth from heay-en, and in the thickness of the
day, starting from the centre of each side of the
square, he made stairways of ten steps each facing
lOwards one of rhe cardinaJ points. At the sixth
step of the north staircase he put a door giving
access to the interior in which were eight chambers
arranged on two floors.
The symholic significance of this structure was
as lallows:
The circular base represented the sun.
The sqU8re roof represented the sky.
r\ eircle in the centre of the roof represented
the moon.
The tread of each step being female and the rise
of each stcp male, the four stairways of ten steps
together prefigured rhe eight tens of families, off
spring of the eight ancestors.
blch stairway held one kind of creature, and
\las associated with a constellation, as foHows:
The north stairway, associated with the Pleiades,
II as for men and fishes.
The south stairway, associated with Orion's
Belt, was for domestic animals.
The east stairway, associated with Venus, was
for birds.
The \\est stairway, associated with the so-called
"long-tailed Star", was for wild animals, vegeta
bles, and insects.
In fact., the picture of the system was not easily
or in1mediately grasped from Ogotemmeli's
account of it.
"When the ancestor ca.me down from Heaven,"
he said at first, "he was standing on a square piece
301
of}-Iea\-en, not a very big piece, about the size of a
sleeping-mat, or perhaps a bit bigger."
"How could he stand on this piece of Heaven?"
"It was a piece of celestiaJ earw."
'~'\ thick piece?"
"Yes! As thick as a hOllse. [t was ten cubits high
with stairs on each side faciDg the lour C'dIdinal
points."
The blind man had raised his head, which was
almost always bent towards the ground. How was he
to explain these geometrical forms, these steps, these
exact measurenlents' The European had begun by
th inIOng that what was meant was a tail prism flanled
by four stairways forming a cross. He kept returning
to this conception in order to get it quite clear, while
the other, patiently groping in the darkncss which
enYeloped him, sought for fresh details.
At last his ravaged face broke into a kind of
smile: he had found what hc wanted. Reaching
into the inside of his house and lying almost nat
on his back, he searched among ,I number of
objects which grated or sounded hollow as they
scraped the earth under his hand. Onl} his thiD
knees and his feet werc still visible in the Cl11bra
sure of the doorway; the rest disappeared in the
shadows within. The front of the house looked like
a great face with the mouth closed on two skinny
shin-bones.
After m.uch rugging, an object emerged from
the depths and appeared framed in the doon\a).
It was a woven basket, black with dust and soot of
the interior, wit.h a round opening and a square
base, crushed and broken, a wretched spectacle.
The thing was placed before the door, losing
several strands in the process, whiJe the whole of
the blind man's body reappeared, his hand still
firmly grasping the basket.
"Its only use nO\1 is to put chickens in," he
said.
He passed his hands slowl} over its battered
remams, and proceeded to explain the world
s}stem.

20
African PhilosophYJ Myth and Reality
Paulin J Hountondji
I must emphasize that my theme is African
philosophy, myth all/I reality, whereas one might
have expected the cony eorional formula, m) th or
reality? I am not asking whether it exists, whetl1er il
is a m) lh or a reality. I obsen'e that it does exist, by
the same right and in the same mode as aU the phi
losophies of the world: in the form of a litcrature.
I shaJl try to accoum for this misunderstood reality,
deliherately ignored or suppressed eYen by those
who produce it and who, in producing iI, believe
that they arc merely reproducing a pre-existing
thought through it: through the insubstantiaJiry of
a tranr;parem discourse, of a flujd, compliant ether
whose only function is to transmit light, My work
ing hypothesis is that such suppression COlO nOt be
innocent: this djscursive self-deception serves to
conceal something else, and this apparem self
obliteration of the subject aims at camouflaging its
massive omnipresence, its convulsivc effort to root
in realit) this fiction filled with itself. Tremendous
censorship of a shamcful text, \\ hich presents itself
as impossibly transparent and almost non-existent
but which also claims for its object (African pseu
do-philosophy) the privilege of having always
existed, outside any e~1Jlicit formulation.
From Paulin J Hounlondji, 1983 A/nca1l Philosap/o', ,11)'111 allli RUt/lit)', pp. 55-70. Reprinted with pcrmissilJn of
Indiana Universil} Pn:ss.
\\(lrd "philosophy" throughoUl its possible geo
prcsef\'ed - not because philosophy must necessar
lthere/orc invert the relation: that which exists,
that which is incontrO\ ertibly gi\'cn is that Iitera
turc, As [or tht:: object it claims to restore, it is at
most a way of speaking, a verbal im ention, a
mUlhos. When I speak ofAfrican philosophy I mean
tbat literature, ,md I try to understand why it has
so far made such strenuous efforts to hide behind
the screen, all the morc opaque for being' imagi
nary, of an implicit "philosophy" conceived as an
unthinking:. spontaneous, collective system of
thought, common to all Africans or at least to all
members severall), past, present and future, of
such-and-such an African ethnic group, I try to
understaJ1d why most African authors, when trying
to engage with philosophy, have so far thought it
necessary to project the misunderstood reality of
their own discourse on to such palpable fiction.
Lct us therefore tacklc the problem at a higher
level. What is in question here, suhstantially, is
the idea of philosophy, or rather, of /(fi'ical1 philo
sophy. :\ lore accurately, the problem is \\'hether the
word "philosoph)," when qualified by the word
'~frican," must rctain its habitual meaning, or
\\hcther thc simplc addition of an adjectin:
necessarily changes thc meaning of the substanti\'e,
AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY, MYTH AND REALITY
,,11at is in question, then, is the universality of the
graphical applications.
\1) o\\n \ ie\\ is that this universality must be
in such a wa) mat they \\ ill recognize themseh'es in
ih del'e1op the same themes or even ask the same
q~lcstions from one couno')' or continent to another,
but because these differcnces of c0I11ml are mean
ingful precisely and only as diffcrences of COI/tel/t,
\\hich, as such, refer back to the esscntial unity of
a single discipline, of a single st)le of inquiry.
The present chapter will therefore endeavour to
develop the conclusions of the first two. Tn par
licular, it will attempt 10 sho\\, first, that the phrase
"-\frican phjlosophy," in the enormous literature
that has been devoted to the problem, has so far
been the subject only of mythological exploitation
,md, second, that it is nevertheless possible to
rmie\e it and apply it to something else: not to the
fiction of a collective system of thought, but to a
set of philosophjcaJ discourses and te>.ts,
J shall try to e\ince the existence of such texts
and to determine both the limits and essential
configurations, or general orientations, of African
philosoplucaJ literature.
The Popular Concept of African
Philosoph~
Tempels' work will serve us as a reference. l
.\Iore than once Tempels emphasizes that "Bantu
philosophy" is e~perienced but not tbought and
that its practitioners are, at best, ollly dimly con
sciolls of it:
let us not expect the first B1ack-in-the-street
(especiall) if he is young) to give us a systematic
account of his ontological syslem. Nevertheless,
this ontolog~ exists; it penetrates and informs all
the primitive's thinking and dominates all his
behaviour, Using the methods of analysis and
S\11t hesis of our own intellectual disciplines. \\ e
can and therefore must do the "primitive" the
sen ice of looling for, classifying and systematiz
ing the elements of his ontological system.(p.lS)
:\nd further on:
We do not claim that Bantus are capable of presel1l
ing us with a philosophical treatise complete with
303
an adequale vocabulary. It is our 0\\ n intellectual
training that enables us to effect its systematic
dc\elopmeot. It is up to us to provide them Wilh
an accurate account of their conception of entities,
our words and \\ ill agree, saying: "You have under
stood us, you know us now completely, you 'know'
in the same \lay \\e 'know'."(p.24)
It is quite clear, then: the black man is here reg
arded, in Eboussi-Boulaga's words, as the "J\ 10nsieur
]ourdaiJ1 of philosophy."2 Unwitting philosopher,
he is the ri\'al in silliness ofJ\lolicrc's famous char
acter, who spoke in prose \\ithout knO\\ing it.
Ignorant of his own thoughts, he needs an inter
preter to translate them for him, or rather an inter
preter who, having formulated these thoughts with
the \"hite world in mind, will accidemly drop a few
crumbs which will inspire the Bantu, when he picks
them up. with boundless gratitude.
We have already mentioned Cesaire's criticism.
That very necessary political critique, we said,
stopped short because it failed to follo\\ up its own
theoretical implications. To aim cautious crit-i
cisms, "not at Bantu philosophy, but at the politi
cal uses to which it is being put,"l was to avoid
questioning the genealogy of the concept itself
and to treat its appearance in $ciemific literature as
an accident, as though its only function were this
very political one. It was, in fact, tantamount to
shying away from an exposure of the profoundl)"
consen'ative nature of the ethnophilosophical
project itself
It follo\\'s that not onl) Bantu PltiloSQphy but the
whole of ethno-philosophical literature must be
subjected to an expandcd and more profound ver
sion of Ccsaire's political criticism. For if, as a
result of what might be callcd the ethnological
division of labour (a sort of scientific equivalent of
the military scramble for the Third World by the
great powers), Tempels can pass for the great spe
cialist in the Bantu area, and if, too, his recon
struction of African "philosophy" is the more
sensational because of his one-ta-one contrasts
between this African pseudo-philosoph) and an
equally imaginary European philosophY,4 similar
attempts have been made by other European
authors for other regions of Africa. To quote only
a few, :\Iarccl Griaule has devoted to the Dogons
304 PAULIN J. HOUTONDJI
of the present-day Republic of Mali a book
l:urrently regarded as \1 dassic of Dogon wisdom,
Dieu tl'eau,; followed by another, in collaboration
with Germaine Dieterlen, entitled Le RellaI'd
ptl/e." Dominique Zahan has made known to the
world the religion, the spirituality and what he
calls the "philosophy" of the Bambara.' J .ouis
Vincent Thomas has carried out painsta1.ing
research among the Diola of Senegal and has
expatiated on their wisdom, their system of
thought or, as he calls it, their "philosophy."x
As might have been expected, the example of
these European authors has been widely followed
at home. Many Africans have plunged into the
same field of research, correcting on occasion - but
withol!t ever questioning its basic assumptions
the work of their Western models. Among them is
the abbe Alexis Kagame of Rwanda, with his
Philosophic blllltou-IWlllldaise de I'hre 9 Then there
is Mgr Makarakiza of Burundi, who published in
n also the Nigerian Adesanya, author of an article
1959 a study entitled La DialeClique ties barundi:
The South African priest Antoine Mabona distin
guished himself in 1960 with an article entitled
"Africzn philosophY," then in 1963 with a text on
"The depths of African phiJosophy" and finally in
1964 with a meditation on "La spiritllalitc
afIicaine."1I In this concert Father A. Rahajarizafy
has sounded the note of the Great Island by trying
to define Malagasy "philosophY" in an article of
1963 on "Sagesse malgache et tllcologie chreli
enne."!2 In 1962, Franyois-Marie Lufu1uabo, a
Fran6scan from the former Belgian Congo,
appeared in the firmament with a booklet, 11m lllle
lModide ball/oue, followed in 1963 by an article
entitled "La Conception bantoue face au chris
tianisme," signing off in 1964 with another book
let on La No/ion luba-balll0lle de !'eIre. I) Then, in
1965, his compatriot, tbe abbe Vincent Mu.1ago,
devoted a chapter to African "philosophy" in his
Vis{{.ge l{(ricai71 du chl'is/illllis1lle." The former
Protestant clergyman ]ean-Cah in Bnhoken, of
Cameroun, was clearing his Clnirieres mi!raphy
siques /lfricaines 1s in 1967, and two years later the
Kenyan pastor John Mbiti, probabl) fascinated by
his own childhood, revealed to the world in a now
classic work, African Religions anti Philosophy, the
fact that the African ignores the fueure, hardly
knows the present and lives entirely turned towards
the past. 16
Before we go on \'lith the catalogue, let us note
m,lt aU the authors we have just quoted arc church_
men, like Tempels himself. This e),'P lains their
main preoccupation, which was to find a psvl:ho
logil:al and cultural basis for rooting the Christian
message in thc African's mind without betraying
either. Of course, this is an eminently legitimat~
concern, up to a point. But it means that thest
authors are compelled to conceive of philosophy
on the model of religion, as a permanent, stab!~
system of beliefs, unaffected by evolution, imper
vious to time and history, ever identical to itself.
Let us now tum to the lay authors, "ith, here
again, only a fe" examples. 'Ne cannot but men
tion Leopold Sedar Senghor, whose chatty disqui
sitioru. 011 "negritude" are often buttressed by an
analvsis of what he called, as early as 1939, the
black man's "conception of the world," a phrase
which he later replaced, under the influence of
Tempels, with the "black metaphysic." I; There are
published in 1958 on "Yoruba metaphysical
thinking";I~ the Ghanaian William Abraham,
author of a book which is remarkable in many
ways, The Mimi oI Afril:lI I9 (l believe that a book
can be instructive, interesting, useful, even if it is
founded on erroneous assumptions); the late
lamented Kwame Nkrumah, whose famous
Comc/elltism can hardly be regarded as his best
publication/" the Senegalese Alassane N'Daw,
who de\'oted several articles to the subject;!1 the
Camerounian Basile-]uJeat Fouda, author of a
doctoral thesis defended at Lille in 1967 on "La
Philosophic negro-africaine de l'existence"
(unpublished);Z? the Dahomean Issiaka Prosper
Laleye, also the author of a thesis, "La Conception
de ia personne dans la pensee traditionnelle
yoruba,"z.; presented in 1970 at the Catholic
University of Fribourg, in Switzerland; the
Nigerian]. 0. Awolalu, author of an article enti
tled "The Yoruba philosophy of life."H And there
are many others. l '
Without being motivated quite so restrictively
as the church etlmophilosophers, these authors
were none the less intent on locating, beneath the
"arious manifestations of African civilization,
beneath the flood of historv \\'hich has wept this
ciYili7..ation along willy-nill):, a solid bedrock \\hich
might provide a foundation of certitudes: in other
AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY, MYTH AND REALITY
\\ords, a system of belief5_ In this quest, we find
the same preoccupation as in the negritude mo..e
ment - a passionate search for the identity that
\yaS denied by the colonizer - but no\\ there is tlle
underlying idea that one of the clements of
the cultural identit\ is precisely "philosophy," the
ide;\ that c\ ery culture rests on a specific, perma
nent. metaphysical substratum.
Let us now ask the crucial question: is this the
usual meaning of the word "philosophy)" Is it the
WU) it is understood, for instance, ill the phrases
"European philosophy," "nineteenth-century phi
losophy," etc.' Clearly not. It seems as though the
word automatically changes its meaniJlg as soon as
it ceases to be applied to Europe or to America and
is applied to Africa. This is a well-known phenom
enon. !\s our Kenyan colleague Henry Odera
humorously remarks:
What may be a superstition is paraded as "African
religion," and the white world is expected to
endorse that it is indeed a religion but an African
rdil,rion. What in all cases is a mythology is paraded
as '~'lirican philosoph)," and again the wbite cul
ture is expected to endorse U1at it is indeed a phi
losoph) but an Ati'ican philosophy. What is in all
cases a dictatorship is paraded as "African democ
rac)," and the "hite culture is again expected to
endorse that it is so. And what is earl) a de
development or pseudo-development is described
as "development," and again t.he white world is
expected to endorse that it is developmem - but
of course "African deyclopmenl."2 r,
\\'ords do i.ndeed change their meanings miracu
lously as soon as they pass from the Western [Q the
:\frican context, and not only in the vocabulary of
European or American writers but also, through
faithful imitation, in that of Africans themselves.
Thai is what happens to the word "philosophy":
applied to Africa, it is supposed to designate no
longer the specific discipline it evokes in its Western
context but merely a collective world-view, an
implicit, spontaneous, perhaps even unconscious
s:-stem of beliefs to which all Africans are supposed
to adhere. This is a vulgar usage of the word, justi
fied presumably by the supposed vulgarity of the
geographical context to which it is applied.
Behind this usage, then, there is a myth at work,
the myth of primitive unanimity, with its suggestion
305
that in "primitive" societies - that is to say, non
Western societies - everybody always agrees with
everybotl) else. It f()lIows that in such societies
there can never be individual belief, or philoso
phies but only collective systems of belief. The
word "philosophy" is then used to designate each
belief-system of this kind, and it is tacitly agreed
among well-bred people that in this COntext it
could not mean anything else.
One can easily detect in this, one of the found
ing acts of the "science" (or rather the pseudo
science) called ethnology, namely, lhe generally
tacit thesis that 110n-Western societies are abso
lutely specific, the silent postulate of a difference
in IWlure (and not merely in the evolilliollary stage
attained, witl1 regaId to particubr types of achieYe
ment), of a difference in quality (not merely in
quantity or s(ale), between so-called "primitive"
societies and developed ones. Cultural anthropology
(another name for dhnology) owes its supposed
autonomy (notably in relation to sociology) to this
arbitrary division of the human community into
two types of society which are taken, arbiu'arily and
without proof, to be fundamentally different U
But let us return to the m)lh of unanimity_
It "ould seem at first sight that this theoretical
wnsensus postulated by cthnophilosophy among
a.I1 members of each "primiti~e" community
should produce a parallel consensus, at Ihe levcl of
results if not of methods, among a.1I ethnophiloso
phers studying the same communit). But, curi
ousl) enough, instead of an ideal consensus, a fine
unanimity whose transparency would have re\Taled
the spontaneous unanimity of all those "primitive
philosophers," ethnophilosophical literature offers
us a rich harvest of not on Iy diverse but also some
times frankly contradictory works.
We have noted above such divergences between
Tempels and Kagame. It would probably be easy
to find similar differences between the many other
works relating to the "traditional" thought of
Bantus or Africans in general, if one could over
come one's understandable boredom, read all of
them one by one, examine them patiently and
juxtapose all the views they contain.
But I can see the objection being raised that
such differences are normal, that the di\'ersity of
works is a source of wealth and not of weakness,
that the internal contradictions of ethnophilosophy
306 PAULlI, J. HOUTONDJI
can be found in any scicnce worthy of the name
physics, chemistry, mathematics, linguistics, psy
choanalysis, sociology, etc. - that they are a sign of
vitality, not inconsistenc), a condition of progress
rather than an obsucle in the path of diseon:ry. It
may be added that, as in aU sciences, a reality may
exist \\ithout being immediately understood, and
that consequently it is not surprising if an impljcit
system of thought can be reconstructed only as a
result of long, collective and contradictory
research.
The only tiling this objection overlooks is the
"slight difference" between the sciences cited
md ethnophilosophy that they do not postulate
anyth.ing rcmotely comparable with the supposed
unanimity of a human community; that in these
sciences, moreover, a con tradiction is never stag
nant but always progressive, ncyer flIlal or absolute
but indicative of an error, of the jirlsi/jI of a hypoth
esis or thesis, whjch is bOlmd to emerge from a
rational investigation of the object itself, whereas a
contraruction between two ethnophilosophical
theses i.s necessarily circular, since it can never be
resolved by cxperinlentaLion or any other method
of verification. The point is that an ethnophilo
soplucal contradiction is necessarily all/inoll/al in
the K.1ntian sense; thesis and antithesis are equally
demonstrable - in other words, equally gratuitous.
In such a case contradicrjon docs not generate
synthesis but simply demonstrates the need to
re-examine the ver~' foundations of the discipline
and to provide a critique of ethnophilosophical
reason and perhaps of ethnological reason too.
Ethnophilosophy can now be seen in its lTue
light. Because it has to account for an imaginary
unaninuty, to interpret a text which nowhere exists
and has to be constantly reinvented, it is a science
without an object, a "crazed language"~H account
able to nothing, a discourse that has no refercnt, so
that its falsity can never be demonstrated. Tempels
can then maintain that for the BanlU being is
pO\yer, and Kagamc can beg to differ: we have no
mealls of settling the quarrel. It is clear, therefore,
that the "Bamu philosophy" of the one is not the
philosophy of the Bantu but that ofTempcls, that
the "Banru-Rwandais philosophy" of the othcr is
not that of the Rwandais but that of Ka!!-'amc. Both
of them simply make use of African traditions and
oral literature and project on to them their own
philosophical beliefs, hoping to enh,mce their
credibility thereby.
That is how the functioning of tills thesis of a
collective African philosophy works: .it is a smoke_
scrcen behind which each author is ablc to manip_
ulatc his own philosophical views, It has nothing
beyond this ideological function: it is an indeter_
minatc discourse with no object,
Towards a New Concept of "African
Philosophy"
Behind and beyond the ethnological pretext,
philosophical views remain. The dogma of una
nimism has not been completely sterile, since it
has at least generated a quite distinctiyc phllo
sophiealliterarure.
Here we must note a surprising fact: while they
were looking for philosoph) in a place where i't
could never be found - in thc col1ecti\'e uncon
scious of African peoples, in the silent folth of
their explicit discourse - the ethnophilosophers
never qucstioned the nature and thcoretical status
of their own analyses. Were these rele\'ant to phi
losophy' There lay the true but undetected prob
lem. For if we want to be scicntiflc, we cannot
apply the same word to two things as different as a
spontaneous, implicit and eol1ectiYe world-Yie\\"
on the one hand and, on the other, the deliberate,
explicit and indi\'idual analytic acti\ity \\hich
takes that world-view as its object. Such an analy
sis should be called "philosophology" rather than
"philosophy" or, to use a less barbarous term,
"metaphilosophy" - but a metaphilosophy of the
worst kind, an inegalitarian meta philosophy, not a
dialogue and confrontation with an existing phi
losophy but a reduction to silence, a denial, mas
querading as the revival of an earlier philosophy.
For we know that in its highty elaborated forms
philosophy is a.lways, in a sense, a metaphilosoph~;
that it can develop onl) by reflccting on its 0\\'11
history, that all new thinkers must feed on the doC
trines of their predecessors, even of thcir contem
poraries, extending or refuting thcm, so as to
cnrich the philosophical heritage ava.ilable in rheir
own time. But in this case mctaphilosophy dues
not rely on an exploitation of extra-philosophical
data or on the arbilTIlry over-intcrpretation of
social facts which in themselvcs bear no relation III
AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY, MYTH AND REALITY
philosophy, Metaphilosoph) signifies, rather, a
philosophical reflection on discourses which are
themselves overtly and consciously philosophjcal.
thnophilosophy, on the other hand, claims to be
the description of an implicit, unexpressed world
,'iew, which ne\'er existed anywhere but in the
;lnthrOpologist's imagination. Ethnophilosophy is
a pre-philosophy mistaking itself for a meta phi
losophy, a philosophy which, instead of presenting
its ()\\n rational justification, shelters lazily behind
the authority of a tradition and projects its own
theses and beliefs on to that tradition.
If we now return to our question, namely,
\vhcther philosophy resides in the world-view
described or in the description itself, we can 110\\
assert that if it resides in either, it must be the sec
ond, the description of that vision, even if this is,
in EICt. a self-deluding ill\'ention that hides behind
its own products. African philosophy does exist
therefore, hut in a new sense, as a literature pro
duced by Africans and dealing with philosophical
problems,
A contradiction? Oh no! Some may be surprised
that, having patiently dismantled the ethnophilo
sophical machine, we should now be trying to
restore it. They have simply failed to understand
that \\e are merely recognizing the existence of
that literature as pill/osophical li/eraltlre, whatever
may be its value and credibility. What we are
acknowledging is what it is, not what it says. Having
Jaill b:l1'e the mythological assumptions on which
it is founded (these having suppressed all question
of its status), \ve can now pay greater attention to
the fact of its existence as a determinate form of
philosophical literature which, howc\'cr mystified
and mystifying it may be (mystifying because mys
tifled), nevertheless belongs to the history of
.\friean liter:lture in general.
Let us be accurate: the issuc here is only Africall
ethnophilosophy. A work like Balltll Philosophy
does not belong to African philosophy, since its
author is not African; but Kagame's work is an
integral pan of African philosophical literalure. Tn
other words, speaking of African philosophy in a
new sense, we musrdra\\ a line, within ethnophilo
sophieal literature in general, between African and
non-African writers, not because one category is
better than the other, or because both might not,
in the I.Lst analysis, say the same thing, but because,
307
the subject being Africall philosophy, we cannot
exclude a geographical \'ariable, takcn here as
empirical, contingent, exrrinsic to the content or
significance of the discourse and as quite apart
from any questions of /henl'flica! conllec/iofls, Thus
Tempels' work, although it deals with an African
subject and has played a decisiye role in the devel
opment of African ethnophilosoph), belongs to
'tiropelill scientific literature, in the same \\ay as
anthropology in general, although it deals \\ ith
non-Western societies, is all embodiment of
"-estern science, no more and no less.
A happy consequence of this demarcation is
that it emphasizes certain subtle nuances and
occasional serious divergences which might other
wise have passed unnoticed and which differenti
ate "'-frican authors whom we initially grouped
togcther as ethnophilosophers. It is thus possible
to see the immense distance which separates, for
instance, Bahoken's Clainires 1l1l!tap/!J'siques
afr/cailles,'!'! justifiably assessed as a perfect exam
ple of ideolog'ical twaddle designed by an appar
ently nationalistic African to flatter the exotic
tastes of the Western public from Kwame
Nkrumah's COllsciencism, \\ rittcn chiefl) for the
African public and aimed at maki11g it aware of it
new cultural identity, even though Nkrumah\
book, unfortunately, partakes of the ethnological
conception that there can be such a thing as a
collective philosophy.
Another even more important consequence is
that this African philosophical literature can now
be seen to include philosophical works of those
<\.frican authors who do not believe in the 111) th of a
collective philosophy or \\ho reject it explicity. Let
me cite a fe\\ of these. Fabien Ehoussi-Boulaga's
fine article "Le Bamou problcmatique",;f) has
alre'ldy been mentioned. Another Camcrounjan,
Marcien Towa, has given us a brilliant critique of
ethnophilosophy in general, the Essai SIll' la proble
ma/iqlie phi/osophiquf dam l'Afrique aC/II(//e, fol
lowed b) an incisi\'e criticism of the Senghorian
doctrine of negritude, J.eopolil Sir/al' Sellghl,r:
Ilegriuu/e 011 selv/lUde: 11 Henry Oruka Oder~ of
Kenya h3s published a fine article entitled
"Mythologies as African philosophy."';2 The
Beninois (former Dahomeyan) Stanislas Spero
Adotevi earned LIme in 1972 \\ith his brilliant book
Negrilllde e/llfgro!ogues 3J
30B PAULIN J. HOUTONDJI
But more than that: African philosophical lit
erature includes works which make no attempt
\\hate\'er to broach the problem of "African phi
losophy," either ro assert or to deny its existence.
In fact, we must extend the concept to include aLI
the research into Western philo~ophy carried out
by Africans. This broadening of the horizon
implies no contradiction: just as the writings of
Western anthropologists on African societies
belong to Western scientific literature, so the phi
losophical writings of Africans on the histOf) of
Western thought are an integral parr of African
philosophical literature So, ob\-iousl), African
philosophical works concerning problems that are
not specially related ro African experience shaull!
also be included. In this sense, the articles by the
Ghanaian J. E. V,Tired u on Kant, on material impli
cation and the concept of truth,J1 are an integral
part of African philosophy, as are analyses of the
concept of freedom or the notion of free will'; by
the Kenyan Henry Odera or the Nigerian D. E.
[doniboye. The same can be said of the research
on French se\enreenth-century philosoph) by the
a'irois Elungu Pere Elungu, Efr:l1duc I!I ({)Imais
sance dam la, phi/osop/Jle de MalebrIJl1c!lI',.l(' of the
epistemological introduction to Theologic pllsitit,c
el fluf%gie spcru/afit'cJ7 by his (cIlO\\ couno') man
Tharcisse TshihanJru. The work of the
Camerounian 1\';oh Mouelk particularly la/oIlS
and De fa midiorritc, d {'exccl/C/1(e: Essai slIr /a sig
nification 1//IIIIIline dll diveloppemerlt,JB may ~lso be
placed in this category. althoug-h their ~L1bjects are
not only un..iYcrsal but also linked with the present
historical siruation of Ali-ica.
B)' the same token we may rcadil) claim works
like those of the Ashanti scholar Anton-Wilhelm
Amo, who studied and taught in German univer
sities during the first half of the eighteenth cen
tury, as belonging to African philosophical
literature, although this may be regarded as a bor
derlinc case, sinceAmo was trained almost entirely
in the West. But is not this the case \\ith almost
every African intellectual even today?1?
The essential point here is that we han~ pro
duced a radically new definition of African philos
ophy, the criterion now being the geogr~phical
origin of the authors rather than an alleged specifi
city of content. The efIect of this is to broaden the
narrow horizon which has hitherto been imposed
on African philosophy and to treat it, as now con
ceived, as a methodical in4ull) with the s~me un i
yersal aims as those of any other philosophy in the
world. [n short, it destroys the dominant mytho
logical conception of }\ fricanness and restores the
simple, ob\ ious truth that Africa is abo\'C all a
continent and the concept of Africa an empirical,
gcographical concept and not ~ metaphysical one.
The purpose of this "uemytboJogizing" of thc itlc:-a
of Africa and African philosophy is simply to fr~
our faculty for theorizing from all the i.ntellcctual
impediments and prejudices which han; so fJr
pre\ ented it from getting off the ground.
Final Remarks
There can no longer be any doubt about the exist
ence of African philosophy, although its meaning
is different from that to which the antbropologists
ha\e accustomed us. It exists as a parrjcular form
of scientific literature. But, of course, oncc this
point is established, many questions remain. For
instance, how shall we distinguish philosophil.al
literature from other forms of scientific literature,
such as mathematics, physics, biology, linguistics,
sociology, etc., inasmuch as these disciplines :llso
develop as specific forms of literature' In other
words, \\hat is the particular object and area of
study of philosophy? In more general terms, "hat
relation is there between scientific literature and
non-scientific liter:lture (for instance, artistic
literature), and why must we include phiJosophi
cal literature in the first rather than the second?
This is not the place to answer these qucstions.
All that we have tried to do so far has been to c1e,lr
the ground for questions of this kind, since they
presuppose that philosophy is recognized simply
as a theoretical discipline and nothing else, a disci
pline which, like any other, can develop only in the
form of literat ure.
tv1oreover, such questions can nel'er receil'e
definite and immutable answers, for tbe definition
of a science must be re\'ised const<mt[y in tbe light
of its o\vn progress, and the articulation of thto
retical discourse in general - by \\hich we mc:an
the demarcation of the various sciences - is itself
subject to historical change. At this point, it is true,
a much harder question, or series of questions,
arises: how is the object of a science determineJ?
AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY, MYTH AND REALITY
What conditions, economic, historical, ideological
or other, contribute to ,fixing the frontiers of a
discipline? How is a new science born? How does
an old science die or cease to be considered a sci
ence"lI
Tlus is nor the place to answer these questions
either. Bu t at least there is one thing- we arc ina
position to affirm: no science, no branch of learn
ing can appe.1r except as an event in Jan~uage or,
more precisely, as the product of discussion. The
first thin~ to d~ then, is to organize such discus
sions in the midst of the society where the birth of
these sciences is desired. [n other words, whatever
the specific object of philosoph) may be, the first
tas\,: of African philosophers today, if they wish to
develop an authentic African philosophy, is to pro
mote and sustain constant free discussion about all
tbe problems concerning t.heir discipline instead
of being saLIslied with a private and somewhat
abstract dialog-ue between themselves and the
Western world. II By reorienting their discourse in
this wa), the), will easily overcome the permanent
temptation of "folklorism" that limits their
research to so-called African subjects - a tempta
tion which has owed most of its strength to the
fact that their writings have been intended for a
foreib'Tl I'll blic.
It is indeed a strange paradox that in present
conditions the dialogue with the West can only
encourage "folklorism," a sort of collecti\e cul
tural exhibitionism which compels the "Third
World" intellectual to "defend and illustrate" the
peculiarities of his tradition for the benefit of a
Western public. This seemingly universal dialogue
simply encourages the worst kind of cultural par
ticularism, both because its supposed pcculiarities
are in the main purely imagi.nary and because the
inrel1ectual who defends t.hem claims to speak in
the name of his whole pcople although they have
never asked him to do so and are usually unaware
that such a dialogue is taKing place.
On the contrary, it is to be hoped that when
:\fricans start discussing theoretical problems
all10ng themselves, they will feel spontaneously
the need to gathcr the broadest possible informa
tion on the scientific achie\'Cments of other conti
nents and societies. They will t~ke an interest in
these achievements not because they will be held
to he the bc.,;t that can be attained but in order to
309
assess more objecti\'e!y, and if necessary improve,
their own achie\ements in the same areas.
The paradox is therefore easily removed: inter
locutors of Ule same origin rarely feci the need to
exalt their own cultural particularities. Such a
need arises only when one faces people froOl odler
countries and is forced to assert one's uniqueness
by conforming to the current stereotypes of one's
own society and civilization. Universality becomes
accessible only when interlocutors arc set free
from the need to assert themselves in the face of
others; and the best way to achieve this in A[rica
today is to organize internal discussion and
exchange among all the scientists in the continent,
within each discipline and - why not) - between
one discipline and another, so as to create in our
societies a scientific tradition worthy of the name.
The diflicult qucstions we have been asking con
cerning the origins, the definition, the boundaries,
the evolution and the destiny of the various sci
ences, and more particularly the nal'Ure of philoso
phy and its relation to other disciplines, will then
find thei.r answcrs in the concrete history of our
theoreticalliteramre.
We must therefore plunge in and not be afraid
of thinling ne\\ thoughts, of simply fllillkillg. For
every thought is new if we take the word in its
active sense, even thought about past thoughts,
provided we are not content simply to repeat hal
lowed themes, catechetically and parrot-fashion,
with a pout or a purr, but on the contrary boldly
rearticuJate these themes, justify them, giye them
a new and sounder foundation. Comersely, every
blustering declaration of loyalty to a so-called
"modern" doctrine will be at best mere folklore
when it does not tum our to be an objective mysti
fication - unless it is accompanied by some
intellectual effort to know, 1l1lderSlal/{I and flli'lk 0111
the doctrine by going beyond the more sensational
formularions to the problematic on which it is
founded. \Ve cannot go on actin~ a part indefi
nitely. The time has come for theoretical respon
sibJity, for taKing ourselves seriously.
In Afrie.1 no\\ ule individual must liberate him
self fmm the weight of the past as well as from the
allure of ideological fashions. Amid the diverse but,
deep down, so str~ngely similar catechisms of con
ventional nationalism and of equally com"entional
pseudo-Marxism, amid so many state ideologies
310 PAULIN J. HOUTONDJI AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY, MYTH AND REALITY
functioning in the Fascist mode, deceptive alibis
behind I\hich the powers that be can quietly do the
opposite of what they say and say the opposite of
what they do, amid th.is immense confusion in
which the mOSt vulgar police state pompousl)
declares itself to be a "dictatorship of the proletariat"
and nco-Fascists mouthing pseudo-rcl'olutionary
platitudes are called "Marxist-Leninists," reducing
the enormous theoretical and political subversive
power of Marxism to the dimensions of a trun
cheon, in which, in the name of revolution, the)
kill, massacre, torture the workers, the trade union
istS, the executives, the students; in the midst of aU
this intellectual and political bedlam lye must all
open our eyes wide and clear our own path. Nothing'
less will make discussions between free and intel
lectually responsible individuals possible. Nothing
less II-ill make a philosophy possible.
As can be seen, tJlen, the dCYelopment of African
philosophical literature presupposes the removal
of a number of political obstacles. Tn particular, it
requires that democratic liberties and especially
the right of free criticism, the suppression of which
seems to constitute the sole aim and raison d'ilre of
the official ideologies, should be acknoldcdged and
jealously guarded. II is impossible to philosophizc
in Africa today "ithout bcing ~marc of this necd
and of the pricelessness of freedom of expression
Notes
P. Tempcls, La Pitilosopitie BautOlle (Paris; Presence
Africaine 1949)(AS 601). The letters AS, foJlowed by
a number, refer to the "bibliogra.phy of African
thought" published by the Rev. 'Father Alphonse
Smct, in Caltien philosophiques a{Ticains no. 2 (fuly
December 1972), Lubumbashi. This "bibliography,"
despite the fact that it lumps together philosophical
and non-philosophic'lll (i.e. sociological, ethnologi
cal, even literary) texts, is ne\TrtheJcss a useful
instrument for any research on African literature or
VI'cstern lirerature concerning Africa. The number
following the letters A5 indicates the number of the
text in 5mct's "Bibliography."
2 r Eboussi-Boulaga, "Lc Bantou problemalique,"
Presence AFiwille, no.66 (196R).
3 Aime Cesaire, Disrol/rs sur Ie colOllia/ismr (Paris:
Editions Reclame I950)(:\S 95), p.4S.
as a necessary condition for all science, for all
theoretical development and, in the last reson, for
all real political and economic progress, too.
Briefly, and in conclusion, African philosophy
exists, but it is not what it is believed to be. It i~
developing objectively in the fiJrIn of a literature
rather than as implicit and collectil'e thoug'ht, but
as a literature of which the output remains captiYe
to the unanimist fallacy. Yet, happily, it is possible
to detect signs of a new spirit. The liberation of
this ne\\ spirit is now the necessary precondition
of all) progress in this field. To achieye that lIe
must begin at the beginning; we must restore the
right to criticism and free expression \\hich are ~()
seriously threatened by our regimes of terror and
ideological confusion.
In short, it is not enough to recognize the
existence of an African philosophical literature.
The most important task is to transform it from
the simple coHection of writings aimed at non
African readers and consequently upholding the
peculiarities of a so-called African Hworlcl-Yiew"
that it is today into the I-ehicle of a frec and rig
orous discussion among African philosophers
themselves. Only then will this literature acquire
universal value and enrich the common interna
tional heritage of human thought.
4 Comparisons between the "world-view" of Third
World peoples and European philosophy iTI\'oh'e
stripping the latter also of its hlstory, ilS internal
diversity and its richness and reducing the multiplic
ity of its works and doctrines to a "Imyest common
denominator." Th.is common stock-in-trade of
European philosophy is represented in Tempels by a
vague system of thought made up of Aristotle,
Cl1fistian theology and horse sense.
5 AS 214.
6 M. Griaule and G. Dieterlen, Le Renard pale (Paris:
Publications of the Institute of Ethnology 191\5)
(AS 120).
7 Dominique Zahan, Sociiles d'illi/ialioll !Jall1bara: '"
,,'dOIllO, Ie kort! (Paris/The I-Iague; Mouton 1963) (AS
7lR); La Dillleaiqae rll/ verbe rhez les Bambara (Parisi
The Hague: Mouton 1963)(A5 713); La Vial/dc ,'Ila
Gmi'l~ mylltologie dogoll (paris: Presence Africalne
1968)(:\S 719); Religion, spinhwll1e d j!t'1ISee ajrimillfS
(Paris: PavOlI970)(AS 716). See my re\'iew of this
last book in Le.< Eludes pltllMopltiques, no.3 (1971).
R l.mlls-Yincent Thomas, Les Diola. Essni d'analyse
li)ll(lionndie sur I/lle populalion de Bass(-CasamanC(,
.lOts. I and n (Dakar; Mcmoires de I'Insti tut Fran<;:ais
d'lIfriquc Noire .1959) (nor mentioned in liS);
"Brhe esquissc sur la pensee cosmologique du
Diola", _~fi-i((m Systems o{Thoughl, prefaced by \1.
Fones and G. Dieterlcn (OUP 1965)(A5 620); "Un
S"stcmc phiJosophique sencgalais: la cosmotogie des
Diola," Presence Ajri(awe, nos. 32-3 (1960)(AS 638);
11/(! e.<sllis sur III /lIorl africaill", PubliC3tions de la
FacultcdcsJ .ertreset Scienceshumaincs(philosophie
cr Sciences socialcs) Dakar no. 3 (l969){-\S 621);
"La Mort et la sages.sc africaine. Esquisse d'unc
anlhrorologie philosophique," P,ycllOjJalholop<'
ifrimille, no. 3 (1967). See also other texts bl the
same author, cited in AS 617-39.
9 AS 294. See also, by the same author, "L'Ethnologie
des Bantu," COIIU/lIpOrilry Phllosoplty. J Surrey,
cd. Raymond KJibansky, vol. IV (Florence 1971)
(AS 754).
10 A5347.
11 \1nngamdi Antoine l\1abona, "Philosophie
afrirnine," PremIre _1.Jhraille, no.30 (1960)(AS 342);
"The Depths of African Philosophy," Persollnalite
ajiuai/le et Cl.ltholiris1llt (Paris: Presence Africaine
1963)(A5 343); "La Spiritualite africaine," PriSelice
Afi-i(aill~ no 52 (1964)(AS 344).
12 A. Rahajarizafy, "Sagesse malgache et theologie
chrctieIUle," Persollllalile afriraille et CatholirislII"
(paris: Presence Africaine ]9(3)(AS 504).
13 Respectively, A5 3+ I; "La Conception bantoue face
au christianisme," Persollna/iti aji-icaille el
Callmli(isllle (Paris: Presence Africaine 1963); AS
339.
1+ AS +14. The chapter in question is thc eighth, enti
rled "Philosophical outline"; "Dialectique existen
\.ielle des Bantous et sacramenralisme," Aspecls de
la rul/ure /loire (Paris 1958)(AS 410).
l.i JC>ln-Cahin Bahoken, Clairieres me,<+physiques a.fri
call1c,' (Paris: Presence Africainel967)(A5 46).
16 John Mbiti, Aji-icall Religiolls 1111d Philosophy
(Heinemann 1969)(AS 372); COllrepls of God ill
"!trim (New York: Praeger 1970)(A5 375); Nen'
nsll1l1lml Rsrhalolligy i,1 all Aj;';wlI Bllckgroulld. A
Slutil' oftlrt mcountey belmem New Tesllllllcllllheol
ogy alld A/i-irtl1llradiriollal rot/crpts (OUP 1971).
17 See in panicuhlr the texts (wrilten hetween 1937
and 1963) collected in Ubmi T. Negri/ude el
hUll1ulII~<IIu. As a theory of "negritude," lhe
311
Senghorian ethnology was always, above all, an
ethnopsychology concerned essenthllly "-.ith defin
ing the "Negro soul," wherc sociology (usuall),
idyllic descriptions of "Negro society") and aes
thetic analyses (commentaries, many of them excel
lent, on various works of art) are used mainly to
reinforce this fantas\ psvchology However, ellmo
pS,Yrhnlngy always betrays the ambition to become
an .:tlmophilo.wplr)' by accounting for the black
"conceprion of the world" as well as for the psy
chological characteristics. The project is clearly
formulated in the celebrated 1939 article "Ce que
l'homme noir apporte" ("The black man's contri
bution") in "'hich the black "conception or the
world," howeRr, still appears as a psychological
quaEly: an animism, or rather, according to
Senghor, an anrhropopsychism. This is no longer
so in the 1Y56 text "The Black African aesthetic"
and the 1959 text on the "Constirutive elements of
a civilization of Black African inspiration" Llhale
J, pp. 202-17 alld 252-86: apart from a few allera
tions, these arc reprints of Senghor's reports to the
First International Congress of Black Writer~ and
Artists, Paris 1956, and to the Second Congress,
Rome 1959. Explicitly referring to Tempels, but
still wishing to expla.ill the black's "metaphysics" in
terms of black "psychophysiology," Senghor
defines it rather as a system of ideas, an "existential
ontolog\ '1 (ibid., pp. 203-4, 26+-8).
The reader will therefore readily understand
that I should feel reluctant to situate ethnophiloso
phy "in rhe wake of negritude" or to treat it as a
"(late) aspect of the negrimde movement". as
Marcien To"a does in Esslli sur /a probllmulique
11I70sophiqllc dam I'...JFique actllelle (Yaounde:
Editions Clc 1971), pp. 23,25. If lji-irall ethnophi
losophers arc undoubted.1y part of the negritude
movement, they owe the philosophical pretensions
of rheir nationalist discourse rather to the erh
nophilosophy of Europelill Africanists.
18 A. Adesanva, "Yoruba metaphysical thinking,"
Od", no.S (.1958)(A5 15).
19 W. Abraham, The A/Illd ~{ Aji-icll (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press and Wcidcnfcld &
Nicolson 1962)(A5 5).
20 AS 436 and 438.
21 Alassane \I'Daw, "Peut-on parler d'un.c pensee
africaine?," Primla _,lji-ieaille no. 58 (l966)(A5
420); "Pensce africaine et deYeioppement,"
Problnlles social/X cOlIgolais (Kinshasa: CEP Sl
Publicalions 1966-7)(A5 419).
22 This unpublished rhesis is mentioned here mainly
because it is discussed at length bv Marcjen 'lo\ya
312 PAULIN J. HOUTONDJI
in his critique of cthnophilosoph) ('Ib"a, F,SSili SUI'
fa p1'OiIlimlltlquc pl/11osoplllljlle, pp. 23--33)(AS 646).
23 Subtitled "1\ phenomenological approach" and
prefaced b, Philippe Laburthe-Tolra (lkr:ne:
Herbert Lang 1970)(AS 325).
24 The article was published in Prisc!la .rJjrim1lle, no.
73 (1970)(1\539).
y_J For instance, G. De Souza, La CUllcep/io1J tie "Vi.:"
chez les FOil (Cotonou: Editions du Benjn 1975): a
doctoral thesis defended in 1'-)72.
26 Hem) Orub Odenl, "VI.\ thologics as African phi
losophy," Ellst .'1frictl Journal, '01. IX, no. 10
(October 1972) (not mentioned in AS).
27 See, on this point, Ola Balogun, "Ethnology md
its ideologies," ClJIlJeljliellre. no. 1 (1974). Sec also
mv article on "Le Mythc de 1a philosophie
spontancc," Cahiers 1'IIIIosophiques Africains. no. I
(1972).
28 That is, "Language gone mad." I have borrowed
rhis phrase from the ZalroisV. Y. Mudimbe, whose
hook L'.'IlIIre Fllre till royal/me. Une Introduclion Ii III
{,.,tiqu~ '/(5 IlJlIgagn (!Ii folie (l"ausanne: L'Agc
d'homme 1973) ranks among Ille linest works writ
ten to Ihis day on (not ~f) ethnology.
29 How revealing that this work was publjshed in
France "with rJle help of the Cenrre :\Iational dc Ia
Recherche Scientifique."
30 J have mcntion~-d this article as the most ,igorous
and complete cril ique of'Tempels to date for it, rig
orous analysis of the contradictions in his work.
Eboussi-Balaga shows th:u these can uJtimatel) be
reduced to
an interplay of y,tlllC and counter-value. which
charaCTerizes the colonizer's judgemenrs on the
colonized. Banmism is partl) admirable and parrly
abominable. It is valuable when the colonized "'ish
to forsake it for equaJilv: then they are reminded
that [hey are losing their "sou)s". But Bantwsm
becomes a "ile hotchpotch of degenerate magic,l1
practices \\hen the colonizer wishes to amrm his
pre-eminence and legitimize his power. ("Le
Bantou probJem.atjque," p. 32)
Ho\\ever, Eboussi does n()t totally reject the idea of
an "ethnological philosophy," a ph.ilosophv which
would abandon the search ror an "ontoloSrlca] sub
stratum for social realir~'," would deal with the
"mythical discolIrse of 'nal\\e theorists'," instead
of bypassing it with scorn (ibid., p.9). On this point
I bcliC\'e J more radical vie" should be taken.
31 Towa, Essai .Il1r la prohlematique philosophique;
L';opo!d Sidar Senghllr; lI/!griluJe Oil s~I'r;iflld'
(Yaounde: Editjons Cie 1971)(AS 647).
AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY, i.iYTH .AND REALITY 213
32 Odera, "Mythologies as African philosophv." Etudes ,J''';ltmre et de pliilosophir de.< .<cimccs (Paris: 41 It is war! h mentioning here the part that can be
33 S.1\.Adotevi, Vignll/(Ic etl/igrologues (paris: linion Vrin 1968); M. Foucaulr, Tlte Birth 0/ the Clillic played in promoting this new tvpe of dialogue by rhe
Gencmle d'Ediriolls, Coli. 10/11\ ]972)(not men t19(2), trans. A. j\ 1. Sheridan Smith (Tavistock deparonems of philosophy in African universities
tioned in 1\5). \lJ73); The Orr/fro/Thmgs (J966), (Ta\'istock 1970); and the phi.10sophica.J associations (e.g. tl1C Intcr
34 J. E. Wiredu, "Kant's synthetic II 1'1';01'1 in gcomclTI The .'lrcfllll'nllif"Y 0/ KlIlIll'lrdgl' (/969), ITans. A. M. African Council for Philosophy) and their respceri\'c
and the rise of non-Euclidean gcometries,;' Sheridan Smith (Tavistock ]972). journals.
"'lII1ISllIdiw, lIeft I, Bonn (]?70)(not in :\S);
"Material implication :md 'if thcll':'
Illtemat;Ollal LOgiC Rtn:/I!1P, no. 6, Bologna (1912)
(not in A.$); "Truth as opinion," Uni;;ersilas, '"oj. 2,
no. 3 (new series), Uni\tTsiry of Ghana (1973)(not
in AS); "On an African orieutarion ill philosoph\",
Second Order, ,"01. 1, no. 2, University orIfe (1972)
(not in AS).
35 H. Ouna, "The meaning of libern," C(.h"n
Phi/osophiqllts AJi-i(QI'IS, no. 1, I. ubum bash i (1972)
(not. in AS); D. E. Icloniboye, "Fremill, the lin
guistic philosopher's dilemma," Ca/:".,..<
Pltil".<(lpltiqlles A[,it"aillS, no. 2, Lubllmbashi (]972)
(not in AS).
36 E. P. Elungu, Iel/llue el cOlT1ll1immte d'lffs la pllilo
sophie de MI/febralldlt (Paris: Vrin ]<)73)(nor in-\5).
One may also mention the unpublished thesis
defended ill Paris in 1971 by the Senegalese \. R.
N'Dia)~, "L'Onkr dans 101 philosophic. de
Malebranche"
37 T. Tshihangu, 7'lli;fllo.~it positive tt rltiologic spimlll
li,;e (Lollvain/Paris: Beatricc-Nauwcbcns 19fi;)
(not inAS)
31\ E. N'joh Mouell~, Fa/tillS: redlert/li! llIIe 111m/Illite'
/U'uve (Yaounde: Edirions Clc 1970)(.'\S 775); Dc III
IIltfdiOC1-iti Ii I'excdicl/re. E,sar Sllr la -'Ignil/wli""
11II'/II~i1le du di... doPPwlmr (Y:LOundi:: Editions Cle
1970)(AS 432).
39 More generally, this new definition oL\fi'ican phi
losophy opens up thc possibilin of a histur, of
Afric.an philosoph), whereas the 'cry notiun of
such a histon was unthinkable in the ideolugical
context. of ethnophi.losophy. if African philosoph,
is SL"Cn not as an implicit world-view but a.s Ihe set
of philosophical writings produGed b, \fricans, "e
can at lasJ undertake to reconstruct their chequercd
history, including those of Afro-Arab allthors like
Ibn Khaldun, Al Ghazali, etc.. "hate,cr rna,} b<.the
historical and theoretical diSL<tnce between rhl-sc
texts.
"Hi For a consideration of tJtese questions amI some
represcmarive answers, see: L. Althusser, nil' 11,,::
(1965), trans. B. Brewster (A lien L:r.nt ]969);
L AhhusSCf, et al., Relltlillg Cllpitlll ('\lew Left Books
1970); G. BacheJard, La PrlrlllatlO}.' de resprtl .<,mlr
jiqut: (1947) (Paris: Vrin 1969); Le .Vollul E.\prit.<,i.-nti
/iqlle(l'J34), <)th ecl. (Paris: PUF 196fi); G. Clnguilhem,

21
Ancestors as Elders in Africa
Igor KopytofJ
Ancestor cults and ancestor worship loom large in
the anthropological image of sub-Saharan Africa
,llld few would disagree with Fortes that "compara
tively viewed, African ancestor worship has a
remarkably uniform structural framework" (Fortes,
1965:122). The general pattern may be quickly
summarized. Ancestors are vested with mystical
powers and authority, They retain a functional role
in the world of the living, specifically in the life of
their living kinsmen; indeed, African kin-groups
are often described as communities of both the liv
ing and the dead. The relation of the ,IDcestors to
their IiY'ing kinsmen has been described as ambiva
lent, a;, both punitive and beneY'olent and some
times even as capricious. In general, ancestral
benevolence is assured through propitiatjon and
sacrifice; neg'lect is believed to bring about punish
ment. Ancestors are inrin:'.atel) involved with the
welfare of their kin-group but Ule) are not linked
in the same way tel eyer) member of that group.
The linkage is structured through the elders of the
kin-group, and the elders' authority is related to
their close link to the ancestors. In some sense the
elders are the representatives of the ancestors and
the mediators between diem and the kin-group,
From Igor Kopyroff, '~'\ncestors as Elders in Africa", Africa, 41:2 (197 J), pp. 129-42. Reproduced by permission of
International African Institute.
t1ifticulries in characterizing the Suku complex as
Tend that Partes's analysis, while pointing in the
Fortes has exrended our theoretjcal understand
ing of African ancestor worship more recently by
further clarify ing some of its structural features
(1965). :\.mplifying Gluckman's (1937) distinction
between ancestor cults amI the Clllts of the dead,
Fortes brings out the importance of the "struc
tural matri.x of LAfrican] ancestor worship", not
ing illlt!/' alia the relative lack of elaboration and
indeed interest among the Africans in the cosmo
graph} of the afterworld in which the ancestors
reside. The African emphasis is clearly not on how
the dead live but on the manner in YY'hich they
affect the living. Different ancestors are recog
nized as relevant to different structural contexts
(as, for example, in groups of different genealogi
cal levels); not all bur onl) certain dead YYith par
ticular structural positions are worshipped as
ancestors; and the behaviour of ancestors reflects
not their indiYid ual personalities but rather a par
ticular legal stams in the political-jural domain.
In this chapter I shall describe some actiYities
and relationships among the Suku of south-west'
Congo (Kinshasa). It will be apparent that the
description conforms to the generalized pattern of
African ancestor cults and is congruent with
ANCESTORS AS ELDERS IN AFRICA
Fortes's anal) sis. Bur, I shall show that there are
forgotten in time, The location of recent gT<1Ves is
an "anceSlOr cult" and shall bring in additional
data on $uku lineage structure. I shall then con
deceased man who was older tp.an they. The other
right direction, does l10t go far enough because it
does not LUke the final step of shedding the ethno
centric connotations of the very term "ancestor"
connutations that have a bearing on theory. I shall
also try to show that by viewing what have been
called African ancestor cults as part of the elder
ship complex, we can account more simply for
man) of Fortes's generalizations and at the same
time make redundant some of the problems he
raises.
The fundamental social and jural group among
the Suku is the corporate matrilineage, generally
consisting of some thirty-five to forty persons.
.\tarried couples live virilocally, and males liY'e
parrilocally at least unrjl their father's deat.h and
often heyond. The membership of a matrilineage
is dispersed over seY'eral villagt.'S but within an area
that is not too large to preclude easy communica
tion, consultations, and joint action in important
matters. The matrilineage is a corporate lUllt in
economic, political, jural, and religious respects.
Each matrilineage is centred in a parricular village
which bears its name and is its administrative
and ritual head-quarters, containing tJle formal
lineage head (the oldest male member) and, usu
ally, scyeral other older members (Kopytoff,
196+,1965).
The dl:ad members of the lineage, as a collectiv
it), arc appealed to in rimes of crisis (such as a seri
ou, sickness or a series of misfortunes) and, more
regularly, on such occasions as the marriages of
women of the lineage, the breaking of sexual
taboos affecting these women, the coming-out
ccremony for infants, and, yearly, before the large
communal hunts of the dr) season. The general
pattern is as fallOYvs: the head of the lineage and
tlYO or three older men of his generation go at
night 10 the grave - any grave - of a deceased
member of the lineage wh() was older than an) of
them. The Suku have no special burying places
and graves are dug at random in the bush outside
the lineage centre or near crossroads; the graves
arc not maintained and d1ey eventually return 1O
315
bush, so that the sitc of a particular grave is usual I)'
of course remembered, and the lineage head and
the older men usually go to the grave of the last
appropriate place to address the dead is at the
crossing of paths.
At the grave or at the cross-ruads, the old men
"feed" the dead certain foods considered to be d1cir
favourite: particular kinds of forest mushroom and
y\ild roots, palm wine, and sometimes even manioc,
the Suku staple. A small hole is dug' in the ground
and the food is put into it. Communication wi III the
dead tales the form of a cOnYersational monologue,
patterned but not stereotyped, and devoid of repet
itiYe formulae. One speaks the way one speaks to
Jj"ing people: "You, [such an.d suchJ, your junior is
ill. We do not know why, \ye do not know who is
responsible. If it is you, if you are angry, we ask
your forgiveness. If we have done wrong, pardon
us. Do not let him die, Other lineages are prosper
ing and our people are dying. Why are you doing
this? Why do you not look after us properly'"
The words typically comhine complaints, scolding,
sometimes even anger, and at the same time appeals
for forgiveness.
At tilC coming-out ceremonies for infants and
at marriages, the dead members of the lineage are
informed of the event; pleas are made for their
approval and their efforts in insuring the success
of the newborn or of the marriage and the children
that will be born to it. Before the large communal
hunts of the dry season, 111C dead members are
asked to extend good luck to the enterprise, The~r
are told that the people are hungry for meat, they
are reprimanded for not granting enough meat,
and they are shamed that their own people should
be earing less well than other lineages. Finally,
dead members of the lineag'e are always referred to
publicly by the living elders on all ceremonial
occasions involving the lineage as a unit.
These activities clearly fit the general pattern of
African "ancestor cults". The ancestors are seen as
retaining their rolc in the affairs of their kin-group
and only of their kin-group. They are propitiated
yvith "sacrifices". They are seen as dispensing both
favours and misfortune; they are often accused of
being capricious and of failing in their responsi
bilities, but, at the same time, their actions are
316 IGOR KOPYTOFF
related to possihle lapses on lhe part of the living
and arc seen :u. legitimatel) punitive. The featmes
of the "cult" emphasize the natw'e of the social
relationship \\ hile details of the life of ancestors tn
the other world are de-emphasized and are,
indeed, of little inLerest to the Suku.1L is primarily
the jural context that dominates the relationship
with the ancestors and not !.he personal character
istics the)' may have had when they were aliYe.
There is, however, one immediate prohlem that
arises in tailing this an "ancestor cult": the Suku
have no term that can he translated as "ancestor".
These dead members of the lineage are refern:d to
as bambuta. Literall)', INJT/lbllta means the "big
ones", the "old ones", those who have attained
maturity, those older than oneself; collectively tbe
term refers to the ruling elders of a lineage. A
IIlhllla (singular) is litcnilly anyone who is older
than ego. The meaning is comparative. Eldership
is not an abso lute state of being old; being a ml)//Io
is always relative to someone who is younger.
Wit bin the lineage, a tIlbllta is any older adult,
older siblings as well as those of the generations
above. My bambuta collectively are all the mcm
bers of the lineage who are older than 1, whether
they are alive or dead. In jmal contexts, wtlere
authority is vested overwhelmingly in tbe males,
the term is effectively narrowed to all my male
seniors. The lineage is thus divided into two
named groups: those abo\'e me who are my bam
huta, and those below me - my baleke - to whom I
am an elder. By contrast, no semantic distinction
is made within the lineage between those who arc
alive and those who are dead.
An elder - any cider - represents TO a junior the
entire legal and mystical authority of the lineage.
The very fact of eldership confers upon a person
mystical powers over the junior. He can curse his
junior in the name of the lineage, thereby remov
ing from him the mystical protection of the line
age. The curse can be formal and public, but it can
also be secret and even unconscious. To use a
contemporary metaphor, a Suku is lmder the
"umbrella" of the power of his lineage; remu\'al of
this protection exposes him to the outside world,
and the world is a dangerous place to be in when
one is not attached to a kin-group. As the Suku
phrase it, a curse "opens the road to misfortune",
thoug'h it does not actively cause misfortune.
An elder's curse, always implicitly made in the name
of tbe linelgc, can only be remo\'ed by an older
elder - one to whom tlle preYious elder is a junior.
Lineage authority and the representation of the
lineage to the outside world are organized on a
continuum of age, that is, of relative eldership.
Within this formal continuum based pureh' on
relative age, there is also the principle of genera
tional soljdarity. Lineage members of the same
generation are closer to each other and ttnd toward
greater though never actual equalil:). Thus, the
inequality of power and authority is most pro
nounced between generations. Jt is most presump_
tuous for the junior generation to question, under
normal circumstances, the decisions of the senior
generation and the ways in which they ha\'e been
arrived at. It is the generation above me that
represents tv me the full authority of the lineage;
generational solidarity as well as inter-generational
disram:e means that, unless I have knowledge to
the contrary, J must assume that the decision of
one senior represents the decision of all seniors.
This generational structure also expresses a con
tinuum of authoriry. If I am middle-aged, the
decision by elders of the generation abmT me car
ries for me the authorit) of all the senior g'enera
tions above me. To a junior in the generation helow
me, m) decision similarly carries the authority of
my generation together with all the generations
senior to it. To the junior, then, lineage authority is
most directly embodied in the generation immedi
atel) abo\ e him, and it is presumptuous for him to
go over their heads, so to speak, to yet more senior
generations. Conversely, the authority of elder
ship is most directly exercised upon those of the
generation immediately below, as they in turn
properl) exercise it over the generation below
lhem. Exercising authority over the second lower
generation, over the helds of the intervening one,
is somewhat inappropriate. This results in muting
the OLlt\1 ard expression of authority between Ille
alternating generations of a lineage, a pattern con
gruent with the relaxed etiquette between alter
nating generations.
In any context, the lineage is fully and legally
represented by the oldest adult member of the lin
eage who is present. Let me gi\e a few examples.
In common II ith many Centr;tl African peoples,
the name of the lineage is formally carried by the
ANCESTORS AS ELDERS IN AFRICA
head of that lineage. Thus, the head of the lineage
Kusu is addressed as Kusu. But this general rule
e:-.-presses a more complex structure. The identifi
l::Ition of the lineage's name with the person
e\tends to the entire membership of the lineage; it
is the lineage as a whole, qua corporate group, that
hulds the title. Cunnison (1951), writing on t.he
Luapula peoples, has analysed this particular
usage in which a person discussing his lineage and
its history in the past, will refer to it by tbe pro
nOWl "I." A similar usage exists among tbe Sujm.
The oldeSt lineage member Wll0 is present in any
situation can refer to himself by the name of his
lineage, and is so addressed by others. For exanl
pie. an infant who is a member of the m)'allineagc
is addressed as Mllli KOlIgo, the title of the Suku
king, as long as no other older member of the royal
lineage is present. The moment an older member
arri\es on the scene, the title is shifted to him.
A young man of Kusu lineage will refer to l1imself
as kusu and, a moment later, after an older lineage
mate has arrived, he will refer to him as Kusu
a,ud will cease applying the title to himself.
Ultimately, of course, if all the memhers of the
lineage are present, the title Kusu devolves upon
Ihe oldest male memher of the lineage who is also
its f()rrnal head.
The continuum of eldership in representing the
Lineage has a jural significance in interlineage rela
tions. Let me illustrate with an extreme example.
A young man became angry with his elders and,
without consulting anyone, sold to another lineage
a hunting area belonging to his o\m. The transac
tion was fully legal, since he was a legitimate
spokesman for his lineage in the context in which
the transaction took place. His own lineage was, of
course, incensed by the action; in the old days he
might have been sold or even killed. But the sig
nificant point here is that the legalil:)' of the trans
action was not questioned.
In shorr, to those on the outside, a lineage is
represented by the oldest member present. Within
the lineage, the lineage is represented to anyone
lllember by any older member present and, col
lectively, by all older members living and dead.
The principle of eldership operating within the
lineage corresponds, in its external relations, to its
"chieftainship" (kilT/jill/III). Lineage "chieftainship"
is also a relative, not an absolute matter; for the
317
outside world, it is calTied by the oldest member
present. Thus, the Suku say rhat "everyone is a
chief" - just as cveryone is an elder.
Let us consider now some additional features of
the ritual preceding the collective hunt of the dry
season. Before the hunting season begins every
Suku secures hunting luck by obtaining reassur
ance that the lineage wishes him well, that he con
tinues to be under its protection. This re.assurance
can in principle be obtained verbally from any
eldcr; more appropriately, it is obtained from any
one in th\: generation above. Young men go to the
middle-aged and the middle-aged go to the old.
There is a pattern in asking for luck: one beseeches,
one complains, one reproves, one asks forgiveness.
On his part, the older man signifies his goodwill
by giving the junior some pelllba (white clay); he
also uses the occasion to remind the young' man of
his obligations to the old, to scold him lightly for
his past misdemeanours, and to ask his forg'iveness
for past misfortunes. The marmer of addressing
the living elder is the same as the one used in
addressing the dead. The Suku regard the [\\0
activities as being not merely analogous but identi
cal, and the differences between them as inciden
tal and contextual. Everyone goes to his cider. Iff
am young, I go to my elders Iyho happen to be
alive. The old people go to their elders; but since
these are dead, they are to be found at the grave or
at the cross-roads at night. Given the continuum
of eldership, the use of any grave, as long as the
dead is older than the petitioner, is understandable.
Also understandable in this conte>.1: is the neglect
of older graves. In the lighl of the structure of
eldership, this neglect does Dot represent a "weak"
ancestor cult nor does it indicate shallowness of
lineage structure.
If there be a "cult" here, it is a cult of bambultl,
of elders living and dead. Every junior owes lmzilll
("honour," "respect") to his seniors, be they
"elders" or "ancestors" in \\iestern terminology. A
single set of principles regulates the relationship
bet\veen senior and junior; a person deals with a
sill~de category of bamblllll and the line dividing
tile living from the dead does not affect lhe struc
ture of the relati()Ilship. \Vhere the line is relevant
is in the method of approaching the elder. The
dead must of necessity be approached differently
from the living; interaction with them necessarily
3lR IGOR KOPYTOFF ANCESTORS AS ELDERS IN AFRICA 319

appears one sided and conversations with them
necessarily become monologues. Also, interaction
with them is necessarily less frequent and when it
occms, it is formal- but no less formal than is the
interaction with living elders on ceremonial occa
sions. The offer of palm wine is normal at all for
mal occasions when a junior approaches a senior;
but dead elders, in their capacity of the dead, also
have their preferred foods - the special forest
mushroom and roots. Thus, it is the speciaJ meth
ods of approach, inevitably characterizing dealings
with the dcad, as opposed to the Jiving, that gives
these dealings the special cast that ma.kes us, as
anthropologists and outsiders, eaU it a "cult" The
dead qua dead also know more and see things that
living elders do not; they are, therefore, more
powerful and can sometimes be more helpful.
Also, though the reasons for action by any elder
are often obscW"e to the juniors, actions by dead
elders are particularly obscure since no explana
tions from them are ever possible. In shorr. there
is a difference in the manner in which the dead are
approached, in contrast ro the living. But the dif
ference is related to their difierent physical states,
even while they remain in the same structural
position vis-a-"is their juniors....
The 'Western ethnocentric con,iction that "ances
tors" must be separated from Jiying "elders" con
ditions the cognitive set with which we approach
African data and theorize about them. Not only is
our term "ancestor" - meaning an ascendant who is
dead - denotatively ethnoeenrric but it is also con
notatively so. Western cU.lmral tradition (which
includes ghosts) accepts that the dead can be
endowed with extraordinary powers. The dead
belong to wh,1( we call the "supernatural world". A
Western anthropologist, working in an African
society; finds it easy to accept without much further
questioning that the dead, including the "anees
tors," should be believed capable of extraordinary
doings, thar they should "mysticaU/' confer bene
fits, that they should visit sickness upon the living,
that the" should have "supernatural" powers. Such
beliefs about the dead are culturally acceptable to
us, and it is appropriate that such dead should hm"C
a "cult." But living people in our cululral concep
tions do not have such "mvstical" powers merely
because they bappen to be older. If they are said
by Africans to hav'e such powers, these must be
"derived" from elsewhere; and the ancestors, being
dead, are seen as an appropriate source. I
Our interpretations have had two opposing
emphases. In the ethnographies, dealing deserip_
tively with African beliefs, it has generally been
held that Africans see the powers of the elder.
as dcrivative from thc power of the ancestors.
B) contrast, on the theoretical level (where our
cultural assumptions come to the fore and where
ancestors can.not "exist" except as a symbol and an
abstraction), the directionality of the explanation
is e,.\;actly reversed; the powers with which anees
tors are endowed become a "projection" of the
palpable powers of living elders. This latter inter
pretation is the gist of Fortes's (1965) formulation.
But what, then, of the mystical powers that elders
hold directly and on their own, as among the
Suku? Are they in turn to be seen as re-projections
frorn the ancestors? When we see the powers O\TT
the juniors of both living elders and ancestors as
deri"ative from eldership per se, both the above
interpretations of the "sources" of power come to
be beside the point. The problems they attempt
to solve arise in the first place from an ethnocentric
categorization of the ethnographic data.
The reformulation of the problem around the
broader category of "eldership" carried other
semantic implications for anthropological termi
nology (and consequent!) for the tht:ory built on
tbis terminology). We talk of ancestor "cults" and
e"en of ancestor "worship." In their modern mean
ings' these English words are culturally appropriate
in describing dealings \\~th the dead and the super
naturaJ. By contrast, we would hesitate to apply the
terms "cult" and "worship" to relations ,,'ith the
living. Yet, if the $uku and others "worship" their
dead elders, then they also "worship" their hv in~
elders. If they bave a "cult" of dead elders, the satn'e
"cult" applies to the living. Obversely, if the living
eldL'Ts are only "respected," then so are the "ances
tors," and no more than that.
These points are very well illustrated by
Kenyatta (1938:265-8), \\ ith his inside view of
Kikuyu culture, when he discusses "ancestors."
"In this account, 1 shall not usc that term [wor
shipl because from practical experience I do not
believe that the Gikuyu worship their ancestors... ,
) shall therefore use the term 'communion with
ancestors"'. Kenyatta's European analogy IS
rev'ealing: "There appears to be such communion
1\ irh ancestors when a European familv, on special
occasions, has an empt)' chair, the seat of a dead
member, at table during a meal. This custom
might be closely equated with Gikuyu behaviour
in this respect." "The words 'prayer' and 'wor
ship', gothaithaiya, f{oikia-II/okoigoro, are ne"er
used in dealing \\ ith the ancestors' spirits. These
words are reseryed for solemn rituals and sacri
fices directed to the power of the unseen." .-\s to
rhe question of what is so often called "sacrifice":
"The gifts which an elder gives to the ancestors'
spirits, as when a sheep is sacrificed to them, and
which perhaps seem to an outsider to be pr,lyers
directed to the ancestors, are nothing but the trib
utes symbolizing the gifts which the departed
elders would have received had they been alive,
and "hich the living elders now receive."
By using terms such as "cult," "worship," and
"sacrifice," we introduce semantic paradoxes
which v-.,'e then feel compelled to explain. Thus, in
Ule international African Institute's $aIisbur)
seminar (Fortes and Dieterlcn, 1965: 18), "the
vie\\ that ancestors are generally represented as
punitive in character was discussed at length."
The need to understand why an object of "wor
ship" should be "punitive" arises from the seman
tics of the terms used. \Ve are told in the report on
the seminar that "Professor Mitchell concluded
that ancestors seemed to be normally ambivalent,
inllicting punishment to demonstrate the legiti
mate authority and exercising benevolence when
appealed to. He linked this up wid) some remarks
ofDr. Turner, who gave instances of ancestor wor
ship being significant in group rituals of solidarity
and expiation aimed at restoring amit) within a
community. Such rituals, Professor Mitchell sug
gested, would be directed towards the ancestors in
their benevolent aspect, whereas in the case of
misfortune the punitive aspect would be invoked
in order to provide an interpreration." Such theo
retical inyolution is UDllCcessary. The attitude to
elders (dead or aliYe) is normally ambiv'alent; they
hoth punish and exercise benevolence, and they
ntocessarily participate in restoring amity within
the lineage. Mitchell's complcx theoretical inter
pretation ig'nores what almost e"ery ethnography
and cv erv g'eneral descripti ve statement on African
ancestor "cults" has always stressed: that African
lineages are communities of both the living ami
the dead. Gluckman and Fones rightly stress that
"ancestor cults" are not the same thjng aJ> the cults
of the dead. But this irrelevaTlce of the "deadness"
of ancestors has implications for the very idiom in
which theoretical problems are cast.
Once we recognize that African "ancestors" are
abm'e all elders and to be understood in terms of
the same category as living elders, we shall stop
pursuing a multitude of problems of our own crea
tion. There is nothing startling that the attitude to
elders wielding authoriry should be ambivalent.
Fortes (1965: 133) makes the important poinr that
what matters in ancestors is their jural status, that
(speaking of the Tallensi) "the personality and
character, the yjrtues or vices, success or failures,
popularity or unpopularity of a person during his
lifetime make no difference to his attainment of
ancestorhood". But, we should add, neither d
these variations make a difference in the authority
invested in eldership; what mattel"S informal rela
tions is the formal status, in dead elders as well as
those alivc. "Tt is not the \\ hole man, but only his
jural status as the parent (or parental personage, in
matrilineal systems) vested with authority and
responsibilit), that is transmuted into ancestor
hood" (ibid.). But from the point of view proposed
here, what occurs is not a "transmutation" but a
retell/ion of status by t.he now dead elder. The status,
that is, remains unaffected by death, while one's
purely personal and idiosyncratic relationship
witl1 the elder is necessarily changed. Similarly,
when Fortes states: "Ancestor \\ orship is a repre
sentation or extension of the authority component
in the jural relations of successive generations,"
we can restate this more simply and,! would claim,
more realistically and more in keeping with African
conceptions as follows: "E.lders, after they die,
maintain their role in the jural relations of succes
siYe generations." Tn Fortes's theory, people are
believed to "acq uire", upon death, the power to
intervene in the life of their juniors. l would claim
that they "continue" to have that power.
Such rephrasing simplifies the imerpretarion
of ethnographic date. Thus, in Fortes's formula
tion, the son begins "officiating" in the "cult"
only upon his father's death because he now
becomes a jural adult (Fortes, 1965: 130-2). This
320 IGOR KOPYTOFF
succession mc-ans "ousting a predecessor", and
"sacrifice" to the ancestors mav be a psychologi
cally reassuring mode of ritual reparation; the
ancestor cult becomes a psychological "refuge"
(Fortes, 1965:140-1, 1945:9) Without question
ing the psvchological dynamics specific to the
Tallensi, onr: lllay suggest another formulation
that would secm to be more appropriate for deal
ing wim the general phenomenon of "sacrifice" in
African "ancestor cults," since lhese guilt feelings
and their relief cannot be shown to exist ill all of
these societies. We see among the Tallensi a con
tinuulll of inter-generational eldership. The power
of the kin-group is represented to me (a Tale) by
my father, as his father represents it to him. My
father "worships" (respects) and "sacrifices"
(gives tribute) to his dead fadler, as I respect and
gi\'e tribute to him. When my father dies, m)' rela
tionship with him continues (Fortes, 1959:48ff.).
The chain of relationships over the gcneration>s
remains unaltered, though the method of interac
tion with my father becomes necessarily different
when he is dead. If we express this difference by
speaking of "worship" and "sacrifice," in contrast
to "respect" ,md "gift or lribute," it is because we,
as \Vesterners, find such terms more appropriate
to express dealings with the dead. And, further,
"sacrifice," "expiation," and "guilt" is a comfort
able semantic cluster for us. But there is surely a
danger here of transmuting the semantic biases of
the observer's culture imo problem.s of the eth
nology of dle observed.
By treatillg the phrase "ancestor cults" as a
rather misleading way of referring to an aspect of
the relationship with elders in general, a matter
that Fortes sees as a puzzle can be re-exanlined in
a new light. The puzzle is in the fact that the Tiv
,md the Nuer, with genealogically based social sys
tems not unlike those of the Tallcnsi, lack "ances
tor worship" (Fortes, 1965: HO). There is indeed a
puzzle if one insists upon seeing the anceSLOr cult
as a ~)lmboli( projeclioll of the social system. In the
view presented here, on the other hand, the ances
tor cult is an integral pari of the system of rela
tionship with elders. The relationship \\ ith dead
ciders (that is, "ancestors") is seen as being on the
sallle symbolic plane as that with living ciders and
not as secondary to it or derivative from it. From
this point of view tbe overall structural similmitics
among 111llensi, Ti\', and Nuer should not bc
expected to result in similar ancestor cults. Other
facts would seem to be more relc"ant to the rela
tionship with ancestors qua dead elders: themcan_
ing and structure of eldership, the nature of the
authority attributed to it, and the beliefs aboUlth"
effect of death upon the elder's role.
For the Tiy, the question to be asked is: what is
there in the Tiv relationship "'ith elders that make-;
for relative indifference to dead elders? Pervasive
Tiy egalitarianism de-emphasizes the authorin of
eldership and indeed exacerbates the allthorit~
problems that inhere in such segmentary system,
(Bohannan, 1953:31 ff.). Neither genealogical posi
tion nor age confer, of themselves, special powers
on the living, while the dead are believed to ha\"C
no effect on the living (ibid:83). In short, Tiy
elders qua elders have little influence on the lives
of their juniors, be the elders alive or dead. Their
formal authority here is minimal and genealogi
cally shallow. Though a rehrionship with the dead
is not entirely lacking (Bohannan, 1969:i:35fT., and
43), it is confined to one's parents. As to the Nuer,
here also elders do not carry authority and power
simply by yirtue of their eldership (EYans
Pritchard, 1940: 179-80). The elders' passage in! 0
the other world docs not change their situation in
this respect.
Though "ancestor cults" should not be equated
with cults of the dead, heliefs about the dead are
nevertheless relevant, as iJlustrated by the Songye
who may also be said to lack an "ancestor cult",
but for rather different reasons. Here, Jiving elders
have authority; once they die, however, the rela
tionship with them as de.1d elders docs not last
because they becollle reincarnated in their grand
children.' To conclude, the selection by anthro
pologists of the phrases "ancestor cult" and
"ancestor worship," in dealing with African cul
tures, is semantically inappropriate, analyticall~
misleading, and theortically unproductive. Fortes
has righrly emphasized that the essential feature.
of these activities are to be found not so much III
the fact that the people concerned arc dead as in
the struclllral marrix in which they are placed.
BUl he does not go far enough. By retaining the
term "ancestor" (rather than use, say. "dead
ANCESTORS AS ELDERS IN AFRICA 321
elders"), he continues to gi\'e undue weight in his
inteJ'prerations to the fact that the persons are
dead. The term "ancestor" sets up a dichotomy
where rhere is a continuum. B) conceptually sep
arating living elder from ancestOrs, we uncon
sciousl; introduce Western connotations to the
phenomena thus labelled and find ourselves hav
ing to deal with paradoxes of om o\\n creation
and with complex solutions to them. h is striking
that African "ancestors" are more mundane and
less mystical than the dead who are objects of
""orship" should be in \\ieslern eyes. African
elders, on the OTher hand, look more mystical to
us than we arc willing to allow the living to be.
Similarly, Africans treat their Jiving elders more
"worshipfully" than the English term "respect"
comeys, aIld they treat the ancestors with less
"respect" and more contentiousness than the
term "worship" should allow.
These 3re all paradoxes that stem from the dif
ficu lty of our vocabulaf) to accommodate to the
fact th,\! African living elders and dead ancestors
are more similar to each other than the Western
li\ing and dead can be, that an elder's social role
NOles
To introduce a persunal note, I had no difficulty in
the field in accepting the idea that the dead "ances
lors" should have "supcrnarural" powers. Blit I must
hayc driven my informants to distraction b~ insisring
On pursuing the question of the "why" and the
"where from" of the powers of the jiving ciders. It
took a kind of methodological (and cultural) leap of
faith to ,1(cept as a terminal ethnographic datum that
if the dead can appropriately do supernarural things,
why not also the living?
The E.nglish word "worship" carried, to be sure. a
less religious connotation in Old EngJish, referring
11lereJy to "<.lignity," l.Ihonour/' and {'worthiness"
appropriate to one aspect of U1C African rebtjonship
\\ ;l.h both elders and ancestors, but still missing its
associated aspect of familiarity tbat, when necessary,
allows scolding.
Personal communication from Dr. Alan P. Merriam.
~ In this paper, I ha"e discussed only the elders/
ancestors of the dcscent group itself, and I have
maue no reference to the "extra-descent group
does not radicallv change when he crosses the
line dividing the living from the dead, and that
African "ancestorship" is but an aspect of lhe
broader phenomenon of 'eltlership." The initial
theoretical problem here is not so much that of
uncovering deep psychological and symbolic
processes as it is of probing African cultural cat
egories and of finding adequate translations of
these into the Western language used for theoriz
ing. The terminological recasting that is proposed
here (with a consequent rec:LsLing of the cognitive
categories of the theorist) suggests that our
understanding of variations in what we have
called "ancestor cuJts" musl begin with the anal
ysis of eldership in particular African societies.
Finally, these redefinitions also resolve the puzzle
of finding "ancestor cults" to be, on the one hand,
so very characteristic of Africa as a Cll !ture area
and, on the other, to be inexplicably and errati
cally absent here and there within tlle area. No
such problem arises when \\ e realize that the cul
tural trait to be examined is not "ancestorship"
but the more widelY distributed African recogni
tion of "eldership."'
ancestor cults" discussed by McKnight (1967).
Briefly summarized, McKnight's point is that the
"extra-descent group ancestors" (that is, paternal
ancestors in the matrilineal systems, and maternal
ones in the patrilineal) are not benevolent ;IS they
should be in terms of Radcliffe-Brown's theory of
extension of sentiments. McKnight shows l'hat Ute
relations with rhe kin-group of rhe "residual par
ent" need not duplicate the sentiments of the rela
tionship with that parent. Thus, in a patrilineal
sociel), one can he on the warmest of terms with
one's mother and her brother and still have strained
and (VCIl hostile relations with their kin-group as a
corporate entity and with other relatiYes in it. And
it is these latter relations that condition the rela
tions with the "extra-descent group ,mcestors."
'\ilc~night's mode of analysis is consistent with
the one used here. I would merely use the term
"relationship with the dead elders of rile extra
descent grollp" instead of "extra-descent group
ancestor cults"
322 IGOR KOPYTOFF
References
Bohann~n, Laura and Paul. 1953. Tlte Til; of Cwlrul
Nigeria. Lon<.1on.
Bohannan, Laura and Pall! 1969. '/ Source J\'(i/"pook Oil
7i"1' RelIgIOn (1'. I: COSIIIIIS, SlIlIIa, Psyche rJl/d Diseuse).
New H:llCI1, Conn.
Cunnison, bn. 1951. HisIOI)! 011 lit" LUl/pulu, Rhodes
Livingstone Papers, 21.
EI'ans-Pritchard, E. 1940. The Nller. Oxford.
Fortes, :vle)cr. 1945. Tlu Dy7/flmics of C!rIllSltip 1/IIIOIIg
lite Ttl!lmsi. London.
Fortes, Me!cr 1959. Otdiplls and Job ill 1I';'sl _4jhcof/
Religioll. Cambridge.
Fones, vte)er 1965. "Some Reflections on Ancestor
Worship'" in .'~{ricall ~)'slellls of T7lOughl, ed . .\1.
Fones and G. Diererlen. Lon<.1on.
Fones, Meyer and Dicterlen, G. (cds.). 1965. ~fricl/II
S.v"mls of 7/iol/ght. r.0n<.1on.
Gluckman, M. 1937. "Mortuary Customs and rhe Belief
in Sunil'al after Death among rhe Sourh-Eastern
Bantu", Rail/II SII/dies, xi.
Hamburger, L. 11)41. Lts LUf/gues Iligro-ujrimin(s '" Ics
pet/pIes qlli Its parlelll. Paris.
Kenyatla, Jomo. 1(:1:18. Fafillg 11011111 Ke'/lya: The Trib"l
rip oftlte GilmYI/ Lon<.1on.
Kopyroff, Igor. 1964. "ramil) and Lineage aIllong the
Suku of the Congo", in The Famd)' /;'Sifl/e ill /lFim,
ed. Robert F Gray and P. II. Gulliver. London.
Kop) lOfl~ r~or 1965. "The Suku ofSomhwesrem Cancro"
in Peopl;s lifAfrim, cd. James L. Gibbs, Jr. Ke\\ YO~k.'
Part VII
McKnight,]. D. 1967. "[:.tra-Descem Group Ancestor
Cults in African Societies", AfriclI, xxxvii 1-21.
Arts, Aesthetics, and
Sapir, Edward. 1921. Languagt. ~e\\ York (rcpri11lcd
1949).
Wilson, Monica. 1957. Riluals of Killsl/lp lIil/ong Ihe
Heritage
!\'ynl'YII.<a. London.
For the terms for "ancestors" and "elders" in the {\friean
languages menrioned, I have used the following Sourccs:
Mary Douglas, The Lelt of tile Kaslli, London, 1\163;
Walter Sangrec, Age, Prayer, IJlld Politics ill Trrlki. KmYlI,
London, 1966; and the dictionaries of rhe respeeril'c
languages b~' the follo\\ ing: C. W. R. Tobias and R. H. C.
Turve~ 1954 (Ovambo/Kwanl-ama), W. Holman Hemlcl
1887 (Kongo), R. P. A. Sernain 1923 (Songyc), G.
ulslaerl 1\152 (Nkundo/Lomongo), M. Guthrie 1')35
(Ngala), M. Mamel 1955 (Ntomba),]. 'vVhitchead IRQ9
(Boban6ri), Edwin VI. Smith 1907 and J. Turrend 1931
(lla), C. .\1. Dokc 11)33 and 1963 (Lamba), G. ~1.
Sanderson 1954 ()'ao), C. Ta~ lor 1959 (Ankole), Herbert
\V. Woou\\ard 1882 (Bondei), C. S. Louw 1\115
(Knranga), D. Me]. !\laJcolm 1966 and C. M. Doke and
B. W. Vilnkal.i 1958 (Zulu), R. P. Alexandre 11)53 (~lossi),
B. F and W. E. ""clmers J968 (Tgbo), Charles A. Taber
1965 (Sango), r\. \d,ens 1928 (l\langbetu).
 Introduction

The prt:scnce of art on the African continent stretches back to prehistory when engra\"1ngs and
paintings were first made on granite rod surfaces by bands of migrating hunters and gatherers,
possibl) as far back as 13,000 years ago. Ylost of these images, at least those \\ hich have sun'ivcd
to the present da~, represent the way of life in the Later Stone Age, depicting wild animals,
Inml:m ligures engaged in hunting activities, and assemblages of people gathered, perhaps, for
the purpose of dance or ritual (see Lewis-Williams, 1983; GarJake, 1995).
Three-dimensional sculptural art first appears in the last millennium IK, among the Nok
culture, which flourished in what is today central Nigeria. The Nok produced a wide assortment
of terracotla sculpture representing both animal and human figures (Fagg, 1977;]emkur, 1992).
:-'lan) of these objects, some of which have been recovered ncarl~ intact, show remarkable aUen
tion to detail - elaboratel) styled hair, intricate necklace and bead ornaments, and a distinctive
treatment of the head, nose, nostrils, and mouth that "clear!) set these figurines apart from
other prehistoric West African terracotta traditions" (Fagg, 199+: 82). To date, archaeolog) in
sub-Saharan Africa has revealed the presence of a number of other major art-producing cul
tures, including, for example, ancient sites exca\'ated at Igbo-Ukwu, lte, Owo, and Jenne-Jeno
(see Willett, 1967; Shaw, 1977; Eyo, 1980; lvlcInrosh, 1994). From the twelfth to fifteenth cen
turies, royal artisans in the Kingdom of Benin produced a large corpus of exquisite bronze fig
ures ~nd pLaques which were used as altarpieces on commemorative shrines, as well as to decorate
and enhance the palace interior (sec also Part I).
While much has been learned about ancient Africa through archaeolog) and the analysis of
earl) artifacts, a great deal has also been learned about Africa, both past and present, through
research into the vast array of contcmporary arts which are produced today for use in both
secular and religious contexts. Whjlc artifacts made of bronze and terracotta have survivcd in
thc archaeological record, most objects made of wood have disintegrated due to the harsh cli
mates of tropical Africa which quickly erode wooden materials. Thus, most wooden masks and
statues which still playa vital role in African life today are, for the most part, only about a
hundred years old at the most.
326 INTRODUCTION
The study of African art in Europe and America developcd largely in conjunction with the
discipline of anthropology at thc beginning of the twentieth century. Some of the earliest works
on African art were writtcn in order to further particular claims within a broader debate between
diffusionist and evolutionist schools of thought (Haddon, 1902). African art was used, in this
context, either as visual cyidence for the spread of cultural traits from innovati\c centers to
imitative pcripherics, or as e\idcnce for the social evolution of culturcs - from groups \\-hich
were supposedly capable of only naturalistic representation to those which had presumably
graduated to the mastery of geomctric stylization and abstract forms (Silver, 1979).
Following in the footsteps of late Victorian anthropology, artists in Europe began to "dis
covcr" for themselves the objects of African art that were beginning to make their way into both
priY:ltc art collections and museums of ethnography. Writers, artists, and intellectuals, like
Maurice Vlarninck, Andre Derain, Guillaume Apollinaire, Georges Braque, Paul Klee, Ernst
Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, and Constantin Brancusi, \\"(~rc all impacted to some degree by
the power of African aesthetics and what they perceived as the refiguling of thc human form in
African sculptural traditions.
Perhaps the bcst known example or Africa's influence on modem European art, howcver, is
Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles dAvignon, which was completed in 1907. Art historians have
consistently noted the striking formal affinity bet\\een certain African maSk i>tyles and the
"mask-like" faces of two of the five women that are the subject of this remarkable painting.
Yet, only recently have scholars tried to link Picasso's interest in African art to a broader concern
regarding: French colonial policy in Africa. Art historian Patricia Leighten has suggested that
Picasso, and many of his circle, embraced African art as a symbol of their antinationalist senti
ments and, specifically, their disdain for the Coloniall>arty 's assertion of France's national des
tiny and the so-called mission civilisalrice to the "undcveloped" peoples of Africa and Asia
(Leighten, 1990: 611). Les Demoiselles d'AVIgl/oT/ was complcted on the heels of stunning discJo.
surcs made to the French public in 1905-6 of European military atrocities against the indige
nous populations in the French and Belgian Congos. Thus, Leighten concludes, "Far from only
wanting to borrow formal motifs from African forms, Picasso purposely challenged and mocked
Westcrn artistic traditions \\ith his allusions to black Africa, with its unavoidable associations of
white cruelty and exploitation" (1990: 610).
The interest that was generated in African art by European intellectuals flowed back once
again into anthropology, and became absorbed into the discipline's new theories and methods of
study. As the field of anthropology altered its emphasis from diffusion to context, and from
evolution to function, the study of African art followed in its path. Drawing upon the new dis
course of anthropology, and in particular taking a lead from the models and theories developcd
by Bronislaw Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, the focus in the study of African art begin
ning sometime in the 1940s and 1950s was to become the indigenous context - which would
reveal the place of art within a balanced holistic system of social and cultural funcrions. In this
sense, art was understood simply as one of many vital organs in the proper maintenance and
functioning of a stable social organism.
Simon Ottenberg's essay, "Humorous Mask!. and Serious Politics among the Afikpo Igbo."
provides a classic example of hO\\ a functionalist approach may serve to locate the role of art (in
this case masks and masking) in thc maintenance of a balanced system of political po\\'er within
an unccntralized or acephalous African society. Onenbcrg argues that harmony and social equi
librium are maintained in A1ikpo Igbo society through the regulated use of masks by junior males
in a perfonnati\'e ritual known as the Okumkpa. Behind the relative anonymity of a wooden face
mask, young men permit themselves to criticize their elders and to vent their dissatisfactions
INTRODUCTION 327
\\ iUl village politics and social regulations. Without the masks, Ottenberg argues, the) oung men
coultl never allow themselves such open and direct challenges to the established rule of the elders.
The elders, for their part, permit the Okumkpa to take place because it allows YOUU1S to vent their
frusWltions without actuall) challenging or disrupting the established socia-political order. After
the Okumkpa performance, \\ hich inverts hierarchy in a controlled contcxt, power relations are
re-established and continue to function in the same way that they did before.
Given the relatiyely small size of Afikpo Igbo society, where each individual knows everyone
else in the village, Ottenberg's analysis of the Okumkpa raises an interesting question about the
role played by masks in concealing a person's identity, Are the young men really anonymous
behind their wooden face mask? Or rather do the elders recognizc the masker's identity', but
respect the anonymity which the mask supposedly offers? In other words, is the mask's capacity
to hide indi\idual identity simply a "structural relationship" which is acknowledged by both
mask-wearer and mask-viewer? Might the mask, in this regard, be compared to the powdered
wIg of a British judgc or barrister which marks an individual's social role and sanctifies his or
hcr authority without actually hiding the person's true identity?
i\nother school of thought in anthropology which, at one point, had an impact on the study
and analysis of African art is structuralism - an approach that was largely developed in France
by Claude Levi-Strauss and which became yery influential in the 1950s and 1960s. Structural
analysis in anthropology seeks to locate the "permutable codes" by which structural relations
are transposed from one plane of reality to another (Adams, 1973: 265). In other words, struc
turalism attempts to identify identical, or at least similar, structural formations, such as "binary
oppositions" (that is, ordering the world according to symbolic principles of dualism or struc
tured pairs), in multiple spheres of cultural expression, including the organization of social
groups, class ranking, myth, ritual, art, and collective practices (Nodelman, 1970).
Recent approaches to the study of African art have challenged what has come to be perceived
as an overemphasis on local context. In so doing, the unit of analysis has been expanded not only
to include contacts within and among a wide range of proximate ethnic groups (Kasfir, 1984), but
also to include the impact of world religions and global tra\el on local art usc and production. Art
historian Rene Brm'mann (1974), for example, has explored the articulation of [slam with indig
enous African beliefs. Far from obliterating so-called "traditional" art forms, Bravmann has
shown how the production and use of art in West Africa has adapted to the religious demands of
Islam and created "syncretic" art forms which blend into a single cultural expression of Muslim
and indigenous religious values (see lntroduction for more on the notion of syncretism in African
cultures). In another important instance of aesthetic assemblage and cultural syncretism, art
historian Henry Drewal (1988, 2008) has explored the incorporation of European and Hindu
beliefs about mermaids and snake-charmer goddesses into the worship and art associated with a
pan-African religious cult known as Mami Wata. Drewal has shown in his research how the cir
culation of myths in the world system of the imagination produces a ne\\ religion and a new art
form which combines indigenous beliefs about water spirits with foreign images of the "other."
Much of the research on African art today focuses on the hybridity of indigenous expressive
cultures. Rather than look for "pure" aesthetic forms as anthropologists often did in the past
that is, art forms that wcre putatively "untouched" by European or other foreign contact
Africanist scholars today acknowledge outside influence and transcultural communication and,
in their writings, often sed to demonstrate how Africans in fact celebrate artistic innO\'ation
and how artists and performers e:-.periment with the foreign, the strange, and the ne\\.
Those who collect African art in Europe and America often imagine that there is a "precolonial
aesthetic" - an art style that originated in pristine conditions and rcmained unchanged for
 -
328 INTRODUCTION
centuries until it was "contaminated" by European exploration and, later, colonialism. }\..lthough
there were indeed precolonial art forms, it does not follow that these arts simply remained
unchanged. Novelt) and innovation have almost alwa~ s played a key role in African "isual anti
:xpressive cultures. People everywhere, howe\er, tend to imagine the past as a time of "authen_
ticity" and as a glorified moment which someho", \\as able to reproduce itse1funchanged Until
outside forces caused irrevocable damage to the "ancient" practices.
This \\ ay of thinking about the relationship between the past and the present is not limited to
European attitudes toward Africa, but is also manifested in African attitudes toward Europe. In
a fascinating interview with West African painter Tamessir Dia, for example, art critic Thomas
~lcEvilley captured a profound irony of postcolonial discourse about Western socicty. W,mdering
thc streets ofVenice in 1993, during an exhibition of contemporary art in \\ hich his work was
featured, Oia contemplated the disjuncture between classical Italian art and architecture and
what he perceived to be the mundane character of modern Italy:
I keep looking at present-day Italians and try to compare 1hem II ith the Italians of the past ,md wonder
how they did such great things in the past. When I look around, not ani, arc the architectural monu
ments extraordinary, hur the paintings as well. I don't sec any link between the relics of the past and
what r see today. I keep wondering, Are these the same people? (McEvillcy, 1993: J 0)
1.n his commentary on this inteniew, McEvilley concludes that for "an African to exert such a
judgment on the West is a profound reversal of the colonial relationship" (1993: 10).
Recent studies of African art have begun not onl} to question the (over) emphasis placed on
local context, at the expense of a more translocal or global perspective, but they have als\J
thrown into doubt the pri"ileged place of pre-colonial masks and statues in the definition of
what constitutes "real" art in Africa. In his research on the African art market in COte d'h'oire,
for exam.ple, Christopher Steiner (1994) has demonstrated how the category "African art" i,
continually reim-ented and redefined by speculators and connoisseurs in the international art
market. Objects that were once classified as "cw'ios" or "artifacts" come to be reclassified as
"art." In this process, objects are given not only new monetary worth but also new cultural and
political ,alue.
Unlike art historians, who generally sec the art object as their prin1ary unit of study, anthro
pologists use art as a means of studying society more broadly. The stud) of art in this case is thus
not intended as an end in itself, but rather it is a methodological tool to gain access to a wider
\'jew of social organization or to penetrate a "deeper" level of cultural knowledge. Art history
and anthropolugy are disciplines that are clearly related to one another, but each brings a differ
ent perspective to the subject ofAfrican art (Adams, 1989; Ben-Amos, 1989). [n both art histo~
and anthropology, however, the study ofAfrican art has been heavily influenced by perspecti,'es
and lJ'ends in Western scholarship. When functionalism was in vogue, for example, many anthro
pologists viewed African art through the lens of functionalist theory. As functionalism waned
and lost favor in the field of anthropology as a whole, so too did its application to the study of
African art. The question, then, is ho\\ much of our understanding of African art emerges frum
Western cultural assumptions about a.rt and aesthetics, and how much is guided by the applica
tion of models and interpretations formed in other academic domains?
PhilosopherV.Y Mudimbe has reached the conclusion in his work thatlhe term "African art"
itself, in Western academic discourse, is a constructed category which fails to address indigenolls
'\frican aesthetic perceptions and sensibilities. "What is called African art," IHites Mudimbe,
"covers a wide range of objects introduced into a historicizing perspective of European values
INTRODUCTION 329
.------------------------
since the eighteenth century" (1986: 3) How can we understand tVrican art without being
guided b) Western models of art and aesthetic theory?
One of the basic problems in the study of African art is the emphasis that has been placed on
durable material objects. Most studies ofAfrican art begin with collections of an that have been
assembled in museums in Europe and America starting in the siHcenth century. These collec
tions of what is known in the parlance of anthropology as material culture are usually silent
abollt the cultural context in which they were originally created and used. In some cast.:s, what
is important about the object is not its physical presence which endures in a museum collection,
but rather its performati"e character which can only be exhibited in its indigenous cultural
milieu. Art historian Robert Farris Thompson (1974) has pointed out that much African art was
not meant to be experienced in the static em'ironment of an exhibition gallery but was intended
to be seen in motion. Jn its original context, for example, a viewer eould not study the features
of a wooden mask in detail but could only catch a fleeting glimpse of the object as a masked
dancer sw irled and spun before a gathered crowd in the village square. The aesthetic experience
of seeing a mas\.. in motion is vcry different from seeing a mask in a glass cabinet - artificially
suspended in time and space.
Just as motion is an important component to the aesthetic din1ension of an African mask, so
roo is sound. Most masks when danced in ritual performance are accompanied by distinct noises
and otherworldly \oices. Thesc sounds, rather than any visual qualities of the wooden mas\..
itself, are often what distinguish one mask type from another (Lifschitl., 1988). Seen in the
silent realm of a museum cabinet these acoustic qualities of a mask's aesthetic configuration
,,"ould be totally missed and o\erlookcd.
Olu Oguibe's essa}, "Art, ldenti~, Boundaries: Posm10dernism and Contemporary African
:\rt," also focuses our attention on the West's obsession with so-called traditional African art.
The West's preoccupation with Africa's mythic past ripples through spheres of art collecting
and museum exhibitions and creates a false dichotomy between the traditional and the modern.
Oguibe's description and analysis of 3n encounter between art critic Thomas McEvilley and
h'oirian artist Ouattara LWansl illustrates the complex predicament of t.he African artist strug
gling to establish his identity and mark within the framework of this peculiar world art stage.
Ouattara rejects the West's strict binary opposition between "traditional" and "modern," and
espouses instead a more African view on these categorics which sees them as co-existing rather
than mutually exclusive. Born and raised in Abidjan, Cote d'h oire, but trained at the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts in Paris, Ouattara embraces the interplay of the modern and the traditional; he
explores technology in Africa and spirituality in the West, thereby reversing the conventional
dichotomy and shaking up the representational model and liberating Africa from the dominating
gaze of Western classification (sec Part I for further discussion of the issues surrounding the
West's representation of Africa).
The control that I he West exerts over the definition of authentic or legitimate African art is
not only an academic debate on identity but has real consequences for African artists struggling
to establish themselves and sun ive on the international art scene. Contemporary art making has
been dominated by the West and defined largely as a Western enterprise. African artists seeking
to participate in the dialogue of modern art have to someho'\ establish themselves on their own
terms. \\'hat Oguibe identifies as Ouattara's disgust with his interlocutor McEvillc)' is an cxam
pie of that struggle for self-definition and identit}. McE,'illey's question "When and where
were you born'" (while seemingly innocent) provokes an inner rage in the artist who feels t.hat
his work is being judged by his geographic roots and the cultural shackles that bind him to place
in Africa rather than being assessed like his Western counterparts for the objective aesthetic
330 INTRODUCTION
merits of work that ought to transcend space and time. Beyond the study of the \'isual arts,
Africanjst scholarship has also made significant contributions to our understanding of the role
of music, musicians, and musical performances in African societies. The study of African music
entered the academy through the field of etllllomusieolog) - a method of analysis that situates
music in its ethnographic or cultural context. Like the early study ofAfrican art and aesthetics
in anthropology, ethnomusicology treats African music as one of many determinative elements
in the sttucturing of the cultural fabric of a society.
In recent years, this approach to the study of African music has been criticized by .'\frican
scholars who view ethnomusicology (or comparative musicology) as a mode of inquiry that "mar
ginalizes Africa in the Western musical imagination and keep[s] African scholars from entry into
the scholarly comcrsation on African music" (Solis 200-+: 108). Because the analysis of African
music evaluates musical forms and performances in terms derived from Western musical practice
and discollTse, the scholarship tends to be largely Eurocentric. "Ethnomusicology and its cous
ins," writes Jean Ngoya Kidula, "can therefore be seen as systems developed by North I\merican
and Europe.1n scholars to understand and 'contain' musics of rural, minority, or other cultures"
(2006: 101). African scholars have heen particularly critical of older ethn()musicological
approaches that view colonial or Western influences on Mrican music as detrimental forms of
cultural corruption that would "overwhelm the local knowlcdgcs and practices of African cul
ture, erasing them utterl)." (Solis 200-1-: 107) instead, recent scholarship on African music, that
draws on postcolonial theory more broadly, insists that these transcultural influences are genera
tive of creative cultural forms that are expressive of important, new hybrid musical genres.
Kell~ Askew's article "As Plato Duly Warned: Music, Politics, and Social Change in COast East
Africa," is an excellent example of this Ile\\ mode of scholarship on African music. In her essa),
Askew examines the role of music in political and social change on the Swahili coast of East
Africa. She analyzes two musical genres, Ilgoma and donsi (typically glossed as "traditional dance"
and "urb,ill jazz"), and exposes within these two genres common aesthetic principles uf innoYJ
tiOIl, inventive appropriation, competitive opposition, linguistic indirection, and intertcxuality.
Following the Ie-ad of Janles Fernandez, an anthropologist who studied the parallels in the
symbolic symmetry of the visual arts and other cultural expressions among the Fang people of
Gabon, Askew identifies within Swahili coast culture a continuum from choices to political and
social practices. R:uher than privilege political actions as "the true social reality," Askew sug
gests that aesthetic principles as expressed in Swahili music are determinative and not separate
or less important than economic or political practice. Her analysis aims to show:
Tl1at (I) we cannut assume that Swahili preferences for contmual artistic innOl'ation through the incor
pOl'arion uf fureign elements derive from Swahili economic history, and (2) that in Swahili communilics
po1i I ical action is a key aesthetic principle.
In the end, Askew concludes (as did Fernandez) that aesthetic form" of expression arc part of
a cultural continuum that embraces not only the arts but also politics and economics. i'lusic is
not a mere epiphenomenon but rather a productive form of social action that has real impact on
real political and economic processes.
In the final chapter of this part, "In Place of Slavery: Fashioning Coastal Identity," llayll
Holsey examines the construction of collective memory in postcolonial Ghana. The chapter
explores what appears to be a contradiction in the way the inhabitants of coastal Elmina glon:,
the era of the Dutch-controlled slave trade (when the town was prosperous and connected to tht:
world) :lndlament their present impoYerishcd and isolated status in un independent nation state.
INTRODUCTION 331
Holsey argues, howe\'er, that it is not the case that the residents of Elmina arc nostalgic for the
slave trade era, which marks thc wealth of their past, but rather they reference their historic
prosperi!) as a wa) of critiquing the decline of wealth and cosmopolitanism that ensued in the
colonial and postcolonial periods. While the era of the Atlantic slave trade was indeed shameful
and horrific, the communi!)" of Elmina was included ill tne global order and a player in transna
tional trade and llffairs. Through selective memories, the people of coastal Ghana raday cq' out
lor international recognition and seek to be respected (rather than forgotrcn) on the world stage.
~'I1cmory, like art and music, is a selcctiyely constructed phenomenon that can be pressed into
sen ice to represent and define the collective identity of a people and nation.
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tllld GlolIlIl CIIIIUI'lII Dlverslly. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Ro\ inc, \"icloria. 2008. Bogolan: Sltapillg Callure Ihrollgh Cloth ill COlllemporary Mali. Bloomington: Indiana
Cnilersil) Press.
Rubin, Arnold, cd. 1988 Marl's o/Civilbl/illll:-lrtisllc TrallSjilrllltJtlOIIS ofllttllllmllll Bldy. Loso\ngcl<.'s: I\luscum
)f Cullur:Li History, Unh ersil.' of California.
Schild~ruul, Enid. anti CurtisA. Keim. 1990. Africall ReflaliOlls; ArlfrollllVartlteasum Zaire. Sealtle: uni\ersil~
of Washin!;lOn Press.
Spring, Chris. 2010. A;;-irtlll.111111 Drtl/if. Cambridge, J\L\' Harvard Uni\ersil} Press.
Strolhcr, Z.S. 1999. fnvenlillg lill/sks: Ag('1/cy tllUl flislory In lite Al'l 1{lhe Celltml Pentlt'. Chicago: Unil'crsit)' of
Chic.1go Press.
Thompson, Robert Farris. 2009. /'Ieslhme oftlte COlli. Pittsburgh: Periscope.
\'isuna, Monica BJac~mun, Robin PO) nor, and J lerben M. Cole. 2007. /Jislory ofArlill l(fTic./, 2nd edn. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
\ogel, Susan. 1991 .. ~(riCtl Explore,: 20/h Cenlury ,Nrimll .'11'1. 'Je\l York: The Centcr for Afric.1n '\rt.
 22
Humorous Masks and Serious Politics
among the Afikpo Igbo
Simon Ottenberg
Comparcd to their actions in ordinary life hm\ do
.\tiican men behave when rhey don masks and spe
cial costumes' Masking is behavior of a stylized
and ritualized kind, and dilTers, therefore, from
activit) of a day -to-da), nature. The question is
more complex, it seems to me, than simpl} whether
the man who puts on a goat mask is supposed to
loo~ and perhaps act like a goat or not. The same
man wearing the same mask may be differently
inrerpreted at various dances. The study of mask
ing, then, forces us to look deeply into the specific
behavior of the performers and into the relation
ship of rheir actions to crucial elements of the
social structure of the sociery. For oftell rbe masked
players symbolically represent both social tensions
:lnd political matters in thcir performances.
Ethnographic Background
.\fi~po, Ihe subject of this study, is a village-group
composed of twenty-two villages inhabited by some
30,000 persons in sourhelstcm Nigeria. I It is one of
several hundred village-groups of (Igbo) who live
From Simon Oltcnberg, "lluffiorOLiS M.asks and Serious Politics among the Afikpo lbo" in ,'~Fic{1/I Art /lnd Leadership,
(,d. Douglas Fraser and Herbert .\11. Colc (1972), pp. 99-121. Copyright
Llli\crsil~ of Wisconsin. Reprinted by permission of the Ulliversit) of Wiseon sin Press.
in this portion of Nigeria and whose total popula
tion probably comprises some cight million. The
Afikpo, like other Igbo, are sedentaT) horticultural
ists with clearly delineated villages composed of
well-defined social groupings. Like other Igbo, they
have never formed themselves into a highly central
ized political system; for many years the Afikpo vil
lage-group has had considerable autonomy in
matters of traditiona!leadership and social control.
The Afikpo are unusual for Igbo, howe I'eI', in hav-ing
double inilineal descent, each person belonging to
corporate matrilineal groupings, which are nonresi
dential, dispersed, landholding descent groups, as
well as to patrilineal groupings, residential group
ings (associated with ancestral shrines) which (orm
the basic units of the political system.
The typicaJ Afikpo village is composed of sev
era! hundred to seven thousand persons and gen
erally consists of a number of palrilineages, often
unrelated, each agnatic group living in its 0\\11
compound more or less at the edge of the \ illage
common. Each yillage also has a distinct system of
male age-sets, there being some twent} sets in all.
e1972 by IJ1C Board of Regents of lhe
336 SIMON OTTENSERG
Each set covers about a three-year span, the men
being first formed into sets in their late twenties.
Sets are grouped rogether into grades, the oldest
forming the eldt:rs' grade, which rules the ,~lIage;
certain younger sets perform cooperative and
communal lahor at the elders' discretion. These
age-sets form the basis of the authorit} :;ystem, in
which age is a primary criterion, and they also
help unite men of different descent groups into a
common social organization.
The male elders rule the village by common
agreement amongst themselves. There are no
formal \ ilJage chiefs or heads; consen!>us is the
rule. Some elders, of course, are "more equal than
others," because the) arc outstanding speakers,
have influence through their wealth and the size of
their landholding, or come from influential descent
group!>. Fundamcntally it is an egalitarian situation
for persons of the same age and sex, and an author
itarian one for younger and older indi,-iduals.
Too much personal power among elders, or in any
Afikpo for that matter, is frowned upon.
Each village has a secret society with its own
secret initiation bush, its special spirit, and a host
of rituals which its members carry out in the six
months following the harvest season when the
society is active. All village males join the society,
genernlly before the) reach adulthood. For men it
is a universal association, since without member
ship a man is sociologically a boy and is excluded
from most adult activities. The society is thus
secret only with reference to women and children.
The tripartite authorit} structure of the Afikp
secret sociery must be mentioned briefk The fir!>t
unit includes the priest and assistant priest of the
society's shrine, \\ ho are aided in carrying out
sacrifices and other ritual activities by;) small group
of interested persons. 2 These persons are generally
but not necessarily elders. The second unit com
prises men who have taken senior titles within the
society and "bo have the right to seltle certain vil
lage disputes which the elders themselves cannot
resoh'e. Again, many are elders, bur there arc excep
tions. Third, the village elders as a group have some
control over the society's activities. All three of
these units - and some persons are members of two
or three - act cooperatively to see that the various
initiations, sacrifices, dances, plays, and the other
activ'jties of the society are effectively carried out.
-
'\10 highly centralized authority rules the Stcrl'!:
society, just as there is none for the village.
-
HUMOROUS MASKS AND SERIOUS POLITICS AMONG THE AFIKPO IGSO 337
\Iany of the society's activities are kept secret
from noninitiates. These forbidden rituals inclUde
initiation ceremonies, title ceremonies of the soci
ely, Ihe production of mysterious noises at night
associated \\ ith my stical spirits, and sacrifices
10 the spirit of the society at its central shrine.
BUl there is also a class of plays, dances, and
musical performances carried out by society
members \\ hich are open to the public; thes~
affairs arc extremely popular and well attended b\
men, \\omen, and children. One of the mor~
important t) pes of play, consisting of a series of
sl-its and dances, is lhe subject of this paper. The
Okumkpa play, \\ hich lasts three to four hours
or so, is performed in the village common and
ttended not only by local villagers but by many
other Afikpo as well.
The Okumkpa Play
he Okumkp'l is presented in the half of the year
follo\\ ing the yam harvest (from about September
to February), when the secret society is active in Plate 22.1 Igbo, Afikpo. A dancer wearing the IIlIe Hgbo (mother of Mgbo) mask. The raffia backing to the
the vilhlges. This half of the year is one in which mask and the method of machment to the face are visible. Mgbom village. Ht. 9" (22.8cm). (Photo~raph:
the highly achievement-oriented Igbo of Afikpo nuthor, 1960.)
(Simon Ottenberg 1958,1971; LeVme 1966) turn
their attention to realigning social relationships.
It is the period when men take important titles by are indi\ idually recognizable by their manner of projcction being markedly increased by bands of
joining special title societies, thus raising their dancing, walking, singing, and in other ways, the raffia which are tied to the back of the mask and
status and sometimes their power and influenee_ fiction is maintained that they are not really hold itin front of the face as seen in Plate 22.1. The
'\od it is the time when the elders ha\ e the oppor humans at all, but a general form of spirit (mma at masks are faces, not half or full heads, or helmets.
tunity to judge cases and disputes, especially in :\fikpo, mmo or II/atl elsewhere in Igbo country). If Some are of animals - a goat, a monkey, a bird.
land matters. It is thus a period of productivity in a wife sees her husband dancing in costume, she is [... ] Some are stylized human faces with addi
social relationships. In the other half of the year not supposed to recognize him, nor to compliment tional designs and projections added to them. In
attention focuses on gaining material wealth and him on his dress or dancing at a later time, though this second group some are male, others female,
subsistence through farming and fishing. Social ties men can do so among themselves, as all are mem and some represent either sex or no gender at all.
become less a focus of concern, the manual labor bers of the secret society. But the crucial act of [... ] One mask often represents a white person. A
of individuals and groups more so. This \\ork placing a mask on the face of a secret-society third group of masks consists of the ugly ones;
period provides wealth in foodstll/Is which become member changes his status from "mortal" to they are distortions of human faces - something
resources for use in the ceremonial season; during "spirit," and thus allows him to behave in certain like the Iroquois False Face Society masks - with
thi!> time ne\\ social tensions arise which are ways with respect both to other players and to bulging checks, crooked noses and mouths, and
attended to in the follO\ving period. The seeret unmasked members of the audience. ears that are out of line; these ugly masks, which
society pia) should be seen in this context. The masks themselves have a characteristic often represent old men, are often dark or black in
As is true in \irtually all of the public perform .-\fikpo style which differs from other Igbo mask contrast to the other masks, which have brighter
ances, ofAfikpo village secret societies, the phiye rs styles. s .vlasks almost invariably have a vertical ori colors, making particular use of white. [... ]
in the Okumkpa wear masks. They arc belie' ~J to entation and are narrower than the human head. Some elements seem common to all the
be spirits rather than people. Though most plaYers Afikpo masks project forward from the face, the Okumkpa masks. Many have a human quality to
338 SIMON OTTENBERG HUMOROUS MASKS AND SERIOUS POLITICS AMONG THE AFIKPO IGBO
do not have a close, personal relationship with a
particular II//Ila spirit.
Normally, Okumkpa consists of a series of skits
and songs presented annually in some of the larger
Afikpo villages, but the content of the plays
ch:lI1ges every year, somewhat as variations on a
recurrent theme, The play is led by two young
men who volunteer for the work and who obtain
the \ illage elders' permission to prepare it. They
<TatheT I heir friends, peers, and relatiVe!> in the vil
~ge ;1nd other \olunteers in the settlement
"eoera)'" it is men in their l\\enties and thirties
~at tak~ part. The players rehearse secretly at
night in the bush for several weeks. Some older
men who enjoy performing may also take part and
\\ill advise the players and judge the quality of the
actS before the public performance. The play is
kept secret from nonsociery members until it is
given. Its nvo organizers lead the actual perform
ance, wearing special masks which indicate their
roles. [... J After the play is presented the songs
may be sung by secret-society members of aoy vil
lage \\ho choose to do so; some popular ones are
Plate 22.2 Igbo, Afikpo. The :tctors are playing OUl a skit. The main bod~' of the performers is in the heard for many years afterwards.
background. :'-1gbom \illage. (Photograph: author, 1960.) In general. the authority relationships among
the Okumpka players are voluntarist ic, coopera
tive, and not tied directly to the authority system
them - even the animal masks - but they are the costume, therehy confusing the sexual identity of these secret society, If young men do not come
almost as un-African as one could make them. of the dancer. forward to organize a play in a given year, none
The noses have a high bridge. The faces lack A real social distance betwcen the players and wiU be presented; the elders do not seem to pres
e\erted lips, and in other wayS do not look like the audience is established through the use of sure strongly for it. The players are not pushed
actual Igbo people, as if tbe Afikpo wished to pro mask and costume in Okumkpa performances. In by the elders to perform in a certain way. nor is
duce a clearly recognizable human face. yet one as our society, \vhen we watch a performance, the their material censored. The young men are
distinct from their own as possible. They appear to players are likely to be personally less well known essentially free from the usual authority of the
be say ing that these faces are, after all, not really' to us and less invoh'ed in direct social relation elders. This is so e\ en though the laner decide
theirs, but those of some other type of being. The ships with us than is the case in Africa. .\lasks in on \\hat day the play is to be given and may insist
masks are, of course, only a part of the totaJ cos Afikpo help to create an iJlusion of distance that members of certain younger age-sets take
tume, though perhaps the most important part, between player and audience - people \\'ho arc part, mainly as dancers, to make the play more
for they make the man into a spirit. otherwise on cJose social terms. impressi\<e.
The same "non-Afikpo" appearance prevails in Each Okumkpa mask has a name, and its \,carer An Okumkpa play may iO\olve O'er a hundred
the costumes. With the exception of khaki shorts, is expected to dance or play, at least at times, in actors, singers, and musicians, all masked and cos
which have been adopted for general usc, the cos character with the quality of the mask. But while tumed, The) sit in the center of the village com
tumes are not in any way like the usual dress of masks are spirits, they arc not particularly power mon facing the section where the village elders sit;
Afikpo men. This is evident ti'om Plate 22.2. ful; they do not gi\'e the wearer the right to try the performers move out from there to act in the
Animal skins worn on the back, porcupine-quill disputes, to judge cases, to wield everyday political skits and to dance between the scenes. [... J Only
hats, and raffia shoulder-hangings and skirts indi power, Thcre arc no specific shrines associated the leaders stand apart. The players wear some ten
C3te that this is the clothing of beings who are nOl with masks. Initiates may 0\\ n, commission. or different types of masks, which constitute the
Afikpo men, Red plastic waist beads, normally rent a mask for a play, or their pan in the pIa) may \Ihole repertory for the Afikpo, with exceptions'
worn by unmarried girls, are often used as part of be assigned by the play leaders. Thus individuals The Ol..umkpa masks blend together the history
339
of Afikpo (Simon Otten berg 1968a, chap. 2).
Some are based on siyles of the nearby Edda and
Okpoha village-groups of Igbo, \\ ith which Afikpo
has common historical ties; some are of Ibibio
origin, an area with which the Afikpo have long
had trading COn1.<lcts, and some appear to be indig
enous to the area, though probably of noo-Ibo
origin, coming from the general Cross River area
of which Afikpo is a part, :\s we have seen, some
represent animals, others male and female human
like spirits, one a white person; some are of older
spirit-persons, some appear as younger beings.
The masked players as a group symbolize a totality
of history, man, and nature at Afikpo. They arc
surrounded on all sides by an audience seated in
the heart of the \'illage - the group common
which also represents the totality of human life in
the community,
The skits and songs are considered humorous
by the Afikpo; they are intended to evoke laughter
and other pleasurable responses from the audi
ence, and they certainl~ do so. None of the Afikpo
masks have movable parts, They very immobilit)
requires the careful and full use of vocal contrasts
to handle sublJeties, and the exaggeration of bod
ily movements in the skits to convey impressions
of persons and indicate emotional states. These
features accentuate the differences between the
masked skits and songs on the one hand and eve
ryday A.fikpo behavior on the other. The masks
become mobile only through the skillful use of the
voice and body movement,
,\Ithough Afikpo do not distinguish sharply
bUWl:"n the types of skits, we can group them into
three basic varieties:
a Th; first tells of single living individuals
who have acted in foolish or greedy \1 ays, Such
persons may be men or women of an) age. There
are tales of men who are henpecked by their
wives, \\ho ask their wives' permission before
doing things whieh are strictly male matters,
such as taking titles. Tales tell of a man \\ho
always drinks loO much at ceremonies and gets
sick and vomits. As in all of these skits and songs
the person is named, and specifiC details con
cerning him are often sung' and acted out. The
skit may tell of a man who performed an impor
tant ceremony, but was too cheap to hire a
340 SIMON OTTENBERG
palm-wine Lapper, and so climbed the tree him
self, fell dow11, and broke his leg. Or of a person
who became so interested in the nearby Catholic
mission thal he forgot how to speak his own
tongue and nO\\ can say only English prayers
"Our Father who art in heaven. Our Father who
art in heaven" - (lVer and over again. Such com
mentaries seem to be reminders of bow individu
als in a wide range of social roles should behave.
They comment on the need to follow proper pro
cedures and etiquette, to act as persons of their
particular sex and age are supposed to.
b i\ second category of skits a.nd songs con
cerns females, often groups of women rather than
indiyjduals. The men may sing that women
should remember that if they wish to have chil
dren they should not sing the secret-society songs
(which they are wont to do in modified form) or
the spirit of the socier) will render them barren.
Or that in the old days when the women went
naJ.ed and fired their pOLS in the open, none
broke; but now they wear clothes and shoes and
their pots are not as good as they used to be and
break in firing. This is because the women do not
keep to custom nowadays.
The secret society is seen strictly as a male
affair. Tn Afikpo the sex polarity in status and
role is sharp: the economic and social activities
of the sexes are clearly separated, and they spend
little time together (phoebe Ottenberg 1958).
Nevertheless, in a culture which emphasizes
individual achievemcnr as this one does, and
which is today under considerable pressure for
social change, the traditional polarity is breaking
down. Men admit that it is no\\ hard to "keep
women in their place" These songs and skits are
attempts to reaffirm role differentiation. Men
sing that women are after all women - they
should not forget their natural functions of bear
ing children, raising them, and cooking, or try to
change their ways. vVomen, for example, are not
supposed to know any of the secrets of the secret
society. If they do, it is thought that they will fail
to bear children unless cleansing rituals are per
formed. Nor for similar reasons are they to touch
the masked dancers. Wives of men who carve
masks are not to know that their husbands, who
do this work in secret, so occupy themselves,
even though the women may grind some of the
dyes used in decorating the masks for their men.
In shon, Afikpo men see these plays, as well as
other aspects of the secret society, as reinforcing
the distinctiveness of males in contrast to
females, and as helping to maintain an authority
structure in which men dominate the govern~
ment and the decision-making in village and
family affairs while females play largely doml:s
tic roles
c A third category of skits and songs im-olyes
criticisms and ridicule of named leaders of the yil
lages. These are generally elders or in some cases
enterprising middle-aged men. The skits and
songs generally invoh-e a number of basic themes.
One is about "palaver" men, those who engage in
an argument or dispute for its own sake and so
gather bribe!; and personal rewards at the expen~e
ofothers, disrupting tlle norma] tendencies toward
cooperation and peace. Anotht:r theme criticizes
the type of village leader who in a dispute sides
with the group that he expects will giw him lhe
most money and food. One skit cites a man \\ho
collected money from Afikpo villages ostensibly to
prosecute a court case between the Afikpo and the
Nigerian government, but who actually used the
money for hinlself. Or players may sing, again gil"
ing names, that certain elders are too shy to speak
in public though they have no physical defects and
can speak well, suggesting that they should come
forward and gi\c thcir views. In short, these brief
dramas say that certain elders are foolish men who
make unwise decisions for their own personal
goals rather than for the whole community. They
are enjoined to listen to what: is being said at the
plays, to help their own people, and to stop caus
ing trouble, disruption, and dissension.
In a consensus society which also emphasizes i11lli
vidual achievement, there is always a tendency for
some elders to try to usurp power, to go too far
beyond the consensus principle. These men usually
act on their own, and for personal gain, while
appearing to represent their groups. Thus the con
sensus system of leadershjp at Afikpo makes for a
sort of contradiction: men should be personally
ambitious, but without disturbing the principle IIf
group control. It is h'lrd to regulate some elders
and make them :lct as elders should. The contradic
tion at Afikpo is expressed both in the fear and in
HUMOROUS MASKS AND SERIOUS POLITICS AMONG THE AFIKPO IGBO
the admiration found there for the "big palaver
man." For this re.l.son too, elders themselves (who
attend the plays in large numbers and enjoy many
"spects of them) often think the dauces, skits, and
songs extremely furrny - especially if they are about
other elders, and more especially other ciders whom
they themselves tlunk have acted inappropriately.
The plays may also serve to articulate to some ciders
points that other elders find uifficult to express
directly themsclves amongst their peers. The skits
and songs therefore act as a sort of authority equal
izer, just as wealth-disu-iburion ceremonies, so
characteristic of Afikpo, act to prevent any indi\id
llal person hom obtaining economic dominance.
From the point of view of the elders, therefore, the
plavs have ultimately desirable goals. In another
skit the leaders argue endlessly and foolishly in a
divorce case. This is cleverIv acted out, with side
comments by the play-leaders about how some meu
loye to talk. One skit concerns some Afikpo leaders
who convened to Islam allegedly for personal gains.
r... JThe skit goes on to say that they were foolish to
change religions for personal gain, and in the long
run they lost money - that tlley are greedy men.
Another point brought our by Okumkpa actors
and singers is that when elders engage in foolish
conflicts, they are liable to be killed by poison, sor
cery, or other mystical means. The plays empha
size a point strongly believed in at Afikpo, namely,
that disputes and conflicts by their nature kill per
sons, and that attempts should therefore be made
to avoid them. Such uisagreements kill good lead
ers as well as "palaver men" who stir up a dispute
for personal reasons_ One song, for example, tells
of an argument between villages over ownership of
a palm grove. The singers call upon certain named
elders to give up the dispute because the grove
belongs to a certain village. They sing of other
prominent elders in Afikpo who died during the
dispute; their deaths must be attributed to the
conflict itself This is, in fact, an old quarrel whjch
has been going on for many YC'Jrs and which has
cost the Afikpo a great deal of rime and monev
without any settlement being reached. The players
voice the anxiety of the public, that the elders
should make peace with one another and not divert
their strength into useless conflicts.
The kinds of comments these masked figurcs
~ollng and middlt-aged men - make concerning
341
their leaders would be, AItkpo admit, impossible
to utter, unmasked, in public. The political StrllC
ture of the village is such that no young or middle
aged man would normally dare to make such
statements at village councils.lfhe did so he would
be quickly shouted down :md probably fined by
the elders. In fact, deferential behavior is invaria
bly exhibited toward persons senior in age to one
self as defined by the age-set sysLem. Younger
brothers are expected to obey their older ones and
not to try to outdo them in taking titles or in other
political or commercial enterprises. Sons likewise
mav not speak up against their falhers at public
meetings, nor may the) take more titles than their
fathers have raken while the latter .Ire alive.
The comments about the leaders made by the
Okumkpa masked dancers are therefore of an unu
sual nature and are so recognized b)' the Afikpo.
This is proved by the wide interest taken in them
on the part of the audience, an interest shared by
the elders and oilier leaders present. Names of
offenders are freely given, and specific situations
which have occurred, or are belin'ed to have taJ.en
place, are actecl out and sung about. If the nanled
persons arc in the audience, they are not allowed
to become angry, for to show annoyance or disgust
is considered very bad form_ They are, in fact,
e~-pected to give the actors or singers pennies or
shillings to show their apprmal of an act well done.
In practice, however, criticized leaders react in a
variety of ways. Some are so happy to ha\e their
names mentioned, even if in a derogatory manner,
that they arc not actually angered. They may be
pleased at this recognition that they have special
power or influence. Others arc very upset and may
privately try to lake revenge on the plal'-producers
at some future time through land-case litigation or
otller devices; but this is considered very bad
form. Thus the pattern is generally maintained
that the Okumkpa plays are very funny affairs and
not to be taken too seriously. It is appropriate that
the masked and costumed characters are light
hearted, amusing, and somctimes ridiculous.
To become overly serious is to spoil the game - to
invite factionalism. Even a mask caner was
referred to as "th:at funn)' man who makes masks,"
as one who does not have a serious or major occu
pation, compared, say, LO iron-smithing or PalO1
wine tapping. It is obvious, on the other hand, that
342 SIMON OTTENBERG
carvers' services are indispensable, for masks are
of vital importance to any acti\-ilies of the secret
society Bura k.ind of make-believe about the plays
establishes them as effective devices for airing ten
sions in the village and for getting comments
across that are otherwise difficult to articulate.
Because people do recogni~e that the caner plays
a serious and important role with high status, the
content of the plays is more than make-believe or
play-acting. Jn fact, I would argue that the play
does ha\'e serious Lmderlying intent.
For the young men do have honest grievances
against the elders. Their comments are often seri
ous, and they have no other effective ways of getting
their complaints heeded short of refusing outright
to cooperate with the elders, something which they
rarely do. What in effect happens is that while elders
normally make moral and judicial judgments on the
beha\ior of the young men, in the plays the situa
tion is reversecL Here the youths say to the elders:
"Look, in such and such a situation you and you
and you acted poorly and unethically." The charac
ters who act out the misbehavior of the ciders often
usc the dark ugly masks, with gestures and voices
that arc exaggerated and grotesque. They make fun
of a leader who has a limp or speaks in a certain
manner as part of their castigation of him. It is as if
the\' are say'ing that the elders being portrayed are
ugly, deviating', and foolish. The point is made indi
rectly at other times in Okumkpa, for all of the skits
are about foolish people; generally, one skit is about
the most foolish man in the village, and another
about the most foolish woman. The latter skit usu
ally invohcs a young dancer who wears the "queen"
mask, opa IIwa (carrier-child) [... ].
The spiritual forces of the Afikpo community
arc normally under the guidance of senior men
who control and direct sacrifices and odler reli
gious rituals, iu which young men play only sup
portive roles, supplving materials to be used in
sacrifice and food for the feasts that accompany
some religious activities. Hut in tlle Okumpka plays
the yO\mger men, as masked spirit dancers (mma),
are the spirits and control and direct affairs. The
elders, as ordinary members of the audience, sit
passively, having only the secular role of reacting to
the players. This is another aspect of the re\ersal of
the leadership roles of elders and younger men that
occurs through the masked plays.
Functional Analysis
A tentative functional analysis of these plays may be
in order. Functional theory is not by any means \\ell
established ro day, and between the earlier thin1.ing
of Emile Durkheim (1926), Alfred R. RadcliflC_
Brown (1935), and Bronislav. Malinowski (1939,
1944) and the present day, it has been severely crit
icized (for example, Cancian 1960; Dore 1961;
Erasmus 1967; Gregg and Williams 1948; Hempel
1959; Homans 196+; van den Berghe 1963) or
developed in modified forms (Parsons 1951; Len
1952; Merton 1949; Spiro 1952, 1961). .\luch
anthropological writing on Africa has used func
tional analysis implicitly, and \\ ithout making \\ hat
was involved cle-ar. I will try a somewhat more
explicit formLllation here,
First, the Okumkpa plays stress normal and
expected behavior by ridjculing deviancy; a wide
range of deviant acts may be dramatized. The
emphasis is on maintaining traditional roles, tra
ditional forms of sex polarity, and traditional lead
ership. When the players are asked why they
perform such skits and songs, they ans"er in spe
cific terms. The manifest function of them,
intended and recognized, is to make fun of ami to
ridicule that which the Afikpo consider to be the
foolish acts of specific individuals and sometimes
of specific groups. It is the anthropologist who
generalizes Lhe totality of actions as functioning in
a latent manner to attempt to reduce deviancy, to
uphold traditional custom, and to attack abnor
mality. Curiously, the young men arc those who in
Afikpo press for change the most, yet simultane
ously they also are Lhe ones who emphasize tradi
tion in their play s. Why is this so? The leaders and
style-setters of the plays seem quite traditionalis
tic compared with some other young men; those
who arc considered most "progressi \T n do not secm
to play leading roles, although the) often take
part. Again, the young men as a whole - whether
conservative or innovative - do not wish the elders
to make the judgments aboLlt new conditions, for
dle) do not feel that the elders understand them.
N(lr do the youths wish women to determine for
themselves what changes to implement. \len
today sec changes in women's behavior as a threat
to themseiYes. The Afikpo recognize that \vonlcn
are more independent and self-sufficient than they
HUMOROUS MASKS AND SERIOUS POLITICS AMONG THE AFIKPO IGBO
were formerly when they had to go to the farms
under the protection of men and when they rarely
nllvcled to distant markets or traded extensively in
their own area. Afikpo women have a saying today:
"When a woman has money, what is a man!" Thus,
the young men see certain aspects of social change
as desirable, but others as a threat to their position;
in some ways they are conservative, in others Lhey
wj~h to play the controlling role in change.
l\ second major recognized and intended aim of
some of the Afikpo skits and songs is to maintain
sex polarity', the dominance of men over women
and rhe restricted social and economic role of
women in the face of changing conditions. J Jere the
function of the play is seen in general terms, as
man~ activities of lhe secret society arc viewed, as a
way of keeping women in their traditional roles.
The means of coercion is the threat of barrenness
in a society in \\ hich children are highly valued and
where a person's status and prestige, male or female,
is parlly dependent on whether or not he or she has
children, especially sons. The onus for failure to
have children is placed on the women in Afikpo
society, as can be seen in these plays and elsewhere
and is associated with the angering of supernatural
Spil;ts through some form of female misbehavior.
'tet there also seems to be a latent function
involved at the psychological level which the Afikpo
do not verbalize. The fact is that men are extremely
anxious about their failure to produce offspring
e\en though the women are generally blamed for
this, at least at first. A man mus1 have at least a son
to have status and to perform certain ceremonies
and titles. Many children bring him considerable
prestige and publicly s)mbolize his sexuality. The
plays and skits, like other aspects of Afi1.-po life,
operate to project strong, though rarely expressed,
maleamieties about childlessness upon the women,
particularly upon "misbehaving" females who are
identified by a male definition. Women who have
passed menopause sometimes flaunt the secrecy of
the society. They may say: "T am an old woman now,
whal can the secret-society spirit do to me. I wiJ!
die anyway!" The extent to which men are some
what annoyed and bothered by such acts may be
contrasted with their real displeasure if women of
childbearing age do the same. This greater annoy
ance suggests that male anxiety oyer childlessness
is a serious problem in Afikpo society.
343
A third major function ofOkumkpa plnys cent
ers around the usc of the theatrical situation to air
anxieties and aggressive feelings that the young
men hold concerning the elders. Here again the
AfLkpo see as a manifest function the fact that the
plays and songs ridicule the elders who do not
behave as elders should, who are greedy, foolish,
bribe-takers, and so on. This is quite ob\-iou~, but
we ha\'e to go further to sec some latent functions
as well. I take it that egalitarian geronrocracy in
Afikpo ineviDlbly leads to younger men develop
ing some resen1Jnents and hostilities toward elders.
In one sense the system of political authority in
these villages is a projection of the famil) situa
tion. The psychological features in man which
make the young rebel against their fathers in the
home context also operate by extension at the vil
lage level. Criticisms of the elders' aclions in the
village are a very limited and ritualized working
our of youths' fedings against the authority of
their fathers at home. Plays provide a way of han
!ling aggressive feelings without changing the
form of \illage social organization. The young
men apparently do not really want radically to
alter this form of governmenr, and are in fact com
mitted to it. They see long-term rewards in the
status quo, even though they are restless with it.
The question why such aggn:ssive tendencies,
such criticisms, cannot be brought our openly at
public meetings in the village, except in a highJy
circlHnspect manner, is crucial to the analysis here.
I suggest that such tactics would be highly disrup
tive. The few attempted cases that J ha\e seen were
put down with short shrift by the elders, whom the
youths both respect and fe:tr, and whose place they
desire some da\ to take rJlemselves_ I do not think
we could postulate that village unity or AfLkpo
socien- \vould disintegrate or disappear if direct
public aggression by clearly identified youths took
place, although changes would occur. The theme
of "social collapse unless aggression" are strongly
displaced" is an old one in functional analysis, but
is also moot. The fact seems to be that the young
men, on the whole, are commined to the system to
which they themselves sometimes object (Simon
Ottenberg 1955), and they are not interested in
radically altering it. Further, they are well aware
that the elders hold the ultimate sources of power
the control and regulation of supernatural forces.

3H SIMON OTTEN BERG
Those "progressive" individuals who arc not
happ~ in this systcm of authority generaII) live
outside the \ iIlages or elscwhere in Nigeria and
rake only a limited part in village matters.
The criticisms of the Afikpo cIders also serve
other latent functions, which are occasionally rec
ognized in specific cases. Onc purpose is to reduce
individualism among the eldcrs and thus to main
tain egalitarianism by criticizing those who dra'l
too much power to themselves. Some ciders sup
port this vie" as well, for the ideal of consensus as
a basis for decision-making and the fear of village
domination by single individuals are both strong
sentimenLS. [n thi!> sense the sklts and songs
concerned with the elders are a functional equiva
lent of the witchcraft accusations among the Tiv,
'I hich are directed roward powerful individuals
(Bohannan 1951\). Both are attempts to reduce and
contain such power. Conflict among the ciders
seems to stir anxiety among many persons in the
Afikpo \illag'c:, and attempts through the plays to
reduce factionalism and get the ciders to pose as a
cooperari\'e group rna) rcducc such feelings.
f\ further function, again one that is mainly
latent and that need!> little commenr, is that the
Okumkpa pia) s secm to help develop or maintain
a scnse of pride and accomplishment in the village
as a unit, to maintain a sense of the whole, of per
sons acting and work.ing togethcr regardless of
individual kin,hip and residential ties. Many other
Afikpo come and see these plays and persons
remark on which villages have produced good
plays in a given year and which have not.
Intervillage ri\'alry, which also linds expression in
wrestling and whipping contests and in other
secret-society plays and dances, is enhanced and
maintaincd by this panicular form of play. The
theater hccomes a s)1nbolic and public statement
of the slale of village organization.
The use of mask!> and costumes as "screens"
helps to facilitate the outlet of anxieties and aggres
sive feelings without fc:ar either of counterattack or
any reorganization of the authority structure. I taJce
it thar here, as in the case of mother-in-law jokcs in
our own society, the humor expressed is related to
some anxiety and tension. I do not mean to imply,
however, that there is a natural tendency for a soci
et} 10 maintain itself or for equilibrium situations
automatically to assert themselvcs in a society
lhrough such plays. Following Homans (1964), I
suggest that indi"iduals in the villagc are not anx_
ious, in terms of their goals, to change its organiza_
tion df:lsticaU) at this point in time; they are
interestcd in it as it is, and lheir orientation talla
it is what maintains it, radler than therc bcing anv
natural tendency toward equilibrium or stability. .
The plays also can be looked at as dysfunctional
though I think to a relatively ,mall dcgree. The\:
rna) lead to anger on the pan of e1dcrs and other~
who havc been ridiculetl and criticized. Such anger
is ohen directed toward the leaders of the play, Ilith
consequent gestures of noncooperation toward the
mcn involved (for example, pressuring to oust th\'m
from land they are using On loan). Thus evcry play
seems to kaye some residue of ill-will in the ,-iJlage,
lhough this does not seriously 3frtct the operation
of the villagc organization and usually OCCurs
between indi\ iduals rather than groups.
It is also worth noting that the rather free
noating authority Structure of the players' group
within thc larger authorit} system of the secret
society and the village i!> no accident. This auton
omy gives players [he freedom to act as they would
llot be able to if they were directly undcr the author
ity of the \'illage elders, the priests' group, or the
titled group of the secret societ" Such functional
autonomy (Gouldner 1959) is neccssary for the
effective preparation and performance of the plays.
1n order to be prepared and performcd a pIal" and
itS creators must be in a certain structural arrange
ment vis-ii-vis sociel} at large, herc onc of relative
freedom to create, independenr from the elders.
Three queries concerning rhis sort of analysis
may no\\ be considered. The first question is: what
sort of things are 1/01 acted or sung about in these
plays? I sec two major omissions: matters having
to do with the secret-society's priests (and other
rcligiou!> officials at Afikpo) and sexual rcferences.
Plays rna) criticize the priests of Afikpo's spirit
shrines and diviners, but only indircctly - for
example, by reminding priests in general thJt
other priests who have failed to perform their
work cffectilely in the past ha\'c died bcfore their
time. Bcyond this, there seems to be no attack on
religious leaders, probably because of thcir direct
association with very powerful spirits_ As 11111/1/
spirits, the maskcd aelOrs are free to criticize ciders
in their role as secular leaders, but not as religious
~
HUMOROUS MASKS AND SERIOUS POLITICS AMONG THE AFIKPO IGSO
heads. This fits well with the Afikpo view. Spirits
arc guardians of moralit}, but as a rulc tlley are not
believed to be critical or hostile to other spirits.
With regard to sexual matters, it is interesting to
note I hat apart from an occasional referel 1 ce, such
mattcrs are generally not treated in Okumkpa plays,
though there is pJenry of tleviation from sexual
norms at Afikpo which could be used as material.
Rather, certain unmasked public song and dance
festivals are held annuall) "hich do treat the actions
and Olisbehn\10r of indi\'iduals, again giving names
and details. The singers are )oung people - male
and female - of certain ages. We have to ask why
thesc performances can be given opcnl) and not
through thc use of masked plays, and wh) women
can take an active pmt in them. The answer is in a
scnse a test of the fitness of the anal~'sis presented
above. At this moment I cannot prOI-idc a fully satis
factory c).planation, but I suggest that a primary
factor is that sexual deviancy from the norm is not
taken ,cry seriously in Afikpo unless it inl-ohes a
fe\\ special forms, such as sexual relationships
bct"een members of the same matrilineal clan. In
fact, virtually everyone in Afikpo is in"ohed in non
nonnative sexual acts, assuming it is cI'en possible
to determine accurately what normative sexlUIlity is
for this area. Further, m,my of these cases involve
persons in differenl \illages - which cascs are there
fore not purely internal mallers - and also matrilin
eal groupings which do not have a rcsidenrial base;
thus the frictions that ,uise over these affairs often
cut alTOSS villages, rather than merely affecting
intravillage relationships. Hence the authorit~
structure of the village is generally not involved,
even if thc violators of sexual norms are elders.
.'\. second problem arises out of the faa that we are
basing at least part of t his anal) sis on hypotheses
concerning individual anxieties and aggressive feel
ings.l hav'c imputed these to the young men in terms
of a general theor) of father-son ties and some
knO\l11 facts about young men and elders at Afikpo
and in other societies. But [ reaUy lack proof for
'\1ikpo. We might learn more by using psychologi
call~ sensitive data, or, if a village in Alikpo could be
found which did not carry out such plays, or did so
I'er} rarely, arl examination of its authority structure
and sex polarity and a careful search for functional
equi'alents of the masked plays might bc matle. A
few sm,lll villages inAfikpo do not produce Okumkpa
345
plays, but at the time they were investigated, I did
not have this question in mind.
A third problem is that of evaluating what the
plays really do to people, other than amusing and
pleasing them. How are persons actually affected
by them, what really is their impact on the
audience - on a short-term or long-range basis? As
'Ie have scen, songs from the plays may be sung by
many persons for months, even ycars, after the
original performance, ,md both songs and skits are
discussed in the village and elsewhere filr a long
time aftcrwards; their inOuence clearly extends
beyond the day they are fIrst presented, and beyond
a second neighboring I iUage where the play is
sometimes given again a few days after its original
performance. I have mentioned the attempt in
Okumkpa plays to maintain sex polarity and egali
tarian leadership. I would add that the plays seem
to be primarily tension-reducing devices; they
point up moral and ethic-al standards, the) attempt
to reduce individualism in leadership, they help to
give a village a sense of identity and unity as against
other villages, and sCI on. But it scems that in the
analysis I ha\e presented, and in others of like
kind, we have yet to de\'elop techniques for accu
ratel) gauging ho\\ effective the plays actually are
in accomplishing these tasks. We do not, at present,
ha"e sensitive field tools to achieve this purpose.
Furthermore, traditional field work techniques are
inadequate in this context, so that ne" and more
accurate tools of a differcnt order "ill hal'e to be
de\'ised. Functional analysis of the sort presented
here is at a vcr) simple and crude bel operation
ally. It can indicate manifest intentions and latent
functions, but it has fe" techniques for measuring
acrual consequences.
In any case, while the Afikpo plays themselves
are humorous, popular, wcll attended, and "ery
much enjoyed, much of the subject matter clearly
is serious and directly tied to quesrions of author
ity and control in the village. The secrecy of the
dancers, aehic"ed through the use of masks and
costume as concealing forms, i<; a method of
publicly revealing what persons gossip about pri
vately, or simply do not J.now. The masked play
ers, rhrough a ritual role reversal of leadership,
become devices through \Ihich the secrets of the
"other world" are revealed and cxplained. Thus
masked secree) is a mechanism to undo secrets.
346 SIMON OTTENSERG HUMOROUS MASKS AND SERIOUS POLITICS AMONG THE AFIKPO IGSO
----------------------------------------
Notes
See Phoebe Onenberg 1958, 1965; Simon Otlellberg
1955, 1965, IlJ68a, 1968b, 1968c, 1970, 1971; Simon
and Phoebe Ottenberg 1962.
2 In some Afikpo vitlages there are no formal positions
of priest and assistant priest, but there is nevcrthc
less a similar type of ritual group.
3 For other Afikpo masks and rdated local styles, see
llra\'mann 1970, pp. 65-67; Starkweather 1968, nos.
1-66; Jones 1939.
Rt:ferences
Bateson, Gregory
1936 Navell. Cambridge, England.
Bohannan, Paul
1958 "Extra-Proccssual Events in Til' Political
Institutions." /Imffic(lIIAmhropologw 60, no. 1: 1-12.
Braymann, Rene A.
1970 West A.frirall SClilpture. Index ofArt in the Pacific
Northwest, 110. 1. Seattle.
Cancian, Francesca
1960 "Functional .'\naJysis of Change." .J.mericall
Sociological Review 25, no. 6: 818-827.
Dore, Ronald P.
1961 "Function and Cause." /Imenwll SocioloKica/
Rmem 26, no. 6: 843-853.
Durkheim, Emile
1926 Th~ Elem(//tilry FOri/IS 0/ the Religious Life. 2d
rc\. ed. "lew York. Translation of Us formes elemfll
tllires de la 1'ic religiw.Ie. Paris, 1912.
Erasmus, Charles J.
1967 "Obviating the Functions of Functionalism."
Social Forces 45, no. 3: 319-328.
GOllldner, Alvin W.
1959 'Reciprocity and Autonomy in functional
Theory." In Symposium all Sociological Theo,)', edited
by r.. Gross, pp. 241-270. New York.
Gregg, Dorothy, and Williams, Elgin
1948 "The Dismal Science of Functionalism."
me-rica II Anthropologist 50, no. 4: 594-611.
Hempel, Carl G.
1959 "The Logic of Functional Analysis." In
Symposium 011 Sociological Theor)', edited by L. Gross,
pp. 271-307. ~ew York.
Homans, George C.
1964 "Bringing Man Back In." Americall Sociological
Rn'im' 29, no. 6: 809-818.
Jones, G. 1.
1939 "On the Identity ofTwo Masks From S. E. Nigeria
in the British Museum." iI'loll 39, art. 35: 33-34.
LeVine, Robert A.
1966 /Ichievef/1/'111 Motivation ill Nigeria. Cbicago.
347
1\171 Leadership lint! Ili/horit)' in all Africa Society: Spiro, Me1ford
711e _.J.fi~po village-Grollp. American Ethnological 1952 "Ghost~, Ifaluk and Teleological Funct
4 These exceptions include a special calabash mask Societ), \1onograph 52. Seattle. ionalism." American .11/lhropo/ngist 54, no. 4: 497
worn during the initiation of a man's eldest son into Ottenberg, Simon and Phoebe 503.
the secret society, certain cloth masls, and masks 1962 "Atikpo Markets: 1900-1960." In jTarkets ill 1961 "Social Systems, Personality and Functional
that noninitiate boys make and use in play in the ;/jriC<J, edited b~ Paul Bohannan and George Dahon, Analysis," In Studyillg Persol/ality Cross-Cllltuwlly,
I'ilhlge. pp. 117-168. Evanston, 111. edited by Bert Kaplan, pp. 93-127. Evanston, Ill.
ParSons, -lalcott Starkweather, Frank
1951 The Sncilll .))'.'telll, Glencoe, 111. 1968 fgbo Art: 1966. Museum of \rt, Uni\crsity of
Raddifle-Brown, Alfred R. Michigan. Ann Arbor.
1935 "On the Concept of Function in Social Science" van den Berghe, Pierre L.
.~l1Ien({1I/ Anthropologist 37, no. 3: 39+-402. 1963 "Dialectic and Functionalism" ,ll1lcriCtlI1
Wi/" The ,Vuwral Science of Socj,ZI'. Glencoe, Ill. Sociological Rt'liien' 28, no. 5: 695-704.
Lc~"y, .\1arion]., JR.
1952 The Structure 0/ Society. Princeton.
Malino" ski, Bronislaw
1939 "The Group and the Individual in Functional.\na_
lysis." Ament"lll/ Jouml/I 0/ SocivlolDl+1-, no. 6: lJ38--96+.
MaJinowsli, Bronislaw
1944 A Scientific Tluory v/Ciliture and Other Essuys.
Chapel Hill.
i\lcrton, Robert K.
1949 "i\lanifest and Latent Functions." In Social
Theory and Social Structure, edited by R. Merton, pp.
21 81. Glencoe, Ill.
Ottenberg, Phoebe
1958 "The Changing Economic Position of Women
'\mong the Afikpo Ibo." Ln Comilluir)' Gild Challge ill
1jrit"on Cilitures, cdited by William R. Bascom and
Melville]. Hcrskovits, pp. 205-223. Chicago.
1965 "The Afikpo Ibo of Eastern Nigeria." In Peoples
0/ Africa, edited by James L. Gibbs, Jr., pp. 1-39.
~ewYork.
Ollenberg, Simon
1955 "Improvement Associations Among the Afikpo
Ibo." A.{rica 25, no. I: 1-28.
1958 "Ibo Reccpti~l') to Change." In COlltinuir), lind
'harlge ill African Cultures, edited by Willianl R. Bascom
and Melville.J. Herskovits, pp. 130-143. Chicago.
1965 "Inheritance and Succession in Afikpo."
I n Studies ill the Lams 0/ Successioll ill Nigeria, cdited
by]. Duncan i\1.. Derrett, pp. 33-90. London.
1968a Double Descent ill all A/rimn SociNy: The -1#pll
village-Croup. American Ethnological Society, \lono
graph 47. Seanle.
1968b "Statement and Reality: The Renewal of an
Igbo Protective Shrine." hrtemutiG/1n1 Archi;;es of
Ethnography 51: 143-162.
1968c "The Development of Credit Associations in
the Changing Economy of an African 50ciet\." .,1{ricd
38, no. 3: 237-252.
1970 "Personal Shrines at Afikpo." Etlmology 9, no. I:
26-51.

23
Art, Identity, Boundaries
F'Dstmodernisill and Contemporary
African Art
Olu Oguibe
In his rather interesting coltecrion of inten'iews
and plates, the posTmodernist critie Thomas
MeE.illcy' asks Ouattara 1 'When and where were
)OU horn", to which the temperamental .Jrtist
J'tbponds "ith barely suppressed irritation. To
many, this woultl seem an innocent and ordinary
enough question, especiallY when the obvious
intent is to present to us a, supposed I); relatively
unknown artist. Asks the critic next: 'In 1957, was
Abitljan a big urban ccnrre, like today?' To which,
again, Ouattara duly provides the expected answer.
On lhe first page of the interview, there is a picture
of the artist, his face is aligned against the text, his
brooding countenance attesting most eloquently
and \ isibJy to his impatience with the critic's line of
enquir). One can almost sense a building tension
within the artist. Readjng closely, however, one also
notices that McEvilley, to the cOIllTary, is quite
relaxed. For him, the chat is going well, and he is
comfortable. And when He is comfortable, e\"ery
one else is comfortable. As he maps the artist with
his e)e5, his mind rctrie\es from its cabinet of tour
ist postcards an image of an African mammy-wagoll
with a Line of popular \\ isdom inscribed on its outer
From Olu Oguibc, "lin, Identit}, Boundaries: Pos"tmodcrnism and Contemporary African An," in R~odillli the
Contemporary: A/ricoll ,-I,I from 1'lJeolY 10 II/( illurh'lpltJu, cd. Olu Oguibc and Ok" ui Enwczor, pp. 17-19,20-1,
23-5,27-8, Insritutc of International Visual Arts (INIVA), London 1999 Olu Oguibe and lNI\'A.
""I"'"
understands LOO welJ how, beyond the boundaries
that which in the past testified to the processes of
obliteration and through this testimonial actively
board: No flurry ill Lift. It is the way of these
people, he reminds himself: generous, charitahle,
accommodating. The) take life easy. And so his
mind drafts l>ack to Ouattara's studio, hardly taking
notice of his quarr) as The artist shifts uneasily on
his st.ool, muttering under his hreath. Quite pre
dict.abl), the \Ihite boy fails to rend t.he sign on the
native's face. For him the gestures of t.he native are
an imisible sign.
The critic runs his pen across his bushy face,
and, as if speaking to a chiJd on his first day at
school asks: '\-\-ouid you t.ell me a little about your
family" There! Ouattara explodes. Bur only \\~ithin.
Likc a gentleman. The ultimate signifying monkey.
He understands - he is brought up to lmderstand,
ever) thing in his history and in his experience pre
pares him to understand and to accept - that in
dealing with the power that McEvilley represents,
he is engaged in an ill-matched game of survid; a
game that he must play carefully if he is to avoid
profound consequences; a g'.lme he must negotiate
\I ith patience to prevent his own erasure, his own
annihilation; a game that he must ultimat.eh con
cede in order to li\e. Living in ~ew York. Ouattara
ART, IDENTITY, BOUNDARIES
of coloni;lI ethnographic displacemenr, the inrro
duction of digitisation in our time has sanitised
crawre and transformed it into a mcssless act. He
understands how the mark of deletion, the ugl)
sites of cancellation and defacemelll., the crossing
out, the scarred page, the marginal inscription
not speech. The~ occupy the site of the guttural,
sub\ erted it - arc now t.hing'> of the past; and the
object of the obliterative act nO\. disappear
together with t.he evidence of its 0\' n excision,
making erasure an act wit.hout trace. This knowl
edge further underlines the ominoJlsness of his
loc:ltion. Ouatl'a ra understands hml much he needs
~'lcE\illey, how much he stands to gain by making
Friends with him. He recognises, albeit painfully,
that the terrain he occupies, the terrain to which he
is perpetually consigned, in which he is confined,
is one under surveillance, where every utterance,
eyer) gesture, carries with it implications of enor
muu, \Ieight for himself as an African artist, and
for his practice. And even more importantly, he
recognises t.his terrain as an outpost, a location on
the peripheries of the principalities that the critic
represents - a border post at which McEvil1e) is
thl: contTol official. This is the locality of tlle
African artist dealing with the West, irrespective of
],(1" domicile. This 1 call the terrain of difficult).
And so, holding his breath firmly do\\ n, gritting
his teeth and silently but vigorously crossing out
the dozen f-words bombing his brain while warn
ing himself to ta\..e it all with calm, Ouattara stakes
his final blll ultimately futile claim, 'I prefer to ral\..
about my work'.
Well. Not quite. The artist's polite caution does
not \\ash with the critic. Defu) and firmly
\ IcEvilley waves Ouattara's protest aside and pro
ceeds with his line of quest.ioning. I Ie feels in
command; he must be seen to be in command. 'If
he hollers let him go', reads an old, American
plantation saying. But no. McEvilley is not fazed
b) the native's protest.s. This time, the mastel' will
ha\e his way. Describing the women of Buxian in
04/111111 Chit/csc Home/I, Julia Kriste\a images the
nati\e as a silent presellce.' In reading Ouanara's
oment with J\IcEville); we are reminded of a dif
ferelll silent presence, closer perhaps to the oblit
erated presence t.hat Chinu3 Achebe identifies in
349
Joseph Conrad's Hearl of Darkness, the native
whose silence is an objectif) ing projection - \\ hat
we may refer to as s;gllijicllnl silence. For though
this silence is not literal, it is nevertheless made
real since, be)ond the preferred narrati\'e - that
specified rhetoric I hat reiterates palatable con
structs of Otherness - the native's utrerances are
the peripheries of <;ense, the space of t.he uruntel
ligible \\ here \.ords arc caught in a savage struggle
and sounds tum into noise, into the surreal
mirror-image of language. In this void of incoher
ence, utterance becomes silence because it is
denied the privilege of audience. And without
audience, there is no speech.
Sprawled out1i\..e Barlhes in Tangier, or prowl
ing through a market in Abidjan, the esoteric gou
lash of native utterance is of course the ultimate
10C<lle of Occidental desire, the last place in which
to hunt for exotic pleasures. But this is not a
pleasure trip. \lcEvi1Le)' has a book in mind and
must ha\e his stor). Under the circumstances,
native aspirations to desire and t.he dialogic ('I
refer ... '), native pretensions to power and
sophistication ('to discuss 11l) work .. .'), are
quickly displaced in a hegemonic withdrawal of
,mdience that re-establishes the hierarchicalloca
tion of the Selfovcr fhe Olha, of the white critical
and artistic establishment over the African artist.
On this stage of simulacra1 dialogue there is only
one \"Dice that counts. The Other can exist only as
a projection, an echo, as the displaced sound of
percussi Vt: fracture.
.-'\nd so '\;IcEvilley drives his conversation with
Ouattara tOwards the re-alisation of his preferred
narrative, with questions not intended to reveal
the anist as subjecl, but rather to display him as
object, an object of exolicist fascination. 'How big
was your family? What school did you go to? What
langllage was spoken in your home? What religion
did )'our family practice? Did it. involve animal
sacrifice?' In the end, his mission fulfilled,
i\IcEvilte) finall) announces to Ouattara: 'T don't.
ha\e any more questions, do you ha\"e anything
more to say?'
For Ouattara, though, the game is alre-ady over.
It was 0\ er before it e\ en began It was over from
the moment he \I as born, from the moment he was
destined to be - designated as - an Other. In

350 OLU OGUIBE
ans\\er, he fumbles within for something deep and
philosophiClI to say. something original, some
thing in his and not the master's voice, some des
perate utterance in the narrow passage of sanction
accorded him, something that represents his,
rather than the preferred version, the master nar
ratiYc. He struggles to speechify, to repossess his
body and reinvest it with htunanity, with language,
\\ ith 'lrticulation. I Ie struggles at the borders of
subjecrhood.
Aligncd to the text at this stage is another pic
tun: of the artist, as if in conclusion. But this time,
the strength of determination, even defiance,
which we glean from the portrait at rhe beginning
of the text, is gone. Ouattara's countelh1nce no
longer projects a brooding tension; it no longer
projects; that is, it no longer aspires. His disposi
tion no longer indicates a willingness to dare, to
utter with Frantz Fanon: 'Get used to me; I am not
getting used ro unyone'.~ Instead, he stares into
space, his face sunken and forlorn, his anger
turned to despair, his attempts at the contested
territory of the voice thwarted b) l\lcEvilley's
hegemonic de' ices. Failed is his effort to displace
the critic's gaze onto his work, to specify the latter
as tIle rightful focus of contemplation, and in so
doing, to claim author-it}. Clear!} against his \1;11,
Outtara finds himself repositioned in the frame as
the object. And though he is coerced to sketch the
conrours of this object, to narrate himself and to
trace the ethnography of his body, he is made to do
so within confines defined by another. He is forced
to strip for McE\illey's pleasure.
[... J
In vetoing Ouarrara's right to self-articulation,
in placing a sanction against his preferred site of
discourse, .\1cEyilley effects a paradigmatic reit
eration of ventriloquy as a structure of reference
for Westem attitudes towards :\frican anists. This
frame has its origins in colonial ethnography and
the colonial desire for the faceless native, the ano
nym. The faceless nati,e, displaced from indi,-idu
ality and coalesced into a tribe, a pack, demands
and justifies representation because she stands for
lack. In the event, authority is appropriated and
tramfcrred from her, and it is this authority that is
subsequently exercised in constructing her for
Occidental consumption. The defacement of the
native consigns her to the category of the unknown.
Displaced to the befuddled comers of obscurit\,
and rudimentary episteme, the native is mad~
u\'ailable for discovery, and this discovery trans_
forms the disco\'erer into an lllIllJUn'ly, their sup_
posed privileged knowledgc often translating into
the right to represent.
Even more specificaJl), the imposition of ano
nymit) on the nati\'c, of course, deletes her claims
to subjectivity and ,,,"orks to displace her from 1I0r
mati\-ity. Kot onl) does this cOJ1\'eniently under_
line her Otherness, her strangeness, her subaltemin'
anonymity equally magnifies the invented exoti~
cism of her material culture, which in turn becomes
a sign of her constructed exoticism. For some
time, in order to emphasise the Otherness of non
Occidental cultures, ethnogmphy applied a differ
ent rule of attribution to art from such cultures,
effectively denying the identities of artists even
where these were known. The figure of the indi
vidual genius, dlat element \1 hich more than any
other defines enlightenment and modernity, was
reserved for Europe while the rest of humanity
was identified with the collective, anonymous pro-
duction pattern that inscribes primiti,-ism. Until
recemly. works of classical African art were duti
fully attributed to the 'tribe', rather than to the
indj\'iduaJ artist, thus effectively erasing the latter
from the narrative spaces of art history. In con
temporary discourses, critics like McE'illey rep
resent the continuation of this practice whereby
novel strategies are employed to anonymiseAfriean
art by either discollilecting the work from the art
ist, thus deleting the author-ity of the latter, or by
constructing the artist away from the normati\'i
ties of contemporary practice.
[...J
The effaced African artist, the faceless, anony
mous native, is the correlative ofFanon's 'palatable
Negro', the tolerable, consumable Other who,
stripped of authority and enunciatory autonomy.
is opened to the penetrative and dominatory
ad"ances of the West. The appeal of the faceless.
anonymous native is in the fact that she is also a
pornographic object, a docile, manipulable object
of desire and pleasure. Pornography as a strategy
rests on the localisation of desire and the intensifi
cation of pleasure through lhe effacement of the
subject, the detachment of the loeality of desire
from the web of subjective associations and rcalit}
ART, IDENTITY, BOUNDARIES
that impinge on the possessor's sense of social
responsihilit~. In other words, its principal device
j, [he objectivisation of the source of pleasure. For
maximwn derivative effect, the pUI'\'e} or as well as
the consumer of pornography must detach and
frame the object, enhanced through the combined
mechanisms of magnification and erasure, filling
the frame with only that which satisfies the speci
fications of desire. E, en this is further aided by
pOSitioning rhe object within an appropriate nar
rari\e, the right sound, the further from speech
the better, all of \\ hich, b) playing on the extremes
of perversion and provoeati\eness, sufficiently
hold it within the frames of the spread. Of course,
the erasure of tbe subject, or her transfiguration
into the realms of the fantastic, consfllidates the
purveyor's fiction of 0\\ nership, and thus of power.
And power, the abiliry to possess unquestionably,
1.0 exercise uncontested authorit~ and manipulate
at \\ ill, is the essence of pornography.
>\ngcla Dworkin has described the pornographic
object as a colony, the terminal site of the colonised
body. In Occidental discourses, African artists and
.".friean art in turn cominue to OCCUp) this site.
Dccoupled and anon) mised, each is turned into a
silent colony, a vassal enclave of pleasure and power.
Each is fragmented ilnd projected in close-up
sequences and pastiches that magnif) pleasure for
the ;111 knowing critic or collector: hence the con
cept of the intimate outsider \\ ho is narrated into a
positiYC relationship with these objects. Each is
parcelled and packaged to suit the West's machina
tions and tastes. to satisfy its desires and to fit
\\ ithin its frames of preference.
E\en the pricing of contemporary African al-t
and artists on the international art market posi
tions lhem within the frame of the cheap, porno signs have not appreciated in value; nor has the art
graphic object. Once, a friend who is an '\frican
art dealer received a painting b~ Gerard Santoni,
the horian artist, from one of the leading galleries
in '\;e\\ York, with a price tag that would be con
sidered quite modest in a degree sho\\. Santoni is
a deservedly well-regarded artist whose work has
been shown at the Venice Biennale and other repu
table international and contemporar) art spaces.
I Ie has practised for several decades and, even
with the fragmentation of values that ostenta
tiousl) characterises our age, his \\ orks would still
generally be considered of the highest standard.
351
But Santoni is underpriced becltlse, in the West,
he and his work are consigned to the category of
mere objects of pleasure and fascination, like por
nography. They are positioncd on those peripher
ies ofcreative genius where the acsthetic e>..perience
fails to cohere with great material value. This
obsenation becomes particularly rele\'3nt when
we consider ho\l' little collectors are willing to pay
for popular art from Africa, despite the fact tbat it
has remained the focus of Western fascination and
anention over the past four dccades, and has been
vigorously promoted as quintessential contempo
ral') African expression. It is to be noted that col
lectors spend much more money plugging the
pieces in their collections and struggling to gener
ate a discourse around them than they have
expended 011 the artworks thcmselves. Across
Africa, popular artists who are much touted in the
West, continue to pursue their careers in condi
tions that bear no comparison \1 ith the affluence
of their Western contemporaries.
/\. good illustration of this perpetual disjuncture
between hype and remuneration is the Nigerian
graphic artist, ~liddJe Art, whose barber-shop
signs were brought to the attention of the world by
Dlli Beier and others in the early 1970s. In the
1990s, Nliddle Art's signs are still \'oraciously col
lected in the West, especially in German~7, where
the artist continues to command critical anention
and dealers continue to recei\'e orders from collec
tors. But after over thirty years of selling to
collections, it is remarkable to note that Middle Art
has remained poor, tU1able to afford a proper studio
or indeed, as a German dealer reccntly told me, to
make a decent living from his work. In twenty
years of narration and promotion. Middle Art's
ist come to be regarded as deserving bener pay
ment, which would be unimagin3ble in the case of
a Western artist who had been so promored and
collected.'Liddle Art's work is cheap because the
West cloes not consider it art 'as we kno\v it'. As an
artist, he compares to his Western contcmporaries
in the same \\'a) rhat a porn actor compares to a
'proper' stage actor. One, though highly desired, is
nevertheless dispensable and cheap, whjle the
other, identified \\ ith high culture, is appropriately
\-alued and appreciated. Porn is recyclable and its
appeal is temporary. For this reason, porn is cheap,
352 OLU OGUIBE
and the object of pornographic consumption even
cheaper. And both belong not in the great spaces of
culture but on the supermarket shelf, on the side
walk, in the quid.')' fri.nges of normative taste.
Projected on contemporarv African artists and
their work, these attributes tetber them to the low
est rungs of :l strictly multi-tiered contemporary
art market from where upward mobiliry is almost
impossible.
The pervcrted desire for the pornogr<1phic
manifests iL~elf most significantly, however, in the
continued preference in the West for that art from
Afriw1 thaL is easily in1aged not as art as we kno\\
it, bur as :l sign of the occult, an inscription of the
fantasric. The childlike paintings of the Beninois,
Cyprien Toukoudagba, would not ordinarily rep
resent great crcative talent in the West, and would
not, conventionally, qualify as art beyond the sixth
grade. In fact, the critical acclaim enjoyed over the
past few years b) the fine draughtsmanship of
British child artist Stephen Wiltshire testifies
more accurately LO COnlemporaIJ Western stand
arus of e\ en jU\enile creativity. But Toukoudagha's
nai\ e dra\\ ings are today preferred in the WesL [Q
the more sophisticated, more familiar forms that
represent the cutting edge of contemporar)
African art precisely hecause his works fall below
these st:mdards, and thus inadvenendy yield to
dubious, pervcrted desires and expecLations. As
form, they represent a slip from normarivity'; they
signify a coveLed distance between the West and
the African; they satisfv the desire for the fantastic;
the) arc open Lo pornographic translation; they
arc strange. A few decades ago, this desire for the
subnormative and pornog-raphic was fulfiJled by
'OuLsider' art: ule art of thc blind, The autiSTic, the
mentally disabled and clinically insane. "Today, tbat
desire is projccted on .\frica, and it is this perver
sion that locates works like Toukoudagba '$ wiLhin
the boundaries of preference.
l... ]
The issue of authenticity and its anendant anx
ieties arc of course not matters over which con
temporary f\frican artists are likely to be found
losing any sleep. On the contrary, it is those who
construct authenticiLies and fabricate identities
for Lhem who are constantly plagued with worries.
And for the precise reason that 1 have alrcady incli
cated: such anxieties have less to do with facts of
authenticity and the relevance of tradition, as '\ith
a desire to force African artists bchind the confines
of manufactured identities aimed to place a dis
tance between Lheir practice and the purlointd
identity of contemporary Caucasian art. In other
words, the introduction of the question of authen_
ticity is only a dem:lIld for identiLY, n demand
for the signs of difference, a demand for cultural
distance. It is a demand for the visual and form;tl
distance ,\ ithout which it is impossible for con
temporary Caucasian art not to re,eal itself as
mimic, as a culture of quotations, as a mediated
lTanslation of cultures and art traditions other
than itself, as pastiche. For, having plUloined its
form and identi~ from others, it becomes reb'ant
for Caucasian art La insisL on difference in order to
obli terate an~ Traces back to the source, to E( u )rm;c
the min1etic trail.
JLis for this reason that the charge of mimier) is
recurrently levelled againsL contemporary African
arusts, their work dismissed as only an imitaLion
of Western art. By employing this de\ice of
reversal, it becomes pOSSIble for the mimic - that
is contemporary Western an - to invest itself" ith
originaliLY and a sense of its own authenticity. In
proceeding, then, to displace mimesis away from
iL~elf, and to project the same on African arti~ts.
eont.:mporary Caucasian art is able through its
narrativcs to resen'e aJrerity for itself, to resene
the right to be Lhe One and the Other at the same
time and wirhout sa.nction. The charge of minl.icr~
becomes its tool for defaming and displacing those
who produce from within those traditiQIlS which,
in truth, it mimics; Lhose whose existence chal
lenges its fictions of originality.
YlcE\'iIJc) '5 seemingly innocent question to
Ouattara again comes to mind: 'Where were you
born?' One recognises an uncanny ring to Lhis
qut.:stion, the resonance of mech,misms of suncil
lance and regulation employt.:d by the West today
to kcep Africans outside its geographical borders.
\\e notice a confluence of the political and the cul
lural. The one-sided contest for authenticity that
the West insinuates, its o\'erbearing desire to chum
originality as a preserve and to di&miss others as
inauthentic and mimeLic, in several respects p'lr.l1
leIs its current paranoia over territory, the anxiet~
that it is about to be overrun by outsiders. Hence
the intensification of border reguJations and the
ART, IDENTITY, BOUNDARIES
redefinition oforigins and identities, the recurrence
of the question: 'Where were you born"
The desire to nominalise the cULting edge of
contemporary African art is a methodical mapping
or Lerritories, a projecL of surveillance that is one
y, ith the tradition of policing the imaginary bor
ders of civilit) and progress. The implications of
the above for creaLive practice are numerous and
far-reaching. Worling wiLhin the confines of dis
torti\'e regulatory strategies, African artists find
Lhemselves \ulnerable to potentially. destructi'e
pressures. The demand is for them to produce to
specification, LO affect anon) mit), to concede the
abilit) LO enuneiaLe within the sites of nor
rnati\ity. E,en more signific\/lL is the fact that, for
Lhese artists, access to criticalil) in contemporary
discourses is regulated by this demand for subnor
rn;ltivit), and here lies the importance of Thomas
~1cE\illey's intenie\\ with Ouartan. For not only
do \lcEvilJey's devices illustrate one critic's incar
cerating projections on an African artist, even
more significantly, u1ey speak to the segn.:gationist
criticaJity and gene)";,) ambiv'alencc of white, post
modernist contingents in the so-called discourse
or Others, a crilicalit~ bounded by 'In interceptory
~otes
Thomas \1cEviJley, FIIsu)/ls: AfriClm Ar/isls ,1/ Ihe ~i'nit'e
Brillllale (Ne\\ York: Museum for African An, 1,}96).
'\1(;\\ York arrist Ouartara \\ as born in J\'or:," Coast bur
ha... lived and \\orked in F'I'Jncc and the US since the
ICJ30s
SccJuJja Kriste\'a, AI10fli Cltm,'5e 110111<11, !Tans. Aniln Bar
.\s (Ne\\ York: Un7en Booh, 1977: reprinlcd 1986).
353
demand forrheidentily ofLheOLher, hy LhequeTy:
"Where were you born?' They spC'Jk LO the fact
that within this djscolUse, posrmodernism
remains, to a remarkable eXLent, a mere rehash of
enrrcnched modernist attitudes and methods, 'a
continued reproduction" as Peter J litchcock has
suggeSLed, of 'the logic of WesLern culLural cri
tique that fosters the "othering" of the so-called
"Third World Subject" '.'
These are peculiar obstacles, of course, \\ hjch
work outside the perimeters of Jimitation/rrans
gression. The challenges Lhey pose requjre of artists
resistive rather Lhan Lransgressive strategies. More
importantl), the) pose an e\en greater challenge for
contemporary culLural theory, and for postmodern
ism as a critical culture. To bring its object into crisis
is the dULy of criLicism, and posonodernism must
extend this responsibility to contemporary African
art, and even more so, to the logic that rcgulates its
conLemp1aJ.ion of non-occidcnt:ll conremporaneil).
To engage meaningfull) with the contemporary, a
cre<lible posLmodernist criticism must place its
ambinllence under crisis, and eXLend the border& of
criticaliL) beyond the demand for identity and sub
normat:iYit).
4 FraJltz Fanon after Aimc Ccsaire, The Fact
of Blackness', in BIMk Ski,l IVh;/~ 11asks, trans.
c.L. \larlmann (l.ondon: Pluto Press. 1986),
p. 13J.
Peter Hirchcock, 'ThcOthering of Cult 11m I Stlldies'.
Third TeAl, no. 36 (London: Winter 1993-9~), PI'.
11-20.

25
reW It of the recent decline of the formerly prosper
In Place of Slavery
Fashioning Coastal Identity
Bayo Holsey
In April 2002, the Prince of Orange and Princess was close. The Dutch played an active part in the
l\1:ixima of the Netherlands traveled to Elmina as planning of this town and built a number of foni
part of a state visit tI) commemorate three hun fic.1tions around it. The relationship is still \-isiblc
dred years of diplomatic relations between the in the monuments and sites in the 1O\\'n itself, in
Netherlands and Ghana. The starting point they the Dutch famil) names many people from
recognized was not the arri\-al of the Dutch on the Elmina still bear and in the usc of some Dutch
coast, which had occurred a century earlier, but words in the local language. We share an interest
rather a Dutch expedition in 1701-2 from Elmina in our common past l
to the Asante kingdom, ,\hich would become a
major supplier of slaves. While this mecting marks a Through these words, he described the close rela
key moment in the development of the slave trade, tionship between the Dutch and Elmina in terms
in a speech he gave to mark the evcnt, the prince of Dutch influences on architecture, families, and
described it as a meeting "to discuss peace and pros language.
perity." He went on to note that much of the period His narrativc creates an image of thc "cosmo
of the Dutch presence on the coast was marked by politan" coast [that] stands in stark contrast to
the slave trade, but he ultimately marginalized its narrati\'es of the "savage bush". But the prince
significance within a larger story of a pcaceful, dip not only constructed a cosmopolitan past, he also
lomatic relationship between Ule Dutch and what suggested that it could be recovered. His speech
became Ghana. In fact, he turned quickly to another was made, after all, at the launching of a town
favorable interpretation of this presence by noting consultation to discuss de\ elopment plans for
its beneficial effects on the town of Elmina itself [Imina. For uus reason, local residents welcomed
Before the assembled crowd, he remarked, the prince's visit, greeting him and the princes~
cheering and waving Dutch flags.
Throughout the Dutch presence on the Gold Their enthusiastic response to the prince's \-isit
Coast, the relationship with rhe people of Elmina reflects the dire state of Elmina's economy.
From Routes oj Remembrance: R~rashioning the Slave Tr(l/le ill Chana, by Bayo Holsey, University of Chicago Press
(2008), pp. 9-14, 109-10, 112-21.
-
IN PLACE OF SLAVERY
Economic stagnation in the town is not only the
Their contemporary marginalization, they insist,
ous South; E1mina's problems began long before.
Its economy has in fact been in decline since the
departure of the Dutch in 1872. Mter this time,
Imina's shipping industr), remained small until its
porrwa~ finally closed in 1921. Cape Coast has faced
a similar situation. While it had the most important
port at Ule turn of the century, it was soon dwarfed
by Sekondi and Accra, \\hich were connected by
r~ads and rail\\'a~ s to important agricultural areas
(Kimble 1963).2 Its port finally closed to interna
tional trade in 1962. In addition, in contrast to their
former roles in the administration of the region,
roday, Elmina and Cape Coast have little role in
national politics. The basis of the nation's economy
has also shifted to thc production of cocoa, which
takes place ill other regions. There are few job
opportunities in these towns and high unemploy
mcnt rates. Coastal residents have thus lost their
political power, economic prosperity, and cultural
cacher.
l\S a result, some of the men and women assem
bled to hear the prince's speech, in particular those
who are familiar with the town's history, appreci
ated not only that he supported Elmina's economic
deYelopment but also that he broached the topic of
the lO\\n'S past close relationship to the DUtch_
Such references, they bclie\e, provide evidence
again5t claims of thcir town's inexorable margin
~lization. These claims, which arc made through
images ofAfrica as a dark continent and ofAfricans
as "a race of slaves," deplete coastal residents' lim
ited supplies of both symbolic and real capital.
Because these discourses, \yhich were first pro
duced by Europeans during ule Atlantic and colo
nial eras, continue to circulate within national and
imernational arenas today, keeping them at bay
requires constant yigil:mce. For this reason, not
onl~ do they displace the slave tradc and its
attached images of savagery on Lo the North. many
coastal residents also replace it WiUl their own sto
ries of their past incorporation inro the Atlantic
order on favorable terms. In other words, faced
with their own incrcasing poverty, they argue that
tbe) \\ ere better off in ule past than they are now,
that they are in fact thc heirs of a glorious past.
Their past centrality within the "global e{;umene"
(Hannerz 1992) is in fact their rightful one, they
373
maintain, and one that therefore must be recovered.
is not the result of an inherent racial inferiority
that d.irn.iJushcs their ability to obtain political
power and economic prosperity; their power and
prosperity have bccn confiscated. Drawn in this
fashion, their images of the Atlantic era become an
indictment of the present.
While coastal residents mobilize narnltives
about their past incorporation into the Atlamic era
in order to protest their exclusion from the con
temporary global economy, such descriptions are
nOt, it is inlportant to note, a glorification of the
slave dealing that took place on the coast and was
in fact the basis of its prosperity for much of the
period of European settlement. They are rather,
I argue, a different view of the Atlantic era alto
gether. wdeed, even more so than the prince,
coastal residents erase the slave trade from narra
tives of coastal cosmopolitanism. They do so, as
1 discuss in the following section, by veiling histo
ries of slave dealing that took place on the coast.
These histories are for many reasons troubling,
a fact which their veiled accounts indicate. Once
their narratives of the Atlantic era are stripped of
explicit references to the slave trade ho\;ever, thcy
are free to describe it as the golden age ofthe coast.
Such narratives, which are the main focus of this
chapter, arc told then ill place of narrati,-cs about
the slave trade. These images function, further
more, as a means of challenging arguments that
naturalize their contemporary marginalization.
They lend crcdence to their calls for grcatcr inclu
sion in the global economy by providing them
with a precedent.
Abjection and Atlantic Pasts
[n his book, Expectations oj ModemilY (1999),
James Ferguson employs the term "abjection"
to refer to the experience of contemporary
Copperbelt minc\\'orkers. He explains,
For many Zambians, then, as these details suggest,
recent history has been experienced not - as the
modernization plot led one to expect - as a process
of moving forward or joining up with the world
but as a process that has pushed them out of the
place in the world thal they once occupied ...
/':Ibjeftio/l refcr~ to a process of being thrown aside,
374 BAYO HOLSEY
expelled, or discarded ... This complex of mean
ings, sad to report, captures precisely the sense I
found among the Copperbelt mine-workers - a
sense that the promises of modernization had been
betrayed, and that they were being thrown out of
the circle of full h umaniry, thrown back into the
ranks of the "second class," cast outw,ud and
downwanl into the world of rags and huts \\hcre
the color bar had always told ''Africans'' they
belonged (1999, 236).
Ferguson stresses that these workers' experience
of abjection was not an experience of bei.ng
excluded but rather one of being expelled (1999,
237), of losing a status that they once enjoyed.
This description well describes the experience
of today's coastal residents and particularly highly
educ-ated ones, whose contemporary conditions
also challenge the modernization plot. Whi.le dur
ing the Atlantic era, level of education was a better
marker of economic success, today, there are few
professional jobs for the large percentage of edu
cated men and women ill Cape Coast and Elmina.
As a result, they no longer have as great an eco
nomic advantage. Because education is one of the
few fields in the region that has not declined in
signific,1.tlce, teachers make up a large a percentage
of the educated class (and therefore a large per
entage of those mentioned in this chapter). With
their modest salaJ'ies, they illustrate tbe educated
class's loss of economic status with the collapse of
the economies of their towns. These men and
women are thus uniquely positioned to critique
tlle barriers to their social mobility. Because they
are also well acquaintcd with the IListories of their
towns, many of these individuals do so by con
trasting their contemporary conditions to the
incorporation of coastal elites into the global order
during the Atlantic era.
In many cultural contexts, groups "seek the
identity of place by laying claim to some particular
moment/location in time-space \\hen the defini
tion of the area and the social relations dominant
within it were to thc advantage of that particular
claimant group" (Massey 199~, 169). Coastal resi
dents' constructions of the past however define
the privilegcd lives of past coastal elites to be the
heritage of their entire towns, thereby painting
over past imernal distinctions including those
between slaves and freepersons and bet\'ccn
Fantes and members of ethnic groups who settled
on the coast. 'Vithin this construction of an undif_
ferentiated coastal population, past forms flf
oppression arc crfecti\,ely silenced. In addition, all
contemporary coastal residents are allowed to la\'
claim to 1his past. Their creation of a shared coast~1
heritage occurs in the context of a leveling of class
differences, which has made the grounds upon
which the educated elite have traditionally asserted
their class superiority increasingly shaky.
So, \\hat do their town histories look like? In
Elmina, many residents often stress the fact that it
was the site of the first European building in sub
Saharan Africa ,md olle of the first places in which
Europeans settled. In referencing the earliest
moment of the Portuguese trade, they m'oid dIS
cussion of the slave trade altogether. This agenda
was apparent i.n Mrs Yeboah's use of the story.
A seventy-two year old teacher in Elmina,
~lrs Yeboah brought up the story in response to
my question as to what she thinks is the most
important part of history for people in her to\m.
She immediately responded, "How the white man
came to sec them" She then explained, "They
asked for tlle land to build the castle, that's very
important because they [the Europeansl knew that
this waS theirs [the local people's]. They came to
the chief ;1I1d the chief gave them the land to build
the castle." Her assertion that Europeans \-iewed
the people of Elmina as citizens of a sovereign state
contrasts sharply to narratives about northerners
that suggest that Europeans saw them as nothing
more tl1aI1 potential slaves. In this context,
Mrs Yeboah's statement carries the subtext that the
"white man" did Tlol view coastal residents as sla\'es
but ratber as equals. But in addition to contrasting
her ancestors to slaves, she also contrasts them to
contemporary residents. By stating that this event
marks the most important moment in their history,
Mrs Yeboah suggests that such recognition by
Europeans was not forthcoming at later ones.
Residents of Cape Coast produce similar town
histories of the European presence, both orally
and in print. Because interactions wlth Europeans
in Cape Coast began \\ ith the slave trade, and
there is no earlier periou in this encounter to
which they can refer, its resiuents often simply
marginalize this aspect of that relationship.
IN PLACE OF SLAVERY
[n 199-1-,J Erskine Graham,Jr, a teacher at Ghana
:\"arional College and a local assemhly member,
published a book entitled Cape Coast in Histor]
that traces historical developments in the 10\\ n. In
his description of the effects of contact with
Europeans, he lists many positive effects, includ
ing the growth of the town. He quotes the Danish
,'isitor who described Cape Coast in 1836 as
"a little heaven, worthy to be reputed the most
~llttacti\"e citauel of the whole.'\ frican coast" (199-1-,
23). He tllen 'Hites, "Capt: Coast, therefore, hith
erto unimportant town, became a powerful flour
ishing trading centre and soon assumed a
cosmopolit;m outlook" (1994, 23).
In addition to constructing a glorious past,
many individuals explicitl) contrast it to a present
decline. In an article about the history of Cape
Coast, Nkulll1 AI..'yea, head of the Central Regional
De\'c!opment Commission, describes the desola
tiun that has become a popular theme within
accounts of both Cape Coast and Elmina:
.\s far back as 191 I, S.R.B. Attoh Ahuma
observcd ... "C:lpe Coast is dull and monotonous
enough in all conscience". Almost a centuf) later,
Ihe settlement presents an outward image of
rusted corrugated iron-roofs with cracked and
crumbling facades of the once huge clay-built
imposing merchant anu family home ... Undoub
tedly, Cape Coast has aged: she is wrinlJed, has a
stooped gait with shuffling fect for steps, dim
eyes and cars hard of hearing and crackling voice
(2001,38).
He explains that this decline is due to the fact rhat
"there are no yiable commercial and indusniaJ
,Ictivities in Cape Coast and its immediate envi
rons to write home about. The town and most of
the Central Region has, for about a century now,
been losing its population (out-migration) to other
economically more attractive adjoining areas"
(2001, 38). He claims, however, that the town was
not that way in the past, quoting another ,witer
\\ ho insists, "Cape Coast has not always looked
like this. The careful observer can soon see that
behind its forlorn and dilapidated appearance
there are indications of \\hat was once a much
more flourishing past" (2001, 38). ~lore than a
simple lament for the passing of a better time, in
other words, expressions of nostalgia, these state
375
ments are highly political. They seck to provide a
precedent for the coast's incorporation into the
global order.
Finally, to tetum to my conversation with
Auntie Amma, not only did she veil the trade in
slaves in her story of magically reproducing beads
in order to create an image of fabulous weaJth, but
later in the same conversation, she noted the
present decline of Elmina. It began \\ hen my com
panion, after hearing her desuiption of her fam
ily's past wealth, asked her, "Then you were rich,
but now yOll are poor, why?" The question had
been on my mind as well. Sitting in the courtyard
in front of ..\ untie Amma's house, the po\'erty that
she and her family face is undeniable. Her house,
once grand, has fallen into disrepair, and the lack
of job opportunities in EJmina has dearly hit her
family hard. Her family's poor economic condi
tion was made all the more startling in comparison
to her description of the family's past wealth. She
summed lip the contrast bet \\ een her family's past
wealth and their present poyen) saying, "Kaltka
hen upa Edil/I/lltatl hfl," or "The Dutch boat has
left Elmina."
This starement is a common s:lying in Elmina
that is used to comment on the to\\ u's economic
decline. Its original reference may be lost on mem
bers of the younger generation,! but it continues
to function as a metaphor, Ii.ke the saying "that
ship has sailed," for lost opportunity. By invoking
this proverb, Auntie Amma not only noted her
family's situation, but also tied it into the experi
ence of all of the residents of Elmina, and cited
more generally the town's expulsion from the glo
bal economy sincc the departure of the Dutch and
the British take over. As Elmina's long-time ene
mies, the British neglected the town's economy
thereby marking a significant shift from the era of
the Dutch presence. That residents trace their
current underdevelopment to the departure of the
Dutch demonstrates then their sense of abjection
rather than simply a celebTlltion of Dutch trade.
The latter interpretation C'dsily leads to an inter
pretation of a blind attachment to Europeans (see
Ferguson 1999; 2002), which is the diagnosis that
many Ghanaians from other regions inueed pro
\~de. An extremcJy harsh cllaTllctcrization of coastal
residents and Fantes in particular appeared in an
editorial in December 2004 after the re-election of
376 BAYO HOLSEY
President Kufuor. In response to a previous
editorial that had questioned why Fames had not
supported Atta-Mills, a fellow Fante, in his bid for
the presidency, the writer argues that Fantes have
no sense of ethnic solidarity; rather, "the first per
son the .Fanti owes his allegiance to is the white
man." She further writes,
If one studies the history of colonial rule and the
slave trade (though other coastal tribes werc
involved, but r will only focus on the Fante tribe), it
can be said that the fantes "sold their soul to the
del'il" for unimportant worldly things without
pausing to think of the consequences. That was the
beginning of their "curse." They al10wed the
"white" people to plunder our gold, rape our
women for pitiful remuncrations such as alcohol,
sweets and the chance to climb abord LSI'] a ship and
listen and dance to music, which was foreign to our
culture. They did not stop there; they actually sup
plied slaves to the white men ... rantes feel superior
to the other tribes because of their affiliation with
the white man. Their language is even inter-laced
Ilith the English language. They were taught to
speak, ear, dress and behave like the white man!
This passage demonstrates that their involve
ment in slave dealing is used against Fames by oth
ers in order to "ilify them. The writer also explicitly
critiques coastal residents' celebration of their past
affiliation with Europeans and their assimilation to
European cultural pracrkes, recalling the popular
image parodied by Sekyi [... ], but with much less
Central Region, placing all coastal residents in the
humor. This characterization invokes Frantz
same boat. Another long-time resident of Elmina
.ran on's analysis of African practices of assimila
tion under colonialism (1967). IIowewr, while
Fanon attributes this phenomenon to the effects of
colonial rule on the menrahty of the colonized thc
\\Titer here suggests that Fame mentalities havc
been altered by their own greed. They chose to be
traitors and have thus lost their souls.
In contrast to both interpretations, J argue not
only that their practices of assimilation protected
them from enslavement in the past [... ] but also
that today, coastal residents' do not articulate
EUJ'ocentric discourse unwittingly or unwillingly;
rather, they do so out of a conscious "will to be
modern" (Gablc 1995) and with the intention of
higWighting a fundamental contradiction, namely,
that despite their past favored position, flO\vs of
\\'ealth and power today largely bypass them. The
editorialist quoted above ignores the fact that the
desire for an affiliation wi.th "the white man"
stems from a recognition of gross global inequali_
ties and not simply from psychological damage.
Iler critique of this past affiliation overlooks the
reality that for some, the horrors of late capitalism
make the Atlantic era appear in fact desirable.
Comment.s like Auntie AmllUl's should be read,
I suggest again following Ferguson (1999; 2002),
not as evidence of a colonized mentality, but rather
as attempts to transform an image of the coast's
intrinsic outside status to an image of its past
belonging followed by its unfair and unfortunate
expulsion. Instead of being merely a celebration of
the Atlantic era, it is actually a critique of the colo
nial and post-colonial eras that followed.
"Black and Proud"
Texts like Save Elmilla provide coastal residents
with narratives about their past that many readily
embrace. In adopting these narratives, howel'er,
I have argued that they do not simply celebrate the
European presence but rather use them to critique
the presentS At the same time, many recognize
t.hat invocations of a glorious past are not enough
to transform tJle conditions in which they liye.
This recognition reveals their skepticism with
regard to the conduct of t.hose like the prince and
members of the Save Elminn Association as to
Ivhether t.hey, despite Lilei!" offers of ai d, are truly
committed to transforming this system of exclu
sion, or rather are operating in bad faith .
Kwame, for instance, expressed bitterness oyer
the failure of the Dutch to do more for Elmina.
While speaking of the Dutch, he said, "I know
because thc whites do a lot of research, I knOll' that
they would be aware that they have family members
oyer here. 1 wish that we could unite, but you know
these whites." In thi~ way, he delivers a critique of
the Dutch, suggesting t.h.at despite thei.r awareness
f their historical ties to Elmina, they have not come
to its aid. The explanation for this failure, further
more, should be obvious to me, another black per
son, who must "know these whites." Indeed, this
statement functions on both sides of the Atlantic ao
a reference to anti-black racism. What he and I both
know is that El1nina's marginalization is tied to the
IN PLACE OF SLAVERY
racializ ed nature of global excl usions in which white
narions ;md institutions llave not historically shared
their wea1tJl with others.
This critique could include the early Dutch trad
ers as well. If they never intended that their rela
tionship with the town be a permanent one, it is no
1I0nder tllat they easily pulled up anchor when the
tides turned out of their favor, leaving Elmina to its
fiery fate at tJle hands of the British. In this context,
the saying "The Dutch boat has left Elmina" takes
on new meaning, alluding to not only the decline of
Elmina ;lfter the Dutch departure but also to the
bad faith of the Dutch ulroughout their occupation
of Elmina. This more probing reading posits local
residents' recognition that the Dutch never consid
ered their forebears as their partners in an econom.ic
order; they rather viewed them as their pa,vns.
Given his critique of the Dutch, I wondered
hOIl lI:.wame felt about his own Dutch ancestry.
A question I posed to this effect prompted the fol
lowing exchange:
K\\r.'\ME: I don't feel so much Dutch at this time,
no I don't feci so much Dutch, though
] think that J am a Ghanaian, not that] think,
I ,lID Ghanaian, I have no Dutch blood, I
don't think that at all.
AUNTIE AMMA: I am proud.
KWAME: She is proud because she knows she is
an indigenous E.lminan
AUNTIE AMNIA: I am black and proud!
B.H. So even though your great grandfathcr was
Dutch -
KWAIvIE: No, we are black.
As this exchange demonstrates, while coastal resi
dents highlight their past interactions with
Europeans, they do not seek to be white; rather,
their fundamental identity remains that of black
people. Their desires are for inclusion in the global
order that they enjoyed in the past, not for white
ness. Indeed, Auntie Amma's exclamation, "I'm
black and proud," is strong evidence that she takes
pride in an African identity. In making this asser
tion, she draws on a transnational discourse on black
pride in which JamesBrown's 1968 anthem becomes
key. lndeed, while she had been speaking primarily
in Fante throughout our conversation, her sudden
declaration "I'm black and proud" was made in
377
perfect English. Hearing Auntie Amma, an elderly
woman without fotmal education, make this state
ment convinced me of just how wide the circulation
of tllis transnational black discourse is in Ghana.
Black pride emerges not on ly because of the bad
faith of the Dutch, but also because of the disman
tling of "mixed" race privilege on the coast. In the
past, willie Euro-Africans were granted a special
status, they retained their African identities to a
large extent because of the strength of the matri
lineal descent system and the persistent function
of families and their larger communities as the
main source of identity for local residents. Their
embrace of a notion of a separate Euro-African
identity was about its social and economic advan
tages more than a belief in their fundamental dif
ference. With the evaporation of those advantages,
being of Dutch descent has little if any meaning in
Elmina today. Indeed, one can hardly speak of an
"etlmoscape" to use Appadurai's term (1996) con
necting Elmina and the Netherlands.
When I asked one Elmina resident if people with
Dutch ancestry have any special status, he replied,
"No, before they had it, but today, no. People don't
respect tJlem, especially if you don't go to school
and you don't gain the wealth. Today in Elmina we
know some who are illiterate, they have not been to
school before, they can't say anything, but they
come from [one of the Dutch families in Elmina]."
The decline of Elmina and Cape Coast more
generally indicates that sites of necessary advan
tage have shifted geographically away from the
responded to my question about wh~ether people
ever talk about their Dutch ancestry, "No, they
don't talk about it, they are superior;> No, no, no,
in fact they don't boast" As these comments dem
onstrate, coastal residents are less committed to
claiming Dutch ancestry on an indiYidual basis,
creating, in other words, a shared ethnoscape with
European nations, than they are to re-establishing
"financescapes" (Appadurai 1996) with them.
In this context, it becomes clear that coasra'! resi
dents' favorable constructions of the Atlantic order
do not represent a colonit:ed mentality. On the con
trary, they serve to critique the global orders that
follOlYed by demonstrating that things have not
ahvays been this way. In addition, their constructions
378
of the past often contain veiled critiques of the
\tlantic order itself, serving as further evidence for
BAYO HOLSEY
the strategic use of affirmative accounts of the past.
By reading statements about coastal superiority
due to their proximity to Europeans as largely stra
tegic practices, we can see \Verbner's (1996) wink in
play [... ]. In other words, coastal residents' seem
ing collusion with Europe:ms in lheir celebration of
their past inclusion within a Western modernity
begins to ren:al their experience of abjection.
In the face of contemporary national and global
economics witbin which lhey occupy a marginal
il.ed position, constructing narratives about a
prosperous past allo\\ s coastal residents to refute
conceptualizations of their intrinsic inferiority.
A notion of coastal cosmopolitanism then is an
attempt to stake a claim to social and economic
Notes
The full text of this speech is available at http://
www.koninklijkhuis.nl/contcnt.jsp 1objectid=4172.
2 Takoradi and Tema later became Ghana's major
pons.
3 In fact, when I asked a young man the literal mean
ing of the eApression, he struggled to uanshne it,
thinking that the reference to the Dutch must be a
References
AI;ye<l, W Nl..unu. 2001. "A Touristic Dimension of the
Historic and Political Role of Cape Coast in the
Development of Ghana." In Oguaaman: All /"Jllllal of
His((I~)" Relltioll and CIIIlIIre of Cape CoaSI. Cape
Coast: Africa Best Enterprise.
Appadurai, Arjon. 1996. l1"derttily al Large: Culluml
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of Minnesota Pw,s.
Comaroff, Jean, and John L Comaroff 1992.
'III/Iogrtlph.l' and lire liiHorical imagimllioll. Boulder:
Wesrview Press.
l"o1non, Fran't:. 1967. Black Skill. Wltile ~1osks. t\'e" York:
G rove Press.
Ferguson, James. 1999. EXPUIUllolIS of ModemilY:
Mphs IJlld ~Ieallillgs of (.irbIJlI Life 011 the Zambia"
7opperbell. Berkele~: University of CalifornUi Press.
Ferguson, James. 2002. "Of l\Ilimicry and l\1embership:
'\fricans and the 'New World Society'." Cultural
A IIlhropo log)l 17(4): 551-69.
Gable, Eric. 1995. "The Decolonization of Consci
ousness: Local Skeptics and the 'Will to Be Modern'
empowerment. Coastal residents mobilize memories
of their past favored status in hopes of converting it
- Part VIII
into present s) mbolie capital. They submit this
precedent in making their contemporaD- claims on
stale and global political economies for greater
opportunities for an improved standard of li\ ing.
Their narratives arc similar to Sarbah's turn-of-!he_
century critique of colonialism as the disenfran_
Sex and Gender Studies
chisement of Fames, who had previously enjoycJ a
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in Africa: Economy
position within the global economy, to call, in other
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reference to Dutch Komenda, a neighboring
coastal town.
4 Feature article of December 21, 200~ on W\\\\.
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Comaroff and Comaroff similarl" note that "people
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in a \Vest African Village." Imerlcoll Elhllologi.,t 22(2):
242-5
Graham, J Erskine. 1994. Cape Coasl 111 History. Cape
oast: Anglican Printing Press.
annerz, Ulf 1992. Cullural Complex/o': Sllfdles IlIllle
Social OrganlzallOIl l!fMeafIJlIg. Ne\~ York: Columbia
Unil'ersity Press.
Kimb]~, David. 1963.:1 Polilical Histlll)' ofChalla: The
Rise ~f Cold Coasl NaliollalislII. 1850- I 928. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Massey, Doreen. 1994. Space, Place, ({lid Gmder.
"tinn~apolis: University of \1inncsota Press.
Sarbah, John \lensah. 1968a 11897]. FIIntl CUSIOIl/U
LaTVs. 3rd edn. London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd.
5arbah, John~lcnsah. 1968b [1906]. Fal/ll j\ollfll/rJI
CO/lslilll/lllll. 2nd edn. London: Frank Cass & Co.
Ltd.
WerbneI', Richard. 1996. "Introduction: Multiple
Identities, Plural Arenas." In Poslcolonial Idenlltws In
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Ranger. London: Zed Dooks.
 Introduction

The subjects of sex and gender include a wide array of theoretical issues and ethnographic topics,
onl) some of which can be covered in a single part. Topics not addressed explicitly in this part
include homosexuality, conceptions of femininity and masculinity, labor migraney, marriage sys
tcm1i, hcahh care, nutrition and fcrtilit), among others. Of course, gender studies permeatl: the
anthology as a whole, in works by Hutchinson, Grinker, and others. The readings in this part
address the \\ays in which differing ideas ahoat men and women, and their social roles, become
integral part" of African political-economic and sexual life. In order to more fully contextualize
these particular readings within the larger literamre, however, we shall use the next few pages to
outline some of the central theoretical problems in gender studies in Africa, and elsewhere.
Some anthropologists and historians working in Africa toda) on sex and gender concerns
refer 1.0 themseh'cs as "feminist anthropologists" (Moore, 1988), a term that deserves some
critical attention. The term "feminist," as it is used in the social sciences, often characterizes
specifically those works that identi~- the sources of women's oppression and struggles for eco
nomic and political autonomy (Cutrufe1li, 1983), and that seek changes in oppressive institu
tions, such as female genital mutilation (usually clitoridectomy), prostitution, and marriage
Customs (such as polygam) and the levirate). However, anthropologist. IIenrietta Moore disa
grees strongly that feminist works are works "about women" or about advocacy. She writes:

The identification of feminist concerns with women's concerns has been one of the SI rategies employed
in the social sciL'Tlces to marginalize the feminist critique. This marginalization is quite unjustified ....
The basis for the feminist critiq ue is not the study of women, but the analysis of gender rehlrions, and
r gender as a structuring principle in all human societies. (Moore, 1988: vii)
Indeed, the works of authors who characterize themselves with terms such as "feminist" or the
more neutral and non-ideological sounding "gender studies" emerged together in the early
1970s, as scholars and activists began to address the invisibility of women in al:aclemic literarure,
and to suggest that the cultural analysis of gender categories is central, rather than a marginal
specialization, to both theory and method in anthropology. Of course, women were never totally
382 INTRODUCTION
absent from ethnographies of the fust part of the twentieth century, especialJ~ because
anthropologists focused so much on kinship and marriage. Moreover, scholars such as Audrey
--
Richards ancl Hermann Baumann took special care in the 1920s to write about the sexual divi-
sian of labor in Africa, and Evans-Pritchard wrote a small, but important, case report on Azande
transvestites. The problem, Moore says, "was not, therefore, one of empirical stud), but rather
one of reprcselllGliun" (1988: I, our emphasis). If there is an absence, we would suggest, it is an
absence of studies of men and masculinity, for men have often been taken to represent the
dominant cultural patterns of society, while women have been taken as the empty category to be
explained (some notable exceptions include: Hewlett, 1991; Moodie, 1994).
How have women figured in anthropological accounts'
Did anthropologists elicit information from them'
Were their voices heard'
Why did it take so long for gender to become a central focus of anrhropologic.1.1 representation?
In the last twenty years, anthropologists have increasingly focused their attention in Africa on
the study of gender, sex, and women. Anthropologists and historians, such as Caroline Bledsoe,
Jane Guyer, Sara Berry, Ester Boserup, Jean Comaroff, Christine Oppong, Christine Obha,
Kristin Mann, IIenrietta Moore, and Anne Whitehead, to name only a fe\\, are among those
who have helped to produce a significant body of \\ork on African gender studjes. Given that
anthropologists have been stud) ing Africa since the beginnings of the European colonization of
Africa, it is reasonable to ask why it took so long for work on gender to begin. The answer lies in
the fact rhat gender studics anymhere are of relatively recent origin.
"Gender" can be used generally to refcr to the cultural const.ruction or maleness and female
ness, and "sex" to refer to the di"ision of human beings i.nto male and female. This is a distinc
tion that might well be c-alled into question as a cultural constrllction in its own right, but the
distinction has some heuristic, if not analytical, value. U onc accepts that the human "arid is
divided, nataraJly, into two sexes - and, it mUSt be stressed, that Lintil the early 1700s, Western
Europeans believed that there was only one sex in the world - male (Lacqueur, 1990), and there
are reasonable argument~ for more than two sexcs (Bmler, 1990) - then the anthmpo!ogical
question bccomes:
What does the division between the sexes mean to people in different times and places'
How are biological distinctions made syrnbolically and socially meaningful'
How does cross-cultural analysis inl1uence the way we think about the limits and possibili
ties of sex and gender categories?
Margaret Mead's early worl.. in the Pacific illlands of Oceania was perhaps the first to explicitly
address the differences in sex and gender across different cultures in detail. In New Guinea, in
the late 19305, Mead srudied three societies - the Arapesh, the Mundug-umor, and the Tchambuli
(also called rbe Chambri) - whose assumptions about the differences between men and \Yomen
stood in stark contrast to lllOse of Mead's social world in the United States. Arapesh held that
there are no fundamental differences between men and women, that both are naturally mater
nal, nurturing, and non-aggressive. Mundugumor too believed that there were no fundamental
differences but that men and women are both aggressive, proud, violent, and harsh. Finally,
Tch.arnbuli believed that mcn were, in Mead's terms, naturally feminine whereas women "ere
naturally masculine. \"'hat this comparative study tel.ls us is that people tend to mturalize
--
INTRODUCTION
differences between men and women, but that the form that naturalization takes js culturally
,-ariable. We must ask: Of all the ways that human beings could organize and conceptualize their
383
world!>, why do they do it in this or that particular way) Human beings often assertthat cultur
ally constructed phenomena are reall) "natural" phenomena, becaLL,>e then they seem more real
and truthful, and nor subject to change.
Following Mead's research, anthropologists, in al1d out of Africa, have sought to explain tbe
extraordinary diversity of beliefs abour sex and gender that are taken to be so axiomatic 0
natural, and to explicate the complex relations between those beliefs and other aspects of cul
ture, including art, myth, ritual, economics, and political systems. Some, such as Sherry Ortner
and Michelle Rosaldo, have addressed the problem of a universal sexism: the ways in which
men <Ire frequently construed (and extolled) as "cultural" - producing and practicing tech
nologies, and controlling a society's economic and sym bobc resources - and the ways in which
women are frequently construed (and denigrated) as "natural," performing sexual, reproduc
tive, and childrearing functions. Others, such as Marilyn Strathern and Brad Shore, have noted
t.hat the "the same axes thar divide and distinguish male from female (and indeed rank male
o,er female), also cross-cut the gender categories, producing internal distinctions and grada
tions within them" (Ortner and Whitehead, 1981: 9: Grinker, 1994: 74-5). In other words, the
Gltegorics of male-female domination become categories of domination between men. Indeed,
Grinker's work in this volume on the Lese and Efe in Central Arrica describes how gender
categorit:s used to distinguish men from women arc used also to distinguish between" hole
ethnic groups. To some e.xtent, gender becomes a free-floating set of symbols, even an artifice,
applicable to myriad aspects of human existence that lie far beyond observable everyday rela
tions between men and women.
All of these authors thus argue that the ramifications of gender concepts arc complcx and
wide-ranging. A related argument is thal we must always question r.he utility and validity of
ClJmparati,c c<uegories, even tlle categories "man" and "woman." Taking aim at some recent
t'cminist literature, Chandra Mohanr} levels a harsh critique against authors ""ho cssentialize
"third world women," that is, authors who create a singular, monolithic, homog'eneous categ'ory
of person. She contends that the process of homogenization is also, perhaps unwittingly, a pro
cess of oppression, appropriated b~ "Vestern feminists as a way to characterize poor, non-Western
women, as ahistorical, undjfferentlated victims who can be used for Western feminist advocacy.
.'\.ccording to Mohanty, many authors trr to achieve solidarity for "women" throughout the
wodd, but by doing so they also tend to represent women as powerless and dependent, and to
reinforce ethnocentric beliefs about sex and gender. As Mohanty puts it, they risk saying that
"They cannot represent themscl\"~ they must be represented" (1991: 216).
The first read ing in this p:lrt deals with polygynous marriage, a practice that appears through-
ut the continent of Africa, in which a man has more than one wife. This term should be distin
guished from the more general term "polygamy," which refers to someone, male or female,
haying more than one spouse, and thus includes the specific term "polyandry," in which a
woman has more [han one husband. Polyandry is uncommon in Africa, having been outlawed in
1\igeria and elsewhere during colonization, and occurs most frequently in north India, Tibet,
and ~epal (Sangree and LevLne, 1978). Throughout Africa. many men and women consider
polygyn~ to oe an ideal form of marriage, though the expense of paying bridewealth and sup
pOrting a large family often proves prohibitive for men. There are other difficulties as well.
Among the Lese and Efe of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, all men
strive to have more than one wife, but even those who achieve their goal, and can support their
Llmilies financially, find it difficult to keep peace in the family. Jealousies and competition

384 INTRODUCTION
between co-wives, and disputes over access to land and other resources, oftcn make polygynous
marriages more unstable than monogamous ones. In West Africa, some high-ranking men were
known to have had hundreds of wives, but the most common number of spouses in polygynous
marriages is two, with one woman the principal or senior wife. In Muslim marriages in Africa
and elsewhere, Qur'anic scripture dictates no more than four wives, for beyond that, the Prop he:
Mohammed believed, a man would not be able to attend to his family with sufficient care.
Beyond two, rivalries bccome especially intense as alliances and factions among co-wives rna\"
emerge. In mOSt polygynous marriages in Africa, wives commonly OCCUP) separate huts in th~
same compound, may till differcllt plots of land, and feed their children separately.
Although there are a number of important issues that arise in the study of polygamy, Boserup
writes primarily about its economic logic. Drawing on data from throughout Africa, but most
specifically from the Yoruba of Nigeria, Boserup outlines the relationships between polygamy,
women's status, and farming.
Why would some men want polygynous marriages?
Why would some women want polygynous marriages?
Is "women's" position dcbased in polygynous societies?
is the co-\vifc only a "guest" in her husband's house and \'1Uage, with fe'll rights of her own?
Although Boscrup does not address these questions directly, it is useful to consider how ethno
centric it would be fur pcople who live in monogamous societies to automaticaJl} assume that
African pol) g) ny has primarily negative effects on womcn's livcs. Polygyny offers a degree of
freedom not available to women in monogamous unions, allowing women to travel more fre
quently, cngage in entrepreneurial or trade activities, or visit friends and relati\es. If a woman is
ill, there arc othcrs who can care for her children; if she is absent, others can care for her garden.
In northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where women suffer from a high rate of infer
wity, infertile women can cnsure their position within a village by bringing in an additional \\ ife
who can reproduce where she could not. Among the Lovedu of West Africa, woman-woman
marriage served precisely this function, as a woman married another woman who would then
havc a sexual reproductive relationship with the first woman's husband. The Lovcdu (Krige,
1943) are also notable in that they are one of the few African societies whose supreme ruler, the
Rain Queen, was a woman. It is also difficult to eXlnpolate from a single cuswm a generalized
status. As Robert Murphy notes, married women in France were allowed to have their own bank
accounts onl) in 1968, but most West African women have always had the right to control their
finances (1979: (7). Yel, polygamy is an issue on which there is little agreement, and local
activists throughout Africa continue to press for the abolition of polygyny and other customs
they deem harmful to women, such as circumcision and bridcwealth. Depending upon one's
perspective, bridewealth can appear as akin to purchase or prostitution, and pol)gamy as an
excuse for male domination. In addition to the many women's organi7.ations and leg-al advocacy
groups in Aliica spcaking and writing on polygamy and human rights, the many perspectives on
polygamy also appear in the writillgs of many African poets and novelists (sce, for example,
Mariama Ba, So Long" Lmer, 1981). Of course this deoate goes on.
t"umerous authors have analyzed hm\ male-female relations have been transformed in the
conte;\'t of rapid historical change in sub-Saharan Africa. In one important article, on the Baule
of Cote d'ivoire, Etienne notes that in precolonial da)s, Baule women controllcd the production
and distribution of cloth, one of thc more valuable artistic and practical products in Baule life,
while mcn controlled the staple food, yarns (Etienne 1980). Although there were many male
385
INTRODUCTION
---
weavers, women controlled their end products because they owned the thread itself. Exchanges
of cloth \V ere vital to establishing all sorts of social relations, especially marriages, linkages
bctween neighboring villagcs, and long-distance trade. Trading or selling cloth could make a
man or woman wealthy, or at least help them to achieve a high level of prestige; but even more
importantly, cloth gave women a significant amount of power and influence in Baule socicty.
Women and men were equally dependent upon one another, thc one for [ood, the other for
cloth. During the French colonization of Cote d'!Yoire, however, Baule men and women were
required to pay taxes, and to fulfill colonial administration quotas on agricultural production.
As one result, women were sometimes forced to cultivate mcn's crops, such as yams, and to
cultivate cotton for cash rather than for local social purposes. In addition, men, especially mal
\\'C2vers, could now buy thread directly from factories established b) the French, thus bypass
ing women and alienating them from the whole production-distribution process. Conseljuently,
women's power has decreased significantly over the years, especially within marriages,
and women today sell their labor so that they can get cash. Men remunerate thcm as they wish
because they no longer depend upon them for an) essential products.
In the chapter reprinted here on thc Igbo of Nigcria, Judith Van Allen also writes about
women's power, and how colonialism, in tlus case by the British, resulted in a loss of the influencc
women excrcised in the non-ccntralized political institutions of the Igbo of Nigeria. Van Allen
notes that Igbo politics have always involvcd diffuse power relations, with status large!) achieved,
rather than ascribed, and the women using meetings (miki,.,) to regulate market activity, call bo)
cotts and strikes, and otherwise consult about women's interests that oppose men's interests.
Specific actions takcn against men were metaphorically referred to as "sitting on a man"
When the British colonial administratjon attempted to define lines of political authority
among the Igbo - to produce a "native administration" consistent with the policy of "indirect
rule" - they chose to ignore local political institutions of both Igbo men and women. The disas
trouS results of their selcctive blindness, and their unwillingness to include women in the new
systems of local govcrnment, can be seen in Van Allen's depiction of one of the greatest demon
strations of women's power in African history: the Womcn's War.
Political reforms instituted by the British in 1933 did little to address women's needs, and
further marginalized the women from economic and political power centers. The diffuse politi
cal system on which womcn's power and influence once depended was gone, as was any legiti
mate system of self-help, or thc method of "sitting on a man" All were replaced by Nativc
Courts, the participation in which was exclusively male, and the practice of which was geared
toward men's intercsts. Van Allen and Etienne's articles suggest that, while colonial administra
tions throughout Africa consistently argued that Westcrnization and the introduction of mod
ern political structures and values would expand the rights and freedoms of all individuals,
women '5 political participation withcred, giving way instead to the British ideal of the politically
invisible Victorian woman.
In the final selection in tllis part, Suzanne LeClerc-Madlala illustratcs a gendered response
to a major public health concern: the HIV/ AIDS epidemic in South Africa. In order to combat
the spread of HIV, elderly women in the KwaZulu-'Jatal province, supported by political offi
cials from numerous levels of leadership, have instituted virginity testing as a form of grass
roots AIDS activism. In an article that cchoes debates o\'er one of the most salient human rights
issues in sub-Saharan Africa - female circumcision - LeClerc-Madlala illustrates the complex
ity of values surrounding the power and influence of female sexuality. When elderly women
examine girls' genitalia for evidence of sexual activit), they do so ostensibly to identify girls at
risk for HJV, or who may pose a risk to others, and to punish the sexually active girl, amI her
386 INTRODUCTION
family. However, the practice reveals Zulu beliefs that \\hile female scxualit) is a positive life
force, it is also a source of danger and disease for men. In addition, Zulu attitudes towards
female sexualiry arc constituted not only by conventional meanings, but also by more COntem_
porary s} mbols. Girls receive Western-sryle school l{rades (A, 13, or C) on the appearance of
their genitalia (for example, an A for an obvious virgin, a 13 for somcone who is possibly sexualh'
aClive, and a C for a failure); fears about fem,lle sexuality are justified by a widespread concer~
lhat "modern" society promotes promiscuity; and thaI current female 5exuality challenges the
social regulalion of sex vital to proper Zulu marriage and marriage pa}1l1cnts. LeClerc-~ladlala's
article is fundamentally about a tOpic of concern to all the authors represented in this section:
the ways in \\ hich sex and gender ramily to l1lulriple areas of social life.
References
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Butler,Judith. 1990. Gmd,,1' ?rollble: FeTIIlrIlS1Il 01111 lite Subursi01l ofIdell/ily. New York: ROlltledge.
CUTre).
Cutrufelli, Maria Rose, 1983. 110mm ofAfrim: ROlils oIOpJIressiOl/. ;'IJicola~ ROmaJl0, trans. London: Zed Press.
l;jsacs, Gordon and Brian McKendrick. Jllale HOII/ose.\ualily in Soulh ~friCilII /tImlily: Formalioll. Cllilure aud
Elienne, Mona. 1980. "Women and Men, Cloth anJ Colonization: tlleTransformation ofProducrion-Distrihution
Crisis,
Relations among the Baule (J"ory Coast)" In ,\lona Etienne amI E1cllnor Lcacod:, cds., 11';JlIleJ1 OIld
Clilonizallllll, pp. 21-1-38. :\iC\\ York: Pracger.
Grinl..er, R.R. 199~. Houses in Ihe RlJinjiiresl. EIJllliril)' 111/11 Iuel/IIIIIII], alllMlg ntrmers alJd For<lgus ill C"uTIII
.Ifrica. Bcrlcley and Losi\ngeles: University of California Press.
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Universit} of Michigan.
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Lacqueur, Thomas. 1990. Mahlig Sc.\" Body alld Gender ji'Ofn Ihe Grech la Freud. Cambridge, MA: HanJrcl
Universily Press.
Mohant), Chandnl Talpade. 1991. "Under Western E)cs: Feminisl Scholarship and Colonial Discollr.,cs." In
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f"miuislI/, Pl'. 51-80. Bloomington: Indiana Universit) Press.
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l\loorc, Henrietta. ]988. Feminist Amhropology. J\!linncapolis: Uni\crsily or Minnesota Press.
Murphy, Robcrt. J979. Overture to Social Anlhropology- Princeton: Pre.nticc-Hall.
Onncr, Shcrry B. and Harriet 'Vhitehcad, ed.s. 1981. "Introduction: .'\ccouOIing for Sexual Meanings." In
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Sangree, Walter II. and '\lanc) E. Levinl', cds. 1978. "'\omen with Man)' Husbands: Polyandrous. Alliance and
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Suggested Reading
Adepoju, Adcrallli and Christine Oppong, cds. 1994. Geuder, lIork 1/1111 Popllialion ill Sub-Saharan /1(,il'<I.
Portsmuuth, KH: Heinemann.
Ba~1ies, C. 2001. AIDS, Senllliity /Jlld Get/der ill A.friCll: Col/er/lve Slraleglrs 11/111 Slruggles In 1;/IIz.1I11ia alld
a",bia. :'-le\\ York: Taylor and Francis.
Blcdsoe, Caroline 11. 1Y80. lJ'iullen Q"d Marriage in Kpdle Soein)'. Stanford. CA: Stanford University Prcss.
Clarl, Gracia. 199~. OniOlls Art my Husband: Sun;i1'll1 111111 o/ceumlll/JliliTl by l1'esl Aft/CUll Jl/t1rka lf1Jmm. Chicago:
Uni\ crsily of Chicago Press.
Crcevc~, l.uc), cd. 1986. lVomm Fanllers il/ . 1friCll: Rural develnpmertl in .\fuli lind Ihe Silhei. Syracuse, :\1.
Syracuse Universit) Press.
Crumble), Helen. 2008. Spiril. SITUCII/re, and Flesh: Gender IIlId Pllmer in ) owilll AfticlIlI 1I1SI;/1/lell Chllrdlls.
Madison, \\'1: UniHrsity of Wisconsin Press.
INTRODUCTION
Epprechl, '\arc. 2008. J1elerns~.\/Ji/1 Afriw' The HisIQT)' ofan Ideafrom tire Age ofE.I'plortJlion 10 Ihe Ag" or. J1DS.
C.olumbus, OH: Ohio Univcrsit) Press.
GelO n , I.isa. I.. 2002. "Marriage, Kin, and Compensation: '\ Socio-political Ecology of Gender in Ankarana."
387
.Hlldllgascar. /lIlhropologicl/l Quarter/l,7S (-I): 675-707.
GOU\\', Amanda. 2005. (UTI)i/lillkir,g Ci/izmship: Femillisl Drblues ill COII/elf/pomry South Afrim. SUITC):
Ashgatc.
GUler,Jane 1. 1981. "Houschold and Community in African Studies." Aji-ican Slllllies RI';'i(m, 24(213): 87-137.
GU}cr, J:Jne l. 1984. nlllli()' 111111 Farm ill SOUl Item Call/eToml. Boston: Boston Unilcrsily African Studies Ccnter.
Gu\cr.]Jnc 1. 1988. "The l\lullipliealion of Labor: Historical !l.1ethods in lhe Study of Gender and Agricultural
Change in .\1odern "frica. CIII"TeIlt ,111lhropology, 29: 247-72.
Hay, \ Iargarel Jean. 1995.'1f""111 I/iJlllell SOIlIIt oflhe Sa hll ra ,2nd edn. l\ew York: Longmann.
Ha}, ;'-largar<:t Jean and '1.arcia Wright, eds. 1982. Africau lVolI/(// IImlllt( LII/1': Hisloricul Prrsp(clives. Boston:
BO'itun L niversit} .\Jrican Studies Center.
Heald, Suzette. J9H2. "The Making of Men." Africa 52: 15-35.
Jaeohson Widding, Anita. 1991. Body 0/1(/ Spare: Symbolic Models of Ullily mill Divisioll ill !frirall Cosmology 0",1
Experim,e. Uppsala and Stockholm, Swcden: Upsaliensis Academie.
KaJipeni, EzeJ.iel, Susan Craddo.:k, Joseph R. Oppong, and Jayati Ghosh, cds. 2003. 11IV and AIDS in AITlCa:
Beyond Hpidt'JIliology. I\lalden, ;'-'1A: Wiley-Blackwell.
Krall, Corinne \. 1994. ;!fJ((llIIg Pajol'llll/llc'C: .l1eanil1g. Mo,'ell/wl 0111/ .rpl'I'it'J/ce i" Ol:itk l11mlens Iuilialioll.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian lnstitution Press.
J\Iool,Jo)ce Le\\'en~er, ed. 1992. Diversily. Farmer Kuowledge arul Suslaiualiilily. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Prc's.
\Ioore, Ilcnrictta and Megan Vaughan, 199~. Cutti"g don'u Trees: Get/rI(r, lVUlrililJu. (/lid '/grimlwml Chl/nge in
,It/' Vorlhem PrOl,illce "fZambia, 1890 1990. Porrsmollth. Nil Heinemann.
:\:lurray, Colin. I <)81. Families Divided: Tlte Impacl a/Migralll Labour in Lesolho. Johannesburg: Raven.
;..!nttrass, l'\icoli. 2004. TIt~ Moral ECn/lOm)' ofAIDS i" SOlllh .4jiiCil. Cambridgc: Cambridge Uni\'ersit) Press.
Obbo, Chrisline. 1980. Afr-ican lViil/lerl. London: Zed Press.
ppong, C. 1974. I/urril/ge (lIIumg u .Hatr/linell! Elite. Cambridge: Cambridge Unil'ersily Press.
Parkin, lJa\id. 1975. Tom" and Counlry in CmTral arId Easlem A/nea. United Kingdom: IAI.
p'Hitek,Olo!. 1966. Song ofLammo. ;'IJairobi: East African Publishing House.
'Pelers, Pauline, 199~. Dividing Ihe Commolls: Poli/ics, Poliq' lind Cullure i" BolsTt>lJIllI. Charlottesville: Uni\'cn;ity
ofYirginia Press.
Rosaldo, \Iichelle Z. and Louise Lamphere. 1974. Homall, Cullllre and Sociely. Stanford, CA.: Stanford
ni\er~it) Press.
Schuster, lisa. 1<)79. Nell' l1vmm ~f Lusl/kll. Ne\\ York: l\laylield.
Sctcl, Philip W. 2000. A P!agu~ iJ( Paradoxes AIDS, Culwr/!, a"d Demogl'llplt)1 ill Norlhem 1imzu"ilt. Chicago:
niversiry of Chicago Press.
Sus~er, lda. 2009. A IDS, Sex, and Culture: Global Politics and Sun:ivlIl i" SlIuTltml (~frica. Maldcn, M!\: WiJc~
D1adwcll.
',,"ojcicki, Janet Maia. 2002. '''She Drank Ilis Money': Survi\--al Scx and the Problem of Violence in Taverns in
Gautcng Provincc, South Africa." lUedical ,4"lltropology Q!'rtrlerly16(3): 267-93.
 26
The Economics of Polygamy
Ester Boserup
Some years ago, LNSCO held a seminar on the
st;ttuS of women in South Asia. The seminar made
this concluding statement after a discussion of the
problcm of polygamy: "Polygamy might be due to
economic reasons, tll:1t is to say, the nature of tile
principal sou rcc of livclillOod of the social group
concerned, e.g. agriculture, but data available to
the Seminar would not permit any conclusions to
be dra,m on this point".'
It is understandable that such a cautious con
clusion should be drawn in Asia where the inci
dence of polygamy is low and diminishing. In
.\frica, however, polygamy is widespread, and
nobody seems to doubt that its occurrence is
closely related to economic conditions. A report
by the secretariat of tlle u'\ Economic Commission
ior Africa (ECA) affirms this point: "One of the
stron~est appeals of polygamy to men in Africa is
precisely its economic aspect, for a man with sev
eral wivcs commands more land, can produce
more food for his household and can achieve a
high starus due to the wealm which be can
eommand".2
It is self explanatory, given women's input ill
.\fiican farming, that a man can get more food if
From lstcr Boserup, "The Economics uf Polygamy", in
L'nwill, pp. 37-50.
he has more land and more wives to cultivate it.
But why is it that the more wiYes he has got, the
more land he can command, as the EC\ statement
says' The explanation lies in the fact that individ
ual property in land is far from bcing the only sys
tem of land tenure in Africa. Over much of the
continent, tribal rules of land tenure are still in
force. Tlus implies that members of a tribe which
commands a certain territory have a native right to
take land under cultivation for food production
and ill many cases also for the cultivation of cash
crops. Under this tenure system, an additional
wife is an additional economic asset which helps
the family to expand its production.
In regions of shifting cultivation, where women
do all or most of the work of growing food crops,
the task of fclJjng the trees in preparation of new
plots is usually done by oh.ler boys and very young
men, as already mentioned. An e1dcrl~' cultivator
with several wives is likely to have a number of
such boys who em be used for this purpose. By
the combined efforts of young sons and young
wives he may gradua.lly expand his cultivation
and become more and more prosperous, while a
man witll a single wife has less help in cultivation
W;m/m's Role ill [cOllomit" Del.'dojlmelll (1970), .\lIen and
390 ESTER BOSERUP

and is likely to have little or no help for felling.

Hence, there is a direct relationship between the
size of the area culti\'ated by a family and the
--
out of the subsistence farm level \\ithout either
lhe use of additional labour (read: hired labour
E.B.), the introduction of the plough, which is nOt
----- Table 26.1
THE ECONOMICS OF POLYGAMY

Incidence of polygamy in Africa

COl/III!')' in mltid, Al:el'llge nU/Il[,a PoIJl/!/unir 111 a ITiagrs

391

number of wives in the family. For instance, in a practical proposition in Bug-ancia; or by the mmple areas of lIJiUI per as percentage of all
the Bwamba region of Uganda, in East Africa, it maintenance of a large family unit, "hich is not a ,Ire located married /lien existing marriages
appeared from a sample study that men with one feature of Ganda social structure at the moment.";
1\ 1.1 24
wife cultivated an average of 1.67 acres of land, In the same vein, Little's classical study of the Senegal ~B 1.3 23
while men with two wives cultivated 2.9~ acres, Mende in the West African state of Sierra Leone 21
C 1.3
or nearly twice as much. The author of the study concluded that "a plurality of wives is an agriCUl_ Sierra Leone 23 51
describes women in this region as "the corner tural asset, since a large number of ,,-omen makes Ivory Coast 1.3 27
stone and the limiting factor in the sphere of it unnecessary to employ rnuch wage labour"." :\t
agricultural production" and notes that almost
all the men desire to have additional" ives. A
the time of Little's study (i.e. in the 1930s), it was
accepted in the more rural areas that nobody could
Nigeria {~ 2.1'
1.5
63

Cameroon 1.0001.3 b
polygamic family is "the ideal family organization
from the man's point of view".3
run a proper farm unless he had at least four wiYes.
Little found sixty-seven wives to the twenty-three
Congo
{~ 1.3
1.2
II
17
In female farming communities, a man with cultivators included in his sample and an 3\"erage South Africa 14
more than one wife can cultivate more land than a
man with only one wife. Hence, the institution of
of 842 households. He describes how the work of
one wife enables him to acquire an additional one:
Uganda {~ 1.7
1.2
45

polyganl\' is a significant element in the process of "He says to his first wife, 'I like such and such a
'The fIgures refer to male heads of families, while married sons li\'ing with rhese seem

economic development in regions where addi girl. Let us make a bigger farm this year.' As Soon to be excluded.

tioml land is available for culti\'ation under the as the han'est is O\'er for that year, he sells the rice bThe lowest rntio refers to unskilled workers, the highest r.ltio to own-account

long fallow system. There is an inverse correlation and so acquires the fourth wife."i "orkers.

between me use of female family labour and the Little's study is thirty years old, and the inci Table 26.1 StJI"gal: Sample A and B, UN. ECI. Polygamy, 9-10, 70,000 persons in Dakar

use of hired labour. It seems that farmers usually dence of polygamy has declined since then. But, in 1955 and ]960. Sample C, Boulillier, 1962,31,33; 1,265 persons in theValb- of

either have a great deal of help from their wives, or although households \-.,-ith large numbers of wiycs Senegal, 1957-8. Sierra Leone: Little 1948, 9-IOn, 842 households in i\lcnde Country,

193/. hrlly COllst: Boutillier 1960,45, sample of 3,764 persons, 1955-6. NIgeria:

else they hire l1bour. Thus farmers in polygamic seem to have more or less disappeared in most of
Sall/ple A, Galetti, 71-2; 776 families in the Yoruba region, 1950-1. SllII/ple B,

communities have a "'ider choice in this than have Africa, polygamy is still extremely widespread and Mortimore, 679, sample of 5, I03 persons in Kano dis trier, 1964_ Cameroon:

farmers in monogamic communities. In the former is considered an economic advantag'C in many rural Gouellain, 260, population in \kw-Be1J, Douala, 1956_ Co"go: Sample A and B,

community, the use of additional female family areas. The present situation can be gleaned from Ralandier 1955, 136. Brana\'i!le and Delisie, 1952. Sou/II Africa: Rc)nders 260,

laboill is not limited to the amount of work that Table 26.1, which brings together the results of a sample of I, ISO households in Bantu areas, 1950-1_ Uganda: Sample /I, Winter, 23,

one wife and her children can perform; the total number of sample studies about we incidence of sample of seve.nty-one families in Bwamba, J951. S,wrple B, Kalarikawe, 8, sample of

input of laboill can be expanded b~' the acquisition fifty-nine farni.lies in j(jga rescttlcm~nt schemes, 1956-6.

polygamy. It is seen that none of the more recent

of one or more additional wives.
This economic significance of polygamy is not
restricted to the long fallow system of cultivation.
In many regions, farmers have a choice bet\"een an
expansion of cultivation by the use of more labour
in long fallo",' cultivation, with a hoe, or an expan
sion by the transion to shorter fallow with ploughs
drawn by anima]s.~ In such cases, three possible
ways of development present themselves to the
farmer: expansion by technical change (the
plough); expansion by hierarchization of the com
munity (hired labour); or expansion by the tradi
tional method of acquiring additional wives. In a
study of economic development in Uganda,
Audrey Richards pointed to this crucial role of
polygamv as one of the possible ways to agricul
tural expansion: "It is rare to find Africans passing
studies shows such a high incidence of polygamic
marriages as in the period of Little's old study.
Most of the studies show an average number of
around 1.3 wives per married man."
In most cases over one-fifth of all married men
were found to have more than one \\-ife at the time
of enquiry.1
The acquisition of an additional \\-ife is not
always used as a mt--al1s ofbeeoming richer through
the expansion of cultivation. In some cases, the
economic role of the additional wife enables the
husband to enjoy more leisure. A village study
from Gambia showed that in the \-illage, where
rice is produced by women, men who had se\eral
wives to produce rice for them produced less mil
let (which is a crop produced by mcn) than did
men with only one wife 8 Likewise, in dle yillages
in the Central African Republic men with two
wives worked less than men with one wife, and
the\ found more time for hunting, the most cher
ished spare time occupation for the male members
of the village population. 9
Cndoubtedly, future changes in marriage pat
terns in rural Africa will be closely linked to future
changes in farming systems which may lessen (or
enhance) the economic incentive for polygamic
marriages. Of course, motives other than purely
economic considerations are behind a man's deci
sion to acquire an additional wife. The desire for
numerous progeny is no doubt often the main
incentive. \rhere both the desire for children and
the economic considerations are at work, the
incentives for polygamy are likely to be so powerful
that religious or legal prohibition avails little.
A study of the Yoruba farmers of Nigeria has
this to say: "There are no doubt other reasons why
polygamy prcYails in the Yoruba country as in other
rcgions of the \\orld; but the two which seem to be
most prominent in the minds of Yoruba farmers
are that wives contribute much more to the family
income than the value of their keep and that the
dignity and standing of the famil~' is enhanced by
an increase of progeny. Whj]e these beliefs persist
the institution of polygamy will be enduring, even
in families which have otherwise accepted Christian
dooTine. The Yoruba farmer argues that the
increased output from his farms obtainable without
392

ESTER BOSERUP
------------------------------------------
cash expense when he has wives to help him out
weighs the economic burden of providing more
food, more c10tlling ami larger houses."lU
The Status of Younger Wives
It is easy to understand the point of view of the
Yoruba farmers quoted above when one considers
tile contribution to family SUPPOTt which women
make i.n this region. Economic relations between
husband and wife among the Yoruba differ widely
from the common practise of countries where
wives are normally supported by their husbands.
Only 5 per cent of the Yoruba women in me sample
reproduced in Table 26.2 received from their hus
bands everything thev needed - food, clothing and
some cash - and only 2 per cent of mem did no
\\ork other than domestic activities. A large major
ity were self-employed (in agriculture, trade or
crafts) and man\' helped a husband on his farm in
addition to their self-employment and their domes
tic duties. Most of tbese self-employed women had
to proyide at least part of the food for the family as
well as clothing and cash out of their own earn
ings. Nearly one-fifth of the women received noth
ing from their husband and had to provide
everything out of their own earnings; nevertheless
they performed domestic duties for the husband
and half of them also helped him on his farm.
There may not be many tribes in Africa where
women contribute as much as the Yorubas to the
upkeep of the family, but it is normal in traditional
African marriages for women to support themselves
Table 26.2 Rights and duties of Yo ruba women
Percentage of Women Viith the following rights and duties:
Wife contributes 10 household:
as sclf-elllp/ol'ed,
Wifi r!'cclr's familv oil! and as self-employed
Fom husb01/{j housewife and Itousewlfr
Nothing 8 11
Part of food 32 16
All food 15 11
Food, clothing 1 ferencc in age between the spouses will be nar
and their children and to cook for the husband
often using food they produce themselves. A. small
sample from Bamenda in the West African
Cameroons showed that the \yomen contributed
44 per cent of the gross income of the famiIY.11
Many women of pastoral tribes, for instance ~he
FuJani tribe of Northem Nigeria and Niger, are
expected to provide a large part of tbe cash expenses
of the family out of their own earnings from the sale
of the milk and butter they produce. They cover the
expenditure on clothing for their children and
themselves as well as buving food for the famil\".I~
In many regions of East Africa, women are tradi
tionally expected to support themselves and many
women are said to prefer to marry Moslems becaus~
a Moslem has a religious duty to support his wife.
In a family system where wives are supposed
both to provide food for the family - or a large part
of it - and to perform the usual domestic du ties for
the husband, a wife will naturally welcome one or
more co-wives to share with them the burden of
daily work. Therefore, educated girls in Africa who
support the cause of monogamous marriage as part
of a modern outlook are unable to ralh the major
ity of women behind them. I) In the Ivory Coast, an
opinion study indicated that 85 per cent of the
women preferred to live in polygamous rather than
monogamous marriage. Nlost of them mentioned
domestic and economic reasons for their choice. 14
ln many cases, the first wife takes the initiative
in suggesting that a second wife, who can take over
the most tiresome jobs in the household, should
be procured. A woman marrying a man who
asfami6' aid as
and hOllseruifl; hOl/s"ml{e Tala!
19
48
28
1
3 )
---
THE ECONOMICS OF POLYGAMY
,Ilready has a number of wives often joins the
household more or less in the capacity of a servant
for the first wife, unless it happens to be a love
match.!> It was said above that in most parts of the
world there seems to be an inverse correlation
between the use of female labour and the use of
hired labour in agriculture, i.e. that most farmers
hal' c some help either from their wives or from
hired labour. However, in some regions \\itb wide
spread polygamy, hired labour is a supplemenl to
rhe labour provided by several wives, in the sense
that the tasks for which male streng1h is needed
are done by hired labour, while the other tasks are
done by wives. In such cases the husband or his
adult sons act only as supenisors.
Reports from different parts of Africa, ranging
hom the Sudan to Nigeria and the Tvor) Coast,
have drawn attention to this frequent combination
of male labourers and wives of polygamous culti
vators Ilorking together in the fields under the
supervision of one or more male family members. I"
In such cases, the availabilit) of male lahour for
hire is not a factor which lessens the incentive to
polygamous marriages. On the contrary, it pro over 35, as can be seen from the table, while only
vides an additional incentive to polygamous mar
riages as a means of expanding the family business
without changing the customary division oflabour
between the two sexes. Little reponed that in
Sierra Leone men with several wives sometimes
used thcm to ensnare male agricultural labourers
and get them to work for them without pay. Ii
In regions where polygamy is the rule, it is
likely, for obvious demographic reasons, that many
males II ill have to postpone marriage, or even
forego it. Widespread prostitution or adultery is
therefore likely to accompany widespread poly
gam); marriage payments are likely to be insignifi
cant or non-existant for the bride's family and
high for the bridegroom's family, sometimes
amounting to several years' earnings of a seasonal
labourer. IS This will induce parents to marry off
their daughters rather young, but in a period like
the present, where each generation of girls is
numerically larger than the previous one, the dif
393
Table 26.3 Age distribution of married Moslem
population of Dakar in Senegal
F'ercCllrages
First Wives Lara TIV,,cs Husbands
Age Group:
elow 25 years 12 35
25-34 years 49 44 10
35-49 years 35 19 59
50 years 4 2 31
and over
.\ll ages 100 100 100
average marriage age for women is 18 years, and
the average age of first marriage for men is between
27 and 28 vears. The average age difference
between men and their second wives is over
15 yeaTS, and nearl) all wives belong to age groups
which are larger than those to which their hus
bands belong.l~ No less than 90 per cent of mar
ried men belong to the relatively small generations
39 per cent of their first wives and 21 per cent of
their second wives belong to these generations.
Economic policy during the period of colonial
rule in Africa contributed to the introduction or
reinforcement of the customary wide difference in
marriage age of young men and girls. In order to
obtain labour for road transport, construction
works, mines and plantations, the Europeans
recruited young villagers at an age where they
might have married had Ule) stayed on in the vil
lage. Instead they married after their return sev
eral years later. The result was an age structure in
the \'illages with very few young men in the age
group between 20 and 35 and the need to marry
young girls to much older men who had returned
from wage labour.
The difterence between the numbers of boys
and girls in villages where the custom of taking
away \\age labourers before marriage persists, can
be seen from Figure 26.1 which gives the ag'e dis
tribution in Rhodesian villages as reported in a

and cash rower than it was preYiously. study by J. Clyde MitchelPO In the age groups
Total 56 38 4 2 100 Figures from Dakar, the capital of Senegal, 20-35 nearly all the men are away and the number
shown ifl Table 26.3 illustrate the importance of of women in these age groups is several times
Table 26.2. Galeni 77, sample of l44 "-omen in sevcnty-tb.rcc families in Yuruba region, 195] --2. the age difference between the spouses. Here, the higher than that of the men. In many other parts
394 ESTER BOSERUP
---
80
120
Age 160
POpulotion in thousands
Shaded portion represents persons absent from the African areas
Figure 26.1 Sex and ~lge structure of population in African areas of South Rhodesia in 1956
of Africa, recruitment for mines, plantations and husband, which would come to much the same
urban industries results in similarly abnormal age thing in terms of real economic relationships.
distributions in the villages where the labourers Embodied in Moslem la\\' is the well-known
are recrui ted. rule that all wives must be treated equally, \\hieh
Normally, the status of the younger wife is infe implies that the younger 'lives must not be used as
rior as befits the ass.istant or even servant to the servants for the senior wives. Moreover, a limit is
first wife. This can be explained partly as a result set to the use of \\ ives for expansion of the family
of the wide age difference between husband and business, partly by limiting the alloll'able number
wife and between first and younger wife, but the ofwivcs to four, and partly by making the husband
historical background of the institution of poly responsible for the support of his wives. We have
gamy must also be kept in mind. Domestic slavery already mentioned that this seryes to make
survived until fairly recently in many parts of Moslem men desirable marriage partners for many
Africa, and the legal ban on slavery introduced by African girls in regions II here girls marricll to
European colonial powers provided an incentive non-Moslems are expected to support themsdyes
for men to marry girls whom otherwise they might and their children by hard work in the fields.
have kept as slaves. Because of this principle of equal treatment, first
In a paper published as reeentl) as 1959, it is wives in orthodox Moslem marriages may desist
mentioned that in the hor)' Coast women were still from making the younger wiYes perform the most
bcing pawned by husbands or fathers to work in unpleas,mt task!>. Often in African families
thcir creditor's fields, together witb his own" ives Moslem and non-l\ loslem - each wife has her o"n
and daughters and without pay until the debt was hut or house and cooks independently, while the
paid off, when they were free to return to their own husband in regular succession will liye and eat
families. 21 Toda), such arrangements may be rare in with each of his wi\ es. Even so, the wife gains by
frica, but it i<; probable that the bride price for ;m not having to feed her husband all the time, 'lOd
additional wife is sometimes settled by the cancella ',e sometimes find that women prefer polygamy
tion of a debt from the girl's family to the future even where the wives are treated equally.
- THE ECONOMICS OF POLYGAMY
In most of Africn the rule is that a wife may
1e,\\c her husband provided that she pays bad. the
bride price. Tn regions where \Ii'es must do hard
aO"ricultural work, many young girls wish to find
I;oncy to enable them to leave a much ulder hus
band, and many husbands fear that their young
\\'i\'cs II ill be ablc to do 50. 12 This makes older men
t,lkc an interest on one hand in keeping bride
prices at ~11e1 el II hich makes it difficult for women
ro earn enough to pay them back and on the other
hand in preventing their young II ives from obtain
ing money incomes. Later we shall ~ee what role
rh~sc conflicting interests bet ween men and
women are playing in development policy.
Work Input and Women's Status
polyganlY offers fcwer incenti\'es in those parts of
the world where, because they are more densely
populated than Africa, the system of shifting culti
YelliOT! has been replaced by the permanent cultiva
tion of fields ploughed before sowing. However, in
some regions where the laller system prevails,
polygamy may have adlantages. This is true par
ticularly where the main crop is cotton, since
\\omen and childrcn are of great help in the pluck
ing seasonY [Jut in farming systems where men do
most of the agricultural work, a second wife call be
an economic burden rather than an asset. In order
to feed an adllitional wife the husband must either
work harder himself or he must hire labourers to
do parl of lhe \\ork. In such regions, polygamy is
either non-existent or is a luxury in which only a
small minority of rich farmers can indulge. The
proportion of polygamic marriages is reported to
be helow 4 per cent in Egypt, 2 per cent in Algeria,
3 PCf cent in Pakistan and Indonesia. 24 The.re is a
striking contrast between this lull' incidence of
polygamy and the fact that in many parts of Africa
South of the S~hara one-third to one-fourth of all
marned men ha\'e more than one wife.
Tn region~ where women do most of the agricul
tural work it is the bridegroom who must pay
bridcwealth, as already mentioned, but where
women are less actively engaged in agriculture,
marriage payments come usual!) from the girl's
i8mil~. In South and East Asia the connection
het\\'een the wod. of women and the direction of
marriage pa) ments is close and unmistakable.
For instance, in Burma, Malaya ~nd Laos women
seem to do most oftbe agricultural work and bride
prices are customary.2; The same is true of Indian
395
tribal people, and of low-caste peoples whose
women work. By contrast, in the Hindu commnni
ties, women are less active in agriculture, and
instead of a bride price being paid by tile bride
groom, a dowf) has to be paid by the bride's family.'"
A dowry paid by tile girl's famjly is a means of secur
ing for her a good position in her husband's family.
In the middle of the ninetecnth century it was legal
for a husband in Thailand to scll a wife for whom
he had paid a bride price, but not a wife whose
p;uenrs had paid a dowry to the husband. 2'
Not only the payment of a dowry but also the
use of the veil is a means of distinguishing the sta
tus of the upper class wife from that of the "sen
ant wife." In ancienr Arab societ), the usc of the
veil and the retirement into seclusion were means
of distinguishing the honoured wife from the s)a,"e
girl who was exposed to the public gaze in the
slave market. 2R In the Sudan cven today it appcnrs
to be a mark of distinction and ~ophistication for
an educated girl to retire into seclusion when she
has finished her edueation.2'1
Ln communities wherc girls live in seclusion,
,md a large dowry must be paid when they marry,
parents naturally come to dread the burden of
haying daughters. In ,orne of the farming commu
nities in Northern India, where women do little
work in agriculturc and the parents know that a
daugbter will in due course cost them the payment
of a down', it was customary in earlier times to
limit tbe number of surviving daughters by infan
ticide. This practice has disappeared, in its out
ward forms, but ncvertheless the ratio of female to
male population in these districts continucs to be
abnormal compared to other regions of India and
to tribes with working women living in the same
region. !\ recent stud) of regional variations in the
sex t<ltiO of population in India.J1l reachcd the con
clusion that the small number of women in the
Northern diso'icts could not be explained cither
b) undelllUmeration of females, or b) migration,
or b) a 10\\ female birthrate. The only plausible
hypothesis wOllld be that mortality among girls
was higher than among boys. The conclusion
drawn was that "the persistence of socio-eultural
factors arc believed to be largely rcsponsible for
396
the excess of female mortality over the mak."31
One of these socio-culrural factors seems to be a
widespread supposition that milk is not good for
ESTER BOSERUP
girls, but is good for boys. There is also a tendency
to care more for sick boys than for sick girls.32
In a study from a district in Central India with
a deficit of women, the author is very outspoken
about the neglect of girls: "The Rajputs always
preferred male children. . .. Female infanticide,
therefore, was a tolerated practise.... Although in
the past 80 ) ears the proportion of the females to
males has steadily risen yet there was always a
shortage of women in the region .... \Vhen inter
rogated about the possibility of exjstence of female
infanticide, the villagers emphaticall) deny its
existence.... It was admitted on aU hands that if a
female child fell ill, then the care talen was vcry
cursor) and if she died then: was liole sorrow. In
fact, in a ne-arby village a cultivator had twelve
children - six sons and six daughters. All the
daughters fell ill from time to time and died. The
sons also fell ill but they' survived. The villagers
know that it was by omissions that these children
had died. Perhaps there has been a transition from
\'iolcnce to non-violence in keeping with the spirit
of tile times,"J3 The report adds that "no records
of birth or deaths are kept.... it was enjoined upon
the Panchayat (\;,1Iage council) to keep these statis
tics. but they were ne\'er able to fuliil the task"'" It
is explicitly said in the study that the district is one
where wives and daughters of culti\'ators tale no
part in field work. In some cases, tbe shortage of
women in rural communities in North India
induces the cultivators to acquire low caste women
from other districts, or from other indian States,
against the payment of a bride price J ; This need
not be an infringement on caste rules. Although it
is usually forbidden for a man to marry a \\oman
of a higher caste, men of higher caste may have the
right to marry women of lower castes. 36 This may
then entail the payment of a bride price instead
of the receipt of a dowry as would be customary in
the husband's own subcaste.
To summarize the analysis of the position of
\\'omen in rural communities, two broad groups
may be identified: the first type is found in regions
where shifting cultivation predominates and the
major part of agricultural work is done by women.
In such communities, we can e~pect to find a high
incidence of polygamy; and bride wealth being
paid by the future husband or his family, Thc
-
womcn are hard working and have only a limited
-- THE ECONOMICS OF POLYGAMY
bOth as workers and as mothers of the ne"t
'feneratio n and, therefore, that the men keenly
desire to have more than one wife. On the other
hand, in a l'lU'al community where women tal;e lit
male children. There is a danger in such a commu
nity that the propaganda for birth control, if suc
cessful, may further lower the status of women both
in the eyes of men and in their 0\\ n eyes. This risk
397
right of support from their husbands, but thc\' is less in communities where women are valued
tle part in field work, they are \-alued as mothers
often enjo~ considerable freedom of mO\'eme~t because the~ contribute to the well-being of the
onl\' and the stams of the barren woman is very low
and some economic independence from the sale of family in other ways, as well as breeding sons.
their own crops.
in ~on1parison with that of the mother of numerous
The second group is found where plough eUhi_
\'ation predominates and where women do less
agricultural work than men. In such communities
we ma~ expect to find that only a tiny minoril\' of :\otes
marriages, if any, are polygamous; that a dow;y is Some of the samples were taken in urban areas, 13 U"l. EC\., Polygamy, 32.
usually paid by the girl's family; that a wife is \I hcre the incidence of polygamy is orten, though 14 Bourillier 1960, 120.
not ah\a~s Im\er than in rural areas. 15 Linle 1951, 133.
entirely dependent upon her husband for eco
To e\alullle correctly this figure for the incidence 16 Baumann, 307; Forde, 45; Boutillier 1960, 97;
nomic support; and that the husband has an obli
of pol\cgamy il must be taken that some of the mar Gosselin, 521.
gation to support his wife and children, at least as 17 Little 1951, HI, 1948, II.
ried men, at the time of the enquiry, had one wife
long as the marriage is in force. 18 Forde, 75n.
on I) becausc they were at an early stage of their
We find the first type of rural community in married life, while othcrs wcre older men !i\'jng in 19 UN. ECA., Po/)/gamy, 24.
Africa South of the Sahara, in many parts of South monugamous marriage because I hey had lost other 20 l\litchell, Suc. Backgr., 80.
East Asia and in rribal regions in many parts of the wives br uealh or divorce. Therefore, the figure for 21 d'AbY,49
\\orld. We also find this type among descendents the inciuence of polygamy wou Id have been consid 22 Winter, 23.
of negro slaves in certain parts of America. 51 The erably higher if it were to sho\\ the proportion of 23 !\rnaldc7., 50.
second type predominates in regions influenced mell who havc more than one wife at some stage of 24 UN. ECA, mJlII. J\: /(fi., 41; Appadorai, 18.
their married life. 25 MiMi Khaing, 109; Swift, 271; Levy, 264.
by Arab, J-lindu and Chinese culture.
.'\ppadorai, 19. 26 Mitham, 283--t
Of course, this distinction between two major
UN. ECA., /fum. Trud. Sor, 5. 27 Purcell, 295.
types of community is a simplification, like any
Winter, H. 28 Izzedin, 299.
other generaliz.1tion about social and economic 29 Tothill,245,
4 Simons, 79-80.
matters. This must be so because many rural com 30 Visaria, 334-71.
Richards 1952,204.
munities are already in transition from one type of 31 Visaria,370.
Littlc 1951, 141-2.
technical and cultural system to another, and in Little 1951,1+1-2,145. 32 Kan'c, 103-4.
this process of change some elements in a culture 8 H\s\\ell, 10. 33 Bharnagar,61-2.
lag behind others to a varying degree. FDr exam 9 Georges, 18,25,31. 34 Bhatnagar, 65.
ple, SOme communities may continue to have a HI Galetti, 77. 35 '\lath,l\lay 1965,816.
f.1irly high incidence of polygamy or continue to 11 Kaberry, 141. 36 Majumdar, 61.
12 Forde, 203; Dupire 1960,79. 37 Bastide, 37ff.
f01l0\\ the custom of paying bride price long after
the economic incentive for such customs has dis
appeared as agricuhural techniques changed.
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~brger}
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ESTER BOSERUP

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l'ecologie du "Grand Quartier" de New-Be.ll, Douala
in Southall, A. (cd.), Social Chllt/ge ill Hodem Africa,
London 1961.
Has\\ell, ~L R, The 'hal/gmg Pallfrtl of f.'col/omlc
1rltt'ily til a CIlIIII'ia I'il/age, HMS London 1963,
processed.
lueddin, !'<ejb, The Arab World, Chicago 1953.
Kaherrl, Ph) lIis \1., 1I1mwII oflhe Crass/idds. A S/tidy 0/
rhe EClJllomh' Pasitioll of 11'(lIlIm ill B,tmclltla, Briti.,h
Ca//lauolls. Culonial Orfice, Research Publicarion 1\0.
l-t, London 1952.
Karl'c, Irawati, "The Indian Woman in 1975" in
Paspe(/ives, SlIpplel/mlt 10 Ihe bldiallloumal ojPllblic
.1dI//;lIistl',l/i07l, January-March 1966.
Katarika\\e, E., "SomePreJjminary Resulrs of a Survey
uf Kiga Resertlemem Schemes in Kigezi, Ankoll and
Toro Districts, Western Uganda", Researrh Paper
Makerere UII;,.wsily Col/e,~e, R.D.R. 31, processed.
Le,"y, Banyen Phimmasone, "Yesrerday and today in
Laos: a Girl':; Autobiographic'll :-.Jotes", in Ward,
Barbara E. (cd.) /I omen ill tire NelP ASia. The C/w',gillg
Social Roles 4 A'lm and Ifometl In Sot/th alld Suuth
I::llsl Asia, Ll\ESCO 1963
Little, K. L., "The Changing Position of Women in the
Sierru I.cone PrOlcctoratc", in Afticu, Vol. X\ 'TIl, 1948.
Little. K. L., Tire ,\lei/de ofSierra Le071e. A HeSI ,~fricall
People III Tmllsit;oll, London 1951.
:\lajumdar, D. N., "About Women in Patrilocal Societies
in South .'\sia", in Appadorai, A. (ed), The StatllS oj
11 Oil/eli in SOllllr1sill, Bombay 1954.
J'vli i\1i Khaing, "Burma, Balance ;yod Harmony", in
Ward, Barbara E. (cd.), Womell ill Ihe NelP '15111. Tire
CJllmgillg Sotlal Roles ~Ol,Jm IIl1d Womell ill Soullr amI
SOIl/ii-East Asill, UNESCO 1963.
/VOII/t'II'S Rul,' 11/ the Develop11It:1I/ of 1/'opir4J //11,[ .\~/...
Tropical Clllllltr;es, Bru~sels 1959.
Re) nuers, 11. j. J., "The Geugraphical Income of Ih t
Bantu Areas in South 'HritOl", in Samuels, 1.. II.(cll.),
4fticIIII Stlldies ,lIll1come IIII{/ Heallh, London l'J{,.1.
Richards, Audre) I., Llllld, LII/oollr (/ltd Die! III .\"orlhar,
Rhodesia. All [collvlI/i( Silltly 0/ Ihe Bemb" Trih(
London 1939.
Richards, Audre~ I., ErO/lOlllif DCi.{'/UpIIIC711 olld Tn!>ul
'IlIIlIge, Cambridge 1952.
Simons, fl. j., Ajrirtl/l II omen. Their Legol Sw", il:
SOllth ./(nco, E\.mston 1968.
S\\ ift, Michael, ""'len and Women in ~lala}' Societ). in
Ward, Barbara E. (cd.) """,lf71 III Ih,' .Ycw Asill. TIl
Chll7lgillg SOfial Roles o/,l'Iell lI/1d '''omen ill SIIUI" ulld
SOltth-Em Asia, UNESCO 1963.
Tothin, J. n, 'Jgrimlillre illlilr 51/111111, London 195-t.
uniled .'alions F.conomic Commission for Africa. "1'01)
gamic, Famillc et Fait Urbain (Essai sur Ie Sl,ntgall,"
i'/'orksll/)p 011 Urba.1I Problems, Addis Ababa 1963,
processed.
Unjl~d Nations Econurnic Commission for Africa, "The
Employment and Socia-Economic Situation of
Women in some Norrh African Countries," ";,r4's"I1/,
Oil urban Problems, Addis Ababa 1903, processed
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"Women in theTraditionalA rrican Societies," "("bl,./,
(Ill Ur/HIII Pmblt'lllJ, Addis Ababa 1963, processed.
Visaria, Pra\in 1\01., "The Sex Ratio of the Populalion of
India and Pakistan and Regional Variations DlIrin~
1901 - 61" III Hose, Ashish (cd.) Pattei'll II/PoPulali""
CJu/ltgr III 1/IIIm 1951-61, Bombay 1967.
Winter, EJ I., "nwamba Econom)", asl .WifUII
Slut/ie.\ ", r\o. 5, Kampala 1955.
Judith Van Allen
'
In the con\'Cntional \\ isdom, Western influence
has "cmancipllled" African women - through the
\\eakening ot" kinship bond~ a.nd the provision of
"free cboice" in Chri~tian monogamous marriage,
rhe suppression of "barbarous" practices, the
opemng of ~ehooJs, the introduction of modem
mcdicine and h) giene, and sometimes, of female
suffrage.
Hut \\Jesternization is not an unmixed bles~ing.
The experience of 19bo women under British
colonialism show~ that Western influence can
sometimes \\eal-en or destro) \\1omen's traditiona.l
aUWUOIl1) and power \\ ithoUl prO'iding modern
forms of autonomy or po\\er in exchange. 19bo
110men had ;t significant role in traditional politi
cal life. As indi, iduals, the) participated in village
meetings with men. But their real political power
\las bascd on the solidarit) of women, as expressed
in their 0\\ n political institutions - their "meet
ings" (1I/;I:'I'i or IIIltin), their market net \\ orl-s,
their kinship groups, and their right to use strikes,
ho:cous and force to effect uleir decisions.
British colonial officers and missionarje~, both
men and \\omen, gencralJ) failed to see the politi
cal roles and the politic:l] po\\er of Igbo \\omen.
The actions of administrators weakened and in
some cases destro)ed \\omen's bases of strength.
Since rhey did nOt appreciate women's political
institutions, they made no efforts to ensure \\om
en's panicipation in the modern insritutions they
II' ere tryi n g to fi)stel'.
19bo women haven't taken leadership roles in
modern local government, nationalist movements
and national government and what roles they Itaile
pl<lyed h:we not been inn:stigated by scholars. The
purpose in describing their tradItiO/TIll political
inslitutions and source of power is to raise the
question of 1/71t1' these women ha\ e been "invisible"
historically, t:\'en though the) forced the colonial
authorities to pay attention to them briefly. We
suggest that the dominant vie\\ among British
colonial ofiicers and missionaries was that politics
was a man's concern. Socialized in Victorian
England, they had internalized a set of \'alucs and
attitudes about \\hat they considered to be the
natural and proper role of women th:!t supported
this belief We suggest further that this assumption
about men and politics has had a great deal to do
\\ itl1 the fact that no one has even asked, "Whatever
happened to 19bo \\ omen's organizations?" e\en

':rom Judith Van Allen, J 982, "'Sitting all a :\lan': Colonialism and the Lost Political Institution ofIgbo \\omen",
~~lIadillll ]/!/If11al oj.-I./i"ictlll Smd,e.f, 6(2}: 165-81.
400
------------------------------~---
though all the evidence needed to justify the
question has been available for 30 years.
JUDITH VAN ALLEN
Igbo Traditional Political Institutions!
Political power in Igbo society was difJilse. There
were no specialized bodies or offices in which
legitimate power was vested, and no person,
regardless of his status or ritual position, had the
authority to issue commands which others had an
obligation to obey. In line with this diffusion of
authority, the right to enforce decisions was also
diffuse: there was no "state" that held a mono
poly of legitimate force, and the use of force to
protect one's interests or to see that a group deci
sion was carried out was considered legitimate for
individuals and groups. In the simplest terms, the
British tried to create specialized political institu
tions which commanded authority and monopo
lized force. In doing so they took into account,
eventually, Igbo political institutions dominated
by men but ignored those of the II omen. Thus,
lI'omen were shut out from political power.
The 19bo lived traditionally in semi-autonomous
villages, which consisted of the scattered com
pounds of 75 or so patri-kinsmen; related villages
formed "village-groups" which came together for
limited ritual and jural purposes. \'illages com
monly contained several hundred people; but size
varied, and in the more densely populated areas
there were "village-groups" with more than 5,000
members 2 Disputes at all the levels above the
compound were settled hy group discussion until
mutual agreement was reached]
The main Igbo political institution seems to
have been the village assembly, a gathering of all
adults in the village who chose to attend. Any adult
who had something to say on the matter under dis
cussion was entitled to speak - as long as he or she
said something the others considered worth listen
ing to; as the Igbo say, "a case forbids no one.";
Matters dealt within the village assembly were
those of concern to an - eithet common problems
for which collective action was appropriate ("How
can we make our market 'bigger' than the other
villages' markets?") or conOicts which threatened
the unity of the village.;
Decisions agreed on by the village assembly did
not have the force of law in our terms, hCJ\vcver.
Even after decisions had been reached, ~ocial
pressure based on consensus and the ability of
individuals and groups to enforce decisions in
their favour played a major part in gi,'ing the force
of law to decisions. As Green 6 put it:
(O)ne had the impression ... that laws only estab
lish themselves by degrees and then only in so far
as they gain gem:ral acceptance. .'\ law does nOI
either exist or not exist: rather it goes through a
process of establishing itself by common consent
or of being shelved by a series of quiet evasions.
Persuasion about the rightness of a particular
course of action in terms of tradition was of pri
mary importance in assuring its acceptance and
the leaders were people who had the ability to
persuade. . while a woman might rank higher among women
The mode of political discourse was that of
prOlerb, parable and metaphor drawn from the
body of Igbo tradition.; The needed political
knowledge was accessible to the average man or
\\oman, since alllgbo were reared with these prov
erbs and parables. InOuential speech was th~ crea
li\ e and skillful 'lL~e of trad~tion to assure others
that a certain course of action was both a I\ise and
right thing to do. The accessibility of this knowl
edge is indicated by an Igbo proverb: "If you tell a
proverb to a fool, he will as\,. you its meaning."
The leaders of Igbo society were men and
\\omen who combined wealth and generosi~'
with "mouth" - the ability to speak well. Age
combined with wisdom brought respect but age
alone carried little inOuence. The senior elders
who \\ ere ritual heads of their lineages were \'eI!'
like!) to have considerable inOuence, but they
would not have achieved these positions in the
first place if they had not been considered to have
good sense and good character,~ Wealth in itself
was no guarantee of inOuence: a "big man" or
"big woman" was not necessarily a wealthy per
son, but one who had shown skill and generosi~'
in helping other indi\ iduals and, especially, the
community.9
Men owned the most profitable crops su,h as
palm oil, received the bulk of tbe money from
bride-wealth, and, if compound heads, presents
from the members. Through the patrilineage, they
controlled the land, which they could lease to
--
aIsa
"SITTING ON A MAN"
non-kinsmen or to women for a good profit. Men
_ did most of the long-distance trading which
., higher profit than local and reg'ional trading
g-J\l;. . .. , )!\
which was almost entirely 111 women shands.
,ramen were entitled to sell the surplus of their
own crops and the palm kernels which were their
sh.lre of the palm produce. They might also sell
repared foods or the products of special skills, for
instance, processed salt, pots and baskets. They
pocketed the entire profit, but their relatively
lower profit levels kept them disadvantaged rela
tire to the men in acquiring titles and prestige. II
For womcn as well as for men, status was largely
achieved, not ascribed. A woman's status was
determined more by her OIIJll adlie-.:emellts than by
the achievemcnts of her husband. The resources
'lrailable to men were greater, however; so that
than her husband did among men, very few women
could acquire the highest titles, a major source of
. I'
prestige.
At villag:e assemblies men were more likely to
speak than were women; women more often spoke
only on maners of direct concern to them.I'Title
holders took leading parts in discussion, and were
more likely to take part in "consultation" After a
case had been thoroughly discussed, a few men
r"tired in order to come to a decision. A spokes
man then announced the decision, which could be
accepted or rejected by the assemblyH
Apparently no rule forbade women to partici
pate in consultations but they were invited to do so
only rarely. The invited women were older women,
for while younger men might have the wealth to
acquire the higher titles and thus make up in talent
what they lacked in age, younger women could not
acquire the needed wealth quickly enough to be
eJigiblc.:. n
Women, therefore, came second to men in
power and inOuence. While status and the politi
cal influence it could bring were achieved and
there \Iere no formal limits to women's political
power, men through their ascriptive status (mem
bers of the patrilineage) acquired wealth which
gaIT them a head start and a life-long advantage
OI'Cr women. The Igbo say that "a child who
waShes his hands clean deserves to cat with his
elders."II, Rut at birth some children I\'ere given
Water and some were not.
Women's Political Institutions
401
Since political authorit} was diffuse, the settling
of disputes, discussions about how to improve the
village or its market, or any other problems of gen
eral concern were brought up at various gather
ings such as funerals, meetings of kinsmen to
discuss burial rituals, and the marketplace, gather
ings whose ostensible purpose was not political
discussion. Ii
The women's base of political power Jay in their
own gatherings. Since Igbo society was patrilocal
and villages were exogamous, adult women resi
dent in a village would almost all be wives, and
others were divorced or widowed "daughters of
the village" who had returned home to live. Women
generally attended age-set gatherings (ogbo) in their
natal villages, performed various ritual functions,
and helped to settle disputes among their
"brothers."ls But the gatherings which performed
the major role in self-rule among women and
which articulated women's interests as opposed to
those of men \\-ere the village-wide gatherings of
all adult women resident in a village which under
colonialism came to be called tllikiri or mitiri (from
"meeting"). 19
Mikiri were held whenever there was a nced. 20
In mikiri the same processes of discussion and
consultation were used as in the village assembly.
There were no official leaders; as in the village,
women of wealth and generosity who could speak
well took leading roles. Decisions appear often to
haye been announced initially by wives telling
their husbands. If the need arose, spokeswomen
to contact the men, or women in other villages
were chosen through general discussion. If the
announcement of decisions and persuasion were
not sufficient for their implementation, women
could take direct action to enforce their decisions
and protect their interests. 21
Mik,'ri provided women with a forum in which
to develop their political talents among a more
egalitarian group than the village assembly. In
17Iikiri, women could discuss their particular
interests as traders, farmers, wiYes and mothers.
These interests often were opposed to those of the
men, and where individually women couldn't
compete with men, collectively they could often
hold their own.
+02 JUDITH VAN ALLEN
One of the lIIil.-iri's most important functions
was that of a market association, to promote and
regulate the major activity of women: tn1ding. At
these discussions prices were set, rules established
about market anendance, and fines fixed for those
who violated the rules or who didn't contribute to
market rituals. Rules were also made which
applied to men. For instance, rowdy behavior on
the part of young men was forbidden. Husbands
and elders were asked to control the young men.
If their requests were il,'llored, the women \\ould
handle the matter b) launching a bo)cott or a
trike to force the men to police themselves or
they might decide to "sit on" the indi\ idual
offcndcr.Zl
"Sitting on a man" or a woman, boycolls and
strikcs were the women's main weapons. To "sit
on" or "make war on" a man involved gathering at
his compound, sometimes late at night, dancing,
singing scurrilous songs \I,hich derailed the wom
en's grievances against him and often called his
manhood into question, banging on his hut with
the pestles women used for pounding yams, and
perhaps demolishing his hut or plastering it with
mud and roughing him up a bit. A man might be
'anctioned in this wa) for mistreating his wife, for
violating the women's market rules, or for letting
his cows cat Lhe women's crops. The women would
stay at hIS hut throughout the day, and late into the
night, if necessary, until he repented anu prom
ised to mend his way s.2'Although this could hardly
have been a pleasant experience for the offending
m<ln, it was considered legitimate and no man
would consider interyening.
In tackling men as a group, women used boy
cotts and strikes.l1arris describes a case in which,
after repeated request by the women for the paths
to the market to be cleared (a male responsibil
ity), all the women refused to cook for their hus
bands untillhe request was carried out. H ror this
boycott [0 be effecti\'e, tI// women had to cooper
ate so that men could not go and cat \\ ith their
brothers. Another time the men of a \ illage
decided that the women should stop trading at
the more distant markets from which they did not
return until late at night because the men feared
that the women \1 ere ha\ ing sexual relations" iLh
men in those towns. The \\ omen, however, refused
to comj)ly since opportuniry to buy in one market
- --
and sell in another was ba~ic to profit-malin
Threats of collective rctaliation were cnou<>h It.
. I
make t he men eapltu ate.
.. It,
As farmers, women's interest conflicted \lith
those of the men as owners of much of the larger
livestock - cows, pigs, goats and sheep. The men'
crop, yams, had a short season and was then dug
up and stored, after which the men temled to he
careless about keeping their li\'cstock OUI of the
women's crops, Green reports a case in \Ihi\:h tht
women of a village swore an oath U1at if an~ wuman
killcd a CO\\ or other domestic anim'l) on her farm
the others would stand b) her. z5
A woman could also bring complaints ahnut her
husband to the mlkiri.If most of the women agrcl'd
that the husband was at faull, the) \\ould collec
tivcl) support her. They might send spoh;~women
to tell the husband to apologize and to gi\l: her a
present, and, if he was recalciu'anl the) might "sit
on" him. They mjght also act to protect a right of
wives. Harris describes a case of women's Solidar
ity to maintain sexual freedom:
'C'he men ... were VCT) angry because their wires
were openlv having relations \\ ith their Imers.
The men ... met and passed a hll\ to the efrect
that ever) woman ... ~hould renounce her 100n
and present a goal to her husband as a tnken 01
repentance ... The \Iomen held ... secret meet
ings and, a fe\\ mornings later, they I\Cn! til a
neighboring [\ illage], leaving all but sUlLling
children beh.ind them ... IThe men] endured it
for a day and a h'llf and then thc)' \\ ent to the
women and beggcd their return ... [T]ht: men
gave Ithe women] one goat and apologized infor
mally and formall)l.
Thus through 17likiri women aCTed to force a resolu
tion of their individual and collecl i\c gric\'antes.
Colonial Penetration
Into tl'lis system of cliffuse authority, fluid and
informalleadersrup, shared rights of enfurcement,
and a more or less stable balance of male and
female power, the British tried to introduce ideas
of "native administration" derived from colonial
experience with chjefs and emirs in northern
Nigeria. Southern Nigeria was declared 1I pt otCl'
lOrate in 1900, but il was ten years before the
qucst was effective. As colonial power was
coll. bll'shed in WI1at t h e B"
l'st,1 .
JTlO
"SITTING ON A MAN"
flUS h percel\'e
. d as a SHU
. 11 of "ordered anarchv," Igbohmd was divided
'. .
. Aba and The Women's War
, 0 ~lti"e Comt Areas whIch VIOlated the auton
l11t . ' . .
01 1' of rillages b~ lumpll1g many unrelated vIJ
;~".~s into c;lch court area. British District Officers
,n.:~rc. to preside over the courts, but were not
Jllra\ s presCllt as there were more courts than
offic~rs. The Tgbo membership was formcd by
choosing from each \-illage a "reprcsentative" who
lIas given a \\arrant of office. These Warranr
Chiefs were also constituted the Native Authority,
The r were required to sec that the orders of the
[)ist~ict Officers were executed in their own vil
IJgcs and \\cre the only link between the colonial
powcr and the peoplc n
It was <l violation of Igbo concepts to have one
mJJl represent the village in the first place and
marc of a violation that he should give orders to
CI crrone else, The people obeycd the Warrant
Chief when they had to, since British power backed
him up. In some places \Varrant Chiefs were line
Jgc heads or wealthy men \\ho were already Icad
l'fS in the \ iUage. But in many places they \\ ere
simpI) ambitious, opportunistic young men who
put themsehes forward as friends of the conquer
ors. ["en the relatively Icss corrupt Warrant Chief
II'JS still, more than anything else, an agent of the
llritish,U
The people avoided using 'Jati\e Courts when
the: could do so. But Warrant Chiefs could force
cases into the Native Court;<; and could fine people
for infractions of rules. B) having the car of the
Briti"h. the Warrant Chief could himself violate
traditions and evcn British rules, and get away
lIith it since his veTsion would be believed. z9
\\omen suffered particularly under the
arbitrary rule of Warrant Chiefs, who were
reported as ha\ing taken women 10 marry with
out conforming to the customary process, which
included the woman's right to refuse a particular
suitor. They also helped themseh'es to the wom
en's agricultural produce, and to their domestic
animals. 'II
Recommendations for reform of the s)stem
were made almost from its inception both by jun
ior ollicers in the field and b) senior officers Sent
OUt from headquarters to imcstigale. BUl no real
improvements were made.)1
The Native Administration in the years bcfore
403
1929 took little account of either mc;n's or wom
en's political institutions. In 1929, \Iomen in
southern 19boland became convinced that they
were to be t;l\:cd b) the British. This fear on top of
their resentment of the Warrant Chiefs led to what
the British called the Aba Riots, and the Igbo, the
Women's War. The rebellion pro\ ides perhaps
the most striking example of British blindness to
the political institutions of Igbo women. The
women, "im isible" to the British as they laid their
plans for l\[ati\'eAdministration, suddenl) bccame
highly \isible for a few months, but as soon as lhe)
quieted down, they were once again ignllred, and
thc reforms made in Native Administration tool..
no account of them politically.Jl
In 1925 Igbo men paid taxes, although during
the census count on which the tax was based the
British had denied th:lt there was to be any taxa
tion. Taxes \\'ere col1ected without too much trou
ble. By 1929, the prices for palm products had
fallen, however, and the taxes, set at 1925 !c\'e!s,
were an increasingly resented burden.." In the
midst of thi:> resentment, an overzealous Assist.,tnt
Disu'iet Officer in Owerri Pro\'ince decided to
update the census registers by recounting house
holds and household propert), which belonged to
\\omen. Understandably, the women did not
belie\'e his assurances that new taxes were not to
be invoked. They sent messages through the mar
kel and kinship networks to other villages and
called a lIlihri to decide what to do.
In the Oloko Native Court area of Owerri
Province, the women decided that as long as ani)
men \Iere approllched in a compollJld ~lI1d asked
for information, the women \Iould do nothing.
The~ wanted clear e\ idence that they were to b
taxed before the) acted,H If any woman was
approached, she was to raise tlle alarm and the)
would meet to discuss retaliation.
On November 23, the agcnt of the Oloko
Warrant Chief, Ol.ugo, entered a compound amI
told a married woman, NW<1nyeruw;l, to count her
goats and sheep. She retorted angrily, "Was your
mother cOllnted?" Thereupon "Ule) closed, seiz
ing each other br the throat."!; Nwanyeruwa's
report to the O]oko women convinced them that
404
JUDITH VAN ALLEN
they were to be taxed. Messengers were sent to
neighboring areas. Women streamed into Oloko
from all over Owerri Province. They massed in
protest at the district office and after several days
of protest at meetings succeeded in obtaining writ
ten assurances that they were not to be taxed, and
in getting Okugo arrested. Subsequently he was
tried and convicted of physically assaulting women
and of spreading news likely to cause alarm. He
was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. J (,
News of this victory spread rapidly through the
market mikiri network, and \\omen in 16 Native
Court areas attempted to get rid of their Warrant
Chiefs as well as the Native Administration itself.
Tens of thousands of women became involved,
generally using the same traditional tactics, though
not with the same results as in Oloko. In each
Native Court area, tJ1e women marched on Native
Administration centers and demanded the Warrant
Chiefs' caps of office and assurances that they
would not be taxed. In some areas the District
Officers assured the women to their satisfaction
that they were not to be taxed and the women dis
persed without further incident. But the British in
general stood behind the Warrant Chiefs; at that
point they interpreted the women's rebeUion as
motivated solely by fear of taxation and Oloko was
the only area in which a Warrant Chief had directly
provoked the women's fears of taxation by count
ing their property.
V.romen in most areas did not get full satisfac
tion from the British, and, further, some British
district officers simply panicked when faced by
masses of angry women and acted in ways which
made negotiation impossible.
In most of the Native Court areas affected,
women took matters into their own hands - they
"sat on" 'Varrant Chiefs and burned Native Court
buildings, and, in some cases, released prisoners
from jail. Among the buildings burned were those
at Aba, a major administrative center from which
the British name for the rebellion is derived. Large
numbers of police and soldiers, and on one occa
sion Boy Scouts, were called in to quell the "dis
turbances." On two occasions, clashes between the
women and the troops left more than SO women
dead and 50 wounded from gunfire. The lives
taken were those of women only - no men, Igbo or
British, were even seriously injured. The cost of
--
property damage - estimated at more than
60,000, was paid for by the Igbo, who were hl'a ._
i1y" taxed to pav"for rebuildingv the "Tat"
" ,~ Ire
Administration centers. 1'
The rebellion lasted about a month. By late
December, "order" was somewhat restored bu
sporadic disturbances and occupation by go\'ern~
ment troops continued into 1930. In all, the rebel_
lion extended over an area of six thousand square
miles, all of Owerri and Calabar Provinces, COn
taining about two million people. 18
The British generally saw the rebellion as "irra
tional" and called it a series of "riots." The\ dis
covered that the market network had been u~ed to
spread the rumor of taxation, but they did not
inquire further into the concerted action of the
women, the grassroots leadership, the agreement
on demands, or even into the fact that thousands
of women showed up at native administration
centers dressed in the same unusual way: wearing
short loincloths, their faces smeared with charcoal
or ashes, their heads bound with young ferns, and
in their hands carrying sticks wreathed with young
palms.)')
In exonerating the soldiers who fired on the
women, a Commission of Enquiry spoke of the
"savage passions" of the "mobs," and one military
officer told the Commission that "he had never
seen crowds in such a state of frenzy_" Yel rhese
"frenzied mobs" injured no one seriously, which
the British found "surprising"""
It is not surprising if the Women's War is seen
as the traditional practice of "sitting on a man,"
only on a larger scale. Decisions \\ere made in
mikiri to respond to a situation in which women
were acutely wronged by the W"arrant Chiefs' cor
ruption and by the taxes they belie\-ed to be forth
coming. Spokeswomen were chosen to present
their demands for the removal of the Warrant
Chiefs and women followed their leadership, on
several occasions sitting down to \\ait for neglltia
tions or agreeing to disperse or to turn in Warrant
Chiefs' caps.-ll Tradirional dress, rituals and
"weapons" for "sitting on" were used: the head
wreathed with young ferns sY'mbolized war, and
sticks, bound with ferns or young palms, were
used to invoke the powers of the female ances
tors. 42 The women's behavior also followed tradi
tional patterns: much noise, stamping, preposterous
"SITTING ON A MAN"
-----
"ts and a general raucous atmosphere were all
t hrc,l. ." . .
rt of the insurutlon of "slttlng on a man"
Pa,-troving an offender's hut - in this case the
Dt:S ~
"ative Court buildings - was clearly within the
bounds of this sanctioning process.
The Women's War was coordinated throughout
the twO provinces by information sent through the
market mikiri nCI work. Delegates travelled from
one area to anotJ1er and the costs were paid by
donations from the women's market profits. 41
Traditional rules were followed in that the partici
pants werc women - only a few men were involved
in the demonstrations - and leadership was clearly
in the hands of women.
The absence of men from the riots does not
indicate lack of support. Men generally approved,
and only a few older men criticized the women for
not being more respectful toward the government.
It is reported (hat both men and women shared
the mistaken belief that the women, having
observed certain rituals, would not be fired upon.
The men had no illusions of immunity for ,hem
selves, having vivid memories of the slaughter of
19bo men during the conquest.+! Finally, the name
given the rebellion by the Igbo - the Women's
\\ar- indicates that the women saw themselves
following their traditional sanctioning methods of
"sitting on" or "making war on" a man.
Since (he British failed to recognize the Women's
\\ar as a collective response to the abrogation of
rights, they did not inquire into the kinds of struc
tures the women had that prepared them for such
action. Thc~ failed to ask, "How do the women
make group decisions? How do they choose their
leaders?" Since they saw only a "riot," they
explained the fact thal the women injured no one
seriously as "luck," never even contemplating that
perhaps the women's actions had traditional limits.
Because lhe women - and the men regarded
the inquiries as attempts to discover whom to pun
ish, they did not volumeer any information about
the women's organizations. But there is at least
some question as to whether the British would
haw llTIderstood them if they had. The market
network was discovered, but suggested no further
lines or
inquiry to the British. The majority of
DistJ'ict Officers thought that the men organized
the women's actions and were secretly directing
them. The Bende District Officer and the
405
Secretary of the southern PrO\-ince believed that
there was a secret "Ogbo Society" which exercised
control over women and was responsible for
fomenting the rebeliionY And the women's
demands that they did not want the Native Court
to hear cases any longer and that all white men
should go to their own country, or, at least, that
women should serve on the Native Courts and one
be appointed District Officer - demands in line
with the power of women in traditional society
were ignored.-\!>
All these responses fall into a coherent pattern:
not of purposeful discrimination against women
with the intent of keeping them from playing their
traditional political roles, but of a prevailing blind
ness to the possibility that women had had a sig
nificant role in traditional politics and should
participate in the new system oflocal government.
A few political officers were "of the opinion that,
if the balance of societ~. is to be kept, the women's
organizations should be encouraged alongside
those of the men.,,4j Some commissioners even
recog'Dized "the remarkable character of organiza
tion and leadership which some of the women dis
played" and recommended that "more attention
be paid to the political influence of women. ,,~~ But
these men were the exception: their views did not
prevail. Even in the late 1930s when the investiga
tions of Leith-Ross and Green re\'ealed the
decreasing vitality of women's organizations under
colonialism, the British still did not include
women in the reformed Native Administration.
When political officers warned that young /lien
were being excluded, however, steps were taken to
return their traditional political status. 49
"Reforms" and Women's Loss of Power
In 1933 reforms were enacted to redress many
Igbo grievances against the NativeAdministration.
The number of Native Court Areas was greatly
increased and their boundaries arranged to con
form rougWy to traditional divisions. Warrant
Chiefs were replaced by "massed benches"
allowing large numbers of judges to sit at one time.
In most cases it was left up to the "illages to decide
whom and how m.1ny to send so This benefitted
the women bv eliminating the corruption of the
Warrant Chiefs, and it made their persons and
406 JUDITH VAN ALLEN
propert) more secure. But it provided no outlet
for collective action, their real base of 1'0\1 er.
As in the village assembl~, the women could not
compete with the men for leadership in the
reformed Native Administration because as indi
viduals they lacked the resources of the men, il I..n
the various studies done on the Igbo in the 1930s
there is onl) one report of a woman being sent to
the Native Court and her patrilineage had put up
the money for her to take her titles. 51
Since the reformed Native Administration actu
allY took over many functions of the village assem
blies, women's political participation was seriousl)
affected. Discussions on policy no longer included
an) adult who wished to take part but only mem
bers of the nati\'e courts. .l\1cn who were not mem
bers were also excluded, but men's interests and
point of vie\\- \Iere represented, ami, at one timc
or another, man~ men had some chance to become
members; vcr) fe\l \I omen e\'er did B
The poJitic~1J parLicipaLion and power of women
had depended on the diffuseness of political power
and authority within Igbo society. In attempting to
create specialized politictl institutions on the
Western model with participation on the basis of
individual achie\ement, the British created a sys
tem in which there was no place for group solidar
ity, no place for what thereby became "extrale~ar'
or simply illegal forms of group coercion, and thus
\'ery little place for \lomen.
The British retorms undermined and weakened
the power of the women b~ removing man~ political
functions from mi!.?iri and from village assemhlies.
Tn 1901 the British had declared all juraJ institu
tions except tJle Nati\'e Courts illegitimatt:, bur it
was only in the years following the 1933 reforms
that Native AdministraLioll local government
became effective enough to make trun JcclaraLioll
meaningful. When this happened, die miki}'i Jost
\'it;lIity.~ Although wbat has happened to them since
has not been reponed in detail The reports that do
exist mention the functioning of market "omen's
organizations but only as pressure groups for nar
ro\\' economic interest i ; and women's participation
in [gbo unions as vcrI' low in two towns.'"
The British also weakened women's power b~
oULlawing "self-help" - the use of force bv indi
viduals or groups to protect theil' own interests by
punishing wrongdoers. This action - in accord
-- --
with the idea that only the state may legitimate!
use force - made "sitting on" ,myonc illegai
thereby depriving women of one of their ~;
weapons to protect \liles from husbands, markcts
from rowdies, or coco )ams from cows.;'
The British didn't kno\l, of course, that thcI
were banning "siLting on a man"; they wcre sim~
ply banning Ule "illegitimate" usc of force. In
theory, this didn't hurt 1he women as wife-beaters,
rowdies and OI\ners of marauding COws could be
taken to court. But couns \I ere e;,,:pcllsive, and the
men who sat in them \Iere likely to have different
vie\\'s from the women's on wife-beating, markt
"fun" and men's cows. I3y interfering with the tra
ditional balance of pOI\Cr, the British effc,ti\'c!l'
eliminated the women's ability to protect thci'r
OWIl interests <lnd made tllem dependcnt upon
men for protection against men.
Since the British did not understand this. thel'
did nothing to help women de\elop new \Ia\'s (;1'
protecting their interest \1 ithin the politic'll sys
tem. (What dle women did do to try to protect their
interests in ulis situation should be a fruitfuL suh
jccr for study.) What women did 1/01 do \Vas to
panicipate to an} significant extelll in local gO\'ern
melll or, much later, in national government. and a
large part of the responsibility must rest on the
Britil;h, who removed legi tinlaC) frol11 womcn's tra
ditional political institutions and did nothing to help
\I'omen move into modern political institutions.
Missionary Influence
The effect of the colonial administration was rein
forced by the missionaries and mission schools.
Christian missions were establ.ished in Igboland in
the late 19th century. They had fell converts at
first, buttheir influence b~ the 1930s \las consid
ered significant, generall~ among the young.;' \
majority ofIgbo eventually "became Christians"
they had to profess Christianity in order to attend
mission schools, and education was highly valucd.
But regardless of ho\\ nomin,tl their membership
was, they had to abc) the rules to remain in good
standing, and one rule was to avoid "pagan" ritu
als. 'Vomen were discouraged from attendJl1g
miki,., where traditional rituals were performcd or
mone~ collected for the rituals, which in eITeet
mean I all mikiri.;q
r 1S am'war,
[101
"SITTING ON A MAN"
Probably more significant, since mihri were in
he prol~SS of losing some of their political func
was mission education. English and
,,'estern education came to be seen as increasingly
nceess:try for political leadership - needed to deal
\I ith the British and their la\l and women had less
Jece5s to this nc\\ kno\"VlcJge than men. Boys were
nlo re often scnt to school, for a variety of reasons
gencraJl) related to their favored posi.tion in the
patrilineage'-IJ But cven when guls dJd go, they
tended nol to receive the same type of education. In
mission schools, and increasingly in special "train
in" homes" which dispensed with most academic
CO~Jr~e), Ule girls were taught Ew-opean domestic
s~ill~ ;Ind the Bible, often in the vernacular. The
missionaries' avowed purpose in educating girls
was to train them to be Christian wives and moth
ers, not for jobs or for citizenshipr,1 Missionaries
Ilcre not necessaril) against women's participation
in politiCS - clergy in England, as ill America, could
be I(lund supporting women's suffrage. But in
.-\frica their l..'Oncern was the church, and for the
church the) needed Christian families. Therefore,
Christian \I ives and mothers, not female political
leaders, was the mission's aim. As l\lary Siessor, the
inf]uelltial Calahar missionary said: "God-like
motherhood is the fmest sphere for women, and the
\la~ to the redemption of the world"61
Yictori,mism and Women's lnvisibiUt)'
The missionaries' beliefs about woman's natural
and proper role being u1at of a Christian helpmate
and the administration's refusal to take the Igbo
\lomen seriously when they demanded political
participation, are understandable in light of the
colonialists having been socialized in a society
dominated by Victorian ,'a lues. It was during
Queen Victoria's reign that the woman's-place-is
in-tbe-home ideology hardened into its most
rccent hIghly rigid form. 6J Although attacked by
feminists, it remained the dominant mode of
thought through that part of the colonial period
discussed here; and it is, in fact, far from dead
roday, when a woman's primary identity is most
often seen as that of wife and mother even when
she works -W hours a week outside the home. fH
\\c are concerned here primarily with the
Victoria.n view of women and politics which
produced the expectation that men would be active
in politics, but women wouJ.d not. The ideal of
Victorian womanhood - attainable, of course, b)
only the middle class, but widc1) believed in
407
throughout society - \las of a sensitivc. moral!)
superior being who was thehearrhside guardian of
Christian virtues and sentiments absent in the
outsidc world. Her mind was not strong enough
for the appropriately masculine subjects: science,
business, and politics. 6; A woman who sholled tal
ent in these areas did not challenge any ideas about
typical women: the exceprional woman simply
"had the brain of a man," as Sir George Goldie
said of "lary Kingsley.6/>
A thorough investigation of the diaries, jour
nals, reports, and letters of colonial officers and
missionaries would be needed to prove that most
of them held thesc Victorian nlues. But prelimi
nary read in!! of biographies, autobiographies,
journals and "reminiscences," and the evidence of
their own statements ahout 19bo women at the
time of the 'Vomen's War, strongly suggest the
plausibility of the hypothesis that the) were
deflected from any attempt to discover and pro
tect Igbo wumen's political role b) their ,Issump
tion that politics isn't a proper, normal place for
women. 67
When Igbo women with their Women's War
forced the colonial administrators to recognize
their presence, their brief "visibility" was insuffi
cient to shake tbese assumptions. Their behavior
was simply seen as aberrant. When 1J1Cy returned
to "normal," they were once again invisible.
Although there was a feminist movement in
England during that time, it had nOt successfully
challenged basic ideas about women nor made the
absence of women from public life seem to be a
problem which required remedy. The movement
had not succeeded in creating a "feminist" con
sciousness in an) but a fC\l "de\ iants," and such a
consciousness is far from widespread today; for to
have a "feminist" consciousness means that one
notices the "invisibility" of \I omen. One lIJl)llIlen
where the women are - in life and in print.
Undebtanding the assumptions about women's
roles prevalent in Yictorian society - and still com
mon today - helps to cxplain hO\l rhe introduction
of supposedly modern political structures and \'al
ues could reduce rather than expand the political
-+08

livesofIgbo women.As longas politics is presumed

to be a male realm, no one wonders where ule
women went. The loss of Igbo women's political
JUDITH VAN ALLEN

institutions - in life and in print - shows the need

for more Western scholars to develop enough of a
feminist consciousness to st.-trt wonderillg.

- pro ,idc quotations from rhe reports which were
not, unfortunately, available to me in full. See
"SITTING ON A MAN"

Reports of politit-al offi<:ers. Meek and Alil!:bo also

409

53 Sylvia Leith-Ross, op. cit., pp. 171-2; Lord Hailey,

,Va/ive .1dmil/l~'lr{l/ilill ill Ihe Brilish African
Terrilories. Part lll, West A/n'clI (London: H. M.
~I~lrgery Pcrham, Nalive /}dllllllisiratio/l ill Nigeria Stationary Office, 1951). pp. 160-5.
(London: Oxford University Press, 1937); Idem, 54 Syh ia Leith-Ross, op. (il., pp. 110, 163,214.
LI(~lm': Tire leal'S oj .4dt,etI/IIre, 1858-1898 55 Henr~ L. Breuon, "Political Influence in Southern
(London; Collins, 1956); Idem, Lugard: The rcars Nigeria", in Hcrbcrt ]. Spiro (cd.), Ilfrica: Tit"
Notes
of ll11lwify, 1898-19-15 (London: Collins, 1960); Primary oj Polifics ([\ew York: Random House,
The Igbo-speaking peoples are heterogeneous and can village ofOnicha clan in Afikpo division II ho, ho\\el.t'l", A. E. Aligbo, "Igbo Village Affairs", ]oumal of Ihe 1966), p. 61.
only be termed a "u'ib<:" on the basis of a eummon went to mission schools from the agc of sCl'en and IlisJorlCflI Socicly of Vigerio 4: I, D<:ecrnber 1967. 56 Audrey C. Smock, lb,) PolitiCS; Tire Role 0/ Etltnic
language and a contiguous tenito!). They were rhe speaks C"nion Igbo rather tbnn his \.i1lage dialect. Harry A. Gai]ey, op. ClI., pp. 94-5; C. K. 2\1eck, op. unions in Easlem Nigeria (Cambridge: The Harvard
"
JJ
dominant group in southeastern Nigeria, durmg tl,e 8 Victor C. Uehendu, op. fit., p. 41. (if., pp, 330 I. Uni\'ersity Press, 1971), pp. 65,137.
colonial period numbering more tlllln three million ibid., p. 34; C. K. M<:ek, op. cil., p. II J. 34 Harr~ A. Gailey, np. cit., pp. 107-.'1. 57 Sylvia Leith-Ross, op. {/t., p. 109,
according to the 1931 census. The Igbo in Ollerri and 10 M. M. Green, oft. Cil., pp. 32-42. .,-,
" Margery Perham, Xatll'e .,1Jmll/islrallflll in N(f!;r:I70. 58 1M"., pp. 109-18; C. K .."Ieek, op. (il., p. xv,
Calabar Proyinces, the 1:\10 southernmost pro\'inces, II Sylvia Leith-Ross, oft, cil" pp. 90--2, 138-9, 113. liP. m., p, 207. Maxwell states that by 1925 there werc 26 mission
wae relati\'ely homogeneous politically, ,md it is their 12 e. K, Med, op. cil., p 203; Victor C. Uch<:ndu, op. 36 !-larry A. Gailey, op. cil., pp. 1O~13. stations a.nd 63 missionaries (twelve of them mis
political insrinltions which are discussed here. Studies Cil., p. 86.
Ji S. O. Esire, "The Aba Riots of 1929", Ajiicol1 sional) wives) in Igboland. The <:arliest station was
in deprh lIere done of the Igbo only in the 1930s, but 13 ~1. 'VI. Green liP. cil" p, 169,
Hislorial1, \"01. I, 1'10. 3 (l965): 13; J. S, I lanis, flp. establi"hed in 1857, but all but three wcre founded
traditional political institutions surviy<:d "under 14 Victor C. Uchendu, op. Cil., p. 410.
(ff.. p. 1-+3; "'-arger) Perham, ,V" I lv,' Admillistratioll after 1900. Fifteen mission stations and 30 mis
neath" the natiYe administration, although weakened IS C. K. :\Ieek, /lp. Cif., p. 203.
i/l ;'v~l(t'ria. op. ,it., pp. 209-12. sionaries were among ]gbo in Owerri and Calabar
more in some a.reas than in others. There were also 16 Victor C. Uehendu, op. cil" p. 19.
38 Harry A. Gailcy, Qp. (il., p. 137; iVlargery Perham, Prol'inees. See]' Lowry \1axwell, Nigeria: The
man) informants who rememhered life in the pre C. K. Meek, op. nf., p. 125; M. M.. <ireen, op. cit., 'vallrf At/millislmtlOlI ill A'igel"Ia. op. (if., pp. 209-12. L/Jud. the People and Cltn~l/lall Progress (London:
colonial days. The picture of Igbo societ~' drawn here pp,132-8. .10 J. S. Ha.rris, op. ,-il., pp. 147-8; ~'llrgery Perham, World Dornjnion Pr<:ss, 1926), pp. 150-2.
is based on reports by IWO Englishwomen, LeitJl-Ross 18 1\1. M, Green op. cil., pp, 217-320,
l'ialm' .1dml,l;slratloll ill Nigeri", of!. cit., pp, 207ff; 59 Sylvia Leirh-Ross, op. cit., p. 110;]. F. Ade Ajayi,
and Green, who had a parricular interest in Igbo i~ Sylvia Leith-Ross. op. Cil" pp. 106-8.
C. K. Meek, op. (il., p. ix. Chri.!liall l1i.t,ioll.! til I\:;geri/l, /84/ 1891: The
women; rhe work of a government anthropological 2(; M. M. Green, op, CII., pp. 178-216.
-\I! .\ hlrl;e!) Perham, Vafl1'e Ailmlllistralioll i" "igoria, \!uKing oj /I Nul' Eliu (E\'ansron, III.: The
officer, Meek; a brief report by Harris, and me lIork of 21 Ibid" p. 140; Syh ia Leith-Ross, (lp. (it., pp. 1067.
op. (II., pp. 212-19. [\orthwestern University Press, 1965), pp. 108-9.
t:ducated Igbo describing their own societ)'. Uehendu 22 ]. S. Harris, op. Cil., pp, 1+&-7.
-\1 Ibid" pp. 212ff. 60 Sylvia Leith-Ross, op. Cil., pp. 133, 196-7,316.
and Onwutt"nka. See VI. M. Gre<:n, Igbo rmage A/jilin 23 Ibid., pp. 146-8; J\1. M, Green, op. cil., pp. 196-7; -l2 HarTIS reports J curse s\\'orn by the women on the 61 Ibid., pp. 189-90, According to Leirh-Ross, in the
(London: Fran.1. Cass& Co" Lrd., 19-+7: pa~e citations S) Ivia Leith-Ross, 1If!. (II" p. 109. pc~t1cs: "It is I IIho gave birth to you. It is I \\ho "girls' lraining homes.,. the scholastic education
to pnperbaek edition. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 24 ].S. Ilarris, "p. cil" pp. 14 eoul. li'lr you to eat. This is the pestk I usc to pound gil'en was limited. in some of the smallcr homes
]964); ].S. Harris, "The Position of Women in a 25 M, M. Green, op. tit" pp. 210--11. ya.ms a.nd coco yams for you to eat. May you soon opened at a laler date almost negligible, but the
Nigerian SOl:icry", Trat/samolls oj Ihe .TVrm York 2(, ]. S. I-Iarris, op. ClI., ]4Cr-7. die'" Sec]. S. Harris, op. Cil., pp. 143-5. domestic training and the general civili:l.ing effect
Academy 0/ Scimces, Seric.~ il, Vo1.2, No.5, 19-+0; Daryll Forde, "Justice nnd Judf,'ll1ent among the lIarr~ .'\. Gailev, op. cil., p. 112. lIere good." E\'idence of these I'jews among mis
Sylvia Leith-Ross, Africa" 1101/11'11 (London: Faber Southern ibo under Colonial RuJe", lInpliblisheJ 44 It,larger)' Perhnm, Nlllh'c' Admlll;stralioll ill NIgaia, sionaries can be found in J F. Ade'\jayi, op. CIt.,
and Faber, 1939): C. K. Meek, Lan' and"1uthorio' ill tl paper prepared for lntcrdisciplina!)' Colloquium op. cil" pp. 212ff;]. C. Anene, Qp. cit., pp. 207-24; pp. 65, H2-4, G. T. Basden, Edilh Il1mm' oj lilt
Nigerian Tribe (London: Oxford University Press, in African Studies., Unilersity of California, Los S, 0. Euke, op. ClI., p. 11; C. K. J\leek, op. cil., p. X. V~l!rr (London: Seeley, Service and Co,) Ltd., 1927),
1957, orig. publ. 1937);]. C. Onwutt"aka, ''The Ab Angeles, pp. 9-13. 4.1 Harr~ '\. Gailey, np. (if., pp. l30ff. pp, 13, 16, 33, 55, 77, 86; Josephine c. Bulifant,
Riot of 1929 and its Relation to Lhe System of Indirect 28 Ibid., pp. 9-13; ]. C. Anene, Soulhem .vigeri,! ill -\6 S~llia Leith-Ross, op. Cil., p. 165; :'v1argery Perh<tm, ~l"Iy rears ill lire Africrlll Blls;' (Grand Rapids,
Rule". Tlu' Nigen'all lOllmlll 0/Ecoll01llic ,/lid Social "Ii-anSI/ion, 1885-1906 (:-.Jell York: The Cambridge /I,'lIfh',' Admil/islra/ioll ill N':l(rria, lip. cil., pp. 165fl: Mieh,: Zonden'an Publishing House, 1950), pp. 163
Siudies. !\o\ember 1965; \'ietor C. Uchendu, The Igb/l L'nh'ersit~ Press, 1967), p. 259; C. K. t.lcck, liP. 47 J\ larger) Perham, \al;n Admin;stre/IIOII /1/ Vigeria, and passim; W. P. Livingstone, M{/~)' SlesslJr 0/
'i!" Soulheast Mgeria (New York: Holt, Rinehart and nl" pp. 328-30. /lP, (;1., p. 246. Calab{l/' (l\C\\ York: George II. Doran Co., m.d.),
Winston, 1965). 29 Daryll Forde, np. cil., p. 12. 48 A. E.. \figbo, op. cit., p. 187. pp. iii-,i;]. Lowry Maxwell, oIl. cit., pp. 55, 118.
2 D:uyll Forde anti G. 1. Jones, The Iho- {Il1d Ibt/1/'o 30 ]. C. Onwuteaka, op. (it., p. 274. -\9 C. K. \leek,op. (1/., p. 203. 62 \\. P. Lilingstone, op. Cil., p. 328.
Speakillg Peoples '1 Soulh-EaSlem !\IIgma (1_ondon: 31 C. K. Meek. op. Cil., pp. 329-30; Harry 1\. Gaiky, 50 \largery Perham, Native Admilli.lfralioll ill Vigaia, 63 Page Smith, Dlluglrfersoffhe ProllUs<'d Lalld(BosLOn:
International African institute, 1950), p. 39; ]. S. TIll' Road fo .4bo (K1'\\ York: New York lini\'ersi~' Ip, (il., pp. 365ff. Lillie, Brown and Co., 1970), pp. 58-76; Doris
Harris,op. CII., p.l41. ress, 1970), pp, 66-74, 51 C. K. Meek, op. cit., p. 203. Stemon, The ElIgl;sh If-I,mall ill Hislllr)' (London:
3 Victor C. Uehendll, op. Cil" pp. 41-4.
32 Information on the Women's Wnr is derived mainl~ 52 Ill/d., pro 158-9. She was divorced and had to George Allen and UnwlTI, Ltd., 1957), pp. 312--+4.
4 !bid., p. 4]; M.. M. Green, /lp. cit., pp. 7&-9.
from Gailt:~ and Pcrhanl, \Iho based their descrip remain unmarried as a condition of her family's 64 L\'a Figes, Piliri/lrchal Attiludes (New York: Steill
5 ]. S. Harris, oft. Cil., pp, 142-3; "ietor C. Uchcndu,
tions on the rcports of tll<: t\\"o Commissions of p;lying for her titlc as they wanted to be sure to gCt and Day, 1970); Ruth E. Hartley, "Children's
oft Cil., pp. 3-+, -+2-3. Enquiry, issued as SessionaJ Papers of the Nigerian their im'esIDlent back when future initiates paid. Concepts of 2\laJe and Female Roles", Mcrrill
6 M. M. Green, np. Cil., p. 137. L<:gislati\ce Cowleil, Nos. 12 and 28 of 1930, and their fees to thc cstablished members. If she remar Palmer Qurrrtrr(JI, Januarl 1960,
7 The sources for this descriptilJn ar<: Uchendu 'lIld per tlle MilllltCS of Evidence issued with the laner. ri<:d., her husband's family, and not her o\\'n, would 65 Wnlter E. Houghton, The V/clOrilll1 Frlltl1c 4,1\11I1d,
sonal conversations with an Igbo born in Umu-Domi Gailey also used the early 19305 Intelligence inherit her propert). 1830-1870 (New Halen: The Yale UnilersitJ Press,
 -

410 JUDITH VAN ALLEN

1957), pp. 349-53. "umerous studit'S o[ Victorian

and posr-"ictorian ideas about women and politics
Perbam, all of whom influenced African colonial
policy, held the same values as men, at least in 28

describe these patterns. Tn addition to Houghton, regard 1"0 women's roles. They did not expect ordi_
Smith and Stemon, see, [or example, Kirsten nary women to have political power any more than
Amundsen, Tlte Silenced Jl1ajorify (Prentice-Hall,
1971): Jessie Bernard, r/tomm Mill IIii' Public bll~rSf
the men did, and they sho\led no particular Con_
cern for Alijean women.
Virginity Testing
(A.ldine-Atherton, 1971): John Stuart M.i.l.l and c.
67 Sec, for non-missionary examples, J. Anene, lip.
Harriet Taylor Mill, Essays 011 Sn Eqllalily
(University of Chicago Press, 1970); Martha Vicinus
cif., pp. 222-34; W. R. Crocker, Nigeria: A Criliql/r Managing Sexuality in a Maturing

oj British Colollilll .'ldllli11i.~fmfioll (London: George

(ed.),Sldfiralld Be Still: lI'omen ill the I irtorianAge
(Indiana Universit) Press, 1972)i Cecil Woodham
Allen ,1I1d Unwin, Ltd., 1936); C. K. :Vlcek, op, ,.il.; HIV/AIOS Epidemic

Mary H. Kingsley, Tra;;els ill Wesl Aji-ica (London:

Smith, Florena fYightlllgtlle. 1820-1910 (i\lcGraw
Hill, 1951). It was not umil 1929 that all English
women cou.ld vote; women oyer 30 who met restric
tive propert}' qualifications got the vote in 1918.
66 Stephen G\I ynn, Tltf L,re of Alary Kingsley
(London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1932), p. 252.
Mary Kingsley along with other elite female
"exceptions" like Flora Shaw LuganJ and Margery
.\lacmillan and Co., Ltd., 1897); Tdem, Wesl Ajri<dl/
Studies (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., ISI)9);
Margery Perham. op. cil.; A.H. SI. John "'flod,
"'\jigeria: fift) Years of Political Deyelopment Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala
among the [bos", in Ra) mond Apthorpe (cd.) From
TJjblll Rille fO Modan Govemmenl (Lusaka,
Northern Rhodesia: Rhodes-Livingston Institute
for Social Research, 1960).

We arc the organization which does virginity testing of girls from six years old up to
marriage status. Initiall) we started from 12 years old but by doing so "e found that half
of the girls tested had already lost their virginity. The reason? Because most of them
have been abused by their relati\'es - brothers, fathers, uncles and also cousins. That's
why, as Igugu Lama Africa, we stand up and fight against those evildoers.
Wc Africans must work together to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS.
I don't believe in Western civilization and culture as they say we must use condoms and
contraceptivcs, which promotes adultery. That is "hy I believe in African culture. The
nation must be proud and join this program as we, Igugu Lama Africa, have started to
train the young girls to plant potatoes, cabbages, peas, lettuce, etc. Because if we work
together the problem will be solved.

The above views were expressed in a letTer to the
editor of The Nllta! Witness, a leading KwaZulu
:\atal daily newspaper in July 2000. Encouraging
parents to send their daughters to join Igugu Lama
Afrim, the letter appeared barely a week before a
prOf(.~t march rook place through the main streets
of the provincial capital with teenaged girls and
middle aged virginity testers waving placards to
demonstrate their support for the revival of this
practice. The \'irginity testing movement has been
marked by controversy from its start in the mid
J990s, yet has continued to grow as communities
seek to respond to a maturing HIV / AIDS epi
demic and its deepening social impact.
As the AIDS epidemic has transformed from
having been an epidemic of increasing HlV infec
tion rates during the 1980s to become an epidemic
of increasing AIDS morbidity and death from the
mid 1990s onwards, the call for regular virginit)
testing of girls has made a concurrent public
appearance. Widely accepted to be primarily a het
erosexually transmitted disease, current estimates

From Suannc Leclerc-I'vladlala, "Virginity Testing: Managing Sexuality in a Maturing I1IVI AIDS Epidemic",
Mfdiml 4nlhrupology Qllorter!y 15(4), pp. 533-53, 2001.
 412
are that 4.7 million of South Africa's 40 million
population is seropositiye for HIV. In KwaZulu
:\latal province, home to the large Zulu-speaking
group, IITV infection rates have consistently led
the country since the first major statistics from
ante-natal screening in the late 1980s became
avaiJable. The start of the new millennium has
brought a dramatic increase in the number of peo
pie presenting themselves at local clinics and hos
pitals with AIDS-related illnesses, 10 the point
where most provincial hospitals now routinely
refuse to have AIDS patients take up valuable bed
space. PrO\ incial mortuaries are likewise reponing
problems of overcrowding and an abundance of
un-daimed bodies, said to be related to the prob
lem of AIDS. Two pri\'ale hospitals have recently
purchased refrigerated cold-storage trucks to help
cope with the overflow of corpses before they are
buried with a pauper's funeral at a hospital mass
burial. Also, the question of adequate land available
for burials on the scale predicted by town planners,
has recently become of major concern to KwaZulu
Natal provincial ad minis I rators. 1 Alongside these
growing concerns and increased acknolliedge
ments of the seriousness of the AlDS epidemic,
the State President has made known his support
for the views of international scholars who oppose
the view that HIV is related to AIDS. Newspaper
reports speak of a pervasive 'national denial' over
the enormity of the AIDS problem during an era
that most people expected to reflect post apartheid
promises of 'the good ]ife'. With the South African
government having recently won a much celebral"cd
coun case to aHow for the manufacture and impor
tation of relatively inexpensive anti-retroviral
drugs, many observers perceive a type of schizo
phrenia that characterizcs government engagement
with and official stances on the ever-growing pub
lic health crisis of ill V/ 1\ IDS.
Adding to the confusing and contradictorv
nature of the government's position, the State
President has been increasingl) referring to the
need to find 'African solutions' to the African
AIDS problem. This reference has been inter
preted by proponents of virginity testing as a clear
indication that leaders at the very highest echelons
of government could be counted on to suPPOrt
I'irginity testing or at least not 10 obstruct its rap
idly growing practice. In broad terms I'irginity
RC-MADLALA
-- -
testing refers to the practice and process of
inspecting girls to determine if they are scxuall.
chaste. This paper considers virginity testing as ~
response to the growmg f-UV/ AIDS epidcmi
among Zulu speaking people in KllaZlilu-:\ata~
province, where this trend is most Widely prac_
ticed and where it currently enjoys a high degree
of public ,md private support.
Competing Voices
\\lhile the most \'isible supporters of the virginih'
testing mOl'ement are older, mostly uneducatl~
women, there is also a considerable 1'1'0-\ irginitl'
testing lobb) that consist of well educated ml~
who are simultaneous)) key adl'ocates of an
'African renaissance' moyemtnt 2 This group
includes amongst others, government ministers at
both national and pro\ incial lel'e1, officials in
the departments of education and health, non
government organizations dedicated to the re
discoI'er) of African traditions and indib"Cnous
knowledge systems, and directors of organizations
that fund AlDS awareness projects. For this b'TOUp
of people, virginity testing represents a way to lake
current debates about Africanization and cultural
revival out of thl: elite halls of academia and dem
on~trate applicability ,It the grass-roots le\l!1. By
casting the discourse on virginity tl:sting in the
idiom of Afritlln renaissance these proponents
draw upon strong emoti\ e associations that link
'lost' traditions with a long history of cultural
destruction caused by the concerted onslaught of
Christian it), colonialism and apartheid.
While the pro-virginit) testing lobby may ht a
broad, powerful, and vocal one, it is not \I ithout its
dislracters. These come in the form of an equally
vocal {mostl} female) group who comprise the
Human Rights and Gender Commissions, as well
as man)' Ilomen from various social formations
\1 ho advocate greater gender equity. From the
point-of-I'iew of this group virginity testing is
nothing less than a nell form of violation and vio
lence against women. They argue that tbis practjce
is counter to stipulations in the national constitu
lion that uphold rights to privacy, bodily integrit),
and outlaw all forms of gender discrimination.
indeed as a result of South Africa's 1999 Human
Rights Repon submitted to the United I'ations, it
~~sr ecommended that the S.A. ..
VIRGINITY TESTING
gOlernment take
.
. ccitic steps to c11ange tradltJonal \'Ie\\'s advocat
,p 'irginit y testing in those communities where it
lng\ . .
o.:curs."'
The current debate on virginity testing in SOUUl
\friGl remains locked in a traditional/modern
p~radigm, whereby culture is equated with tradi
tion and tlle democratic constitution is equated
with western-sryle modernity that, in the opinion
of many rural people, espouses foreign ideas.
Seldom in the debates are the two perceived to
share common ground. Much of the Conlro\ ersy
th,n surrounds virginity testing in South Africa
rcelli s the ongoing debate over femaJe circumci
sion in other parts of Africa (e.g. Assad 1980,
BodL1~ 1991, Gordon 1991, Gruenbaum 1982,
1996 and Obermeyer 1999). Whjle the LWO prac
tices ,lre "cry differcnt in nature, both are \ iewed
~s socially oppressi\ e. While \'irginity testing is
not generaJly perceived to be physicaJly harmful in
thc same way as circumcision, this does not pre
clude South African women who are opposed to
virginity testing from drawing similarities between
the twO practices. Based on her studies of female
circumcision in Sudan, Gruenbaum (1996: 456)
has argued that efforts to change this practice that
neglect to anaJY-/.e its causes and resort to 'tradi
tion' as the sole e:\planation, are problematic. The
complexit} of decision-making processes within a
culture and the competing demands on iodi\'idu
als are overlooked. This is where anthropologists
can make a contribution; by discovering and
exphuning the meaning of such practices in their
various cultural conlexts and by analyzing issucs
of causality.
In th.is papcr, I argue that virginity, testing can
be understood as a 'gendered' response to a 10caJ
disease experience that is fundamentally 'gcn
dered' in nature. Examining girls to determine
their chaste status is another thread reinforcing a
Ileb of meaning that places women and women's
sexuality at the epicenter of blame for the current
:\IDS epidemic amongst the Zulu. In addition, its
growing popularity highlights the gendered
impact of the epidemic v, hereby it is also women
\\'ho are shouldering the burden of care for AIDS
orphans. Virginity testing is the latest clause in an
on-going gendered narrative of HIV / AIDS in
K\\'aZulu-Natal.
Methodology
This stud) draws upon ethnographic data gathered
between 1996 and 2000 in a predominantly Zulu
413
speaking, peri-urban, low-income community in
Durban, South Africa. Participant-observation, in
depth semi-structured interviews and focus group
discussions were the primary methods used for
data collection. This period encompassed formal
fieldwork for my PhD dissertation on sociocultural
consrructions of gender, sexuality and HIV / AIDS
among Zulu-speaking people in KwaZulu-l\iatal.
A brief summary of my major findings on the gcn
dered nature of I IT\'/AlDS are presented in an
efforL to locate the current of the virginitv testing
movement and support my views on the symbolic
meanings attached to this practice. As the trend in
virginity testing ,tarted to gain wide popularity
and media exposure in the province from late 1998
onwards, I extended my research to include a
post-tloctoral study specifically on \irgin.ity test
ing. This comprised mainl) interviews with key
informants in the virginit) testing movement as
well as observations made at virginity testing events
that took place between January and September
2000. In addition, interviews were conductcd with
members of the Gender Commission who were in
the process of facilitating workshops throughout
the province in an effort to understand the grow
ing appeal of virginity testing willie at the same
lime disseminate their Iiews that \'irginity testing
was an abuse of human rights and a~ljDst the
national constitution.
Virginity Testing: The Current Practice
With whistles blowing and balloons swaying in the
wlnd, 85 girls are waiting in a long Line whjle grass
mats are laid in a roll' on the growld. They hold
their panties scrunched up in their ha.nds, and
range in age from 5 to 22. The participants appear
quiet and ncrl"ous. 1esring time has arril"ed. This
particular virginity testing event was one of many
weekend jamborees held at vMious football stadi
ums of local townships. The event opened with
speeches by self professed traditionalists, who
beseeched the crowd of mostly mothers and grand
mothers, virginity testers and participants, and
nu.merous on-lookers peering tllrough the fences,
 414 SUZANNE LECLERC-MADLALA
with praises for long lost African traditions and
reasnnswhy these needed to be re....i....ed. Descriptions
of an ideal problem-free past characterized the first
speech, made by a middle-afred male academic ,Ycll
known as one of the inspirations behind the current
virginity testing movement. The next two speaKers
were women, one an academic and ....irginity tester
herself, and the other a popular radio personality
and self-styled expert on Zulu culturc.
Having set the tone for this ukuhlolrva h"ez/l1
f(llllbe (virginity testing) event, the content of the
speeches was no doubt aimed at con....incing
the girls and their mothers that they were doing
the right thing. In the words of the final speaker,
this was going to bring an end to 'all these new dis
eases and the need to worry about contraeepti....es
,md condoms'. Moreovcr Yirginity testing was
going 'to save the nation'. With an end to the whis
tle blm\ ing, it was time to start the proceedings.
The girb lay down in groups of lO on the grass
mats. The mother (and any accompanying female
relati'e) was asked to come forward to observe and
receive the results. While one tester chatted inccs
santly on a cell phone, the other checked the exter
nal genitalia while wearing rubber gloves. The
same pair of g'loves was used for a1185 girls. At this
particular proceeding, there was not much in the
way of internal inspection. These particular test
ers, who often work as a team, believe that internal
inspection is not necessary to assess virginity. They
depend more on external signs such as the color
and texture of the labia (very light pink and dry
said to be foremost signs of \"irginity) and look for
signs of abuse (bruises and cuts) and STh (pim
ples and sores and foul smelling discharge).
Within 45 minutes all 85 girls were checked,
and all but three were declared to be virgins. The
three who 'failed' the test were asked to step aside,
and their mothers were told to bring the girls to a
clinic for further advice. Those who passed were
given certificates, once the mothers paid the
required five rands. A whistle blew for the girls to
stand up, and the mothers started to sing and
dance. As they waved their daughters' certificates
to and fro, the balloons were released into the air,
and the newly declared virgins were encouraged ro
join the celebration dance. The event thus ended
as the testers left the stadium grounds, and the
buses and taxis arrived to take the girls and their
families borne.
VIRGINITY TESTING 415
Dejiuillg the tamill
---- ----------------------------------------
be the inspiration behind the growing movement,
clJ.ims [Q have started her practice as early as 1993,
assessments associated "ilh ,irgi.nity. These
assessments are derived from indigenous rather
Contemporary "irginit} testing events take place
and to have personally inspected over 60,000 girls than biomedical knowledge. To properly under
in a wide variety of settings that range from
throughoul the province. This tester is in much stand virginity testing among the Zulu, one must
the privacy of the family home, tlle kraal of a
demand, <:laiming that her weekends arc full as she be conn:rsant in the metaphorical language used
village chief, school halls, community centers or
J110~es from one urban stadium to a rural school in the folk descriptions of human bodies and
large public sports stadiums such as the e\ent
and on to a church hall conducting virginity tests. human bodily processes. Here, biomedical 'real
described above. Although pro\"incial-'\ide festi_
.\!though she is employed by the Department of ity' and scienriGc 'truth' are of little import. What
\-als initiated in the past se, eral }ears rcceiw mUch
Traditional and Environment Affairs, she conducts the testers look at and look for as evidence of vir
local media attention, they are far from the onlr
,ir'Tinity testing in her own time, as a private prac ginity is framed within folk constructs of human
sites where virginity testing is taking place..\lo~t
tic; TI~e fee she charges for certificates is said to bodies and ethnomedical beliefs of health and ill
of these pUblic festivals such as the now yearly
help eO"er her transportation cost only. Other test ness. This indigenolls knowledge is a knowledge
Nfll1/J.:hububvalle or 'first fruits' festival, have bee~
er~ mark the girL~ wid1 a white paint dot on the t.hat is largely articulated tluough metaphor and
revived in the name of African R.enaissancl;, b~'
f()rehead as an alternati\'e to granting a certificate. symbolic representation. Its variance with a scien
individuals who have formed the aforementioned
Still others ask the girL~ to bring their own note tific knowledge articulated through empirically
non-goverrunent organizations ,limed at fostering
books to record the date of testing along with their established 'fact' is to be expected. This is where
a 'return to tradition'. Ish:/vmlf Samas/ko is prob
pass/ fail 'mark'. communication falters between the 'modern' lan
ably the best known of these organizations. Started
~1ost of the girls are sent to be virginity tested by guage of the Gender Commission and the 'tradi
in J 997, the founders of fs/l.'h:lllle see the revi,ul of
their mothers. The question of whether or not these tional' language of the virginity testers and their
dormant Zulu customs such as \irginity testing as
girls are coerced or forced to be tested ag-ainst tl1eir supporters. The Gender Commission may argue
a practical wa) to reclaim clements of culture that
wills is of primary concem to members of the Gender that hymens can be broken through horse riding
may help to sol\'e modern day problems. /sir/ruJlt
,md Human Rights Commissions who condemn the and Yaginal lubrication varies throughout the
along with AmaG/lg/l a.1eAfrika, fs/gg/ seSill//I, and
practice. \Nhile some girls are sent to regional centres menstrual cycle, but this is of littlc relevance to
the All Africa Cultural Group are amongst the
to attend the yearly 'first fruits' Nomkhubulrve festi the virginity testers. R;lther dley talk. about virgin
best known of the local post-apartheid cultural
,ai, where hundreds of girls are tested, others arc ity being evident if there is a visiblc 'white dot'
organizations that conduct \"irginity testing in the
tested monthly in their own communities. In some somewhere deep in the vaginal canal. The thin
province. \Vith ten million rands recenrl~ set a.,ide
rural area.~ chiefs host virginiry testing at their kraals, sheath covering that they sometimes call thc
by the government for the study and promotion of
and ask all parents of un-married gjrl~ to send their hymen, is described as a 'white lacy barrier'. In the
indigenous knowledge systems, all part of the
children. The names of girls found to have lost their metaphoric language of one tester, the barrier that
African renaissance 'project', the future of such
yirginit) are given to the chief by the appointed signifies virginity is 'similar to the lace of a wed
organizations is assured well into tl1e future.
tester, and the chief then demands a fine from the ding veil'. So eager are girls to pass their virginity
There is no overarching cultural formation/
girl's father for 'tai.nting' his community_ test, that some are said to resort to pushing tooth
organiation controlling or coordinating the rap
While some virginity testers are eager to main paste high up into the vagina in an attempt to
idly growing practice of virginity testing in
tain a sense of professionalism with tl1e belief that mimic the white lacev veil.
KwaZulu-Natal. This is a source of concern fonhe
they have a special knowledge and ability to con '\ccording to those testers who give letter grades
larger organizations such a;, !sfc'ivane SalllllJiko
duct the tests, others relate how the) would like to for virginity tests, to achieve an 'A' a girl has to
that would like to act as a type of controlling
educate all mothers to be abie to 'check' their meet a combination of cliteria. Most important
'watchdog body'. Also, the provincial health
daughters themselves. One tester firmly stated are fearures of the genitalia. The color of the labia
department, while not officially advocating yirgin
that mothers should start checking daughters as should be a very light pink, the size of the va~inal
it~ testing is acti\'ely involved in assuring th.lI
soon as possible around the age of two or three, opening should be very small. the vagina should
proper hL-alth measures are laken duri.ng genital
and do so on a dail" basis. She stated: 'Just as you be very dry and tight, and the white dot or white
inspection (by providing rubber gloves and facili
wash her body and comb her hair, you can check if lacey veil should be clearly evident and intact. In
tating workshops to edtlcate tt'.l:>'1:ers about female
she's slill "clean" down there.' addition, a girl's eyes should reflect virginitv in
reproductive anatomy). They lOO profess a concern
that 'they look innocent'. lIer breasts and abdo
for the lack of control mer the virginity testing
men should be firm and taut and muscles behind
process. Amongst the better known testers in the The A, B, C's ofVirginity
her knees should be tight and straight.
province, there seems [Q be a fair degree of ri,alt:,
Western educational canSU'ucts of letter grades A 'B' grade virgin is said to be someone who
jealous~ and, according to some, attempts to
used to mark tests in schools, have been incorpo may have had intercoursc once or twice, or alter
undermine eae-h other's reputation and limit riyal
rated into some virginity testing practices. An 'l\' natively 'may have been abused'. Active complicity
practices. One tester, who is widely proclaimed to
grade is given to a girl who rates highly in all in the sex act may mean the difference berween a
41(, SUZANNE LECLERC-MADLALA VIRGINITY TESTING 417
---------------------------------------~----

'B' and a 'C' in the virginil} test, but a girl who has
been abused repeatedly is likely to get a 'C' grade.
Labia of a 'B' grade \'irgin are a deeper shade of
pink, the \'aginal opening slightly bigger, vagina
nOl so tight, and vaginal walls slightly lubricated.
The white dot and IaCC) veil are said to show evi
dence of 'being disturbed' bUl testers are reluctant
to describe exactl} \\hat this looks like. Given a 'B'
grade, a girl's mother will be warned to watch her
daughter closely because it is possible that some
one has 'louehed' her in all inappropriale way.
Nevertheless t.he girl is declared a \ irgin, and a
certificate is given.
A 'C' grade is essemially a failure. Here, the
testers describe a vagina that is 'too wide and too
wet'. No evidence of a white dot or veil can be
found, and the girl's eyes betray her as someone
'who knows men'. Most virginity testers say that it
is useless to do anything further lor these girls as
'it is lOO late' and 'nothing will change them'. A
minority of testers claim that they would COllnSel
these girls and impress upon them the dangers of
STIs, AIDS and pregnancy. Al the virginity test
ing events attended b} the author there was little
e\'idence of any kind of counselling for any of the
girls. To be given a 'C' grade for your virginity test
is to be marked with shame and disgrace.
Depending on the particular lester and the host of
the cvcnt, the girl's family may be asked to pay a
fine. In the words of one lester, the girl is now like
a 'rotten potato" she must be kept away from the
virgin girls, as hcr presence will surely 'spoil the
bunch'. As a sexually active wom:m, she represents
a danger to the virgins. Her loss of \'irginity is con
ceived as a contagion thal would cause chaste girls
to lose their virginity should they remain in close
company with her. In the words of Olle tester, her
proximity would 'causc [he Oowers of the nation
to will'.
The Local 'Gendcring' of AIDS
To understand the symbolic value that people place
on virginily testing and to shed some light on the
nature of tJ1C politicll and cultural work being done
by advocating th.is practice as an AIDS intervention,
it is necessary to consider some of the meanings and
metaphors that people artach to I IIV I AIDS and
the AIDS epidemic more generally. Dominant
narratives of blame for the HIV / AIDS epidemie
among Zulu-spea.k.ing people in KwaZulu-Natal ate
framed widlin a common diseourse on female sexu
ality. At both a physical and behaviorallc\'e1 an adUlt
woman's sexuality is metaphorically conceived as
'dirty' and potentially dangerous if not properl\'
harnessed and contained within socially dcfined
moral boundaries ofthe patriJineally linked society.
Folk models of human bodies reflect and SUppOrt ~
ideology that associates female reproducti\'c biology
with both positive and negative valences. On the
one hand her body is the acknowledged site of male
sexual pleasure and the 'nest' within whieh ncw
members of the patrilineage arc nourished, gro\\TI
and brought forth. On the other hand \\'omen's
bodies, once they become sexually active, conjure
up notions of danger, disease and the abilil1 to
weaken men and bnng all manner of misfonunate
to society. Tn the process of making meaning out of
the current AIDS epidemic, the Zulu draw upon
some long-established notions of pollution associ
ated with sexually active women and their bodies.
Ngubane (1977) provides us with what is possibly
the moSl comprehensive discussion 011 pollution
ideas among the Zulu. She states that the concept of
lIIfllO'4111a that essentially means darkness and refers
to a state of 'rirual' pollution that is contagious and
capable of causing illness and misfortune, is prima
rily associated with women (1977:76).
While much of the local ethnographic literature
on notions of pollution contains analyses that
make lise of the idiom of 'ritual' pollution (see for
example Bryant 1949, Krige 1950, Berglund 1976
and Ngubane 1977), there have been recent
attempts to problematize the notion of pollution
and explain ilS utility as an expression of ill-health
more generaHv. Work by Jewkes and Wood (1999)
among mostly Xhosa-speaking women in the
Eastern Cape province of South Africa (an l\'guni
group closely related to the Zulu) is an example of
this gendre of analysis. In their descriptions of
rcproducti\-e health and illness, \vomen inform
ants referred to 'dirty' wombs that needed to he
routinely 'cleaned' in an effon to maintain repro
ductive health. Concurring with my research
among the Zulu, Jewkes and Wood demonstrate
that Xhosa notions of 'dirt' and pollution are lIsed
as an idiom of disease and extend well beyond pre
vious ethnographic analyses of 'ritual' poll ution.
'DiselJ.fed' bodIes
pollution ideology that is representative of a gen
eral idiom of dis(,'ase among the Zulu is often artic
ulated today through the use of biomedical concepts
such as germs and germ theory. For example, many
pre\iouS \\Titers on the Zulu describe taboos that
once functioned to restrict activities of menstruat
ing women, or women who had recently b>1ven
birth, or misc:lrried. Krige ( 1950: 188) tells us that a
menstruating woman was once forbidden to enter
the famil) canle kraal or the family gardens, as it
was believed that her presence would cause 'the
udders of the cow to dry up and the crops to wilt on
their \ mes'. Most notably, intercourse with such
II omen had to be avoided as this was (and still is to
some c:\lent) believed to 'weaken' a man and cause
him to be more prone to illness or other forms of
mi.~Ii:>rLUnes. Today, these notions resonare in the
local discourse on AIDS. A woman's 'dirty' repro
ductive anatomy and related seeretions (menstrual
blood, vaginal discharges and lubrications in gen
eml), are viewed as reservoirs of HIV 'germs'. The
'bodjly secretions' of the AIDS awareness cam
paigns that can 'weaken' the immune system and
cause men to be more prone to illnesses arc new
ideas that have been distilled and filtered through
lnng-cstablished ideas of female pollution and the
peril it represented for men. The particularity of
women's bodies is associated with 'nesting' quali
ties VI here not only babies grow bm where poten
tially deadl\' 'germs' including HTV 'grow' and
'hick'. In descriptions of HIV I AIDS transmission
patterns and sexual networks, informants consist
ently represent tile transmission of HIV / AIDS as
'unidirectional' from woman to man. An infected
man is most often represented as a passive victim of
a 'dirty' wom:m while an infected I\'oman is repre
,coted as the active participant in acquiring her
infection, due to her own behavior.
Descriptions of the vagina by both male and
fema.le informams call forth a negative imagery of
a darl., damp and mysterious passage that opens
up into the body, with secretions associated with
\exual excess and disease. Dry vaginas are concep
tualized as 'clean' and disease-free, the imagery
reflecting the moral character of its owner. The
\I'Ctnl'SS of the \'agina is used as an index of both
thc degree of a woman's sexual activity and her
potential for harboring sexually tnUlsmittablc
'germs'. The wetter tlle vagina, the more sexually
active the woman and the greater the number of
'germs' likely to be found 'sticking' to tile vaginal
walls. Germs for STDs and illV in particular are
believed to be somehow infused within vaginal
secretions that assist the germs to 'stick' to the
vagina. Ilerc the STD and I IIV 'genns' are said to
'wait' and 'grow', ready to 'infect' a partner during
the act of intercourse. As a dark, moist, internal
orifice, the vagina is metaphorically represented as
a type ofnatural incubator for I rrv/ AIDS 'germs'.
Present day constructions ofIIIV 'germs' have, to
a large extent, derived meaning from a pre-exist
ing cognitive frameworks that inform people's
ideas about female impurity and the perils associ
ated with 'dirty' women. In the process the cur
rent HTV / AIDS epidcmic is giving renewed
sustenance to deeply embedded notions that help
supply the rationale for gender inequity.
'Diseased' behat:iour
Combininp; with and re-inforcing up-dated mean
ings attached to female impurity arc perception.s
of modern women conducting themselves in a
manner perceivcd as excessive and signifying a
transgression of patriarchally defined moral
boundaries. Commonly held views that women
today are more sexually active than in the past,
often taking the initiative to attract men and com
mence a sexual relationship, contribute to perva
sive ideas that modern women are 'out-of-eonlTol'.
Mothers of young women are almost unaninlous
in their opinion that }oung women today have lost
aJI manner of dignity and self-respect. One woman
with teenage daughters, two of whom had chil
dren, reflect.ed general opinion when she stated
the follo\\;ng: 'I.ook at our girls today. They arc
like lost sheep, or chickens, just poking here and
there. For what? They think sex is nice, boyfriends
are nice. What about these babies and new dis
eases? Our girls are a shame and disgracc!'
Controlling Female Sexuality:
Past and Present
Beyond a general agreement that virginity testing
was conducted in the past, there is a high level of
uncertainlY today regarding the past process, its
frequency and the sett.ing for conductin!! the test.
-1-18 SUZANNE LECLERC-MADLALA
Nonetheless, debates on the origins and practice of
virginity testing a.re rooted in the common assum
ption that \'irginity before marriage was once
highly regarded and a socially regulated norm.
These \'iews are well supported by previous eth
nographic studies of the Zulu including accounts
by J.ugg (1929) Gluckman (1935, 1940), Bryant
(l9-l9) Krige (1950, ]968), Vilakazi (1965),
Berglund (1976) and Ngubane (1977). Traditional
bride\\'ealth practices reflected the importance
placed on a girl's virginity. Cattle were used as the
foremost form of brideweath transaction known as
iff/hllfa. The standard ten head of cattle could be
supplemented by an additional head, the 'eleventh
cow' if the girl was fOtmd to be a \irgin. This CO\\
was known as in/wllw /mmama, mother's cow, and
was given to the girl's mother as a sign of thanks
from the in-laws for providing them with a 'pure'
daughter-in-law. Significantly, female genitalia are
also referred to as inkomo kamama. Checking the
about-to-be-married young woman to establish
her chaste status was said to be the job of elderly
female relatives of the girl's family \\ ith the pro
specti\ e mother-in-laws as a witness.
While some informants today insist that girls
were once subjected to routine inspection, there is
little by way of ethnographic evidence to support
this assertion. Rather, the ethnogTaphy highlights
other forms of social control that helped to instill
the value of pre-marital chastity. Talking to girls
abollt the importance of maintaining virginity
before marriage formed part of traditional puberty
rituals known as 111IIhlnnya/le (Krige 1968). This
event ideally coincided with the commencement
of a girl's menses, and was marked by ritual seclu
sion and instruction by elderly women on hal\' to
sit properly and generally bow to conduct oneself
with modesty and digniTy. As a fertile young
woman, she would soon be deemed read) for
courtship. tor this, she needed to be taught ways
to ensure that she would not 'expose her mother's
canle', i.e. lose h(:r virginity.
As she matured and boys began to show an
interest in her, older female relatives, the socio
logical 'sisters' of the clan, were the ones said to be
tasked with the duty of teaching the girl about
ukusomcl. This practice referred to intraerural sex
ual activity that did not include penetration. By
holding her thighs tightly together, a young woman
-
could give sexual pleasure to a man. Aeeordin
Vilakazi (1965) and others, sexual activi" 'bet"g to
.
the thighs' was socially acceptable. In this Wa,
young man would be able to achie\'e sexual rek;~
een
and a young woman would be able to avail herself
of his attentions (and thus demonstrate her lovc)
but not 'expose her mother's cattle'. ~othing, nei_
ther in the ethnographic literature 1101' in Contem_
porary interviews, is e\'er mentioned about the
type of sexual rcl~ase or pleasure that a young
woman \\ould den"e from IIkllso/ll<l acti, it). Thc
o\'erwhelming impression is that lIkllSO/ll,1 wa.~
about pleasing men. It '...as the woman's r~ponsi_
bilit)' to maintain the balance bet\\een giving mcn
pleasure through her body and guarding her
virginity until marriage.
While the extent of routine virginity checking
oJ girls or young women in the past is difficult to
deduce from \\ ritten accounts of past practices,
these accounts make clear that even if girls did not
regularly submit to genital inspection, there was a
high value placed on virginity and wide social
interest shown in a girl's developing body. Thc
practice of IIkushikifa, whereby a girl was expected
to raise her skirt and expose her lower abdomen,
back and front, upon the command of any adult
family member, is one such example. Informants
today say that this was done in an effort to assess
the girl's degree of physical maturity and to deter
mine her readiness for courtship and marriage. It
was a way to regularly and quickly 'inspect the
goods', and also used as an index of virginity.
Along with widening hips that indicated sexual
maturity, flabby stomachs and 'loose' buttocks
were said to be signs of lost virginity. According to
one prominent virginity tester today \\ho is also a
registered nurse, 'The stomach of a virgin is tight
and taut. Buttocks arc held high, thcy do not shake
much when walking. Ukllshikifa was a way to
check these things.'
There is also \\ ide agreement amongst contem
porary virginity testers that taut hamstring muscles
behind the knees are also an indication of virginity.
Some profess that virgi.nity (:an be deduced by
looking 'in the eyes'. One male university professor.
\\ ho is not a virginity tester himself but adyocatcs
its re.. ival, was adamant that 'you can know a \"irgin
by looking at htr eyes. The eyes don't lie.' The cur
rent debate as to whether or not routine checking of
----
VIRGINITY TESTING
. \!;irl's genitalia for signs of lost virginity was
::r~ditionar practice' is largely a moot point. What
is important is the fact that a Zulu girl's developing
sC\u~\\it) and her pre-marital sexual bchavior has
;111\"a\S provoked keen interest in thc patrilineally
structured and patriarchally dominated Zulu soci
ety. Getting girls to lie flat on the ground, knees
s,;rcad \\ ide apart and panties clutched tightly in
clenched fists. is simply a most poignant contem
porar\ reminder of a long tradition of a social pre
occupation with female sexuality.
Conclusion
In this paper I have attempted to locate and ana
Inc the phenomenon of virginity testing as a
~sponse to a maturing AIDS epid:~mic that is
consistent with local interpretive frameworks used
to understand the disease. The growing popularity
of testing can be understood as a social response to
3n Inv/ AIDS epidemic that is deeply gendered
in itS meaning. With women and the particularies
of their modern sexuality conceptualized as the
source of AIDS disease and death, inspecting girls
for signs of sexual activity represents an almost
ine\"itable development in the on-going gendered
narrative of AIDS in KwaZulu-Natal. According
to the 'gendered' logic of this narrative, putting a
halt to the sexual activity of unmarried women
will put a halt to a multiplicity of problems being
thrown up by the maturing AIDS epidemic,
namely the growing numbers of sick and dying
people and orphaned children. A gendered epi
demic requires and demands a gendered response,
\\hich virF:inity testing represents.
It m:,y be argued that virginity testing provides
a new site for further dividing women and
entrenching gender inequality. As members of the
Gender Commission argue, the current practice
of \"irginity testing is nothing less than another
form of violarion and violence against women. Yet
while some aspects of womanhood are being
'silenced' through virginity testing, other aspects
of women's experience are gi\"en expression. It is
women themselvcs, older and married, \\"ho are
promoting, organizing, and enthusiastically facili
tating these events. For some of these women, vir
ginit), testing has become a lucrative profession as
their services are being sought far and wide.
trgmlty testing has emerged as a new way to
empower older women in a society where \\omen's
voices have historically been muted, but where
women (in their roles as mothers, grandmothers
419
and mothers-in-law) have alway s held power and
authority over younger women. Virginity testing
re-asserts that power, and, in a province where
unemploy ment reaches 50% in some to\\l1ships,
having the knowledge and skills to do genital
inspection are abilities that are currently highly
marketable.
After more than a decade of social science
research on AIDS in Africa, there is a considerable
body of literature that points to the role of deeply
entrenched gender inequalities in the reproduc
tion of 'unsafe' sexual practices that assist the
spread of AIDS (see for example Green 1988,
Caldwell 1989, Ankomah 1992, Schoepf 1992, Vlin
1992, _McGrath et al. 1993, Obbo 1993 and 1995,
Orubuloye et al. 1993, Basset and Sherman 1994,
Campbell 1995, Caldwell et al. 1999). Building
upon these studies there is a growing body of lit
erature by authors such as Baylies and Bujra
(2000), Sujra (2000), Foreman (1999), Kiama
(1999), Leclerc-Madlala (2000), t\lakhaye (1998),
Omvodo (1996), Redman (1996), Setel (1996) and
Tallis (2000) that points to the rok ('f male sexual
ity and its performance and calls for more research
on notions of masculinity and their implication for
the spread of !\IDS in Africa. There is a need to
\\"iden our agenda for research and intervention on
AIDS to examine ways to target both meu (Iud
women for greater mutuality in sexual relations.
Drawing upon Ankrah's (1991, 1997) work, Tallis
(2000:259) reminds us that until gender differ
ences and power differentials are addressed explic
itly, people cannot or will not use the knowledge
they have acquired to protect themselves against
HIV/AlDS.
In South Africa we need to ask why virginity
until marriag'e is, in the first instance, such a near
impossibility. Culturally prescribed gendcr scripts
that legitimate sexual \iolencc against women have
been identified as lying close to the roots of the
current AIDS epidemic sweeping South Africa
(Preston-Whyte et al. 1991, Leclerc-Madlala
1997, Varga 1997, Wood and ]e\\ kes 1997,Abdool
Karim 1998). In a country that also bears the dis
tinction of ha\ ing amongst the world's highest
420 SUZANNE LECLERC-MADLALA
-------------------------------------
statistics for rape Gewkes et al. 2001), making girls
responsible for maintaining virginity diverts atten
tion away from other forces that may be driving'
the epidemic, i.e. the whole other half of the het
erosexual eq uation.
At both a conceptual and practicaJ level, \irgin
ity testing is enacting (and I would suggest further
entrenching) the gender inequalit) that is propel
ling the spread of HlV I AIDS. Lining up girls for
genital inspection is a contemporary sociaJ drama
NOles
These problems have consistently been reported in
the local press trom late 1998 onwards.l\ lore recentl)
the enormity of the sO'ain that the epidemic is
putting on the health care system has also feanu'ed jn
several articles of popular magazines, with titles such
Krige, Eileen J
as 'Swamped by Dead Bodies' (Drum, 23 1':ovember
1950 The Sf!{ial System o/tlte Zulu (2nd ed.) London:
2000), or 'Burials 1':0,," a Bouming Business'
Longmans, Green and Co.
(SUl/llflY Tnbllne, 23 April 2001).
1968 Girls' Puberty Songs and Their Relation to
2 The tcrm 'African rcnaissance' as used in this paper
Fenilir)', Health, Morality and Religjon Among the
refers hroadly to the philosophy of reawakening and
developing aU lhat is essentially African. In his pres
idential inaugural address and in his book AfriclI
'the Time HilS Com( (1998), President Thabo Mbeki
spoke cloquenlll and conyincinglv on the need to
rediscovC'r, reassert and nourish indigellous Afrirnn
institulions, African vailles, and African ways, in
order to propel South AfTica and the rcst of lhe con
t;ncrlt into the 21st century. The concept of African
rcnaissance has been \\idch embraced by black intel
lectuals especially, and the theme has come to be
associated with the current era of the Mbeki admin
istration as a type of national guiding philosophy.
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 Introduction

By the time of colonization, in the late 1800s, Europeans had already been in close contact with
Africans for hundreds of years. For example, by the eighth eentur), the Islamic world included
parts of north and eastern Africa, leather and bead goods arrived in southern Europe from
Africa as early as the thirteenth cenrur)~ and Portuguese traders opened up trade routes in cen
tral southern Africa, along the Zambezi river, in 1511. Dutch settlers, later called Afrikaners (or
'Boers"), arrived in southern Africa in 1652, when the Dutch East India Company established
itself therc, and throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, following the
European conquest of the Nc\\ World, Dutch, French and British traders and settlers in the
:\mericas looked to Africa as their source of slave labor.
Why did Europeans go to Africa? And once they went, why did they decide to colonize)
Clearly there were economic, political and military reasons for establishing contacts, as the
European empire sought to secure more and more of the world for its economic and political
gains. For example, the British heavily invested in India as part of the British Empire. To get to
India, where there was a rich trade in spices, and where thousands of British citizens lived and
\Iorked, one had to go around Africa past the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of the
continent, or through the Suez Canal. Because the British wanted to protect their economic
supply route, lhey became active in colonizing the regions that controlled the two pathways, and
eyen inref\'ened in military activities that affected them (for example, defending the Ottoman
Empire against Russia during the late 1870s since the Ottoman Empire at that time bordered the
route through the Red Sea).
When the Industrial Revolution began in Western Europe, huge amounts of capital became
ayailable for investment in Africa, and Africa became a source of new materials for Europe.
During the late 1800s, for example, King LeQpold II of Belgium financed his own private cor
poration (the Congo Free State) by exploiting rich rubber and ivory resources in what is today
Democnllic Republic of Congo. Colonization - permanent settlement and incorporation into
the politil'al, economic, and social system of the parent country - rather than simply exploita
tion, helped to secure the African lands as parts of an empire. It must be noted, however, that

426 INTRODUCTION
empire \\as not always profitable (Fieldhouse, 1984). Leopold, for I:xample, lost huge sums of
mone) when the central I\frican rubber supply was exhausted (Grinker, 1994: 31; ]ewsiewicki,
1983: 99). The growth of science during the enlightenment, including rescarch on racial catego_
ries) was an additional motivator for travel to Africa, and was in many ways linked with mission_
aD expedition and settlement. If the world was the creation of God, then science sought 10
reveal the complexity of God's world. That work necessitatcd catcgorizing and studying, as wcll
as convcrting, human beings in all their physical and cultural forms. Finally, increascd medic'lll
knowledge during the ninctecnth century made it possible for Europcans to travel to Africa
without large numbers of casuahies due to tropical disease. Although Europeans may have
wanted to go to Africa in greater numbers and for more length) periods of time, they could not
do so safcly until the cause of malaria was discovered in the 18+0s, and it was discm-ered that
quinine worked as a prophylactic against the malaria parasites. Still, for quite some time West
Africa was known in Europe as "the white man's grave."
By 1885, a "scramble for Africa" began in which differenl European nations, namely, POrtugal,
Holland, Germany, Belgium, France and England, sought to caJ\'e up Africa as integral parts of
its empires. l\ luch like a jigsaw puzzle, Europeans at the Berlin Conference of 1884-5 madc
decisions on paper about \\ hich piece belonged to which nation, constructing borders in what
appcared at times almost arbitrary fashion, often right through the center of particular ethnic
group territories. Colonil.ation became necessary as Europeans competed for control over the
territories. Art icle 35 of the Berlin Act, signed during the conference (Uzoigwe, 1990: 15), stip
ulated that "an occupier of any such coastal possessions had also to demonstrate that it pos
sessed sufficient 'authority' there 'to protect existing rights, and, as the case may be, freedom of
trade and of transit under the conditions agreed upon'."
The social impact of the mapping on Africa and Africans was profound. The Bakongo, for
example, became subjects in Portuguese, French, and Belgian colonies; and the Azande became
subjects in 13ritish and Belgian colonies. Although decided by European PO\\ ers more than a
century ago, almost all of these borders, and the separation of ethnic groups into two or more
distinct nation-states, are mai.ntained today in independent, postcolonial, Africa. The Berlin
conference thus illuminates how map-making has long been an essential part of political
domination.
Although all of the colonizers participated in the Berlin conference, it would be quite mis
leading to think that the term "colonization" characterizes all of the aeti\ ities of all Europeans
in Africa during the so-called "colonial period," for there are man) different kinds of coloniza
tions, the variabilil) determined by the culture and history of the colonizers as well as the types
of societies and economies they colonized. Not only were there vast differences in how one
country, such as England, colonized places as different as Nigeria and Swaziland, not to men
tion the differences between India and most African territories, but France, England, Portugal
and Germany, among others, had distinct methods of domination. England followed Frederick
Lugard's directives. some of which are included in the reading by Lugard in this part, to act
paternalistically as the trustee of the colonized, and to rule iI/directly. This meant that local
African officials would mediate between the British and the people. Indirect rule was a practical
allem.ati\ e to direct rule, especiaIJ) because in some places Iherc were simply too few British to
act as administrators, and because the British knc\\ from previous experiences that it was impos
sible to abolish completely African political and social organizations, and so they needed to work
\\ ith them rather than against them. With the exception of North .'\erica, the French and
Portuguese, in contrast, sought to rule more directly over their subjects, treating local officials
more as compliant subjects than as adminisuators.
--
427
INTRODUCTION
Perhaps the most important and influential document on colonial rule, Lugard's "Dual
1I1:lndale" outlined the method of indirect rule, the legitimation of "native authority," and the
s) stem of ta xation. Taxes, Lugard wrote, formed "the hasis of tlle whole system" (1922: 20 I),
~d thus constituted the development of both colonial hureaucracies and ncw categories of
persons - colonial elites - who stood outside the pre-existing class structures of African socie
ties. As Bctts and Asiwaju (1990: 149) note:
The ta~ s~ stem was the one which most obviousl) encouraged the bureaucratic de\ elopment of colonial
rule. It assigned a common function to the administrator and the African chief, who, in assessing and
collening the tax, often in conjunction \Iith local councils of elders or notables, reminded cvcl)one of
I he regulator) power of the new system. Furthermore, after tax collectors as such, there soon appeared
atiministrative agents who became part of the new colonial elite.
1n the long: histor} of Africa, the period of colonial rule from the 1880s to the 1960s rna) seem
minuscule. Yet, colonialism had a profound impacl on the present and futu re li\'es of all Africans
a~ II ell as on the present and future lives of the colonists. Indeed, there is a single point so obvious
that it is often m'erlooked: colonialism not only produced the colonized, it also produced coloniz
ers (Weiskel, 1980; Comaroff and Com.aroff, 1991; Thomas, 1994). The essays included in this
pari highlight the complex relations between Europe and Africa during the colonial period. They
a~() help us see that the effects of colonialism constitute a legacy that extends far beyond the
historical point at which it cnded, and when African nations became officialJ) independent
(Stoller, 1995). Waltcr Rodney's essay, for example, bold I) details the oppressive effect.s of capi
talism on African societies, but makes clear that European imperial capital \\ as nothing lI,jt!W/lt
linca. In a famous quotation, Frantz Fanon (1963, p. 102) says: "Europe is literally the creation
of the third world." Ranger shows how Britain invented Africa, often in its own image, an argu
ment paralleled closely in Chapter 1 by Jean and John Comaroff.
One of the common and misleading assumptions about the colonization of Africa is tha[ it
\\as primarily a process of conquer and rule. Certainly, that is a fair characterization as countless
~fricans died from European military campaigns, \a.rious other atrocities, and diseases intro
duced from Europe. Although thest forms of domination are the C<lsiest to see, they sometimes
mask other forms of domination, exploitation, and oppression that are subtle, C\'en elusi\ e, and
perniciolls. These are the modes of power that radically change people's awareness of Il1C111
sch es and others, that ha\'e profound psychological inlpJicatiol1s, and forever alter the meaning
of one's culture. Jean and John Comaroff (1991: 15) thus write, "The point, now commonplace,
is that the essence of colonization inheres less in political overrule than in seizing and lrans
f()rming 'others' by the vel') act of conceptualizing, inscribing, and interacting wilh them on
tcrms not of their own choosing."
An example of such hegemony, used by the Comaroffs and by the edilors of this volume, is t.he
discussion between Livingstone and the rain doclor (sec Chapter 15), in \\ hich the rain doctor is
fashioned into a scientist of sorts, who must adopt the discourse of thc colonizcr. and cannot be
e\aluated in his O\\TI terms, according to his 0\\11 worldview. Other examples can be found in the
Africans' denigration of their own culnlre and glorification of European culture, in thc abandon
ment of local forms of religion and the embracing of ChristianilY and other imported belief
s)stems, and the priorit) so of1en given to Western forms of medicine over Afrimn medicines
that have been efficacious lor centuries. As additional examples, the "nation" becomes the natural
unit of political 0I'ganiz,1tion, nmelists and poets write in European languages and thus not in the
languages in which they may actually think and feel, and tJle notions of Africa and blackness
 -- --
428 INTRODUCTION
become reified as things that actually exist in the world, rather than as culLUral constructions that
emerged out of European contact. African history is long and ancient, but Africans have fre
quently been made to feel that their histor) began when Europeans arrived at their shores.
Along with tbe Comaroffs, it is useful to distinguish between two forms of power relation
"ideology" and "hegemony." The former might refer to agentive power, in which there is a~
identifiable instrument of power that speaks, coerces, expresses itself openly and directlv.
Ideologies are thus contestable, because that which is said, known, and recognized, can also be
argued against. Hegemony, on the other hand, can refer to relations of power that are elusive
unrecognized, taken for granted, and therefore all the more powerful and uncontestable. ' Stoller, Paul. 1995. Embodying Colollilll Hemones: Spirit Possession, Power a1ld the Hi/uta iu West Afrlfa. New York
Power also presents, or rather hides, itself in lhe forms of everyday life. Sometimes ascribed to tran
scendental, suprahistorical forces (gods or ancestors, nature or physics, biological instinct or probabil_
ity), these forms are not easily questioned. Being "natural" and "ineffable," they seem to be beyond
human agency, notwithstanding the fact that the intcrests they sen'e may be all too human. This kind
of 1l0nagellrivc power proliferates outsidc the realm of institutional politics, saturating such things as
aesthetics and ethics, built form and bodily representation, medical knowledge and mundane usage.
What is more, il may not be experienced as power at aJJ, since its effects are rarely IHought by Olert
compulsion. They are inrernajjzcd, in their negalive guise, as constraints; in their ncutral guise, as
conventions; and, in their positil'e guise, as values. Yct the silent powcr of the sign, the unspoken
authority of habit, may be as effective as the most violent coercion in shaping, directing, eyen dominat
ing social thought and action. (Comaroff and Comaroff, 1991: 22)
When we sa) that categories and identities are constructed or invented through forms of pOll cr,
it is not to say that they are false or unreal, only that they are not essential, natural, or outside of
culturc and history. The categories are so well constructed, in fact - so hegemonic - that they
appear to be natural and true. We usually do not question that people arc organized into male
and female, although we know that hlunan beings could organize the world otherwise; many
English speakers do not question that the neutral pronoun in English is "he"; and few people
question that the nation is the natural, or normal, unit of political organization in the world.
Truth is established often through power directed upon the body, whether through medicine,
capitalism's labor, religion, or racism. These truth regimes, as Michel Foucault called them,
destroy the possibility of even asking whether tllose truths are valid or not - because the method
of evaluating validity is bound up with the forms and techniques of power that created the so
called truth. It is as if we determine the outcome of a medical malpractice case in court on the
basis of what six OUt of ten doctors say. What is most disturbing about all of this is that, if
Foucault is right, then power is capillary, everywhere moving in all directions. There is no agent
to resist because we are all agents. The jailer, as he puts it, is as much a subject of surveillance,
knowledge, and power as the prisoner. Ngugi wa Thiong'o leads us precisely in this direction, as
he argues that many Africans - the colonial elite - unwittingly became simultaneously subjects
and agents of power; that is, they became tile instruments of the same hegemonic forces that
constructed them. Ngugi's examples, combined with those of Ranger and Rodney, help us to see
the great force of colonialism, its lasting strength and malignancy.
References
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Geneml History o/A(i'/ca, Vol. VJI: Africa IInder Cololllal Dominatioll, 1880-1935, pp. 143-52. Berkeley and
Los Angeles: Univcrsity of Califomia Press.
~29
INTRODUCTION
Com'lroff, Jean and John Comaroff. 1991. 0/ ReT;(/at/oll and Re-JII/II/rnll, Vol. 1: Christianlo/, Coloilla/ism, Ilild
ConJclOIISf/(SJ 111 South Aji1C11. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Grinker, Ro} Richard. 1994. llOllSes i'l rhe Raill Forest: Etlmicit)' {wd Illequalit}' amollg T:ilr/llers IlIIiI Foragers "1
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)CII'SICllicki, Bogumil. 1983. "Rural SocielY and the Belgian Colonial Economy". In Dalid Birmingham and
l'h.llis i\hrnn, cds., The HIStory o/Cell/ral Afr'fa, 1'01. 2. pp. 95-125. London: Longman.
Luga~d, frederick. 1922. The Dual A/andote i1l Tropical Aji-Ica. London: Blackwood.
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Thoma~ :'\ieholas. 1994. Colollialism's Culture: Anthropology, Travel, amI Government. Princeton: Princeton
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Czoigwe, G.N. 1990. "European Partition and Conquest of Africa: An O'crview." In A. Adu Boahen, ed.,
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Suggested Reading
Aja' i,J. 1968. "The Continuity of African Institutions under Colonialism." In TO. Ranger, ed., Emerglug Tlumes
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Asad. Tab!. 1975. A,,,lrropology IIl1d the Colonial Encounter. London: Ithaca Press.
:\tkins, Keletso. J989. The Moon Is Dead! Gire us .Woney' The Cultural Origi'ls 0/ an .4.ji-iClln /Vork Ethic. Natal,
South l(i-ira, 1843-1900. London: James Currey.
Balandier, George. "The Colonial Situation." In Pierre L. Van de Berghe, cd., A/r;CII: Social Problems ~rChllllge
tim! Cnnj1ict. San Francisco, CA: Chandler.
BJout, J.M. 1993. The Colonizer's Modd ~r the World: Difjilslol/lsm and Eurocellh';c Ilistory. :-.Jew York: Guilford.
Bomen,:\.. Adu. 1987. Africau Perspectives on Colotlialis11l. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Buckle), Liam. 2005. "Objects of Love and Decay: Colonial Photographs in a Postcolonial Archive." Culll/ral
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Calla\\ a), Helen. 1992. "Drcssing for Dinner in the Bush: Rituals of Self-definition and British Imperial
AlIlhorily." In Ruth Barnes and Joanne B. Eicher, eds., Dress and Gender: !IIlkmg IlIId MeClniltg. Oxford:
Berg.
CcsairL, .\ime. 1972 [1955]. Discourse on ColOltialis1ll. Trans. Joan Pinkham. I\cw York: Monthly Review Press.
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/Y33. New Halen: Yale University Press.
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Fernandez, James W. J982. Bmitl: All Ethnography of the Rel/gious Imaginlltion ill. !(iiea. Princeton: Princeton
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Nigerian' iUage Community." AfriCII12: 129-62.
Harms, Robert, ed. 1994. Paths tOll'ard tire Past: A/i'ical1lJrstoncol Essays i71 Honor ~rJall 1'1l1ts/lla. Atlama: African
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430 INTRODUCTION

Kuper, .'\dam. 1973. "Anthropology and Colonialism." In Adam Kuper, ed., Jll/ltropolog)' alld .ltl/lrropolu,~i'<ls:
'he ,~1odet"lt BritIsh S<-hool, pp. 99-120. London: RKP. 29

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The Dual Mandate in British

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L niH:.rsit) of California Pre's.

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Said, Edward. 1\1711. Oriel/lalum. New York: Vintagc Books.

Said, Ed\\ard, 19R9. "Representing the Coloni7Cd: -\nthropology', lntcrlocuters." Crilical Jnqlli~)' 15: 205-15.
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106(1) 71--84. Frederick D. Lugard
Van Onselen, Charles. 1976. Chibaro: African .\Jille Labour ill SOllthrrtl Rhodesia. 1900-1933. London: Pluto
Prc~s.

Young, Robert]'C. 1995. Col/Jllil/l De~irc: H)'bridity ill Theory, Cllltllre, mltl Rllre. London and \lew York:
ROlltlcdge

If continuiC) and decentralisation are, as 1 have
said, the first and most important conditions
in maintaining an effective administration, co
operation is the ke\'-note of succcss in its applica
tion - continuous co-operation between every link
in the chain, from the head of the administration
to its most junior member, - co-operation between
the GOI ernment and the commercial community,
and, abo\'e all, bet\\'een the provincial staff and the
Ilati\'e rulers. Ever) individual ;ldc\s his share not
on1l to the accompli,hment of the ideal, but to the
ideal itself. Its principles are fashioncd by his
quota of experience, its results are achieved by his
patient and loyal application of these principles,
with as little interference as possible with native
customs and modes of thought.
Principles do not ch;lnge, but their mode of
application may and should vary with the customs,
the traditions, and the prejudices of each unit. The
tasl.. of the administrative officer is to clothe his
principles in the garb of evolution, not of
re\'olution; to make it apparent aJike to the edu
cated nativc, the conservative l\10slem, and the
primitive pagan, each in his own degree, that the
po.licy of the Government is not antagonistic but
progressive - sympathetic to his aspirations and
the safeguard of his natural rights. The Governor
looks to the administrative staff to keep in touch
with native thought and feeling, and to report fully
to himself, in order that he in turn may be able to
support them and recognise their work.
When describing the machinery of Government
in an African dependency, I spoke of the supervi
sion and guidance cxercised by the Lieur.
Governor, the Residents, and the District Officers
over the native chiefs. In this chapter I propose to
discuss how those functions should be exercised.
Lord Milner's declaration that the British pol
icy is to rule subject races through their own chiefs
is generally applauded, but the manner in which
the principle should be translated into practice
admits of wide differences of opinion and method.
Obviously the extent to which natj\,c races are
capable of controlling their own affairs must vary
in proportion to their degree of de\'c1opmenr and
progress in social organisation, but this is a ques
tion of adaptation and not of principle. Broadly
speaking, the diYergent opinions in regard to the
application of the principle may be found to origi
nate in three different conceptions.

From Frederick D. Lugard, 1922, "\1cthods of Ruling Native Races," pp. 193-213. The DUIII ;\1ctndate ill nrilish
Tr"pical A/i'iclI. London: Dlad..wood.
432 FREDERICK D. LUGARD
The tiTst is that the ideal of self-government can
only be realised by the methods of evolution which
have produced the democracies of Europe and
America - \iz., by representative institutions in
which a comparatively small educated class shall be
recogniscd as the natural spokesmen for the many.
This method is naturally in fa\'our with the edu
cated African. Whether it is adapted to peoples
accustomed by their own institutions to autocracy
albeit modified by a substantial expression of the
popular \\ ill and circumscribed by eustom - is nat
urally a matter on which opinions differ. The fun
damental essential, however, in such a fonn of
Government is that the educated few shall at least
be representative of the feelings and desires of the
many - well known to them, speaking their lan
g'uage, and versed in their customs and prejudices.
In present conditions in Africa the numerous
separate tribes, speaking different languages, and
in different stages of evolution, cannot produce
representative men of education. Even were they
available, the number of communities which could
claim separate representation would make any
central and really representative Council vcry
unwieldy. The authority vested in the representa
tives would be antagonistic (as the Indian
Progressives realise [... ]) to that of the native rul
ers and their councils, - \\ hich are the product of
the natural tendencies of tribal evolution, - and
would run counter to the customs and institutions
of the people. [... ]
An attempt to adapt these principles of Western
representative Government to tropical races is
now being made in India. It is at present an Eastern
rather than an African problem, but as a great
experiment in the method of Government in trop
ical countries, the outcome of which "many other
native races in other parts of the world are watch
ing with strained attention," it demands at least a
passing reference here.
Though the po\vers entrusted to the elected
representatives of the people are at first restricted
under the dyarchical system (which reserves cer
tain subjects for the Central Authority), the prin
ciple of gOl'ernment by all educated minority, as
opposcd to government by nati\"e rulers, is full)
accepted. It must be admitted that t..'lere is a con
siderable bod) of well-informed opinion in lndia
and England -voiced here by the lndiaAssociation,
an ex-Governor of Bombay), and others - whieh
expresses much misgiving as to the wisdom or
- -
Lord Sydenham (who speaks with the authority or
placing all political power "in the hands of a disar_
fected minorit) unrepresentative of India," and
regards it as "an ,1llempt to govern India by the
n;lHowest of oligarchies, whose interests often
conflict with those of the millions." [... J
The C).periment has so far shown much promise
of succcss, but thc real test is not merely Whether
the narivc councillors show moderation and
restraint as against extremists of their Own class,
bllt whether, when legislation has to be enacted
which is unpopular with the illiterate masses and
thc martial races of India, there may be a reluctance
to accept what will be called "Bahn-made law,"
though it would have been accepted without demur
as the order of "the Sirkar" - the British Raj.
It is, of course, no\\ too latc to adopt to any large
extent the alternative of gradually transforming
the greater part of British India into native State~
governed by their own hereditary dynasties, whose
representatives in many cases still exist, and
extending to them the principles which have so
successfully guided our relations with the native
States in rndia itself, and in ~(alaya in the past. It
is one thing to excitc an ignorant peasantry against
an alien usurper, but quite anodlcr thing to chal
lenge a native ru leT.
Such a system does not exclude the educated
native from participation in the government of the
State to \\hich he belongs, as a councillor to the
native ruler, but it substitutes for direct British
rule, not an elected oligarchy bUi a form of gO\'l:m
ment more in accord with racial instincts and
inherited traditions. It may be that \vhile dyarchy
and representative government may prove suitable
to Bcngal, and perhaps to some othcr provinces, the
alternative system may be found to be best adapted
to Mohamedan States, and to other of the warlike
races of India, where representatives of the ancient
dynasties still survive. Time alone will sho\\'. I shall
recur to this subject in the next chapter.
The second conception is that every advanced
community should bc given the widest possible
powers of self-government under its own ruler, and
lhat these powers should hc rapidly increased \\ilh
the object of complete independence at the earliest
possible date in the not distant future. Those who
THE DUAL MANDATE IN BRITISH TROPICAL AFRICA
hold this view generally, T think, also consider that
nempts to train primitive rribes in any form of
~c1f_go\emmcnt are futile, and the administration
;nuS t be "holly conducted by British officials. This
in rhe past has been the principle adopted in many
dependencies. It recognised no alternative between
astat LIS ofimIependence, like the Sultans ofM.alaya,
or the nativc princes ofIndia, and the direct rule of
rhe district commissioner.
But the attempt to create such independent
States in Africa has been full of anomalies. In the
case of Egbaland, where the status had been for
m3L1y recob'lliscd by treaty, the extent to which the
Crol\ n had jurisdiction was uncertain, yet, as we
h31'e seen, international conventions, including
cyen that relating to the protection of wild ani
mals, which was wholly opposed to native custom
arv rights, were applied without the consent of the
"lndcp('l1dent" State, and powers quite incompat
ible with independence were exercised by the
Suzernin. [... ]
The paramount chief might receive ceremonial
visits from time to time from the Governor, and
eyen perhaps be addressed as "Your Royal
Highness," and vested with titular dig'nitv and the
tinsel insignia of office. His right to impose tolls
on trade, and to cxact whatever oppressive ta;!es he
chose from his peasantry, was admitted, but his
authorit) was subject to constant interference.
The last-joined District Officer, or any other offi
cial, might issue orders, if not to him, at any rate to
any of his subordinate chiefs, and the native ruler
had no legal and recognised means of enforcing
his commands. He was necessarily forbidden to
raise armed forces - on which in the last resort the
authorit)" of the law must depend - and could not
therefore maintain order.
The third conception is that of rule by native
chiefs, unfcttered in their comrol of their people
as regards all those matters which are to them the
most important attributes of rule, with scope for
initiative and responsibility, but admittedly - so
far as the visible horizon is concerned - subordi
nate to the control of the protecting Power in cer
tain well-defined directions. It recognises, in the
words of the Versailles Treaty, that the subject
races of Africa are not yet able to stand alone, and
that it would not conduce to lhe happiness of the
Vast bulk of the people - for whose welfare the
controlling Power is trustee - that the attempt
should be made.
433
The verdict of students of history and sociology
of different nationalities, such as Dr Kidd, l... J
Dr Stoddard, [... ] M. Beaulieu, [... J Meredith
Townsend, [... 1and others is unanimous that the
era of complete independence is not as yet \'isible
on the horizon of timc. Practical administrators
(among whom I may include my successor, Sir
P. Girouard, in Northern Nigeria) have arrived at
the same conclusion.
The danger of going too fast with native races is
even more like!) to lead to disappointment, if not
to disaster, than the dang'er of not going fast
enough. The pace can best be gauged by those
who have intimate acquaintance alike with the
strong points and 1he limitations of the rulti\'e peo
ples and rulers with whom they have to deal.
The Fulani of Northern Nigeria are, as I have
said, more capable of rule than the indigenous
races, but in proportion as we consider them an
alien race, we are denying self-government to the
people ovcr whom they rule, and supporting an
alien caste - albeit closer and more akin to the
native races than a European can be. Yct capable as
tiley are, it requires the ceaseless vigilance of the
British staff to maintain a high standard of admin
istrative integrity, and to prel'ent oppression of
the peasantry. We arc dealing with the same gen
eration, and in many cas(;s with the identical rul
ers, who were responsible for the misrule and
tyranny which we found in 1902. The subject races
near the capital were then serfs, and the victims of
constant extortion. Those dwelling at a distance
werc raided for slaves, and could not count their
women, their cattk, or their crops their own.
Punishments were most barbarous, and included
impalement, mutilation, and burying alive. [... ]
Many generations have passed since British rule
vIas established among the more intellectual peo
ple oflndia - the inheritors of centuries of Eastern
civilisation - yet only to-day are we tentatively
seeking to confer on them a measure of self
government. "Festina lente" is a motto which the
Colonial Office will do well to remember in its
dealings with Africa.
That the principle of ruling through the native
chiefs is adopted by the different governments of
British Tropical Africa can be s(;en from recent
434
local pronouncements. The Governor of Sierra
FREDERICK D. LUGARD
Leone, in his address to the Legislative Council
last December (1920), remarks that "nine-tenths
of the people enjoy autonomy under their 0\\11
elected chiefs ... European officers arc the techni
cal advisers, and helpers of the tribal authority."
The Governor of the Gold Coast 011 a similar
occasion observed: "The chiefs are keenly appre
ciative of our po1ie) of indirect rule, and of the full
powers I hey retain under !lleir native institutions."
l...] The powers retained b) the Kabaka of Uganda
and his Council are \'el) wide indeed. [... ]
The system adopted in Nigeria is therefore only
a particular method of the application of these
principles - more especiall) as regards "advanced
communities," - and since Lam familiar with it I
will use it as illustrative of the methods which in
my opinion should characterise Lhe dealings of the
controlling power with subject races.
The object in \'iew is to make each "Emir" or
paramount chief, assi~ted by his judicial Council,
an effective ruler oyer his own people. He pre
sides over a "Native Administration" organised
throughout as a unit of]ocal government. The area
over \\ hich he exercises jurisdiction is divided into
districts under the control of "Headmen," who
collect the taxes in the name of the ruler, and pa}
them into the "Native Treasury," conducted b) a
native treasurer and staff under lhe supen'ision of
the chief at his capital. Ilere, too, is the prison for
native court prisoners, and probably the school.
arge cities are divided into wards for purposes of
control and taxation.
The district headman, usuall) a territorial mag
nate with local connections, is the chief executi\'e
officer in the area under his charge. He controls
the village headmen, and is responsible for Ihe
assessmenr of the tax, which he collects through
their agenc). J Ie must reside in his district and not
at the capital. TIc is not allowed to pose as a chief
\\ ith a retinue of his own and duplicate officials,
and is summoned from time to time to report to
his chief If, as is the case with some of the ancient
Emirates, the community is a small one hut inde
pendent of an) other natiYC rule, the chief may be
his own district headman.
A province under a Resident may contain sev
eral separate ";\Iative Administrations," whether
the} be Moslem Emirates or pagan communities.
- -
A "di\ ision" under a British District Officer ma\'
include one or more headmen's districts, Or mor~
than one small Emirate or independent [... ] pagan
tribe, hut as a rule no Emirate is parth' in one
division and partl) in an0t11er. The Resident acts
as S} mpathetic adviser and counsellor to the nati\c
chief, being careful not to interfere so as to lower
his prestige, or cause him to lose interest in his
"ork. I lis advice on matters of general puliC\
must be followed, but the native ruler issu~s hi~
own instructions to his subordinate chiefs and
district heads - not as the orders of the Resident
but as his own, - and he is encouraged to \Vurk
through them, instead of centralising ner) thing
in himself - a system which in the past had pro
duced such great abuses. The British District
Officers supen'ise and assist the nati\e district
ht:admen, through whom the} com e) any instruc_
tions to village heads, and make an} arrange;:ments
neccssar) for carl)'ing on the \\ ork of the
Goyernment departments, but all important
orders emanate from the Emir, whose mcsse;:ngcr
usually accompanies and acts as mouthpiece of a
District Officer.
The tax - which supersedes all former "trib
ute," irregular impo~Ls, and forced labour - is, in a
sense, the basis of the \\ hole system, since it sup
pLies the means to pay the Emir and a1l his offi
cials. Thl: district and vil1age heads are effeeti\dy
supen'ised and assisted in its assessment by the
British staff The native treasuI) retains the pru
portion assigned to it (in advanced communities a
haLf), and pays the remainder into Colonial
Reyenul:.
There are fiff) such treasuries in the northern
provinces of Nigeria, and every independent chief,
however small, is encouraged to ha\c his O\m. The
appropriation b} the native administration uf mar
ket dues, slaughter-house fees, forest licences, &c.,
is authorised b) ordinance, and the native admin
istration receives also the fines and fees of nwve
courts. From these funds are paid the salaries of
the Emir and his council, the nati\'e court judg-cs,
thl: district and \ illage heads, police, prisun \\ ard
ers, and Dlher employees. The surplus is dt:\otcd
to the construction and maintenance of dispensa
ries, leper selliements, ~chooLs" roads, courthouses.
and other buildings. Such wor~s rna} be carried
OUl whol1y or in part bY:I Government department,
THE DUAL MANDATE IN BRITISH TROPICAL AFRICA
i f the nati\e administration requires technical
Jssistance, the cost being borne by the native
rrc:lStlT}.
The native treasurer keeps all accounts of
receipts llnd expenditure, and the Emir, with the
~lssislance of the Resident, arulUally prepares a
budget, which is formal1y approved by the Lieut.-
GlW emor.
[n these advanced commuJlities the judges of
rhe native courts - \\hieh I shall describe in a later
chapter administer native law and custom, and
c\crcise their jurisdiction independentLy of the
nJti\e executive, but under lhe supenision of the
British staff, and subject to the general control of
rhe Emir, whose "Judicial council" consists of his
principal officers of State, and is vested with exec
urire as well as judicial powers. No punishment
nlay bl.: inflicted by a native authorif)', except
through a regular tribunal. The ordinances of gOY
ernment arc operative everywhere, but the native
authorit) may make by-laws in modification of
native custom - c.g., on matters of sanitation, &c.,
_ and these, \\ hen approved by the Governor, arc
enforced by the native coutts.
The authority of the Emir over his own people is
absolute, and the profession of an alien creed docs
not absolve a native from the obligation to ober his
hl\\ flll orders; but aliens - other than natives domi
ciled in the Emirate and accepting the jurisdiction
of the native authority anu cuurts - arc under the
direct control of the British staff. Townsllips are
excluded from the nati\'e jurisdiction.
The village is the administrative unit. It is not
alw-ays cas) to define, since the security to life and
propert) \\ hich has followed tile British adminis
tration has caused an exodus from the cities and
large villages, and tlle creation of irummerable
hamlets, sometimes onLy of one or two huts, on
the agricultural lands. The pe-asantry of the
ad\'3nced communities, though ignorant, yet dif
fers from that of the backward tribes in that they
recognise tIle authority of the Emir, and arc mure
ready to listen to the village head and the Council
of Elders. "The de\'elopment of self-government
in India," says Lord Sydenham, "should begin
with the Pcmc!wyet" (Village Council). r...] This is
the base and unit of the ~igerian system.
Subject, therefore, to the limitations wh.ich 1
shall presently discuss, the native autJlority is thus
appoints and dismisses his subordinate chiefs and
435
de [acro and de jllre ruler over his own people. He
officiaLs. He exercisl.:s thl.: power of allocation of
lands, and with the aid of the native courtS, of
adjudication in land disputes and expropriation
for offenccs against the communit)" these are the
essential functions upon which, in the opinion of
the West African Lands Committee, the prestige
of the native authority depends. The lawful orders
which he may give arc carefully defined hy ordi
nance, and in the last resort are enforced by
Government.
Since native authority, especially if exercised hy
alien conquerors, is inevitably weakened by the
first impact of ciYilised rule, it is made clear to the
elements of disorder, who regard force as confer
ring the only right to demand obedience, that gov
ernment, by the use of force if necessary, intends
to support the native chief. To enable him to main
tain order he employs a body of unarmed police,
and if the occasion demands the display of supe
rior force he looks to the Government - as, for
instance, if a community combines to break the
law or shicld criminals from justice - a rare event
in the advanced communities.
The native ruler derives his power from the
Suzerain, and is responsible that ir is not misused,
Ile is equally with British officers amenable to the
law, bur his authority dol.:s not depend on the
caprice of an executiye officer. To intrigue against
him is an offence punishable, if necessary, in a
Provincial Court. Thus both British and native
courts are invoked to uphold his authority.
The essential feature of the system (as J wrote at
the time of its inauguration) is that the nalive
chiefs are constituted "as an integral part of the
machinery of the administration. There arc not
two sets of rulers - British and native - working
either separately or in co-operation, but a single
Goyernment in which the native chiefs have well
defined duties and an acknowledged stalus equally
with British officials. Their duties should never
conOict and should overlap as little as possible.
They should be complementary to each other, and
the chief h.imself must understand that he has no
right to place and power unles~ he renders his
proper services to thl.: State."
The ruling classes arc no longer either demi
gods, or parasites preying on the community. The}

436 FREDERICK D. LUGARD
must work for the stipends and position they enjoy.
They are the trusted delegates of the Governor,
exercising in the Moslem States the well-understood
powers of "Wakils" in conformity with dleir own
Islamic system, and recogni:iing the King's repre
sentative as their acknowledged Suzerain....
Pending the growth of a fuller sense of public
responsibility and of an enlightcned public opin
ion, SOme check may be afforded by the prepara
tionofannual estimates ofrevenue and expenditure
in a very simple form. These should require the
approval of the Governor (or of the Lieut.
Governor), as the colonial estimates require that
of the Secretary of State, and any subsequent
alteration should require the like sanction. While
refraining as far as possible from interference in
detail, me Lieut.-Governor can, by suggestion
and comparison, effect some co-ordination and
uniformity where desirable, and can best discrimi
nate between the scope which may be allowed to
an individual, and the grant of extended powers of
Wliversal application. [... ]
The habits of a people are not changed in a dec
ade, and when powerful despots are deprived of the
pastime of war and slavcraiding, and when even the
weak begin to forget their former sufferings, to
grow weary of a life without excitement and to
resent the perry restrictions which have replaced
the cruelties of the old despotism, it must be the
aim of Government to provide new interests and
rivalries in civilised progress, in education, in mate
rial prosperity and trade, and even in sport. [... ]
There were indeed many who, with the picture
of Fulani misrule fresh in their memory, regarded
this system when it was first inaugurated with
much misgiving, and bclieved that though the
hostility of the rulers to the British might be con
cealed, and their vices disguised, neither could be
eradicated, and they would always remain hostile
at heart. They thought that the Fulani as an alien
race of conquerors, who had in turn been con
quered, had not the same claims for consideration
as thosc whom thcy had displaced, even though
they had become so identified with the people that
they could no longer be called aliens.
But there can be no doubt that such races form
an invaluable medium between the British staff
and the native peasantry. Nor can the difficulty of
finding anyone capable of taking their place, or
-
the danger they would constitute to the State if
ousted from their positions, be ignored. Their tra
ditions of rule, their monotheistic religion, and
their intelligence enable them to appreciate more
readily than the negro population the wider objects
of British policy while meir close touch with
the masses - with whom they live in daily inter_
course - mark them out as dcstined to play an
important part in the future, as they have do~e in
the past, in the development of the tropics.
Both the Arabs in the east and dle Fulani in the
west are Mohamedans, and by supporting their
rule we unavoidably encourage the spread ofIslam
which from the purely administrative point of Vie,,'
has rJ1C disad\'antage of being subject to wavcs of
fanaticism, bounded by no political frontiers. In
Nigeria it has been the rule that their power should
not be re-established over tribes which had made
good their independence, or imposed upon those
who had successfully resistcd domination.
On the other hand, the pcrsonal in terests of the
rulers must rapidJ) become identified with those
of the controlling Power. The forces of disorder do
not distinguish hetween them, and the rulers soon
recognise that any upheaval against the British
would equally make an end of them. Once this
community of intercst is established, the Central
Governmenr cannot be taken by surprise, for it is
impossible that the native rulers should not be
aware of any disaffection. [... ]
This identification of the ruling class with the
Government accentuates the corresponding obli
gation to check malpractices on their part. The
task of educating them in the duties of a ruler
becomes more than ever itilsistent; of inculcating a
sense of responsibility; of convincing their intelli
gence of the advantages which accrue from the
material prosperity of the peasantry, from free
labour and initiative; of the necessity of delegating
powers to trusted subordinates; of the evils of
favouritism and bribery; of the importance of edu
cation, especially for the ruling class, and for the
filling of lucrative posts under Government; of the
benefits of sanitation, vaccination, and isolation of
infection in checking mortality; and finally, of
impressing upon them how greatlv they may ben
efit their country by personal interest in such mat
ters, and by the application of labour-saving
deviccs and of scientific methods in agriculture.
THE DUAL MANDATE IN BRITISH TROPICAL AFRICA
---- nintentional misuse of the system of native
administr<ltion must a.lso be guarded against. It is
not, for instance, the dut1 of a native administra
tion to purchase supplies for nativc troops, or to
enlist and pa~ labour for public works, though its
ageoC'l within carefuJly defined limits may be use
f~l in- making known Government requirements,
and seeing that markets are well supplied. Nor
should it be directed to collect licences, fees, and
ren15 due to Government, nor should its funds be
used for any purpose not solelv connected with
and prompted br its own needs.
I have throughout these pages continually
emphasised the necessity of recognising, as a car
dinal principle of British policy in dealing with
native races, that institutions and methods, in
order to command success and promote the hap
piness wd welfare of the people, must be
deep-rooted in their traditions and prejudices.
Obviously in no sphere of administration is this
more essential than in that under discussion, and a
slavish adherence to any particular type, however
successful it may have proved elsewhere, may, if
unadapted to the local environment, he as ill
suited and as foreign to its conceptions as direct
British rule would be.
The type suited to a community which has long
grown accustomed to the social organisation of the
'Iloslem State mayor may not be suitable to
advanced pagan communities, \vhich have evolved
a social system of their own, such as the Yorubas,
the Benis, the Egbas, or the Ashantis in the West,
or The \Vaganda, the Wanyoro, the Watoro, and
others in the East. The history, the traditions, the
idiosyncracies, and the prejudices of each must be
studied by the Resident and his staff, in order that
the form adopted shall accord with natura] c.du
tion, and shall ensure the ready co-operation of
the chiefs and people.
erore passing to the discussion of methods
applicable to primitive tribes, it may be of interest
to note briefly some of the dctails - as apart from
general principles - adopted in Nigeria among the
ad'':Inced communities.
Chiefs who are executive rulers are graded
those of the first three classes are installed by the
Governor or J ,ieut.-Governor, and carry a staff of
office surmounted for the first class by a silver,
and for the others by a brass cro\m. Lower grades
437
carry a baton, and are installed by the Resident, or
by the Emir, if the chief is subordinate to him.
These staves of office, which are greatly prized,
symbolise to the peasantry the fact that the Emir
derives his power from the Government, and will
be supported in its exercise. The installation of an
Emir is a ceremonial witnessed by a great con
course of his people, and dignified by a parade of
troops. The native insignia of office, and a parch
ment scroll, setting out in the vernacular the con
ditions of his appointment, are presented to him.
The alkali (native judge) administers the following
oath on the Koran: "I swear in the Dame of God,
well and truly to serve His Majesty King George V
and his representative the Governor of Nigeria, to
obey the laws of Nigeria and lhe lawful commands
of the Governor, and of the Lieut.-Governor, pro
vided that they are not contrary to my religion,
and if Ihey are so contrary I will at once inform the
Governor through the Resident. I will cherish in
my heart no !Teachery or disloyalty, and I will rule
my people with justice and without partiality: And
as 1 carry out this oath so may God judge me."
Pagan chiefs are sworn according to their own cus
toms on a sword.
Native etiquette and ceremonial must be care
fully studied and observed in order that uninten
tional offence may be avoided. Great importance
is attached to them, and a like observance in
accordance with native custom is demanded
to\\ ards British officers. Chiefs are treated with
respect and courtesy. Native raccs alike in India
and Africa are quick to discriminate between natu
ral dignitv and assumed superiority. Vulgar famili
arity is no more a passport to their friendship than
an assumption of self-importance is to their
respect. [... j The English gcntleman needs no
prompting in such a matter - his instinct is never
wrong. Native titles of rank are adopted, and only
native dress is worn, whether by chiefs or by
schoolboys. Principal chiefs accused of serious
crimes are tried by a British court, and are not
imprisoned before trial, unless in yery exceptional
circumstances. Minor chiefs and native officials
appointed by an Emir may be tried b\ his Judicial
CowlCiL If the offence does not involve depriva
tion of office, the offender ma)' be fined without
public trial, if he prefers it, in order to avoid
humiliation and loss of influence.
438 FREDERICK D. LUGARD

Succession is governed by nati"e law and

custom, subject in the case of important chiefs
to the approval of the Governor, in order that
--
In pagan communities the method varies; bUt
there is no rigid rule, and a margin for selection is
allowed. The formal approval of the Governor after
30

the most capable claimant may be chostn. It is a shoft period of probation is a useful precaution
important to ascertain the customary la\\ and to so that if the designated chief proves himself How Europe

foUo\\' it when possible, for the appointment of a unsuitable, the selection may be revised without
chief who is not the recognised heir, or who is difficulty. j\1inor chiefs are usually selected b\' Underdeveloped Africa

disliked by the people, may give rise to trouble,
and in any case the new chief would have much
difficulty in asserting his authority, and would
fear to check abuses lest he should alienate his
supporters. In l\loslem countries the law is fairly
clearly defmed, being a useful combination of
the hereditary principle, tempered by selection,
and in many cases in Nigeria the ingenious
device is maintained of having t\\ 0 rival dynas
ties, from each of which the successor is selected
alternately.
popular vote, subject to the apprO\'al of the para~
mount chief. It is a rule in Nigeria that no slave
may be appointed as a cbief or district headman. If
one is nominated he must first be publicly freed. Walter Rodney
Small and isolated communities, living \\ ithin
the jurisdiction of a chief, but owing allegiance 10
the chief of Iheir place of origin - a common
source of trouble in Africa - should gradually be
absorbed into the territorial jurisdiction. '\Iiens
who have settled in a district for their o\\'n pur
poses would be subject to the local jurisdiction.

The black man certainly has to pay dear for carrying the \\hite man's burden.
(George Padmore (West Indian) Pan-Africanist, 1936)

In I he colonial society, education is such that it serves the colonialist ... In a regime of
slavery, education was but one institution for forming slaves. (Statement of FRELJ~10
(Mozambique Liberation Front) Department of Education and Culture, 1968)

challenged, but attention should also be drawn to

The Supposed Benefits of
Colonialism to Africa
Soeio-ecrl/lomie services
Faced \I ith the evidence of European exploitation
ofAfrica, many bourgeois writers would concede at
least partially that colonialism was a s) stem which
functioned well in the interests of the metropoles.
Hll\l'ever, they would then urge that another issue
to he resolved is ho\\ much Europeans did for
Africans, and that it is necessary to draw up a bal
ance ~hect of colonialism. On that bahmce sheet,
they place both the credits and the debits, and quite
often conclude that the good outweighed the bad.
That particular conclusion can quite easily be
the fact that the process of reasoning is itself mis
leading. The reasoning has some sentimental per
suasiveness. It appeals to the common sentiment
tll:lt "after all there must be two sides to a thing."
The argument suggests that, on the one hand, there
was exploitation and oppression, but, on the other
hand, colonial governments did much for the ben
efit of Africans and they developed Africa. It is Ollr
contention that this is completely false. Colonialism
had only one hand - it was a one-armed-bandit.
What did colonial gO\'ernments do in the inter
est of :\fricans? Supposedly, they built railroads,
schools, hospitals, and the like. The sum total of
these services was amazingly small.

From Walter Rodney, [fOil' Europe Ulld!rde"Crioped Africa (1972), Howard University Press, pp. 223-60. Copyright
t 1972 b) Walter Rodney. Reprinted with the permission of Howard Unilcrsiry Press.

40ft) WALTER RODNEY
For the first three decades of colonialism, hardly
anything \1 as done that could remotely be termed
a service to the .'\frican people. It was in fact only
after the last war that social services were built as a
marter of policy. How little they amounted to docs
not really need illustrating. After all, the statistics
"hieh sholl that '\frica today is underdeveloped
are the statistics represen ring the state of affairs at
the end of colonialism. For that matter, the figures
at I he end of the rust decade of African independ
ence in spheres such as health, housing, and edu
catioll are often several times higher than the
figures inherited by the nellly independent gov
ernments. It would he an act of the most brazen
fraud to weigh the paltry socia] amenities provided
during the colonial epoch against the exploitation,
and to arrivc at the conclusion that the good out
weighed the bad.
Capitalism did bring social services to European
workers - first}), as a by-product of providing
sllch sen'ices for the bourgeoisie and the middle
class, and later as a deliberate act of policy. Nothing
remotely comparable occurred in Africa. In 1934,
long before the coming of tJ,e welfare state to
Britain, expenditure for social services in tile
British Jsles amounted to 6 pounds 15 shillings
per person. fn Ghana, the figure was 7 shillings 4
pence per person, and that was high by colonial
standard~. In Nigeria and Nyasaland, it was less
that 1 shilling 9 pence pcr head. None of the other
colonizing powers were doing any better, and some
much \\orse.
The POrlugul"Se stand out because they boasted
the mosl and did the least. Portugal boasted mat
Angola, Guinea, and ~Iozambiqlle ha\'e been their
possessions for five hundred years, during which
time a "ci\ilizing mission" has been going on. At
the end of five hundred years of shouldering u1e
white man's burden of cil ilizing "African natives,"
the Portuguese has not managed to train a single
t\frica.n dOCtor in Mozanlbique, and the life
expectanc) in eastern Angola was less than thirty
years. As for Guinea-Bissau, some insight into the
situ,ltion there is prol'ided by the admission of the
Portuguese themselves that Guinea-Bissau was
more neglected than Angola and ~lozanlbique!
Furthermore, rhe limited social ser\'ices II ithin
Africa during colonial times were distributed in a
manner that reflected the panern of domination
and exploitation. First of all, white settlers and
expatriates \I anted the standards of the bourgeoi_
sie ur professional classes of 1he mctropolcs. The\'
were all the more determined to have luxuries i~
Africa, because so many of them came from PO\'
erty in Europe and could not expect good Sen ices
in their own homelands. In colonies like AJ[eria
Kenya, and South Mriea, it is well known tha;
whites created an infrastructure to afford thL1ll_
selves leisured and enjoyable lives. It means, there_
tore, that the total amenities provided in am of
those colonies is no guidc to what Africans go; OUt
of colonialism.
In Algeria, thc figure for infant mortality Was 39
per 1,000 live births among white settlers; but it
jumped to 170 per 1,000 live births in the C<lse of
Algerians living in the towns. In practical terms,
that meant that the medical, maternif\' and sanita
tion sen ices \I ere all gearcd tO\\ ards the well
being of the scttlers. Similarly, in South Africa, all
social statistics have to be broken down into at least
two groups - "hite and blad. - if they are to be
interpreted correctly. In British East l\frica there
were three groups: firstly, the Europeans, who got
the most; then, Ihe Indians, who took nwst of what
was left; and thirdJ), the Africans, who came last in
their 01\ n country.
1n predominanu) blac\- countries, it was also
true that thc bulk of the social sen'ices went to
"hites. The southern part of Nigeria was one of
the colonial areas that was supposed to hal'e
received the most from a bene\ olent mother coun
try. Ibadan, one of the most head) populated cit
ies in Africa, had onl) about 50 Europeans before
the last war. For those chosen few, the British colo
nial government maintained a segregated hO'>Pital
service of I J beds in well-furnished surroundings.
There wcrc 34 beds for the half-million blal-ks.
The sitllation was repeated in olher areas, so that
altogether the 4,000 Europeans in the countr~ in
the 1930s had 12 modern hospitals, while the
African population of at lea<;t 40 million had 52
hospitals.
The I iciousness of the colonial system "ith
respect to the provision of social senices \\'as most
dramatically brought out in the case of economic
activities which made huge profits, and notably in
the mining industry. 1\'1ining takes serious toll of
the health of workers, and it was only n:cently in
-
HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA
the metropoles that miners have had access to the
kind of medical and insurance sen ices which
could safeguard their lives and health. In colonial
-\frica, the exploitation of miners was entirely
;\'itho ut responsibility. In 1930, seurvy and other
epidemics broke out in the Lupa gold fields of
1~lngan~ ika. llundreds of workers died. One
should not wonder that they had no facilitie
which would have saved some lives, because in the
fir,t place they were not being paid enough to eat
proper1~ .,.
Vlany '\fricans trekked to towns, because (bad
as the~ II ere) they offered a little more than the
countr) side. Modern sanitation, electricity, piped
water, paved roads, medical scn'ices, and schools
wcre as foreign at the end of thc colonial period as
they were in the beginning - as far as most of rural
\frica was concerned. Yet, it was the countryside
that grcw U1C cash crops and provided the labor
that kcpt the system going. The peasants there
knc\\ \ Cf) little of rhe supposed "credits" on the
colonial balance sheet....
Within individual countries, considerable reg
ional variations existed, depending on the degree
to which different parts of a country were inte
grated into the capitalist money economy. Thus,
the northern part of Kenya or the south of Sudan
had lillie to offer the colonialists, and such a zone
\I<lS simply ignored by the colonizing power with
regard to roads, schools, hospitals, and so on.
Often, at the level of the disrrict of a given colony,
there would be discrimination in providing social
amenities, on the basis of contribution to exportable
surplus. For instance, plantations and companies
might build hospitals for their workers, because
some m.i.nimum maintenance of the workers' health
was an economic imestment. Usually, such a hos
pital was exclusively for workcrs of that particular
Cllpitalist concern, and mose Africans Ii\ ing in the
\'icinity under subsistence conditions outside the
money cconomy 1\ ere ignored altogether....
The financial instimtions of colonial Africa
lIere evcn more scandalously neglectful of indig
enous African interests than was the case with the
European-oriented communications system. The
banks did very little lending locally. In British East
Afrie-a, credit to Africans was specifically discour
aged by the Credit 10 Natiles (Restriction)
Ordinance of 1931. Insur,mce companies catered
441
almost exclusively to the interests of white settlers
and capitalisturms. The polic) of colonial reserves
in metropolitan currencies can also be cited as a
"sen'ice" inimical to Africans. The Currency
Boards and central banks \1 hich performed such
services denied Africa access to its own funds cre
ated by exports. Instead, Ihe rolllnia/ rescn.;es in
Brilain, Frllllce, 1I11d Belgium reprCSe71led Africall
/oal1S to lIud ClIpila/ illustmellJ ill Europe.
It is necessary to re-evaluate the much glorified
notion of "European capita)" as having been
invested in colonial Africa and Asia. The money
available for investment in the capitalist system
was itself the consequence of the previolls robber,.
of workers and peasants in Europe and the world
at large. In Africa's case, the capital that was
invested in nineteenth-century commerce was
part of the capital that had been derived from the
trade in slaves. The Portuguese government was
the first in Europe to ship captives from Africa and
the last to let go of slave trading. j\Jluch of the
pmfit slipped out of Portuguese hands, and went
instead to Britain and Germany; butlhcPortuguese
slave trade nevertheless helped the Portuguesc
themselves to finance later colonial ventures, such
as joint capitalist participation in agricultural and
mining companies in Angola and ~loz:J.mbique.
As indicated earlier, many of the entrepren
eurs from the big European porttoV\11$ who turned
to import.ing African agricultural produce into
Europe were formerly carrying on the rrade in
slaves. The same can be said of many New England
firms in the United States. Some of the biggest
"names' in the colonial epoch were capitalist con
cerns whose original capital eanlC from the trade
in slaves or from slavery itself Lloyds, the great
insurance underwriting and banking bouse, falls
into this category, hal ing been nOllIishcd by prof
its from Ihe slave territories of the West Indies in
the sCI'enteenth and eighteenth centuries; and the
ubiquitoLis Barclays Bank had its antecedents in
slave trading. Worms et Compagnic is a French
example of the same phenomenon. Back in the
eighteenth centur}, Worms had strong links with
the Frcnch sial e trade, and it grew to become one
of the most powerful financial houses dealing 1\ ith
the French empire in Africa and Asia, with par
ticular concentration on Madagascar and the
Indian Ocean.

H2 WALTER RODiJEY
The example of Unilever and the UAC rein
forces the point that Africa was being exploitcd b)
capital produced out ofAfrican labor. When Lever
Brothers took mer the Niger Compan) in 1929,
the) became heirs to one of the most notorious
exploiters of nineteenth-century Africa. The
Niger Company lias a chartered compan~ with
full governmental and poliee powers during the
years 1885 to 1897. In that period, the company
exploited Nigerians ruthlessl). Furthcrmore, the
Niger Company was itself a monopoly that had
bought up smaller firms tracing their capital
directly to sla\'e trading. Similarl), when the UAC
was born out of the merger with the Eastern and
Afriean Trading Com pan), it was associated with
some more capital that grew from a family tree
rooted in the European slave trade. The Cllpital at
the disposal of the big French trading firms CFAO
and SCOA can also be traced in the same way.
The process of capital accumulation and repro
duction in East Africa lacks the continuity of West
AJriea. Firstly, Arabs as well as Europeans \\ere
participants in the shn'e trade from East Africa.
Second!), the Germans intervened in 188"
although they had not been previously involved;
while the French (who had led the European slave
trade in East Africa during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries) concentrated on colonizing
the Indian Ocean islands rather than the East
African mainland. Thirdly, German colonialism
did not last beyond the 191+-18 war. Even so, on
the British side, the capital and profits of the colo
nizing East Africa Company reappeared in the
trading firm of Smith Mackenzie.
The capital that was invested in colonial Africa
in later years was a continuation of tbe nineteenth
century, along with new influx.es from the
rnetropoles, If one inquired closely into the origins
of the supposedly new sources, quite a few would
ha\'e been connected vcry closely to previous
exploitation of non-European peoples. I-IO\ve"er,
it is not necessary to prove that even' firm trading
in Africa had a firsthand or secondhand connec
tion wiLll the European slave u'ade and with earlier
exp10it.1tion of the continent. It is enough t
remember that Europe's greatest source of pri
mary capital accumulation was overseas, and that
the profits from African ventUres continuaUj out
ran the capital invested in the colonies.
- --
A conservative bourgeois writer on colonial
Africa made: the follo\l ing remarks about the
South African gold and diamond illdustries:
Apart from the original capital suhscribed [in the
diamond industryl, all capital expenditure Was
provided for out of profits, The industr) al~o
yieldeu large profits to the international lin
ns
IIhich dealt in diamonds. These had a peculiar
importance, because a considerable ponion of the
wealth accumulated by diamond firms was later
used in the development of the Igold industry] of
the Rand.
Similarly, in Angola the DJamallg diamond com
pan) was an investment that quickly paid for itself,
and was then producing capital. The combined
profits of that company for the years 1954 and
1955 alone came to the total of il1\Tsted capital
plus 40 per cent. The cxcess over im'estment and
maintenance costs was of course expatriated to
Portugal, Belgium and the USA, where the share
holders of the Diamo/lg were resident; and Angola
was thereby investing in those countries.
In this sense, the colonies were the generators
of the capital rather than the countries into which
foreig'n capital was plowed.
Capital was constantly in motion from metro
pole to some part of the dependencies, from colo
nies to other colonies (via the metropo!cs), from
one metropole to another, and from colon) to
metropole. But because of the superprofits created
b~ non-European peoples ever since slaluy, the
net flow was from colony to metropolc_ What was
called "profits" in one year came back as "capital"
the next. Even progressive writers have created a
wrong impression by speaking about capital
"exports" from Europe to Africa and about the
role of "foreign" capital. What was foreign about
the capital in colonial Africa was its ownership and
not its initial source.
Apologists for colonialism are quick to say that
the money for schools, hospitals, and such sen'ices
in Africa was provided by the British, French, or
Belgian taxpayer, as the case may h3\rc been. It
defies logic to admit that profits from a gil'en col
ony in a given yeo\[ totaled several million dollars
and to affirm nevertheless that the few thousand
dollars allocated to social services in thaT coJony
HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA
II'JS the moncy of European taxpayers! The true
,iluutio n can accurate1! be prcsented in the fol
Io" ing ll:rms: :\ frica.n workers and peasants pro
duced fur European eapitalism goods and services
or' [1 certain value. A small proportion of the fruits
altheir efforts was retained by them in the form of
lI'a((CS, cash pa)wents, and extremely limited social
,er~ ices, such as were essential to the maintenance
of colonialism. The rest went to the various bene
ticiaries of I he colonial system..
:lpitali~m as a system within the metropoles or
epicenters had two dominant classes: firstly, the
c1pitalists or bourgeoisie who owned the factories
and banks (the major means for producing and dis
tributing wealth); and secondlv, the workers or pro
kt~riar \\ho worked in the factories of the said
bourgeoisie. Colonialism did not create a capital
owning and faetory-own..ing cla..<;s among Mricans or
CI'en inside Africa; nor did it create an urbanized
prulerariat of any significance (particularly outside
South Africa) In other \~ords, capitalism in the form
of L-olonialism failed to perform in Africa the tasks
which it had performed in Europc in cbanging social
relations and liberating the forces of production.
It is fairly obvious that capitalists do not set out
to cr.:ale other capitalists, who would be rivals. On
the contrary, the tendency of capitalism in Europe
from Ihe vcry begiruling was one of competition,
c1imin:uion, and monopoly. Therefore, when the
imperialist stage was reached, the metropolitan
capil:l1ists had no intention of allowing rivals to
arise in the dependencies. Il0wever, in spite of
Ilhat the metropoles wanted, some local capitalists
did emerge in Asia and Latin America. Africa is a
significant exception in the sense that, compared
with other colonized peoples, far fewer Africans
had access e\'en to the middle rungs of the bour
geois ladder in terms of capital for investment.
Part of the explanation for the lack of African
C'dpitaltsls in Africa lies in the arri\-al of minority
groups who had no local family ties which could
stand in the way of the ruthless primary accumu
lation \1 hich capitalism requires. Lebanese, Syrian,
'reek, and Indian businessmen rose from the
ranks of pett) traders to become minor and some
limes substantial capitalists. N:lmes like Raccah
and Leventis were well known in Wcst Africa, just
as nanles like ~Iadh\'ani and Visram became well
known as capitalists in East Africa.
443
There were clashes between the middlemen and
the European colonialists, but the latter much pre
ferred to encourage the minoritie~ rather than see
Africans build u1emsclvcs up. For instance, in West
Africa the busillessmen from Sierra Leone were
discouraged hoth in their own colon) and in other
British possessions whcre they chose to settle. In
East Africa, there was hope among Ugandans in
particular that they might acquire cotton gins and
perform some capitalist functions connected with
cotton gro\\ing and other activities, However, when
in 1920 a Development Commission \\as appointed
to promote commerce and industr), it favored
firstly Europeans and then Indians, Africans were
prohibited by legislation from owning gins,
Taki.ng Africa as a whole, the fe\1 African husi
ncssmen who werc allc)\\ed to emerge were at the
bottom of the ladder and cannot be considered as
"capitalists" in the true sense. Thcy did nOt own
suffieient capital to in\'est in large-scale farming,
trading, mining, or industry_ They were depend
ent both on Europcan-o.... ned C'dpital and on the
local capital of minorif) groups.
That Eumpean capitalism should ha\'e failed 1O
create African capitalists is perhaps not so striking
as its inability to create a working class and to dif
fuse ,ind ustrial skills tllfoughout Mrica. By its very
nature, colonialism was prejudiced against the
establishment of induslTies in Mrica, outside of
agriculture and the extractive spheres of mining
and timber felling:. Whenever internal forces
seemed to push in the direction ofAfrican industri
alization, they wcre deliberately blocked by the
colonial governments acting on behalf of the mct
ropolit,m industrialists. Groundnut-oil mills were
set up in Senegal in J 927 and began exports to
France. They were soon placed under restrictions
because of protests of oil-milJers in France.
Similarly in Nigeria, the oil mills set up by Lebanese
were discouraged. The oil was still sent to Europe
as a raw material for industf), but European indus
trialists did not then welcome c\'en ule simple stage
of processing groundnurs into oil on African soil.
Many irrational contradictions arose through
out colonial Africa as a result of the non
industriali:tation policy: Sudanese and Ugandans
grew cotton but imported manufacmred cotton
goods, Ivory Coast grew cocoa and imported tinned
cocoa and chocolate.
 444 WALTER RODNEY
The tin) working class of colonial Africa cov
ered jobs such as agricultural labor and domestic
service. Must of it was unskilled, in contra'it to the
accumulating skills of capitalism proper When it
came to projects requiring technical expertise,
Europeans did the supervisi(m - standing around
in their helmets and white shorts. Of course, in
1885 Africans did not have the technical know
how which had evolved in Europe during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. That differ
ence was itself partly due to the kind of relations
between Africa and Europe in the pre-colonial
period. What is more significant, hO\\e\cr, is the
incredibly small number of Africans who were able
to acquire "modern" skills during rhe colonial
period. in a few places, such as South Africa and
the Rhodesias, this was due to specific racial dis
crimination in employment, so as to keep the best
jobs for whites. Yet, even in the absence of whites,
lack of skills among Africans was an integral part
of the capita.list impact on the continent.
It has already been illustrated how the presence
of industry in Europe fostered and multiplied sci
entific techniques. The re\erse side of the coin was
presented in Africa: no industry meant no genera
tion of skllls. ben in the mining indu'itry, it was
arranged that the most valuable labor should be
done outside Africa. lr is sometimes forgotten that
it is labor which adds value to commodities through
the transformation of natural products. For
instance, although gem diamonds have a value far
above their practical usefulness, the value is not
simplv a question of their being rare. Work had to
be done to locate the diamond~. That is the ~killcd
task of a geologist, and the geologists were of course
Europeans. Work had to be done to dig the dia
monds out, which involves mainly physicaJ labor.
Only in that phase were Africans from Sout h '\ frica,
Namibia, Angola, Tanganyika, wd Sierra Leone
brought into the picture. Subsequently, work had
to be done in CUlling and polishing the diamonds. A
small portion of dlis was performed by whites in
South Africa, and most of it by whites in Brusseb
and London. It was on the desk of rhe skilled cutter
that the rough diamond became a gem and soared
in value. No Afriews were allowed to corne near
that kind of technique in the colonial period.
Much of the dynamism of capitalism la~ in the
way that growth created more opportunities for
further growth. Major industries had by-products,
the~ -
stimulated local raw-material usage, the\'
expanded transport and the building industry _ ~
was seen in the case ofUnilever. In the wonhofthe
professional economists, those were the beneficial
"backward and forward linkages." Given that the
indusrries using African raw materials were located
IItsidt! Africa, then there could be no beneficial
backward and forward Linkages inside Africa. After
the Second World War, Guinea began to expOrt
ballJo:ite. In the hands of French and !\merican cap
italists, the bauxite became aluminum. In the
mctropoles, it went into the making of refactor\'
material, electrical conductors, cigarette foii
kitchen utensils, glass, jewel be.1rings, abra~i\'es:
light \\eight structures, and aircraft. Guinean
bauxjre stimulated European shipping and .:'-lurth
American hydro-electric po\ver. In Guinea, the
colonial bauxite mining left holes in the ground.
With regard to gold, the fmancial implications in
Furope were enormous and African gold played its
part in the de\'elopment of the monetary system
and of industry and agriculture in the metropnlcs.
But, like bauxite and other minerals, gold is an
exhaustible resource. Once it is taken out of a coun
try's soil, that is an absolute loss thar cannot be
replaced. That simple fact is often obscured so long
a~ production continues, as in South Africa; but it is
dramatically brought to attention when the miner
als have actually disappeared during the colonial
epoch. For instance, in the south ofTanganyika, the
British mined gold as fast as they could from 1933
onwards at a pbce called Chunya. By 1953, they
had gobbled it all up and exported it abroad. By the
end of the colonial period, Chunya was one of the
most backward spots in the whole of Tanganyi!..a,
which was itself k.no\\n as the poor Cinderella of
East Africa. If that was modernization, and giYen
the price paid in exploitation and oppression, then
Africans \\ould ha\'e been better off in the bush.
Industrialization docs not only mean agricul
ture itself has been industrialized in capitalist and
socialist countries b~ the intensive application of
scientific principles to irrigation, fertilizers, tools.
crop selection, stock breeding. (The most decisi\'e
failure of colonialism in Africa was irs failure to
change the technology of agricultural produc
tion.) The most cOI1\'incing evidence as to the
superficialit~ of the talk about colonialism haying
"moderni/.ed" Africa is the fact that the vast
majority of Africans \\ent into colonialism with a
------
HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA
hoe and camc out with a hoc. Some capitalist plan
lations inrroduced agricultural machinery, and the
odd rractor found its way into the hands of African
farmers; but the hoe remained the o\-crwhelm
'0",1\ dominant agricultural implement. Capitalism
I".
could re\olUlionize agriculture in Europe, but it
could not do the same for Africa.
In ~omc districts, capitalism brought about
technological backwardness in agriculture. On the
reseT\'es of southern Africa, far too man) Afncans
\"ere crowded onro inadequate land, and were
forced to engage in intensive farming, using tech
niques that \\ere suitable only to shifting culriva
[ion. Tn practice, that was a form of technical
retrogression, because the land yielded less and
less and hecamedestroyed in the process. Wherever
.'\tricans were hampered in their use of tbeir
ancesrral lands on a wide-ranging shifting: basis,
the same negative effect was to be fOllJ1d. Besides,
some of the new cash crops like groundnuts and
cotton were very demanding on the soil. In coun
tries like Senegal, !'Jiger, and Chad, \\ hieh were
alr ead ) on the edge of the desert, the steady culti
\ation Jed to soil impoverishment and encroach
ment of the desert.
White racist notions arc so deep-rooted within
capitalist society that the failure of Ati-ican agri
culture to advance was put down to the inherent
inferiority of the African. It would be much truer
to sa) that it was due to the wrute intruders,
although the basic explanation is to be found not
in the personal ill-will of the colonialists or in their
racial origin, but rather in the organized vicious
ness of the capitalist/colonialist systcm.
Failure to improve agricultural tools and mClh
ods on behalf of African peasants was not a mailer
of a bad decision b) colonial policy-makers. It was
an inescapable feature of colonialism as a whole.,
based on the understanding that the intcrnational
division of labor aimed at skills in the metro poles
and luw-level manpower in the dependencies. It was
also a result of the considerable use of force (includ
ing laxation) in African labor rclations. People can
be forced to perform simple manual labor, but \cry
little else. This was proven" hen Africans were used
as slaves ill the West Indies and America. Slaves
damaged tools and carricd out sabotage, which
could only be comrolled b) extra supervision and
by kcepiJlg tools and productive processes very ele
mentar). S\a\'c labor was unsuitable for carrying out
industrial acri.it)', so that in the USA the North
+-1-5
went to '\\ar in lR61 to end slavery in the South, ~o
as to spread true capitalist relations throughout the
Iwcl. Following the same line of argument, it
becomes clear why the various forms of forced agri
cultural labor in Africa had to bc kept quite simple,
and that in tum meant small earnings.
Capitalists under colonialism did not pay
enough for an African to maintain himself and
family. This can readily be realized by reflecting
on the amounts of mone) earned by African peas
ants from cash crops. The sale of produce b) an
African cash-crop farmer rarely brought in lO
pounds per year and often it was less than half that
amount. Out of that, a peasant had to pay for tools,
seeds, and transport and he had to repay the 103n
to the middleman before he could call the remain
der his own. Peasants producing coffec and cocoa
wei collecting palm produce tended to earn more
than those dealing widl corton and groundnuts,
but cven the ordinary Akwapim cocoa farmer or
Chagga coffee farmer never handled money in
quantities sufficient to feed, clothe, and shelter his
family. lns1:ead, subsistence farming of yams or
bananas continued a.~ a supplemenr. That was ho\\
the peasant managed to cat, and the few shillings
earned \\ent to pay taxes and ro buy the increasing
number of things \\ hich could not be obtained
\\ ithout money in the middlemen's shops - salt,
cloth, paraffin.Hhe was extremely lucky, he would
have access to zinc sheets, bicycles, radios, and
se\\ ing machines, and would be able to pay school
fees. It must be made quile clear that rhosein the
last category were extremel) few.
One reason \\hy the African peasant got so little
for his agricultural crops was that his labor was
unskilled. That was not the whole explanation, but
it is lTue that a product such as corton jumped in
\111ue during the time it went through the sophisti
cated processes of manufacture in Europe. Karl
Marx, in clarify ing how t:Jpitalists appropriated
part of the surplus of each worker, used the c-xample
of cotlon. He explained that the value of the manu
factured cotton included the value of the labor that
went into growing the raw cotton, plus part of the
value of the labor that made the spindles, plus the
labor that wenl into ule actual manufacture. From
an African viewpoint, the first conclusion to be
drawn is that tIle peasant \\Orking on '\frican soil
was being expluited by the industrialist who used

446 WALTER RODNEY
African raw material in Europe or America.
Secondly, it is necessary to reauze that the African
contribution of unskilled labor was valued far less
than the European contribution of skilled labor....
Within an) social system, the oppressed find
some room to maneU\cr through their 0\\11 initia
tive. For instance, under the slave regime of
Arn.:rica and the West Indies, Africans found ways
and means of gaining small ad\antages. They
would flatter and "con" the shl\emasters, who
were so arrogant and bigoted that the) were readily
fooled. Similarly, under colonialism man) Africans
played the game to secure \\hat they could. Africans
in positions like interpreters, police, and court ofll
cials often had their way over the ruling Europeans.
owever, that shoultl not be mistaken for power or
poutical participation or the exercise of individual
freedum. Under slaver}, power lay in the hands of
the slave masters: under colonialism, po\\cr lay in
the hands of the colonialists. The loss of power
for the various African states meant a reduction in
the freedom of ever) individual.
Colonialism was a negation of freedom from the
viewpoint of the colonized. Even in quantitative
terms it could not possibly bring modern political
liberation La AfTicans comparable to the little that
had been achien:d by capitalism as an improve
ment of feudalism. [n its political aspects, capital
ism in the metropoles included constitutions,
parliaments, freedom of the press. All of th(ISe
things were limited in their application to the
European working class, bUI fhey had existed in
some form or fa.~hion in the metropoles en:r since
the American War ofTndependence and the French
Re\olution. But Jules Ferr), a former French colo
nial minister, explained that the French Re\'olution
was not fought on behalf of 1he blacks of Africa.
Bourgeois liberty, cqualit), and fraternirv wal> nor
for colonial subjects. Africans had to make do ....i th
bayonets, riot aLts, and gunboats.
:'-Jegative Character of the Social,
Political, and Economic Consequences
. .. During the centurics of pre-colonial trade,
some, control over social, political, and economic
life was retained in Africa, in spite of the disad\an
tageous commerce with Europeans. That lil1le
control over intemal matters disappc-ared under
- -
colonialism. Colonialism went much further than
trade. it meant a tendency towards direct appro
priation by Europeans of the social institutions
within Africa. Africans ceased to sct inlligenous
cultural goals and standards, and lost full Com_
mand of training: )'oung members of the SlJeietr.
Those were undoubtedly major steps back\lolrd.'
The Tunisian, Albert .\lemmi, puts fonY.rd the
following proposition:
The most serious blow suffered by the colonized
is being removed from history am] from the com
munir). Colonizarion usurps any free role in
either war or peace, every decision contributing
to his destiny and that of the world, and all cul
tural and social responsibilit).
Sweeping as that statement may initially appear, it
is entirely true. The remoyal from history follows
logically from the loss of pm\ er which colonialism
represented. The po\\er to act independently is
tJ1C guarantee to participate actively and colIs,iIIllSI),
in history. To be colonized is to be removed fmm
history, except in the most passi\c sense. A strik
ing illustration of the facr that colonial Africa \\JS
a passive object i!> seen in its attraction for \\ hite
anthropologists, "ho came La study "primitiye
society." Colonialism determined that Africans
\\ere no more makers of history than were beetles
objects to be looked at under a microscope and
examined for unusual features.
The negatiw impact of colonialism in political
term~ was quite dramatic. Overnight, African
political states lost their power, independence, and
meaning - irrespective of whether they were big
empires or small polities. Certain traditional rul
ers were kept in office, and the formal structure of
some kingdoms was partially retained, but the
substance of political life was quite different.
Political power had passed into the hands of for
eign 0\ edords. Of course, numerous African states
in previous centuries had passed through the cycle
of grO\\ th and decline. But colonial rule \\as dif
ferent. So long as it lasted, not n single African
state could flourish.
To be specific, it must be noted that colonialism
crushed by force the surviying feudal states of
North Africa; tJ1at the French wiped our the large
j\ Ioslem state of the Western Sudan, as \\ell as
HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA
D~homey and kingdoms in MadagasC:lr; that the
British t:liminated Egypt, the j\{ahdist Sudan,
'\santc, Benin, the Yoruba kingdoms, SWaYjland,
'lat3belelaml, the Lozi, and the East African lake
~ingdomS as great states. It should further be
noted that a multiplicity of smaller and growing
sHiteS \\ere removed from the face of Africa by the
Belgians, portuguese, British, French, Germans,
Spaniards, and Italians. Finally, those that appeared
to 5ur\i,e \\ere norhing but puppet creations. For
instance, the Sultan of Morocco retained nominal
existence under colonial rule which started in
1912; and the same applied to the Bey of Tunis;
bllt Vlorocco and Tunisia were JUSt as much under
the power of French colonial administrators as
neighboring !\lgeria, where the feudal rulers were
remo\Cd '1Itogether.
Sometimes, the African rulers \\ho were chosen
to sene ,IS agents of foreign colonial rule were
quite obviously nothing but puppets. The French
anJ the Portuguese were in the habit of choosing
their o\\'n African "chiefs"; the British went to
Ihllland and inyentecJ "warrant chiefs"; and all the
colonial powers found it convenient to create
"superior" or "pararnolUlt" rulers. Vcr) often, th
local population hated and despised sUl:h colonial
stooges. There were traditional rulers such as tbe
Sultan of Sokoto, the Kabaka of Buganda, and tbe
:\santehcne of Asante, who retained a great deal of
prestige in lhe eyes of Africans, but they had DO
power to act outside the narrow boundaries laid
c1cl\m b) colonialism, lest they find themselves in
the Sc)cheJles Islands as "guests of His Majesty's
GO\ernment."
One can go so far as to sa~ that colonjal rule
meant the effecti\e eradication of African political
pflwer u1roughout the continent, since Liberia and
Ethiopia could no longer function as independent
states within the context of continent-wide colo
nialism. Liberia in particular had to bo\\ before
foreign political, economic, and military pressures
in a way lhat no genumely indepencJent state could
ha\e accepted; and :l1though Ethiopia held firm
until 1936, most European capitalist nations were
nOt inclined to treat Ethiopia as a sovereign state,
primarily because it \\'as African, and AfriC:lns
were ~upposed to be colonial subjects.
The pattern of arrest of AfricJlJ political devel
opment has some features which can only be
++
appreciated after careful scrutiny and the taking
away of the blinkers which the colonizers put on
the eyes of their subjects. An interesting case in
point is that of \Iomen's role in society. Until
today, capitalist society has failed to resolve the
inequality bet\lt:en man and woman, which was
entrenched in all modes of production prior to
socialism. The colonialists in Africa occasionally
paid lip senice to women's education and emanci
pation, but objectively there was deterioration in
the status of women owing to colonial rule.
A realistic assessment of the role of women in
independent pre-colonial Africa shows two con
trasting but combined tendencies. In the first
place, \\omen were exploited by men through
polygamous arrangements designed to capture the
labor power of women. As always, exploitation was
accompanied by oppression; and there is evidence
to the effect that women were sometimes treated
like bcasts of burden, as for instance in Moslem
!\frican societies. l"everthelcss, there was a
counter-tendency to insure the dignity of women
to greater or lesser degree in all .'\frican societies.
Mother-right was a prevalent feature of l\frican
societies, and particular women held a variety of
privileges based on the fact mat they were the keys
to inheritance.
!\lore important still, some women had real
power in the political sense, exercised either
through religion or directly within the politico
constitutional apparatus. In ~ Iozambique, the
wido\\' of an Nguni king became the priestess in
charge of the shrine set up in the burial place of
her deceased husband, and the reigning king had
to consult her on aIJ important matters. [n a few
instances, women were actually heads of state.
Among tlle Lovcdu of Transvaal, the key figure
was the Rain-Qycen, combining political and reli
gious functions. The most frequently encountered
role of importance played by \\omen was that of
"Qyeen '\-lother" or "Queen Sister." In practice,
th.1t POSt was filled by a female of royal blood, who
might be mother, sister, or almt of the reigning
king in places such as Mali, Asante, and Buganda.
Iler influence was considerable, and there were
occasions when the "Queen :\olother" was the real
power and the male king a mere puppet.
What h,lppcned to African women under coloni
alism is that the social, religious, constitutional, and
448 WALTER RODNEY
political privilcgl'S and rights disappeared, "hile
the economic exploitation continued and \"\as often
intensified. It was intensified because the division
of labor according to sex was frequently disrupted.
Traditionally, African men did the heal") labor of
felling u'ees, clearing land, building houses, apart
from conducting warfare and huming. When they
were required to leave their farms to seek employ
ment, women remained behind burdened \I ith
every t.ask necessary for the sun ivaI of themselves,
the children, and even the men as far as foodstuffs
were concerned. "loreo' er, since men entered the
money sector more ('asi!y wd in greater numbers
than women, women's work became greacly infe
rior to tbat of men \v;thin rhe new value system of
colonialism: men\ work was "modem" and wom
en\ was "tnldit;onal" and "backward." Therefore,
the deterioration in the status of African \\ omen
wa.s bound up \Iith the consequent loss of tile right
to ser indigenous standards of what work had merit
and what did not.
One of the most important manifestations of
historical arrest and stagnation ill colonial Africa is
that \\ hicb commonly goes under the title of "trib
alism." That tcrm, in irs common journalistic set
ting, is understood to mean thar Africans have a
basic 10ydlty to tribe rather than nation ,md tllat
each tTibe still re/aills a fundamental hostility
toward~ irs neighboring tribes. The examples
favored by the capitalist press and bourgeois schol
arship are those of Congo and r-.;igeria. Their
accounts suggest that ElIIopeans tried to make a
nation out of the Congolese and Nigerian peoples,
but they failed, because the various tribes had
their agelong h:ttreds; and, as soon as the colonial
pUller went, the natives refilmed to killing' each
otber. To this phenomenon, Europeans often
allach tbe word "atavism:' to carry the notion that
Africans were rcturning to their primitivc sav
agery. Even a cursory sun"e) of the African past
shows that such asserrions are the exact opposite
of the truth.
It is necessary to discuss briefly wh~t comprises
a tribe - a term that has been avoided in tbis analy
sis, partly bec.'1use it usually canies derogator)'
connotations and partly because of its vagueness
and rhe loose ways in which it is employed ill the
literature on Africa. Following tbe principle of
family living, A frjcans were organized in groups
which had common ancestors. Tbeoretical1~, the
tribe was the largest group of people claiming
- - HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA
~hosa, and as Sotho so that the march towards
broader African national and class solidarities
+49
fighting each othcr because of ethnic origin. Of
course there were \\ ars, but the) had a rational
descent from a common ancestor at some time in could be stopped and turned back. basis in trade ri\"alry, religious contentions, and
the remote past. Generally, such a group could The civil war in Nigeria is generally regarded the clashes of political expansion. \Vhat came to
therefore be said [() be of the same ethnic stock ,IS hal ing been a tribal affair. To accept such a be called tribalism at rhe beginning of the nell
and their bnguage ",auld have a great cleal in com~ contention would mean extending tbe definition epoch of political indepcndence in Kigeria was
man. Beyond that, members of a tribe wcre seldom of tribe toco\'er Shell Oil and Gulf Oil! But, quite itself a product of the wa) that people were
all members of rhe same political unit and vcr} sel apart from mar, it must be pointed out that brought together under colonialism so as to be
dom indeed did they all share a common social no\\here in the histo!) of pre-colonial independ exploited. It was a product of adminislrati\'e
purpose in terms of activities, such as trade and ent I\ligeria can anyone point to the massacre of devices, of entrenched regional separations, of
V\arElfe. Instead, African 51ntes were sometimes rbos by Hausas or any incident which suggests differential access by particular ethnic groups
based entirely on part of the members of a gircn that people up to the nineteenth cemu!)' werc into the colonial econom) and culture.
ethnic group or (more usually) on an amalgama_
tion of members of different ethnic communities.
All of the large states of nineteenth-centun'
Africa wcre multi-ethnic, and their c\:pansion \'Ia",
continually making anything like "tribal" loyalty a
thing of the past, by substituting in its place
nntional and class tics. Ilowever, in all parts of the
world, that substitution of national and class rics
for purely ethnic ones is a lengthy historical proc
ess; and, invariably there remains for long periods
certain regional pockets of inclividllills \Ibo ha\'C
their own narrow, regional loyalties, springing
from tics of kinship, language, and culture. In
Asia, the feudal states ofViernam and Burma both
achieved a considerable degree of national homo
geneity over the centuries before colonial rule. But
there were puckets of "tribes" or "minorities" \\ho
remained outside the effective sphere of the
nationstate and the national economy and culturc.
In the first place, colonialism blockcd the fur
thcr eyolution of national solidary, because it
destroyed the particular '\sian or Ati'jcan slates
which were the principal agents for achicying the
liquidation of fragmented loyalties. In the second
place, because ethnic and regional loyalties which
go under the name of "tribalism" could not he
effectil'e1y resolved by lbe colonial state, they
tended to fester amI grow in unhealthy forms.
Indeed, rhe colonial powers sometimes sa\\' the
\'alue of stimuhlting tbe internal tribal jealousies
so as to keep the colonized from dealing with their
principal contradiction with the European
overlords - i.e., the classic technique of d.jvicle and
rule. Certainly, tbe Belgians consciously fostered
that; and the racist \\ hires in SOUtll Africa had
by the 19S0s worked outa careful plan to "de\clop"
the oppressed African population as Zulu, as
 32
Detained:
A Writer's Prison Diary
Ngugi wa Thiong' 0
A colonial affair ... the phrase keeps on intruding
into the literary .!low of my mind and pen ... a
colonial affair in an independent Kenya ... It is as
if the phrase has followed me inside KamTti Prison
to mod.. at me.
In 1967, just before retuming home from a
three-year stay in England, I had signed a contract
with William Heinemmn to write a book focusing
on the social life of European settlers in Kenya.
The literary agent who negotiated the contract
he was also the originator of the idea - put it this
way: "Theirs is a world which has forever van
ished, but for that very reason, many readers'" ill
find an account of it still interesting."
The title? A Colollial ,~fftir!
I had agreed to do thc book because I strongly
held that the settlers were pan of the history of
Kenya: the sevcnty years of this destructive alien
presence could not be ignored by Kenyans.
Heaven knows, as they would say, that 1 tried
hard to come to terms \\;th the task. ] dug up old
newspapers and settlers' memoirs to get an
authentic feeling of the times as the settlers lived
it. A writer must be honest. But in the end I was
unable to write the book. I could not quite find the
Frum Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Delajll~ti: A Writrr's Pri.lon Dillry (1981), pro 29-38, 56--62, from Heinemann Publisher,
(Oxford) Lid.
--
I he dream in fairy t;lles was now his in practice.
in theS\; fiefdoms is well captured in Gerald
right tone. The difficulty lay in more than D1\
uncertainty as to whether or not "their world" had
really vanished. An account of their social life
would have to includc a section on culture, and I
was by then convinced that a Draculan idle class
could nevcr produce a culture.
For the settlers in Kenya were really parasites in
paradise. Kenya., for them. was a huge winter home
for aristocrats, whieh of course meant big gam~
hunting and living it up on the bJCks of a million
field and domestic slm'es, the rfti'llll as they called
them. Coming ashore in ~lomhasa, as I\ab dearly
shown by the photographic e\ idence in the
193Y edition of Lord Cran\\onh's book, Ke,o"
Chronicles, was literally on the backs of Kenyan
workers. "No one coming into a ne\\ country," he
writes, "could desire a more attracti\'e welcome.
\\le were rO\ved ashore in a small boat and came to
land on the shoulders of sturdy Swahili n'ltiws:
This was in 1906. By 1956, Sir helYTl Baring. the
governor, could still get himself photographed
being carried, like a big baby, in the arms of a
Kenyan worker. Thus by setLing foot on Kenyan
soil at Mombasa, every European I\as inst;ll1t1~
transformed into a blue-blooded aristocrat.\n
~"J ct1
"n
t IIt ~l
.
DETAINED: A WRITER'S PRISON DIARY
\': \\c!come: before him, stretching beyond
.
()fhIS eyes, lay a ..-ast \ alley g-arden of end-
-.'
. pll\'ical leIsure and pleasure that he must
Il"S . .
hJI~ once reaJ about In the '/mI1l1l1l1\"iglIts stories.
title and the glossy c()\'ers, there is on I} emptiness,
'p I\ork, no winter, no physical or mental exer
linn. }Iere he \\otdcl set up his own fiefdom. Life
Their theatre, professional and amateur, ne\ er
Ikoley's novels C(l1J.(ul at Sill/SCI and Drinkers of
')Jrlllt!.(.(. \\ooring, hunting, drinking, why worry?
\\ark OJl lhe land was carried out by gangs of
Hrican"boys." HOlh COlls1I1 at SlInsel and Drinkers
(D,lfl'lIess are fiction. Obsen ed evidence comes
':rom lh~ Jiaries of a tmeller. Tn her 1929-30 dia
ri~-.;. nOli brought out together under the title Ellst
/Ii';:'''' }lIIlT1l f l', .\1argery Perham described the
,,;mc life in minute detail:
'\'e dro\ e out past the laSI scallered houses of sub
urban "airobi, houses very much like their oppo
,ilC numbers in England. But here ordinary people
can li,'c in sunlight; get their golf and their lennis
marc easily and cheaply- than at home; keep three
or lour black seT\'ants; revel in a social freedom
that often turns, by all accounts, into licence, and
h'lIe the into)(icating sense of belonging to a small
ruling aristocracy ... certainly, on the smfacc, life
is \.:Ty charming in Nairobi, and vcry sociable
with unlimited entertaining; all the shooting,
games and bridge anyone could want. And in many
houses a table loaded with drinJ..s, upon wh.ich you
can begin at any hour from I a.QDam onwards, and
with real concentration from 6.00pm.
:\nd, so, beyond drinking whis!"y and \\ horing
each 01 her's \\ i\es and natives (\\ hal Margery
Perham prudishly calls social freedom turned "by
all ,1CCOUnts, into licence") and gunning natives for
pleasure in this vast happy "alley - oh, yes, are you
mmied or do you live in Ken) a? - the settlers
produced little. No art, no literature, no eultLIre,
just the making of a little dominion marred only
hI niggers too many to exterminate, the way they
did in 1\e\\ Zealand, and threatened by upstart
"Giku) u agitators."
The high~st they reached in creative literature
\Ias perhap~ Elspeth lIuxlc) and she is reaUy a
scribbler of tourist guidcs and anaemic seHler
polemics blown up to the size of books. The most
creative things about her \\Titmg are her titles
for instance - because in them she lets herself be
inspired by native life and landscapc. Bc)ond the
.J.63
'he Flllme Trees of TIl/ita and The HOlf/ed Lizard,
and emptiness as a defence of oppression has never
made a grcnt subject for litcnlture.
went be}ond crude imitation and desperate
anempts to keep up with the West End or Broad\\ ay.
This theatre ne..-er inspired a single original script
or actor or critic.
In science, they could of course display Leake).
But Leakey's speciality was in digging up, dating
and classifying old skulls. Like George Eliot's
Casaubon, he was happier living with the dl.'ad. To
the Leakeys, it often seems that thc archaeological
ancestors of Africans were more lovable and noble
than the current ones - an apparcnt case of regres
siye evolution. Colonel Leakey, and even Le\\is
Leakey, hated Africans and proposed ways of kill
ing off nationalism, "hile praising skulls of dead
Africans as precursors of humanity. The evidence
is there in black and "'hite: L.S.8. Leakey is the
author of two anti-Mau Mau books - .Hall .Mall
alld Ihe Kikll)//I and Deji:rl1l11g Mlw ,Mall.
In art, their highest achievement was the mural
paintings on the waJls of the Lord Dclamere bar in
the Norfolk Hotel, Nai robi. 1 The murals stand to
this day and they still attract hordes of tourists
who come to enjoy racist aesthetics in art. But the
murals in their artistic mcdiocrity possess a rcveal
ing historical realism.
On one wall are depicted scenes drawn from the
English country side: fourteen di fferent postures
for the proper deportment of an English gentle
man; fox-hunting with gentlemen and ladies on
horseback surrounded on all sides by well-fed
hounds panting and wagging tails in anticipation
of the kill to corne; and of course the different
pubs, from the \\'hite Hart to the Royal Oak, wait
ing to quench the thirst of the ladie.s and gentle
men after their blood sports. Kenya is England
3\\<lY from England, with this difference: Kenya is
an England of endless summer tempered by an
eternal spring of sprouting green life.
n another wall are l\\O murals depicting aspects
of settler life in that Kenya. One shows the Norfolk
the House of Lords as it was then known - in 1904.

+64 NGUGI WA THIONG'O
---------------------------------------------
Here again are English ladies and gentlemen - some
on horseback, others sitting or standing on the
verandah - but all drinking hard liquor suved them
by an African waiter wt:aring the sen'am's uniform
of white kall.'w, red fez, and a red band o\'er his
shoulder and front. In tlle foreground is an ox
admission that, even if they triumphed over the
wagon with two Africans: one, the driver, lashing at
people, this would only be a temporary victory:
me dumb oxen; and me other, the pilot, pulling
them along the right paths. The ribs of the "push
ing: boy" and the "pulling boy" are protruding, in
contrast to the fully fleshed oxen and members of
"the House of Lords". But the most prominent
feature in this mural is "a rickshaw boy" with grin
ning teeth holding up mis human-po\\ered carriage
for a finely dressed English lady to enter. Oxen
powered wagons for English sun ivaI goods; African
powered carriages for English lords and ladies.
Eleanor Cole, in her 1975 random recollections of
pioneer settler life in Kenya, writes:
Transport in Nairobi in those dars was by rick
shaw, one man .in front betwcen the shafts and
one behind, eithcr pushing or acting as a brake.
I>CQple had their priyate rickshaws and put their
rickshaw men in uniform. There were also public
ones for hire.
The other mural depicts the same type of royal
crowd at Nairobi railway station. At the forefront, is
a well-fed dog \\'agging its tail before its lord and
master. But amidst tlle different groups chatting or
""alking, stands a lone bullnecked, bull-faced settler
in riding breeches \\ ith a hat covering bushy eye
brows and a grey moustache. He could have been a
lone! Grogan or a Lord Delamere or any other
settler. The most representative feature aboUl him
is the sjambok he is firmly holding in his hands.
The rickshaw. The dog. The sja11lbok. The ubiqui
tous underfed, wide-eyed, mUformed l1ative slave.
In March 1970, Colonel Grogan and four asso
ciates flogged three "rickshaw boys" outside a
Nairobi court-house. The "boys" were later t<\ken
to hospital with lacerated backs and faces. Their
crime? They had had the intention of alarming
two white ladies by raising the rickshaw shafts an
inch too high! The rhetoric of the magistrate when
latcr Grogan, Bowkes, Gray, Fichat, and Low were
summoned before him for being members of an
unlawful assembly, left not the slightest doubt
about the sadistic brutalit) of the deeds of
these sons of English nobility and graduates of
Cambridge:
From the first to the last it appears to me that OUt
of all the people present assisting at the nogging
of these men, there was no one of that number
who ever took the trouble to satisfy himself as to
\\ hether I hese natives had eyer done anything
deserving of punishment at all. There was no trial
of any sort nor any form or pretence of trial.
These boys \\ere neither asked \\hether thCJ had
any defence or explanation to give, nor dates it
appear that they ever had any opportunity of
making one. Grogan, wl10 ordered the flogging,
hali himself stated that no plea or defence which
they might have made would have diverted him
from his purpose. This is a very unpleasant ft-a
ture in the case and [ consider it about as bad as it
can be. Yel, in my opinion, it is further 'lggravated
by the fact that the place selected for this unlaw ful
act wa" directly in front of a courthouse.
Sweet rhetoric versus bitter reality: the culprits,
all found guilt), were given prison terms ranging
from sevcn to thirt) days. Prison? Their own
houses where they wcre free to receive and enter
tain guests! Elsewhere, in the plantations and
estates, the "bwana" would simply have shot and
buried them, or fed them to his dogs.
In 1960, Peter Harold Poole shot and killed
Kamame Musunge for throwing stones at Poole's
dogs in self-dcfence. To the settlers, dogs ranked
infinitely higher than KeIlyans; and Kenyans were
either chjldren (to be paternalistjeally loved but
not appreciated, like dogs) or mindless scoundrels
to be whipped or killed). In his autobiography,
Words, Sartre has made the apt comment that
"when you love children and dogs too much, yOU
love rnem instead of adults" The settlers' reallo\'e
was for dogs and puppies. Thus, to hit an attacking
dog was a wor~c crime than killing a Kenyan. And
"hen Poole was sentenced to death, the \\ hole
colonial Hemmrolk cried in unison against this
"miscarriage of justice" Peter IIarold Poole had
done what had heen the daily norm since 1895.
In 1918, for instance, t\\ 0 British peers flogged a
Kenyan to death and later burnt his body. His crime:
I Ie was suspected of having an intention to steal
property. The t \\'0 murderers were found guilt) ofa
-
DETAINED: A WRITER'S PRISON DIARY
"simple hurt" and were fined two-thousand shil
lings each. The governor later appointed one of
them a member of a district committee to dispense
justice among the "nativcs". The gory details are
there in Macgregor Ross's book Kenya Fmm Withill.
lustice in a sj(jmbok!
. I thought about this in my cell at Kamiti prison
and suddenly realized 1 had been wrong about the
British settlers. I should have written that book.
For the colonial system did produce a culture.
But it was the culture of legalized brutality, a
ruling-class culture of fear, the culture of an
oppressing minority desperately trying to impose
total silence on a restive oppressed majority. This
culture was sanctified in the colonial administration
ofPe, D.c., 0.0., Chiefs, right down to the askari.
At Kamili, we called it the Mbwa Kali culture.
Culture of silence and fear: the diaries anti mem
oirs of the leading intellectual lights of the old
colonial system contain full literary celebration of
this settler culture. We need go no further than
Colonel ~ leinertzhagen's Kenya Dillfies and
Baroness Blixen's Out ofAfrica.
,\!eineftzhagen was a commanding officer of the
British forces of occupation. But he is far hetter
known in history as the assassin of Koitalel, the
otherwise unconquerable military and political
leader of the Nandi people. This is what happened.
Under Koitalel's inspiring leadership, the Nandi
people had waged a ten-year armed struggle against
the foreign army of occupation, humiliating British
oflieers, one after the other. Enter Meinertzhagen,
a gentleman. Unable to defeat the Nandi guerrilla
army, the colonel invited Koitalel to a peace parley
on some "neutral" ground. But only on one condi
tion. Both men would come unarmed. Having
been led to belieye that the British wanted to dis
cuss surrender terms and guarantees of safe retreat
from Nandi country, Koitalel accepted. Put inno
cence ag-ainst brutality and innocence will lose.
There could he no finer illustration of thi~ than the
encounter between Koitalel and Meinertzhagen.
Koitalel stretched an empty hand in greeting.
:\'Ieinertzhagen stretched out a hidden gun and
shot Koitalel in cold blood. The incident is recorded
in Kenya Diaries as an act of British heroism!
Similar deeds of British colonial heroism are
recorded in the same diaries.
465
The scene now shifts to GikGyii country, where
people once again fought with tremendous cour
age against the better armed foreign invaders. So
fierce was the struggle that in 1902 Meinertzhagen
was forced to make the grudging but prophetic
the British could never hold the country for more
than fifty years. In one of several battles in
MGrang'a, a British officer was captured by the
national defence army in MGrGka and was handed
to the people for justice. They killed him. Months
later, Meinertzhagen stole into Milnlka on a
market day, had the whole market surrounded,
and ordered a massacre of ever) single sou) - a
cold-blooded vengeance against defiant husbands
and sons. Thereafter he embarked on a campaign
of pillage, plunder and more murder.
i\leinertzhagen wrote in his diary: "Every soul
was either shot or bayonetted ... we burned all
huts and razed the banana plantations to the
ground ... Then I went home and wept for
brother officer killed."
Baroness Blixen was the separated wife of the
big game hunter-cum-settler Baron von Blixen.
From him she got no children but incurable
syphilis. As if in compensation for unfulfilled
desires and longings, the baroness turned Kenya
into a vast erotic dreamland in which her several
"hite lovers appeared as young gods and her
Kenyan ~ervants as usable curs and other
animals. It is all there in her two books, Shado17Js
011 the Crass and Ollt ofAfri,a. In the latter, her
most famous, she celebrates a hideous colonial
aesthetic in an account she entitles Kitosch's
story:
Kitosch was a young native in the service of a
young white settler of Molo. One Wednesday in
June, the settler lent his brown mare to a friend,
to ride to the station on. He sent Kitosch there to
bring back the mare, and told him not to ride her,
but to lead her. But Kitosch jumped on the mare,
and rode her back, and on Saturday the settler, his
master, was told of the offence by a man who had
seen it. In punishment the settler, on Sunday
afternoon, had Kitosch flogged, and afterwards
tied up in his store, and here late on Sunday night
Kitosch died.
466
-----------------------------------
The outcome of the trial in the High Court at
Nakuru rurned to rest solely on the intention~ of
the victim. It transpired b~ a hideous logic that
NGUGI WA THIONG'O
K.itosch had actuaJJy wanted to die and he was
therefore responsible for his death. 10 I\nglo
Saxonland, it seems colonized nati\Ces have a
fiendish desire for suicide that J.bsohocs white
munlerers:
Kitoseh had not much opportuni~ for expressing
his intentions. Ill.' was locked up in the store.. his
message, therefore comes yery simply, and in a
single gesture. The night walch states that he
cried all night. But it was not so, for at one o'clock
he talked with toto, who was in the store Wilh
him, becau,e the flogging had made him deaf
But ell one o'clock he asked lhe toto to loosen his
feel, and explained that in any case he could not
fun away. When the tolo had done as he asked
him, Kitosch sJ.id to him that he wanted to die. A
little while after, he rocked himself from side to
side, cried: "I am dead'" and died.
Medical science was cven brought in to support
the wish-to-die theory. This was supposed to be a
psychological peculiarity of lhe African. I Ie wants
to die, and he dies. The iron~ is not Blixen's. She
accepts the theory. What, of course, Kitosch said
was, "Nataka kufa" which means: "I am about to
die, or I am dying." But that is not the issue_ It is
the verdict and the conclusion. The settler was
found guilty of "grievous hurt." And for a "griev
ous hurt" to a Kenyan, the foreign senler got t\\O
~ears in jJ.il, probabl) on his own farm l It is nOI
recorded ho" much more grievous hurt he com
mitted later.
The fault is not Blixen's manner of telling the
story - all the derails arc there - but her total
acceptance of the hideous theory and her attempts
to draw from it aesthetic conclusions meant to
have universal relevance and \'aJidity:
Ily this strong sense in him of what is right and
decorous, the fibTUre of Kitoseh, with his firm will
to die, although now remo\Td from us by many
years, stands out WitJl ~ beJ.uty of its own. In it is
emhodied the fugiti\'encss of \\ ild things who aloe,
in the hour of need, conscious of a refuge some
where in existence; \\ ho go \yhen they will; of
whom we can never get hold.
The African is an animal: the settler is exonerated
Not a single word of condemnation for thi; prae~
tice of colonial justice. No evidence of am' d'.
IS
comfiture. And for this, generations of western
European critics from Hemingway to John Cpdike
h~I\'e showered bcr with praises. Some nco-colonial
Africnns too. But I err too in saying the African was
considered an animaJ. In realit~ they loved the wild
game but Africnns were worse, morc threatening,
instinctless, unlovable, lmredeemable sub-animal'i
merely useful for brute labour. 1J1 Dill (~r ~{rir."
Karen Blixen says tllat her knowledge of wild game
was useful in her later contact with Africans'
\\hat of course is disgusting is the J.ttempt by
writers like Blixen to tttrn acts of cold-blooded
murder and torture of these "black suppliers of
brute labour" into deeds of heroic grandeur. It
makes words lose their meaning or perhaps it is
proof that the meaning of a word depends on the
user. Galbraith Cole shot dead a ~lasai national in
cold blood. The subsequent triaJ lias a pre
arranged farce, rehearsed to the letter and gesture
by all three pa.rties, prosecutor, judge and mur
derer (all European of course), in such J. way that
on the records tl1e Kenyan murdered would
emerge guilr~ of unbearable armed provocation.
ut the settler "J.S too J.rrogant to hide his mur
derous intentions behind a glossy mask of lies. \s
later reported b) Karen Blixen, this is how the
farce reachcd a climax of absurdity:
The Judge said to Galbraith, "It's not, you kno\\~
lh~l we don't understand that you shot only to
stop the thieves." "1\0," GJlbraith said, "I shotto
kill. J said that I would do so."
"Think again, Mr Cole," said the judge. "We
are convinced that you only shot to stop thl'1Tl."
"No, by God," Galbraith said, "1 shot til kill."
Ill.' was acquitted. But Blixen reported Cole's
admission as an act of unparalleled greatnes!>. In a
book, Silence mill Speak, the same literary glorifi
(;ation of the settler culture of murder and torture
is shamelessl~' repeated in 1977 by one Errol
Trzebinksi.
Robert Ruark, in SOll/elhillf( of Vil/uc and l./ll/IrII,
was to outdo the lluxJe)s, the Blixens, the
Trzebinskis, in raising the reactionary settler
culture of violence to the level of uni\-crsality, and
--
of'doom and c\erlasting darkness.
DETAINED: A WRITER'S PRISON DIARY
an\Cbody upsctting it was seen as Hades' harbinger
.\lcinertzhagen, the soldier-assassin tumed
\\ riter; Karen BJixen, the baroness of blighted
bloom {Unlcd writer; Robert Ruark, the big-game
hunter turned writer - theirs is a literary reflec
tion o(dlat colonial culture of silence and fear best
articu!J.ted in a dispatch by an early g()\ernor, Sir
-\. R. H;lrdinge, on 5 April 1897:
Force and the prestige which rests on a belief in
force, are the only wa~ you can do anything with
those people, but once beaten and disarmed they
\"ill serve you. Temporizing is no good ... These
people must learn submission by bullet; - it's lhe
only school, after that )OU may begin more mod
ern and humane methods of education, and if you
don't do it this year you will have to next, so why
not get il over? ... in Africa to havc peace you
must first teach obedience, and the only turar
who impresses the lesson properly is rhe sword_
Thus rhe abO\'e acts of animal brutalitv IVere not
cases of individual aberration but an integral part
of colonial politics, philosophy and culture.
Reactiollal) violence to instil fear and silence was
the ver)' essence of colonial settJer culture.
Now a comprador bourgeoisie is, by its very eco
nomic base, a dependent class, a parasitic class in
the Imp? sense. It is, in essence, a mnyapl/lu class, a
hJ.ndsomely paid supervisor for the ~mooth opera
tion of foreign economic interests. Its political
inspiration and guidJ.nce come from outside the
countf). This economic and political dependency is
clearly reflccted in its imitative culture - excres
cences of '\lew York, Los Angeles and London. For
this c1as~, as Frantz Fanon once put it, has an
extreme, incurable wish for permanent identifica
tion with the culture of the imperialist bourgeoisie.
Here this class faces insurmountable difficulties
and contradictions. I'or to trul) and reall) become
an integral part of that culture, they would have to
live and grow abroad. But to do so would remove
the political base of their economic constitution as
a class: their control of the state of a former colony
and hence their abilit), to mortgage a \\ hole country
and its people for a few million dollars. So this class
can (Jnl) admire that culture from an undesirable
467
distance and try to ape it the best the~ can within
the severe limitations of territory and history, but
with the hope thJ.t tJleir children will be fully unin
hibited and unlimited in their Euro-t\mericanism.
The) will order suits straight from Ilarrods of
London or hi/Ille coulllre from Paris; buy castles
and estates abroad and even build ~easide and
country \-illas there; now and then go on holidays
abroad to relax and shop and bank. At home, Ihey
will meticulousl) groom, with the country's pre
cious and hard-earned foreign currenc) reserves, a
privileged elite caste of imported foreign experts
and advisors, at the same time setting up a school
system rep rod ucing what the)' assume obtains
abroad. They will send their children to the most
expensive boarding schools abroad, or else
approach EEC coUJltries to build worth while
international-class l)leees at home for the super
elite children of the super-wealthy.
But the members of a comprador bourgeoisie of
a former sett.lcr colony count themseJres lucky;
they don't have to travel and reside J.broad to know
and copy 111e culture of the imperialist bourgeoi
sie: have the) not learnt it all from the colonial
settler representatives of metropolitan culture?
Nurtured in Ule womb of the old colonial system,
they have matured to their full compradorial
heights, looking up to the local Europeans as the
alpha and omega of gentlemanly refinement and
ladylike eleg-ance. With racial barriers to class
mobility thrown open, the deportment of a
European gentleman - rosebuds and pins in coat
lapels, spotJess white kerchiefs in breast pockets,
tail-coats, top-hats and gold-chained pocket
watches - is no longer in the realm of dreams and
wishes. Thus in a very recent book edited by
Elspeth HlDdey, Piol/eer's Scrapbook, there is an
approving comment about this cultural imitation:
Henr\ Scott died ... on 11 April 1911 and was
buried at Kikuyu. He was succeeded in the fol
Im\ing year b) Dr J. \V. Arthur, who had come to
Kikuyu in 1907: a man of great personal charm
and driving force, who exercised a Itemendous
influence over the younger Kikuyu. Ilis habit of
wearing a rosebud or carnation in his lapel is per
petuated by some of the leading polilicians of the
present day who were small children at b:.ikuyu in
the late twenties.
468
Lady Eleanor Cole, wife of the infamous
Galbraith Cole, in her otherwise dry, humour
NGUGI WA THIONG'O
less, random recollections of settler life in Kenya,
writes enthusiastically about the social scene in
the Nairobi of 1917:
Nairobi was very social and people gave formal
dinner parties, at which the women were dressed
in long skirted low-necked gowns and men in stiff
shirts and ~hite waistcoats or in uniform. Men
and women were carefully paired, and you were
tal-en to dinner on the arm of your partner. There
were strict rules of precedence, and woe betide
the hostess who ignored them.
She is describing the Nairobi of 1917, but she
could as easily ha\'e been describing Nairobi of the
1970s; only the latter Nairobi's wastefulness
behind the feudal formality surpasses the former
in sheer opulence,
The most popular columns in the old settler
papers, The Sunday Post and The Kfllya Weekly
News, were the social pages listing who was who at
this or that function at this or that club or at so and
so's residence. The columns used to make hearts
lutter, in tears or joy, depending of course on
whether or not one was included. ';'hose who
appeared more regularly, especially at functions in
exclusiYe clubs and residences, I'. ere regarded with
envious awe and admiration by the Icss fortunate
aspirants. After independence, the columns ceased
to be, as did the two newspapers.
\Vell, the columns are now back in the glossy
bourgeois monthlies Vh:a and Cille and in the Aga
Khan-owned tabloid, The Daily Nation. They are
even more popular. The columns are still a cause
for joy or sorrow to many an expectant lady and
g:entleman. Only that this time, among the main
:':uropean and Asian actors arc to be found upper
crust Kenyan blacks holding, on their gentlemanly
arms, ladies bedecked with gold and diamonds
holding a goblet of liquor.
Lessons learnt in the Hardinge school of phi
losophy. First through the bullet and the sword.
Then through the more "humane" and "modern"
methods. The character and the behaviour of
the more successful pupils would have pleased
Goyernor Hardinge and all the other tutors, from
Eliot to Malcolm .\1acdonald, in that famous -
school of colonial philosophy. First the gun, cow
them; then the pen, take their minds prisoner'
then filter them and pick out the top loyalists and
bribe them numb \\ ith some semblance of Power
and wealth. And see the results.
Thu~ the settler played golf and polo, Went to
horse-races or on the royal hunt in red-coats and
riding-breeches, a herd of yapping and growling
hounds on the chase. The black pupils now do the
same, only with greater zeal: golf and horses ha\'c
become "national" institutions.
The settler prostituted women, as when Karl
Peters publicly hanged his African mistress because
she preferred the company of her Kenyan brothers
to his own. His pupils today have gone into the
whole game with greater gusto: tourism, as prac
tised today, can only thrive on the virtual prostitu
tion of the whole country, becoming a sacred
industr) \\ith shrines, under the name of hotels
and lodges in all the cities and at the seaside. The
modern-day Karl Peters need not usc the gun to
deter rivals. The name of the game now is money.'
The settler built exclusive betting clubs, drank
neat whisky on the verandah of his huge mansion,
or indulged in countless sundowners and cocktail
parties. Their pupils continue tl1e process: gam
bling casinos and strip-tease joints get full state
support and legal encouragement.
The settler despised peasant languages which
he termed vernacular, meaning the language of
slaves, and believed that the English language was
holy. Their pupils carry this contempt a stage fur
ther: some of their early educational acts on receiv
ing the lag were to ban African languages in
schools and to elevate English as the medium of
instruOion from primary to secondary stages. In
some schools, corporal punishment is meted out
to those caught speaking their mother tongues;
fines are extorted for similar offences. '\len at the
top will fume in fury at fello" Africans whu mis
pronounce .:English but will laugh with pride at
their own inability to speaJ.. a single correcl sen
tence of their own African languages. In some
government departments, the ability to speak the
Queen's English, exactly like an upper-class
English gentleman, is the sole criterion for employ
ment and promotion. But since few, if any, Africans
-
C10
DETAINED: A WRITER'S PRISON DIARY
speak the language exactly like those nati\ e to
it, only Englishmen get employed or promoted to
criticJI positions of authority.
The settler loathed any intellectuall) challeng
ing literature or any genuine creative expression,
beyond imitations of sugary comedies from
L~ndon performed by amateurs wearing robes
flown fnml abroad to give the whole tear-jerking
aerobatics a touch of the real thing. To him, African
culture was a curious museum-piece or an esoteric
barbaric show for the amusement of tittering ladies
'lOd gentlemen desiring glimpses of savagery.
Their comprador pupils too hate books and they
loathe any theatre or music that challenges their
betrayal. If a certain book is in vogue, they will buy
it and ask their wives or children to go through it
.md tell them briefly what the fuss is all about.
The) also loathe African culture except when it
can be used to rationalize their betrayal. But the)
will illl'itt: a few traditional dancers to do acrobal
ics for \ isitors from abroad, later summing up the
whole sho\\ with polite applause and patronizing
wonder: hO\\ do these people manage such bodily
rontortions'
The settler built goo(h\ill churches to thank a
white God for delivering the wh ite race from the
toils of Adam and invited his African labourers
to share in the joyful tidings. The settler believed
in charity to passively grateful African serfs: a
bit of the plunder back to the plundered? Here
these dutiful pupils surpass themsclves in their
singular leal to excecute the same. Charity dona
tions and church-going become "national"
imperatives and moral yardsticks for political
acceptance. The cult of oSlent:ltious godliness is
raised to nevI ethical planes. The propertied few
compete in donating money for erecting several
churches in a rural village that cannot boast of a
single decem primary school, much less food or
water. The imperialist evangelical dri\C of colo
nial missions is now led b~ the state and its
wealthy blacks, with the same message: trust and
obey. Spiritual leaders arc trotted out in a string
to calm ril>ing disgust by promising future
bount) for obedient souls. There is a pathetic
side to the \~hole exercise in apemanship exhib
ited by these successful pupils of I Iardinge's
school of philosophy.
In the 1950s a blue-blooded settler memsahib
whose education never went beyond riding Arah
469
ponies and bashing the keys of the piano, sought
and found solace for her early widowhood in
joining the anti-;\ tau Mau, anti-communist,
l\'loral Rearmament crusade. Accompanied by a
fv1..Rl\'t team flown from its headquarters in
Switzerland, paid for by the financial gnomes of
Zurich, she visited schools and colleges and
detention camps showing pro-imperialist reli
gious films like The Forgotten Fllctor, Freedut1l,
The CroT/ming Experimce in which anti-colonial
guerrillas suddenly give up their armed struggle
for liberation on learning about the presumed
transforming power of the four moral absolutes
of honesty, unselfishness, purity and love. Her
theme? Give up guns for hoi) kisses. Beware of
godless communism.
Well? Soldierly religious words never die. In the
1970s the same words reappear in speeches by a
senior cabinet minister, intellectual conqueror of
uniycrsities in Africa and abroad, at fund-raising
ceremonies for more and more goodwill churches.
His theme? Beware of godless communism! This
foreign ideology is against our African traditions.
We are Christians and capitalists by birth and
ancestry.
Thus far for the modern and humane features
of Hardinge's school of philosoph). Playing golf
and polo, gambling at modern casinos and horse
races, ogling at naked women in strip-tease clubs,
creating a modern happy \'alley for moneyocrats
from Germany and America, televising ostenta
tious display's of well-groomed holiness and
Churchillian e:-.travaganzas at weekends, speaking
English with an upper-class English accent, all
these seem harmless imitations although far reach
ing in their consequences. They can be fought if
there's democracy. Reality is anyway more power
ful than a million imitations.
Unfortunately, it is the repressive features of
colonial culture - Hardinge's sword and bullet, as
the onl~ insurance of continuing their life-style
that seem to have most attracted the unqualified
admiration of the compradors. The settler with
the Sjambllk lording it 0\ er a mass of "pulling and
pushing nigger boys", that figure so meticulously
presen ed on the walls of "The Lord Dclamere"

470
in the Norfolk Hotel, seems the modern ideal for
the post-colonial ruling class.
NGUGI WA THIONG'O
How else call it be explained that the 1966 laws
of detemion, sedition and treason, reproduce,
almost word for word, those in practice betwl.:cl1
1951 and 1961 during the high noon of colonial
culture?
Submission through the sword and the bullet!
~nd only later is it possible to achieve the same
through the modern "peaceful" methods of
churches, schools, theatres, television, cinema,
colonial history, junk literature all run, super
\ ised and approved by foreigners l
The fact is that the comprador bourgeoisie
would like to resurrect the imagined grandeur and
dubious dignit) of colonial culture_ The unilateral
,lrbitrary arrest and detention of kenyans opposed
to imperialist culture was a major step towards
reconstruction of the new colonial Jerusalem,
:-';otes
On 31 Occcmber 1980 the Norfolk Hotel was
bombed, reponedl) b) revolutionaries. But the Lord
Dclamere bar rema.incd intact.
2 Kupc, tick; 111l1yapala, overseer.
3 I was too hastv when I wrote this. The S,ulldllrd of I
Octub<:r 1980 carried this rep on: '~mcrican sailor
Frank Joseph Sundstrom, who admitted killing a
Kenyan, ~1onieah Njeri, in her Mombasa Oat after an
c\'ening of sex, was ycstcrd'ly discharged on rhe condi
tion that he signed a bond of shs. 500 to be of good
behaviour tor rhe next two years." Sundstrom, who
- - ._------
-
\\ here people would for ever sing in unison: 'TrUst
and obey, for there is no other wa\~ to be happr
amidst us, except to trust and obey." .
Part X
''Arise colonial ulZ3ru,>" is their cclebraton' C'all t
. II
divine worship at the holy shrines of imperiali~m:
Our father in Europe and America
11 all 0\\ ed be thy name
Thy kingdom come
Nations and Nationalism
Thy will he done
In our wealt h~ i\friea
Our willing and welcoming tunC<1
As it was done in tJle colonial pas!.
Gi,e us this day our daily dollar
Am) forgi\'e liS our failures
Help us triumph over those that challenge you
and liS
\nel give us grace amI aid and rJ1e power to be
meek and grateful
For C\'cr and ever, Amen.
was \\itJl the USS La Sal/e, which was then payinp
"good will" \-isit to Kenya, was tried before J white
judge, L.G.E. HarrL~, and a \\hiICprosccutor, l\'icholas
Harwood. The government has granted milimry facil
ities to we USA, and the La Salle was \'isitill~ Ken\J
from the US r..liddle "EaJ;t fleet poised to Sllppres~ an~
gelluine anri-imperialist nationalist uprisings in the
arC;l. The massive anger of Ken\',ln people at the
judgement forced the retirement ofJustice Harris. hill
a whole four months or so after the ;nlan10us judge
ment and e\'en then with full bcncfits.
 Introduction

It is fitLing to begin this section on African nationalism with an essay b) Leopold Scdar Senghor
II"ho, as founder of the Mali Federation in 1959, paved the way for national independence
throughout much of Francophone West Africa. As a statesman, Senghor was instrumental, by
way of skillful negotiations wilh French president Charles de Gaulle, in gaining independence
for Senegal from French colonial rule. In 1960, Senghor was unanimously elected as the first
president of the independent republic of Senegal- a nation which he successfully governed for
twO decades until he was succeeded by Abdou Diouf. As a poet and man of letters, Senghor was
an eloquent spokesman for the intellectual philosophy and cultural movement known as negri
tude - a term which Senghor defined succinctly as "the sum total of cultural values of the
~egro-African world."
The negritude movement began in Paris during the 1930s when francophone African and
Caribbean intellectuals (bound b)' their common legacy as colonial subjects of France), including,
in particular, Leopold Senghor and Martiniquan poet Aime Cesaire, fashioned a discourse of pan
Mrican cultural identity which was intended as a non-violent revolt against colonialism and, in
particular, as a statement of protest against France's policy of cultural assimilation in Africa
(Crowder, 1962). Negritude used poetry and literature to restore the vaJidit} of African culture,
and to establish a positive image of "black" consciousness - a metaphor of identity \\ hich would
serve as ,I rallying force of nationalism in the African world (Steeves, 1973: 92). In his numerous
writings on the subject, Senghor (1948, 1964) stresses the indigenous wisdom of African peoples,
and argu(.'S that beneath the superficial cultural idiosyncrasies that distinguish one society from
another Africans are united by a profound commonality which is expressed in their democratic
social structures, their religions, their work practices, their arts, and in the rhythm of African life
itself (see also our general Introduction on the notion of African cultural unity). While stressing
that African cultures were united, Senghor also argued that Africa was distinct from Europe and
that nation-building (as a form of anti-colonialism) could on1)' emerge if the "African personality'
\Va.~ rescued from t.he suffocating pressure of European colonial culture. Senghor drew upon
images of gender and temperament when he described Africa as "female, emotional, and rhythmic"
474 INTRODUCTION
-
in contrast to Europe which he characterized as "male, technical, and cold" (Lambert, 1993: 249).
In his essay Femmes Noires, for example) Senghor constructed a female image of Africa in which
he "portl"ays the woman Africa as a promised land from which the black pcrson is alienated while
in Europe" (Lambert, 1993: 249). How different is this image from earlier European aCCOunts of
exploration which depicted Africa as an erotic and dark female body waiting to be penetrated bv
European colonization (see Comaroff and Comaroff, Chapter I)? Is it possible to construct ~
gemlercd image of a continent as both a positi\'e and negati\ e mctaphor?
There is a central contradiction in Senghor's work which forms, at least in part, the basis of
Fanon's critique of negritude. While Senghor argued that "there existed in blackness a special social
quality ... he expressed this outlook in French language of such skill and precision that he was
admitted to the French Ac-ademy" (Manning, 1988: 165). T.his point not only raises the whole issue
of what language should be used to establish an "authcntic" voice in African national literature (see
the Introduction to Part I on the debate between ChinuaAchcbe and Ngugi wa Thiong'o), but also
tl1fOWS into question the possibilit} of discovering "true" African identity wough the framcwork
of European scholarly discourse. Ho\\ connected was Senghor to the predicament of colonial Africa
when he was writing from the perspective of an elite intellectual living and studying in Paris?
Frantz Fanon was born in Martinique and became a political activist in the Algerian National
Liberation Front in the 1950s. His essay, "On National Culture," \\'as "ritten for the Second
Congress of Black Artists and Writers which was held in Rome in I959, and was published in
1961 as a chapter in his highly acclaimed polemic The Wretched of the Earth. Unlike Senghor,
Fanon's agenda was more political than it was academic. His essa) offers a direct critique of the
negritude movement, which Fanon says does Dot go nearly far enough in its struggle [Q disman
tle colonialism. He argues that Senghor's vision of independent African identity is couched in
European colonial racialist terms. Rather than liberate himself from the culture of the oppres
sor, Fanon contends that Senghor accepts the basic premise of colonial subjugation: namely, the
inferiority of the colonized. Out of the indignity engendered by racist colonial rhetoric, negri
tude tried ro rehabilitate African culture in the eyes of the West. Por Fanon, however, this was
neither the way to independence nor to the formation of national identity. African nationalism
cannot be founded on an} attempt to redress colonial discourse (a process which, through its
very negation, gives credence to European stereotypes), but rather must emerge from Africa's
own struggle and on its o\\n terms (July, 1987: 215-17).
Specifically, Fanon rejects two principal tenets of the negritude movement. First, he argues
that national identity cannot emerge from dle (re)construction of an idealized or nostalgic past,
but must be grounded on the reality of the present - a reality \\hich, for Fanon, involves violence
against the colonial authorities. "A national culture," writes Fanon, "is not a folklore, nor an
abstract populism that believes it can discover the people's true nature." Second, Fanon believed
that culture is national and specific to the experience of a region or local state. The emphasis in
negritude on pan-African identity functioned to diffuse the struggle against colonialism. There
was no "common destiny" to be shared across Africa as a whole, but there was a common destiny
"between the Senegalese and Guinean nations whjch are both dominated by the same French
colonialism." What fan on largely fails to consider, however, is the question of how diverse and
multiple ethnic groups can come together to form a single national culture. While the common
destiny of the Senegalese may be different from that of the Guinean, what about the common
destiny of the multiple ethnic groups which comprise Senegal as a nation? Are the national goals
and aspirations of the Wolof, for example, the same as those of the Serer?
The problem of multi-ethnic states is the focus of the next two essays in this part. Both of the
essays broach the issue of ethnicity and nationalism from a different perspective. Bruce Berman's
- INTRODUCTION
essay "'\ationalism, Ethnicity, and Modernity: The Paradox of ~1au ;\lau" demonstrates the
contested interpretation of a politic:lllreligious movement in Kenp known as Mau Mall. The
475
i\1au :'\lau revolt was an armed uprising by Kiku) U pC:lsants against the colonial state in Kenya.
from the early 1950s until its suppression by British authorities in 1956, a campaign of oathing
(pledging allegiance to a revolutionary cause) was used to create unity among the Kikuyu people
(Green, 1990). Although Mau Mau was targeted against foreign colonial rule, it was played out
.1S a conflict between Kikuyu 10) ali~ts and Kikuyu liberationists: only a handful of the thousand
deaths \\ ere "white."
During the 1950s, when Mau Mau was still active in Kenya, the colonial authorities viewed
the movement as an expression of "atavistic tribalism" - a quasi-religious cult steeped in the
barbarit} and violence which Europeans had come to associate with Africa (see Part I). In the
1960s, follo\\ ing Kenya's independence from Britain, and in an era \\ hen Afric<ln political sci
ence was emerging as an important field of study in the United States, writers like CaTl Rosberg
and John :"Jottingham (1966) reconsidered thc colonial interpretation of ~1au Mau, and con
cluded that to view Mau Mau as a form of atavistic tribalism was to buy into a colonial myth
which was constructed out of an ideology of racism and European paranoia and fear. Mau Mau
was to be understood instead as a form of "militant nationalism" whose struggle for liberation
\Ias predicated on "modern" and "rational" political moti\'ations. Berman concludes that both
interpretations of lv1au Mau are flawed, and a.re based on identical premises about modernity,
development, and nationalism. Drawing heavily on 1he influential work of Benedict Anderson
1983), and his concept of the nation as "an imagined community," Berman argues that Mau
\lau was both a religious mo\'ement a11d a political movement. i\1au Mau gre\\ out of internal
factionalism and dissent among the Kikuyu people. There was no unified front (either "ritual"
or "national") but rather "a diverse and exceedingly fragmented collection of individuals,
organizations and ideas, out of \\hich no dominant concept of a Kikuyu imagined national com
munity had emerged." By viewing nationalism as a political ideology which has more in com
mon \\ ith kinship and religion than it does with the secularizing demands of the modern
nation-state, Berman is able to account for the "passion" of Mau Mau in a way which no prior
interpret.1tion was able to do.
P'inally, the problem of the multi-ethnic state is also considered by Christopher Steiner in his
essay "The Invisible Face: Masks, Ethnicity, and t.he State in Cote d'Ivoire." Steiner asks the
following question: 1low does the lvoirian state bring together over sixty different ethnic groups
into a single, unified vision of a nation? And, furthermore, how does the state then go about
marketing this image of national identity to the rest of the world, and, specificall), to European
and American tourists? The Festimask, a huge masked festival organized by the Ministry of
Tourism in 1987, was an attempt to present a unified image of Cote d'Tvoire to both nationals
and foreigners alike. The nation state was to be encapsulated in the image of the mask, an art
form which was thought to capture the "mystical" past of the nation. Through an analysis of its
huge commercial failure, Steiner use~ the Festimask as an object lesson in multiethnic African
nationalism, demonst.rating the inherent tensions between "modern" national integration and
the preservation of authentic "traditions." How different, in the end, is the Festimask from the
foll,lore and nostalgia which Fanon criticized so heavily nearly three decades ago?
References
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagillrd COll/llIlmilles: Rrj7ecliolls all Iltr Or(e;il/ {lIId Spread of ValiaI/o/ism. London
nnd Ne\\ York: Verso.
Crowder, Michael. 1962. Smega/: A Sludy ill Frel/ch Assimi/alioriisl P()/iq'. London: Oxford University Press.

476 INTRODUCTION

Green, Maia. 1990. "Mau Mau Oathing Rituals and Political Ideolog~ in Kenya: ARe-Analysis." Afrim 60(1):
69-87.
July. Roben W. 1987. An African Voice: The Rille ofthe HlImlll/ilies in /lji-icllI/ Indepefldenre. Durham, NC: DUke
-
33

University Press.
Lambert, Michael C. 1993. "From Citizenship to Nip'lIl11le: 'Making a Difference' in Elite Ideologies of Negritude:

Colonized Francophone West Africa." Cumpllra.live Studies ill Sucicly alllllliSlory 35(2): 239-62.
Manning, Patrick. 1988. FratlCophulle Sub-Sahara.l1 Africa. 1880--1985. Cambridge: Camhridgc lini\'ersi!\'
Press. - A Humanism of the Twentieth Century

Rosberg. Carl, and John Nottingham. 1966. The Mylh ofl\1a/l .I1all: /Vationalism ill Kenya. New York: Praeger.
Senghor, Leopold Scdar. 1948. Alllhologie de III nout'elle poesi( lIigre (I malgache de lal/glle fratlfaise. Paris: Prelises
universitaires de France. Reprinted in 1969.
Senghor, Leopold Sedal. 196+. 01/ African Socialism. Translated by J,lercer Cook. l\ c\\ York: Praegel.
Steeves, Edna L. 1973. "I\legrirude and the Noble Savage." The Joumal of. Wodem AjriCiln Studies 11(1):
Leopold Sedar Senghor
91-104.

Suggested Reading
Afigbo, A.E., and S.LO. Okita, eds. 1985. Mllseums alld Nillioll BlJilrlil/g. lmo State, Nigeria: New African
Publishing.
Amoah, Michael. 2007. RecollStme/ing the Nalioll ill /lfriell: The Polilies o/,V,fli/JI/Illism i1/ Challa. London and
New Yc)rk: LB. Tauris Acadcmic Studies.
Bah, Abu Bakarl. 2008. Breakdf/U'I/ and ReeolwilUlioll: Democrat)', JlI~ Nillioll-Slau, and EJlmiczty ill iVigm
Alnham, MD: Lexington Books.
Berman, Bruce, Dickson Eyoh and Will hymlicka, eds. 2004. EII/IIirilJ' and Democracr in Africa. Columbus, OH: During the last thirty or so years that we have been l\legro poet, Langston Hughes, wrote after the
Ohio St,lte University Press. procbiming negritude, it has become customary, first world war: "\Ve, the creators of the new gen
Cesairc, !\ime. 1969. Retllrn to my Vatit'( Lalld. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. espcciall~ among English-speaking critics, to eration, want to give expression to our black per
Coombes, Annie E. 1988. "Museums and the Formal ion of National and Cultural Identities." The O.1/iml Arl accuse us of racialism. This is probably because the sonality without shame or fear ... We know we arc
Jlltlrllll/l l(2): 57-68. word is not of English origin. But, in the language handsome. Ugly as well. The drums weep and the
Dia, Mamadou. 1961. The Afriran NaliOlls alld /1'(trlrl Solidllrily. Translated by Mercer Cook. 1\ew York: drums laugh." Perhaps our only originality, since
of Shakespeare, is it not in good company with the
Pracger. l it was the West Indian poet, Aime Cesaire, who
words humanism and socialism? Mphahleles have
Golan, Dafnah. 1994. InvCltling Shaka: Usillg Hislor)' ill Ihe- Conslr/l((itJ11 IIf Zulu Nallf/I/alism, Boulder, CO: coined the word negritude, is to have attempted to
Rienncl. been sent about the world saying: "Negritude is an
inferiority complex"; but the same word cannot define the concept a little more closely; to have
Hodgkin, Thomas. 1957. NlI/iOllalism in Colr/lliaIAfri(lI. Nc\\ \ork: Nc\\ York Uni\'ersit) Press.
mean both "racialism" and "inferiorit) complex" developed it as a weapon, as an instrument of lib
Irele, Abiola. 1965. "'\egritude or Black Cultural 'Iationalism." The Jill/mal of Jl10rlmf /1fi-iWII SllIdies 3(3):
321-48. without contradiction. The most recent attack eration and as a contribution to the humanism of
Jul), Robert W. 1967. Th~ Origills ~fMQtlerll Afrimn Thol/ghl. l\ew York: Praegel. comes from Ghana, where the government the twentieth century.
Ken) alta, Jomo. 1938. Rlring MOl/nl Ken)'a: The Tribal Lift of Ihe- KilII)'I/. London: Secker and Warburg. has commissioned a poem entitled "I Hate But, once again, what is negritude? Ethnologists
Langley,J, Ayodclc. 1973. Prm-Afri({/Ilism and VlllifITwlism iI/ West, Ijrica, 1900-1945. Oxford: Clarendon Press. l\egritude" - as if one could hate oneself, hate and sociologists today speak of "different civiliza
M.alkki, Liisa H. ]995. Purity IJlld E~'ile: Vio!<-uu, Melllor),. alld Natif/llal Cuslflology IImOllg HII/u Rejifgecs in one's being, without ceasing to be. tions." It is obvious that peoples differ in their ideas
'Timulflia. Chicago: Univcrsity of Chicago Prcss. and their languages, in their philosophies and their
No, negritude is none of these things. It is nei
Mark, Pcter. 199+. ':A.n, Ritual, and Folklore: Dance and Culrmalldcntit), among the Peoples of the Casamance." religions, in their customs and their institutions, in
ther racialism nor self-negation. Yet it is not just
Cahim d'El/liles aji-icailles 136, 3+(+): 563-8+. their literature and their art. Who would deny that
'-cubergcr, Bcnyamin. 1987. "Historv and African Concepts of '\Iationhood." Calladtall Review of Slorlies ill affirmation; it is rooting oneself in oneself, and
self-confirmation: confirmation of one's b"j"g. Africans, too, have a certain way of conceiving life
'VllliOlliJlism H(I): 161-79.
'\egritude is nothing more or less than what some and of li\-ing it? A cert'lin way of speaking, singing,
Simpson, '\ndrew. 2008. Lal/guIIgI' al/ll NaliOltll1 /delllity ill Africa. Oxford: Oxford Univcrsit) Press.
English-speaking Afticans havc called the African and dancing; of painting and sculpturing, and even
Smith, Anthony D. 1983. S'llte ItlZd Nl1ti/J1/ in IIIe Third World. BrighllJn: Wheatshe.1f.
Straker, Jay. 2009. YOllth, Natiollillism. IImlllte Cuilltan R'-Jolltlioll. Bloomington, IN: Indian University Press. personalit),. It is no different from the "black per of laughing and crying? Nobody, probably; for oth
Verder}, Katherine. 1993. "Whither 'Nation' and 'Nationalism'?" Daedalus 122(3): 37-46. sonality" disco\'ered and proclaimed by the erwise we would not ha\'c been talking about
\\faeticn, Thcmbisa. 200+. lIf"l'ers alld Irtll'n'/Jrs: l1asfIIlim'Iy IIlIlltite .~/rllgglefor .vatioll jll SOUlh /lfriCff. Crbana: American New Negro movement..'\s the American "0!egro art" for the last sill.t) years and Africa
Uni\'ersit) of lIIinois.
Wellivcr, Timothy K., ed. 1993. Africall Naliollalisllllwd Ilttlepmdence. New York: Garland.
From l.eopold Scdar Senghor, "Kcgrirude: A Humanism of the T\\cnticth Century", pp. 179-92. In WiJfred Carty
and t-<lanin Kilson, cds, The /Ifrica/l Reader: Iwlepend.entl1jricII, Vintage Books, Ncw York. C.opyright 1970 by
Wilfred Carty and Martin Kilson.

478 LEOPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR
---------------------------------------
would be the only continent today without its eth
nologists and sociologists. What, then, is negril ude~
It is - as you can guess from what precedes - the
.111m /II the cultllral values ({the black morld; that is, a
cemin active presence in the world, or better, in
the universe. It is, as]ohn Reed and Clive Wake call
it, a certain "\\'a) of relating oneself to the world
and to others."~ Yes, it is essentially relations with
orhers, an opening OUI to the world, contact and
participation with others. Because of \lhat it ~
negritude is necessary in the world today: it is a
humanism of the twentieth century.
"The Revolution of 1889"
But let us go back to 1885 and the morrol\' o[ the
Berlin Conference. The European nations had just
finished, with Africa, their division of the planet.
lncluding the United States ofAmerica, they were
five or six at the height of their power who domi
nated the world. Without any complexes, they
were proud of their m'lterial strengdl; prouder
even of their science, and paradoxically, of their
r{ue. It is true that at that time this was not a para
dox. Gobineall, thc nineteenth-century philoso
pher of racial supremacy, had, by a process of
osmosis, even influenced .\tarx, and Disraeli was
the great theoretician of that "E7I.'s/isli race, proud,
tenacious, confident in itself, that no climate, no
change can undermine." (The italics arc mine.)
Leo Frobenills, the German ethnologist, one
of the first to apprehend the rich complexity of
African culture, writes in The Destill)' of
Civilizations: "Each of the great nations that con
siders itself personalI)' responsible for the 'destinv
of the world' believes it possesses the key to the
understanding of the whole and the other nations.
It is an attitude raised from the past"
In [,lCt, this attitude "raised from the past" had
begun to be discredited toward the end of the nine
teenth century by books like Bergson's Time IT//(I
Free Will, .... hich was publisheJ in 1889. Since the
Renaissance, the valucs of European civilization
had rested essentiall) on discursive reason and
facts, on logic and matter. Bergson, with an emi
nendy dialectical subtlety, answered the expecta
tion of a public weary of scienrism and naturalism.
He showed that facts and marter, which are the
objects of diseursiye reason, were only the outer
surface that had to be transcended by illluitilJll in
order to achieve a 1. iS;UII in depth oI rea lit),.
'
But the "Revolution of 1889" - as we shall call
it - did not onll' affect art ;u1d literature, it COm_
pletely upset the sciences. In 1880, only a year before
the invention of the word electron, a distinction was
still being duVI'Tl between matter and energy. The
former was inert and lUlchangeable, the latter \las
not. Dut what characterized both of them was their
permanence and their conrinuitr The~ were both
subject to a strict mechanical determinism. ~latter
and energy had, so to speak, existed from the begin
ning of time; they could change their shape, but not
their substance. All we lacked in order to know them
objectively in space and time were sufficiently accu
rate mstrumenlJi of investigation and measurement.
Well, in less than fifty years, all these principles
were to be outmoded and even rejected. Thirty ye-ars
ago already, the new discoveries of science - quanta,
relativity, wave mechanics, the uncertainty principle,
electron spin - had upset the nineteenth-century
notion of determinism, which denied man's free
will, along with the concepts of matter and energy.
The French physicist, Broglie, revealed to us the
duality of matter and energy, or the ,Yave-particle
principle that underlies things; the German phys
icist, Heisenberg, showed us that objectivity was
an illusion and that we could not obsene facts
without modifying them; others showed that, on
the scale of the infinitely small as on that of the
immensely great, particles act on one another.
Since then, the physico-chemical laws, like mailer
itself, could no longer appear unchangeable. EI-en
in the field, and on the scale, where they \lcre
valid, the~ were OI1]~ rough approximations, no
more than probabilities. It was enough to scrape
the surface of things and of facts to realize just
how much instability there is, defying our measur
ing instruments, probably because they are only
mechanical: rIIaterial.
It was on the basis of these discoveries, through
a combination of logical coherence and ama7jng
intuition, of scientific experiment and inner expe
rience, that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was able to
transcend the traditional dichotomies with a new
dialectic, to reveal to us the living, throbbing unity
of the universe. On the basis, then, of the
new scientific discoveries, Teilhard de Chardin
transcends the old dualism of the philosophers
--
NEGRITUDE: A HUMANISM OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
and rhe scientists, \I hieh .Marx and Engels had
perpetuated by gil ing matter precedence over the
spirit. He advanced the theory that the stuff of the
universe is not composed of two realities, but of a
single reality in the shape of I-WO phenomena; that
there is not matter and energy, not evCl1 matter
and spirit, but spirit-matter, just as there is space
rime. ~latter and spirit become a "network of rela
tions," as the French philosopher, Bachelard,
called it: energy, defined as a net lIork of [orces_ In
matter-spirit there is, therefore, only one energy,
which has two aspects. The first, ttlngential energy,
which is external, is material and quantitative. It
links together the corpuscles, or particles, that
make up matter. The other, radilll e1lergy, which is
intemaJ, is psychic and qualitative. It is centripetal
force. It organizes into a complex the cenrer-to
center relations of the internal particles of a cor
puscle. Since energ~ is fOl'ce, it follows that radial
enet-g) is the creative force, the "prinlary stuff of
things," and tangential energ~ is only a residual
product "caused by the interreactions of the ele
mentary 'centers' of the consciousness, impercep
tible II here life has not yet occurred, but clearly
apprehensible hy our experience at a sufficiently
advanced stage in the development of matter"
(Teilhard de Chardin)_ It follows that wh.ere life
hJ5 not yet occllrred the physico-chemical laws
remain \':tlid within the limitations \Ie hale defined
ahove, while in the h,-ing world. as we rise from
plant to animal and from animal to .\ilan, the psy
che increases in consciousness until it makes and
expresses itself in freedom. "_Makes itself": that is,
realizes itself, by means of - yet by transcending
mat~ria] well-being through an increase of spirit
uallifc "Realizes itself": by that 1mean it develops
in harnlOnious fashion the two complementary
element~ of the soul: the heart and the mind.
The Philosophy of Being
The paradox is only apparent when 1 say that neg
ritude, by its onrology (that is, its philosophy of
being), its moral law and its aesthetic, is a response
to the modem humanism that EW'opean philoso
phers and scientists have been preparing since the
end of the nineteenth century, and as Teilhard de
hardin and the writers and artists of the mid
twentieth century present it.
479
Firstly, African ontologv. Far back as one may
go into his past, from the northern Sudanese to
the sOllthern Bantu, the African has always and
everywhere prcsented a concept of the world
which is diametrically opposed to thc traditional
philosophy of Europe. The latler is essentially
stlllic, objcclh.!e, didwt01I11C; it is, in facl, dualistic, in
that it makes an absolute distinction between body
and soul, matter and spirit. It is founded on sepa
ration and opposition: on analysis and conflict.
The African, on the other hand, conceives the
world, beyond the di"ersit) of irs forms, as a fUI1
damentall~ mobile, yet unique, rC'J.1ity that seeks
synthesis. This necds development.
It is significant that in Wolof, ule main language
of Senegal, there arc at least three words to lrans
late the word "spirit": xel, SltgO. or degal, whereas
images have to be used for the word "matter": lef
(thing) or yaram (body). The African is, of course,
sensitive to the external world, to the material
aspect of beings and things. It is precisely because
he is more so than the white European, because he
is sensitil"e to the tangible qualities of things
shape, color, smell, weight, etc. - that the African
con~iders these things merely as signs that have to
be interpreted and transcended in order to reach
the reality of human beings. Like others, more
than others, he distinguishes the pebble from the
plant, the plant from the animal, 111e animal from
Man; but, once again, the accidents and appear
ances that differentiate these kingdoms only illus
trate different aspects of the same reality. This
reality is being in the ontological sense ofthe word,
and it is life force. For the IUrican, matter in the
sense the Europeans understand it, is only a sys
tem of signs which translates the single reality of
the universe: being, which is spirit, whieh is life
force. Thus, the "hole universe appears as an infi
nitely small, and at the same time an infinitely
large, network of life forces which emanate from
God and end in God, who is the source of all life
forces. It is He who \;talizes and devitalizes all
other beings, all the other life forces_
I have not wlUldered as far as might be thought
from modern onLology. European ethnologists,
Africanists and artists use the same words and
the same expressions to designate the ultimate
reality of the universe they are trying to know and
to express: "spider's web," "network of forces,"
480 LI~OPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR
"communicating \"essels," "system of canals,"
etc. This is not very diffcrent, either, from what
the scientists and chemists say. As far as African
ontology is concerned, too, t.here is no such lhing
as dead matter: every being, every thing - be it
on I) a grain of sand - radiates a life force, a sort
of wave-particle; and sages, priests, kings, doc
tors, and artists all use it to help bring the uni
verse to its fulfilment.
For the African, contrary to popular belief, is
not passive in face of the order - or disorder - of
the world. His artirude is fundamentally eUtical. If
the moral law ofthe African has remained unknown
for so long, it is because it derives, naturally, from
his conception of the world: from his ontology
so naturally, that both have remained unknown,
denied even, b) Europeans, because they have not
been brought to their attention by being re
examined b) each new generation of Africans.
So God tired of all the possibilities that
rema.ined con.fined within Him, unexpressed, dor
mant, and as if dead. And God opened His mouth,
:md He spoke at length a word that was harmoni
ous and rhythmical. All these possibilities exp
ressed by the mouth of God aisted and had the
vocation 10 live: to express God in their tum, by
establishing the link with God and all tJle forces
deriving from Him.
In order to explain this morality il1 actioll of neg
rirude, I must go bad. a little. Each of the identifi
able life forces of the universe - from the grain of
sand to the ancestor 3 - is, itself and in its turn, a
network of life forces - as modern physical chem
istry confirms: a network of c1cments thar arc con
tradictory in appearance bUl really complementary.
Thus, for the African, l\1an is composed, of course,
of matter and spirit, of bod\' and soul; but ar the
same time he is also composed of a virile and a
feminine element: indeed of several "souls." Man
is therefore a composition of mobile life forces
,\ hich interlock: a world of solidarltie~ that seek to
knit themsdvcs together. Because he exists, he is
at once end and beginning: end of the threc orders
of the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal, but
beg'inning of the human order.
Let us ignore for dle momcnt the first three
orders and examine the human order. Abovc Man
and based on him, lies this fourth world of concen
tric circles, bigg'er and bigger, higher and higher,
until they reach God along with the whole of the
universe. Each circle - family, village, province,
nation, humanity - is, in tlle image of !\ lan and by
vocation, a close-knit society. . South Afric-u, Rhodesia, and the Portuguese colo
So, for the African, living according to the moral
law means living according to his nature, Com
posed as it is of contradictory elements but com
plementary life forces Thus he gives stuff to the
stuff of the universe and tightens the threads of
the tissue of life. Thus he transcends the contra
dictions of the elements and works toward making
the life forces complementary to one another: in
himself first of all, as Man, but also in the whole of
human society It is by bringing the complemen
tary life forces together in this way that .Man rein
forces thcm in their movement towards God and,
in reinforcing them, he reinforces himself: that is,
he passes from existing to being. He cannot reach
ule highest form of being, for in fact only God has
this quality; and He has it all the more fully as
creation, and all that exists, fulfil themselves and
express themselves ill Hi.m.
Dialogue
Etlmologists have often praised the unity, the bal
ance, and the harmony of African civilization, of
black society, "hich was based both on the (om
munity and on the persoll, and in which, because it
was founded on dialogue and reciprocity, the
group had priority over the individual without
crushing him, but allowing him to blossom as a
person. I would like to emphasize at this point how
much these characteristics of negritude enable it
to fmd its place in contemporary humanism,
thereby permitting black Africa to make its conm
bution to the "Civilization of the Universal" which
is so necessary in our divided but interdependen
world of the second half of the twentieth century.
A contribution, flfSt of all, to international coop
eration, which must be and ",hich shall be tbe cor
nerstone of that civilization. It is through these
virtues of negritude that decolonization has been
accomplished without too much bloodshed or
Jun'ed and that a positive form of cooperation
based on "dialogue and reciprocity" has been
established between former colonizers and colo
nized. It is through these virtues that there has
been a new spirit at the United Nations. \\-here the
NEGRITUDE: A HUMANISM OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
"no" and the bang of tlle fist on the table are no
longer signs of strength. It is through these virtues
that peace through cooperation could extend to
nies, if only the dualistic spirit of the whites would
open itself to dialogue.
. In fact, the contribution of negritude to the
"Civilization of the Universal" is not of recent ori
(fin In the fields of literature and art, it is eODtem
~orary with the "Revolution of 1889." The French
poet, Arthlu Rimbaud (1854-91), had already
associated himself with negritude. But in this arti
c1~ I wa.nt to concentrate on the "Negro revolu
tion" - ule expression belongs to Emmanuel
Berl- which helped to stir European plastic art at
the beginning of this century.
Art, like literature, is always the expression of a
certain conception of the world and of life; the
expression of a certain philosophy and, above all,
of a certain ontology. Corresponding to the philo
sophical and scientific movement of 1889 rhere
was nOl only a literary cvolution - symbolism then
surrealism- but another revolution, or radler rev
olutions, in art, which were called, taking only dlC
plastic arts, nabism, cxpressionisnl, fauvism, and
cubism. A world of life forces that have to bc lamed
is substituted for a closed world of permanent and
continuous substances that havc to be reproduced.
Since tbe Greek kouroi (the term used for the
sratues of young men in classical Greek sculpture),
the art of the European West had always been
based on realism.; the work of art had always been
an imitation of the object: a physeos IIlimest~,. to use
Art.isrotle's expression: a corrected imitarion,
"improved," "idealized" by the requirements of
rationality, but inlitation all the same. The inter
lude of the Christian MiddJe Ages is significant
insofar as Christianity is itself of Asian origin a.nd
strongh- influenced by the African, St. Augustine.
Tel what will the artist then give expression) No
lon~er to pu_rclv objective matter, but to his spi.r
itual self: that is, to h.is inner self, his spirituality,
and beyond himself to the spirituality of his age
and of mankind. No longer by means of perspec
ti\'e. relief, and chiaroscuro, bUl, as the French
painter, Bazaine, writes, "by the most bidden
workings of instinct and the sensibility." fulOther
French painter, Andre Masson, makes i.t more
explicit when he writes: "By a simple interplay of
481
shapes and colors legibly ordered." This interplay
of shapes and colors is that of the life forces amI
which has been illustrated in partiCUlar by a
painter like Soulages.
"Interplay of life forces": and so we corne back
to - negritude. As the French painter, Soulages, in
fact, once told me, the African aesthetic is "that of
contemporary art." I find indirect proof of this in
the fact that, while the consecration and spread of
the new aesthetic revolution have occurred in
France, the majority of its promoters were of Slav
and Germanic origin; people who, like the Africans,
belong to dle mystical civilizations of the senses.
Of course, without the discovery ofAfrican art, rhe
revolution would still have taken place, bur proba
bly without such vigor and assurance and such a
deepening of the knowledge of Man. The fact that
an art of the subject and of dle spirit should have
germinated outside Europe, in Afric'a - to which
ethnologists had not yet given its true place in
world culture - ,...'as proof of the hum,m va.lue of
thc message of tbe new European art.
Over and above its aesthetic lesson - to which
we shall return later - what Picasso, Braque and
dle other artists and early explorers of African art
were seeking was, in the first place, just this: its
human value. For in black Africa art is not a sepa
rate activity, in itself or for itseU-: it is a social activ
ity, a technique of living, a handicraft in fact. Bm
it is a major actiyity tllat brings all other activities
to dleiJ fulf!Jment, like prayer in ule Christian
Middle Ages: binb and education, marriage and
death, sport, cven war. All hwnan activities down
to the least daily act must be integrated into the
subtle interplay of life forces - family, tribal,
national, world, and universal forces. This harmo
nious interplay of life forces must be helped by
subordinating the lower forces - mineral, vegetab.le,
and animal- to their rela.tions with 1\1an, and the
forces of human society to its relations wirh
the Divine Being dlfOUgh the intermediary of rhe
Ancestral Beings.
A veal' or two ago I attended, on thc cliffs of
Bandiagara ill the Mali Republic, an entertain
ment which was a microcosm of Dogon art."' Even
though it was but a pale reflection of the splendors
of tbe past, this "play-concert" was an extremely
signifiea.nt expression of the Dagon vision of the
universe. It was declaimed, sung, and danced;
-+82 LEOPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR
sculptured and presenrcd in coStume. The whole
of the Dogon univer~e was portrayed in tllis sym
biosis of the arL~, as is the custom in black Africa.
The universe - heaven and earth - \"\'as therefore
represemed through tbe intermediary of :1\1an,
whose ideogram is the same as that of the universe.
Then the world was re-prese11led by means of
masks, each of which portrayed, at one and the
same time, a totemic animal, an ancestor and a
spirit. Others portrayed the foreign peoples:
nomadic Fulani; and white Europeans. The aim of
Ule entertainment was, by means of the symbiosis
of the arts - poetry, song, dance, sculpture, and
painting, used as techniques of integration - to
re-create the universe and the contemporary world,
but in a more harmonious way by making use of
African humor, which corrects diSl0rtions at the
expense of the foreign Fulani and the whire con
querors. But this ontological \ ision was an enrer
tainment - that is, an artistic demonstration - as
well: a joy for the soul because a joy for the eyes
and ears.
It was perhaps - indeed, it was certainly - this
last aspecr of the African aesthetic lesson that fIrst
attracted Picasso and Braq LIe when, toward 1906,
they discovered African art and were inspired by
it. For my part, what struck me from tlle start of
the Dogan "play-concert," even before I tried to
understand its meaning, was tlle harmon) of form
and movement, of color and rhyrhm, that charac
terized it. It is this harmony by which, as a specta
tor, 1 was moved; which, in the re-creation of
reality, acts on the invisible forces whose appear
ances are only signs, subordinates them in a com
plementary fashion to one another and establishes
the link between them and God through the inter
mediary of Man. By appearances I mean the
attributes of matter that strike our senses: shape
and color, timbre and tone, movement and
rhytllm.
] have said that these appearances are signs.
They are more than mat: they are meaning-ful
signs, the "lines of force" of the life forces, insofar
as they are used in tlleir pure state, wiw only their
characteristics of shape, color, sound, movement,
and rhythm. Recently M. Lods, who teaches at the
National School of Art of Senegal, was showing
me the pictures his students intend exhibiting at
uJe projected Festival of African Arts. I was imme
-
diately struck by the noble and elegant interplav of
shape and color. When I discovered that the ~ie
- NEGRITUDE: A HUMANISM OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
B;lzain e, "th-at great common structure, that deep
resemblance between .\-lan and the world, without and, consequently, of God, the source of all life
+83
the reinforcement of the life forces in the universe
lures were not completely abstract, that they por \\hich there is no living form." forces - or, in other words, the Being of the uni
trayed ladies, princes, and noble animals, I was We ha\'e seen what constitutes for the African verse. In this way, we reinforce ourselves at the
almost disappointed. There was no need for me to tbe "deep resemblance between ~'1an and the same rime, bath as interdependent forces and as
be: the very interplay of colored shapes perfeetlv world," For him, then, the act of restoring the beings whose being consists in revitalizing
expressed that elegant nobilit) that characteriz~s order of the world by re-creating it through art is ourselves in the re-creation of art.
the art of the northern Sudan.
This, wen, is Africa's lesson in aesthetics: an
docs not consist in photographing nature but in
taming it, like the hunter when he reprodUces :\ote5
the call of rhe hunted animal, like a separated
The South African writer, Ezekiel t-Iphahlele, are surrounded by a complex ritual so as to cnsure
couple, or lWO lovers, calling to each other in
author, among other books, of The Afrjcal! Image, the maintenance of this link.
their desire to be reunited. The call is not the strongl) disagrees with the concept of negritude. 4 The Dogon are a \\ cst Afrimn tribe among whom
simple reprodUCtion of the cry of the Other; it is (lp,,fd Sida, Senglior: Selected Poems, introduced wood sculpture has achieved a very remarkable
a call of complementarity, a song: a call of har and tnmslatcd by John Reed and Clive Wakc. See degree of excellence.
mony to the harmony of union that enriches bv ~lso: Leopold Sid"r Smghor: Prose allli Poetry, by the The Fulani arc a nomadic pastoral people found
increasing Being. We call it pure harmony. One~ same authors. throughout \\"~st Africa.
more, Africa teaches that art is not photography; In African religion, the anccstors are the essential
if there are images they are rhythmical. I can link between the Jiving and God. This is why they
suggeSl or create anything - a man, a moon, a
fruit, a smile, a tear - simply by assembling
shapes and colors (painting sculpture), shapes
and movement (dance), timbre and tones (music),
provided that this assembling is not an aggrega
tion, but that it is ordered and, in short, rhyth
mical. For it is rhythm - the main virtue, in fact,
of negritude - that gives the work of art its
beauty. Rhythm is simply the movement of
attraction or repulsion that expresses the life of
the cosmic forces; symmetry and asymmetry,
repetition or opposition: in short, the lines of
force that link the meaningful signs that shapes
and colors, timbre and tones, are.
Before concluding, I should like to pause for a
moment on the apparent contradiction that must
have been noticed between contemporary
European art (which places the emphasis on the
subject) and African art (which places it on the
object). This is because the "Revolution of 1889"
began by reacting, of necessity, against the super
stition of the object; and the existentialist ontolngy
of the African, while it is based on the bei1'lg
subject, has God as irs pole-object; God who is the
fullness of Being. \Vhat was noticed, then, was
simply a nuance. Por the contemporary Europeatl,
and the African, the work of art, like the act of
knowing, expresses (he confrontation, thc embrace,
of subject and object: "That penetration," wrote

34
the mother country. It is in fact a commonplace to
On National Culture
the African, Mexican, and Peruvian civilizations.
Frantz Fanon
... In this chapter we shall analyze the problem, delay the crystallization of national consciousm.'Ss
which is felt to be fundamental, of the legitimacy for a few years. But, sooner or later, colonialism
of the claims of a nation. lL must be recognized sces that it is not within its powers to put into
that the political party which mobilizes the people practice a project of economic and social reforms
hardly touches on this prohlem of legitimacy. The which will satisfy t.he aspirations of the colonized
political parties start from li\;ng reality and it is in people. Even where food supplies arc concerned,
the name of this rcal.ity, in the name of the stark colonialism gil'es proof of its inherent incapability.
facts which weigh down the present and the future The colonialist state quickly discO\'ers that if it
of men and women, that they fix their line of wishes to disarm the nationalist parties on strictly
action. The political party may well speak in mov economic questions then it will have to do in the
ing terms of the nation, but what it is concerncd colonies exactly II'hat it has refused to do in its own
with is that the people \\ ho are listening under country....
stand the need to take part in We fight if, quite Inside the political parties, and most often in
simply, they wish to continue to exist. oHshoots from these parties, cultured indil'iduals
Today we knOll that in the first phase of the of the colonized race make their appearance. For
national struggle colonialism tries to disarm these individuals, the demand for a national cul
national demands by putting forward economic ture and the affirmation of the existence of such a
doctrines. As soon as the first demands arc set out, culture represent a special battlefield. While the
colonialism pretends to consider them, recogniz politicians situate thcir action in actual present
ing \\ ith ostentatious humility that the territory is day events, men of culture take their stand in the
suffering from serious underde\-elopment which field of history. Confronted with the native intel
necessitates a great economic and social effon. lectual \\ ho decides to make an aggressive response
nd, in fact, it so happens that certain spectacular to the colonialist theory of pre-colonial barbarism.
measures (centers of work for the unemployed colonialism will react only slightly, and still less
which arc opened here and there, for example) because the ideas developed by t.he youngcoJonized
From Frantz Fanon, The Wre/clled oflilt Earlh, trans. Constance Farrington (1968, 1982), PI'. 206-J 9,22&-.7,236-47.
Copyright ~ 1963 by Presence Africaine, from HarperCollins Publishers Ltd and Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
-- ON NATIONAL CULTURE
intelligentsi'l are widely professed by specialists in
of psycho-affective equilibrium it is responsible
srate th.lt for several decades large numbers of
research workers have, in the main, rehabilitated
ism is not simply content to impose its rule upon
The passion Ilith which native intellectuals defend
thc existence of their national culture may be a
source of amazement; but those who condemn
this exaggerated passion are strangely apt to forget
That their own psyche and their own seh"es are
conI enienl Iy sheltered behind a French or German
culture which has given full proof of its existence
and I~hich is uncontested.
I am rL'ady to concede that on the plane of fac
tual bein~ the past existence of an Aztec civiliza
tion docs not change anything vcry much in the
diet of the i'v[exican peasant of today. I admit that
all the proofs of a wonderful Songhai civilization
will not change the fact that today the Songhais are
underfeu and illiterate, thrown between sky and
water with empty heads and empty cyes. But it has
been remarked several times that this passionate
search for a national culture which existed before
the colonial era finds its legitimate reason in the
an"iety shared by native intellectuals to shrink
away from that Western culture in which they all
risk being swamped. Because they realize they are
in danger of losing their lives and thus becoming
lost to their people, these men, hotheaded and with
anger in their hearts, relentlessly determine to
renew contact once more with the oldest and most
pre-colonial springs of life of their people.
;t us go further. Perhaps this passionate
research and this anger are kept up or at least
directed by the secret hopc of discovering beyond
the misery of today, beyond self-contempt, resig
nation, and abjuration, some very beautiful and
splendid cra whose existence rehabilitates us both
in regard to ourselves and in regard to others. I
have said that I have decided to go further. Perhaps
unconsciously, the native intellectual.s, since they
could not stanu wonderstruck before the history of
toda} 's barbarity, decided to back further and to
delve deeper down; and, let us make no mistake, it
was with the greatest delight that they discovered
that Ihere was nothing to be ashamed of in the past,
but rather dignity, glory, and solemnity. The claim
to a national culture in the past docs not only reha
bilitate that nation and serve as a justification for
485
the hope of a future national culture. In the sphere
for an inlportant change in the native. Perhaps we
have not sufficiently demonstrated that colonial
the present and the future of a dominated country.
Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a
people in its grip and emptying the native's brain
of all form and content. By a kind of perverted
logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people,
and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it. This 1V0rk
of devaluing pre-colonial history takes on a dialec
tical significance today.
When we consider the efforts made to carry out
the cultural estrangement so characteristic of the
colonial epoch, we realize that nothing has been
left to chance and that the total result looked for by
colonial domination was indeed to convince the
natives that colonialism came to lighten their dark
ness. The effect consciously sought by colonialism
was to drive into the nativcs' heads the idea that if
the settlers were to leave, they would at once fall
back into barbarism. degradation, and bestiality.
On the unconscious plane, colonialism there
fore did not seek to be considered by the native as
a gentle, 100'ing mother who protects her child
from a hostile em'ironment, but rather as a mother
who unceasingly restrains her fundamentally per
verse offspring from managing to commit suicide
and from giving free rein to its evil instincts. The
colonial mother protects her child from itself,
from its ego, and from its physiology, its biology,
and its own unhappiness which is its very essence.
In such a situation the claims of the native intel
lectual are not a luxury but a necessity in any
coherent program. The native intellectual who
takes up arms to defend his nation's legitimacy
and who wants to bring proofs to bear out that
legitimacy, who is willing to strip himself naked to
study the h.istory of his body, is obliged to dissect
t.he heart of his people.
Such an examination is not specifically national.
The native intellectual who decides to give battle
to coloruallies fights on the field of the whole con
tinent. The past is givcn back its value. Culture,
extracted from the past to be displayed in all its
splendor. is not necessarily that of his own coun
u")'. Colonialism, which has not bothered to put
too fine a point on its efforts, has never ceased to
486
maintain that the Negro is a savage; and for the
colonist, the Negro was neither an Angolan nor a
FRANTZ FANON
Nigerian, for he simply spoke of "the Negro." For
colonialism, this vast continent was the haunt of
savages, a country riddled with superstitions and
fanaticism, destined for contempt, weighed down
by lhe curse of God, a country of cannibals - in
short, the Negro's country. Colonialism's con
demnation is continental in its scope. The conten
tion by colonialism that the darkest night of
humanity layover pre-colonial history concerns
the whole of the African continent. The efforts of
the native to rehabilitate himself and to escape
from the claws ofcolonialism are logically inscribed
from the same point of view as tllat of colonialism.
The native intellectual who has gone far beyond
the domains ofWcstern culture and who has got it
into h.is head to proclaim the e..xistence of another
culture never does so in the name of Angola or of
Dahomey. The culture which is affirmed is African
culture. The Negro, never so much a Negro as
since he has been dominated by the whites, when
he decides to prove that he has a culture and to
behave like a cultured person, comes to realize
that history points out a well-defined path to him:
he must demonstrate that a Negro culture exists.
And it is only too true that those who are most
responsible for this racialization of thought, or at
least for the first movement toward that thought,
are and remain those Europeans who have never
ceased to set up white culture to fill tne gap left by
the absence of other cultures. Colonialism did not
dream of wasting its time in denying the existence
of one national culture after another. Therefore
the reply of the coloniy.ed peoples will be straight
away continental in its breadth. In Africa, the
native literature of the last twenty years is not a
national literature but a Negro literature. The
concept of negritude, for example, \\as the emo
tional if not the logical antithesis of that insult
which the white man flung at humanity. This rush
of negritude against the white man's contempt
showed itself in certain spheres to be the one idea
capable of lifting interdictions and al'lathemas.
Because the New Guinean or Kenyan intellectuals
found themselves above all up against a general
ostracism and delivered to the combined contempt
of their overlords their reaction was to sing praises
in admiration of each other. The unconditional
-
affirmation of African culture has succee<kd th
unconditional affirmation of European cultur C
On the whole, the poelS of negritude oPPOSe th
e.
idea of an old Europe to a young Africa, tiresom~
reasoning to lyricism, oppressive logic to high_
stepping nature, and on one side stiffness, ccre_
mony, etiquette, and scepticism, while on the other
frankness, liveliness, liberty, and - why not _
Iu.xuriance: but also irresponsibility.
The pocts of negritude will not stop at the
limits of the continent. From America, black
voices will take up the hymn \\ ith fuller unison.
The "black world" will see the light and Busia
from Ghana, Birago Diop from Senegal, Hampatc
Ba from the Soudan, and Saint-Clair Drake
from Chicago will not hesitate to assert the exist
ence of common ties and a motive power that is
identical.
Thi~ historical necessit) in which the men of
African culture find themselves to racializc their
claims and to speak more of African culture than
of national culture will tend to lead them up a
blind alley. Let us take for example the case of the
African Cultural Society. This society had been
created by African intellectuals who wished to get
to kno\\ each other and to compare their experi
ences and the results of their respective research
work. The aim of this society \"Vas therefore to
affirm the existence of an African culture, to eval
uate this culture on me plane of distinct nations,
and to reveal the internal motive forces of each of
their national cultures. But at the same time this
society fulfilled another need: the need to exist
side by side with the European Cultural Societ);
which threatened to transform. itself into a
Universal Cultural Society. There was therefore
at the bnttom of this decision the anxiety to be
present at the universal trysting place fully
armed, with a culture springing from the very
heart of the African continent. No\y, this Society
will very quickly show its inability to shoulder
these different tasks, and will limit itself to exhi
bitionist demonstrations, while the habitual
behavior of the members of this Society will be
confined to showing Europeans [hat such a thing
as African culture exists, and opposing their
ideas to those of ostentatious and narcissistic
Europeans. We ha\'e shown that such an attitude
is normal and draws its legitimacy from the lies
-----
~egTadation
ON NATI orll\ Leu LTU RE
ropagated bv men of Western culture, but the
of me aims of this Society will
be~oDle more marked \\ ilh the elaboration of the
concept of ncgritude. The African Society will
become tlle cultural society of the black world
Jnel \nll come to include the Negro dispersion,
thJt is to say the tens of thousands of black people
spread orer the American continents.
The "\cgroes who live in the United States and
in Central or I,atin }\merica in fact experience the
need to attach themselves to a cultural matrix.
Their problem is not fundamentally diffcrent
from that of the Africans. The whites of America
did not metc oul to them any different treatment
from that ofme whites who ruled over the Africans.
We have seen tl13t the whites were used to putting
J11 "IJegroes in the same bag. During the first con
"resS of the African Cultural Society which was
held in Paris in 1956, the American Negroes of
their 0\\11 accord considered their problems from
the same sr.:mdpoint as tllose of their African
brothers. Cultured Africans, speaking of African
ciyiJizaLions, decreed that there should be a rea
sonable status witllin the state for those who had
fannerly been slaves. But little by little the
\mericaJl Negroes realized that the essential
problems confronting them were not the same as
those that confronted the A.frican Negroes. The
\'egroes of Chicago only resemble the Nigerians
or the 1anganyikans iII so far as they were all
defined in relation to the whites. But once the first
comparisons had been made and subjective feel
iogs were assuaged, the American Negroes rea1ized
that the objective problems were fundamentally
heterogeneous. The test cases of civil liberty
whereby both whites and blacks in America try to
drive back racial discrimination have very little in
common in their principles and objecti\'cs with
the heroic fight of tlle Angolan people against the
detestable Portuguese colonialism. Thus, during
the second congress of the African Cultural
Society the American l"egroes decided to create
an American society for people of black cultures.
Negritude tllerefore finds its first limitation in
the phenomena which take account of the forma
tion of me historical character of men. Negro and
.\frican-Negro culture broke up into different
entitie~ because the men who wished to incarnate
these cultures realized that every culture is first
and foremost national, and that the problems
which kept Richard Wright or J .angston HugJ1es
on the alert were fundamentally different from
~8-
those which might con from J.eopold Senghor or
Jomo Kenyana. In the same way certain Arab
states, though they had chanted the mary-elous
hytnn of Arab renaissance, had nevertheless to
realize that their geographical position and tl1e
economic ties of their region were stronger even
than the past that they wished to revive. Thus we
find today the Arab states organically linked once
more with societies which are Mediterranean in
their culture. The fact is that thcse states are sub
mitted to modern pressure and to new channels of
trade while the network of trade relations which
was dominant during the great period of Arab his
tory has disappeared. But above all there is me fact
that the political regimes of certain Arab states are
so different, and so far away from each other in
their conceptions, that even a cultural meeting
between these states is meaningless.
Thus we see that the cultural problem as it
sometimes exists in colonized countries runs thc
risk of giving rise to serious ambiguities. The lack
of culture of the :--Jegroes, as proclaimed by colo
nialism, and the inherent barbarity of the Arabs
ought logically to lead to the exaltation of cultural
manifestations which are not simply national but
continental, and extremelv racial. In Africa, t.he
mOvement of men of culture is a movement toward
the Negro-African culture or the Arab-Nloslem
culture. It is not specifically toward a national cul
ture. Culture is becoming more and more cut off
from the e\,ents of today. It finds its refuge beside
a hearth that glows with passionate emotion, and
from there makes its way b\' realistic paths which
are the only means by which it may be made fruit
ful, homogeneous, and consistent.
If the action of the native intellectual is limited
historically, there remains nevermelcss the fact
iliat it contributes greatly to upholding and justify
ing the action of politicians. It is true that the atti
tude of the native intellectual sometimes takes on
the aspect of a cult or of a religion. But if we realIy
wish to analyze this attitude correctly we will come
to see that it is symptomatic of the intellectual's
realization of the danger that he is running in cut
ting his last moorings and of breaking adrift from
his people. This stated belief in a national culture is
488
in fact an ardent, despairing turning toward
FRANTZ FANON
anything that will afford him secure anchorage. In
order to ensure hi~ salvation and to escape from the
supremacy of the white man's culture tlle native
feels the need to turn backward toward his unknown
roots and [0 lose himself at whatever cost in his
0\\11 barbarous people. Because he feels he is
becoming estranged, that is to say because he fecls
that he is the living haunt of contradictions which
run the risk of becoming insurmountable, the
native tears himself away from the swamp that may
suck him down and accepts everything, decides to
take all for granted and confirms everything even
though hemay lose body and soul. The native finds
that he is expected to answer for everything, and to
all comers. TIe not only turru; himself into the
defender of his people's past~ he is willing to be
counted as one of them, and henceforward he is
even capable of laughing at his past cowardice.
This tearing away, painful and difficult though
it may be, is however necessary. If it is not accom
plished there will be serious psycho-affective inju
rles and the result will be individuals without an
anchor, without a horizon, colorless, stateless,
rootless - a race of angels. It will be also quite nor
mal to hear certain natives declare, "I speak as a
Senegalese and as a Frenchman ... " "I speak as an
Algerian and as a Frenchman ... " The intellectual
who is Arab and French, or Nigerian and English,
when he comes up against the need to take on two
nationalities, chooses, if he wants to remain true to
himself, the negation of one of these determina
tions. But most often, since they cannot or will not
make a choice, such intellectuals gather together
all the historical determining factors which have
conditioned them and take up a fundamentally
"universal standpoint."
This is because the native imelkctual has
thrown himself greedilv upon Western culture.
Like adopted children who only stop ilwestigating
the new family framework at tlle moment when a
minimum nucleus of security crystallizes in their
psyche, the native intellectual will try to make
European culture his own. He will not be content
to get to know Rabclais and Diderot, Shakespeare
and Edgar Allen Poe; he will bind them to his
intelligence as closely as possible... _
But at the moment when the nationalist parties
are mobilizing the people in the name of national
-
independence, the rultive intellectual sometimes
spurns these acquisitions which he suddenly feels
make him a stranger i.n his own land. It is always
easier to proclaim rejection than actually to rcje~.
The intellectual who through the medium of cul
ture has filtered into Western civilization, who has
managed to become part of the body of European
culture - in other words who has exchanged his
own culture for another - will come to realize that
the cultural matrix) whjch now he wishes to as!\ume
since he is anxious to appear original, can hardly
supply any figureheads which will bear compariso~
with those, so many in number and so great in
prestige, of the occupying power's ciyilization.
Histor)', of course, though neyerthcless written by
the Westerners and to serve their pm'poses, will b~
able to ev:l1uate from time to timc certain periods
of the African past. But, standing face to face with
his cOlmtry at the present time, and observing
clearly and objectively the events of roday through
out the continent which he wants to make his own,
the intellectual is terrified by the void, the degra
dation, and the savagery he sees there. Now he fecls
that he must get away from the white culture. He
must seek his culture elsewhere, anywhere at all;
and if he fails to find the substancc of culture of the
same grandeur and scope as displayed by the rul
ing power, the native intellectual will very often fall
back upon emotional attitudes and will develop a
psychology which is dominated by exceptional
sensitivity and susceptibility. This withdrawal,
which is due in the first instance to a begging of the
question in his internal behavior mechanism and
his own character, brings out, above all, a reflex
and contradiction which is muscular.
This is sufficient explanation of the style of
those native intellectuals who decide to gi,e
expression to this phase of consciousness which is
in the process of being liberated. It is a harsh style,
full of images, for the image is the draw-bridge
which allows unconscious energies to be scattered
on the surrounding meadows. It is a vigorous st)lt:,
alive with rhythms, struck through and through
with bursting life; it is full of color, too, bronzeu.
sumbaked, and violent. This style, which in its
time astonished the peoples of the West, has noth
ing racial about it, in spite of frequent statements
to the contrary; it expresses above all a hand-to
hand struggle and it reveals the need that man has
-
ON NATIONAL CULTURE
to liberate himself from a part of his being which
Jlready contained the seeds of decay. Whether the
tioN is painful, quick, or inevitable, muscular
;\;tion must substitute itself for concepts.
If in the world of poetry this movement reaches
unaccustomed heights, the fact remains that in tlle
real world the intellectual often follows up a blind
alleY. When at the height of his intercourse with
his 'people, whatever they were or whatever they
are, the intellectual decides to come dO"'n into the
common paths of real life, he only bl;ngs back
ti'om his adventuring formulas which are sterile in
the extreme. He sets a high value on the customs,
traditions, and the appearances of his people; but
his inevitable, painful experience only seems to be
a banal search for exoticism. The sari becomes
sacred, and shoes that come from Paris or Italy are
left off in favor of pampooties, while suddenly lhe
language of the ruling power is felt to burn your
lips. Finding your fellow countrymen sometimes
means in this phase to will to be a nigger, not a nig
ger like all other niggers but a real nigger, a Negro
cur, just the sort of nigger that the white man wants
YOU to be. Going back to your own people means to
become a dirty wog, to go nativc as much as you
can, to become unrecognizable, and to cut off those
wings that before you had allowed to grow.
The native intellectual decides to make an
inventory of the bad habits drawn from \.he colo
nial world, and hastens to remind everyone of the
good old customs of the people, that people which
he has decided contains all truth and goodness.
The scandalized attitude with ,Yhich the settlers
who live in the colonial territory greet this new
departure only serves to strengthen the native's
decision. When the colonialists, who had tasted
the sweets of their victory over these assimilated
people, realize that these men whom they consid
ered as saved souls are beginning to fall back into
the ways of niggers, the whole system totters.
Every native won over, every native who had taken
the pledge not only marks a failure for the colonial
structure when he decides to lose himself and to
go bad. t(l his own side, but also stands as a symbol
for the uselessness and the shallowness of all the
work \.hat has been accomplished. Each native who
goes back over the line is a radical condemnation
of the methods and of the regime; and the native
intelJectual finds in the scandal he gives rise to a
justification and an encouragement to persevere in
the path he has chosen.
If we wanted to trace in the works of native
489
writers the different phases wh.ich characterize
this evolution we would find spread out before us
a panorama on three levels. In the first phase, the
native intellectual givcs proof that he has assimi
lated the culture of the occupying power. His \\ rit
ings correspond point by point with those of his
opposite numbers in the mother country. His
inspiration is European and we can easily link up
these works with definite trends in the literature
of the mother country. This is the period of
unqualified assimilation. We find in this literature
coming from the colonies the Parnassians, the
Symbolists, and the Surrealists.
In the second phase we find the native is dis
turbed; he decides to remember what he is. This
period of creative work approximately corresponds
to that immersion which we have just described.
But since the native is not a part of his people,
since he only has extcrior relations with his peo
ple, he is content to recall their life only. Past hap
penings of the byegone days of his childhood will
be brought up out of the depths of his memory;
old legends will be reinterpreted in the light of a
borrowed esthcticism and of a conception of the
world which was discovered under other skies.
Sometimes this literature of just-before-the
battle is dominated by humor and by allegory; but
often too it is symptomatic of a period of distress
and difficulty, where death is oiperienced, and
disgust too. We spew ourselves up; but already
underneath laughter can be heard.
Finally in the third phase, which is called the
fighting phase, the native, after having tried to
lose himself in the people and with the people,
will on the contrary shake the people. Instead of
according the people's lethargy an honored place
in his esteem, he turns himself into an awakener
of the people; hence comes a fighting literature, a
revolutionary literature, and a national literature.
During this phase a great many men and women
who up till then would never have thought of pro
ducing a literary work, now that they find
themselves in exceptional circumstances - in
prison, with the .\1aquis, or on the eve of their
execution - feel the need to speak to their nation,
to compose the sentence which expresses the

490 FRANTZ FANON
hean of the people, and to become the mouth
piece of a nell' reality in <lction.
The nati\c intellectual nevertheless sooner or
later will realize that \ou do not show proof of
your nation from its culture but that you substan
tiate its existence in the fight 'i\hich the people
wage against the forces of occupation. No colonial
system draws its justification from the fact th3t the
territories it dominates are culturally non-cx1stent.
You will never make colonialism blush for sh<une
by spreading out Ijttle-known cultural treasures
under its eyes. At the vent moment when the native
intellectual is anxiously trying to create a cultural
work he fails to realize that be is utilizing tech
niques and language which are borrowed from the
stranger in his country. He contents himself with
stamping these instruments with a hallmark which
he wishes to be national, but which is strangely
reminiscent of exoticism. The native intellectual
who comes back to his people by way of cultural
achie\ements behaves in fact like a foreigner.
Sometimes he has no hesitation in using a dialect
in order to show his will to be as near as possible to
the people; but the ideas that he expresses and the
preoccupations he is taken up with have no com
mon yardstick to measure the real situation which
the men and the women of his country know. The
culture that the intellectual leans toward is often
no more than a stock of particularisms. He wishes
to attach himself to tlle people; but instead he only
catches hold of their outer garments. And these
outer garments are merely the reflection of a hid
den life, teeming and perpetually in motion. That
extremely obvious objectivity which seems to
characterize a people is in fact only the inert,
already forsaken result of frequent, and not always
very coherent, adapt.ltjons of a mucll more funda
mental substance which itself is continually being
renewed. The man of culture, instead of setting
out to find this substance, \~il1 let himself be hyp
notized by these mummified fragments which
because they are static are in fact symbols of neg-a
tion and outworn contrivances. Culture has never
the translucidiry of custom; it abhors all simplifi
cation. In its essence it is opposed to custom, for
custom is always the deterioration of culture. The
desire ro attach oneself to tradition or bring aban
doned traditions to life again does not only mean
gomg against the current of history but also
opposing one's own people. When a people under_
takes an armed struggle or even a political struggle
against a relentless colonialism, the significance of
tradition changes. All that bas made up the tech_
nique of passive resistance in the past may, during
this phase, be radically condemned. In an under_
developed country during the period of struggle
traditions are fundamentally unstable and are shot
through by centrifugal tendencies. This is why the
intellectual often runs the risk of heing out of date.
The peoples who have carried on the struggle are
more and more impervious to demagogy; and
those who wish to follow them reveal themselves
as nothing more than common opportunists, in
other words, latecomers.
In the sphere of plastic arts, for example, the
native artist who wishes at whatever cost to create
a national work of art shuts himself up in a stereo
typed reproduetion of detajls. These artists \Iho
ha,'e nevertheless thoroughly studied modem
techniques and who have taken part in the main
trends of contemporary painting and architecture.
turn their backs on foreign culture, deny it, and set
out to look for a true national cult.ure, setting
great SLOre on what they consider to be the con
stant principles of national art. But these people
forget that the forms of thought and what it feeds
on, together with modern techniques of informa
tion, language, and dress have dialectical!)
reorganized the people's intelligences and that the
constant principles wruch acted as safeguards
during the colonial period are now undergoing
extremely radical changes.
The artist who has decided to illustrate the
truths oftbc nation turns paradoxically toward the
past and away from actual events. 'Vhat he ulti
mately intends to embrace are in fact the castuffs
of thou~ht, its shells and corpses. a knO\\ ledge
which has been stabilized once and fc)r all. But the
native intellectual who wishes to create an authen
tic work of art must realize that the truths of a
nation are in the first place its realities. He must go
on Wltil he has found the seething pot out of \1 hich
the learning of the future wm emerge.
Before indeperldence, rbe native painter was
insensible to tbe national scene. He set a bigh value
on non-figurative art, or more often specialized in
stiU lifes. After independence his anxiety to reioin
his people will confine him to the most detailed
ON NATIONAL CULTURE
represent:ltion of reality. TillS is representatiYC art
II hich has no internal rhythms, an art which is
scren e and .immobile, e\'ocati\-e not of life but of
death. Enlightened circles are in ecst.asies when
confronted ",ith this "inner truth" which is so
Ilell expressed; but we have the right to ask if this
truth is in fact a reality, <Uld if it is not already out
I,orn and denied, called in question by the epoch
through which the people are treading out their
path LOward histor}.
In the realm of poetr) we rna) establish the
same facts. After the period of assimjlation charac
terized b) rhrming poetry, the poetic tom-tom's
rhythms breal through. This is a poetTy of revolt;
but it is also descriptive and analytical poerry. The
poct Oug-hl however to understand that nothing
can replace the reasoned, irrevocable taking up of
aWlS on the people's side. Let us quote Depestre:
The ladY was not alone;
She had a husband,
t\ husband who knew everything,
Bur to tell the trurh knew nothing.
For you can't have culture withom making
concc'Ssions.
You concede your flesh and blood to it,
You concede your own self to others,
By conceding you gain
Classicism and Romanticism,
And all that our souls are steeped in.'
The nati'e poet who is preoccupied with creating
a national work of art and who is determined to
describe his people fails in h.is aim, for he is not yet
ready to make that flmdamcntal concession that
Depestre speaks of. The French poet Rene Char
shO\\ s his understanding of the djJficuJ ty when he
reminds us that "the poem emerges out of a sub
jective imposition amI an objective choice. A poem
is the assembling and moving togetller of deter
mining original \~Jlues, in contemporary relation
I\jth someone that these circumstances bring to
the front. "1
Yes, the .first dury of tlle native poet is to see
clearly the people he has chosen as the subject of
his work of art. He cannot go fonvard resolutely
unless be tirst realizes the extent of his estrange
'l1ent ff()111 them. We have taken everything from
the other side; and the other side gives us nothing
491
unless by a thousand detours wc swing finally round
in their direction, unless by ten thousand wiles and
a hundred thousand tricks they manage to draw us
toward them, to seduce LIS, and to imprison us.
Taking means in nearly every case being taken: thus
it is not enough to try to free oneself by repeating
proclamatjons and denials. It is not cnough to try to
get back to tJle people in that past out of which they
ha\~e already emerged; rathel' we must join them in
that fluctuating movement which they are just giv
ing a shape to, and Which. as soon as it has started,
will be the signal for e\"er~-thing {Q he called in
question. Let there be no mistake about it; it is to
this zone of occuh instability \\here the people
dwell that we must come; and it is there that our
souls are crystallized and that our perceptions and
our lives are transfused with light. ...
The responsibility of the nativc man of cultme
is not :l responsibility vis-a-vis his national cul
ture, but a global responsibility with regard to the
totality of the nation, whose culture merely, after
all, represents one aspcct of that nation. The cul
tured native should not concern himself with
choosing the level on which he wishes to fight or
the sector where he decides to give battle for his
nation. To fight for national culture means in the
first place to fight for the liberation of the nation,
that material keystone which makes the building
f a culture possible. There is no other fight for
culture which can clevelop apart from the popular
struggle. To take an example: all those men and
women who are fighting with their bare hands
against French colonialism in .i\.Igeria are not by
am means strangers to the national culture of
Algeria. The national Algerian culture is taking on
form and content as the battles are being: fought
out, in prisons, wlder the guillotine, and in every
French outpost which is captured or destroyed.
We must not tllerefore be content with delving
into the past of a people in order to find coherent
elements which will counteract colonialism's
attempts to falsify and harm. We must work and
fight with the sanle rhythm as thl;' people to con
struct the future and to prepare the ground where
vigorous shoots are already springing lip. A national
culture is not a folklore, nor an abstract populism
that believes it Cln discover the people's truc
nature. It is not made up of the inert dregs of gra
tuitous actions, that is to say actions which are less
492 FRANTZ FANON
and less attached to t.he ever-present reality of the
people. A national culture is the whole bod) of
efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought
to describe, justify, and praise the action through
which that peoplc has crcated itself and keeps itself
in e>...istencc. A national culture in underdeveloped
countries should therefore take its place at the very
heart of the struggle for freedom which these
countries are carrying on ..Men of African cultures
who are still fighting in the name ofAfrican-Negro
cuJture and who have called many congresses in
the name of the unity of that culture should today
realize that all their efforts amount to is to make
comparisons between coins and sarcophagi.
There is no common destiny to be shared
between the national culmres of Senegal and
Guinea; but there is a common destiny between
the Senegalese and Guinean nations which are
both dominated by the same French colonialism.
If it is wished that the national culture of Senegal
should come to resemble the national culture of
Guinea, it is not enough for the rulers of the two
peoples to decide to consider their problems
whether the problem of liberation is concerned, or
the trade-union question, or economic difficul
ties - from similar viewpoints. And even here
there does not seem to be complete identity, for
the rhythm of the people and that of their rulers
are not the same. There can be no two cultures
which are completely identical. To believe that it is
possible to create a black culture is to forget that
niggers are disappearing, just as those people who
brought them into being are seeing the breakup of
their economic and cultural supremacy.-' There
will never be such a thing as black culture because
there is not a single politician who feels he has a
vocation to bring black republics into being. The
problem is to get to know the place that these men
mean to give their people, the kind of social rela
tions that they decide to set up, and the concep
tion that the) have of the future of humanity. It is
this that counts; everything else is mystification,
signifying nothing.
In 1959, the cultured Africans who met at Rome
never stopped talking about unitr But one of the
people who was loudest in the praise of this cul
tural unity, Jacques Rabemananjara, is today a
minister in thc Madagascan government, and as
such has decided, with his government, to oppose
the Algerian people in the General Assembly of
the United Nations. Rabemananjara, if he had
been true to himself, ought to have resigned from
the government and denounced those men who
claim to incarnate the will ofthe JVladagascan peo
ple. The ninety thousand dead of Madagascar have
not given Rabemananjara authority to oppose the
aspirations of the Algerian people in the General
Assembly of the United Nations.
It is around the peoples' struggles that African_
Negro culture takes on substance, and not around
songs, poems, or folklore. Senghor, who is also a
member of the Society of African Culture and who
has worked with us on the question of African cul
tme, is not afraid for his part either to giyc the order
to his delegation to support French proposals on
Algeria. Adherence to African-Negro culture and
to the cultural unity of Africa is arri\-cd at in the
first place by upholding unconditionally the peo
ples' strug-gle for freedom. No one can truly wish
for the spread of African culture if he does not give
practical support to the creation of the conditions
necessary to the existence of that culture; in other
words, to the liberation of the whole continent.
I say again that no speech-making and no procla
mation concerning culture will tum us from our fun
damental tasks: the liberation ofthe national territory;
a continual struggle against colonialism in its new
forms; and an obstinate refusal to enter thc charmed
circle of mutual admiration at the summit.
Reciprocal Bases of National Culture
and the Fight for Freedom
Colonial domination, because it is total and tends to
oversimplify, very soon manages to disrupt in spec
tacular fashion the cultural life of a conquered peo
ple. This cultural obliteliation is made possible by
the negation of national reality, by new leg-.ll rrla
tions introduced by the occupying power, by the
banishment of the natives and their customs to out
lying districts by colonial society, by expropriation,
and by the systematic enslaving of men and women.
Three years ago at our first congress I showed
that, in the colonial situation, dynamism is replaced
fairly quickly by a substantification of the attitudes
of the colonizing po\ver. The area of culture is then
marked off by fences and signposts. These are in
fact so many defe.nse mechanisms of the most
ON NATIONAL CULTURE
elementary type, comparable for more than one
.,ood reason to tbe simple instinct for preservation.
The interest of this period for us is that the oppres
sor does not manage to convince himself of the
objective non-existence of the oppressed n:ltion and
its culturc. Every effort is made to bring the colo
nized person to admit the inferiority of his culture
\\hich has been transformed into instinctive pat
terns of behaviOl~ to rccognize the unreality of his
""nation," and, in the last extreme, the confused and
imperfect character of his own biological structure.
ris-~-vis this state of affairs, the native's reac
tions are not unanimous. While the mass of the
people maintain intact traditions which are com
pletely different from those of the colonial situa
tion, ami the artisanal style solidifies into a
formalism which is more and more stereotyped,
the intellectual throws himself in frenzied fashion
inro the frantic acquisition of the culture of the
oCCU1)) ing power and takes every opportunity of
ullfavorabl) criticizing his O"l'o't1 national culture, or
else rakes refuge in setting out and substantiating
the claims of that culture in a way that is passion
ate but rapidly becomes unproductive.
The common nature of these two reactions lies
in the fact that they both lead to impossible contra
dictions. Whether a turncoat or a substantialist, the
nativc is ineffectual precisely because the analysis
of the colonial situation is not carried out on strict
lines. The colonial situation calls a halt to national
culture in almost every fIeld. Within the frame
worl of colonial domination there is not and there
will never be such phenomena as new cultural
departures or changes in the national culture. Here
and there valiant attempts are sometimes made to
reanimate the cultural dynamic and to give fresh
impulses to its themes, its forms, and its tonalities.
The immediate, palpable, and obvious interest of
such leaps allead is nil. But if we follow up the con
sequences to the very end we see that preparations
are being thus made to brush the cob\ycbs off
natiOlL11 consciousness, to question oppression,
and to open up the struggle for freedom.
A national culture under colonial domination is
a conte~1:ed culture whose destruction is sougbt in
systematic fashion. It very quick]) becomes a
Cullure condemncd to secrecy. This idea of a clan
destine culture is immediatel) seen in the reac
tions of the occup)ing power which interprets
493
attachment to traditions as faithfulness to the
spirit of the nation and as a refusal to submit. This
persistence in following forms of cultun.'S. which
are already condemned to extinction is already a
demonstration of nationality; but it is a demon
stration which is a throwback to the laws of inertia.
There is no taking of the offensive and no redefin
ing of relationships. There is simply a concentra
tion on a hard core of clllture which is becoming
more and more shrivelled up, inert, and empty.
By the time a century or two of exploitation has
passed there comes about a veritable emaciation of
the stock of national culture. It becomes a set of
automatic habits, some traditions of dress, and a
few broken-down institutions. Litt]e movement
can be discerned in such remnants of culture;
there is no real creativity and no overflowing life.
The poverty of the people, national oppression,
and the inhibition of culture are one and the same
thing. After a century of colonial domination we
find a culture which is rigid in the extreme, or
rather what we find are the dregs of culture, its
mineral strata. The withering away of the reality
of the nation and the death pangs of the national
culture are linked to each other in mutual depend
ence. This is why it is of capital importance to fol
low the evolution of these relations during the
struggle for national freedom. The negation of the
native's culture, the contempt for any manifesta
tion of culture whether active or emotional, and
the placing outside the pale of all specialized
branches of orgallization contribute to breed
aggressive patterns of conduct in the native. But
these patterns of conduct are of the reOexive
type; they are poorly djfferentiated, anarchic, and
ineffective. Colonia] exploitation, poverty, and
endemic famine drive the native more and more to
open, organjzed revolt. The necessity for an open
and decisive breach is formed progressively and
imperceptibly, and comes to be felt by the great
majority of the people. Those tensions which
hitherto were non-existent come into being.
International events, the collapse of whole sections
of colonial empires and the contradictions inher
ent in the colonial system strengthen and uphold
the native's combativity while promoting and
giving support to national consciousness.
These new-found tensions which are present at
all stages in the real nature of colonialism have their
494
repercussions on the cultural plane. In literature,
FRANTZ FANON
for c:o.ample, there is relative overproduction. From
being a repl~ on a minor scale to the dominating
power, the literature produced by nativcs becomes
differel1liat~d and makes itself into a \\ ill to particu
larism. The intelligentsia, \\ hich during the period
of repression \\as essenrialJ) a consuming public,
now themselves become producers. This literature
at first chooses ro confine itself to the tragic and
poetic style; but later on nO\cls, shon stories, and
cssa)S are attempted. It is as if a lind of internal
organi7..3tion or lawaI' expression existed which
wills that poetic expression become less frequent in
proportion as the objecri\'cs and the methods of
ule struggle for liberation become more precise.
Themcs are complete!) altered; in fact, we find less
and less of bitter, hopeless recrimi.nation and less
also of that violent, resounding, florid writing which
on the whole sen'es to reassure the occupying power.
The colonialists have in former times encollraged
these modes of expression and made their existence
possible. Stinging denunciations, the exposing of
distressing conditions and passions which find tht.'ir
outlet in expression are in fact assimilated b} the
occupying power in a cathartic process. 1b aid such
processes is in a certain sense to avoid their drama
tiz.ation and to clear the amlOsphere.
But such a situation can only be transitory. In
fact, the progress of national consciollsness among
he people modifies and gives precision to the lit
erary utterances of the native intellectual. The
continued cohesion of the people constitutes for
the intellectual an in\'it,llion to go further than his
cry of protest. The lament first mak~ the indict
ment; and then it makes an appeal. In tlle period
that follo\\s, the words of command are heard.
The crystallization of the national consciousness
will both disrupt literary styles a.nd themes, and
also create a completely new public. While at the
beginning the nati\'e intellecrual used to produce
his work to be read exclusi\'el) by the oppressor,
whether with the intention of charming him or of
denouncing him through ethnic or subjectivist
means, no\\ the native writer progressively takes
on the habit of addressing his own people.
It is only from that moment that we can speak of
a national literature. Here there is, at the level
of literary creation, the taking up and clarification
of themes which are typically nationalist. This
. -
may be properly called a literature of combat .
,m
the sense that It calls on the \\hole people to lIght
for melr eXIstence as a natIOn. It IS a literature of
combat, because it molds the national conscious_
ness, gi\ ing it form and contours and tlmgin
open before it new and boundless horizons; it is ~
literature of combat because it assumes reSPonsi_
bility, and because it is the will to liberty e"pressed
in terms of time and space.
n another level, the oral tradition - stories
epics, and songs of the people - which formcri\:
were filed away as set pieces are no\\ beginning t~
change. The storytellers who used to relate inert
episodes now bring rhem alive and inrroduce into
them modifications which are incn::asingly funda
mental. There is a tendency to bring conflicts up
to date and to modernize the kinds of struggle
which the stories eyoke, together \\'ith the names
of heroes and the types of weapons. The method
of allusion is more and more widely used. The for
mula "This all happened long ago" is substituted
with thar of "What we are going to speak of hap
pened somewhere else, but it might well hayc hap
pened here today, and it might happen tomorrow."
The example of Algeria is significant in this con
text. From 1952-3 on, the storytellers, who were
before that time stereory ped and tedious to !i~ten
to, completely overturned their traditional meth
ods of storytelling and the contents of their tales.
Their public, which was formerly scattered,
became compact. The epic, \yith its typified cate
gories, reappeared; it became an authentic form of
entertainment which took on once more a cultural
value. Colonialism made no mistake \yhen from
1955 on it proceeded to arrest these sror)lcllers
systematicall).
The conta.ct of the pcople with the new mO\'e
ment gives rise to a new rhytllm of life and to for
gotten muscular tensions, and develops the
imagination. Every time the storyteller relates a
fresh episode to his public, he presides o\,er a real
invocation. The existence of a new type of man is
revealed to the public. The present is no longer
turned in upon itself but spread out for all to sec.
be storyteller once more gives free rein to his
imagination; he makes innovations and he crcates a
work of an. It even happens that the characterS,
which an: barely ready for such a transformation
highway robbers or more or less allti-social
ON NATIONAL CULTURE
\'~:r~bollds - are taken up and remodeled. The
en;ergence of the imagination and of the creative
un!L i.n the songs and epic stories of a colonized
co~ntr) is \\orth following. The storyteller replies
to rhe cxpecrant people b~ successive approxima
rion~, .lOd makes his way, apparently alone but in
facr helped on b) his public, toward the seeling
out of new patterns, t hat is to say national patterns.
l1ledy ,md farce diS'lppear, or lose their attrac
tion. As for dramatization, it is no longer placed
on the plane of the troubled intellectual and his
tormented conscience. 13) losing its characteristics
of despair and revolt, the drama becomes part of
the common lot of the people and f(lrms part of an
acrion In preparation or already in progress.
Where handicrafts are concerned, the forms of
expression \\ hich formerly \\ ere the dregs of art,
sun i\ ing as if in a daze, no\\ begin to real:h out.
\\'oodwork, fur example, \\ hich formerly turned
our .:crrain faces and allitudes by the million,
begins to he differentiated. The inexpressive or
orerwrought mask comes to life and the arms tend
to be raised from the body as if to sketch an action.
Compositions containing two, three or five figures
appear. The traditional schools are led on to crea
ti\l~ efTnrts by the rising avalanche of amateurs or
of critics. This new vigor in this sector of cultural
life ven nfLen passes unseen; and yet its contribu
tion to 1 he national effon is of capital importance.
Ill' car\ing figures and faces which are full of life,
and b) t<lJ...ing as his theme a group fixed on the
same pedestal, the artist im ites participation in an
organized movement.
If \\e study the repercussions of the awakening
of national consciousness in I he domains of ceram
ics and pottery-making, the same observations
may be draw n. Formalism is abandoned in the
craftSman's work. Jugs, jars, and trays are modi
lIed, at first imperceptibly, then almost savagely.
The coltlrs, uf which formerly there were but few
and which obeyed Ihe tra.ditional rules of har
111011), increase in number and are influenced by
the repercussion of the rising revolution. Certain
ochres and blues, wllich seemed forbidden to all
ererniry in a gi\en culLllral area, now assert them
selves withollt giving rise to scandal. Tn the same
lIa) the stylization of the human face, which
acconling to sociologists is typical of very clearly
defmed regions, becomes suddenly completely
relati\'e. The specialist coming from the horne
coumry and the ethnologist are quick to note these
changes. On the whole such changes are con
495
demned in the name of a rigid code of artistic style
and of a cultural life which grows up at the he-Irt
of the colonial system. The colonialist specialists
do not recognize these new forms and rush to the
help of the traditions of the indigenous societ). It
ill the colonialists \\ho become the defenders of
the nati\ e style. We remember perfectl}, and the
exanlple tool on a certain measure of importance
since the real nature of colonialism was not
in\ oIY-ed, the reactions of the white jazz specialists
when after the Second \Vorld \'Var new styles such
as tlte be-bop took definite share. The fact is that
in their eyes jazz should only be the despairing,
broken-down nostalgia of an old :-J'egro who is
trapped bet\\' een five glasses of whiskey, the curse
of his race, and the racial hatred of the white men.
As soon as the Negro comes to an understanding
of himself, and understands the rest of the world
differently, \\ hen he gi\ es birth to hope and forces
back the racist universe, it is clear that his trumpet
sounds more clearly and his voice less hoarsely.
The new fashions in jazz are not simply born of
economic competition. We must without any
doubt see in them one of the consequences of the
defeat, slow but sure, of the southern world of the
United States. And it is not utupian to suppose
that in fifty years' time the t) pc of jazz howl hic
cuped by a poor misfonunate Negro will be upheld
only by the whites \\'ho belie\e in it as an expres
sion of negritude, and who are faithful to this
arrested image of a type of relationship.
We might in the same way seek and find in
dancing, singing, and traditional rites and ceremo
nics tlle same upward-springing trend, and make
out the same changes and the same impatience in
this ficld. Well before the political or fighting
phase of the national movement, an attentive spec
tator can thus feel and sec the manifestation of
new "igor and feel the approaching conflict. He
will note unusual forms of expression and themes
which are fresh and imbued with a Po~\ er which is
no longer that of invocation bm rather of the
assembling of the people, a summoning together
for a precise purpose. Everything works together
to awaken tbe native's sensibility and to make unreal
and inacceptable the contemplative attitude, or the
-l96
acceptance of defeat. The native rebuilds his per
ceptions bee-Juse he renews the purpose and dyna
mism of the craftsmen, of dancing and music, and
of literarure and the oral tradition. His world
FRANTZ FANON
comes to lose its accursed character. The conditions
nt~cessary for the inevitable conflict are brought
together.
\Ve have noted the appearance of t he movement
in cultural forms and we have seen that this move
ment and these new forms are linked to the state of
maturity of the national consciousness. Now, this
movement tends more and more to express itself
objectively, in institutions. From thence comes the
need for a national existence, "hatever the cost.
A frequent mistake, and one" hich is moreover
hardly justifiable, is to try to find cultural expres
sions for and to give new values to native culture
\'o'ithin the framework of colonial domination.
Thjs is why we arrive at a proposition wllieh at
fust sight seems paradoxical: the fact that in a
colonized countr~' the most elementary, most sav
age, and the most undifferentiated nationalism is
the most fervent and efficient means of defending
national culture. For culture is first the expression
of a nation, ule expression of its preferences, of its
taboos and of its patterns. It is at every stage of the
whole of society that other taboos, values, and pat
terns are formed. A national ClLlture is the sum
total of all these appraisals; it is the result of inter
nal and external tensions exerted over society as a
whole and also at every level of that society. In
the colonial situation, culture, which is doubly
deprived of the support of the nation and of the
state, falls awav and dies. The condition for its
existence is therefore national liberation and the
renaissance of the state.
The nation is not only the condition of culture,
its fj'uitfulness, its continuous renewal, and its
deepening. It is also a necessity. It is the fight for
llesire ro study hisrorical causes, no one can criri
national existence which sets culture moving and
cize ir. But if on lhe other hand ir was lakcn in
opens to it the doors of creation. Later on it is th
order to create black self-consciousncss, it i~ simply
nation which will ensure the conditions and
a turnjng of his back upon histor~ which has
framework necessary to culture. The nation gath
alre-ady taken cugnizance of the disappearance of
ers together the various inillspensable elements
rhe majorit) of 'Jcgroes.
necessary for the creation of a culture, those cle
ments which alone can give it credibility, validity,
life, and creative power. In the same way it is its
national character that will make such a culture
open to other cultures and wllich will enable it to
influence and perme-ate other cultures .\
.
xlstent culture can hardly be expected to h
b e:mng
. . h
l' . fl
bl' h
--
-
necessity IS t e re-esta IS ment of the natio .
" " nOn_
ille
on re:l Ity, or to 111 uence re-alit,. The Ii
Il'lit
. I'c . I
or der to give II e to natlona culture in the .st'
n In
I teaches us, on the contrary, that it tl> its guarantee.
net \.
biological sense of the phrase.
Thus we have followed the breakup of the old
strata of culture, a shattering which becom
increasingly fundamental; and \\e have noticed oC';
the eve of the decisive conflict for national f;ee~
dom, rhe renewing of forms of expression and the
rehirth of the imagination. There remains one
essential question: what arc the relatiuns between
the struggle - whether political or military - and
Cll lture' Is there a suspension of culture during
the conflict? Is the national struggle an e>.pression
of a culture) Finally, ought om: to say that the bat
tle for freedom however fertile ({ posteriori with
regard to culture is in itself a negation of CUlture?
In short, is the struggle for liberation a cultural
phenomenon or not?
We believe thar the conscious and organized
undertaking by a colonized people to re-establish
the sovereignty of that nation constitutes the: most
complete and obvious cultuLlI manifestation that
exists. It is not alone the success of the struggle
which afterward gives validity and \igor to cul
ture; culture is not put into cold storage during
the con flier. The struggle itself in its development
and in its internal progression sends culture along
different paths and traces out entirely new ont'S
for it. The struggle for freedom does not gin back
to the national culture its former value and shapes;
this struggle which aims at a fundamentally ulffer
ent set of relations between men callnot leave
intact either the form or the content of the peo
ple's culture. After the conflict there is not only
the disappearance of colonialjsm bur also the dis
appearance lIf the colonized man.
This new humanity cannot do otherwise than
define a new humanism both for itself and for oth
ers. It is prefigured in the objectives and methods
of the conflict. A struggle which mobilizes all
classes of the people and which expresses their
aims and their impatience, which is not afraid to
count almost exclusively on the people's support,
will of necessit) triumph. The value of this t) pe of
connict is that it supplies the maximum of condi
tions necessary for the devclopment and aims of
---- re
.:1I I1ll.
turJ I \
. .
d 'm certam
,oun
ON NATIONAL CULTURE
After national freedom has been obtained
.
these condJOons, there 1S no such pamful cul
m '11oecision W,.llCI1 IS . c . coun
rries which are ne\\ Iy independent, hecause the
malio n b) its mannc: of commg mlO bcmg and
. the terlllS of its cXlstence exerts a fundamental
111
influence over culture. i\ nation which is born
afrhe people's concerted action and \\ hich embod
. rhc real aspirations of the people while chang
Ie,
ing the state cannot exist save in [he expression of
~~ccptionally rich forms of culture.
The natives who are anxious for the culture of
their country and \\ ho wish to give to it a uruversal
oimcnsion ought not therefore to place their con
fidence in the single principle of inevitable, undjf
krcntiated independence wrillen into the
con,ciousncss of the people in order to achieve
[heir task. The liberation of the nation is one thing;
[he mcthOds and popular content of the fight are
another. It s(.'Cms to u~ that the future of national
culture and irs riche~ are equally also part and par
cel of the values \\bich ha\ e ordained the struggle
lor freedom.
\no now it is time 1.0 denounce certain phari
s~es. ~ational claims, it is here and there stared,
are a phasc rhal hunnnity has left behind. It is tbe
dJ\' of great concerted actions, and retarded
narionillist~ ought in consequence to set tbeir mis
takes 'lfight. We bowevet consider that the mLS
ta~e, \\ hieh rna) have very serious consequences,
lies in wishing to skip the national period. If cul
ture is lhe expression of national consciousness,
I will not hesitate ro affirm thal in the case with
\Oles
Rene Depestre: "Face it 13 Nuit."
Rene Char, Purtage Porme!.
\llhc la~t school prize giving in Dakar, lhe presi
denr of the Senegalese Republic, Leopold Senghor,
decideu 10 include the slud~ of rhe idea of negritude
in lhe curriculum. If rhis decision was due to a
which is the most elaborate form of culture.
The consciousness of self is not the closing of
a door to communication. Philosophic thought
49'7
which 'we are dea.ling it i:, the national consciousness
National consciousness, which is not nationalism,
is the only thing that \\ ill give us :tnintemational
dimension. This problem of national conscious
ness and of national culture takes on in Africa a
special dimension. The birth of national con
sciousness in Africa has a ~trictly contemporane
ous connection with the African consciousness.
The responsibilit~ of the African as regards
national culture is also a responsibility \\ ith regard
to African Negro culture. This joint responsibility
is not the fact of a metaphysical principle but the
awareness of a simple rule which wills that every
independent nation in an Africa where colonialism
is still entrenched is an encircled nation, a nation
wllich i.s fragile and in permanent danger.
lf man is known by his acts, then we will say that
the most w'gent thing today for the intellectual is to
build up his nation. If th.is building up is true, that is
to say if it interprets the mJmifest will of the people
and reveals the eager Afl;can peoples, then the build
ing of a nation is of necessity accompanied by the
discovery and encouragement of universalizing \al
ues. Far from keeping aloof from other nations,
therefore, it is national liberation which leads the
llJltion to play its par! on the stage of history. It is at
the heart of national consciousness that international
ronsciousness lives and grows. Am} this two-fold
emerging is ultimately only the source of all culture.
 35
Nationalism,. EthnicityJ and Modernity
The Paradox of Mau Mau
Bruce J Berman
introduction: The Continuing
Fascination of Mau Mau
What was Mau Mau? What was its significance in
the history of Kenya or, more broadly, the history
of colonial Mrica? What can an lLnderstanding of
Mau Mau telt us about the colonial confrontation
of African "tradition" and \Vestcrn "modernity"?
Almost forty )'ears after the colonial authorities in
Nairobi declared a state of emergency to crush
what they insistcd was a savage and wholly e\'il
secret cult, conclusivc answers to these questions
remain elusive. "The horror story of the Empire in
the 1950s," as Jolm Lonsdale calls it, continues to
be a source of political anci intellectual conU"o\'ersy I
During the 19705 and again in the mid-1980s,
Kenyan intellectuals and political figures clashed
m-er conflicting intcrpretations of _\au J\1au, with
many aging ex-Mau Mau fighters also jumping
into the fray (Odhiambo, 1988; Ylaughan-Brown,
J 985, 20-2). The historical and fictional writings
on 1\ lau .\1au of Kenya's leading intellectual dissi
dents, Ngugi wa Thiong'o and J\laina wa Kinyatti,
were factors in their detention and exile (Thiong'o
and Mugo 1976; Thiong'o 1983; Kinyatti 1985,
From Bruce J. Berman. 1991, "Nationalism, 1:..1 hnicity, and Modernity: The Paradox of Mau Mau," Cot/alli'"l Jour/wI
offlFican StlJdj,'s/ReVile cilnadimne des EII/dcs IIj;;caine, 25(2): 11\ 1-206.
~l\l'aIe of what they belieyed 'I as a secret organi7.a
named "1\lau Mau." Through the years of the
1987). Academic interest in ~1au Mau has surged
once more, with a whole series of monographs and
papers appearing since 1986 which explore yet
again its nature and place in the politics of colonial
and post-colonial Kenya (Kanogo 1987; Throup
1987; Edgerton 1989; Furedi 1989; Presley 1988;
Gordon 1986; Berman 1990).
Central to the debates over Mau !\lau is the
nature of its relationship to nationalism in K\:Ilya.
Was it a parochial tribal uprising or the central
episode of Kenya's national liberation struggle:
Were the Mall Mau forest lighters tribal tradition
alists or nationalist patriots? Despite its military
defeat by Imperial forces, did .\fau Mau force the
British into social and political reforms which led
to independence under an African government: If
J\Iau Mau fought for national liberation, why was
it unable to articulate a trans-ethnic national ide
ology? This article addresses these questions
through a critical examination of the conflicting
interpretations of Mau Mau's relationship with
nationalism, followed hy a plausible reconstruc
tion of the relationship suggested by an under
standing of the internal conflicts in Kikuyu society
in the first decade after World War n.
-
\[au Mau: Anti-Nationalism or
NATIONALISM, ETHNICITY, AND MODERNITY
\lilitant Nationalism?
In the lute 19+0s colonial officials first became
tion :IIDong African farm l,tbourers on the
European estates of the Rift Valley which they
Depraved, murderous, and wholly e\'il, Mau ]'viau
Emergency from 1952 to 1960, and into the first
years of K.enya's independence after 1963, the
dominant interpretation of this phenomenon
focused on its essentially tribal and religious char
actcr. This view, with variations, comprised the
con\cntional wisdom about Mau Mau shared not
only by colonial officials in Nairobi and London,
white senters, and missionaries but also by jour
nalists and academic commentators from Britain
and sereral other countries.
In the most coherent official version,! ~1au Mau
was depicted as a savage, violent, and depraved
tribal cult, an expression of unrestrained emotion
rather than reason. It sought to turn the Kikuyu
people back to "the bad old days" before enlight
ened British rule had brought the blessings of
modern civilization and den:lopmcnt. When the
first repons of something called "Mau Mau"
rcachcd u,e Provincial Administration and the
Kenya Police in 1948-9, it was immediately identi
fied as a "dini" or religious cult. As late as February
1953, u,e Commissioner of Police was passing on
reports that linked Mau Mau with the Dini ya
\Isamb\\a, which had violently clashed with gov
ernment forces a few years before.] The govern
ment also claimed that Mau Mall had emerged
among a particularly unstable people who had dif
ticulty adjusting to the strains of rapid social
change and modernization. Playing upon their
morbid fears and superstitions, Mall Mau turned
the Kikuyu into savage and maniacal killers.
Government intelligence reports dwelt on the
"ins:me frenz)" and "fanatical discipline" of \[au
\tau adherenls.~ 1L had been deliberately orgnn
iZtd, according to the government, by cynical and
unprincipled leaders, seeking only to satisfy their
OlIn lust for power. Furthermore, officials repeat
celly insisted that Mall Mau was not a response LO
economic deprivation and material grievances
arising out of colonialism, but rather was an irra
tional rejection of the benefits of development.
+99
This \-iew led them to stress repeatedly the essen
tially atavistic character of Mau Mau. As the
British parliamentary delegation which visited
Kenya in 1954 put it, "Mau Mau intentionally and
deliberately seeks to lead the Africans of Kenya
back to the bush and savagery, not forward into
progress" (Report to the Sw-etaf)' of Siale, 4).
had to be totally destroyed.
This characterization of Mall j'vlau, repeated
almost daily for several years in press conferences,
news briefs, and interviews from government
information agencies in Nairobi and London, and
widely disseminated in print and broadcasts by the
press throughout the \\'Orld, became and remains,
especially in English-speaking countries, the
image of the phenomenon in popular culture.
Until the mid-1960s it received powerful support
in numerous studies by academic social scientists
which claimed for it the status of objectil'e scien
tific knowledge. The most important of these were
by Louis Leakey, Kenya's leading scholar and
intellectual at the time, whose interpreti"e author
ity was reinforced by his being born and raised
among the Kikuyu and being one of the fe\\ whites
in K.enya who spoke their language fluently. His
two books (1952 and 1954) gave definitive expres
sion to the analysis of Mau Mau as a perverted
religious cult manipulated by cynical and C\'jl
leaders, and were widely disseminated by the
Kenya Government, which supplied copies to all
of its administrative and police officers s This
explanation was quickly taken up by scholars in
other countries, especially amongst American
anthropologists, among whom Mau 1\-lau wa.
readily assimilated to existing concepts of "nati\'
istic sects," "tribal revival movements," and "cri
sis cults" developed in the analysis of native
American responses to white colonial expansion.
Its definitive expression was a 1965 article by
Gilbert Kushner in the German anthropological
journal Ant/zropos, which relied primarily on
Leakey for empirical evidence and fixed Mau j\1au
firml)' within the theoretical paradigm of ata"istic,
violent, despairing movements among peoples
being overwhelmed by the ad"ance of modern
civilization (Kushner 1965; see also Rosenstiel
1953)6 These movements were seen as nostalgic
attempts to escape the rigours of modernity; not
500 BRUCE J. BERMAN
efforts [0 relit:ve the inequities of colonial dnel
upment, but its utter rejection.
Thus, Mau Mau's atavistic mind and tribal
scale made it the enemy, the very antithesis, of
nationalism. M.au Mau could not be an expression
of nationalism because it led away from everything
the latter represented as an essemial part of the
modernization process.
No Western observer, not even those on the anti
colonialleft, S<1W Mau Mau as the political expres
sion of national integration ... The movement's
s) mboJs had nothing "Kenyan" about them, J'''lau
Mau, uniquely, seemed to be a core radicalism
which rejecleJ Lhe nation. (Lonsdale 1989,7)
By the mid-1960s this interpretation hegan to be
chalkmged by a revisionist \'er~ion of J\1au Niau
\\hich depicted it as an essential, if radical, com
ponent of African nationalism in Kenya. First,
memoirs of the Emergency by some of those aeti'e
in Mau Ntau began to be published, notably by
).J\1. Kariuki (1963), a politician who spent years
in detention, and Waruhiu hote (1967), who as
"General China" had commanded the guerrilla
forces in the forests of;\10um Kenya until his cap
ture in 1954. Both insisted that Mau Mau was a
modern, rational, and nationaList political move
ment, not tribalist r('.actioD, and that the fighters
of the Land and Freedom Arm) had fought a glo
rious struggle for nationaJ libeT:ition. Second, and
more important for shaping a significant shift in
academic opinion about Mau Mau, \\ere two sub
stantiaJ works which brought together participants
on opposite sides of the struggle wid, AmericaJl
social scientists. The first, ."tau Maufrom lVi/hili,
is the autobiography of Karari Njama, a man of
some education who had sen'cd as secretary to the
guerrilla forces in the: Abcrdares and to its leade
Dedan Kimathi, edited with extensi\'e commen
tary by the radical anthropologist Donald Barnett.
This text is an extended elaboration of the depic
tion of Mnu Mau as a rational struggle for n:itional
liberation, substantially down playing the Kikuyu
cultural content and symbolism it employed. This
is e\ ident right at rhe beginning of the book in a
preface signed by several prominent political fig
ures, including Fred Kubai, Bildad Kaggia, and
Achieng Oneko, who had been charged with Jomo
Kenyatta with "organizing Mau Mau" They crit_
icized previous accounts of it:
There is obsessive preoccupation in these works
\\ ith the sinister and the awesome. The \Cry lWme
"Mau J\>lau" is an illustration of how successful
propaganda can damn an entire movement to
whieh thousands sacrificed everything, including
their li\ es, by attaching to it an appellation that
conjures up all the cliches of the "dark continent"
which still crowd the European mind. (Barnett
and Njama 1966, 9)
The second challenge to the interpretation of .:'Ilau
Mau as ata\'ism is a thoroughly academic mono
graph, based on extensive documental') analysis and
numerous interyiews with African political tlgures,
composed by John Norringhanl, a maverick colunial
administrator who had rejected Lhc official version
of Mau \fau, and Carl Rosberg, a political scicntist
from the University of c.1.lifomia at Berkeley. The~
state their re\'isionist purpose right at the outset:
.. ~tau Mau" is identified with rhe militant nation
alism and the violence which characterized the
politics of cemral Kenya before and durin[/: the
early years of the Emergency ... This book presems
an alternative interpretation of "l\lau \[au," in
which we will be concemed with the modem ori
gins of African politics and rheir patt(;'m of
development, with particular emphasis on the
politicizatiun and mobiliz:uion of the Kikuyu peo
pIe ... In our vie\~; the outbreak of open \'iolcnce in
Kenya in 1952 occurred primarily because of a
Europe-all failure rather than all African one; it was
not so much a failure of the Kikll~ II people to adapt
to a modem institutional setTing as it was a failure
of the European policy-makers to recognize the
need for significant social and political rdorm.
(Rosberg and Nottingham 1966, Xl'i-:wii)
:--Jot only is Mau ~lau identified as modern and
nationalist but also the focus of the analysis is on
the development of African anti-colonial natiunal
ist opposition in Ken) a in response to the concrete
inequities and material grievances of colonial
domination. African politics in Ken~'a is sholm to
be essentially instrumental and rational and
grounded in material causes for wbieh the British
were largel) responsible. The trcatment of the
NATIONALISM. ETHNICITY, AND MODERNITY
specificaJly Kiku.\ u cultural forms and content
which characterized Mau Mau is muted, with the
~[.,u Mau oath, the central cY'idence for its sup
posed "'1\'age obscenity, depicted as a rationaL
"instrumcnt for achieving wlity." The earlier
interpretation of l\lau Mau as savage and atavistic
tribalism is subject to penetrating analysis as a
"rn} Lh of Mau l\lau" grounded in European rac
ism ami ethnocentrism. Only on the vcry last page
do Rosberg and Nottingham conclude:
Although oarhing strengthened the Kikuvu
organizational ability to challenge thc colonial
state, it nonetheless had the additional effect of
limiting the institutional spread of the national
movement to non-Kikuyu groups. This dilemma
lIas not unrecognized by the Kikuyu leadership,
for the} envisaged the creation of other tribal
oaths II hich would serve to mobilize and commit
nun-K.ikuyu people to their ~t:yle of militant
nationahsm, Lack of sufficient time and the
Administr3tion\ success in compartmentalizing
and controlling Afriean political activity \\ere two
important factors that prc\'cnted this from occur
ring in any extensive manner. Thus, the pattern of
nationalism as it unfolded stemmed from a ration
aJJ} conceived strategy in search of political power
wiLhin ;l context of structural conditions which
sclt'reJ~ inhibited the growth of a colony-wide
nat ional organizational movemcnt. (1966, 354)'
\'ationalism and Development:
The Common Foundation of
Di\'ergenl Explanations
How could such di\ergent, indeed contradictory,
characterizations of J\lau Mau develop as succes
sile inf1uential explan.ations of the phenomenon,
with the "militant nationalism" model largely
supplanting thc "atavistic tribalism" model among
.-\fricanists by the end of the 1960s? The matter
becomes C\'en more compelling when one exam
ines the explanations morc closely and finds that
they arc in fact based on essentiaJJy identical
premises about modernity, dcvelopment, and
nationalism. This paradox reveals some of thc cru
cial difficulties involved not only in understanding
\!all Mau, but in understanding the phenomenon
calkd African nationalism ....
SOl
It has been clear for many years that the con
cept of "traditional society," and its particular
expression in Africa, "tribal society," represent
idealized constructs which very imperfectly reflect
what is now understood abo lit the character of
pre-colonial African societies. In particular, rhe
dominant image of traditional society as highly
integrated, stable, rclati'ely unchanging, and
largely free of disruptive internal conflict has been
challenged by increasing evidence of the fluidity
of political boundaries and cthnic identities and
the significant levels of internal conflict revealed
in contemporary historical research, The concept
of traditional society was not in any case based on
substantial and s)'stematically collected empirical
evidence. The pre-colonial history of African soci
eties had barel) begun to be written before the late
19605; and the knowledge available in the late
19405 and early 1950s -largely from the haphaz
ard and unsystematic effons of colonial adminis
trators and missionaries, and, for a very few
African peoples, more methodical ethnographic
studies by a handful of professional anthropolo
gists - referred mostly to contemporary condi
tions in societies already subject to colonial rule
for a generation or more. "Traditional society"
represented instead the coming tog'ether of a set of
seemingly incongruous assumptions and interests
from a number of sources.
First, colon.ial administrators expressed an ide
ology of paternalistic authoritarianism grounded
in a concept of society as an organic community,
each of whose constituent parts had a specific role
to play in the larger whole. Harmony and order
were the basic characteristics of the organic com
munity. While AfrieaIl tribal society was ignorant,
impO\'crishcd, and superstition-ridden, it was also
an organic community. Administrators came to see
the conservation of the integrity of its institutions
as instrumental for the maintcnance of effcctive
control (Berman 1990, 10+-15).
\Vhile adminiStrative ideology and its construc
tion of tradition was imbued \\ith a substllmial ele
ment of conservative romantic irrationalism and of
pastoral nostalgia for the rural community of some
ill-defined golden past, it ne\'ertheless dovetailed
neatly with the far more rationalist model of tr;ldi
tional society of British social anthropology. The lat
ter discipline was dominated from the 1930s until
502 BRUCE J. BERMAN
----------------------------------------
lhe end of colonial rule by the functionalist para
digms of Bronislaw :Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe
Brown, which emphasized lhe analysis of traditional
societies as functionally integrated homeostatic sys
lems in which any feature of the society was to be
explained by the contribution it made to the mainte
nance of the whole. Despite mutual professional
jealousv and hostility, anlhropoJogiClI ideas became
increasingl~ familiar to colonial officials as anthro
pology was incorporated into Colonial Office train
ing programmes, and after 1945 a gro\\-ing number
of social anthl"opologists made their way to Kenya
and other colonies to conduct field research undcr
the auspices of the Colonial Social Science Research
Council. FurtJlermore, much anthropological work
contained significant elements of an "cthnographic
pastoral" (see Rosaldo 1986; (Jifford j(86), comple
menting that of colonial officials, which idealized the
harmony and ortler of functionally integrated tradi
tional societies (Kuper 1983, chapters 3 and 4).
Finally, the vision of traditional society of
anthropologists and colonial officials was also sig
nificantly influenced bv the interests and perspec
tin:.s of African chicfs an d elders, recognized in
British Africa as "native authorities," who were
the primary source of information about indige
nous institutions and culture and sought to bolster
their legitimacy by accounts that stressed their
autlloriratiye role in the maintenance of the order
and harmony of pre-colonial society. In Kenya,
and for the Kikuyu, all three of these elements
came together in the work of Leakey, himself an
initiated Kikuyu elder, who shared the images of
traditional society of both colonial officials and
anthropologists....
.flus construction of traditional society was also
essentially the same, if expressed in a different
j(liom, as that developed by American social SCiCll
tists from Parsonian struchlral-functionalism and
depicted in the now familiar dichotomies of the
"pattern yariables": particularism versus univer
salism, ascription versus achievement, affectivity
7Jr?rSIIS neutrality, and diffuseness versll5 specificity
(Lcys 1982,333-4). "Modern" societies were sim
ply construCTed as the polar opposite of traditional
society on t.bese characteristics and on numerous
empirical "indicators." The distance between tra
ditional and modern society was traversed by a
universal and uni.linear process of development,
"from tradition to moderniry." AJI existing Socie_
ties could be ranged according to their position
along this metaphorical road of social progress.
Both colonial officials and social scientists shared
to a striking degree a conception of the normal
course and scquence of this process of moderniza_
tion. The political, economic, and cultural demands
of colonialism stimulated social change by dri\"in~
people out of the old "trihal" ways of doing thin~
and pulling ("hem into wider social arenas. As the
networks of Aftican societies increased in scale, the
dependence on the small tribal community \\\)111d
decline, local loyalries and ethnic identities wuuld
diminish, and wider ones would develop. Cnder
the impact of a monetary economy spread by \\age
labour and cash crop production, ITaditional social
relations decline and are replaced by more inslru
mentally efficient modern forms. x The ascripri\e
particularism of small-scale societies \\"Quld be
increasingly replaced by the achie\'cment-oriCnted
universalism of modern secular society. Nor even
the mosr consen"ative disu'ict commissioner, who
rued the demise of the communal solidarities of
org-anic traditional societies, denied 111at the proc
ess led to a society based less on emotion and super
stition and more on rationality and science...
Paternalistic authoritarianism shaped the proc
ess of political progress towards [he nation-state
into a gradual tutelary procedure under the con
trol of the colonial administration whereby local
elites through experience in local government and
administration would learn to rule and graduo1l1y
be given access to more inclusive Tliltional institu
tions. The implicit model was of a class stratified
national society led by an indigenous ruling elite
sharing the outlook of their colonial rulers. As
\1.ichacl Lee put it,
Good government meanr thaT Lhe official classes
accepted full responsibility for de\c!opjllenl
schemes, neither more nor less_ It \\ as expected
that local politicians and local civil sen-ants would
eventually arise to take over full responsihility.
and therefore reconsti[Ure the official classes,
This process was often described as creating: "a
polirical class," which meant ellvisag-ing the c,ea
tion of a native elite capahle of running the
machinery required to join the soeiet~- of states in
the international order. (1967,13-14)"
NATIONALISM. ETHNICITY, AND MODERNITY
_\ former Secretary of State for the Colonies put it
~lOre bluntly and colomfully in an interview when
he observed that "you ca.n't have the institutions
without a political class and you can't have a polit
ical class \\ ithout the institutions" (Berman 1990,
106). This logic applied with particular force in a
colony such as Kenya, with its substantial European
and Asian immigrant populations. Political devel
opment for Africans was conceivable in the first
instance only as ultimately part of a multiracial
dominant class in which Europeans would con
tinue to pIa) a preponderant role for an indefinite
perioll (Berman 1990,301-7)..
While nationalist organizations and leaders
could be assimilated to the rationalist social engi
neering of nation-building, nationalist passions
could not. Colonial officials and political scientists
ali](e shared an aversion to the fervent emotions,
deep personal identification, and self-sacrificial
commitment a.lso identified with nationalism. In
the aftermath of World 'o\'a.r II, these sentiments
seemed not only irrational but pernicious and
destructive. According to Walker Conner, scholars
presumed Lhar the war had convinced the peoples
of Weslern Europe that nationalism was dan
gerous and outmoded, and the inlplementation of
_\'Iar.xlsm-Leninism in Eastern Europe had made
it superfluous in modern socialist societies, while
in studying the Third World "ethnic heterogeneity
tCllded to be ignored or to be cavalicrly dismissed
as an ephemeral phenomenon," and they "offered
fe\\ if any suggestions as to how a single national
consciousness was to be forged among disparate
ethnic elements" (1987, 196-7). Political awrsioll
was reinforced by intellectual disdain in tbe face of
the theoretical incoherence and historical mystifi
cation characteristic of nationalist writing and the
almost [0 tal lack of nationalist thinkers who could
be recognized as great by anyone outside of the
particular nation they addressed. Ernest Gelbler
notes: "their precise doctrines are hardly worth
analyzing ... nationalist ideology suffers from
pervasi\e false consciousness" (1983, 124); and
Benedict Anderson points to a central paradox
when he notes the contrast between the "political
power of nationalisms 7JS rheir philosophical pov
eny" (Anderson 1983, 14). But while nationalist
ideology holds no candle to liberalism or Marxism
as intellectual doctrine, it has elicited far more
503
intense and widespread commitment. The ceno
taphs and tomhs of unkno\\ll soldiers, one of the
most powerfu 1and common of nationalist Sp11 bois,
are not matched, as Anderson wittily reminds us,
by "a Tomb of the Unknown ;\Iarxist or a cenotaph
for fallen Libemls" (Anderson 1983,17-18).
Thus, the theory and the project of national
development envisioned by either British colonial
officials or American social scientists had linle to
say about or room for nationalism as dOclrine and
sentiment rooted in common history, culture, and
language. Indeed, in the context of Africa, it
seemed improbable that anyone of the numerous
"tribes" contained in each colony could provide
the basis for a national consciousness in the new
nation-state they were creating. The gnJ\nh of
such erhno-eu.ltural identities appeared to be dis
integrative and to recall traditional tribaJjsm in a
wa) that threatened both modernization and
nation-building. Moreover, in Kenya, the presence
of .'\sians and Europeans as distinctive cultural
communities demanding protection of their com
munal rights made it inconceivable that an) African
cultural forms or idenrities could be part of Lhe
process of political development. The participa
tion of Africans in a multi-racial dominant class
had to be on the basis of their being essentially
European in education, culture, and lifestyle.
Officials assumed that assimilation to a dominant
European culture was the natural goal for Africans
and tbe pre-condition for the emergence of a
common Kenyan nationalit). As Rosberg and
Nottingham note: "The Leviathan of the colonial
state represented the enlightened self-interests of
the African in which the ne\\ educated man could
remove himself completely from the darkness of
his barbaric origi.ns into the sun of the white man's
culture" (1966, 322). Multi-racialism could not
mean multi-culturalism.
The difficulty of dealing with the passions of
nationalist ideology and identity within the r'ltion
alist structural and materialist model of national
development provided the basis for interpreting
Mau Mau as eirher atavistic tribalism or radical
nationalism. As I suggested earlier, the differ
ence between these interpretations was viv1dly
expressed in the readings given to lhe emotive
ideological and cultural content of Mau Mau as
contained largely in the oaths given to its recruits.
504
During the Emergency, texts of oaths were the
BRUCE J. BERMAN
only e\'idence about Mau J\1au presented to sus
tain the official yersion of its character. Coloniid
officials, \\ hite settlers and the British and imerna
tional press were obsessed with the deviant
weirdness and bestiality of the oaths as proving
that Mau Mau was atavistic, savage, and e\-il. lU
Con\'erselj, ~jama and Barnen, Rosberg and
Nottingham, and rhe various Mau Mau memoir
ists \\ere equally intem on pro,ing that it was a
modern movement for nat.ionalliberation and did
so by stressing the politically instrumental charac
ter of the mass oaths and setting them within the
context of a long history of African anti-colonial
struggle and of accumulating grievances ag'ainst
the inequities of the colonial order, While this
does show how divergent exphuutions were con
structed within the common premises about tradi
tion, modernity and narional development, it does
nor explain why they \\cre produced. To answer
the latter question one must examine tllem within
the particular historical contc:\.rs in which the)
appC<lred.
During rhe Emergenc)', particularly in its earl)
phases, the British authorities in Nairobi and
London had a desperate need for an explanation
of 1\L1u Mau which would accomplish several
objectives, effectively achieved by characteri;-..ing
it, as Cohen put it, as "a reversion ro tribalism in a
pervertcd and brutal form" (1959, 55), First, by
comincing the cadres of the colonial state that
J\lau Mau in all its mystical and murderous
obsccnity \\as wholly evil, it enablcd thcm to light
a nasty guerrilla war in good conscience..'\ strong
predisposition to this view already existed in the
racist stcrt'()types of African brutishness, irr:llion
aliry, and bloodthirsty violence which, in their
most extrcme form, kept the settler population of
Ken~ a on a constant edge of hysterical fear of the
Africans the} so callousl} exploited, and, in more
moderate form, left colonial officials uneasy about
unpredictable and dangerous reactions from their
African wards (Berman and Lonsdale 1991 b, 6-14;
Kenned) 1987, chapters 8 and 9; ~1aughan-Bro\\ n
1985, 81-93). Second, by stigmatizing Mau Mau
as the enemy of modernizing development and
nationalism, rhe authorities were able both to insist
that it had norhing to do with African grievances
and, with no sense of contradicrion, to continue
the project of national dcvclopment throu h
, f .
massive programme 0 soclO-economie refor '
.mten d
---
e to Increase su sranttaJly the ineomesms
d ' b '
g a
of
both African peasants and urban workers, and also
to expand rapidly educatIOn and social sen iccs in
the urban locations and rural resenL'S. This
programme \\,as combincd with a series of Con
stitutional and political reforms which rapidlv
expanded African access to the central institutiuns
of the colonial state, including the ci\'il sen'ice, '
Third, this characterization of Mau ;\Iau also
bluntcd the edgc of Icft-wing critics of coloniali~lTI
in Britain \, ho tried to depict it as an anti-colonial
liberation struggle,11 Fourth, charactcrizing \lau
Mau as atavistic and colonialism as progressivc
also helped to moderate the potential reaction hv
both the Unitcd States and the Soviet Union t~
the use of force in the colon~. In the former, it
blunted deep-seatcd American anti-coloniali~m
and helped sustain support for the British project
of national developmcnt and gradual decoloniza
tion. As far as the Soviet Union \\'as concerned,
despite the fevered claims of extreme right-wing
anri-communists in Britain and among the I(enya
settlers, who saw a Russian agent behind e\'ery
thorn tree, the colonial authorities well knew that
there was no Soviet support or encouragement for
Mau J\lau, but in the Cold War deep freeze ofthc
critical 1952-6 pcriod, they sought to deny them
any possible practical or propaganda ad\'antage hy
stressing thc primitive and retrogressive chancter
of the movemcnt. 11
B) the early 1960s the political context had
changed signi.ficantly. Mau ~au had been defcated,
but Kenya was rapidly moving towards independ
ence under an African majority go\'crnment. While
Kenyatta was lionized as still the only real national
lcader, new nationalist organ.izations in Kenya con
tained an uneas)' blend of old leaders, mostly
Kikuyu, many of whom had spent the Emergency
in detention, and a ncw generation of larg'ely non
Kiku) u politicians, Externally, the crucial issue was
in the de\'e!opmcnt of relations between the new
national government and the United Stares and thc
international agencies it dominated, which collec
tivelv controlled most of the sources of aid and
inve~tment that would sustain the project of
national de\'elopment. Meanwhile, research on
Africa, especially in the United States, had been
-- NATIONALISM, ETHNICITY, AND MODERNITY
rapidly expanded and professionalized into "African
,rudies" dominared largely by political scicntists.
\rhile this research was instrumcntal in persuading
lic\"-mnkcrs in Britain that "territorial national-
p O , . decade of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, a
ism 1\1IS a lorce for good, or at least a force to be
reckoned with" (Lee 1967, 285),H Ken}"an nation
alism and many of its most important African polit
ical figures wcre tainted by the image of Mau Mau
constructed ouring the Emergency. ill the changed
circumstances of this period, the former detainees
~nd forest fighters sought to claim political legiti
mac~ h} insisting on a !\13u .\Iau connection with
n;llionalism and the independence struggle...
The Relationship between Mau Mau
and Nationalism
The question remains as to whethcr there is a
more effective way of lIJ1derstanding the passions
of nationalism that will help analyze the character
of\lau l\lau and irs relationship with nationalism
in Kcnya, The necessary conceptual tools can be
found, 1 behe\e, in BcncdictAnderson's fmllgilled
COllllllunities (1983), one of the most import:lllt
theorctical essays on nationalism in recent years.
ln both those attributes which conform to and
rhose which diverge from Anderson's construc
rion of nationa.lism, one can understand the dis
tinctive characrcr of Mau Mau and its ambiguous
relationship to the more typical forms of what he
mils "anti-colonial nationalism."
Anderson stresscs the importancc of historical
sequence and preccdent for understanding the
de\'clopment of the successive forms of national
ism and the nation-state, which is its institutional
container. Rather than originating in the primor
dial pasr, both are seen as the product of little more
than two hundred years of devclopment. He iden
tifies the origins of nationalism and the modern
state in the "creole nationalisms" of the Americas,
\,orth and South, and their movements for inde
pendence from 1775 to 1830. These rcyolutionary
new nations provided a model that was widely dis
cussed ill Europe and available for emulation:
Our of the American welter came these imagined
re"lities: nation-stares, republican institutions,
common citizenships, popular sovereignty,
national flags and anthems, etc" and the liquida
tion of thei r conceptual opposites: dynastic
empires, monarchical institutions, absolutisms,
subjecthoods, inherited nobilities, serfdoms,
505
ghettos, and so forth. '" IJ) effect, by the second
"model" of the independent national state was
available for pirating. (Anderson 1983, 78)
This model was employed by the "populist nation
alisms" ofEuropc, which transformed diverse and
fragmented ethnjc groups into "nations" based on
the print-lanbruagcs and written records of their
history and culture, and established the precedent
thai for each nation an independent and so\'creign
state was the essential condition of its legitimate
existence and SUITiwl (/\nderson 1983, ()6 73,
78-9), In central and CllSlern Europe, this populist
nationalism challenged the older polyglot and
muhj-ethnic dynastic empires of Czarist Russia,
Hapsburg Ausuia, and Ottoman Turkey, and igni
ted the struggles for national self-determination
which marked the 1850-1920 pcriod, These set off
the defensive and reactionary "official national
isms," such as Romanov Russification, which
attempted a "\1 illed merger of narion and dynastic
empire" through consciou!i policies "adapted from
the model of the largely spontaneous popular
nationalisms which preceded them" (Anderson
1983,83,102),
Thc most recent \'ariant of nationalism, accord
ing to Anderson, is the anti-colonial nationalisms
of the t"\\ entieth centur}, for which all of the previ
ous forms have provided accessible models of
nationalism, nation-ness and the state in an inter
national environment in which the sovereign
nation-state is the dominant, incleed, unchallenged
norm. This nationalism is grounded in the experi
ence of literate and bilingual indigenous intelli
gentsias fluent in the language of the imperial
power, schooled in its "national" history, and staff
ing thc colonial administrative cadres up to but
not including its highest levels, These new nations
have been essentially isomorphic with previous
imperial administrative units (Anderson 1983,
104-9, 127-8; Kitching 1985, 111-13). This per
spective allows us to lIJ1derstand how the senior
imperial administraturs from the metropole were
able to conceive the project of modernization
and nation-building to transform colonies into
506
nation-states, enm in ad\-ance of the demands of
indigenous nationalist moYements.
BRUCE J. BERMAN
To deal with the critical problem of the pass
ions of nationali~m, Anderson stresses the impor
tance of underSlllnding the nation as an imagined
community:
It is imagined because the members of even the
smallesl nation will never know most of their fellow
members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in
the minds of each liycs the image of their commun
ion.... it is imagined as a community, because,
regardless of the actual inequalil~ and exploitation
that may prevail in each, the nation is always con
ceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately
it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the
past t\\'o centuries, for so many millions of people,
not so much to kill, as to willingly die for such
limited imaginings. (Anderson 1983, 15-16)
nlike the rationalism of liberalism and Marxism,
nationalism is much concerned with ultimate
meanings, death and immorality. Ratller than a
political ideology, it has more in common with
kinship and religion. It replaces the religious
Yision of immortality with a secular one based on
the nation.
If nation-states arc widely conceded to be "new"
and "historical," the nations to which tlley gi\'e
political expression always loom out of an imme
morial past, and, still more important, glide into a
limitless future. It is the magic of nationalism to
turn chance into destiny. (:\nderson 1983, 19)
Language plays the central role in the creation of
the imagined community in so far as it is prinled
and related to the spread of mass literacy. "Print
language is what invents nalionalism, not a par
ticula.r language per se" (Anderson 1983, 122). [n
the Europtan experience a diversity of dialects
\\as reduced to a much smaller number of stand
ardized print vernaculars, \\hile in the creole
nations of the Americas and the colonial empires
of the twentieth century, the prinr language was
primarily that of the imperial metropole. In all of
these instances, the growing number of readers
formed the embryo of the nationally imagined
community, with the production and conswnp
tion of novds amI ne\'Yspapers being particularly
--
important in making possible the imagining of the
nation (Anderson 1983,30-9,47-9,61-3).
The role of print language in the development
of nationalism is closely linked to the de\elopment
of whatAnderson calls "print capitalism." Printing
and book production was one of the key industries
of early capitalism. The principal consumers of
literature were the growing middle classes, \\ ith
the bourgeoisie being the first class to achieve
solidarity on a largely imagined basis rooted in
universal literacy. Finally, print language is also
crucially connected to the development of the
modern state. The schools and universities run bv
the stale not only spread uni\-ersal literacy, b~t
also create the studies of history, lilerature, and
folklore through which the nation takes on con
crete and permanent existence, and can 'i) ste
matically reproduce itsel f from generation to
generation. The use of the language as a language
of administration shapes rhe consciousness of the
imagined national community within the STate
cadres (Anderson 1983, 66-9, 74, 106---9, 127).
The linkage of print language and the state trans
forms ethnicity into nationalism and makes the
possession of a sovereign state the uni\ ersally
demanded norm for every imagined community.
To employ Anderson's approach to nationalism
in analyzing ~1au Mau, i,t is first necessary to note
the shift in the understanding of the latter that
occurred during the 1970s. In the context of stud
ies of the political economy of colonial Kenya by
Marxist and nco-Marxist historians and social sci
entists, which focused on the incorporation of
Africans into capitalist production and exchange,
and the consequent processes of class formation.
the view of Mau \lau shifted again; and it came to
be seen as a peasant lVar emerging out of the grow
ing class struggles among the Kikuyu. While the
British often called the Emergency a ci\-il war
between the mass of Kikuyu "ho had taken the
Mau Mau oath of unity, on the one hand, and a
small band of"Loyalists," on tJle other, and Rosberg
and Noningham had analyzed at some length the
major intcrnal political conflicts among the Kikuyu.
more recent research has revealed with far greater
subtlety and detail the compleMty of internal dif
ferentiation and class formation among the Kiku~u
not only during colonialism but also betore rhe
beginning of colonial rule. I; In contrast to the
-- NATIONALISM, ETHNICITY, AND MODERNITY
cOl15tTucred image of a stable and harmonious tra
Jition, the Kikuyu in the nineteenth celllury were
Jcri\"c1y expanding and colonizing new territory
:lnd already internally divided bet\\een wealthy
bnd-<Jwning families and landless families attached
to them in a variety of forms of dependence. The
highest stams and civic virtue
la) in the labour of agrarian ci\'iliz:ltion
dir~cted by household heads. llonour lay in
we-,1lth, the proud fruit of burning back the forest
anu tamiJlg the \\'ild, clearing a cuJrivated space in
IIhich industrious dependents might establish
themsehes in self-respecling independence; the
pos"ibiJi(~ of working onc's own salvation was the
subjecl of more Kikuyu proverbs than any other.
(LonM.J:lle 1990, 417)
The impact of colonial capitalism and the colonial
state hit the Kikuyu wirh grealer force and effect
than any other of Kenya's peoples, setting off ne\\
proces~es of differentiation and class formation.
:\nd~rson stresses that in the development of
colonial nationalism "to an unprecedented extent
the key carl~ spokesman ... were lonely, bilingual
intelligentsias unallached to srurdy local bour
geoisies," whose pilgrimage among administrative
po,ts ending in the colonial capital was critical to
their imagining of a nation (1983, 127--8). This
was not true, however, for the Kikuyu or for Kenya
as a \\ hole through most of the colonial period.
The intelligentsia and administrative cadres
among the Kikuyu were intimately connected
\\ ith the development of a petry bourgeoisie. In
the parriclilar circumstances of Kenya as a colony
of white settlement, the Kikuyu servants of the
colonial staTe consisted of local chiefs and head
men, who never served outside of their original
areas, and literate clerks and artisans, who encoun
tered their counterparts from other peoples in
Kenya only when they worked in the urban cruci
ble of Na.irobi and a few of the other major towns.
The pilgrimage for both tbe Kikuyu new wealthy
and ne\\ poor W,IS a more restricted circui t between
the reserves established by the colonial st.lte, the
white settler estates and to\\ ns of the Rift Valley,
and t he capital. From the I920s, howe\Tr, the
developing elite of accumulators was internally
split b) a cleavage between the collaborationist
chiefs and thcir families and supporters and a
younger and more populist element organized in
507
the fUkUYlI Central Association and willing to
confront colonial authority over the issue of the
"stolen" lands alienated to IIhite settlers and lhe
mi.ssionar~ attack on the Kikuyu custom of female
circumcision. At the other pole of the class struc
ture, growing numbers of impoverished Kikuyu
were leaving the home territories, no\\ increas
ingly crowded within lheir fixed boundaries, to
seek land and worl as squatters or wage labourers
on settler estates or as largely unskilled workers in
the towns.
The increasing disparities of wealth and prop
erty and deyeloping conflicts within and between
the developing social elasses in Kjku)u society \\cre
exprcssed in a vigorous internal debate, largely
invisible to the British in Kenya and onl) now being
reconstructed, over the meaning of Kikuyu-ness,
the nature of the community, the value of tnldition,
the involvemenl in ne\\ forms of production and
exchange, and the dcgree of acceptance of and
assimilation to European cultureY'Thus. the chiefs
and th~ir supporters opposed the more militant
KikuY11 Central Association through the pointedly
named "Kikuyu Loyal Patriots." l\leam\hiJe, in the
aftermath of the breach with the mission societies
O\'er the custom of female circumcision, two inde
pendent school associations were formed calling
themselves the Kiku) u Independent Schools
Association and the Kikuyu Karing'a (pure or
authentic) Schools.
From the beginning, print-language and literacy
in both English and Kikuyu played a crucial role in
defining the terms and content of the debate. The
developing petty bourgeoisie was commonly
referred to as the alhomi (literall), "thc readers").
In 1928 the KCA began publishing a Kikuyu
language journal called l\1uigwithania (''The
Reconciler"), \\ ith Kenyatta as its first editor. An
article in an early issue on the word "association"
told the readers not to say "that you do not belong
to that Association. You arc members of the
Association since you are all Kikuyu Karing'a (real
Kikuyu)" (Rosberg and ~oningham 1966, 100). In
1938 Kenyatta published in English his ethnogra
phy of the Kikuyu, written during his studics at
the London School of Economics with Bronislaw
~lali.nowski, which provided a vigorous defence of
508
Kikuyu custom against European criticism and
BRUCE J. BERMAN
provided in permanent printed form his version of
a pre-colonial pastoral. In this key text of an emerg
ing Kikuyu imagined community, as well as in
other v\Titings of the period, there is a strong
clement of "redemptive criticism," a "present
employment of the past in the hopes of reshaping
the future" (Kenyatta 1938; Clark 1989,396).17
By the late 19405 the Kikuyu wen: a deeply
divided people, increasingly in connict among
themseh"es as \\ell as with the colonial political and
economic order. In three cenlres of grO\~ing unres~
a growing mass of the dispossessed and impover
ished confronted the leadership of the chiefs and
the athomi. In the Rift Valle}, an incre.1sing number
of squatters werc expelled from settler estates for
refusing to accept ever-tighter restrictions on their
herds and use of settler land. In the overcrowded
reserves, small peasants desperately clung to fr,lg
mCl1led and eroded holdings no longer capable of
supporting a family, \\ hile wc-.llthy landowners
sought to expel tenants and dependents to regain
land for more profitable uses. In ~airobi, ,I largely
Kikuyu labour lorce slruggled with grO\~ing
impoverishment, inflation, amI unemployment.
The slruggle over authentic Kikuyu-ness, over the
character of the imagined community, continued
unabatcd.o\t thjs point, however, the conceptions
of propertied civ ic virtue
... began to mock the majority rather than to
inspire ... those who had the most cause to fi!!"ht
coloni'll rule had the least chance to merit rcspon
sibilirr Those whose deeds might deli\er po\\cr
would have no chance ro enjoy it. That was the
Kikuyu tragedy, a struggle over the moralities of
dass formation, not mental derangement".
(Lonsdale 1990, 417)
The situation was complicated by the emer
gence of the Kenya African Union, the first
attempt at a pan-ethnic "national" political organ
ization. In this organization we do find an expres
sion of a more typical anti-colonial nationalism.
KAU had a rnulti-ethinie, although largely
Kikuyu, leadership of bilingual literates of the
type upon which Anderson focuses. It was com
mitted to a vcr} different vision of the imagined
community, a multi-ethnic Kenya, and to moderate
-
eonstitul ional politics" hich accepted the premises
of the colonial state's version of modernization
and nalion-building....
K.il.uyu slruggle continued to take place in
print. The dominant journal Was the weeki\'
MUIIII'I(yereri, edited bj Henry ~luoria. " authorities. however, it \\ as wfficiently clear to merit
Considered the paper of Kikuyu patriotism, it
publi-.hed a mixture of real and imagined grie\'
ances. As tension grew in 195 I and 1952, it became
uncompromising in its nationalism. Im'itations to
political meetings, called undcr the guise of "tea
panics" (which usually included oathing cercmo
nics) at the Kikuyu Club in Nairobi's Pumwani
Loe.1lion. became a regular fe;uure of the paper.
Rosberg and Nottingham 1966, 212)
There was also a considerahle vernacular pam
phlet literature, the most remarkable a\'ailable
example of \~hich is Gakaara wa Warljau's JIil,/gcrll'
I/O mil JllI!tolll (He Spirit II! 11al/hood lIlId
PUSfi.'L'rilna!of Ajriccl11s), published in April 1952.
IV hieh appeals for wlity acros<; the deal'ages of
"the rebrime of tlivision that the white man has
established mer us and the bitter and destructi\'c
conf1icts between ourseh'cs this regime creates,"
lists all of the classes and segmcnt$ of the Kikuyu
and their just grievances, proclaims uniyersal
acceptance of the goa.ls of modernization and
developmcnt, enjoins the rich to "get acti\'e1y
involved in Ihe people's movement," and includes
this extraordinary evocation of tbe imagined com
munity and lhe passions of nationalism:
... it is \itallhat every J\frican plays his own role
in the struggle for African freedom. To fight for
freedom does not only mean making politil-al
speeches and writing political tracts. /oviore than
that, to strug~le for freedom is to be imbued with
a patriotic love for your country and its people. so
that you become part and parcel of its suffering
and its triumphs, so that, in your spiritual unity
with your people, you \\eep \\'ith them \Ihen they
weep, and you share with them their moments of
JOY. It is a deep and all consuming in\'OlYement
with your people. It moth'ates you to seek to
know what is happening all the time to your peo
ple; it mori\ ate, you to always seek to further the
cause of freedom and independence. (Wanjau
1988, 227--1-3)
NATIONALISM, ETHNICITY, AND MODERNITY
\\'anjau spcal..s here of "-fricans and African free
dom, but the language and cultw-al symbolism he
employs arc Kikuyu, and this suggests rhe contra
dictor) notions of the imagined communit) of the
nation existing during this period. For the colonial
\tmjau's arrest at the beginning of tile Emergency
and his subsequent detention for ten years.
While ~lall ~lau wa." dear!} not a tribal atavism
seeJ.ing a return to the past, the answer to the
question of "was it nationalism?" must be yes and
no. What the British called ~lau Mau, and b} eon
stanl repetition imposed on the consciousness of
bodl Kenya and the outside world, was no single
thing, but rather a diverse and exceedingly frag
mented collcction of individuals, ()rganizations
and ideas, oUt of which no dominant concept of a
Kikuyu imagined national communit), had
emerged. At the same time, if .\tau Mau ~~as not a
nativistic reviv'al or atavistic re\-italization move
ment, it did emerge out of a bitterly contested
process or reinterpreting and reconstructing lra
dition that embraced the colonial authorities as
well as J..:ikuyu factions, Lea.kc} as well as Kenyatta;
and in which cultural beliefs and s) mbols were
profoundly important. Mau Mau was parr of a
,Truggle over lhe dimensions and meaning of
Kikuyu elhnicity and its problematic relationship
with both the internal c1em'ages of class and the
wider solidarities of a Kenyan nation.l~
The colonial authorities' version of \ tau Mau as
a conspiratorial secret cult attached to it an illusor)
unity of organization and ideology. The official Yer
sian also played loosely will1 the historical sequence
of CV"cnts, focusing on the limited degree of
organization and unity achieyed by the forest fight
ers under Dedan Kimathi and General Chin.1, add
ing the connections to the Nairobi "Central
Committee," combining both with the "ev'idence"
of oaths often extracted from detainees under tor
ture, and then projecting all of this backward to
char;lcterize "~lau stau" before the Emergency:
What the accumulated e\'idence records, instead,
are largely failed efforts to define a Kikuyu nation
ality linked to a militant populist politics of the
poor. 110\\ this was to relate to the other imagined
communities in Kenya in an independent nation
Slate was not clearly thought through. What is
interesting is that the ideological c1ea\'ages of
contrasting \'isions of the Kikuyu and Kenyan
nations were reproduced \\'ithin the structure of
509
the Land and Freedom Army it"c1f in conflicts
between the literate leaders like Kimathi and Karari
Njama and many of the primarily illiterate rank and
file of peasants and dispossessed squatters led by
men like Stanley \1athengc. "This boiled down, in
essence, to the rejection by the non-literate leaders
of the state-building, parliamentarist 'Freedom'
component, in favour of the peasant /Iand compo
nent, in the forest fighters' 'nationalism'"
(2\1augllan-Bro\~n 1985, 47). The forest fighters'
own name for their movement, "'halla Ira ,pia/hi, is
perhaps better translated, according to Lonsdale, as
"freedom through land" or "land and moral
responsibilit)," which invokes "the highest civic
\'irtue of IGkuyu clderhnod, rather than tlle more
common 'land and frcedom' which im ites the ret
rospecti\e connotation of 'land and national inde
pendence'" (Lonsdale 1990, 416 note 1I8), and
thus expresses the djstincti\'e cultural content of
Kikuyu internal conflicts as much as an anti-colo
njallihera.tion struggle.
The paradoxes of~tau l'vIau are also reyealed tell
ingl)" in lhe career and words of Kenyatta. He both
outraged and terrifiecl the British officialdom
because, in their eyes, he was the ob\ ious charismatic
nationalist leader of Kenya's Africans, but used thc
force of his personality and his elite education to
delibera.tely lead the Kiku) u back 10 the my~..tical
witchcraft of lribal reaction rather than un.i.te the
Africans with whites in the project of national dcvel
opment. They convicted him or organizing Mau
\'{au in a flagrantly rigged trial \~hich threw him
together with men like Kubai and Kaggia who actu
all) had organized the mass oathings. But Kenyatta,
and his colleagues in the KCA, spoke for the new
generation of athomi who, e\'en in opposing the
chief~ and elders, always laid claim to the leadership
f the Kikuyu in traditional terms as men of prop
erty and virtue. In the internal struggles among the
KiJ-uyu hefore tl1e Emergency, he stood on the
opposite side from the leaders of the Kikuyu
di5possessed, the squatters, urban workers and land
less peasant"; V\ hile as the leallcr of the KAU he
lotrugglcd to hold together iL~ multi-ethnic coalition.
His denunciations of \Iau Mau in 1952, when he
equated it with poverty, irresponsibility and crimi
nalit), led its leaders to consider his assassination .19
 BRUCE J. BERMAN
510
ironically, it was the Emergency which secured
the \ ictor} of the vcr) different nationalism of the
multi-ethnic dominant class that came to po\\er
with independence, "hile Jo..:.enyatta's conviction
and imprisonment for organizing Mau Mau prob
ablv saved his position as the national leader. The
elite nationalism of this class was definitively
formed during the Emergency itself among the
Kikuyu loyalists and the educated elites from
other ethnic communities, \\ho shared literacy in
English and" ho travelled their national pilgrim
age in less than a decade through increasing access
to the bureaucr:lcy of the colonial Slate and to the
expanding "national" political instiultions at the
centre, created by repeated rounds of constitu
tional reform. Simultaneously, with the detention
or confinement in the reserves of the bulk of the
Kikuyu labom force in the colony, replacements
were found among other ethnic groups, while eco
nomic reforms both raised wages and increased
peasant access to cash crop markets - all of which
provided a subst.wtiall} widened base of support
for "nationalist" goals when African political
organi7Altions were again permitted after 1957.
The pressure of this multi-ethnic elite forced the
pace of British withdrawal, undermined U1e polit
ical position of white settlers and ultimate!) made
independence under a "multi-racial" rq~ime
impossible (Berm,m 1990, chapter 9). In them, the
British found, rather unexpectedl~~ the "poliric.ll
Notes
This article is derived [Tom a joint research project
entitled "Explaining 1vlau ~1au: A Stud) in the
Politics of Knowledge," in \\ hich John Lonsdale and
I have been engaged since 1987. While many of the
id~ls expressed in this article arc the joint product of
our work, I remain responsible for the particular
imerprclation offered here.
2 It is lhe official wrsion de\doped by the aUlhorities
of the colonial slate that is of primary interest in the
present conte..: !. For an analysi$ of other 1"lriaI1t~ of
tlle explanation of Mau Mau among both Europeans
and \fricans during the Emergenc), see J .onsdale
(1990).
3 The [lrst papers on Mau Mau recl,ived by
the Provincial Commissioner of CenlTal Province
(the main Kikuyu area) "ere filed wilh pre\'ious
class" ro whom they could safely turn oyer P(lI\l:r
and helatcJly Jiscm ereu in Kenyatta rhe modcnll~
mouerni7jng national leader.
It is hardly surprising that the attitude of the
gOI'ernment of indepenuent Kenya has bct:n
ambi\'a.1ent about the recognition of the contribu_
tions of Mau .!Viau "freedom fighters," or that the
divergent post-independence interpretation~ of
\Tau .\1:lU, as the central clement in the epic of
n'ltionalliberation or as an isolated tribal uprising,
reflect a continuing cleaYage uetween radical Pl1p
ulist elements among the Kikuyu and thl:
"narional" dominant class (Maughan-Brown
1985, 57-8, 258-61 ).!U Kenyatta himself, after hi~
rele-ase from prison and political rehabilitation in
the early 19605 and later as President of Kenya,
continued to denounce \lau Mau and equate it
with criminalitv and disease, repeating the vcry
type of metaphor which the British had used to
describe it. Meanwhile, his government pro
claimed: "we all fought for Uhuru" and refusell
an) special recognition of the achievements of
Mau ~lau or the claims of dle ex-forest fighters
and detainees, although it permitted some local
memorials in Ki\"uyulancl to them and to J..::jmathi.:
[n 1988 the monument to the "freedom fighters,"
which contains no explicit reference to illlllloll //11
mialhi sat forlorn and graffiti-defaced at an intcr
secljon in Nyeri town, a m:.lterial expression of Ihe
continuing paradoxes of Mall Mau.
correspondence on religioLis sects found in the COhlll).
See Kenya National Archives (hereafter, "-\lAo) PCI
CP8/7/4 (co'erin~ the period 1934-53); and Puhlic
Record OfTice, London (hereafter, PRO)/PCS221 'Hi,
Commissioner ofPolil:c, "Secret Situation Repon for
11 Februar), ]953."
4 PRO/C08221+17, Commissioner of Police, "Secret
lmelligence Report for 27 Nov<:mber, 19~2."
Leakey's role as bot h an interpreter and actor is a
major part of the slor~ of Mau Mau that has yet to be
full) apprecialt:d. We have attempted to rcctifv this
omission in Berman and Lonsdale (199]a).
6 So characteril.ed, .\-!au j\lau became a usefulc:\.lm
pIe for use in the comparative analysis of cults .lnd
religious movemems. Sec, for example, Fernandez
(1964) and La Bme (19711.
NATIONALISM, ETHNICITY. AND MODERNITY 511
Thc relationship bet\\cen African grievances cmd
Urican polilil.:.'; is the dominant theme of chapters
II to' r. espcciall) pages 220 33; the "~1aLl ~lall"
oath IS analyzed un pag<.'S H ]-()2; while thcEuropean
"myTh of Mau MaLI" is treated on pages 320-34.
II 0111; of the earliest expressions of these ideas was
fOLind in the lirst chapters of \Vilson and Wilson
(1945).
l) The principal Colonial Office statement of political
de\e1opment polic\ in the immediate post-war period
came in the "Despatch from dIe Secretary of Swe to
dlC Gove1l1ors oftheAfricanlcrritoriC!>," 25 JIl,brualJ
1947 (Ken~a Government Librar~, "airobi).
10 John Lonsdale has noted the manner in which Mall
-',bu's "rituals ofrecruimlenr" were e'(ploited at the
lime: "British war propaganda had no difficulty in
pMrraying these 'lS utterly repugnant, debased, md
h) intention, debasing.... The paraphernalia ofMau
:'Ilau recruiting officers ceruin I) made good copy
which the press did no! hcsildle to exploit, if with the
coy reserve which titillatcs as mllch as it repels.
For it was reported llut the oadlS became el't,r more
deviant and be~t ial as the war dragged on and rhe
insurgent~ became more desperate or fanatic. Many
accounts left the details unsaid, allc)\\ing the readers'
imaginations frt~ to wander in fascinated sclf
dlsgu~1. ... A lisiring parliamenlalJ delegation
dlOught the rccruirrm'nt rituals toO dreadful to lay
befilft: th<: British clectoT'11te. The rele\,mt appendix
to Ihe report was never published. It was deposited
in tIl<: library of the House of Commons instead,
where minds \\ere apparently thought to be alrcady
sufiiciently depr;l\ed" (1989, 2).
I) This programme \'as called "rhe second prong"
again>! Mau Mau, the fJrst being the military cam
paign. The various reports, memoranda, and notes
relating to it are a major source of informa6on on
official thinking during the Emergenc)' and arc
founJ in K."JA/GH4/795. For fuller analysis of
the reform programme in the context of the poli
tics of tlle Emergenc) see Berman (1990, 347-7l).
12 The aCli"itics of the British left and various anti
l:Olonial associations in Britain dre\' the particular
ire of the colonial aurhorities, who felt that they did
not unJerstand \\hat Mau Mall was "really" like
and that their ill-informed efforts threatened ro
undermine the metropolitan poJitic.11 and eco
nomic support necessary to crush it. The lirst draft
of the official history of lviau Mau, circulated
'\mong senior officials in Nairobi, contained a par
ticularly virulent allad on the left-II ing "friends"
of Mau Mau, which was excisl:d from the pub
lished 'crsion (KNA/G03/2172).
13 The sensiti'it.l of the Colonial Ollice to reaction.s to
Mall .\1:lu in other countrit'S, ~1)(.'Cially the US, is
inclicared in the papt.'TS contained in PRO/C08221
+18 EX/mllli Rtpet'mssi,Jl/s 1m the l1ulI '\lUll Sillltll;ml
ill KeII)'o; while the concern \\ itl1 Soviet reactions and
evaluation of possible Conummist in\'olvcment is dis
cuSS<.-u in PRO/C08221+61 CUl/Il/I/l//;s/.-J..Iprrls IIf/he
"falitHulI S;tual;I)/1 ;/1 A:etIyo.
14 Lee also shows that b) 1956, II hill' in all other social
sciences the majorit), of researchers working in
British A.frica were eilher British or citizens of the
"white" Commol1\~ealth, in political science thir
teen of s<:venteen were Americans.
15 Sec, in particul;tr, the carcful synthesis and ,mal)'sis
of the evidence in Kilching (1980).
16 These themes arc explored more fully in Lomdale,
"Wealth, Poverty and Civic"irtue in Kil-u) u Political
Tholl!(ht" in Berman and Lonsdale (1992).
l7 Clark's remar.l.s concern Leakey'; ethnography, but
they apply equally well lO Kenyatu's. The ril'alry
benl een Kenllltta and Leake) for the intellectual
leadership of the Kiku} u and it.; expression 111 the
ethnographic politics of t"Stab1ishing the "right"
version of Kikuyu society and culture is analyzed
ill "Louis Leakey's i\hu Mau" (Berman and
Lonsdale l 991 a).
18 Man l\lau can thus be usefuJJy examined in the
comparatile cuIltext of the processes of construct
ing ethnicil\' and tradition discussed in Hobsoawn
anJ Ranger (1983) (See Ranger, Chapter 31, this
volume) and Vail (1989).
19 As revealed by Fred Kubai in an mlen;ew ";th
Alan Se!!'31 broadcasl in pan in Granada Telcvision 's
program on Kenya in its series "The End of
Empire" in July 1985.
20 Ngugi wa Thiong'o has recently analyzed the split in
Kenyan inlelJectua1 life betl\een the English
speaking, neo-colonial petty-bourgeoisie which, he
claims. hi-jackeJ independence and the "true"
nationaLism represented by j\lau Mau. He explicitly
denounces the dominant class both for its exploita
tion of ethnic challl inism and its reliance on the old
imperial language \lhile praising Mau Mau, and the
work of Ga.kaara Wi! 'Wanjau in particular, for encour
agjn~ the emergence of a genuine indigenolls
African-language lilerature, as \Iell as exprcssing
"the mass polilical movements of an awakened pcas
antn and working class" (1986, 23-4. 4+-5,102-+).
2J Some of Kenyatta's statements d~nollncing "hooli
ganism" and oath-taking can be found in Kenyana
(1968, 147, 154, 167, 183, 189, and 204). See also
Buijtenhuijs (1973, 49-53, 61-72) and Lonsdale
(1990, 418-20).

512 BRUCE J. BERMAN
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 -- - -
36
ical role in the promotion of international wurism
The Invisible Face
,lrt traders line their stalls \\ ith row upon rO\\ of
Masks Ethnicity, and the State
I
in Cote d'lvoire
Christopher B. Steiner
This chapter examines the critical role of masks purely for general entertainment. While these sec
and masked performances in the Cotc d'h'oirc ' ular forms of masking are often carried out at the
go,'ernment's dual projects of (1) promoting inter local v'illage le\el, the) arc sometimes incorporated
national tourism in light of the country's most into public events organized by members of both
scverc economic recession, and (2) fostering regional and national government. -'\ meeting. of
national unity in the face of gro\\ing cthnie fac town mayors, a visir to a yjl.lage by a district (prtie,
tionalism and tension. Although, as 1 will argue, titre) administrator, or a national tour by a high
the ideological frameworks underlying these 1\\"0 ranking minister or diplomat are all eyents that
goals are in many ways diametricall) opposed to would call for the performance of a masked festiv-al.
one another, r will demonstrate that the use of Although certain forms of secular masking pruba
masks and masked dancing is an arrcrnpt on the bly found expression at the village leyel in pre
part of the h'oirian state to bridge the differences colonial times, I would argue that most public
between these two nation-stabilizing strategies displays of masking became associated \I'ith politi
and mute their potential contradictions. cal and bureaucratic e,ents during colonial rule.
Masks and masking in Cote d'Ivoirc arc found in Huge masked festivals, for example, werc organized
differcnt forms in a Yariety of coastal and inland each summer by the French to celebrate Bastllle
communities. \lany of the estimated sixty ethnic D,ly; while smaller masked festiv-ab werc often held
groups in the country have their own style of mask at the ground-breaking reception for the construc
carving and their own repertoire of masked dancing tion of administratiYe buildings, at official ceremo
and performances. Although some aspects of mask nies for the naming of city streets, or at the unv-ciling
ing are shrouded under a Yeil of sccrec'- and used of colonial monuments (see Gorer 1935:322-8).
only in the contc:>.t of secret society activities, many Together with their function in national poli
forms consist largely of public displays intcnded tics, masks and masking in post-colonial COte
From Christopher B. Steiner, "The lnv'isible Face: Ma.s~ Ethnicity, and the Slate in Cute d'hoire, West Africa."
lHIISm/ll Alllhropu/ogy 16(3), 1992, pp. 53-7. Reproduced b~ permission of the American Anthropological
>\ssociation.
THE Ir,VISIBLE FACE
d'}roire have, in recent years at least, played a crit
after independence, both national integration and
,u,d the marketing ofAfrican art (Steiner 1994). In
:lny onc of the major marketplaces in Cote d'l \oire,
caT\ cd wooden masks. The major styles are anrib
uted to the Daule, Guro, Senufo, and Dan ethnic
group" ~liniature masks, called "passports," are
'l\'ailable to tourists who do not have the room in
their luggage to carry home a full-size mask.
Within the last decade, the mask has been
appropriated by the hoirian state as a symbol of
national identity or character2 As Duon Sadia, the
Ivoirian Minister of Tourism, noted in a 198
inten ievv: "Because Cote d'lvoire does not pos
s~s, pyramids or grand ancient monuments like
Eg) pt or Mexico, and because it does not have an
ablmdance of \v ildlife like some of the countries in
East Africa, Cote d'Ivoire has chosen to promote
itself through its only indigenous product, Ivoirian
man himself - with his culture and his traditions,
oi which masks and masking are an integral part"
rBouabrc 1987:8)3 In another interview, the
:\ linister of Tourism further clarified the specific
function of masks in the development of the mod
ern hoirian polity by noting that, "We now declare
that the trademark [of Cote d'Ivoire I will be the
mask, for it is representative [of this countrYl,
rather pleasing to observe, and enshrouded in an
air of mystery. The mask could arouse the curios
ity of foreign tourists and lead them to visit our
COUDU). We have [therefore] chosen the mask for
we believe that it integratcs sevual asrccts of our
culture and our civilization. The mask cncapsu
btcs the traditional arts of COte d'Ivoire, and rep
resems the strength and history of our nation"
(Philmon 1982:13).
The promotion of tourism through thc market
ing ofthe image of the mask reprcsents, in point of
fact, a radical departure in the rhetoric of the
Iyoirian state. Less than a dccade before this recent
campaign, for example, Felix Houphouct-Boigny,
President of the Republic and founder of inde
pendent Cote d'lvoire, declared to a congress of
the National Democratic Party: "We arc fed up
with haling Africa relegated, through the futile
gale of the obseryer, to a land of sunshine,
rhythms, and innocuous folklore" (quoted in
Boutillier, Ficloux and Ormicres 1978: 5). For
515
Ilouphouet-Boigny, in his first years of power
international economic success wcre to be found
in the promotion of modern industrial technolo
gics rather than in a return to traditionalism or the
re-creation of a "primitivist" aesthetic.
I Ience, in light of this philosophy, how can one
explain the state's recent shift toward traditional
cultural resources and, in partiCUlar, its appropria
tion of the wooden mask as a S) mbol of national,
multi-ethnic pride? [ would argue that rhis return
to traditionalism is a direct result of the nation's
financial collapse followin g the fail ure of irs cash
crop export economy - beginning sometime in
1980 (Brooke 1988). That is to say, as long as Cote
d'h'oire enjoyed economic prosperit) through its
production and export of cacao and coffee, the
state used its success in the international economy
as a device for rallying nationalist sentiment. It
needed nothing else. Following the dramatic col
lapsc of the price of cacao and coffee in the world
market, however, politicians scrambled to find not
only a new source of foreign income but also a new
gathering point for nationalist sentiment. The
mask was thought to be capable of achie' ing' both.
On the one hand, ir fueled the Western imagina
tion through its mystery and exotic appeal. On the
other hand, it reconciled growing ethnic divisions
by elevating the symbolism of the masl- with its
plethora of ethnic styles and interpretations - to a
single, national icon.
The first attempt b} the government of Cote
d'lv'oire to promote tourism and national solidarity
through the use of wooden masks was the festival
of masks held on April 14-15, 1979 in the town of
Man, near the Liberian border in the western part
of the country [plate 36.1]. The festival was organ
ized b) Bernard Dadie, the Minister of Cultural
:\ffairs. On the whole, the festiya) was poorly
attended, and it received \'ery little coverage from
the I "oirian press (only three short articles in the
semi-official daily newspaper Fralernite ,\1alll/).
The second masked festival was organized by
the :\ linister of Tourism, Duon Sadia. It too was
held in the town of Man from February 11-15,
1983. In the second festival at Man, there was a
more overt effort on behalf of the government
~rganj::ers to use the mask as a symbol of Cote
d'1 voire and as a mech.mism for attracting the
516 CHRISTOPHER B. STEINER
Plate 36.1 Masked dancer with musicians performing at the festil'al of masks in Man, ca. 1979.
Photographer unknown
financial benefits of tourism. The masked festival
at ~[an, Duon Sadia noted at a press conference
held at the luxurious Hotel I loire in Abidjan, "\\'ill
be the equivalent of Carnival in Rio, with an added
element of the profound soul and mystef) of 'non
cornmercialiscd' Africa" (Anonymous 1983: I0).4
The 1983 fest'ival of the masks at Man was again
reported by the press to be an overall failure. Very
few tourists wcnt to the festival, and the mask
bearers, who felt the) were bcing treated withour
sufficient respect., boycotted their appearance. A
delegation, consisting of three ministers and a
representative of the national government, had to
plead in public with the masked dancers to come
out and perform on the stage (Djidji 1983:11).
The hoirian state's appropriation of the mask
reached its epitome in the summer of 1988, when
the Ministries of Tourism and Culture jointly
organized a national masked festival. Promoted
under the name "Festimask," the festi\al was
funded b) the st.'lte at an estimated cost of$500,000.
Unlike previous state-sponsored masked festivals
which \Iere organizeu by district administrations
with the exclusive participation of local ethnic
groups, the Festimask attempted to bring all the
ethnic groups of CIJte d'lvoire into a single event
which, not surprisingl~, wns held in tbe President's
home town ofYamoussoukro, in the center of the
country. The official reason reported in the national
new~paper for holding the festival inYamoussoukro,
rather than Man, was because of its proximit~ to
the economic capital and port cit) of .-\bidjan
thereby, thc argument went, encouraging more
expatriates and more tourists to attend the festilal
of m'lsks. IIowever, the unstated reason for the
site of the event, I would argue, was to link the fes
tival of masks and, more generally, the symbolism
of masks and masking to the national government
through its association with lIouphouet-Boigny's
natal village and place of retrcat.
When the masked festival was moved to
Yamoussoukro in 1988, it became not only a vchi
c1e for promoting international tourism, it was also
used as a means of stressing national unity. Since
THE INVISIBLE FACE
the end of the colonial period, many burgeoning
_"-frican nations have had to push for Dational unir)
in the face of internal ethnic factionalism. Although
culruml pluralism ma) be profitable \Iithin the
realm uf the international art market, it is often
percei\"ed as a major obstacle in the domain of cen
tralized state pobtics. As Wallerstein noted in 1960,
"The dysfunctional aspects ofethnicity for national
integration are obvious. The first is that etlmic
groupS ,ue still particularistic in their orient:ltion
:Wd difTuse in their obligations.... The second
problem, and one \\-hich worries African political
leader~ more, is separatism, which in larious guiscs
is a pcn'asi\e tendency in \Nest Africa today"
(1960: 137-8). Until recently, post-colonial Cote
d'hoire had a history of successful national intc
gmtion. In a country made up of approximately
sixt~ different cthnic groups, this record of success
is an impressive triumph. One of the reasons which
accounts for successful integration of ethnic
groups in Cote d']voire is the rapid growtll and
cxpan!;ion of the Ivoirian economy - the so-called
hoirian "miracle" which took place from 1960 to
1980. Since a majority of lvoirian nationals were
reaping the benefits of favorable transnational
trade, it was to their (economic) ad\antagc to
remain united under a national economic cause
(Dozon 1985:53-4). Since the economy has weak
ened, however, in the past several years, it could be
argued that ethnic factionalism has become an
increasing concern to the representatives of the
centralized Ivoirian state. Viewed in this context,
then, the masked festival at Yamoussoukro was yet
another wa\ of promoting nationalist sentiment in
the face of growing ethnic factioU<llism. The
Festirnask respected ethnic heterogeneity - i.e.,
t'aeh m;lsked performance was associated with a
different and unique ethnic style - \1 hile, at the
saDle time, it brought disparate ethnic groups
[ogether into a single, united cause.
The Festimask stresses national unity in at least
two ways. First, it aims to bring the edmic distinc
tions embedded in styles of art into a single "folk
loric" catcgolJ. There are no longer individual
ethnic masks. All masks, said the org-anizers of the
festival, are to be thought of as members of the
PDO (Partie Dcmocratique de Cote d'h'oire). All
masks are to be considered Ivojrian patriots strug
gling for the good of the modem nation-statc
517
(Gnangnan 1987). Secondly, the festil'al of masks
strives to bring the concerns of the older generation
(the so-caJled "lIImtl/litees tmditi(melles" of the rural
popuJation) into step with national concerns, such
as the promotion of international tourism and
he President's long-standing campaign for West
AITican regional peace. Tn the context of Festimask,
the mask is a 1001 of the modern nation-state d,at
serves "rational" political goals while being pre
sented to both nationals and foreigners as a kind of
'traditionaLizing instrumenl" (Moore and l\1 yerhoff
1977:8). At a press conference hcld to clarify the
role of the mask in the nationalist part), the Ivoirian
Minister of Tourism, Duon Sadia, said:
Wheo we say that the mask must become militant,
we mean to signal that the mask must no longer
transmit the knowledge of the ancesrors in a
mechanical lVay without an) explanations. The
mask must become a spokesman - communicating
in tJle common language of our culture - for the
message of peace. The performance [ofFc51 imasl.l
is not intended to caricature our traditional val
ues, but rather it is aimed to preserve these tradi
tions by adapting them to tJle exigencies of the
modern \\orld. (Bouabre 1987:8)
The Festimask was thus intended to collapse divi
sions in both space (i.e., etllDic geography) and
time (i.e., generational differences).
According to Ernest Gellner, there are at least
three pre-condition.s for the flourishment of state
nationalism: (1) that a population be CUlnlnlU)' homo
genoll~ without internal ethnic ~ub-groupings, (2)
that a population be literate and capable of author
ing and propagating its own history, and (3) that a
population be anonymous, fluid, mobile, and
unmediated in its loyalt) to the state (1983: 138).
International tourism in most of the developing
world hinges on the exact opposite criteria fTom
those which underlie the foundation of state
nationalism. first, international tourism demands
that a population be as culturall} and ct hnically
dil erse as possible. In Cote d'hoire, for example,
the tourist art market is driven by (he production
of a large variet) of supposedly autochthonous and
stereotyped emnic arts (cf. Graburn 1984:413).
Second, international tourism seeks to di"'icover a
population that is illiterate, and without a sense of
518 CHRISTOPHER B. STEINER
historical knowledge or a proper understanding of
its geographic placc within the world system. And
third. internationaJ tourism calls for the existence
of small-scale populations in which there is no
anonymity, in which whole societies recognize each
and evcry one of its members, and in which long
disrance communication is not possible among
putatively isolated groups. Tn essence, therefore,
the demands of state nationalism and the demands
of international tourism are situated at opposite
poles in the realm of possibilities concerning the
individual's relationship to societ}.
The organization of Festimask was an anempt
by the hoirian government ro satis~ siml//lane
olls/y both the monolithic requirements of effective
state nationalism and the polymorphic demands of
successful international tourism. By elevating the
mask to a national icon, the srate was anempring
(1) to subvert ethnic diffcrences, (2) to emphasize
an indigenous form of nationallireracy and ethno
historical consciousness, and (3) to create a national
cmegory of aesthetic identit) through the hidden
and anonymous face of the mask. Ar the same
time, however, the state was also trying to encour
age international tourism by stressing both the
visual diversity in ethnic material productions and
the exoticism of rhe masked dance itself.
Although the aims of rhe festimask were both
complex and diverse, its results were unambiguous.
Notes
In order to respeci the decree of 14 October 1985 by
President Felix Houphouet-Boign}, the countrv name
"Cine d'h oire" wiU not be translated into English.
2 The process is also renected in [he usc of "rradi
tional" s}'1ubols on West African bank notes (prancs
CFA) used jointl} by nations of former Afrique
Occidentale Fran~aise (cf. Vogel 1991 :233).
References
Anoll) mous
1983 Festivale de masques it Man. Frarmliri .i1a1in,
7 February, p.ll.
1987 Communique from the Ministry of Information
TO the Ministry of Tourism. Archives of the Ministr}
of Tourism, Abidjan.
Doth tourists al/(I nationals judged the CVl'nt as-
complete failure. Tourists, on the one hand, starc~
aW'l)' from the Festimask because, I wa, told' by
--------------------------------------
lcall Copans. Michele Ficloux, Suzanne Lallemeand,
THE INVISIBLE FACE
:111<.1 J''3JJ-Louis Ormieres. pp.5-81. Paris: Fran~ois
\laspcm.
Gnangan, Desire
1987 Festi\"ale de masque 1987. FmtemirJ iHati",
+May, p.lO.
519
Brou.ke, James Gorer, GeolTrey
one, they anticipated a large, staged, "tourist;'
1988 hory Coast Gambles to Prop up Cacao Prices. 1935 A/rlrtl D,mm. Ne\\ York: Alfred A. Knopf
e'ent. Nationals, on the other hand, werc dis
171t .'Vm' lork T'mes, 2] f'.:member, section D, p.10. Grabutn, Nelson H.ll.
gusted with the Festimask because they felt thcy
Copans, Jc-an 1984 The Evolution of Tourist Arts. Allllois ,}fTourimr
had been treated without respect - like pa"m in ~ 19i8 Ideologies et ideologues du touri,me au Senegal: Rrsellrclr 11:393-41':1.
commercial venture. As one of the elders who rabrications et contenus d'une image de marque. In J"loore, SaJ1i FaJk, and Barbara J\lytrhoff (cds.)
attended the Festimask put it to a reporter for thc 1,1' IOllrWlle m /~(rilJlJ1' tie l'olle.ll. edited In Jean-Louis 1977 SUIII(/r RiltJul. Asscn, The Ncthnlands: Van
national press., "Nly son, we "ent to Yamoussoukro Bourillie.r. Jt:3n Copans, Michele Fieloux, Suzanne Gorcwn.
and we were happy [or we had been imited to th~ allem:lIJd, and Jean-Louis Onnieres. pp.lOS--tO. Philmon, Thierry
\,jJlage of our President.... Bm you shoulLl know Pans: rr:m~ois J\-laspero. 1982 Conference du ~'Iinistrc Duon Sadia. Pmlemill'
that nobody took carc of us; nobody cyen pTOyidL'tI Djidji..>\mbroise Malill,2 DecemblT, pp.I3-16.
1983 Rcne'l:ion sur Ie festival des masques. j-'mlenrile Steiner, Christopher B.
us wilh food, and that just isn't normal. Not onh
HUlill, 22 February, p.lO. 11)94 AjTiwfI Arl ill Transtl. Cambridge: Cambridge
were we nor greeted by the organizers of the festi~
Duzon, Je.~n-rierre Unin:rsit"\' Press.
,'al, as is the custom, but when we [finally did gct
1985 Les Bett:: Une creation coloniale. In /1,1 roellr de Vogel, Susan (ed.)
some food] it was their leftovers that we were sent I'tllrni,'. edited b' Jean-Loui.> Amselle and E1ikia 1991 Africa Explores: 2Ulh Cenlury Ajrtcan Arl. New
to eat" (Anonymous 1987). .\1'Bokol0. pp.-t9-85. Paris: Editions Ja Decouvcrte. York: The Center for African An.
In conclusion, 1 would argue, the masked festi GeUner, Ernest Wallerstein, lromanud
val failed in the eyes of both hoirian nationals and 1983 \'alllJ'l~ alld Valllll/ali'lII. IUJaca: Cornell 1960 Ethnicity and National Integration in West
foreign tourists for the same reason. In both llnivcrsit} Press. Africa. CalJiers d'EIU(ies ,1(ricoilles 3: 129-39.
insta.nces, the festimask was viewed as all inau
thentic event because it had been, as it wert', too
"modern" in irs tactics and too insensiti\e to the
demands of "custom" The appropriation of rhe
hidden face by the hidden hand resulted in a par
ticular form of the commodification of ethlliciry,
in which neither the producers nor the consumers
were willing to strike a bargain.
3 r\1l rranslations from the French are by the author.
4 The link between an African festi'al and the Carni,al
in Rio was first made by the gO\ ernment of S~'l1e~':l1
in 1974 when rhey tried (withour success) to hlunch
a series of "ethnic" dances which "would beC(lme as
famous as the Carnival of Rio or of Nice" (Copans
1978119).
Bouabn~, Paul
a
1987 Festimask 1987: Le masque doit senir \a paix.
Fm/emili Malin, 16 July, p.8.
Boutillier, J-l" Michele Fieloux, and J-L Ormiercs
1978 Le tourisme en J\frique de I'ouest. In Le rl/Miml<'
til Afrique de J'ouesr, ed.ited by Jean-Louis Boutillicr.
 +-'
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 Introduction

"'-ar has become a tragic signifier for postcolonial Africa. Short ly after the turn of the millennium
ol'er -W percent of the globe's 45 significant armed conflicts were occurring on the continent of
.-\frica (GUff et aI., 200 I). Many recent or ongoing African wars ha\'e persisted for tll'O,l three,2
or even four] decades, often spanning multiple generations. Thus, far from being an exceptiona I
state of affairs, prolonged or chronically resurgent war has become a normative backdrop for I he
Ii\e~ of many millions of Africa's inhabitants throughout the last half century (Richards, 2005a;
Lahand, 2007; LubJ..emann, 2008).
Wherever war occurs, it is destructive and disorganizing, but as we noted in the introduction
to this book, European and North American representations of conflict and violence differ
depending on the location being described. The media, in particular, depict violence in Europe
as "ethno-nationalist", but violence in Africa as "tribal" - with all the primeval connotations
this term implies. Indeed, Africa's contemporary conflicts have tended to be cast by analysts
from outside the continent as hyper-chaotic and randomly - even incomprchensivcl) - barbaric.
As Paul Richards notes, the images that predominate in media and even many scholar!) depic
tions of these so-called "new wars" draw upon "epidemiological" metaphors that equate the
spread of mass violence with the mindless irrationa.lity (If a viral contagion capable of "infest
in~" entire regions (2005a: 2-3). To many outside obsen'ers these conflagrations thus appear to
be imprecisely located, spilling back and forth across borders, the lines between combatants and
non-combatants blurred. Tn such representations, the objectives of warring' factions in Africa
seem driven less by "political" motives or ideologies than by pri\'ateering and pillage.
HO\\ever, against this view of "meaningless and arbitrary \'ialence" Richards and others (sec
Behrend, 1999; Desteman, 1999; Ellis, 200 I; Finnstrom, 2008; Hutchinson, 1996; Lubkemann,
2008; l\'Ioran, 2006; Ta) lor, 1999; Wilson, 1992) conI incingly argue that these "new wars" -Iii
all "ars - should be understood as long-term struggles for political ends conceiyed of and pur
slied in locally relevant terms - and thus as simply one form of social project among many that

Thi, rntroduction includes significantly adapted material from pr. 103-109 of Cllilure /17 Chaos: AI1
IJJ Ihe Soo'al ell/lllilioll ill Hlar (Chicago, 2008), bv Stephen C. Lubkcmann.
"!lIIhroplJ!ogy
524 INTRODUCTION
;).re organized by social agents embedded in specific cultural contexts. Ethnography is \,-ell-suited
to the task of analyzing Africa's many violent political struggles because it is capable of rendering
visible the terms of the political game, as scen and understood by those who are engaged in it.
Notably, however, for most of the twentieth century anl hropologists paid little attention to
the contemporary violent contests for political dominance and state power that so profound Iv
marked the ascension of the nation as the globe's hegemonic political form. Until rather recentl~'
most anthropological studies of organized violence tended to (l) focus on the role of violence i~
maintaining order in, and organizing, so-called "stateless societies," sometimes erroneoush
conceived of as a stage of social and political evolution or (2) debate the relative weight of bio~
logical, socio-cultural, and economic-material factors in fostering organized violence.
The failure to focus on armed struggles in which state power was at stake did not mean Such
conOicts were irrelevant to the social processes or settings in which cultural anthropologists were
st.udying. in fact, de-facto colonial rule throughout most of Africa was only achieved over the last
quarter of tlle nineteenth century and t.he first quarter of the twentieth through intense and
brutal militar} campaigns lhat sought to give substance to the territorial claims made by European
powers in the Berlin Congress of 1884-5. Thus, for ex.'lmple, as late as 1921 the Portuguese were
still sU'uggling to militarily subdue tbe independent kingdom of Barue, in what later became
Mozambique, while the previous twO decades witnessed numerous and brutal "pacification cam
paigns" such as those by the Belgians in the Congo, the British in Sudan, by African-American
colonislS in Liberia, and by the Germans in Namibia. Nor did it take much more than a genera
tion or two before Africans began to violently resist the degradations of colonial rule such as
occurred in the Mau Mau movement in Kenya (see Berman, Chapter 35 in this volume).
In fact, throughout mo5t of the twentieth ccnrury many ethnogTaphers of Africa lived with
and studied African societies that had been profoundly transformed b) successive dispensations
of violent political struggle in the colonial age and were, at the time of the ethnographic researLh,
being shaken by postcolonial civil wars. However, until less than three decades ago, most schol
ars of African societies - and mid twentieth-century anthropologists in particular - bracketed
out such conflagrations from their analysis, viewing them as aberrations in the "normal" course
of the e,"eryday life that they took to be their scientific object of study. E. Evans-Pritchard pub
lished ethnographies that have been widely accepted as paragons of holistic analysis (see Evans
Pritchard in this volume), and yet he ignored how recent colonial conquest and then-ongoing
military "pacification" campaigns had profotmdly affected the social practices and organization
of tbe groups that he was studying. As anthropologist Sharon Hutdtinson (Chaper 10 in this
volume) has noted, the irony in his case was all the greater because it was actuall) the "problem"
of pacifying ,md administering the Nuer that led to his being hired by the British colonial
regime to undertake this research in the first place.
Flux and destabilization presented problems to the ahistorical struetural-flffictionalist theo
retical framework (see Part II in this volume on tribe and ethnicity) that described and treated
all social practices in terms of their contribution to the maintenance and reproduction of social
order. Thus, even though leading social theorists of African society such as Victor Turner (1957)
and Max Gluckman (Chapter 37 in this volume) would eventually draw anthropological atten
tion to social conflict they would nevertheless still empha:;ize its role in reproducing structural
continuity rather than in effecting social change. Even when anthropologists wrote social
history, it was almost always a history of sameness and order - in other words, a synchronic
rathcr than a diachronic history.
AnthHlpological interest in more sustained forms of organized political violence in which
state power and the socio-political order itself were at stake is thus a rather more recent
INTRODUCTION 525
---------------------------------------------
phenomenon - one related both to the dramatic decolonization snuggles that erupted in the
post World War IT years in so many of the African societies in which anthropologists worked,
and ro the discipline's growing preoccupation with theorizing social change. David Lan's land
mark ethnographic study of the armed struggle against the racist settler regime in Southern
Rhodesia~ was one of the first - and remains one of the few - anthropological efforts to analyze
a contemporary decolonization struggle in Africa (Lan, 1985). Against a tide of analysts a..'1d
political leaders who sought to portray many of the anti-colonial struggles as emancipations
from culmre and the past, Lan insisted on analyzing armed resistance as a project that was as
culturally informed as any other. He highlighted the pivotal role that spirit mediums played in
securing sociallegitiJrulcy for the freedom fighters. The mediums portrayed avowedly "Marxist"
guerillas as the legitimate heirs and descendants of the original ancestral spirit owners of the
land. The mediums' recasting of the war in turn shaped the practice of military violence itself,
as ZANLA guerrillas obeyed ritual prescriptions that mediums placed on their use of violence
and carried out violent tasks the mediums assigned to them - such as ferreting out and punishing
witches (Lan, 1985: 166-9). As one result, the fighters confronted "threats" that would not haye
otherwise been identified in Marxist precepts. Local ritual specialists thus mediated the violence
of the guerrillas, the population, and the agents of the colonial state in ways that allowed vernacu
lar understandings of power and politics to restructure the dynamics of wartime violence.
As violent political upheaval has regretrably become an almost paradigmatic feature of the
African postcolonial condition it has elicited an e\"er more robust accounting from the anthro
pologists and other social scientists who work in the shadow of its persistent, pervasive, and
profoundly consequential presence. These scholars include Paul Richards (1996, 2005a, 2005b)
working in Sierra Leone, Donald Donham (1999) in Ethiopia, Heike Behrend (1999) and
S"erker Finnstrom (2008) in Uganda, Stephen Ellis (2001) and Mats Utas (2005) in Liberia,
Christian Geffny (1989), Ken Wilson (1992), Carolyn Nordstrom (1997), Alcinda Honwana
(2002), Harri Englund (2002) and Stephen Lubkemann (2008) in Mozambique, Catherine
Besteman (1999) in Somalia, Peter Uvin (1998) and Christopher Taylor (1999) in Rwanda,
]oceJyn Alexander, JoAnn McGregor, and Terence Ranger (2000) in Zimbabwe and Sharon
H1.llchinson (1996) in Sudan. Arguing that dramatic acts of wartime yiolence are more than just
a strategy for minimizing local dissent through terrorist tactics, these ethnographers of contem
porary African political violence have all tended to focus on the expressiYe dimensions of vio
lence in African warzones - often pursuing a meaning-centered approach that highlights topics
such as language (for example, testimony, confession, and legal discourse), the interactions
among different religious systems, and globalization.
Several of the newer ethnographies reveal wartime violence as not only a dramaturgical means
for contending for - or with - state power but also as a means of expressing culturally specific
understandings of the landscape of power itself. In her analysis of the genesis of the Holy Spirit
Movement in northern Uganda (the precursor to the infamous Lord's Resistance Army) Heike
Behrend demonstrates how specific local histories and culturally scripted interpretations shaped
what both the organizers and armed participants in this violent insurgency understood the war
"to be about." She argues that the genocidal state violence, famine, economic destitution, and even
the explosion of AIDS, that were experienced under successive postcolonial regimes (Idi Amin,
Obate, and Museveni) were, in the view of the Acholi of northern Uganda, all interrelated. They
were all understood to be products of the rapid grovnh and spread of witchcraft. The move
ment's leader, Alice Lakwena, deriyed much of her power from her promise to eradicate this
Scourge. Consequently, her armed insurgency's agenda was cast as far more than simply a war
against the government, but as a cosmic struggle against spiritual malfeasance (Behrend, 1999).
526 INTRODUCTION
From this more recent theoretical perspective, contcmporar) African warfare is not merch
"ethnic" or primarily "local", much less is it rooted in aspirations that harl. back to a "pre~
modern P3St" or that remain unaware of, or uninnuenccd by the global ecumene. Rather violent
action should be positioned within a hroader repertoire of culturally informed tactics for coun
tering the insecurir), volatility, and dashed l':\.peclations that ultimately result from I he forms of
subordinate articulation \\ithin global political-economic relations that generate sentiments of
"abjection" (Feqwson, Chapter i-l in this volume) and the experience of "structural violence"
(Uvin, Chapter i-2 in this yolume). Some of the imaginative tactics developed and deployed to
cope with socio-cconomic vulnerabilit) and the frustrations of the unrealized promises of
development (see Part XII in Ihis volume) have not been violent - such as tlle proliferating
forms of charismatic Christianit~ t hat promise to harness the power of the greater force of the
I Ioly Spirit against the perils of il1\ isible power let loose by uncontrolled capitalism (Sommers,
2001; Ashforth, 2000; West, Chapter i-5 in this volume) or the inventive inlernet scams that
Kigerian )outh dcpto) in an effort to get a bite at the elusive global pic (Smith, Chapter 43 in
this \'olume). However, other tactics have proven dramatically more violent - as in the case of
the well-subscribed witch-finding cults that ha\'e come to thrive tluoughout urban Africa
(Geschierc, 1997; Comaroff and Comaroff. 1999; Smith, 200i-; Ashforth, 2000), and the violent
insurgencies that ultimate!) take to the national stage itself (Richards, Chaper 38 in this volume).
Ultimately, in situating the various forms and degrees of organized political violence in Africa
within this continuum, ethnographers and social historians ha\e sought to place AIrica's con
temporary wars and political con11icts back within a range of social acrjon that docs not require
exceptional explanation but rather explores conflict as an outcome of the stark and consequen
tial contradictions of the everyday life of so many Africans (Richards, 2005b).
Recognizing that prolonged warfare has become the backdrop for the evcryda) life of many of
Afriea's inhabitants, rather than an exceptional social state, anthropologists and other social sci
ences ha\'e also increasingly placed a premi urn on tracing' the dynamic development of social
relations in African societies throughout conOict and displacemcnt, rather than treating war as
an interruption that suspends social process. Anthropologist!> such as Mallki (1995), Besteman
(1999), Hutchinson (Chapter 10 in this volume), Lubkemann (Chapter i-O in this \olume),
Shandy (Chapter 46 in tllis volume), and Finnstrom (2008) have thus sought to investigate how
gendered, generational, intra-communal, and other forms of social relations and identities can
be and are profoundly transformed by the wartime reconfiguration of social and economic
opportunity structures. Harrell-Bond (1986), Honwana (2002), Lubkemann (this \'olume),
Shandy (this volume), Mallki (1995), Hutchinson (this volume) and man) others ha\'e demon
strated that wartime displacement is p<trticularl) socially transformative because of its tendency
to fragment social networks, to contribute to massive urbanization, to polarize and politicize
identities, and to reconfigure economic activity and interdependencies.
The first chapter in this part, by Max Gluckman, introduces the reader to the functionalist
argument that conflict contributes to structural continuity. In this famous essay on "rituals of
rebellion," Gluckman develops the structural-functionalist logic to its extreme, arguing that
instances of cathartic but ultimatel) sociall~' controlled expressions of resentment against spe
cific ~ocial power holders were actually \ital for ensuring !>ocial unit). When channeled through
ritual, connict performed a vital social function: enabling systems of social power and hierarchy
to persist, rather than transforming them in indeterminate ways. From this theoretical
perspective, socio-political conflict was thus always a matter of rebellion rather than revolu
tion, in which existing principles of political and social order were reaffirmed rather than
overthrown.
INTRODUCTION
527
In the second chapter in this part, on Sierra Leone, Paul Richards (1990, 2005b) formulates
a particular!) influential approach to war as a dramatic form of public communication. This
"public dramaturgy" is as much a pa.rt of the arsenal deployed b) opposing military factions as
.lre the more obviousl) lethal wcapons the) wield in their hands. In Richards' view, violent
.1ctorS often achieve their objective less through the evisceration and disempowerment of Yic
tims, and more through the messages that such bodily inscriptions communicate to a broader
public about what might transpire in the future and why. Victims of violence are thus not alwavs
the primary intended audience for the messages so painfuLl) inscribed upon theiJ bodies. Th~s,
the Rcvolutionary United Front's (RUF) cutting off of the hands of civilians in Sierra Leone
(Richards, 1996), the meticulous brick-by-bricl. razing of e\ery vestige of physical infrastruc
lure in me ,vlozambiquan National Resistance (REN.hvIO) "destruction zones" in Mozambique
(Wilson, 1992), or the hobbling by machete of already immobilized victims by the genocidaire in
Rwanda (Uvin, Chaptcr 42 and Taylor, Chapter 39 in this \olume) - all acts that to outsiders
ha\e evidenced wanton and meaningless brutality - are revealed mrough ethnographic contex
rualization as sophisticated forms of political discourse. While his analysi!'. docs not in an) way
;ustif) these acts, Richards seeks to interpret VIolence as a form of tragically consequential com
munication dlat renders messages with dramatic clarity within particular social contexts and in
lhl: terms of specific cultural idioms.
Thus in the intertwined Sierra Leonean and Liberian conflicts, the violent images drawn
upon to com ey "locally meaningful" messages include not only those culled from the centuries
old Poro and Sande initiation societies, but also Rambo (Richards, this volume), Lara Croft
(Utas, 2005), and the gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur (Hoffman, 2005). Similarly, in the I Ioly
Spirit ~loYement in Uganda insurgents not only invoked the "Christian" spirit "Lakwena" but
also appealed to that of the action hero superstar "Bruce Lee" (Behrend, 1999: 7). In short, the
narrali\'es that fundamentally shape "local" expectations may be as much derived from
Hollywood's distorted depiclions of life in America (Utas, 2005), the similarl) gilded tales of
expatriate diasporas (i\ lacGaffey and Bazenguissa-Ganga, 2000; Matsuoka and Sorenson, 2001;
Shandy, this volume), or the disproportionattly privileged !i\'es of expatriate aid workers who
lire, \\ ork and play in the compound just down the road (Uvin, this volume), as the) arc from
the more "self-evidently local" realities.
Jn the chapter by Taylor, on the specific forms of violence perpetrated in the Rwandan genocide,
we find that local notions of national political power draw on culturally specific metaphors for the
body and biological reproduction. In Rwanda, terms used to conceptualize social reproduction
serve as the ba...is for ho\\ social order and disorder are themselves understood at \'arious levels
including that of the "national body" itself As a result, militaf) tactics that might strike outside
ohservers as "irrational" - such as the proliferation of dozens of roadblocks within sight of each
other - appear less arbitrary and senseless when understood as stagings of strength that draw upon
local understandings of power as the capacity to both block and enable flows. 111)'lor's analysis of
the cultural grammar of genocidal violence is particular!) important because of his insights into its
gendered dimensions. I lis explanation of the link between cultural notions of bodily purit} and
ideologies of ethnic national purity explains the virulence widl which Hutu extremists reacted to
and focused upon the "polluting" etTects of cross-etJmic marriages, and the particularly gruesome
gender edgt.: that shaped their genocidal violence (Taylor, this volume).
In his chapter on central MOL.ambique, Lubkemann documents the ways in which the violence
\\ ielded by militaf) factions was diverted in service to other forms of highly localized social con
ruct that had little, if anything, to do with the war's master political narrative. Local beliefs about
the socio-spiritual consequences of not seeking redress for those wrongfully and violentl} killed
528 INTRODUCTION
also fed a deadly intensification of wartime violence. In this conrext both wartime violence and
migratory strategies for coping with it were thus shaped by the local belief t hat meaningful social
relations spanned a continuum in which the dead and the living were in continuous and high"
consequential interaction (sec also Kopytoff, Chapter 21 in this volume).
Lubkemann also describes the inadvertent but profound social effects of prolonged wartime
spousal separation on the structure of marriage and the dramatically different transformations
in this institution's mcaning for men and women as a result of the transnationaJization of poly
gyny. Moreover, he documents a moment of creative and fundamental epistemological shift that
emerges as migrant men sought to renegotiate their own socio-spiritual relationships and status
in ways that would allow them to pursue new lransnational strategies that empowered them yis
a-vis both the state and their spouses. As his study and those of others (including Shandy,
Chapter 46 and Hutchinson, Chapter 10 in lhis volume) illustratc, contemporary conflict and
violence in Africa has ultimatcl) underwritten a bewildering array of processes (migration, dis
placemenr, global diasporization, urbanit:ation, involuntary immobilization in refugee camps,
social network fragmentation, inf1ammation of local social tensions) whose transformathc
effects on social relations and the very terms of cultural expre"'sion have been profound and
complex. The need to mldy social transformation throughout war is all the more pressing in the
growing number of .'\frica's socicties where armed conllicts have insisted on spanning genera
tions, or at least on periodically punctuating tJleir social existence.
Works such as those in this section suggest that \\ artime violencc in Africa should not be
viewed as capable of eradicating or 0\ erwriting cullural meanings (Nordstrom, 1997: 1+1-2;
165-73), nor as somehow qualitatively more mindless, meaningless, and "primitive" (Kaplan,
1994) than organized violence elsewhere. Rather, these studies reveal armed conflict and the
violence within as forms of behavioral expression as deeply infused with already existing cul
tural meaning as any other, and whose "performance [of \liolence] cannot be amputated from
that wider body of cult ural performance" (Whitehead, 2004: 10).
Viewed together, the recent body of ethnographies and social histories of postcolonial African
conflicts v1\;d1y demonstrate how contcmporary armed insurgencies creatively draw upon cul
turally specific idioms and tools of resistance tbat are all rooted in very specific hi-<;tories, and yet
are far from being merely "traditionalist" in their objectiYes or dri\'en by "primordial senti
ments" (as Africa's "new wars" are often depicted). Rather these violent movements mobilize a
creative fusion of symbols - some of contemporary and even "global" pl'ovellance and others
from a more idiom at ic past - in order to endorsc drastic solutions to thc pressing problems of the
present, including historically structured social and political exclusion, thwarted expectations,
and shrinking economic opportunities.
Notes
I Mozambiquc, Liberia, Namibia, DRC, Algeria, Uganda.
2 Sudan, Chad, Somalia.
3 An!!ola. Rwanda, Burundi, Western Sahara,.
4 Renamed Zimbabwe since indcpendenc" in 1980.
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 -
530 INTRODUCTION
Turner, Victor. 1957. Schism imd Conlillllil)' ill/I/I African Society. ~1anchestcr: :\1anchester Uni\'cr~it\" Press.
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Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa
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Max Gluckman
I shall [ ... J consider the social components of
ceremonies, [... J among the South-Eastern Bantu
of Zululand, Swaziland, and \1ozambique. Here
there are (in some cases, were) performed, as else
where in Africa, national and local ceremonies at
the break of the rains, sowing, first-fruits, and har
"est. In one ceremony the idea of a goddess \l"ho is
propitiated by the rites is clearly expressed; usu
ally the ceremonies are directed to the ancestral
spirit~ of the tribal chiefs or the kinship groups
concerned. But whatever the ostensible purpose of
the ceremonies, a most striking feature of their
organi7.ation is the way in I\'hich they openly
express social tensions: women ha\'e to assert
licence and dominance as against their formal sub
ordin.ation to men, princes have to behave to the
king as if they covet the throne, and subjects
open.ly ~l:ll(; their resentment of authority. Hence
I call them rituals of rebellion. I shall argue that
these ritual rebellions proceed within an estab
lished and sacred traditional svstem, in which
there is dispute about particular distributions of
power, and not about the structure of the system
From r.lax Gluckman, Order and R,?bellioll ilz Tril>alAfrica: Collected Essays willi Alitobingraphi((/! blll'odllrlioll, ed. \tax
Gluckman, Routledge (2004), pp. J 12-35. Copyright It 2004, Routledge. Reproduced by permission of Taylor &
Fnll1cis Books UK.
37
itself. This allows for instituted protest, and m
complex ways renc\\"s the unity of the system.
The Zulu had no developed pantheon. Their ideas
of the High God were vague and there was no rit
ual address to him. Heaven was believed to be
responsible for certain devastating phenomena,
such as lightning. It was controlled by special
magicians. The only developed deity in their reli
gion was Nomkllbtl/nJa"a, the Princess of) Teaven,
who was honoured by the women and girls of local
districts in Zululand and Natal, when the crops
had begun to grow. The performance of these
agricultural rituals by women on 3 local scale con
trasts with great national sowing and first-fruits
rites, which were mainly the responsibility of men
as warriors serving the king on whom the ritual
centred.
The women no longer perform their ritual to
honour the goddess Nom/mbli/mallll, so T did not
observe it during my own work in Zululand. [... J
BUl the goddess herself still visits that pleasant
land. She mol'cs in the mists which mark the end
532 MAX GLUCKMAN RITUALS OF REBELLION IN SOUTH-EAST AFRICA 533

of the dry season and which presage the beginning
of the rains. From their homes on the hills the
Zulu look over these mists, which lie in the valleys
touched by the light of the rising sun, and they
comment on the Princess of Heaven's beauty.
A missionary in Zululand wrote:
She is described as being robed with light as a
garment and hadng come dovv n from heaven to
teach people to make beer, to plnnt, to harvest,
and all the useful arts.... She is a maiden and she
makes her yisit to the earth in the Spring of the
) ear. She is also described as presenting the
appearance of a beautiful landscape with verdant
forests on some parts of her body, grass-covered
slopes on others and cultivated slopes on others.
She is said to be the maker of rain. 1
According to Father Bryant, a Catholic missionary
who has been the foremost student of Zulu history
and culture,
she is supposed to have first given man form. The
ulu say she moves with the mist, on one side a
human being, on one side a river, on one side
overgrown with grass. If no rites were performed
for her, she was offended and blighted the grain.
From time to time she appeared in white to
women and gave them new taws or told them what
would happen in the future. The rainbow is the
rafter of her hut -she dwells in the sky and is con
nected with rain.!
o111kubulwunQ is thus clearly a goddess of the
same kind as the corn-goddesses and corn-gods of
the ancient world. Father Bryant explicitly com
pares her with these deities and drav"5 parallels
between their respective rites. The most impor
tant of these rites among the Zulu required
obscene behaviour by the women and girls. The
girls donned men's garments, and herded and
milked the cattle, which were normally taboo to
them. Their mothers planted a garden for the god
dess far out in the veld, and poured a libation of
beer to her. Thereafter this garden was neglected.
At various stages of the ceremonies women and
girls went naked, and sang lewd songs. \1en and
boys hid and might not go near.
[... J
[ ... All] I wish to stress here is that [... ] a domi
nant role was ascribed to the women, and a subOr_
dinate role to the men [... ] These elements appear
in ceremonies throughout the South-Eastern
Bantu tribes. Thus we are told of a ceremony to
drive away crop-pests among the Tsonga of
Mozan1bique:
Woe to the man who walks along the paths! He is
pitilessly attacked by these viragos, who push him
to one side, or even maltreat him, and none of his
fellows will go to his assistance. They all keep out
of the way, for they well know what v,ould be in
store for them, shoLdd they meet the saYage
crowdP
This temporary dominant role of the women - a
dominant role that was publicly instituted, indeed
approved, and not exercised tactfully in the back
ground - contrasted strongl) with the mores of
these patriarchal peoples. Hence it is my fiN;t
example of a ritual of rebellion, an instituted pro
test demanded by sacred tradition, which is seem
ingly against the established order, yet which aims
to bless that order to achieve prosperity. To under
stand how this rebellion \\orked we must contrast
the women's behaviour here with their accustomed
behaviour.
In the first place, it is important to grasp that
the men did not merely abstain from participation
in the ceremonial, and regard it as a women\
affair. The men were convinced that the ceremony
would help produce bountiful crops: old Zulu
men complained to me in 1937 that the neglect of
the ceremony accounted for the poor crops of
today. The men wished the ritual to be performed,
and their own positive ro)e in the ceremony was TO
hide, [... ] and to allow the girls to wear their gar
ments and do their work while elder women
behaved with Dacchamic lewdness as against the
usual demand that they be modest.
Secondly, the ceremonies were performed by
the women and girls of local districts, vyhile the
men as warriors in the king's regiments joined in
great sowing and first-fruits ceremonies for
national strength a.nd prosperity. The direct inter
ests of women and girls were confined to their
home districts, and here they took action to get
local prosperity. Their ceremonial actions, marked
b" dominance and lewdness, were effective in
C~l1lrast to their usual subordination and modesty.
I cannot here describe this contrast in detail, [ ... ]
but stilte briefly that they were in every respect
formally under the tutelage of men. Legally
women were ahvays minors, in the care of father,
brother, or husband. They could not in general
hecome politically powerful. They were married
out of their own kin-group into the homes of
strangers where they \\ere subject to many
restraints and taboos. In ritual their role was not
only subordinate, but also highly ambivalent and
uSllall~ cvil. They could perform good magic, as
when J pregnant woman burnt medicines whose
smoke benefited the crops. But they could not
become magici,1I1s; indeed, if a woman stepped
Olcr a fireplace where magic had been prepared,
she fell ill. Though the menses were the source of
children, so that the menses could be beneficial,
usuall~ during their menstrual periods women
were il constant threat of danger. In this condition
they could spoil magic, blight crops, kill callIe, and
rob the warrior of his strength and the hunter of
his skill. Terrible ills afflicted a man who had
intercourse with a menstruating woman. In reli
gion women were equally suppressed and as
pl'ltentially evil. They moved to reside under the
protection of their husbands' stranger ancestors,
whom they could not approach directly. They did
not, like men, become ancestral spirits doing good
for their children in return for sacrifices. For as
spirits women were capriciously evil: male ancestors
did not normally continue to afflict their descend
ants after sacrifice had been made, but female spir
its might continue to cause malicious ill. The Zulu
"aguely personify the power of I leaven in storms,
and they distinguish two kinds of Heaven. The
first, marked by sheet-lightning, is good, and male;
the second, marked by forked-lightning, is female,
and dangerous. Finally, as men could learn to
become good magicians, so they could learn to be
malignant sorcerers, deliberately choosing to be
wicked. Hut women's inherent wickedness
attracted to them sexual familiars who turned
them into witches and demanded the lives of their
relaliv'es. In Zulu myths it was Eves \\ ho intro
duced killing by sorcery- into Paradise. Most Zulu
charl:l'es of witchcraft were made against women
against sisters-in-law and daughters-in-law, and
between the fellow-wives of one man or the wives
of brothers.
One path to good ritual action was open to
women. The)' could be possessed by spirits and
become diviners: 90 per cent of this kind of divin
ers were women. However, this possession was an
extremely painful illness which might endure for
years, and often killed the patient. The symbol of
a successful initiation was the right to carry shield
and spear, those badges of manhood.
Thus the standardized beliefs and practices of
the Zulu stressed the social subordimttion and the
inherent ambivalent position of women. \Vomen
potentially threatened evil by ritual means. Yet in
practice they not only were useful, as the main
cultivators of gardens, but also they were essential
for the procreation of societ). The agnatic lineage
a group of males descended through males from a
male founding ancestor - was the dominant endur
ing group in Zulu kinship and familial life. Women
of the lineage were married elsewhere to produce
children for other lineages. I.... J But the men who
as a group were socially fertile in that their chil
dren perpetuated their existence, were on the
other hand physically sterile. Under the rules
which forbade men to marry their kinswomen,
tbey had to obtain wives elsewhere in order to get
children. [... ] Thus the male group depended on
stranger women for its perpetuation. When these
women married into the group they were hedged
with tab(Jos and restraints. For while the group's
continuity and strength depended on its offspring
by these women, its v'ery increase in numbers
threatened that strength and continuit),. A man
who has two sons by his wife produces two riv'als
for a single position and property; and his wife is
responsible for this dangerous proliferation of his
personality. If he has two wives, each with sons,
the cleavage, like the proliferation, is greater.
Ilence the role of women in producing children
both strengthens and threatens to disrupt the
group, and this ambivalence is expressed in the
manifold beliefs I have recited. Since struggles
between men over property and posit10n, which
threatened to disrupt the group, were fought in
terms of their attachment to the agnatic group
through stranger-women [... 1 it is not surprising
that charges of witchcraft were brought frequently'
by fellow-wives, jealous not only of their husbands'
534
MAX GLUCKMAN
fa'ours but also for their sons, and b} both men
and women against sisters-in-Ia\\ and daughters
in-law. ~ [arcover, the men of the group, because
of 111eir unit); could not attack each other directly
\\ith accusations of witchcraft, but one could
attack another indirect!) b) accusing his wife.
Cattle come into this series of conflicts, fu'srly
as the main property, beside position, over which
men fought. Land was then plentiful. ,.\nother
potent source of quarrels \I as women. However,
\I omen and (."attle were in a sense identified,
though - and perhaps therefore - taboo to each
other, since a man required cattle to give as
marriage-payment for hi~ wife. CatLle, the herding
of which formed, \\ith warriorhood, the admjred
Zulu roles, were thus not only taboo to women,
but also the apparent s) mbol for dleir transfer
from the security of their natal home to the uncer
tainties of a strange village and to the \'icissitudcs
of conjugal life. Though marriage was the goal of
all women, in the years of courtship Zulu girls
were liable to suffer from hysterical attacks, which
were blamed on the h)\e-magic of their suitors.
When a girl married, cattle mo\'ed into her home
to replace her, and her brother used these cattle to
get his own bride. The stabilit) of her brother's
marriage, established with these cattle, depended
on the stability of her marriage and on her having
children; for theoretically if she were divorced
though in practice divorce was extremely rare
among the Zulu [... ) - or if ~he were barren, her
husband could claim the catLle with which his
brother-in-law had married. The cattle thus came
to svmbo(jze not anI) the manner in which a girl
became a "'ife, bur also the conflict between brot h
ers and sisters, \\ ith the brother heir to ills sister's
marriage as well as to the group's cattle. From this
position the sister was excluded by virtue of her
sex. For had her brother's and her sexes been
reversed, she would have been heir to cattle and
social predominance, amI he destined to perpetu
ate a group of strangers and not his and her own
nat,11 group.
This is part of the social background in \\ hich
we must try to understand the Nomlmbztlwona crr
monies with their protest of women's rebellion.
They took place when women had embarked on
the arduous and uncertain agricu1ruraltasks of the
year and promised a good harvest from the one
----
..
goddess in tI1e array of virile 'gods' and ancestors.
The young girls, still in their natal homes, acted as
if they were their brothers: they donned rnale
clothing, carried weapons (like the possessed
diviners), and herded the belm'ed cattle. Their
brothers remajned in the huts, like women. The
younger married women, l...l with le\\d beha\_
iour, r1:lnted the goddess's field: as men at the
capital ceremonially sO\\'ed a field for the king.
A dropping of normal restraints, and im erted and
transvestite beha\'iour, in ~ hich women were
dominant and men suppressed, somehom were
believed to achieve good for the communit} - an
'lbundant harvest. Clearly a wealth of psychologi_
cal and sociological- even physiological - mecha
nisms are contained in that 'so17lehoTlJ were believed
to 'lchieve good'. 1 have not time to enter into these
mechanisms, of which indeed as yet we under
stand little. Here I stress only that the ceremonial
operates seemingly by an act of rebellion, by an
open and privileged assertion of obscenity, [... 1b~
the patent acting of fundamental conflicts both in
the social structme and in individual psyches.
[... J
The NOlllkllbulTl'ona ceremnny is one of many
domestic rituals which exhibit these processes
[... J. Other domestic ceremonies also exhibit the
theme of rebellion. l...) However, I turn no\\ to
analyse a great national ceremony connected with
crops and kingship, in which the tbeme of rebel
lion in the polilical process is made manifest.
The Zulu kingship was broken after the Anglo
Zulu war of 1879; but happily tI1e kindred S\\azi
sti.lI perform national ceremonies \\ hich arc very
similar to those the Zulu lIsed to perform. Dr Hilda
Kuper [... ] has given us a brilliant description of
them.~
The Swazi ;I/(",ola ceremony has been takn b~
most obsen ers to be a typical first-fruits ceremony,
and jndeed no one should eat of some of the crops
before it has been perJormed. In most South African
tribes a breach of this taboo threatened rimal dangcr
not to the transgressor, but to tl1e leader whose right
of precedence 'was stolcn'. There is e\ idence that
many broke the taboo: if caught, they \Iere punished
by the chiefs. The sanction on this taboo itself states
the main theme of rebellious conflict witl1 which we
arc here concerned. The king had thus to race his
RITUALS OF REBELLION IN SOUTH-EAST AFRICA
sLlbjects 'to bite the ne\\' year" the passage into
\\ hieh \\as m:lrked b) tJle sun's tum at the tropic.
But the king must also 'race the sun' and begin tI1e
ceremony before tJ,e solstice itself. This requires
some calculation as the king must go into his retire
ment when the moon is on the wane, and symbol
izes tJl;\t man's powers arc declining. The nation
resid~ on the land and is dependent on the cosmic
forces, but it must utilize and even subdue them,
Here to<) the king is concerned to prevent orner
nations stealing a march on him.
The ceremonies vary according to the age of the
king: the) are reduced to a few rites if he succeeds
as a bo) and blossom in his maturity. But only tI1e
king among we royal clan can stage the ritual.
Whcn t \\'0 princes organized their own ceremo
nies this lcd, in Swazi historical thought, to great
disasters: national armies were sent to punish
rhem for this treason. Certain immigrant provin
cial chiefs of other clans retain their own first
fruits ceremonics, which they stage later, but they
keep away from tI1e king's i/lema/a.
l\vo calabashes are prepared for tI1e ceremony.
Each L"3labash is known as 'Princess' (illkusatallo),
and seems to be connected ",ith tI1e Princess
Jllkosllllllla, who, according to Dr Kuper, is 'a sky
deil) whose footprint' is the rainbow, and of whose
mood lightning is rhe expression'. This suggests
further some relationship with Nomklllmimotla. The
calabashes are prepared by hereditary rirual experts
kllown as 'The People [Priests -1\ L G.J of the Sea'.
:\ pitch black bull is stolen from the herd of a sub
ject not of the royal clan. 'He is angl) and proud',
and these conflicting emotions are sajd to impreg
nate the ingredients for lhe ritual. The bull is slain
and snips of its skin are twined about the 'princess'
calabashes. Then in the evening 'the Priests of the
Se:l' set off under the royal ancestors' blessing to get
the waters of lie sea and the great bordering rivers,
and plants from tI1e tangled forests of tl,e Lebombo
Mounrajns. This was formerly a hazardous journey
into enem) lands but 'the waters of the world [were
required] to give strength and purity to the king'. As
the) go wrough tI1e country tI1e grave priests prac
rise licensed robbery on we people.
On the day of the night when the moon will be
dark, the calabashes are placed in a sacred enclo
sure in the royal cattle-kraal. Some of the priests
pillage the capital. The 'little ceremony' has begun.
535
The age-regiments of \'eterans from we capital of
the king's dead fatl1er's queen-mother assemble in
the kraal as the crescent of the \\ l:ak moon. Amid
the 10\\ ing of the cattle they slowly chant tbe
sacred royal song:
You hate the child king,
You hate the child h.ing (rl'pealetf).
I would depart with my Father (lhe king),
I fear we \\ould be recalled.
They put him on the stone:
- sleeps with his sister:
-sleeps \Iith Lozithupa ([the1 Princess):
You hate the child king.
The \Iords are repeated in varying order over and
over again. During the chanting the regiments from
the capitals of the king and his queen-motl1er enter
the kraal and the army forms a crescent. Queens
and princesses, and commoner women and chil
dren, stand in separate ranks, distant according to
status. All chant a second sacred song:
You hate him,
Mother, the enemies are the people,
You hate him,
The people are wizards.
Admit the treason of MahedJa
You hate him,
You have wronged,
bend great neck,
those and those Ihey hate him,
they hate the king.
This song too is sung again, and is followed by
songs 'rich in historical allusions and moral pre
cepts', but wluch may be sung on secular occa
sions. Dr Kuper cites one: it too speaks of rhe
king's enemies among the people for it urges
revenge on those who were believed to have killed
his father, King Bunu, by sorcery.
Come let us arm, men of the capital,
the harem is burnt,
the shield of rhe lion has disappeared
(repealed).
Meanwhile the king is in the sacred enclosure.
The Priests of the Sea come with medicines to
treat him, and women avert their c)es for 'to look
 536

on the medicines of the king can drive one mad'.

MAX GLUCKMAN

A pitch black hull is killed in the enclosure, and

rhe arm)' moves from rhe crescent shape to that
and the spitting ceremony is again performed
The ritual is oler.

Foreigners and those of the royal clan are expelled

.
RITUALS OF REBELLION IN SOUTH-EAST AFRICA

We shall k-ave them with their country,

Whose travellers are like distant thunder,
D0 you hear, DlambuJ3, do you hear?
back, pause, sway forward. At last he responds.
537

cry to him to come out, 'king of kings'. 'The)' draw

At his approach tbey retire, elllicing him to foUow,

of the full moon against the enclosure, while a
~oung regiment goes behind it. While the king is
treated \1 ith powerful magic he is surrounded
by his subjects. The army chants a royal song
\1 hieh is Sling at all important episodes in the
king's life:
Kin~ al:ts for your fare,
King, they reject thee,
King, 111ey hate thee.
The chant is silenced; foreigners who do not O\le
allegiance to rhe king, and men and women of the
There remains an essentiaJ 'work of the people for
lJngship'. The warriors weed the quecn-mother's
gardens, but their work is descrihed h" a term for
working" ith Little energ), with play and daWdling.
The regimelllalicaders urge the warriors to stren_
uous effurt and scold slackers, but, still, it is called
working without energy - I suspect it is at least an
unconscious protcst against work for the state.
The arm) dances; and then the people are feasted
according to rank. This ends the Iinlc ceremon\"
and during the ensuing fortnight the pcople pra~~
tise the songs and dances for the great ceremOI1\
which is performed ,,hen the moon is full, IIn;'
.\nd the \I omen reply,
Do you hear?
Let us gu, let us go.
The \Iords and the tune arc \1 ild and sad [sav
the SW3l.illike the sea '\lhen the sea is angry and
the hirds of the sea arc tossed on the waves'. The
royal women move backwards and forwards in
small, desperate groups. ... .\hny weep. The
men's feet stamp rhe ground \ igorous!)' and slowly,
the hbck plumes II ave and Outter, the princes
but aner a few steps he turns back and they close
behind him again.' The warriors dance vigorously,
beating lheir shields, for 'they keep tJleir king alive
and healthy by their own movements. The mime
goes on with incre'lsing tension ... [the kingJ
is terrifying, and as the knife-edged grass cuts
into his skin he tosses his bod~ furiously in pain
and rage.'
The pure youths at last come to the front: they
carry special large black shields. The song changes
to Triumph:
Thunder deep,

royal clan and women pregnant by these men, are man's powers with it rise to a new status. PeO~llc come closer, driving the king in their midst. Nearer That they hear the thundrous beat.

ordered awa). Dr Kuper considers 'that the king from all over the countr) assemble for these d:l)s and nearer the~ bring him to his sanctuary. The
at the height of his ritual treatment must be sur of national celebration. crowd gTOII s frenzied, the singing louder, the bod The youths pummel their shields as the king
rounded only by his loyal and unrelated subjeclS'. The themes I am an,llysing have emerged in ies swa) and press against the enclosure, and lhe dances tow:lrds them, but they rctreat from him.
The leader of the Sea PriesLs shouts: 'He Slabs the little ccremon), so for lack of time 1 summa king is forced within. He retires two or three times more to the sanctu
it II ith both horns. Our Bull'; and the people rize the great ceremon), which Dr Kuper ha~ Dr Kuper wa.s given til a apparently eonOieting a~, and then cmcrges carrying a gourd, which
kno\1 that the king has spat medicine to breal.. described ~ ith unsurpassed artjstr~. On the first interpretations of this rite. The first" as that the though plucked the previous )ear is still green.
1he old jcar and prepare for the new. The crO\ld ua,,' young warriors, pure and undefiled by sex royal clan wants to migrate again. 'The) want their Foreigners and royalty again leave the amphitheatre.
applauds, for the king 'has triumphed and is ual relations, make an arduous journey to get king to come with them, they want to leave the The king again retreats, tantalizing the men: then
strengthening the earth'. The people chant th green everlasting ilnd quic1..-groll-ing shruhs. people II hom they distrust in the countT)' where suddenly he lurches forward, and casts thc gourd
national ant hem, now full not of hate and rejection, Then they dance with the king. After they ha'e lhey staycd :I linle while.' The second interpreta on to a shield. The men stamp their feet, hiss, and
but of triumph: rested, on the third day the I-ing is treated "hh tion 11:15: 'Thc [royal clan] show their Mtred of the thump their shields: and all dispcrse.
powerful medicines. Another stolen bull, "hose king. The) denounce him and force him from Some informants told Dr Kuper that in the
I lere is the lnexplicable.
t heft has made its commoner O\l'I1er 'angry', i" their midsr.' I think both interpretations arc times of wars the recipient of the gourd, who thus
Our Bull! Lion! Descend.
killed by the youths \\ ith their bare hands: and correct, lor both are stressed in the ne),t act. [... ] received the powerful vessel symbolizing the past,
Descend, Uein!,! of Heaven,
he who was not pure is Iiahle to be injured. The song changes: would have been killed when he went to baule; and
Unconquerable.
\1agicall) powerful parts of the bull arc taken ro she suggests that he may be a national scapegoat,
Pia} like rides of the sea,
treat the I-ing. Thc fourth day is the great day, Come, come, King of Kings, 'a sacrifice to the future'.
You Inexplicable, Great Muuntain.
when, to quote Dr Kuper, 'the king appears in Come, fathcr, come, The king is full of dangerOlls magical power.
Our Bull.
all his splendour, and the ambivalent attitude of Come king, oh come here, king. That night he cohabits with his ritual wife, made
loye and hate felt by his brothers and his non blood-sister to him, so that commoner and royal
They disperse. Fire bums all night in the enclosure. related subjects to him and to each other is The princes Junge with their sricks against the blood meet in her to make her sister-wife to the
Before the sun lises the men assemble again in tlramatiled'. The king goes naked saye for a small doorway and beat their shields in agitation, king. All the population 011 the next day is in a
the kraal and chant the songs of rejection. They gluwing ivory prepuce-cover to the sacred enclo draw back slowly and beseechingly, try to lure him tabooed state and subject to restraints, while the
shout, 'Come, Lion, awake, the sun is leaving you,' sure through his people, as they chant the songs out, heg him with praises: 'Come from ~our sanc king sits naked and still among his pO\lerful cuun
'The" hate him, the son of Bunu,' and other f hate and rejection. I lis mothers weep and pil) tuary. The sun is leaving you, You the High One.' cillors. 'On this day the identific:ltion of the peo
insults to stir the king to activity. With dIe risi.ng him. He spits medicines so that his strength goes The king emerges as a wild monster, his head ple with the king is very marked.' For example,
sun lhe king cnters lhe enclosure, and it is encircled through and awakens his people. Now he bites cOlered VI ith black plumes, his bod~ with bright people who break the taboo on sleeping late are
b" the arm". Again thc~ sing, the new crops; and next chly the various status green, razor-edged grass and cycrlasting shoots. reprimanded, 'You cause the king to sleep', and
groups of the nation do so in order of prece These and other accoutrements have ritual asso are fined. The queen-mother is also treated with
King, alas for your frue, dence. In the afternoon, the king, surrounded by ci<ltiuns. I Ie 'appears reluctant to return to the medicines.
King, thc" reject thee, men of the royal clan, dances at the head of the nation. J Ie executes a lTaz) elusive uance.' Then On the final day certain things that were used in
King, They hate thee. army. They change their song: he returns to the sanctuary, and again the princes the ceremony are burnt on a great pyte, a.nd the
538
MAX GLUCKMAN
people dance and sing, but the sad songs of rejec
tion are now taboo for a yc-ar. Rain should fall
and usuall~ does - to quench the flames. There is
feasting and re,'elry at the expense of rhe rulers,
and gay 100'e-making. The warriors weed the royal
fields, and then disperse to their homes.
The ceremonies themselves exhibit their main
symbolism in Dr Kuper's \'ivid account, One can
feel the acting out of the powerful tensions which
make up national life - king and state against peo
ple, and people against king and state; king allied
with commoners against his rival brother-princes,
commoners allied with princes against the king;
the relation of the king to his mother and his own
queens; and the nation united against internal
enemies and extemal foes, and in a struggle for a
living with nature. This ceremony is not a simple
mass assertion of unity, but a stressing of conflict,
a statement of rebellion and rivalry against the
king, with periodical affirmations of unity with
the king, and the dl'awing of power from the king.
The political structure, as the source of prospcrity
and strength which safeguards the nation inter
nally and externally, is made sacred in the person
of the king. He is associated with his ancestors, for
the political structure endures through the gener
ations, though kings and people are born and die.
The queen-mother links him with past kings, his
queens with future kings. Many other elements
are prcsent, but again we see that the dramatic,
symbolic acting of social relations in their ambiva
Iencc is belie"ed to achieve unity and prosperity.
[ ... ]
\Ve are here confronted with a cultural mecha
nism which challenges study by sociologists, psy
chologists, and biologists: the analysis in dctail of
the processes by which this acting of conflict
achieves a blessing - social unity. [ ... J Clearly we
are dealing with the general problem of catharsis
set by Aristotle in his Politics and his Tragedy - the
purging of emotion through 'pity, fear and inspi
ration'. Here I attempt only to analyse the socio
logical setting of the process.
I would chiefly stress that the rebellious ritual
occurs \\ ithin an established and unchallt:nged
social order. In the past the South-Eastern Bantu
people may have criticized and rebelled against
particular authorities and individuals, but they
did not question the system of institutions.
Zulu women undoubtedly suffered severe pSYchi_
cal pressure in their social subordination and their
transference by marriage to stranger-groups, but
they desued marriage, children, well-cultivated
and fertile fields to feed their husbands and fami_
lies. In the Nrnnkubll[malla ritual they became
temporarily lewd viragoes, and their daughters
martial herdsmen; but they accepted the social
order and did not form a party of suffragettes.
Here I think is an obvious pointer - and it is not
necessarily WTong because it is obvious - to one set
of social reasons why these African ceremonies
could express, freely and openly, fundamental
social conflicts. They possessed, not suffragettes
aiming at altering the existing social and POlitical
order, but women seeking for good husbands to
give them children.
Similarly, in African political life men were
rebels and never revolutionaries. King and ri,oal
prince and subject all accepted the existing order
and its institutions as right. Contenders for po\\er
against established authority sought only to
acquire the same positions of authority for them
selves. Professor Frankfort describes a similar
structure in Ancient Egypt. Pharaoh 'maintains an
established order (in which justice is an essential
element) against the onslaught of the powers of
chaos'. This order was moat - usually translated as
'truth', but 'which really means "right order"
the inherent structure of creation, of which ju!>ticc
is an integral part'. It was so 'effecti"eJy recog
nized by the people, that in the whole of Egypt's
long history there is no evidence of any popular
rising', though there were many palace intrigues.;
The acceptance of the established order as right
and good, and even sacred, seems to allow unbri
dled cxcess, very rituals of rebellion, for the order
itself keeps this rebellion within bounds. Hence to
act the conflicts, whether directly or by inversion
or in other symbolical form, emphasizes the social
cohesion within which the conflicts exist. E\t:ry
social system is a field of tension, full of ambiva
lence, of co-operation and contrasting' struggle.
This is true of relatively stationary - what I like to
call repefitive 6 - social sy stems as well as of systems
which are changing and developing. In a repetitive
system particular conflicts are settled not by alter
arions in the ortler of offices, but by changes in rhe
persons occupying those offices. The passage of
RITUALS OF REBELLION IN SOUTH-EAST AFRICA
timC \\ ith its growth ,l11d change of population
produces over long periods realignments, but not
radical change of pallern. And as the social order
'llways contains a division of rights and duties,
and of privileges and powers as against liabilities,
the ceremonial enactment of this order states the
n<Jture of the order in all its rightness. The cere
mony states that in virtue of their social position
princes and people hate the king, but nevertheless
tht:y support him. Indeed, they support him in
I'irrue of, and despite, the conflicts between them.
Th~ critically important point is that even if Swazi
princes do not actually hate the king, their social
po,ition rna) rally malcontents to them. Indeed,
in a comparatively small-scale society princes by
their very existence have powcr which th.reatens
the king. I Icnce in their prescribed, compelled,
ritual behaviour they exhibit opposition to as well
as support for the king, but mainly support for
the kingship. This is the social setting for rituals
of rebellion. [... J
Here is one answer to Dr Kuper's discussion of
the songs of hate and rejection with which the
$\la7i mpport their king:
The \lords of the Jllcwala songs art: surprising to
rhe European, accustomed at national celebra
tions, to hear royalt\' blatantly extolled, the vir
rues of the nation magnified, and the country
gloritied. The theme of the lllcwaia songs is
halTed of the king and his rejection by the people.
[A Swa7i ,note]: 'The [one] song or hymn is an
indirect allusion to the king's enemies not neces
sarily from outside, but may be from members of
the royal family, or among the tribesmeno The
line, 'he hates him! ahoshi ahoshi ahoshi' - is
intended as a thrust against all who may not
join in the 111C11'ala, whose non-participation is
regarded as an act of rebellion, hostility and per
sonal hatred to the king.' Of the [rejection song
he wrote]: 'It is a national expression of sympathy
or lhe king, who, by rea.son of the manner of his
choice, necessarily provokes enemies within the
royal family.... The songs show the hatred evoked
by the king, but they also demonstrate the loyalty
of his supporters. The people" ho sing the songs
~ing with pain and suffering, they hate his enemies
and denounce them.' (Another Swazi] said: '1 think
these songs are magical prc\cnti\es against h<lrm
coming to the king.'
539
When the king walks naked to the sanctuary
through his people,
the women wcep and the song of hate rings Out
with penctra.ting melancholy. Later, when
[Dr Kuper] asked the women why they had wept,
the queen-mother said: 'It is pain to see him a
king. My cbild goes alone through the people',
tbc queens said: 'We pit) him. There is no othcr
man who could walk naked in front of every
body,' and an old man added: The work of a
king is indeed hea\y.'
It is the particular king who is hated and rejected
by some that has to be pitied and supported b~
those who are loyal. People may hate the kingship
in resenting its authority, but they do not aim to
subvert it. For, 'it is the kingship and not the king
who is divine'.7
1, .. 1
Swazi polity was a system in which there'" ere
rebels, nOI revolutionaries. Should a particular
king be a tyrant, his people's redress was not to
seek to establish a republic, but to find some good
prince whom they could establish as king. They
were constrained both by belief and custom, and
by the structure of groups in which they united
for rebellion, to seck for their sa\;our leader in the
royal family. for it was firmly believed that only a
member 0' the royal family could become king. In
these circumstances of a rebellion against a bad
king for not observing the value of kingship, the
rebellion is in fact waged to defend the kingship
against the king. The people have an interest in the
"alues of kingship and fight for them. In short,
since the rebellion is to put a prince, who it is
hoped will observe these values, in the ling's place
with the same powers, a rebellion paradoxically
supports the kingship. Further, as the leader of a
rebellion is a member of the royal family, rebellion
confirms that family\ title to the kingship.
Therefore a prince can illl ite commoners to rebel
and attack his kinsman king without im'alidating
his family's title. In this situation rulers fear ri"als
from their own ranks, and not revolutionaries of
lower status: and each ruler, in fear of his rivals,
has a great interest in conforming to the norms of
kingship. Every rebellion Therefore is a fight in
defence of royalty and kingsbip: and in this process

540 MAX GLUCKMAN
the hostility of commoners against aristocrats is
directed to maintain the rule of the aristocrats,
some of whom lead the conunoners in revolt.~
~II these alignments are dramatized in the ritual
of rebellion, together with unity against nature and
extemal foes. The king is strengthened as king: and
the kingship is strengthened in his person, through
association with kingly ancestors, with the queen
mother, and with inherited regalia which symbolize
the throne's endurance. But his personal isolation,
and the confiicts th;u centre on him as an individual
incumbent of the throne, dramatically express the
real alignments of struggles for power in the sys
tem, and intensify actions and emotions expressing
loyalty. While the king is a minor few ceremonies
are performed; the men do not assemble and the
songs of hate are not sung. The king's personal
position is too weak to allow conflict to express
dramatic unit: in complementary opposition.
The rebellious structure of this type of station
ary society has long been noted by hisrorians.~ Bm
this ritual of rebellion suggests that we may push
the analysis further. The great ceremony which
was believed b) the Swazi to strengthen and unitc
their nation achieved these ends not only by massed
dances and songs, abstentions and festivities, but
abo by emphasizing potential rebellion. If this
emphasis on potential rebellion in practice made
the nation feci united, is it not possible that civil
rebellion itself was a source of strength to these
systems? I cannot here present all the ev idenee that
supports this bold statement. These were states
based on a comparativ-cly simple technology with
limited trade connections_ They had not goods to
raise standards of living and the rich used their
wealth largely to feed their dependents and increase
their followings. Hence the societies were basically
egalitarian. They also lacked a complex integrating
economic system to hold them together and their
system of communications was poor. Each territo
rial segment was on the whole economically auton
omous and lightly controlled from the centre.
The territorial segments therefore developed, on
the basis of local loyalties and cohesion, so-ong ten
dencies to break Ollt of the national system and set
up as independent. But in practice the leaders of
these territorial segments often tended to struggle
for the kingship, or for power around it, rather
than for independence. Periodic civil wars thus
strengthened the system by canalizing rendencies
-
to segment, and by ,tating that the main goal of
leaders was the sacred kingship itself. Hence \\hen
a good Zulu king had reigned long and happily
two of his sons fought for his heirship during his
lifetime. In other nations (e.g. Ankole) there lIas a
free-for-all civil war between potential heirs. In
others (e.g. Zulu) a peaceful king would be attacked
by someone claiming he was a lIsurper. Frequenth'
segments of the nation would put fonlard thei~
own pretenders to the throne, each segment read,
to die behind its true prince. . It:ry mO\ e into plenty observably produces a
This suggestion is strengthened by the fact that
rarely in Africa do we find clear and simple rules
indicating a single prince as the true heir.
Frequently the rules of succession are in them
selves contradictory in that they support different
heirs (e.g. B(;mba), and more often still they oper
ate uncertainly in practice (e.g. Swazi and Zulu).
Almost el'e1) succession may raise rival claimants.
Or the heir is selected from the royal family (1.ozi).
Or else the kingship rotates between different
houses of the royal dynasty which represent dif
ferent territorial segments (e.g. Shilluk and Nupe).
Another device is the dual monarchy with rule
split between two capitals, one of \\hich ma~ be
ruled by the king's mother or sister (e.g. Swazi and
Lozi). [... JThe I cry structure of kingship thrusts
struggles between ri\'al houses, and elen ci\-il war,
on the nation; and it is an historical fact that these
struggles kept component groups of the nation
united in conflicting allegiance around the sacred
kingship. When a kingdom becomes integrated by
a complex econom) and rapiel communication
system, palace intrigues ma) continue, but the
comparati\e1) simple processes of segmentation
and rebellion are complicated by class-struggles
and ten<1encic.~ to rc\olution. The ritual of rebellion
cea,es to be appropriate or possible.
Certain points remain to tie up our argument.
First, VI hy should these ceremonies take place at
first-fruits and harvest.' I suggest thatthere arc real
socially disruptive forces working at this se-ason,
which require physiologic,ll and psychological
study. In all these tribes the first-fruits come after
a period of hunger. Quarrels may arise beOluse of
the sudden access of energy from the new food. tor
it is after h,lrvcst that wars arc waged and internecine
fighting breaks out. Even before that the expectation
of plenty, especially of beer, undoubtedly leaus to
RITUALS OF REBELLION IN SOUTH-EAST AFRICA
a I iolent outburst of energy in the men, \Iho arc
quarrelsome at this time. Some people in fact eat
the new food before the ceremony is performed.
There is, if crops are good - and many South
AIi'iean tribes held no ceremony if they were bad
the jubilant ending of uncertainty. ln this back
[found difficulties arise where one family's crops
~e ripe \1 hile another family lives still in hunger.
The tabo\> on early eating allows each family to
mOve into plenty at roughly the same time. The
charge of emotion in the society. As food supplies
arc drawn on in these subsistence economies, each
household tends to withdr:l\1 into itself. After
first-fruiL~ and han est wider social activities arc
resumed: weddings, dances, beer-drinks, become
d'lil) occurrences and attract wbole neighbour
houds. This great change in the tempo of social
life is accompanied by relief because another year
has been passed successfull), whjle the heavy
demands of the ritual, and its slow and ordered
release of confiicting emotions and pent-lip
energy, control behaviour by the programme of
ceremonies and dances, stressing unity. All arc
performed under the sanction of deities or royal
ancestors. The Lozi have no hunger period and no
great ceremonies. r...]
nle \Iomen's ceremony, and the king's ceremo
nies at SO\\ ing and first-fruits, arc clearly agricultural
rituals. Some of the social and psychical tensions
the) cope II ith are associated with stages of the agri
cultural cycle, and the food \\ hich it is hoped to pro
duce or \\~hich has been produced. Bur these tensions
an'related through the ritual actors to the social rela
tionships im'olved in food production. Agricultural
success depends on more than the fickleness of
nature, though fickle nature is personified in aU the
ceremonies. The goddess lVolllJ..'1tbulmana is a nature
spirit who may grant good crops or 110t. She is a
nature-spirit for women not only because she is con
nected \Iith crops, but also because women act as a
hod~ in neighbourhoods. These neighbourhoods
COntain women from man~ different kinship-groups
of diverse ancestral origin, and in any case women
cannot approach tbe ancestors who arc primarily
held responsible for prosperity. The Nomlmbuhvolla
ritual is thus a land-cult, and her garden is planted
far out in the .,.e1d. Like this garden, Nomkuhulmolla
herself remains outside the ring of society: she does
not enter the ceremony. She is propitiated when the
541
crops begin to grow and when they are attacked by
pests, so that the women and their goddess arc asso
ciated with the most uncertain [. ,.] stages of agricul
tllre, when the women's work is heaviest. Here
celebrants reverse their role drastically. This sug
gests for psychological study the possibility that the
marital situation of women produces great strains
and that these are never well subdued. They show in
women's liability to nen'ous disorders, hysteria in fear
of magical courting by men, and spirit-posscssion. lO
ciologically, the ritual and the nature-spirit seem
to be related to the potential instability of domestic
life and groups.
The first-fruits ceremony is a political ritual
organized by the state which is an enduring group:
hence it exhihits different beliefs and processes.
The Bantu believe that the ancestral spirits of
the king are in the end primarily responsible for
the weather, and for good crops. These spirits have
been in life part of the society, and they are al\\a)s
about certain sacred spots inside men's habitations.
They may be wayward in their actions, but they are
inside society. The ruling king is their earthly rep
resentative who supplicates them in a small-scale
ceremony at sowing; and again the first-fruits cer
emony to celebrate a sllccessful season (the Zulu
called the ceremony 'playing with the king')
inl'Olves the king and his ancestors. The ritual is
organized to exhibit tl1e co-operation and conflict
which make up the political system. After this
ceremony there tallows a series of separate ofTer
ings of the first-fruits by the heads of all political
groups, dOI\n to the homestead, to their own ances
tors. But the women make no offering from the
harvest to Nomkllbu!ll'flllo, who, b) anotl1er set of
beliefs, granted fertility. The period of agricultural
certainty - tirst-fruits and haryest - is thus associated
with the king and the political system, for despite
the conflicts it contains, from year to year the politi
cal system is ordered and stable, beyond the stabiJit)
of domestic units. I Iowe\~er, the uncertainty and
wildness of nature may enter into the king's cere
mony, though it is the king who personifies these.
This happens when, at the climax of the ceremony,
he appears dressed in rushes and animal skins - a
monster or wild thing (Silo) - executing a frenzied
inspired dance, since he is not taught it. But even
as a nature-spirit, the king is enticed into society by
his allied enemies, the princes, until be tlU"ows
away the past year in a last act of aggression, the
542 MAX GLUCKMAN
-------------------------------------
casting of a gourd on to the shield of a \\arrior who
"ill die. Then he bccomes king again, but in
tabooed seclusion which marks his subordination to
the political order. The king is the servant of his
suhjects. Nature is subdued by the political system,
in a ritual which is timed by the surest of natural
phenomena - the movements of sun and moon.
Professors Fortes amI E\oans-Pritchard have
suggested a more specifically sociological hypoth
esis, to explain hal\' social cohesion in the political
ceremony is associated with the new crops. I I If the
communilY is to achieve any of the things it val
ues - good fellowship, children, man~ cattle, vic
tory, in short, prosperity - it must have food. This
is lrite and obvious enough. But it is perhaps less
ohvious to point out that communal interests in
the procuring of food may conflict \\ith the inter
ests of particular individuals. For to obtain food,
men need land and hoes, and cattle; they need
wives to cultivate their gardens. Particular indi
\icluals or groups may come into conflict over
items ofland, or implements, or cattle, or women.
Hence indi\idual interests in tJle food that is so
essential stand in a sense in opposition to the com
munity's interests that all its people be prosperous
and ha\'e plenty of food. Thus elements of conOict
arise over the very food th:lt is so desired. These
conOicts are settled because in holding :lnd Clilti
varing land, in herding cattle, and in marrying
Notes
Samuelson, R. C. A., LOllg, LOl/g Ago (1929),
p. 303
2 Bryant, J\. T, 7J,C Zulu Prople as tltey ",ar bill"" 16
IJ Itile ,"1-111" CaTlle (194<.1), pp. 662 f.
3 Junod, 1-1.. A., The LiJ~ 0/ a SOl/tit /frieuTI Tribe
(1927), ii, p. +41.
4 In Chapter XliI, 'The Drama of Kingship', of An
Africrl/l Arislol"fl/cy: RIll/it ulJjong Ihe Sn'l/z;
(1<.147).
5 Kingship lind Ihe G",IJ, 01'. cit., Pl'. 9 and 51-2 et
passim.
6 'Analysis of a Social Situalion in .\1odern Zululand',
Balliu Siudies, xiI, 1 and 2 (March and June, 1940),
(reprinted as Rhodes-Livingstone Paper No. 28,
1958).
7 EI<lns-Pritchard in his Frazer Lecture, 1948, 'l Ire
DImle KlIIgship of Ihe Slti/luk, op. cit., at p. 36, has
discussed this situation.
wl",es, men are involved not onl~ in technic-JI
actjvities, but also in actions which have a legal and
moral aspect in associating them with theIr fel
lows. They must on the whole fulfil their Obliga_
tions and respect the rights of others 'or else the
materiaJ need~ of existence could no longer be Sat
isfied. Productive labour would come to a stand_
still and the ~ocicty disint.egrale.' The grea!c:st
common interest is thus in pe,ICe and good order,
and the obsen'ance of Law. Since the political
structure guarantees this order and peace, \I hich
will allow food to be produced, the political strunure
becomes associated with food for the communitv
at large. At t.he ceremony the ne" food is opened
to all the nalion, though some subjects may ste-.II it.
Thus the political order of interconnected rights
and durie~ is made sacred: and the king who rep
resents that order enters the di\ ine kingship.
Perhaps we may no\\ go further, and add thai con
flicrs between individuals and the political order ,IS
a whole are demonstrated in the ritual of rebellion.
Everyone, including the king himself, is restrained
by the order's authority againsl his individual
gratification [... ] Even the king approaches the
kingship with care: restraints on the Swazi king
are very heavy on the day when he is aso;ol,;ateo
most closel)' with his people. His personal inade
quacy and his liability to desecrate tbe values of
kingship are exhibited in the insults he suffers.
8 See my cssa~ 'The Kingdom of the Zulu of Soulh
Mrica' in AfricQlI Political Systems, and the Editors'
Inlmill/Clioft at p. 13. See also my 'The LO/i of
Barotscland in t"orth-Western Rhodesia', in Se,'el/
TribcsojBritish Celliral.~rri((/ (1951).
9 See e.g., Kern, F, Kingship 1lI11! La", ill tlTt' 1/"We
,lges (1948), translated from the German by S. B.
Chrimes.
10 Dr S. Kark, who ran a Health Cenn'e in Southern
Natal, reports this in unpublished manusrriJl15;
Lee, S. G., 'Some Zulu Concepts of Ps~chogenic
Disorder', SOllth Ajriftlll]O/ITnuljhrSoclll/ Re.(rllrr/,
(1951), Pl'. 9-16; Kohler, \11., The ]:;,lII!f,,1II11
Dit'il/crs, EthnologiL-J.1 Publications of the South
African Departmem of Natil'e Affairs, Pretoria:
No.9. (1941); Lauhscher, Jl J E, Se,r CUm",l, <l/d
PsyclmpfllholoKY (J 937).
II 'Introduction' to Africall Poliliml SY5ICII/5.
38
Fighting for the Rainforest
War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone
Paul Richards
Small Wars in a Post-Cold War World quickl" they spring up again. The fear of the
rel'enge of the enslaved and dispossessed is hard l
\5 the ColLI War nightmare fades more attention
quell. Recent versions of the argument offer a new
is paid to small wars, fought with conventional
nvist by adding modern weapons and the spread
\\capons and for complex local reasons. Africa is
of drug culture. Most journalistic reportage and
scarred by a rash nf small wars. Factors internal t.o
not a little academic writing reflects this I'iew,
The continent are no\\" being offered as explana
\\hich is becoming more, not less, influential,
tinns for this troublesome rise in modern 10w
obliging their dissenters to return lo the fray.
lc,-el insurgency. Episodes of apparently bizarre
Are these proponents of Malthus-with-guns
I iolence in Liberia, Somalia, Rwanda seem to fir a
saying anything new about war and Africa; It is
pattern. Surely this is e\'idencc that Africa is,
time to submit the environmentalist argument to
inherently, a wild and dangerous place? IIere is
re-examination, but taking the cheap AK-47s and
I'iolence driven by environmental and cultural
crack cocaine fully into account. To distinguish
imperatives which the West has had no hand in
this post-Cold War argument from earlier
shaping, and n()\v has no responsibility to try and
:Malthusian visions of African dystopia I I propose
cont;lin. These violent urges are polilicallv mean
the label 'New Barbarism'. [This] is a critique of
ingless and be) ond the scope of conventional
the ~ew Barbarism thesis.
diplomacy or conciliation. They are best under
stood as natural forces- the cultural consequences
of a biological tendency b) Africans to populale
Malthus-with-guns: The New
their countries to the point of cm'ironmental Barbarism Thesis
collapse. Three central ideas underpin the New Barbarism
Arguments linking environmental determinism thesis [ ... J in Africa and more widely.
and cultural essentialism are hardly new. They First, cultural identiry is an essential and durable,
have been regular!) refuted by .\fricanists. Just as rather than context-dependent, feature of social
From Paul Richards, FIghtil1g .Ii" tlte Ra;'lforesl: IJlilY, YOllth a"d RrsQl/lus In Sierra Leolle, Heinemann (1996),
PortsmoUlh, NH, pp. xiii-xx, x.xii-x"X\, 25-32, 34, 56-60.
54-4 PAUL RICHARDS
systems. Different cultures and civilizations are
1hereby prone to clash (lluntington 1993).
Second, war in t11e post-Cold War world has
changed. States have lost the monopoly of military
\ iolence once underwritten by nuclear balance of
terror. The equipment is cheap, and widely avail
able to religiolls, cultural and criminal org:mi7.ations
prepared to pursue armed conflict independently
of sovercibTJ1 states and without reference to inter
national opinion I....]
Third, cwture clash, resource competition and
environmt:ntal breakdown provoke a rash of small,
localized and essentially unconuollable armed
conflicts. Many are anarchic disputes - i.e. apoliti
cal events indistinguishable from bandiu'Y and
crime. Tnsulation rather than inrervenlion is the
ational response of the major powers.
This potell[ mix of ideas was brought together
in a hook on the Balkan conflict by American jour
nalist Robert Kaplan (Kaplan 1993). [... ] When
the Yugoslavian state broke up suppressed etlmic
and religious animosit~ broke out like a disease.
Kaplan then extended tl1e argument to Africa in
an inl1uenrial essay ('The coming anarchy"
oJthmti," MOllthl)', February 1994).2 Violence in
Liberia, Rwanda, Somalia is not war in any ordi
nary political sense (If the term (a continuation of
diplomacy by other means, as Clausewitz viewed it
[...J). Far from fully understood even by the par
ticipants themselves, tllese conflicts, in Kaplan's
eyes, were clear evidence of Africa's gathering
environmental crisis. Maintaining peace in such
conditions is beyond the scope of regular diplo
macy or peace-keeping inrervention. [... ]
New Barbarism in Sierra Leone?
Kaplan's thesis has proved extraordinarily influ
ential in me U.S. IUs article was faxed to every
American embassy in AfriL':l, and has undoubtedly
inOuenced U.S. policy. This is less because of the
cogency of thought and quality of evidence, than
because of the way Kaplan tapped into broadcr
currents of iliinking.
Kaplan's essay begins and ends in the small
West African country of Sierra Leone. Arguably
the oldest modern state in West Africa (with a con
stitutional history dating back to 1787) Sierra
Leone first experienced war in 1991 when a small
-..
rebellion took shape on the eastern border with
---
Liberia, launched from territory controlled by one
of the factions fighting tl1e Liberian civil War.
Lacking any Cold War roots, or el-ident religious
or ethnic dimensions, but possessing a high quo
tient of apparently bizarre and random acts or vio
lence, many perpetrated by children, this conflict
is cited by Kaplan as a prime instance of the New
Barbarism.
By the time Kaplan" isitcd Sierra Leone (in late
1993) government troops maintained only tenuous
control of large parts of forested eastern and
southern Sierra I.eone. What had caused anarchv
to spread so quickly through these West Africa~
forests? According to Kaplan, the 11,lr was a prod
uct of social breakdown caused by population
pr'ssure and environmental collapse.
Throughout West Africa, drought and land
hunger (he argues) had dri\en young people to the
teeming and only superficially modernized
shanty-town suburbs of the coastal cities. Spun otT
from a failing traditional society, these criminally
inclined young migrants were 'loose molecules in
a Iery unstable social fluid' (Kaplan 1994). The
perpetrators of the violence in eastern and south
ern Sierra Leone lacked :my ckar political pur
pose. They were better pictured as criminals and
bandits. Reverting to old, superstition-riddled,
forms of violence, these gangs of youngsters,
roaming the Sierra Leone countryside, armed
with AK-47s and killing for scraps, are likened by
Kaplan to the hungry mercenary hordes ravaging
sc\cnteenth-century Germany prior to the ending
of the Thirty Years War.
Testing New Barbarism
[.,.] New Barbarism's essential propos1t1ons are
found wanting in se\ual major respects.
Although thc local history of resource acquisi
tion is rele\ ant to understanding the war there is
no run-away environmental crisis in Sierra Leone,
Young people caught up in the dispute specifically
point to political failures as a causc of the \var, and
deny the relevance of Malthusian factors. The data
on population trends and land resources confirm
the essential soundnt:Ss of this point of view.
Whereas it is true that the war in Sierra Leone
is a terror war, and involves horrifying acts of
- FIGHTING FOR THE RAINFOREST
brutality against defenceless civilians, this sad fact
cannot in any way be taken to prove a reversion to
some kind of essential African savagery, Terror is
.IIIpposed to unsettle its victims. The confused
accounts of terrorized victims of violence do not
coJUititute evidence of the irrationality of violence.
Rather they show the opposite - that the tactics
have been full~' effectin: in disorientating, trauma
ti7.ing a.nd demoralizing victims of violence. In
short, they arc devilishly well-calculated. [... ]
Lacking heavy weapons, both rebels and gov
ernment forces have made extensive use of cw
tlIraJ resources in their L':lmpaigns. In particular,
the rebels deploy forest knowledge in both practi
GIl and symbolic ways to make converts to their
calise and demoralizc opponents. By those cul
tural plays they manifest a distinctly 'post-modern'
awareness of modern media and the propaganda
opportunities they provide. The skills on view are
those ohhe hybrid and globalized world ofAdantie
commerce rather than the 'traditional' subsistence
worlds of the African bush.
Ne\\' Uarbarism pays scant regard to the insur
gents' Ol\n claims concerning the purpose of their
movement (that they took up arms to fight for
multi party democracy and against state corrup
tion). Kaplan (1994) prefers instead to endorse a
I'iew widesproad among capital city elites and in
diplomatic circles at the time of his visit, but now
J..nown to be incorrect, that the rebel movt:ment
had been destroyed and the violence was exclu
siycly 'he work of bandits and military splinter
groups. r...] ]n facr the war has a clear political
context, and the belligerents havc perfectly rational
political aims, ho\\ever difficult it may be to justify
the levels of violence they employ in pursuit of
these aims Tht: rebellcadership has a clear politi
cal vision of a reformed and accountable state.
Failure to communit:are that vision owes more to
the poverty, incompetence, and sectarian is()lation
uf the movement than to any inherent trend
towards anarchy in tOday's devastated West African
forests.
As in any" ar opportunist indi\iduals and groups
muddy the \laters with atrocities and looting. But
these opportunist acts by themselves are insuffi
cient to cxphlin the continuation of the conflict.
The \\ ar in Sierra Leone drags on essentially because
there arc social factors feeding the conflict, and
because the main rebel group feels it has not yet
545
had a chance to get its political point ()f view across,
and that it needs to do so to honour activists who
died in its cause.
Cill/tra Ne,,' Barbarism the violence of the
Sierra Leone conflict is sho\\ n to be moored,
culturally, in the hybrid Atlantic world of interna
tional commerce in which, over many years,
Europeans and Americans have played a promi
nent and often violent pan. Although a small and
highly localized conflict, the war has a global
range of sy mbolic and dramaturgical reference. It
deserves to be regarded as onc of the world's first
truly post-Cold War conflicts, since it owes little if
anything to Super Power rivalry, anJ everything to
the media flows and cultural hybridizations that
make up glohalized modernity (cf. Waters 1995).
The challenge is to understand that 'we' and 'they'
have made this bungled world of Atlantic-edge
rain-forest-cloaked violence together. In a world
of globalization disengagement from'\frica 's
violence is no longer an option.
Fighting for the Rain Forest: A Crisis of
the Patrimonial State
If we reject New Barbarism what bener explana
tions of the war in Sierra Leone might he offered'
Long-term patterns of 'primitive accurnula60n'
of forest and mineral resources in Sierra Leone
have fcd a modern politics dominated by patrimo
nial redistribution (Rono 1995, Kpundeh 1995).
The political elite builds support through distrib
uting resources on a personal basis to followers.
Relatively few resources are distributed according
to principles of bureaucratic rationality or account
ability. In the 1980s, through a combination of cir
cumstances, the resources available for patrimonial
redistribution in Sierra Leone went into sharp
decline, a decline exacerbated by the ending of the
Cold War and a general reduction and tightening
up of overseas aid budgets. This crisis has tested
the loyalty of the younger generation in particular.
Meanwhile, as a result of political machinations
and resource shortages the state's capacity to con
trol somc of its peripheral regions \1 as weakened.
The Liberian horder region was a particular casu
alty of this aspect of state recession, allO\I ing dis
sidents to enter the countJy from Liberia and
546 PAUL RICHARDS
deploy methods of violent social destabilization
invented in the course of the Liberian civil war
(1989-96). The Sierra Leone war [... ] is a prod uct
of this protracted, post-colonial, crisis of patri
monialism.
[ ... ]
A War More Barbaric Than Most.
The Sierra Leone insurgency began on 23 ~1arch
1991 (Musa and !\Iusa 1993), Seeking to over
thro" the patrimonial rule of President Joseph
Saidu Momoh and the AU People's Congress
(APC) a small amllightl) armed rebel force fought
for a year in the forested districts of eastern and
southern Sierra Leone before Momoh and the
APC were ousted in a coup by junior officers dis
enchanted b) government lack of support for their
efforts in confronting the rebels.
Rebel violence in tJle first phase of the war fell
mainly upon unarmed villagers, and ci\-ilian sup
port for the young officers' regime, the !\ational
Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC), was based on
a promise to the victims of the violence to bring
the war to a brisk conclusion.
After the NPRC eoup fighting between govern
ment troops and rebels resumed. The rebels
suffered major losses but vowed to fight on.
Dissension \\ ithin the army gave them the chance
to counter-attack. Ha\-ing initially takcn up arms
to oust the APC, the rebels justified further exten
sion of the long-drawn-out bush war with the
claim that the NPRC regime, after a bright start,
had re\erted to the patrimonial politics of the
APe. By January 1995 the i.l1Surgents were within
sight of tlle capital Freetown. Suffering subse
quent reverses they declared an interest in peace
negotiations. The first tentative contacts concern
ing a peace process took place during the 1:lttcr
half of 1995, but without any obyious reduction in
the intensity of the fighting.
The rebel group appears to be remarkabl)
small. It is run by a War Council onl people, and
has several thousand young members. It has little
if any territorial base, and few settlements of any
size under its firm control, apart from its forest
camps. It obtains resources by mining diamonds
in the forl:st and capturing food and we-apons,
mainly from NPRC sources. It builds membership
- -
by conscription of young people it judges amenable
to its political message.
~1ost of these youngsters, in fact, have little
option about whethc. or not they join. Terrorized
in the process of capture I he) are later treated gen
erousl) b) the rebelS and the secrets of the mOve
ment are revealed. This process amounts to a type
of initiation, for several centw'ies a ncar-universal
feature of forest society in the western half of West
Africa. Initiation separates young people from
their immediate family and builds adult loyalties
to a wider socicty3
In a country of c. -+ million, an estimated 15,000
'ivilians have been killed and morc than 40 per
cent of the tot~l population displaced during fi\-e
years of war Local communities are still ruled bv
widely-respected Paramount Chiefs. It is ~m~
measure of the dislocation caused by the conflict
that half me country's Paramount Chiefs are dis
placed, li,'ing in Freetown or one of the three main
pro\'incial to\\ ns (Bo, Kenema and !\lakeni).
1\ lanifestly not an ethnic conflict, and therefore
failing to fit the main international media 'slot'
rescn cd for the reporting of African war, the
Sierra Leone insurgenc) has had little coYcrage
apart from incidents invoh ing the capture of
forei!,'11 hostages by the rebels.
Superficially, some of the facts of the war seem
to fit the uleory of New Barbarism. Fighting takes
place mainl) b) means of hit-and-run raids and
ambushes in thickl) forested country. With little
hardware, the rebels have to rely upon bushcraft,
misinformation and terror tactics to control \iIlag
ers and demoralize the bener-armed g'overnment
troops. This leads them into actions (beheading
chiefs, cutting' the hands and fingers off yillagers)
that cause outsiders to assume a wanton and mind
less violence. Further reflection shows it to be
nothing of the sort.
Take, for instance, a spate of incidents in \-il
lages between Bo and Moyamba in September
October 1995 in which rebel~ cut off the hands of
village women. What clearer instance could there
be of a revcrsion to primiti\'e barbarity? Images
flood into the mind of hands cut off for the manu
facture of magic potions.
But behind iliis savage series of incidents lay.
in fact, a set of simple strategic calculations. The
insurgent movement spread~ by capturing young
FIGHTING FOR THE RAINFOREST
people. Short of food in the pre-harvest period,
some captives, irrespective of the risks, sought to
JerI the movement and return to their villag'es
where the early han'est was about to commence.
HoW could the rebels prevent such defections'
B\' stopping the harvest. When the news of rebel
a~lPUt;llions spread in central Sierra Leone (the rice
lYra narY of the war-affected reglOn) few women
~ere prepared to venture out into the fields
The harvest ceased. [... ]
Conllict in Sierra Leone is no exception to the
IYeneralization that modern warfare targets civi1
~ns as \\cll as enlisted troops. Whether the rebels
in Sierra Lcone were in any way justified in their
decision to take up violence is highly debatable.
The consequences have been tragic. But their
actiOns are not the actions of madmen or mindless
samgcs. Once a decision to resort to violence had
been takcn, hand cutting, throat slitting and other
acts of terror became rational ,yars of achieving
intended strategic outcomes. There is little if any
analytical value, it seems to me, in distinguishing
bcnveen cheap war based on killing with knives
and cutlasses, and expensive wars in which civil
ians are maimcd or destroyed with sophisticated
laser-guided weapons. All war is terrible. It makes
no sense to call one kind of war 'barbaric' when all
that is meant is that it is cheap.
Some Theoretical Considerations
r.]
Har as perfOrmallce
War, and coping with war, are matters of perform
ance. The apparently pointless bitterness of a
'rebellion without cause' (Bradbury 1995) makes
considerable sense as a drama of state recession,
renewal and revenge. Performance theory con
cerns itself with the stage management of events.
.-\ppljed to war, performance theory u-ies to under
stand how people make power through managing
\"iolenee and terror as expressi,'c resources.
A dramaturgical emphasis in analysis makes it
possible, for example, to consider me Sierra Lcone
insurgents in terms of a rationalistic framework
proposed by Lipsedge and Littlmood (1996) for
the study of domestic sieges - violent events also
conunonly seen as crazy or incomprehensible.
Sieges typically inyo}ye an estranged father,
distraught at being separated from children he
10Yes, seizing them and threatening to kill them.
547
This apparent contradiction generally leads to
the conclusion that hostage takers are 'mad'.
Lipsedge and Littlewood propose, ho\veyer, that
the rationality of the domestic siege lies in its
coherence as drama. Sieges are events 'staged' in
such a \Yay as to attract wider media interest.
Once media exposure is gained, the event then
demands of onlookers that they ponder the question
'what external events have dri\'en me, a reasona
ble person, to such despair, that I am prepared to
behave like a lunatic, and threaten to kill my own
children?'
The Sierra Leone rebels indulged in a spate of
(international) hostage taking in 1994-5. Possession
of the hostages got the rebel movement TV expo
sure internationally. Releasing the hostages, rebel
leader Foday Sankoh, a professional photographer
as well as ex-soldier, and skilled, therefore, in rep
resellt(/tioll, as well as trained in (he practicalities of
violence, explained that they had been seized 'for
their own protection', since Sierra Leone was now
such a dangerous place. This sounds like poor
logic, since thc rebels ',~re the ones making the
country so dangerous, but makes dramaturgical
sense. Sankoh was, it seems, 'posing' his struggle
in siege-like terms to bring out the extent to which
'reasonable people' had turned to desperate meas
ures, faced with the social dereliction caused by
the extensive engagement, over many years, of
patrimonial politicians and business elites in inter
national commerce in gold, slaves, diamonds and
tropical forest products.
Insurgents in Sierra Leone also dra\\' upon
more local dramaturgical resources, especially
those associated with initiation. In Sierra Leone,
the masked 'devil' is an expression of the secret
energy of societies gathered together in this way.
The young initiates captured by rhe rebels return
to the countryside which they lay waste as 'bush
devils'. Their terror campaign is more than repre
selltatioll of a crisis, therefore. It is an attempt to
mobilize power through the expression of 'war as
masquerade'. Theories of performance provide
clues to the essential dramaturgical coherence,
and powerfulness, of what it is the insurgents are
trying to achieve.
548 PAUL RICHARDS
-------------------------------------------
IVar (IS discourse
Globalization Theory argues that the modern world
is constructed as much from svmboljc exchanges as
from material transactions (Waters 1995). The
worlds beyond the periphery of a patrimonial state
in crisis are cut off, to greater or lesser extent, from
regular material transactions the rest of us take for
granted. In practical terms 'state collapse' means
collapse of roads and other communications lead
ing into these marginal regions. For regions 'beyond
the pale' symbolic transactions assume a larger than
normal significance in the attempt to re-establish
contact \\ itll the wider world.
When insurgents entered Sierra Leone in 1991
they demanded an international press conference to
talk to an international audience. They lacked spon
sors and equipment, and the world ignored them.
Once the) had seized their first international hos
tages, outsiders were forced to try and locate the
rebels and find out what they wanted. When negotia
tions opened, one demand of the insurgents (though
not met) was for an international satellite phone link,
to maJ...e up for lost rime in promoting their cause.
Subsequently (as noted) the rebels received TV cov
erage as part of a deal to recover the hostage.!>.
[...J
War itself is a type of text - a violent attempt to
'tell a story' or to 'cut in on the conversation' of
others from whose company the belligerents feel
excluded. [... ]
Cul/ure theory
Far from isolating countries like Liberia and Sierra
Leone from the wider world, as the New Barbarism
literature attempts, we should be :.lctively exploring
[...] in \~hat ways such national tragedies can be
understood from a comparative sociological perspec
tive. Here, it may pay to ponder possible similarities
of cultural response to social exclusion evident in the
thinking of forest rebels in Sierra Leone and anti
Federal forest sun'ivalists in the United States.
Structur,ll position as 'excluded intellectuals' may be
the common thread in the hostile response of both
groups to perceived corruption at tbe federal or pat
rimoni:ll (i.e. hierarchical) metropolJion core.
'Radical scepticism " Douglas \\Irit~ 'may flour
ish (and prove highly destructive) where an elite,
educated and privileged, is faced with unacceptable
arbitrary power, and is helpless to challenge it'
(Douglas 1986, p. 80). Excluded intellectuals
are irresponsibly destructive. \Vhere hierarchs
look to their ancestors, sectarians need mart) rs.
Sometimes, as in Sierra T.eone or Oklahoma City,
these mutually reinforcing processes lead to real
\iolence and tragic consequences.
[...1Tconsider it plausible, and useful, to think
of the rebel movement in Sierra Leone as a sectar
ian intellectual response to the perceived corrup
tion of a metropolitan patrimonial elite. Far from
random, the violence is an expression of the social
exclusion of a group of educated exiles deter
mined to force patrons 'in town' to imagine what
life is like for the young minds stranded 'in the
bush'. [... ]
Understanding the RUF: Excluded
In tellectuals?
[ ... ]
The RUF \\ hen it fir!>t appeared was a small
group of exiles, with a common experie.nce of
being driven to the margins of Sierra Leonean
society and beyond by experiences under the All
People's Congress government of Siab Ste\ens
(1968-85). Living as exiles in Liberia when the
civil war started, sevt>fal preferred to accept the
chance to fight their way hack home than remain
in Liberia as refugees. [... ]
RUF leader Foday Sabana Sankoh, a nati\e of
l\1agburaka in Tonkolili District, 'Aas once a
corporal in the signals section in the Sierra
Lcone army. Cashiered and jailed for se\en
years under suspicion of involvement in a coup
plot against Siaka Ste\ ens in 1971, Sankoh set
up, on release, a photographic business run
from a shed in front of the Public Works
Compound in Bo. TIc later shifted (0 the dia
mond districls, basing himself in Seghwema,
Kailahun District, for several years.
During his Segbwema period Sankoh was noted
for trekking the back paths leading from bush
mining camp to camp, rather than using the roads
and public transport. Li\ ing the reality of stJIC
recession in Kailahun he would haye acquired a
good working knowledge of both the forested
terrain and the lifestyle ,md political sentiments of
the diamond tributors of this border region so
FIGHTING FOR THE RAINFOREST
crucial to the economic fortunes of the state.
Senior figures in government, army and civil sen-
icc had interests in small diamond mining opera
tions and logging operations in the border zone.
Sponsorship ties linking the diamond diggers of
the region to the Freetown political elite, smug
gling, and arbitrary acts of the 'anti-smuggling'
sen ices arc hardly likely to ha\-e escaped the notice
of this itinerant recorder of day-to-daj life as he
scoured the nooks and crannies of the border zone
in embittered internal exile.
Other figures in the RUF share Sankoh's back
ground (rustication from a state institution under
the APe). Philip Palmer, a combatant in tJle
pujohun sector in 1991, identified himself to eye
witnesses as a Liberian-based exile radicalized by
the APe response to student protests against Siaka
Stevens. One of the RUF's senior military figures,
ex-Lieutenant James l\lassally, was jailed for his
alleged invohement in the 1971 coup plot. Some
RUF recruits worked as rural teacher~ prior to the
rebellion_ Some graduates enter teaching only for
lad, of other preferment and sec a rural secondar)
school as a punishment posting. Other recruits
were rusticated student protesters or \\orkers Jiv
ing on, unemployed, in the environs of the institu
~s~m~~th~~b=~~.~~
attacks on the Teachers' Colltge at Bwmmbu in
Kailahun District may have provided a small
'crop' of such disgruntled educators. Later raids
on Njala University College and the Sierra Rutile
mine at ~Iobimbi (both in southern Sierra Leone)
seem to have been spurred by plans to 'liberate'
other 'internal' exiles.
Once rescued, activists seemingly plan revenge
ag-ainst the institution that has shamed them. One
attack on :'-Jjala in 1995 targeted only the universit}
records for destruction. Leaders of the a[[<lck idm
tified themselves as sent-dov.n former sllJdents.
They may have been secking to disguise the fact
that they never graduated. The uru\-crsity authorities
were warned not to try to re-open the institution
while 'the war of liberation' continued.
Only at first sight do these revenge-inspired
anacl.s seem pointless. An attack on the rutile
mine at Mobimbi in October 1995 left many build
ings burnt. The rutile and bauxite mines, among
the vcry few large-scale solvent ventures ilJ the
Sierra Leone countryside, were frequentl) milked
549
on an ad hoc basis by government ministers, unable
to persuade the government to negotiate proper
mining agreements, fair to all parlies.~ In periods
of economic crisis mine managements sometimes
provided the then APC regime with the foreign
exchange or fuel oil necessary to keep the country
running on a week-to-week basis. Such deal~ fre
quently turned out to have been to the private
adv,mtage of the politicians in questionS
The NPRC had promised democrac), but a
democratical I}" elected leader "ould be no guaran
tee that such patrimonial abuses might not return.
The attack on the mine was prefaced by a message
to the NPRC government that there would be no
mine left for any incoming, democratically elected,
president 'to enjoy'.
The abuses tllUS being flagged arc real. It is the
rebel response that provol.es amazement. Why
destroy? \Vh) not take over the facilities and run
them in the insurgent interest? Multinational
miners in Africa are political realists and \\'ould
soon come to terms.
What I \~ant to suggest is that these dramatic
gestures of protest are a 1:) picaI academic response.
They serve to jlluminate (in flames, as it were)
widespread patrimonial abuses linked to mining
and other forms of resource appropriation in the
Sierra Leone countr) side in which national politi
cal elites and international interests appear to have
connived. The point about such protest is that
it makes satisfying sense on paper, or in the mind.
It is the lack of regard for the practical conse
quences in a country of such great poverty that is
so shocking. It is not at all dear how the RUF
would propose running the country without mining
re\"eIlUeS, or do they believe in their hcart-<>f-hearts
that they \1 ill never come to power? This is
wby it seems Mary Douglas (1986) ma) be right.
The irresponsible destructiveness of excluded
intellectual elites can be vcr) great. What could be
a more perfect illustration of her point than to
attack a university, not for loot, but to destroy its
record system?
According to the New Barbarism thesis, the
attacks just described arc evidence that a mindless
or criminal element is at work in Sierra Leone;
just the opposite interpretation is offered here.
This is not barbarism, but the product of the intel
lectual anger of an excluded educated elite. [ ... 1
550 PAUL RICHARDS
Capture: Why the Rebellion Expands
The RUF has expanded through capturing tlle
kind of young people it considers potential recruits
to its cause. There is a calculated judgement that
dislocated vouths in mining-wrecked countryside
will come to see the world like the RUF, even when
forced to join the movement against their \\~I1. But
how is this loyalty induced?
In the shan term fear must be a factor
especially fear of what government forces will do
to any young person sllspcctcd of association with
the movement, if re-captured. Certainly, summary
execution of rebel suspects (as carefully docu
we have been dumped in the darkness of the hush.
mented by Amnesty international since 1(92) has
This darkness comprises both reduction in the
served as a powerful aid to the RUF's retention of
its captive youngsters (Amnest~ International
1992,1993).
But the rebels have more positive inducements
to 10yaJty as well. Some are straightforwardl)
material. One young girl, asked why she came to
identify with the people who had seized her from
her home, answered frankly: 'the~' offered me a
choice of shoes and dresses - I never had decent
shoes before.'
It is also important to realize that the rebels
consider their business camps an alternative to the
failed schooling found in the wider society. State
recession means dysfunctional schooling. Teachers'
salaries, pinances at best, were paid late or not at
all. Conditions worsened under the financial aus
terity programmes imposed on the country by the
1MF and World Bank from 1977 onwards. Rural
teachers' salaries were paid last of all. 1 have \ ivid
memories of the time and money rural teachers in
schools around Gola Forest wasted in journeys to
the provincial headquarters in Kenema to enquire
whether long back-dated pay had yet arrived.
Sometimes they could only obtain amounts 'on
account' by paying heavy 'interest' to the authorities
('bribes' by any other name).6
For many seized youngsters in the diamond dis
tricts functional schooling had broken dOWll long
before the RUF arrived. The rebellion was a
chance to resume their education. Captives report
being schooled in RUF camps, using fragments
and scraps of revolutionary texts for books, and
receiving a good hasic training in the arts of bush
warfare..Many captive children adapt quickly,]
and cxult in new-found skills, and the chance
perhaps for the first time in therr li\'cs, to sho\\~
what they can do. Stood-<lown boy soldiers in
I.iberia have spoken longingly of their guns not a~
weapons of destruction but as being the fir~t pie(;e
of modern kit they have ever kno\\11 how to handle
Hodges 1992).
The ReF is clearly limited in the weapons at its
command (being restricted mainly w supplies
obtained through ambush of, or deals \\ ith, govern
ment troops or troops in neighbouring countriL"i)
and, boy-scout-like, the youngsters in the mOve
ment carve wooden replicas to create the impr~
sion of greater strcngth than they actually possess.
l ]
Cultural Resonances:
Camps and Initiation
The RUf knows how to manipulate to its advan
tage the cultmal 'infrastructure' of rural life in
Sierra Leone. Two aspects require brief introduc
tion here - forest camps and initiation.
The RUF believes it is fighting to save Sierra
Leonean society from itself Cut off from that soci
ety by e.xile, and five years of forest-based combat,
the leadership sees devaStation all around it. This
vision, reinforced by 'sobels' and bandits, is a sclf
fulfilling prophecy. Attacks on ci"illans and atroci
ties against \yomen 'prove' that wider socicty is as
the RLF belie\'es it to be - dangerous and corrupt.
The burning of villages and the killing of \-illagcrs
make concrete the assertion that capti\-es havc no
home to return to, at least until larger \'ictory is won.
Even the international hostages were told that their
capture was necessary 'for their safety'. As in thc
chaotic days of the O\'erseas slave trade, security is to
be found in isolated camps deep inside the forest.
The main idiom of transition from childhood
to adulthood in forest society is that of initiation,
followed by instruction in adult ways .in thc 'bush
school'. The Poro Society 'devil' comes to town to
seize young boys from their mothers. In thc colo
nial period, before the value of Westcrn education
was fully appreciated, the state, in effect, did thl:
same thing when seeking to fill its schools. But now
the educational 'devil' no longer calls. In a state
near to collapse, with teachers no longer regularly
paid, the RUF 'devil' steps into the breach.
FIGHTING FOR THE RAINFOREST
With initiation alread) deeply etched in the
Ii' es of /l1an~ young people in thc Upper Guinean
forests, capture may Serve to recapitulate aspects
of the experience. \'illagers appl) an initiation
'model' to the disaster that has befallen them; they
perceive that their children have been taken from
them by force (as in initiation) and turned into
alien creatures by the power of rebel magic.
On'ered rudimentary schooling in rhe hush, and
instruction in skills of guerrilla warfarc, many
captives quickly readjUSt to their lot.
[...J
The r.eopard Has Come to Town:
The Dramaturgy of Forest War
Sierra Leone is a compact ring of forested or
once-forested territory gathered around a coastal
primate cit), Freetown, containing today about
20-25 per cent of the country's total population.
[... J The country has a long histor) of \~olcnt
opposition between 'bush' (the forest) and 'to\\ n'
(established patrimonial authority linked to O\er
seas trade).
Spreading from a heavily forested periphery
from which a \vea.kcneo patrimonial state was seen
to be withdrawing, the present \\,lr [... 1is seen by
protagonists [... J as a crisis of 'bush' come to
'town' (or as a saying puts it, lepet d01l Kalil lla ron
- '(-he leopard has entered the city'). The leopard
is a long-standing and powerful symbol of malign,
and illegitimate, political agency in Sierra Leonean
lire. According to one localtheor) it is the animal
form assumed by weakened political elites seeking,
by stcalth, to rebuild their political fortunes
(Richards J 993). The rebel leadership stalks the
cnfeebled patrimonial state to re\erse and revenge
its earlier banishment from political light into
outer forested darkness.
But the crisis of bush come to town has interna
tional resonances as well. Sierra Leone was one of
thc first places where the Western world came into
exploitative contact with the great African rain
forcst.
[... ] The Sierra Leone river was an early, and
late, centre for the slave trade, based on the fort at
Bunce Island. [... JA tradition of meeting Atlantic
maritime service needs survi,ed until very recently.
Freetown harbour was a major staging pOSt for
551
Allied forces fighting in North Africa during the
Second World War. [... J In a last gasp of empire,
Freetown harbour was used for bunkering pur
poses by the British Falklands fleet.
Shaped b) its imoh-ement in the violence-laden
Atlantic world, Sierra Leonc has also felt thc
impress of comparably violent attacks on local forest
resources. l... 1
By their action$ Ihe rebel~ make a rhetorical
point deeply rooted in this troubled history of
resource extraction. First you lIsed our harbour
and took us as slaves, and then you took our tim
ber, ivory and valuable mineral resources. But now
educational opportunity for which the country has
long been famous, and the physical darkness that
frequentlY afflicted the two rural higher educa
tional establishmenlS from \\ hich some of the
rebel lC'adership comes.
The insurgents usc the forest, then, as a
stage on which to enact a drama of state reces
sion. But with their stage opening directl) onto
the Atlantic world the rebels hoped that this
might make the drama visible even to the inter
national community as far away as New York
and London. [... )
The Political Culture of Patrimonial
Decline
Youth culture in Sierra Leone reflects some of
these dilemmas of state recession. This is seen
especially clearly in interpretations of the Rambo
film First Blood, \ iewed locally as a charter for
self-empowerment under conditions of patrimo
nial decline. The rebels haw tried to huild on this
legacy. [... ]
Journalistic comment on Sierra T,cone, and
more so on J ,iberia, has regularly dr3\\1l attention
to the carnival-like elements of insurgency i_n the
region, implicitly contrasting, so .\1ary Moran
(J 994) has argued, the bizarre battle costumes of
young fighters in Liberia (Kung Fu kit, horror
comic masks, young men setting off for battle in
women's dresses and underwear) with the clean,
orderly, rationalistic uniforms and battle order of
the allied forces in the Gulf War, the mcdia-ori
ented show-case for modern combat.
552 PAUL RICHARDS
_Moran interprets these odd costumes, con
vincingly, as youthful jelo: d'espril intended to
'attack' the values of the Liberian regime of
Samuel Doe. Doe was seen by his opponents, she
argues, as the epitome of the ignorant, brutal
rank-and-file soldiery \\ hose day-to-day pert)
brutality served to keep many African post-colo
nial regimes in power. The crossdressing, horror
comic-helmeted, young teenage rebel lighter
was, by contrast, brilliantly recapitualting an
inventive pre-colonial rradition, where dress
served to disguise amI protect, rather than
express, the true character of the warrior, But
here we have no simple reversion to the African
past. These are post-modern costumes, straight
from I long Kong or an American joke shop cata
logue, made mainly from that deepl) traditional
African raw material - plastic.
As Kellie Conteb's remarks suggest, the car
nival clement is not without tactical purpose.
But perhaps at the same time the costumes are
also close in spirit to the international Saturday
Night finery of the diamond digger 'on the town'
(narcs and platform-soled shoes were especial
1970s favourites). The imprecator) graffiti the
RUF leave behind in sacked villages relate to the
rich stock of slogans adorning the shutters and
lintels of the village rooms of school-educated
young people throughout rural Sierra Leone.
These graffiti arc often ironic commentary on
the strange juxtapositions of the local and glo
bal, as experienced by those at the borrom of the
social pile.
[...J
All warfare has its expressive dimcnsions. In
low-intensit) warfare, in poor countries like Sierra
Leone, this expressive dimension may be highly
visible, for want of more practically functional kit.
It deseryes proper exegesis, not the 'isn't this
bizarre' dismissal it receives in the international
media.
r... JThe complaint that the Sierra Leone rebels
have never articulated their political demands is
true only to the extent that the intended audience
continues to ignore the expressive poses they strike
through their destructive actions.
One of these poses seems to grow out of a
widespread interpretation young people in Sierra
Leone havc made of the 1982 Rambo film, Firsl
Blood.
[... '1
Video has had a wide impact in the forested
diamond districts of Sierra Leone, and ulis little
drama of the sociall:xclusion of the miseducated IS
often cited by young people as one of their favourite
films, or the film they found most enlightening
(significantly, the word they most often use in this
context is 'educative'). Firsr Blood has seyeral times
been compared, by informants, to the impact of
studying Shakespeare's Mru"/lelh at school. iHacberh
strips the mask of public service from politics to
re\"Cal naked personal ambition beneath. The point
that strikes home about Rambo is social exclusion.
Ejected from town b) the corrupt and comfortable
forces of law and order, with only his \\ its for pro
tection, Rambo is on his 0\\11 in the forest. The Willi
of social exclusion, the film seems to say, is uncon
strained violencc. That violence is cathartic, since it
sen'es to wake up society at large to the neglected
cleverness of youth. The film speaks eloquent!) to
young people in Sierra Leone fearing a collap~e I)f
patrimonial support in an era of state recession.
Western media critics see little in R.lmlw
beyond 'American Cold War militarism' under lhe
Reagan presidency. [... J To Tomer amI Tomer
(1994) Rambo symbolizes a passing era in \\hkh
war was based on brawn and bravery not brains.
Young Sierra Leoneans [... ] draw an exactly oppo
site conclusion from First Blood. Rambo suggests
that someone young, clever and strong always has
a chance to outsmart the well-armod but sltl\\
witted opponent. It is curious to see prophet Jnd
disciples at odds over this point. The Tomers
focus on the computer software in 'smart \\ar';
young Sierra Leoneans prefer to note the
unbounded potential of the human soft" arc.
Rebels in both Liberia and Sierra Leone were
alert to the political potential of the Rambo mes
sage for their young captives from the beginning.
An eye-witness in Gbarnga in the early days of
the NPFL reported five generator-powered \ideo
parlours running night and day to show such
material to young: fighters. A young combatant
interviewed attests that all factions in Liberia lind
Sierra Leone have routinely used Firsr 8/'11/
and similar videos to inspire, to entertain, and
FIGHTING FOR THE RAINFOREST
perhaps to orient their young captives rowards the
ambush skills that are the staple fare of uus kind of
101'>-lelcl jungle warfare. The Rambo figltre fre
lJuently appeared in the murals depicting the war
p,linted by urban youths in Sierra Leone foUowing
the NPRC coup. Rebels frequentl) affected Rambo
st) Ie headba.nds. Some adopted the name. One RUF
l:ommando ,in Kailahun - summing up the war in
twO \\ords - was knOWTl as 'Nasty Rambo'.
[...J
Rambo is a trickster figure in classic Wcst
'rican mould. His exploits are close in spirit to
those of ~lusa 'No, the youth trickster ot" Mende
tradition (Cosentino 1989). Musa \Vo stories sen'e
to remind Mende elders not to ncglect the energy
and cunning of the young. Rather ule challenge is
to harness these skills for the greater social good.
The RUF rebellion seems at first to indicate patri
monialism at the end of its teUler about to be
replaced by the violence of youthful self-empower
ment. This would suggest tllat the RUF's ultimate
aim is to replace the patrimonial system with a
revolUTionary egalitarian system of its own devis
iog. But another interpretation is also possible.
The Schadenfreude of the young rebels may be
equivalent to 'wrecking the police station', The
main aim of the destruction may not be to clear
away the old system entirel), bur to establish a
national debate aboUL a ne\\ and fairer patrimonial
ism. Year Zero or an Mrican Welfare State? - this
remains the major unresolved question concerning
the war aims of the insurgents in Sierra Leone.
Conclusion
Balled international reaction to the war in
Sierra Leone suggests little understanding of the
Notes
A word signifying the opposite of Utopia.
Tim" irth, Under-Secretary at the US Deparnnenl
of Global Affairs, faxed Kaplan's article to every US
embassy around the \\odd (Bradshaw 1996).
According to the same source the article 'so ralLied
top ufficials at the UniLed Nations that lhey called a
confidential meeting to discuss its impJications'.
553
socio-economic and forest-bound conditions under
which the RUF has expanded, or why the O1O\e
mem could continue to survive more or less indefi
nirely beyond the recession-shrunk edges of a \\C'Jk
state. According to outside asswnptions, 'proper'
rebellions in Africa should havc 'people' (an cthnic
identity), contiguous territory under unambiguous
control of the rebels, and an announced programme
that the world at large can understand. In short,
the)" should be Biafra-Iike 'mini-states' in waiting.
"\lone of these criteria apply to the rebel movement
in Sierra T.eone, so doubts were entertained about
whether it existed at aU. External views are still
dominated b) the notion that African states are
arbitrary colonial creations, and that political
progress will depend on the emergence of more
'natural' unit&. Although the RUF might not be out
f place as a sun"jvalist movcment in ,Montana, say,
there is no place for any such Rambo-style social
movement in the mental schemes outsidcrs havc
laid down for Africa. If the category does not exist
then neither can the phenomenon.
Here, howevel~ a different argument has been pro
posed. The RUF is much more readily lmderstand
able, it is suggested, if the background of state
recession is put in place. The movement is a creature
of the Imresolvcd contradictions of the post-colonial
state. Cold War aid kept alive a fa<;:ade ofintemational
respectabilit) - the official state. Donor pressure in
the post-Cold War period has demanded deep
reforms - but the reformers are leaning not on a real
set of institutions, but on a fa<yade. The real state,
much reduced but still fed in significant mcasure by
diamond wealth, remains patrimonial in character.
Donors cannot reach t!lat state, and Sierra Lconeans
ha.\e not yet developed any finn consensus about
what the) \\ ant in its place or how to achicvc it.
3 Capture by the rebels, by contrast, seem.~ to induce
the apparently paradoxiealloyaltics berween hostage
and captor known in Western psychiatric models as
the SLOckholm Syndrome.
4 The management of the rutile mine had been anxious
that government should replace these informal arrang'
ments with an up-dated mining act and transparent
 -- -

554 PAUL RICHARDS

royalr}' agreements fair both to government and mining

interests. There was much foot~Jragging on the gov
1977, was recruited in 1991 while working as a sec
ondary school teacher under these kinds of condi 39

ernment side, since the existing ad hoc arrangements
were advantageously opaq ue.
A documentary made for BBC TV in 1991 on the
environmental const.:quences of mining found plenty
tions in isolated Kallahun District.
7 It is relevant to note \\'hat psychiatrists tcrm the
StocJ.holm Syndrome. This is the condition in which
terrified captives subsequent I) identify with their
Sacrifice as Terror

of local voices ready to testify against the companies.
But the programme makers failed to press the ques
tion of the gO\'ernment's role in such abuses. The
documentary was seen on video throughout the
countr\.
6 One of the leading figures in the ReF in 1995, Fayia
Musa, a Njab graduate in agriculturt.: and partici
pant in studt.:nt protests against Siaka Stcyens in
captors - per/laps because to their surprise they arc
treated with respect, even kindness - and become The Rwandan Genocide of 1994
loyal supporters of the hostage-takers' cause. \
famous example was the case of an American news
paper heiress seized by an urban guerrilla group, the
Symbionese Liberation :\rmy; the young woman
later became an apparentl~ willing participant in U1C Christopher C. Taylor
group's armed operations.

References
I\mnest)' International
1992 Th~ ex/mjl/dicial e.recl/tioll of suspcr/cd r~bels alld
collaborators. London: International Secretariat of
Amnesty International, Inde>.. AFR 51/02192.
1993 Siam Leolle. Prisoners of war? Children dtlaille
in barracks alld prison. London: International
Secretariat of Amnt.:sty International, Index AFR
51/06/93.
Bradbur~', M.
1995 Rebels witl/fw/ a cause: all e-xploratory report for
CARE Britaill all the conflict ofSierra Lcone. London:
unpublished mimt.:o.
Cosentino, D.
1989 'Midnight charters: Ylusa Wo and the .\iende
myths of chaos.' In \V. Arens & 1. Karp, eds., The
creativi(l' of power. Washington DC: Smithsonian
Institution Press.
Douglas, M.
1986 'The social preconditions of radical skepticism'.
In J. Law, ed., Po rver, action alld bdief a lief/) sociology
ufi:llolPledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Hodges, R.K.
1992 'A \iew of psychological problems resulting
from the Liberian civil conflict and recommendations
for counselling and other correctiye activities.'
Appendix V, in .1 Rc-port ofthe Roulldtable COllfi'wlce
all Strategics and Dire.;/ioll for lhe ReconstructiOlI an
D,"",e!opm(/// ofLiberia. The New African Research &
Development Agency, Monrovia.
Huntington, S.P.
1993 'The clash of civilizations?' Foreigll AjJairs, 72
(Summer).
Kaplan, R.D.
1993 Bill/tim gliosis: ajoumey through IlIStory. London:
Macmillan.
Kaplan, R.D.
1994 'The coming anarchy: how scarcity, crime, O\'er
population, and disease are rapidly destroying the
social fabric of our planet.' Allantic MomMy, I:"cbruary
pp.44-76.
Kpundeh, S.].
1995 Politics and corruptiOTl in A/n'm: a .:ase study (~r
Sierra Leone. Lanham MD: University Press of
America.
Lipsedge, M. and Littlewood, R.
1996 'Psy chopathology and its public models: a pro
visional typology and a dramaturg'Y of domestic
sieges', submitted to BrilJ,(1J Journal ~r Mediwl
Psychology.
Moran, Mary
1994 'Warriors or soldiers: masculinity and ritual
transvestism in the Liberian ci\'il war.' In Constance
R. Sutton, ed., Fell/Illism, nationalism tllld militans
Arlington VA:AmeriC3nAnthropologicalAssociation/
Association for Feminist Anthropology.
Musa, S. and Musa, J. Lansana
1993 The im:osioll ofSierra !-eolle: a chrunide ~rC['t'nt.,
ofa llUtiollllnder siege. Washington DC: Sierra Leone
Institute for Policy Studies.
Riebards, P.
1993 'Natural symbols and natural history: chimpan
zees, elephants and experiments in Mende thought:
In K. Milton, ed., Elluironmcn/alism: the i:ien! l"'/II
Ilthropology, ASA Monograph 32, London:
Routledge.
Toffler, A. and Toffler, H.
1994 /I'ar lind ali/i-WilY: slirviJ,'al lit the dawlI oftlze lht
wllliry. London: Little, Brown & Co.
Waters,].
1995 Clollalizatioll. London: Routledge.
Although much of vvhat I will concern myself with
in this paper involves the politil:s of ethnicity in
R\\anda, my major point is that we cannot make
sense of the Rwanuan traged) through political
and historical analysis alone, although tbese are
certainly necessary. Indeed, something political
and historical happened in Rwanda in 1994, but
something cultural happened as well. The violence
\\hich occurred there, and which continues to a
lesser extent today, was not merely symptomatic of
a fragmented social order succumbing to exter
nally and internally generated tensions. Beneath
the aspel:t of disoruer there lay an eerie order to
the violence of 1.994 Rwanda. \lany of the actions
followed a cultural patterning, a structured and
structuring logic, as indiv'idual Rwandans lashed
OUl against a perceived internal OIher that threat
ened in their imaginations both their personal
integrity and the cosmic order of the state. It was
overwhelmingly Tutsi \v ho were the sacrificial vic
tims in what in many respects was a massiv'e ritual
of purification, a ritual intended to purge the
nation of 'obstructing beings' as the threat of
obstruction was imagined through a Rwandan
From Christopher C. Taylor, Sacrifice as Terror: Th( Rmlllldllll Genocide of 1994, Berg Publishers (2001), pp. 101-2,
105,110-14,117-19,127-37,139-40, J42-5, 153-7, J67-8, 174-6.
ontology that situates lhe body politic in analogous
relation to the individual human body.
As J will attempt to show [... J, many of the rep
resentations concerning bodily integrity that
I encountered in popular medicine during field
work in Rwanda in 1983-5, 1987, and 1993-4,
emerged in the tel:hniques of physical cruelty
employed by Hutu extremists during the geno
cide. But there was no simple cultural determin
ism to the Rwandan genocide. I do not advance the
argument that Lhe political eV'ents of 1994 were in
any way caused by these symbols nor by Rwandan
'culture', conceived of in a simplistic and cultural
ist way in the manner of Goldhagen's contrO\-eT
sial analysis of the :"Jazi genocide (1996). These
representations operated as mueh during times of
peace as at times of war. The 'generative schemes'
the logical substrate of oppositions, analogies, and
homologies - upon which the representations were
based constituted for many RW:U1dans, a practical,
everyday sense of body, self, and others. Because
these 'generative schemes' were internalized
during early' sociali7.ation, they took on a nearly
unconscious or 'goes wilhout saying' quality
556 CHRISTOPHER C. TAYLOR
(Bourdieu, 1990: 67-79). Although many Rwandan
social actors embodied this knowledge, tlley never
explicitly vcrbalized it. It could not, thereforc, be
ideological in any direct or simple way, despite the
fact that Hutu extremists made use of political
symbols that bore the imprint of the generative
schemes.
The symbolic system I describe herc takes root in
represcntations iliat go back at least to the nine
teentll century and elements of it can be discerned
in the rituals of Rwandan sacred kingship practised
during pre~colonial and early colonial times. In that
sense much of this symbolism is relatively old. It
must be emphasized, however, that neither the sym
bolic nor the nonnative structures of early Rwanda
were faithfully and mechanically reproduced dur
ing ilie events of 1994. Clearly both manifest conti
nuity with and divergence from ilie past. The
context in which the symbols appeared was quite
contemporary, for the discourse of Ilutu ethnic
nationalism with its accompanying characteristics
of primordialism, biological determmism, essential
ism, and racism are nothing if not modern. [... ]
Niany [... ] techniques of cruelty were encoun
tered in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide: impal
ing, evisceration of pregnant women, forced iJlcest,
forced cannibalism of family members. There were
also other forms of torture and terror in Rwanda
that mayor may not have occurred in Burundi: the
widespread killing of victims at roadblocks erected
on highways, roads, streets, or eyen on small foot
paths; thc severing of the Achilles' tendons of
human and eactle victims; emasculation of men;
and breast oblation of women.
In order to make these forms of violence com
prehensiblein terms of tlle local symbolism, It is
first necessary to understand, as Pierre Clasues
instructs us, that social systems inscribe 'law'
onto the bodies of their subjects (1974).
Occasionally phrsical torture is an integral part
of the ritual process intended to inculcate soci
ety's norms and values. Using The Pnud Colon)!
by wa)' of illustration Clastres states, 'Here Kafka
designates the body as a writing surface, a surface
able to receive the law's readable text'. [... ]
Clastres expands upon this by considering the
cognitive role of the body in ritual, 'The body
mediates in the acq uisition of knowledge; iliis
knowledge inscribes itself upon the body'
[1974: 154]. And ritual, Clastres emphasizes,
involves the mnemonics of ordeal and pain, '[ ... 1
society prints its mark on the body of its youth.
[... ] The mark acts as an obstacle to forgetting;
the body carries the traces of a memory printed
r
upon it; the body is a 1IIem01Y' 1974: 156].
[ ... ]
Rwandan Symbolism and the Body
The Rwandan body is, following Clastres, an
1: ... ]
imprinted body - imprinted with the condensed
memories of history. Following Kapferer, it is onlv
through myth and s}lnbol that we can gTaSp th~
logic of these condensed memories and their
significance to Rwandan Butu nationalism because
the latter derived much of its passionate force from a
mythic logic constitutive of being and personhood:
Broadly, the legitimating and emotional force of
my th is not in the events as such but in the logic
that conditions their significance. This is so \\hen
the logic is also vital in the way human actors are
culturally given to constituting a self in the every
day routine world and move out toward others in
that world. Mythic reality is mediated by human
beings into tl1e worlds in which they live. Where
human beings recognize the argument of mythic
reality as corresponding to lheir o\m personal
constitutions - their orientation within and mO\c
ment tI1rough reality - so my! h gathers force and
can come to be seen as embodying ultimate truth.
J\lyth so enliYened, 1suggest, can become imbued
with commanding po\yer, binding human actors
to the logical movement of its scheme. In this
sense, myth is not subordinated to the interests of
the individual or group but can itselJhave motive
force. It comes to define significant experience in
the world, cxperience which in its significance is
also conceived of as intrinsic to the constitution
of the person. By virtue of the fact that myth
engages a reasoning which is a.l50 integral to ew
rvday realities, part of tbe taken-for-granted (lr
'habi tus' [Bourdieu, 1977] of the mundane world,
myth can charge the emotions and fire the pas
sions. (Kapferer, 1988: 46-7)
Nevertheless, in order to understand these mythic
and pre-reflective dimensions of ontology, we
need to move beyond Kapferer's and Dumont's
SACRIFICE AS TERROR
categories of 'egalitarian and individualistic'
rersUS 'hierarchical and encompassing'. We need
t<l shift analysis (0 an almost 'molecular' leyel and
to consider tile structures of thought that underlie
the constTuction of the moral person in Rwanda
and that constitute a specific practical logic of
being in the world. These structures must be seen
bom in their formalist dimension and in specific
instances of their use and enactment in everyday
social life. Proceeding in this fashion we may then
be able to appreciate that, lurking beneath the
extraordinary events and violence of the genocide,
one perceives tbe logic of ordinary socialil)'.
Much of this ordinal'y; practical logic can be
discerned in Rwandan practices related to the
body and aimed at maintaining it or restoring it to
health and integrity. From Rwandan populJ.T med
ical practices that I observcd during the 1980s,
I have advanced the hypothesis elsewhere that a
root meraphor underlies conceptualizations of the
body (Taylor, 1992). Basically these conceptualiza
tions are characterized by an opposirion between
orderly states of humoral and other f1ow> to disor
derly ones. [... ] Analogies are constructed that
take this opposition as their base and then relate
bowly processes to those of social and natural life.
In the unfolding of human and natural events,
flow/blockage symbolism mediates between phys
iological, sociological, and cosmological levels of
causality. Popular healing aims at restoring bodily
flows that have been perturbed by' human negli
gence and malevolence. Bodily fluids such as
blood, semen, breast milk, and menstrual blood
arc a recurrent concern as is the passage of ali
ments through the digestive tract. [... ] Pathological
states are characterized by obstructed or excessiye
flo\\'s and perturbations of iliis sort may signify i.ll
ness, diminished fertility, or death.
[ ... ]
Popular Medicine
During my fieldwork in Rwanda in the 1980s,
I found that illnesses were often characterized by
perceived irregularities in f1uid flows and that
these tended to have an alimentary or reproductive
;ymptomatic focus. Concern with ordered f10ws
and their proper embodiment was n01 just imp li
c.1led i.n illness, however; it was also implicated in
557
health. From the very moment when a human
being enters this world, these metaphors figure
prominently in the cultural construction of the
person. Practices associated with childbirth, for
example, focus upon certain portions of the child's
anatomy: Rural Rwandans that I inlen iewed both
in northern and souiliern Rwanda duri.ng the 1980s
recounted versions of the follo\ving practices.
ftcr giving' birth a ne" mother is secluded for
a period of eight days (tOday iliis period is often
shorter). On the ninth day, the newborn child is
presented to other members of ilie family and local
community for the first rime (gllso!tora l/IIIWalw).
This rite of passage can only be performed afrer
the baby's body has been examined and found to be
free of anal malformations. People at this occasion
receive a meal, especially ilie children present, who
are given favourite foods. These children in turn
bestow a nickname on the new-born child, which
will remain their name for the child. A few months
later, the parents give the child another name, but
the children continue to call the infant by their
name. The meal given to the children is termed
kuryo ubu!I.l'o/lo, which means 'to eat the baby's
excrement', for Rwandans say that a tiny quantity
of the baby's faecal matter is mixed with the food.
This appellation celebrates the fact that the baby's
body has been found to be an 'open conduit', an
adequatc vessel for perpetuating the process of
'flow'. In a sense, the baby's faeces are its first gift
and the members of his age class are its first recip
ients. The children at the ceremony incorporate
the child into ilieir group by symbolically ingest
ing one of his bodily products. Their bestowal of a
name upon ilie infant manifests their acceptance of
the child as a social being.
The confirmation of the baby's body as an 'open
conduit' is a socially and morally salient image. If
the body were 'closed' at the anal end, the baby
would still be able to ingest, though not to excrele.
The baby would be able to receive, but unable to
give up or pass on that which it had received. In
effect, its body would be a 'blocked' conduit or
pathway. In social terms, such a body would be
unahle to participate in reciprocit), for while it
could receive, it could never give (see also
Beidelrnan, 1982). That gift-giving and reciprocity
are important aspects where Rwandan concepts of
the moral person are concerned can be discerned
558 CHRISTOPHER C. TAYLOR
from the term for 'man' in Kinyarwanda
lJ7/Ugllbu - for it is derived from the \-crb, kugl/ba,
which means 'to give'. The construction of the
moral person among rural Rwandans is contingent
upon the social attestation that the person prop
erly embodies the physiological atrributes that
analogically evoke the capacity to reciprocate. This
entails the capacity to ingest and the capaciry to
excrete, or, in socia-moral terms, the capaciry LO
receive and llle capacity to gi\'e. Consequently,
twO portions of the anatomy and rheir unob
structed connection are at issue: the mouth and
the :mus. By analogical extension the concern with
unobstructed connection and unimpeded move
ment characterizes earlier Rwandan symbolic
thought abour the topography of the land, its ri\
ers, roads, and pathways in general.
lllnesses trcated by Rwardan popular healers are
often said to be caused by the malevolent actions of
other human beings r...) Sorcerers act upon others
by .Irrest ing their Dow of generati\-e fluids; they
make women sterile and men inlpotenL They are
also vampirish, anthropophagic beings who para
sitically and invisibly suck away the blood and other
vital fluids of their victims_ In other instances 50r
erers may induce fluids to leave the body in a tor
rent causing symptoms such as haemorrhagic
men<;rruation, the romiting of blood, projectile
vomiting, and violent diarrhoea. There are thus
two basic expressions to symptoms in this model:
'blocked flo\\' and 'haemorrhagic flow'.
[ ... )
Close to the southern Rwandan town of Butare,
1 elicited the following illness narrative in 1984
from a woman named Verediana \\ho had con
sulted a healer named Matthew. This narrative is
remarkable in that it illusuates the imagery of per
turbed menstruation, perturbed lactation, reduced
fertility, and interruption during the course of a
journey. At the time, howeycr, I had little idea that
the events related in this woman's story were con
nected in any other way than that \\hich she per
sistentl) emphasized: thesc were persistent
misfortunes whose seriality proved that they were
due to the malevolent influence of sorcerers_
\terediana came to ~latthew convinced that she
had been poisoned. This time she had been sick
since .11.11) 1983, approximately one year beforc I
met her. Her primary syrmptom consisted of
prolonged, 'lbundant menstruatlon. Although she
had \isited a hospital and received injections that
stopped her haemorrhagic periods, she still felt
intensely afraid. She often had trouble eating
Recently she and her husband had separated.
Immediately afLer their separation her symptoms
improved, then they began to worsen ane\\.
According to "erediana, it was the older brother
of her husband and his \\ ife who were her poison
ers_ She believed that this man afTIieted others
through the use of malevolent spirits. In previous
years she had been suspicious of another brother
of her husband, a man who was suspected of sor
cery anc1later killed by a group of his neighbours.
She also felt that her husband was in league with
his brothers all of whom were eager to have her
out of the way.
In recounting earlier misfortunes, Verediana
explained that her third pregnancy had been inter
rupted by the baby's premature birth at eight and
a half months. Somehow the child managed to
survive despite her reduced lactation. Before this
occurrence, she had lost a child. During the trou
bled events of 1973 - revived tensions between
) lutu and Tursi and the government's inabilit~ to
deal with the situat ion had led to a military coup
she was being transported to the hospital in labour.
She recalls that there were numerous roadblocks
and barriers erected on the roads. Despite these
barriers, she finally arrived safely at the hospital.
Uer child was born alive, but died the next day.
When 1 suggested to her that her difficulty in
reaching the hospital may have had morc to do
with national events in Rwanda than with actions
of her persecutors, she replied, 'Yes, but why did I
go into labour at just such a time;'
:V1atthe\1 's diagnosis was that Vered iana \\-as suf
fering from Ill//Ilgeztl affliction, a spirit illness that
can Cduse excessi\'e blood flow from the \agina.
otice that in this narrative, Verediana speaks of
disorderly bodil) flows: haemorrhagie men~trua
tion, premature birth, and diminished lacl.uion.
She also mentions physical obstructions enl:oun
tered while ell mult' to the hospital in 19/3. The
background to this incident, the political e\ ents of
1973, constjtutes a moment when political rela
tions between Rwanda's two most numeroUS eth
nic groups, theTutsi and the llutu, had degenerated
into violence.
SACRIFICE AS TERROR
.\lan) of the details that \'eredi:uJa employs in
her narrative arc images of incompletion, parrjaJ
arrest, or obstruction: difficulty in eating, dimin
i,hed lactation, barriers on the roads, a child who
dies soon after birth, or a baby who \\ as born
prematurely - Ulat is, it left her \Iomb before it
had been completely formed h) the process of
intensified mixing of husband's semen and wife's
blood that is supposed to occur during the final
stages of pregnancy (guRurtlRuza)_ Other details
are images of e:\cessive flow: menstrual periods
thaI are prolonged and haemorrhagic.
She impJicatt.'5 se\'eral domains of problematic
social relations that merg-e together in her story:
difficulties \\ ith htr husband in rhe context of a
polygynous household, relations \Iit h her affines,
political conflict between Tutsi and Hutll during
lY71 This \Ioman's staT) is rcmarl..ab1e in touch
ing so man) Ie\ c1~ at once. While the sy mptomatic
'oCU5 IS her body, an analog) is constantly being
drawn betwecn it and other domains of social life:
her relationship with her husband, her relation
ship \\ ith her 'lffim.'s, even the relarions bet\\een
f\.lTsi and I lUlU at the nationallc\el. Her narrati\ e
mO\C5 from her bod), to the household, to the
c\tended tilmil), to the nation in a seamless seriCli
of sy mbolically logical h.-ap" for all are posed in
term, of bodily and social processes whose move
ment or ohstruction arc causes for concern.
[ ... )
Ritual, Power, and Genocide
I~,ucs of personhood and the body, aU of \\ hich are
generally implicated in nationalistic e:o.pressions of
\'io!ence, do nlll follow a universal logic. Lilewi~e,
this IOf(ic is not limired to the common exigenC) to
eliminate as m:lI1) of t he regime's adversaries ~
possible_ State-promoted \iolence persistently
detic:, the state's attempts to 'rat ionalize' and 'routi
nize' it. The psychologi(:ally detached, dispassion
ate tOrturer does not exist; the acult ural tOrturer
who acts independently of the IlIIbill1.1 that he or she
cmbllclies dOt.."S not exist. l\or can rhe interposition
of killing machines (lr technology efface what h.afka
so perccpti"el~ rel.:ognized in Tlte PL't/ill Colony
that societies 'write' their signalures onto the bod
ies of their sacrificial \ iClims. A.. FouC:lUlt shO\I s,
Power constructs human subjects and a certain
559
homolOg) ohtains bef\leen the quotidian
disciplinary practices employed by social instint
tions like t.he army or the school to produce 'decile
bodies', and rhe more coercive measures employed
against criminals and enemies of the state (1979).
Taking this observation further, one might :lsk: why
the French once used Lbe guillotine, the Spanish
the garrotte, rhe English the rope, while Americans
electrocute, g,IS, or lculal1~ inject thuse in its midsl
whom it wishe;, to ohliterate from tbe moral com
munity) Among the numerous forms of statc CfU
cit) that Edward Peters e~amines in TOl'tllre, he
notes that 'there seem to be culturally-fa\ oured
forms of torture in different societies' (1996: 1/1).
1'01 all methods are used e\'l:rywhere. In Greece,
for e~ample, tbere appe,us to be a preference for
jil!allgn (the beating of the soles of the feet), ;1 tor
ture thar is absent from L1.Ull America and where
electrical shock predominates. to R\lamla of 199{,
torturers manifested a certain procli\ity to emplo)
violent methods \I ith specilic forms. These forms
betrayed a preoccupation \Iitb the movement of
persons and substances and \I iUl the canals, arter
ies, :mu cooduin; along which persons and sub
stances, flo\\': ri, er~ ro;tdway S, path \1 3Y S, and even
the conduits of the human body SUdl as the l'eprl1
ducljve :1I1d digestive systems.
Controlling Flows
Rivers
In oUler worl.. 1 have analy sed t he ritual and sy m
bolic imponartt.'C of Rwanda '$ rivers in light of the
generative scheme of 110\1 \ ersus blockage. In Ule
kingship ritual !..nO\1 n as the 'path of the \\ aler
ing', for example, the :\'yabugogo and Ny barongo
Rivers sen cd to re\ivify the magico-religiou5
potent) of the dynast') by recycling and reinte
grating Ihe ancestral benevolence of deceased
kings (Taylor, 1988). While in the post-colonial
Rwandan state these ri\ers appe:lr to han: lost
their pre\ ious ritual signiticance, Rwanua's ri\er5
were conscripted into the genocide. This is appar
ent in staLements made by one of the leading pro
ponent;, of Huttl extremism, Leon \ Iugesera.
Well in ad\,mce of the genocide, Rwandan poli
ticians made sl;ltemenrs indicating rhat clements
in the President's entourage were cOnlemphlting
large-scale massacres ofTutsi. One of the baldest
560 CHRISTOPHER C. TAYLOR
pronouncements in this regard came from the
Mugesera, an \1RND part)' leader from the
northern prefecture of Gisenyi. On 22 November
1992, Mugesera spoke to party faithful there. It
was no accident that a \'enue in Gisenyi prefecture
had been chosen for such an inflammatory speech,
because this was the regimc's home turf. Gisenyi
solidly backed the Rwandan government and its
president. For follO\\ing Habyarimana's coup
d'etat in 1973, the region always received more
than its allotted share of state jobs, secondary
school placements, and so forth. Mugesera's words
were not falling on deaf ears:
The opposition parties have plotted with the
enemy to make Byumba prefecture fall to the
111)1e11u. [ ... ] They have plotted to undermine our
armed forces. [... ] The law is quite clear on this
poinl: 'Any person who is guilty of acts aiming at
sapping the morale of the armed forces will be
condemned to death.' What arc we waiting for?
[... ] And "hat about those accomplices (rbyilso)
here who are sending their children to the Rl'F?
Why are we waiting to get rid of these families?
[... ) We have to take responsibility into our own
hands and wipe Ollt these hoodlums. [... ] The
fatal mistake we made in 1959 was La let them [the
Tutsis1get out. [... ] They belong in Erhiopia and
we are going to find them a shortcut to get there
by throwing them into the Nyabarongo ri\er
[which flows northwards]. I must insist on this
point. We have to act. Wipe them all out! (Text
cited from Prunier, 1995: 171-2)
Shortly after this occurrence, Mugesera repeated
the same speech in other Rwamlan venues and
se\'eral violent incidents in which Tutsi were
kil1ed can be directly traced to its instigation.
Although the then Minister of Justice, Stanislas
Mbonampeka, charged Mugesera with inciting
racial hatred and gave orders to have him arrested.
Mugesera took tefuge at an army base where police
dared not enter (Prunier, 1995).
In this speech there are several important ele
ments, some of which arc more apparent and oth
ers less so. That Mugesera is calling for the
extermination of all enemies of the regime and
especially Tutsi seems clear. The old theme of
Tutsi as originators from Ethiopia or 'invaders
from Ethiopia' has also resurfaced in this speech.
The theme of Ethiopian origins, used during the
late colonial era by apologists ofTutsi domination
ef. Kagame, 1959) has become in the hands of
Hutu extremists, a means of denying Tutsi am
share in the palrimony of Rwanda. Yet also preSC~t
in this speech is the first explicit post-colonial ref
erence Ihat I know of, to the Nyabarongo River as
a geographic entity with symbolic and political
significance. In this speech the Nyabarongo has
become the means by which Tutsi shall be removed
'rom Rwanda and retransported to their presumed
land of origin. Here, it should be emphasized, the
river is again to play an important restorative and
purifying role - that of sanitizing the nation of its
internal 'foreign' minority. In the months of June,
July, and August of 1994, when allegations of a
massive genocide in R\\anda were just beginning
to be taken seriously in the international media,
thousands of bodies began washing up on the
shores of Lale Victoria; bodies that had been car
ried there by the :'-lybarongo and then theAkagera
Rivers.
Rwanda's rivers became part of the genocide by
acting as the body politic's organs of elimination,
in a sense 'excreting' its hated internal other. It is
not much of a leap to infer that Tutsi were thought
of as cxcrement by their persecutors. Other cvi
dence of this is apparent in the fact that many
Tutsi were stuffed into latrines after their deaths.
Some were even thrown while still alive into
latrines; a few of them actually managed to sun'ivc
and to extricate themselves.
C/lsiba l/lzira, 'Blocking the path'
Among the accounts of Rwandan refugees that
I inteniewed in Kenya during the late spring .md
early summer of 1994, there was persistent men
tion of barriers and roadblocks. Like l"azi shower
rooms in the concentration camps, these were thc
most frequent loci of execution for Rwanda's Tutsi
and Hutu opponents of the regime. Barriers \\"ere
erected almost ubiquitously and by many different
groups. There were roadblocks manned by
Rwandan Government Forces, roadblocks of the
dreaded IflteralllllJln'e militia, Rwandan communal
police roadblocks, roadblocks set up by neigh
bourhood protection groups, opportunistic road
blocks erected by groups of criminals, and e\"en
occasional roadblocks manned by the R\\:ll1 dan
SACRIFICE AS TERROR
Patriotic Front in areas under their comrol. For
people attempting to flee Rwanda, evading these
roadblocks was virtually impossible. Moreover,
during tbe genocide, participation in a team man
ning a roadblock was often a duty imposed upon
people by local Rwandan government or militar)
officials.
Several Hutll informants who escaped Rwanda
ria an overland route explained to me that they
had had 10 trayerse hundreds of roadblocks. One
informant estimated that he had encountered one
barrier per hundred metres in a certain area.
"\nolher counted forry-three roadblocks in a ten
kilomttre stretch on the paved road between
Kigali and Gitarama.
Leaying major highways was no solution, for
one would encounter barriers erected across dirt
reads and footpaths manned by local peasants. AI
cvery barrier fleeing peoplt were forced to sho\\
their national identity card. Since the ill card bore
mention of one's ethnicity, distinguishing Tutsi
from Hutu was no problem and almost alway;"
fleeing Tutsi, said to be ibyilSo or 'traitors', were
robbed and killed. When a refugee claimed to have
10SI the ill card, his or her physical features were
relied upon as ethnic identification. It was to one's
ad\alltage to look Hum (to be of moderate height
and 10 have a wide nose).
In order to traverse these barriers, even as a
Hutu, it was often necessary to bribe those who
lIerc in control. One prosperous Hutu business
man that I had known in Kigali and who surely
Ilouid haye been killed because of his political
affiliation (PSD) had he been recognized, told me
that he had paid a total of over fiye thousand dol
lars in bribes.
Barriers were ritual and liminal spaces where
'obstructing beings' were to be obstructed in their
hlrn and cast out of the nation. The roadblocks
IIcre Ihe space both of ritual and of transgressie)n,
following an ambivalent logic that Bourdieu
underlines, 'the most fundamental ritual actions
are in facl denied transgression' (1990: 212). There
Wcre scenes of inordinate cruelty. Often the con
demned had to pay for the quid. death of a bullet,
whereas the less fortunate were slashed with
machetes or bludgeoned to death with nail
studded clubs. In many cases victims were inten
tionally maimed but not full) dispatched. Beside
561
the line of motionless corpses awaiting pickup and
disposal la) the mortally injured, exposed to the
sun and still \\ rithing, as their persecutors sal b)
ealml), drinking beer.
One refugee who had made it to Kenya by the
circuitous route of fleeing southward to Burundi,
told me that he and everyone else in his compan)
had been forced to pay an unusual toll at one bar
rier. Each had been forced to bludgeon a captured
Tutsi with a hammer before being allowed to move
on. Some in the party had even been made to
repeat their blows a second or third time for lack
of initial enthusiasm. The reasoning behind this
can be clarified by considering the logic of sacri
fice and the stigma that inevitabl) accrues to the
saerificer, the person who actually spills the vic
tim's blood. As Bourdieu puts it:
The magical protections that are set to work
I\henever the reproduction of the \ital order
requires transgression of the limits that are the
foundation of that order, especially whene\ er it is
necessary to cut or kill, in short, to interrupl the
normal course of life, include a number of ambi\
alent figures who are all equally despised and
feared. (Bourdieu, 1990: 213)
Requiring those who were being spared at Ule
roadblocks to kill a hapless captive rna) seem
unnecessary and purely sadistic, yet it served a
useful psychological function from the point of
"ic\1 of the genocide's perpetrators: thaI of remov
ing the ambivalence of the sacrificial act and the
stigma of the saerifieer/executioner by passing
these on to ever)one. The ritual obfuscated thc
boundary between 'genocidaires' and those who
were otherwise innocent 1Iutu. Not only were
Thtsi and llulu 'traitors' being killed at thc
barriers - innocent lIutu wcre being forced to
become mOl'all) complicit in the genocide by
becoming both 'sacrificer' and 'sacrifier' (Hubcrt
and Mauss, 1964) and shedding Tutsi blood.
[ ... )
Although the barriers that fleeing Rwandans
had to contend with were effectivc as a means of
robbing and killing many of them, roadblocks
were next to useless as a means of halting the slow
but inexorable RPF advance. In fact, the barriers
defied military logic. Proliferated in all directions,
562 CHRISTOPHER C. TAYLOR
they were counterproducti\'e in any tactical sense,
for they diverted manpower that could have been
deployed in the field and they decentralized
resistance to the RPF. Rwandan Government
Forces and t heir associated llllaaltolllwe militias
were like a headless tentacular beast expending
its rage againsl Tutsi ci\,ilians and HUlu moder
atcs while doing little to confront its reJl adver
sary. .E\en from the point ofvie\Y of the militar)
and mili tia \\ ho controlled the barriers, their util
ity defied ordinary logic. With roadblocks so
closel) placed to one another - as close as one
hundred meters in some insrances - most were
clearly redundant. Downstream harriers had lit
rle hope of catching people \\ho had not alread)
been stopped and lleeced of their money and
belongings.
[ ... ]
If the movement of people could be obstructed
with barriers, it could also be hindered by directly
attacking the body. The parts of the body most
frequentl) targeted to induce immobility were lhe
legs, feet, .md Achilles' tendons. Thousands of
corpses discovered after the violcnce showed eyi
dence of one or both tendons sectioned by machete
blows. Olhcr victims later found alive in parts of
Rwanda where humanitarian organizations were
able to iorenene had also sustained this injury.
Medecins Sans Frontieres, \\hen il entered east
ern Rwanda in late June of 1994, declared in pres
entation!> to televised media that this injur) was
the one most frequently encountered in their arCOl.
While .rvlSF manag'cd to save many lives among
those so injured, the organization warned that in
practically eyery case, costly surgery would be
needed to restore some capability of movement to
the fool. This injury, known in medieval france as
tbe 'coup de Jarnae', has somelimes been ,nrrib
uted to the inlluence of french troops and their
alleged training of JlltertJhal1Jroe militia members
(Braeckman, 1994). J have no evidence to refute
this in lhis specific instance, but Braeckman's
assertion does not explain wh) the technique was
used before in Rwanda during the violence of
1959-64 and in 1973. \loreo\('r, in pre\ious epi
sodes of violence as well as in 1994, assailants also
mutilated cattle belonging to Tutsi by cutting the
leg tendons. Although many cattle in 1994 were
killed outright and ealen, and others were stolen, a
large number were immobilized and left to dl l
slowl) in the field.
This technique of cruelty has a certain logic to
it where human beings arc concerned. In the pres
ence of a large number of potential \ictims, too
man)' to kill at once, JlIlcra!uIIIIIPI' might immobi_
lize fleeing I"ictims b) a quick blow to one or bOlh
of the Achilles' tendons. Then the killers could
return at their leisure and complete their wurk.
This makes sense, yet it docs not exphlin \\ hy man\'
who sustained this injur) \\ere childrcn too ~olln~
to walk, elderly people, people who "ere cripph:d
or infirm, and people in hospital beds incapable of
running away. It is here that the pragmatic logic of
immobili.J:ing one's enemies and the symbolic
logic of 'blocking the path', which arc not Contra
dictor) in man) cases, arc in conflict. Why ob~lrUet
the immobile' As with barrier~ 011 paths and road
ways, there is a deeper generati,e scheme that
subtends both the killers' inrentiunality and the
message inscribed on the bodies of their \ ictrms,
C\"en though these techniques of eruelt~ also
in\ olve a degree of improvisation. Po\\er in this
instance, in symbolic terms, deri\'es from the
capacit) to obstruct. The persecutor 'blocks the
path' of buman beings and impedes the mOlement
of the material s) mbolic capital necessar) tl! the
social reproduction of human beings - c:mle. En;11
when it is apparently unnecessar) to arrest the
movement of the already immobile, the assl'ftion
f the capacity to obstruct is nonc the les~ the
claim and assertion of power.
The 00(6' as COl/dul'
In addition to the imagery of obstruction, numer
ous instances of the body as conduit can he dis
cerned in the Rwandan \iolence of 1994.
\ ..J
The image of ule body as conduit was l.. ] seen
in the techniques of cruelt.y u<;cd by the perpetr.l
rors of violence. Perhaps the most vivid eXJmplc of
this during the genocide was the practice of impale
ment. Recalling ~talkki's obsenation abO\e con
cerning tbe 1972 violence against I luLU in Burundi.
Rwand.lll Tursi men in 1994 were also impaled
from anus to mouth \\ ith wooden or bmnboo r ok.;
and metal spears. Tutsi wumen \\ere often impaled
from \agina to mouth. Althougb nonl of the n:fu
gees that 1 intcT\'icwed in Nairobi spoke of ha\'ing
SACRIFICE AS TERROR
wimessed impalement, it was rcported in Kenyan
newspapers that I read during the summer of 1994.
More recentl) it has been cited in an African Rights
report entitled 'Rwanda: Killing the E\ idence' as a
means b) which perpetrators of the genocide still
living on Rwandan soil terrori~e surviving wit
nesses (Omaar and De Waal, 1996). For example,
the repoTI cites lhe case of a certain Makasi, a resi
dent of the Kicukiro suburb of Kigali, "ho <;everal
months after the genocide found a leaflet shoved
under his door t1U'COltening his life and thal of sev
eral others:
You, lvlakasi are going to die no matter what. And
it will not only be you. It will be Byllngiro as well.
Let your wife know that she will be killed 1\ illl .1
pole lhat will run from her legs right up to her
moulh. As for Charles' wife, her legs and arms
will be cut off. (Omaar and De Waal, 1996: 15)
[ ... ]
1n pre-colonial and early colonial times
Rwandans impaled cattle thieves. The execution
ers inserted a wooden stake into the thief's anus
and then pushed it through the bod), causing it to
exit at the neck or the mouth. The pole \\ith its
agonizing charge was then erected, stuck into the
earth, and left standing for seleral days.
Dramaticall) gruesome and public, this punish
ment carried a clear and obvious normative mes
s'lgc intended to deter cattle thievery. in a more
subtle way, the message can be interpreted "ym
boJicJlIy. Because cattle exchanges accompany,
legitimize, and commemorate the most significan t
social transitions and relationships, most notably,
patron-client relations, blood brotherhood, and
marriage, obviating the possibility of such
eXeh3Jlges or subverting those \\ hich ha\e alrcady
ocew'red by stealing cartle removes all tangible
mnemonic e\ idence of the attendant social rela
tionships. Diverting socially appropriate flows of
callie by means of thieveI') is a \Va) of glJsiha
II1z!m, or 'blocking the palh' between individuals
and groups uniteclthrough matrimonial alliance,
blood brotherhood, or patron-client lies. It is
symbolic'llly appropriate, therefore, lhat people
\\ho obstrucl thc conduits of social exchange,
have the conduit that is the body obstructed with
a pole or spear.
563
Quite obviously between the pre- and early colo
nial times, where Rwandan executioners inlpaled
Callie thieves and 1994 when genocidal murderers
impaled Tutsi men and "omen, many things have
hanged. Clearly the more recent victims of the
practice were nn cattlc thieves. Were lhev in some
sense like cattle thieves in the minds of those com
mitting the atrocities? \Iy leeling is that they were.,
although t11e more recent terms used in Hutu
extremist discourse to describe Tutsi only occa
sionally make reference to actual actions of which
they might be guilty, such as theft. Instead 'Tursi
are invaders from Ethiopia', 'cockroaches', 'eaters
of our sweat', or 'weight upon our back'. The Tutsi,
much like the archet)1,al agakeemrtl discussed
above, exert their male\olent influence on the social
group not so much by whal they do, than by inher
ent qualities which the) supposedy embody. In that
sense the) approach 'blocking beings', the mythical
nemeses of Rwandan tradilion - the agakeecurtl,
illlpeTlebere, or impa - and like these figures, they
possess fearful powers. 10 this case they were
obstrueters of the cosmic unity of the nation as
'this unit) was imagined bv the Huru extremist
elile; a purified nation with a purificd, reifjed
'Hutu culturc' explmged of all clements of 'Tursi
culture' and rid or all \\ho would resist the encom
passing powers of the state. The torturers not only
killed their victims -they transformed their bodies
into powerful signs which resonatcd with a
Rwandan hahillls even as tl1ey improvised upon it
and enlarged the original semantic domain of
associated meanings to depict an entire ethnic
group as encmies of the Hutu statc.
[ ... ]
The Rwandan Genocide
and Historical Transformation
AlulOugh I believe that tJ1e imagery of now and
obstruction was peryasi\c during the genocide, it
would be wrong to conclude from the above argu
ment ulat Rwandan culture is simply a 'machine a
tropes' constantly replicating the same structures
and hermetically sealed off from all inlluences
arising from within or beyond its borders. As
Bourdieu maintains, people tend to reproduce the
'structured and structuring logic' of the habitlls.
Nevertheless, although older generations subtly

564 CHRISTOPHER C. TAYLOR
inculcate this logic to their juniors, the socialization
process is never perfect nor complete (1977, 1990).
Transformed objective circumstances always
influence socialization. The tendency to repro
duce a structmed logic thus should not be seen as
simple and yolitionless replication. There is always
improvisation and innovation even if many of the
basic panerns retain their saliency.
In the Rwandan instance, colonialism and con
comitant transformations in economic and politi
cal conditions influenced the perception and
depiction of evil Because of these changes, the
symbolism of male\'olent obstruction could be
applied [Q an entire ethnic group. This was a radi
cal departure from the past. During pre-colonial
times the image of the menacing 'blocking being'
was confined to a limited number of individwls.
These included: impil - women who had reached
childbearing age and had never menstruated;
impenelJere - women who had reached childbearing
age and had not developed breasts; individual ene
mies of the Rwandan king, and sorcerers. A II these
malevolent beings were mythically presaged in the
legend about the agakeecuru and the origin of
death. Occasionally, in the rituals associated with
sacred kingship, such individuals were publicly
sacrificed to rid the polit) of their potential I)
nefarious influence.
It was not until Tutsi and Hutu ethnic identities
had become substantialized under colonialism and
then privileges awarded b) the colonial rulers on
the basis of these identities, that an entire gTl)UP of
people could be thought of as a source of obstruc
tion to the polity as a whole. Tutsi could be easily
assimilated to the category of 'invaders' because of
their alliance with German, then Belgian, outsid
ers and the colonialists' reliance on Hamitic theo
ries. When Belgians quickly shifted their allegiance
to Huru in the late 1950s, supporting the '] ]utu
revolution', Tutsi ,"ere left to fend for themselves
while ret.aining their substantialized identity. Tut.si
assimilation to the imager} of malevolent others,
'blocked' or 'blocking beings', was faci1ilaled b}
t.he fact that a minority among them had indeed
been favoured socially and economically under t.he
colonial regime. Where once there had been a
sacred king whose actions were thought to assure a
religious and material redistributive function - the
downward flow of celestial beneficence, wealth,
-- --
and prosperity - under colonialism po 1a
. h . I
cre d ence 11l t e ntua and pragmatic fUllct'
pu r
.. . Ions of
kmgshlp was undermmed.
In its place a privileged class of Tutsi ~ .'
. . . h ' UtSI
aeJIl11ll1strators III t e colonial state anpar
. " atU\
were perceived by other Rwandans to have bee
lTle
rich by subverting the redistribution process
. . '. . ,or.
mas} mbohc sense, by lmpedll1g the flow of
imaana. The 1959-62 revolution in R".mda was
not anti-colonial; Belgians were not endmgered or
forced to flee the country - Tutsi were. ~or wcrc
Belgian economic and cultural interests serioush'
threatened in the country. Belgians cominued t;,
enjoy privileged staUis in Rwanda until some time
after 1990 when Bclgium withdre\v its militarv
support for the IIabyarimana regime. The s"m~
bolism of obstruction is indeed pre-colonia'l in
origin, but its application to an entire group of
people is a thoroughl} recent, modern application
reflecting transformed consciuusness of the politi
and of the people comprising it. . of the violence encountered here were emacinated
Secondly, many of the actual and s)mbolic forms
of violence became syncreti7.ed to Euro-:\merican
or tran.snational forms. This is apparent in the car
toon depicting Melchior Ndadaye's death, and in
other juxtapositions of transn,nional images and
those oflocal vimage. Clearly the violent imaginary
looks for inspiration to all possible sources.
ccording to Jean-Pierre Chretien in RWllllda: Les
medias du gellocide (1995) Nazi symbols Ilcre attrib
uted to the RPF b} Hum ex'tremists. The French
government's habit of referring to the RPF as
'Khmers noirs' followed in this pattern and echot:d
tlleir HUTU extremist allies. ~e\'erthdess, it was
!lutu extremists who were more Nazi-Iil,e and
Khmer Rouge-like in actual practice.
[... J
The Rwandan atrocities w'ould then seem to have
followed an empirical, rationalist logic centred on
maximizing lhe number of one's enemies J..illed. or
maximizing the psychological effect by the sheer
horror of atrocity. Such an explanation might con
cur with what the authors of the atrocities them
selves might claim was the n:asoning behind their
acts. Although such an explanation is accuratt:, it is
incomplete. It cannot explain tJ1e depth of passion
that clearly lay behind the Rwandan violence, nor
the fact that it assumed specific forms. But one type
of logic to the cruelty does not preclude all others;
SACRIFICE AS TERROR
. '!111atism and symbolism in a general way are not
pr:~ssa.ril) connictual (cf Sperber, 1975). Killing
. W h'1I e commulllcaong
..
ne '5 Jihersa nes powerful
on C
mes's''',es
"::- about tllem and oneself are not mutualh
. .
exclusive. Pragmatic explanations alone, however,
CJnno t account for the sheer number of roadblocks
that refugees reported to me that t.hey encountered.
There was certainly a point of diminishing rerurns
"here adding new barriers was concerned, and it
lIQuid appear that this point had been more than
surpassed. Nor was impalement the only way of
making one's I'ictims endure atrocious and exem
plary suffering. Did it make sense to sever the
-\chilles' tendons of those who had very little
chance of running away~ Did it make sense to cas
trate pre-pubescent boys~ Did it make sense to cut
the leg tendons of cattle rather than killing them
outrigbt?
This is where pragmatic logic alone docs not
fully e).plain the Rwandan violence. Many forms
in Rwandan ways of bodily experience and bodily
predispositions lurking beneath the level of ver
balization and rational calculation. Although these
predispositions were political in the sense that
they influenced thought and action where power
was concerned, they were certainly not political in
the ordinary and instrumental sense of symbols
consciously used by one group to advance its
claims in opposition to another group and its sym
bols. This symbolism was logically prior to its
instantiation in a political form and not the other
way around.
[ ... ]
While the proclivity to see the genocide as
purely etllllic in nature is understandable and is in
part justified by local Rwandan social realities, we
risk f.1lling into the trap of extremist ideology
(wherher IIutu or Tutsi) if this is all we can see.
Both I lutu and Tutsi extremists believe and would
have others believe, that the conflicts in Rwanda
Jnd Burundi are purely racial in nature.
Understanding only the ethnic dimension, how
el'er, blinds us to other social imbalances and
inequities that cannot be amended b} concent
rating on ethnicity alone.
Where gender is concerned, this is a glaring
o\'ersight.
[ ... ]
565
Gender on the Warpath
[ ... ]
The genocide aimed at reasserting the cosmic
order of the Hutu state as t]1is was imagined
through an idealized, nostalgic image of the 1959
Hutu revolution which brought an end to the Tursi
monarchy and to Tutsi dominance. The only per
ceived blemish of the revolution, repeated fre
quently in the days leading up to the genocide, was
its failure to purify the country entirely. Extremists
regretted that they had not gone far enough in
1959, that the revolution had failed to rid Rwanda
of its polluting internal other once and for all. As a
corollary to this image, though less overtly stated,
extremists aimed at reclaiming the lost ground of
patriarchy and re-asserting a male dominance that
had probably never existed in Rwanda's actual his
tory. [... ] Tursi women were pivotal enemies in the
extremists' struggle to reclaim both patriarch)
and the Hutu revolution, because in many respects
they lVere socially positioned at the permeable
boundary bet\leen the two ethnic groups. It was
much more common in pre-genocide Rwanda, for
example, to find Tutsi women married to Hutu
men than to find Hutu women married to Tutsi
men. As official ethnic identity (marked on every
one's national identity card) was determined by the
father in pre-genocide Rwanda, [... ] a Huru man
married to a Tutsi women produced offspring who
were legally Ilutu. Intermarriage between Hum
men and 11.Itsi women thus conferred the full ben
efits of Hutu citizenship to progeny who were per
ceived by many as racially impure.
As the social dichotomization process advanced
during the 1990s, ambiguous ethnic identities
became less and less tolerated. This applied not
only to the progeny of Hutu-Tutsi unions but also
to the progeny of European-Rwandan and Asian
Rwandan unions, as many such people told me.
The negative portrayal of Tutsi women in Hutu
extremist literature owed much to the fact that
Tursi women were potential mothers of ethnically
anomalous children, for more Tursi women than
Hutu women married men of other ethnicities. As
the ideology of Jlutu extremism developed, racial
purity came to be seen as a nccessar) component of
Hutu identity. Miscegenation between I-Iutu men
and Tutsi women began to be viewed with hostility.
566 CHRISTOPHER C. TAYLOR SACRIFICE AS TERROR
Yet, at the same time, many] Iunl men, including
some who were extremists, either had Tutsi wi\'es
or Tutsi mi~tresses with whom they had sired chil
dren. Clearly a great deal of psychological and
social ambivalencc characterized rhe relation
bet" ecn Hutll men and Tutsi women before the
genocide. ) n order to understand it and its conse
quences, we need to understand the history of
inter-ethnic marriages in Rwanda anti the colonial
ideoJog) of Hamitism, "hich depicted Tutsi a.~
racIally (and intellectually) superior to Huru, and
Tursi women as morc beautiful than Hliru women.
Conjugal unions between HUIU Omen and Tutsi
women were not all that uncommon in the 1970s
and )<)80s, even if they \\ere not the norm, but b)
the 1990s the negative perception of such unions
had become much more pronounced. During the
genocide itself, Hutu men with Tutsi wires were
often forced to kill their spouses themselves in
order to pre\ent tJleir 0\\ n deilths and a more grue
some death for their \\ ives.
:\s the dichotomization process intensified III the
years leading up to the genocide, Tutsi women came
to OCCUp) a soci.uly liminal position. As ')iminoid
beings' (Turner, 1977), Tutsi women \\ erc capable of
undermining the categories Hutu' and 'Tut..~i' :l1to
gether, although it is doubtful tlmt most indi\idual
Tutsi women possessed much cognizance of this
fact.. In m:uTiages or long-term sexualliaisollS with
llutu men, the) were giving birtJl to children \\ho
\\ere de jure' Iuru but dt! jiU/1i 50 per cent Tutsi. B)
logical extension, the perpetuation and proliferation
of lIutu-Tutsi unions ulreatened the categoricaI
boundary between Hutll and Tursi. In man~ ClSes
children of mixed marriages could havc typic-all)
Tutsi physiognomics, but ~ct be oiliciaIlv classified
as HUlu on their national idemity cards. One such
woman, \'hose father was Ilutu and \rl1ose mother
was Tutsi. told me that in l\hrch 1992 the bllsh taxi
that she was travelling in was stopped at a milit:u,
roaublock. The soldicr examined ewryone's identi~
card; \\hen he got to hers, he scoffed at the fact that
the catcgor) 'Hutu' had been checkmarked. WiUl an
insult he threw the (:ard onto the roadway where she
\\,lS forced to pick it up.
It is here that we need to examine the role of
women as s) mbols ami to consider the nature of
the representations that were associated "itb
them. These representations. discernible in HULU
extremist Iiteraturc, forL"Shadowed the degree of
sadism perpetrated b~ c:l.trcmists on the bodies Ill'
their victims. To many Rwandans gender relations
in the 1980s and 1990s were falling into a state or
decadencc as more women attained positions of
prominence in economic and public jjfe, and as
more of them exercised their personal preferences
in their private Jivcs. Complex sexual politics pre
ceded the genocide and were manifest iJl it. \Iunl'
of the bitter ironi~ and contradictions of ethni~_
it) were played out in sell and gender tcrms.
\Vomen as Symbols
[ ... ]
Going furthcr back into the past, to pre-colonb.1
and early colunial times, ta~ing a TUlsi \\ife \\as
often perceivcd a~ a sign of social advancement Ull
the part of a I lutu man. [n order to obtain such a
\\ ife, one had to become wealth) in bo\inc capital.
The children of such unions \Ierc usual!) consid
ered TlItsi. (This, by [he wa~, was in sharp contrast
with the late colonial and post-colonial cra \lh\.1"c
the father determined ethnici~.) In effect it \\a~
possible, as a Huru in the late nineteellth and earh
twentieth centuries, to have one's descendanh
become Tutsi by acquiring- wealth in cattle and
intermarrying with TUl~i. Tutsi hypogamy was ju~
tified on their part for the) would often absorb rich
Hutu into their lineages in this \\ ay. Practices such
as Illese OCCUlTed often enough to justify a \Iord 111
Kinyan\'anda, kIP/1m/lira, meaning 'to cease bl:ing
Hutu, to become Tutsi'. When the Rwandan mon
arch) and the system ofTutsi dominance that hat!
characterized the colonial era came to an end wjlh
the lIutLI re\Olution of )<)59-62, ir \vould hayc
been logical for such inrerm,lrriages t.o decline in
Irequenc}. As Tutsi in general were now reJegatetl
to second-class status, there could be little adViIn
tage in establishing matrimunial alliances with
them. Nc\erthdess, the practice continued.
[ ... ]
lOuring lhe genocide], I-Iutu extremists appear
to be attempting to purge their ambiv;llcnce toward
Tutsi \\omen via symbolic violence, even JS theY
project weir own erotic fantasies upon them. ,\1
one level the) were certainly aware tl,at to presene
the racial purity ofHulu. the) had to categorically
renounce Tutsi women as objccts of desire..\t the
same time they also knew that they themselves
\\ ere not free of the forbidden desire. They were
not impen ious to the allure of Tut~i women and
indeed they knew that many of the most prominent
among then had succumhed to the temptation. If
(he choicc between Hutll and Tutsi women were
non-problematic for HUlll elltremists, narratives to
the elTect that Tutsi use the beauty of their wornell
to ensnare Hutu would be unnecessary. One can
only speculate about the possible cognitiYe disso
nance in the minds of mam Hutu extremists where
the question ofTutsi \\omen was concerned. What
is most important for our purposes is the fact that
these sentiments recei\ed social expression.
for example, in December 1990 the Huru
clIu'emist magazine, Kangura, printed what is
perhaps the most succinct statement of Hutll
~tremjst ideology - the infamous 'Hutll Ten
Commandments'. Although this document has
been quoted often and \\ idely discussed by scholars
\\ho have \\Titten about the genocide (Prunier, 1995;
Chretien, )995), no one to my knowledge has pointed
out that gender preoccupations were clearly very
much on the minds ofthe extremists. Hutll extremists
had to have accorded high priority to the question of
relations between HlItu mcn and Tutsi women, for
the first three of the Ten Commandments concern
this subjl:ct and this subject alone.
1lcre are the first three commandmems:
1. Every Muhutu [Huru male] should know that
wherever he finds Umututsikazi [a female
Tutsi] she is working for herTutsi ethnic group.
As a result every Muhutu who marries a
Mutursikazi, or who takes a !\1ututsikazi for a
mistress, or employs her as a secretary or a pro
tegee is a traitor.
2. Everv Muhutu should know that our
Bah urukazi [female Hutu 1 are more worthy
of, and conscious of their roles as woman,
spouse, and mother. Are lhey not pretty, good
secretaries, and more honest!
3. Bahutukazi [HUIU womenj, be vigilant and
bring your husbands, brothers, and sons back
to the path of reason. (Chretien, 1995: 141
rm) translation j)
Would it have been necessary to recall all Hutu
men to order in this \\ay, if the women of the
opponents' group had not exerted such compelling
56
attraction' V,Thy was it necessar) for the e:l.tremists
to assert that Huru women arc prett), un less there
were doubts to the contrary? The third command
ment is also very telling: Hutu mcn cannot be
expected to resist the attractions of Tutsi women
alone; thcy need their Hutu wives, sisters, and
mothcrs to call them back to reason!
Another commandment, Ihe sen~nth, declared
that the Rwandan Army must remain Hutu, bur
addcd to that an additional warnin~ against Tutsi
\\omen. Apparently Hutu extrcmists were so pre
occupied hy this issue that no amount of redun
dancy or overemphasis could e\ er be decmed
excessive.
7. The Rwa.ndan Armed Forces must be exclu
sively Hutll. The experience of the October
1990 war teacbes us this. No soldier should
marry a Mututsikazi. (Chretien, 1995: 142
[m~ rranslation])
Beneath this ambivalence one cannot belp bur
sense lurking Hamitic imagery - a tragic yet unac
knowledgeable sense on the part of the extremists
that, when all ';\,as said and done, early Europeans
had indeed been correct in depict.ing Tursi as
'golden-red beauties' and Hutu as inferior (and
less ,lttractive) negroids.
[ ... ]
As Prunier points out in a footnote in his book,
such evidence of a lingering inferiority complex
may partl) account for the degree of sadism
unleilshed b) Hum death squads against Tursi.
Indeed, special measures of terrorism were
reserved for Tutsi women by the extremists. Many
Tutsi women suffered breast oblation, or were
raped before being' killed. Others were impaled
with spears from vagina to mouth. J\.L'my were
forced to commit incest \\ ith a male family mem
ber before being killed. Pregnant women were
often e\-iscerated. Yet other Tutsi women were
spared and taken as 'wives' by their persecutors
and brought into the refugee camps of eastern
Zaire. There the) became se:l.ual slaves to their
captors. Tn the e\ents that transpired in eastern
Zaire during the last da)s of the Mobutu regime,
some of these women managed to escape and to
rerum to R\\anda pregnant and to seek abortion in
a Catholic countr) that prohibits it.
568 CHRISTOPHER C. TAYLOR
Conclusion
The R\\ andan genocide cannot be understood
solei) in ethnic terms. Although recent theoretical
contributions Lo the study of ethno-nationaJism
are obviously ofgreat import;mcein comprehend ing'
References
Deidelman, T.O., COIOllicLl E,,"ngelism: A SIJcio-HisloriclIl
SWdy of an Easl AfTican JI1;ssion a1 lite Grassroots,
Bloomington, Indiana lJniversit) Press, J982.
Seidelman, T, Moral fmclgimllioll ill KagllrJI AIodes of
Thougltt, BloomillgtOfl, Indiana University Press,
J986
l1ourdieu, P, Ollllille ~(a TIIl,ory ofPnutice, Cambridgc,
Cambridge Univcrsity Press, 1977.
Bourdicu, P., The Logic of Procticc, Stanford, Stanford
Uni\'crsit) Press, 1990.
BraccI-man, C, Rll'ollda, Hisloire 1/'11/1 geuocide, Paris,
Fayard, 199-l.
Chrcticn, ]'-1'., Rilla/Ida: les midias du genocide, Paris,
Editions Karthala, 1995.
Clastrcs, P, La so(iile (0'111'11 /,dlol: recherches d'lllllhro
pologie politigue, Paris, Editions de MinLlit, 1974.
Foucault, M., "On Go\ernmentality." Ideology and
COlIscioume.iS 6, 1979: pp. 5-22.
Gulclhagen, D., Hitler's lVilling Execlltlollers: Ordillilry
Gc'mulI/s alld the Holocallst, Nen York, Knopf, 1996.
this traged)~ the) tend to accord little weight to
gender, ifthey deal with it all. Gender issues inter
acted with ethnic ones in complex ways involving
the demarcatjon of sociaJ boundaries and local
notions of racial purit).
[ ... ]
HuberT, I-I., and Mauss, .\1., Silcrifice: J/J Nil/lire <11,,1 FUllc
tiol/s, ChiL<lgo, Univcrsit) of Chicago Press, 1981 [196-1].
Kafk;l, pranz, The Pellill Cololly: Storits (lIld Short Picces.
Tram,. bv Jan Johnston, 1914.
Kagame, 1\., Ingllll); Kllmga, 2 vols., Kabgayi (Rwanda),
1959.
Kapferer, B., Legwds f!(J'eople. ,lIylhs ofS/ote, Washington
DC, Smithsonian Institution Prcss, 1988.
Oninar, R., and Dc Waal, A., (cds) RWOlldll: Killillg Ih,
F"idnlce, London, African Rights, April, 1996.
Peters, E., Tor/uft', Philadclphia, UniYcrsity of
Penns) Ivania Press, 1996.
Prunicr. G., 1he Rwanda Crisis, New York, Columbia
Univer,ity Press, 1995.
Sperber, D., Le ~YlTlhllliJmc ell gmeral, Paris, Hermann,
1975.
Taylor, C, l1ilk', flune]' olld ;\loney, Washington DC.
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.
Turner, v., The Riwal PrOfess, Ithaca NY, Cornell
nivcrsity Press, 1977.
40
Where to Be an Ancestor,
Reconstituting Socio-spiritual
Worlds among Displaced Mozambicans
Stephen Lubkemann
[ ... ]
Throup;hout the twentieth cenUlr) ;\ilachazian
subsistencc strate~ies revol"ed around a sociaJ
division of labour betwecn female subsi~tence
agriculture confined to .Machaze and male migra
tion to Southern RJ,oelesia (later Zimbabwe) and
South Africa in pursuit of wage-labour. Most
Machazian men spent long migrator) careers
\\orking in South Ati-icn, rcrurning after years
abroad for sta)s of seyeral months in I\lachaze - a
pmern often repeated for decndes before finaJ
rctiremcnt in J\lachaze. In contrast, i\\aehazian
women rarcl) migrated and engaged almost exclu
sively in subsistcnee agriculnlre (Lubkemann
2000a, 2000el). Thus, Machazian 'social worlds'
wcre not enacted entirel) within delimited territo
rial boundaries but actually depended upon migra
tory processcs and social networks that
continuously spanned international borders and
linkcd several ruraJ and pcri-urban environments.
It is aJso important to understand that \1achazians
perceivcd their social worlds to span not only spa
tial boundaries but spiritual ones as well. Machazians
believed that social interaction occurred not only
among the liying but also between the living and
From Stcphcn Lubkcrnann, "Where to Be an Ancestor? Reconstituting Socio-spirituaJ Worlds among Displaccd
1\ 107A1l1'1bicans," Joumol ofRejilgce S/lulies, Vol. 15, No.2, 2002, Oxford university Press (2002), pp. Lub. 3-18, Lub. 20-t
the spirits of the dead. Foremost among these spir
its were the '(.'ru/zimu, one's own deceased ancestors.
The vadzimll were bclicv'ed to intervene in the lives
of the living in order to correct moraJ failings or
simpl) not to be forgotten, usually by causing minor
ilJncsses (rather than grievous harm). This type of
mdzim/l admonishment W<lS believed to occur if
the living neglected to perform riTuaJs of respect.
However, Maehazians also bdieved that ancestral
rcproach could easil) be 'triggered' by contenTious
relationships among the living. The mere existence
of feelin~s of ill will between social actors was
believed to motivate t'atlzim/l to act, partieularl) in
defence of the rights of oldcr and senior kin, whose
agc ami social rank conferred on them a status that
was 'closer to the anccstors'. Within this belief sys
tem social duties and obligations towards others
werc often fullilled to avoid provoking ancestral
rescntment and not only out of fear lhat1.he living
offended party might exercise materi;t] sanctions
directly.
The spirits of the dead wcre also believed to be
potentiaJly the source of more grievous forms of
harm, usually through the vehicle of witchcraft
(11/01). Among Mach..1zians, as among many other
570 STEPHEN LUBKEMANN
Shona-speakers (Bourdillon 1991), all serious ill
nesses, misfortune, ilnd death were attributed to
II/oi. Such misfortune was beIie\'ed to be caused b)
a !/!fuJ.:wl/,J a particular IJpe or state of spirit moti
\'ated to cause dC<\lh, in conjunction \\;th a specific
Jiving actor who either intentionally or LIlunten
tionall) directed or facilitated the /IIfukwn's activity.
Although 11/0; coull! be produced through the
intentional intervention of ritual specialists, it was
also belie\'ed that the mere existence of jealousy or
intense hostilit) could open up a path for a mfllkrvl/
to act. Sometimes a person could unkno"ingly
facilitate IIIfll1:11'1/ action against another by har
bouring hostile sentiments against that person.
Alternatiye]), ,\ 1IIjilJ.:IJIII could eyen pursue his (or
his kin's) own interests rather than those of an inad
vertent facilitoltor. Thus, before the \\iIT the spirits
of particularly powerful dead chiefs were believed
to pursue their 0\\ n lineages' interests after death as
mjilJn1'lls. Similarly, during the war those wrongly
slain and improperly buried, or the spirits of slain
soldiers \\ ho \\ere outsiders, were beIie\ed to be
motivated by reason of rheir own 'violent dearlL~' to
kill, by taking advantage of the 'paths opened up' by
the hostile sentinlents among the living, even if not
intentionally summoned to do so.
Machal.ians consultt:d TlYl/ngas and nYl/moss%s,
[...1 two l) pes of 'traditional' local healers and
diviners, as wdl as local church profetas (prophets)
in order to diagnose the sources of social conflict
that ga\'e rise to acrimonious socio-spiritual inter
action. These specialists were belie\'ed capable of
identifying which specific spiritual actors caused
an illness, of interpreting thcir intentions and
demands \i5-3-\'is the living, and of interceding
\\ it'h them for resolution. Local chiefs and church
pastors also played important roles in mediating
social interaction between spirirual and li\ ing
members of the Machazian social world. At a com
munity le\'e1, a loose and historically shifting hier
arch) of local chiefs were charged with annual rain
and gra\e cleaning ceremonies held to curry
fa\our \\ ith the spirits of dead chiefs - believed to
be the 'genuine owners' of the land - in order to
assure crop prosperity. In the c.hronically drought
ridden area of Machazc this has long been an
important role.~leanwhile, pastors played a sig
nificant if highly variable role in ensuring the pro
tectivc activity of the IIol} Spirit in the lives of
their parishioners. [... ] All of these institution~
reflect the degrce to which :\bchazians perceived
themselves to inhabit a space of social interaction
that can be described as a 'socio-spiritual world'.
Machazian coping strategies during and after thc
\\3.1' were consequently responsive to the perceived
effects of wartime violence, migration, and social
change on the entirc array of social relationships
within this socio-spiritual world.
The Socia-Spiritual Spiral of
Wartime Violence
Shonly after Mozambique achieved independ
ence from Portugal in 1975, hostile neighbourin~
apartheid regimes instigated a civil war that lasted
;llmost fifteen years. Machaze was one of the earli
est settings for this conflict. By late 1979 the area
was fully embroiled in the war between the
RllOdesian (and later South African) supported
anti-~o\ernment facrion (RENAMO) and the
government forces (FRELIYlO). Estimates sug
gest that between -l0 per cent and 70 per cent of
the population were forced out of the district and
migrated to South J\frica or Zimbabwe, or wcre
internally. displaced within Mozambique during
the eonnict (GTZ 1993, 1996; CARE 1994;
Wenzel and Bannerman 1995). Those \\110
remained within the district were displaced from
their homesteads, forced to choose between 1110\
ing into F'RELl.l\10's fortified communal villago.:s
or fleeing decp into the 'bush', nominally under
RENA~10's control.
Choices to move into either FRELL\IO ur
RENAi\10 areas were more often than not unre
lated to political sympathies with either of these
parties. Rather they reflected the ways in \\ hidl
forms of local social conflict permeated and Cll1
trail) shaped the militaTy activity of both armed
factions in the Machaze area. Both FRELl\lO
and Rl:.NAMO troops and commanders unfamil
iar with the area relied on locals to guide them
and to identify enemy cadres or collaborators
Machazians became adept at using this type of
accusation in order to further private agendas
founded in local forms of social strife unrelated to
the political agendas of the warring parties - such
as jealousy over differential success in labour
migration or suspicions of witcher-1ft. In ~ lachaze.
WHERE TO BE AN ANCESTOR?
loc;tI. social di\"isions tended to occur primarily
\\ ithin .l.inship groups - often even within
households - in part bel.'1Iuse of cultural beliefs
that identify social intimates as the most likely
suurce of ri\alry.ln contrast to \lachaze, elsewhere
in f>.lozambique, erhnicit) (Roesch 1992; Geffray
1989), socio-economic class and urbanlrural
di\ ides (O'Laughlin 1992; Geffray 1989;
\IcGregor 1998; J\lanning 1998), and intr;l
community political rivalry amongelites(Alexander
199~) played a more prominent role in shaping
wartime violence and political alignments. [... ]
As the war intensified in \'!achaze, more and
more people took flight in reaction to accusations
of political collaboration even though these allega
rions were mostl} spurious. Moreover, man) pre
empti\c1y moved in tlle opposite direction taken
by social rivals in fear of being identified to sol
diers in the areils to which the rivals had moved as
supporters of the opposition. Thus from rhe war's
outset local social agendas cast in culturally
specific terms strongly influenced the deplo) ment
of violence by FRELlJ\lO and RE.l':AJvt0, and
directed it in the service of local micro-political
rather than national macro-political ends. WaTtime
,"iolence in Machaze was thus primarily under
stood and reacted to as a product of locally gener
ated and defined social conOicts, rather than as a
product of political affiliation with RENA,\IO or
FRELlMO per se. While a small minority of local
FRELlMO cadres and earl) RENA.\10 mobiliz
ers may have been motivated by u1e political
projects of the con tenders for national power, most
residents of i\'lachaze reacted to the way in \\ hich
that power itself could be manipulated in the sen'
icc of micro-political projects generated in the
cultural logic of local social relations.
Wartime violence in J\lachazc was further aggra
vated by the ways in which religious beliefs ampli
fied local social antagonism. M.achazians believed
thar those who sufferee! violent de.1ths were Iikel) to
become mjitkwlls. The death of soldiers \\ho were
'outsiders' raised the spectre of a proliferation of
dangerous unknown mjitlmll/s who could randomly
inten'cne to cause death. A more predictable, yet
also more constant Uu'eat was posed b} the intimate
relative whose violent death \\ as belie\'ed to pro
vuke them to takc on a mjilkwG state. Although
wrongful death obligated the living to seck redress,
571
d1e culturally prescribed institutiuns for doing so
had been enfeebled b~ targeted post-colonial gov
ernment repression, \lorcover, rhe impossibililJ" of
interacting with the guilty. parries (ofren unknown
or else unreachabk in the opposing force's area of
control) made the negoriation of a settlement wilh
the 1II[lIk1/l0 all tl1e more difficult if not impossible.
Sometimes even proper burials were not viable
another ritual failure lhought likel) to prO\oke
ancestral virulence. Not onl) could an irate /IIjii/avu
threaten its own family members, but its 'presence'
placed a family 's relationships in the broader com
munity at risk since the mjid'nllI became part of the
'package of actors' bruught into social interactions
of aU forms \\ ith other parties. Any form of conOict
with a family with a 1/!(lIkrva was believed to be par
ticularly dangerous.
Lacking the possibility for redress, re\'enge was
upheld as u1e \'er) lowest level of action belie\'cd
capable of deOecting the ancestral wrath of ulose
\"iolent1y slain in war. 'fhis belief in conjunction
with the crippling of 'pcal:eful' forms of resolu
tion thus led many l\lachazians to perpetrate radi
cally \-iolcnt actions of rc\enge ulemsches in what
amounled in part to a form of 'socia-spiritual
defence'. Each act of \ iolence inevitably gave
motive for responses uf at least the saml:: magni
tude, thus multiplying the number of accusations
and violent deaths in a yiciously escalating and
ever more sucially inclusi\'e spiral. During the WilT
.\;Iachazians perceived a \;olent radicalization of
the terms of interaet.ion throughout the socio
spiritual world. The war, thus, not only repre
sented a dangerous ITansfonnation of social
relations among tlle living, but was seen by the
Machazians as a peri lOlls change in relations
between the living and the dead.
The Socio-spiritual Effects of
Wartime Migration and Social Change
Wartime migration decisions were also responsive
to other social processes that ultimatel~ produced
highly gender- and age-specific patteTlLs of
wartime population distribution and significantly
reconfigured power ;md social relations within
Machazian households. Throughout the war
almost twice as man) women as men remained
in Machaze Or in neighbouring rural districts
572 STEPHEN LUBKEMANN
(GTZ 1993, 1996; CARE 1994; Lubkemann
2000a, 2000b, 2000d). B) eontrast, most adult
Machazian men were forced out of the district to
the peri-urban areas in South Africa during the
first few years of the con flict.
The fact that men were targ'eted for forced
recruitment, and were more likely to be killed
played a part in this engendered population re
distribution. However, this panern also reflected an
attempt by both men and women to engage in long
established strategies of socio-economic reprod uc
tion in a ne\\ \\'3rtime cmironment. The patterns
of predominantly male migration to South Africa
early in the conflict represented the continuation of
long-established coping strategies similar to those
employed historically during cycles of intensifled
colonial labour recruitment (Lubkemann 2000a:
90-5,100-15,127-31). Similarly, i\lachazian WIlm
en's relocation within the (listrict reflected their
preference for rural destinations that allowed them
to re-establish some form of subsistence agricul
ture. Few Machazian women hac.l the desire in the
earl) days of the conDiet to join male relati\'es
migrating out of the district.
However, as explored in detail elsewhere
(Lubkemann 20DOc), attempts at minimizing dis
ruption to established life-strategies were not
equally successful for men and women. The war's
persistence for almost a deCIde and a half had far
more disrupti\ e effects on agricultural subsistence
\\~thin Mozambique than it did on wage labour
emplo)ment in South Africa. Moreoyer, the war's
iruensification anc.l successive droughts throughout
the 19805, which fmther restricted the possibiliTics
for subsistence, forced more people out of the elis
aict. A brgc population of predominantly women,
children, and elderly men l eventually fled to
roimbabwe and settled in tJ"NHCR refugee camps.
l5 the war progrcssed Machazian men facing
prolonged stays in South Africa began to establish
conjugal unions with South African women.
Although some of tllese men cssenriall) aban
doned their I\lozambican marriages, a majoriry
sought to retain their marital rights with both
South African and Mozambican spouses, despite
maintaining minimal (if any) contact with the lat
ter, sometimes for well over a decade. This new
strategy of 'transnational polygyny' (Lubl..emann
2000a, 2000c.l) allowed Machazian men to have
families and children who could contribute to
their old age care, while retaining the option of
eventual post-conDict return. However, after the
war ended in 1992 interest in transnational poly
gyny continued to grow. Of 200 Machazian men
whom I surveyed in South Africa in J998, 65 per
cent were involved in ongoing conjugal relation_
ships in South Africa. Twenty-six per cent had
marital relationships onl) in South Africo, while
23 per cent were invoh'ed in marital relationships
only in Mozambique (Lubkemann 2000a, 2000d).
The wartime devastation of Mozambique and its
uncertain political stabilit} reinforced the long
est'lblishec.l importance of employment in South
Africa after the war. Moreover, during the \lar
men had increasingly established other important
social, leg-al, am] economic tics to South :\.Erica
72 per cent of those 200 surveyed planned to keep
a house in South Africa, and 79 per cent a bLLsi
ness, \I hile 47 per cent reported they were enrolled
in a pension plan that had to be regularly collected
in person in South Africa (Lubkemann 2000d).
l\ tany of these men thus began to see South Africa
as more than merc1~ a place of employment, hut
rather a ~ite in which to pursue a social life that
paralleled, rather than simply contributed to, their
social lives hack in Machaze.
B) maintaining households in both countries,
transnationall) polygynous men di\ crsified lheir
risb- an important 'improvement' to many in light
of different insecurities faced in Mozambique and
South Africa. On one hand, inadequate social and
medical services, perceived political volatility, amI
drought represented significant risks faced in
Mozambique (Lubkemann 2000a). Yet, in South
Africa 1I,1achaYian men faced rising violence, crime,
and xenophobia in the townships. Their illeg-al sta
tus made them particularly vulnerable to crime
since it was known they would not rcport it to
authorities, and to \\ idespread extortion by corrupt
local officials. The high cost of living and rising
unemployment also made township life difficult. In
contrast, Machaze afforded much lowcr li\ ing cost
options if and when money hecame tight.
While Machazian men benefited (rom den:lop
ing new social and economic options in South
Africa through the trans nationalization of pol)~yny~
these wartime changes reconfigun:d the balance of
power and the meaning of social relationships
WHERE TO BE AN ANCESTOR?
\\itllln marriages and extended kinship groups in
detrimental ways for several other categories of
Maehazians. In particular, the development of rela
tionships betwecn Machazian men and South
African womcn eroded what benefits women in
Machaze had once experienced from polygyny,
while accentuating many of the problems experi
enced because of it. Before the war, polygyny
realized solely within Macha.ze represented an
ambiguous combination of potential gains ,md
losses (ur Machazian women. vYhereas a co-wife
was often regarded as a rival and potential sourcc of
uloi, she could also help case heavy domestic labour
requirements. Consequently many women reportec.l
suggesting and participating in the selection of an
additional wife for their spouse. Ll a polygynous
configuration in which both \vives remained in
Machaze, a junior wife provided free labour and
enhanced the status of a senior wife. Additionally,
she often released the first wife from the responsi
bilities of assisting a mother-in-law, thus affording
her greater in dependence.
Tn contrast, transnational polygyny afforded no
labour relief or enhanced autonomy to Machazian
women because transnational co-wives \I cre
not ph)"sicall) present in Machaze. Moreover,
~Iachazian wives in these marriages often received
a reducec.l share of resources from husbands, since
South African wives hac! the ad"antage in pressing
their claims because mOlley was earned in South
Africa and men spent more time there. The distri
bution of benefits among co-wives could also no
longer be monitorec.l by Machazian wives in par
ticular, who had to settle for 'leftovers'. While
Machazjan women rcmained dependcnt on
migrant husbands for cash, their husbands were
no\\ less dependent on them. Accordingly, power
within Macha7.ian marriages was redistributed to
men's advantage. Whereas Machazian women still
hod to fulfil the obligations required b) marriage
(such as assisting mothers-in-law), and these obli
gations \lere made morc difficult without co
resident co-wives, they lost much of rhe levcrage
they once had in enforcing a husband's fulfilment
of reciprocal obligations.
South "-frican marriages, in which parents
played no part, also signific.lntly reduced the lev
erage parents exercised over sons and further
transformed the meanjng of marriage itsclf: Local
573
kinship alliance imperatives in which senior kin
largel) dictated the interest:> at stake did not factor
into South African marriages. lvloreover, the drain
of resources in favour uf South African social
interests made it a more difficult job to manage
extended households that often included wives
and ehilc.lren left behind. Heightened dissatisfac
tion of neglected whes placed marriages at greater
risk of failure and consequently threatened the
loss of a daughter-in-Iaw's labour. These factors
fed parents' ultimate fear that children would
neglect their olc.l-age support.
Aftcr the conflict, these '\artime changcs intro
duced new forms of tension into everyday forms
of 1\ lachazian social interaction at the domestic
and community !cIel. Ultimatel); the develop
ment of nevI' South African options for men and of
transnational pol) gyn), repositioned migration
and marriage in the struggle for power in the
Machazian domestic sphere. In transnationally
polyg~ nollS marriages men and women, and men
and their parents, increasingly evidenced mutually
exdusiH~ expectations about what marriage should
'mean' - thar is. what rights anc.l obligations should
the relationship imply. [n many ways there was a
zero-sum relationship between contesting ,-iews,
as men '$ desire to practise transnational polygyny
violatcd the expectations held by 1\1achazian
women about marriage. Furulermorc, women and
parents' desires to maintain Maehaze as the sole
point or migrant men's socio-economic reference
and investmenl threatened the riSk diversification
strategies these men sought to pursue. Marriages
hecame sites of intensified social strife and
Machazian men who had developed stronger tics
to South Mrica were particularly concerned with
the socio-spiritual effects of these exacerbated
social tensions.
Drawing on this understanding of hO\l wartime
changes affected social strife and ofhow Machazians
perceived the relationship betwecn social con
tention and socio-spiritual interaction, the second
half of this article cxamines hm' different post
conflict resettlement options presentec.l \1achazians
with particular socio-spiritual dilemmas. First, a
typology of responses to these socio-spiritual
dilemmas is established. Thi~ rypology is thell used
to categorize the mechanisms that differellt cate
gories of I\hchazian social actors used to cope with
574 STEPHEN LUBKEMANN WHERE TO BE AN ANCESTOR? 575

the socio-spiritual dilemlTh1s impl.ied by their reset
tlement choices, Final!) comes an analysis of the
ways in \\ hich gcndered (and other) differences in
social power allowed some actors to pursue a
broader range of strategies that often preserved or
enhanced power gains, while forcing others to pur
sue riskier and more drastic strategies, that at best
minimized power loss, I do not undertake a social
psychology of return decision-making per Sf - i,e, I
do not attempt to identify the range of social and
psychological factors that led some Machazians to
beliel'e one thing and otbers to believe another, I
do not identify how bel.iefs influenced particular
rescttlement choices either, Rather, I start my dis
cussion describing resettlement choices that were
made and analyse how these choices were negoti
ated between decision-makers and social others - a
range of interpretive practices that drew upon a set
of common symbolic referents and in a context in
which differences in social power influenced whose
interpretive practices were social!) legitimized and
whose were not. Thus, the analysis focuses less on
what people 'really belie\'ed' and how beliefs influ
enced action, and more on how presentations of
belief justified particular courses of action and
what facLOred into the social legitimization of some
presentat ions over others,
A Typology of Machazian Responses to
Post-conflict Socio-spiritual Dilemmas:
The 'Loyalty to Voice Continuum'
In his classic analysis of response to decline in organ
i".ations, llirschman (1970) proposed three possible
categories of reaction to dissatisfaction with the
terms of interaction in associational life: 'loyalty',
'voice', and 'exit', LoyaJry strategies are attempts to
realiz.e objectives within the current terms of inter
action - to abide by the rules of the game. In con
trast, 'voice' strategies are attempts to realize
objecti..es by modifying the terms of interaction
itself- i,e, by changing the rules of the game, Finally,
'exit' strategies arc attempts to realize objectives by
leaving one milieu of social interaction (or organiza
tion) for another \\ itll entirely different terms of
interaction altogether - i,e, leaving one type of game
to play in an aJtogether different type of game,
It is useful to adapt Hirschman's analytical typol
ogy so that 'loyalty' and 'voice' are seen as ends on
a continuum rather than categorically dichotOll1l1Us
options, With tlUs typology, modification responses
are not seen as eiJher 'voice' or 'loyalty' options but
as all having bo/h voice and loyalty aspects, that \ an
in their relative weight to each other dependin[! Cl~
where the response is located between the (\\"0 poles
of the continuum, Thus, a response located closer
to the 'loyalty' pole will invoh"e fewer or more
superficial challenges to the terms of interaction,
\\hereas those located closer to the 'Yoice' pole will
propose more fundamental epistemologic,ll shifts
in the current terms of interpretation and interac
tion, Machazian strategies for coping with the
socio-spiritual dilemmas posed by particular re~et
tlement options can be analysed as ranging across
the entirety of this continuum,
Negotia/ing refllrll
Examined within this framework, those who
returned to Machaze 'outright' \\"ithout retaining
social investments in South African marriages can
be thought of as pursuing options closer to the
'loyalty' end of the continuum, Their strategies
resembled those long practised by "'Jachazian
labour migrants, Throughout the t\\t:ntieth cen
tury l\lachazian migrants professed a strong belief
in the importance of maintaining connections not
only with living relatives but also with their ances
tral spirits in Machaze, The fact that ancestors
were buried in Machaze also pro\'ided it \\ ith a
form of 'place-specific utility' that played a role
in encouraging ultin13te permanent settlement in
-"Iachaze upon retirement, Throughout their
migrant careers Machazian men remained anen
tive to their obligations \"is-i-vis ancestors, believ
ing that illness or misfornme during migration
was often a sign that ritual gestures of respect due
to ancestral spirits were o\'erdue and neces;Jlatcd
a return, Such ritual obligations induded cleaning
gra\'es and building or repairing 'houses' built
specially for ancestral spirits, They also implied a
physical return to ~Iacha7.e itself. The transfor
mation in status of important social others (such
as a father) through death, pro\'ided particularly
strong motiYation for immediate return to
Machaze, Many men reported lca\"ing hard won
jobs in order to return to Machaze for a funeral
that would ensure good socia-spiritual relations
with a new ancestor.
\lorcover, in contrast w religious beliefs that
draw n sharp boundar} bemcen worlds of li..ing
'lnO spiritual interaclion, Machazians believed their
ultimate destin} was to continue to interact in death
I\'ithin the same social \\orld they had been active in
during their lifetime, albeit from a transformed and
more powerful social position as ancestral spirits
themselves, The realization of this destin) required
preserving physical conneclions with ancestors';
that translated into a ~trong desire to be buried in
~Lacha7.e, It is difficult to overestimate the imp
ortance of this factor in motivating Machazian
migrants to reLUrn to l\lachazc, a factor reported
widely in othcr African societies as well (e,g,
Cald\\eIl1969;Gugler 1975; BourdilJon 1991),
WhIle a desire to retain connections with ances
tors strongly motivated post-conflict return to
Machale, it is important to acknowledge that a
whole range of different sociu-spiritual dilemmas
motivated returnees, often in conflicting wayS that
affected timing and destination decisions, ~1any
individuals returned to the district but not to the
exact loca.lities the} had lived in before the war so
as to avoid othcrs whose wartime activity had
advasel) affected them (or vice' ersa), Thus, in
one post-conflict locality over 60 per cent of the
\-illage 'ciders' (mad(ldas) had !i"cd elsewhere in
the district before the war, Returnees were also
concerned with the 'loose' mfukTPas produced by
the violent deaths and non-burial of soldiers,
Local communities and churches often organized
rituals to capture and 'send home' tht:se spirits
whose origin outside of ~lachazian socio-spiritual
worlds made them particular!) dangerous because
they had no li\'ing ancestors and thus no potential
and positi"e veSTed interests in ~[achaze, Finally,
many -"rachazians waited to return until rain cer
emonies that were disallowcd by the pre-war
regime~ were successfully re-instated by local
headman, Ultimately, many returnees to Machaze
belic\ cd the potential consequences of offending
ancestors outweighed other risks (\\ ater scarcity,
chronic drought, and landmines in particular) that
return entailed,
Illres/ing in "/O/.:cn return"
Prolonged absence from Maehaze and consequent
failures to perform necessary rituals during the war
\\ere often described in interviews as 'excused' by
the spirits in light ofthe war's eXigent circumstances,
However, when rcturn bccame possible l\ lachazian
men in Somh Africa faced greater challenges justi
fying to others (and e,en to thcmselves) any further
deferral of these obligations or of return, In par
ticular, men with South African wives feared that
discontented spouses and elderly parentS baek in
l\lachaze might trigger ancestral sanctions from
'Jadzilllu or more grievous harm via mJitkTPas,
In contrast to those who returned to Machaze
outright after the war, thosc who desired to main
tain socio-economic investments made in South
Africa were forced to explore options further
from the 'loyalty' end of the continuum, They
thus faced a greater challenge in having their
choices ackno\\ ledged as legitimate realizations
(rather than violations) of the recognized socio
moral order, Two specific strategies - of 'token
return' and of 'deferred contingent return'
represented attempts to justify maintaining socio
economic im'cstrnents in South Africa in "hat
were primarily 'loyalty' terms - i,c, not as chal
lenges to the fundamental rules of the socio-moral
order but as no\'el ways of realizing it, .\-lost
importantl), both of these strate!!ies ad.nowl
edged the non-negotiability of Machaze as the
primary point of socio-spiritual symbolic refer
ence, but proposed no\'el interpretations of what
ong:oing im'esmlents in South African sign'1Ued
about their ultimate investment in and attachment
to Machaze itself.
Transnationally polygynous men contested
claims that a zero-sum game relationship existed
bet\\een their investments in Machaze and those
in South Africa, It is important to realize that the
distribution of investment between Machazian
and South African poles did vary considerably
among these men, Whereas some invested as much
or even more heavily in Machaze than they did in
South Africa, the strategies of those who invested
primarily in South Africa are of primary interest
to this analysis, Some men returned briefly to
Machaze in order to obtain a wife in Machaze
to live with their elderly parents, before returning
to South Africa where they focused most of their
interests, energies, and time, Through such 'mar
riages,' men essentially absent from Machaze were
able to fulfil" many of their prescribed duties
towa.rds mothers and ancestors,
576 STEPHEN LUBKEMANN
In one case a Machazian man had briefly first be well established ill his work so all is well
returned and rebuilt three huts on his deceased here ... ' Another man claimed to he postponing his
father's homestead - one for his mother, one for a return to Machaze because he lacked money for the
new wife whom he brought to live with and help trip. However, he lived in one of the better houses
his mother, and a third for himself Although he in the township with internal plumbing, five rooms,
had not remrned since this visit five years previ a stereo and a colour TV. He had a job that allowC(/
ously, he had sent money to his mother and wife him to play the lottery every day and \\'as proud uf
and for a brother to build a ritual house for their the support he received from his son \\'hom he
father's spirit bec.1use of reported 'spiritual prob described as I\orking in Johannesburg as a medical
lems'. His primary concern was that his wife, who technician. Although he clearly could afford to go
felt abandoned, might have to be sent home to her back he seemed uninterested in doing so soon or in
parents because her discontent was stirring up making significant investments back in i\1achaze.
spirirual activit); thus leaving his mother without Frequently such 'narrali\'es of intended return'
assistance and likel~ to become unhappy herself. (Lubkemann 2000d) reframed delay not as a mar
With two adult, married sons living in South ter of re)uct:lJ1ce to return, but as a desire to ensure
Africa, with two South African wives Jiving with the quality and success of that rerum, sometiml:s
him in his home with plumbing and c1ectriciry, even emphasizing the responsibility that returnets
and with his own car and taxi business, he admit had LOwards others and the need to remain abroad
ted the low likelihood of ever returning to acrually in order to save enough money 10 fulfil thL'Se
live in 'his' hut in Machaze. Instead, he hoped to responsibilities. These performances were struc
coumer the emerging spiritual problem occa rured to emphasize the inevitability and desirahll
sioned by his continued absence by sending more it) of 'return' as an end while simultaneously
money to usc as lobola in obtaining another wife in emphasizing conditionality and indeterminac~ in
Machaze to live with their mother. Transnational defining means to that end. Thus, 'narratives of
polygyny allowed such men to simultaneously intended rerum' were performance devices that
remain in South Africa while responding to criti paradoxically affirmed a connection to Machaze
eaJ moral imperatives, through what amounted to while j llsrifying an ongoing absence from Machaze
'token returns'. and continued social inyestment c1scVI here. These
performances thus effectively negotiated the
Narratl1lg 'deJared/ conti1/gent return' socio-spiritual dilemmas created by the grO\nh of
Other men with considerable investment in South wartime socio-economic investment in South
Mrica pursued strategies of 'deferred! contingent' Mrica. Such 'narratives of intended return' might
return, hy reframing their continued presence in be seen above all as claims about moral positioning
South Africa as delays in, rather than a definitive in a socia-spiritual I~orld, rnther than clear expres
break with, social investment back in Machaze. sions of intentions to renlrn or actual return . .\ lore
One migrant intenriewed in South Africa who pur than expressing intentions LO go back to Machazc,
sued this strategy felt that his poor health signalled narratives of 'intended return' were always public
a need to return to M.achazc in order to appease claims about the way social relations 'should be'
ancestral spirits. He elaborated highly detailed md and about how current activity met socio-spiritual
concrete plans for his future post-return life in obligations. On one hand, these presentations
i\1achaze (constructing houses, starting a grinding legitimized the continued participation of 'non
mill and chicken raising business, drilling a well) returnees' in a community in which tJl0se who
that contrasted sharply with his vagueness about retained active investments in affairs bad in
\1 hen c.xactly that return wouJd occur. Interestingly, Mozambique constituted a 'moral majority'
rcnJrn was always stated as an imperative that was s explained elsewhere (Lubkemann 2000dj,
attached to indeterminate conditionality in its tim there were significant reasons why Machazian mig
ing: 'of course I mllSt return ... but 1 mllst make rants primarily oriented towards South Africa \\an
sure I have enough money for the ITip and for drill ted to remain within the Machazian community
ing (the well) ... I will go soon ... bllt my son must i.e. to continue interact with other J\lachazians in
WHERE TO BE AN ANCESTOR?
South Mrica. In a COmpetltl\'e labour market,
ethnic networks were critical for securing jobs or
assistance during unemployment. In responding to
growing xenophobia and crime in South Mrica,
these networks also provided the only alternatiYe
for iUegal immigrants unable to avail themselvcs of
lebr:U recourse. A more complex set of issues
ill'u!l'ed new domestic strategies, Tn case~ of mari
tal dispute or dissolution, South African spouses
sometimes used their Mozambican husband's ille
~al status as leverage. After the war some men
replaced South African wives with women brought
from \hchaze (\\ho had neither supporting kin
ship networks nor legal status in South Africa) in
rder to solve this problem. Despite tJleir disinter
est in ro.tachaze, these men hoped to confine the
social interaction of Machazian wives and children
to .\ L1chazian social circles in order to counter tJle
influence of" hat they perceived as a moral laxit) in
South African society that threatened their patriar
chal authority. Migrant men thus participated in
the .\ lachazian eommuni~ not only as an economic
net\lork but also as a socio-moral mechanism for
reproducing power configurations and defining
terms of social interJction IT.at served their inter
eSIS..lvlaintaining M:lchazian idenrit)- and commu
nity was paradoxi~ll1y a way for men disinterested
in Machaze itself to deal 1\ ith various South
.\frican-specific problems entailed by their perma
nent residence in the lownships.
1I0\lever, it is also critical to realize that
~Iachazian 'narratives of intended return' were
presentalions of self (Goffman 197-+) performed
not only for those Ii\-jng in the Ivlacbazian com
munit) but also to its spiritual inhabitant5, in many
ways regarded as the 'box seat' occupants for these
performances. As such, they were c1ain1s made to
the full audience of those perceived to exercise
import::tnt forms of sanction over one's fortune in
life. In fact, such narratives were performed in a
"ariety of ways t hat redefined roles in Mach<v.ian
religious institutions and transformcd the market
plaee of religious organizations. The business of
negotiating postponements of retum to Machaze
"'as a booming cottage induso'y in South Africa in
1997--R Whereas "\Iachazian 'llyallgas' and '1II1a
IIIQssoros' were reported as rarel) if ever active in
South Africa before the war, their services in nego
tiating postponements of reLUrn with ancestral
5-
spmts were in high demand after the conflict
i\;loreO\ er, after the war church pro/etlls hecame
increasingl) active in such mediation ~oles \I hereas
they had shunned such imoh'ement before it.
Both strategies of 'token return' and 'deferred/
ontingent return' represent a move further '1\\"31
from the 'loyalty' pole on the 'loyaltY-voice' con'
tinuum of strategies for coping with the
socia-spirirual dilemmas implied by POst-conflict
resetrlement choices. Nc,"ertheless, hoth these
strategies justified change within already existent
terms of interaction, in a sense casting aspects of
'voice' in 'loyalty' terms. As with strategies of
'token return', practices of social disim'estments
from i\1achaze were interpreted as affirmations (Jf,
rather than challenges to the non-negotiability of
Machaze's monopoly on centrality in the socio
spiritual world.
1oici71g strategies oj 're-pIOfC-mt'lIt'
In contrast, the strategics deployed to cope
II ith socio-spiritual dilemmas by the minority of
l\1achazian men (under 15 per cent) who openly
sought to constitute post-con!lJct lives solely in
South Africa without any return or investment
back in NLtchaze, evidenced stronger clements of
'voice' Many of these men actually brought their
Machazian \Iives to live \Iith them in South Africa
after the ';\ ,tr. What distinguished these men from
the majority of other migrants waS their affirma
tion that they did not suffer sanctions from spirits
as a result of their decisions to remain perma
nently in South Africa, and that their anceStor~
had accepted this relocation as permanent.
The spirits' tolerance of this choice was
explained with reference to historical e\-ents,
Specifically, the Machazian origin myth that nar
rates original migration from Eastern Zinlbabwc
into the Machazian lowlands, and the historicaJly
documented migration of Machazians to Bilene in
southern 1\lozambique under the pre-colonia]
ruler Gugunhanna (in the 1880s) m:re invoked as
parallels to the wanime forced migration and
resettlement of Machazians in South Africa. Doth
of these historical migrations invoh'ed permanenl
resettlement away from 'original' ancestral graves.
This exegesis posited that historical occasions of
permanent resettlement had avoidetl spirirual
repercussions because they originated in exigent
578 STEPHEN lUBKEMANN
circumstances and involved respectful consulta
rion with the ancestors. Tn particular, ancestors
had been notified about their descendants' new
whereabouts so the} could 'find' and continue to
interact \\ ith the living, thus reconstituting the
socia-spiritual world. Ke}' leaders among those
who had decided to re-seule permanently in South
Africa claimed to ha,'e successfully engaged in
similar notifications, which legitimized their own
permanenr relocation. As one respondcnt put it
'\\11en 1 die I will be an ancestor here (in SOUlh
Africa) no, I will not make m} children go bad Lo
Vlachaze, bUL rau1er the} must come back here.'
While shU clearly dra"ing on fundamcntal
epistemological elemenLS of Machazian religious
beliefs, such narratives proposed a profounJ re
ordering of thosc clements. Tn particular, the~
challenged the notion of '\lachaze as the central
and single stable referent for organizing the socio
spiritual .... orld and socia-moral order, thus dis
lodging it from a non-negotiable position in
socicrspiritual interaction. In facL, such narratives
actually propose for South Africa a form of moral
anchorage that was previously ani} attributed to
Maehazc through the claim that one's own spirit
will compel childn.:n to remain oriented to the
newl} negotiated 'home' in South Africa.
Such 'narratives of re-place-ment' constituted
far more radical infusions of "'oice' into srrategies
for coping with the perceived socio-spiritual chal
lenges of displacement. Though these narratives
were not uncontested and were onl) pursued by a
minority, it is important to note that their public
proposal was also not grounds for immediaLe mar
ginalization by other Machazian community
members in South Africa. Tn fact, far from being
marginal members of the community, these men
often played pivotal and powerfuJ roles in its
organization, as pasLors :Uld in other inf1ueoLial
and respected capacities.
Exiling marginaliza/iol1
Perhaps the most radical strategies for coping with
the socicrspiritual dilemmas of posL-conflicl reset
tlement options were deployed by a small group of
f\lachazian women whose extreme marginalized
position was the pruduct of wartime displacement.
The same transnational strategies ,hat allo.. .I'ed
iV{achazian men to guard and enhance their life
straLegies, increasingly forced some .\tachalian
wives to face extremely difficult and equally In;tr
ginalizing choices related to the realization of their
fertiliL)'.; Facing prolonged spousal separation"
some women could only bear children - the critical
clement of fULure security - through cultumlI\'
prohibited se.\ual unions with men othcr than thei-r
husbands. I lo\\'ever, this option made di\'orce more
likely and placed these women's children at ris!.. in
the case of di'orce_ AILernatively, women could
remain faithful to absent husbands a.nd risk h,!\'ing
few or no children. The social organization of war
time displacement thus created a contradiction tor
women rhat could onl~' be resolved by fulfilling one
culLural prescription at the expense of the other"
foOl' many women ,his dilemma became more aeUle
as the war came Lo span more of their fertile years
OJ' robbed them of children already born.
.I\lost women facing such choices opted to have
children, even at the expense of doing so 'lc~iti
maLely'. Some women who stayed in \lachazc
during the war bore children with soldiers. Others
in UNlICR camps in Zimbabwe moved alH)' from
kin in order to bear chiklren free from their social
,-igilance and disappro,al. After the war, many of
these women faced claims from husbands or aff
ines on children produced in extra-marital war
time unions. i\lany women whose children \H:re
the product of non-consensual unions and war
time rape also faced similar threats of being
di'orced and losing childrcn ,hat had been borne
as a result of their violent sexual exploitation dur
ing the conflict.
As examined in greater depth elsewhere
(Lubkemann, 2000c), these women faced cow,ider
able disadV'anrages in pressing ,heir claims to these
children in the face of prevalent Machazian ideolo
gies of kinship that privileged the rights of patrilin
cages who had paid loboill. Accordingly, man~ of
these women opted not to return to "''lachazf arIel'
the war. Others iJl this predicamenr actually leti
J\ 1achaze for the first tIIne after the war. Despite
high costs of living that made subsistcnet: ,1 chal
lenge, man) of these women settled 200 kilometres
La the north, in the peri-urban shant)" towns around
Lhe pro,-incial capital of 01imoio.
More than merely removing thcmseh-es from
,1achaze as a phlce, these women sought to c,-,ri
caLC themselves entirely from the .\lachazian
WHERE TO BE AN ANCESTOR?
s()t.icrspiritual world by minimizing uleir interac
tion with other f\fachazians in Chimoio. R Fearful
not on1~ that legal claims mighL be pressed agains,
lhl~m, u1ese women soug;ht to COlmter the poten
tial sanctions of reproachful ~lach3Zian spirits. By
minimizing contact with other NlachaziaJ1s and in
paTlicular wiLh kin whose reproach their residence
in Chimoio was likely to invite, they believed they
could lessen the chance of being found bv Lhese
:)pirit~ and of being made bOUl the targets of lIloi
and accused of causing it. '\ly friends are from
d1C church and the markeL' remarkeLl one such
woman in Chimaio, 'because there arc fewer C()IIl
p!im('s (complications) when they arc not also from
~hKhaze. When I worked ncar my (ex-) husband's
,,,ife ~be '\ould tell her husband if 1 made more
money. Then Lhey said that 1 was making (spirit
ual) problems for her son. They wanted to take my
children. That is wh~ the~ hal'e called me back to
\lachaze'. Another woman explained that despite
a strong deSIre to find a husband who would sup
pori her and her children, she had refused the
proposals of several f\lachazian suitors: 'I "am
nOLhing wiLl1 them because they are from
~laehazc --1 will marry an) body, iJ1lybody excepl a
/I/lII/Fom MacllClu' Such responses embody what
can be thought of in terms of Hirschman's typol
og) as straLegies of 'exit' - attempts to realize
objectives by leaving one 'game' to participate in
another one rather than either abiding by its rules
('Ioyalt}') or attempting to modify thcm ('voice').
lany of Lhese women joined Protestant
churches in Chimoio that were distinguisheLl pre
cisely by the fact that the) had no sister cong
regations in i\lachaze itself Virtually all the
congregations in \\hich migrant men in South
Africa parlicipated had counterparts back in
\1achaze. The strong populariLy among these
women of the Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus
(Unilersal Kingdom of God Church) and the
Igreja Evangelica Cristo Vil'e Gesus Lives
(v-angelic Church) constituted alternative social
SUPPOrL networks for Lhem. Indeed, it also allowed
them to interact with other Machaziall women like
themselves wiLhout the threat of spiritual sanc
tions, by re-casting these women in the role of
'church sisters' rather than '.I\lachazian women'.
The focus in these churches' teachings also
struck a noteworthy contrast to the emphasis of
579
teachings in churches attended hy Machazian~ in
South Africa and in Machaze itself. As others have
also noted (Chingono 1995), the charismatic
Protestant churches ,mended by Lhese women
emphasize the importance of the nuclear family
and in particubr the mutual rights of spouses
rather than extended kinship obligations, reflecting
their recent Western source (the Igreja Universal
do Reino de Deus is Brazilian in origin and has
large congregations in the USA and Portugal).
The emphasis on nuclear family obligations rati
fied the sense of injustice these women felt :IS a
result of wartime spousal abandonment and justi
fied their own actions, while the emphasis in Lhese
charismatic congregations on 'holy spiriL powcr'
prom ised strong protection against ancl;straJ spir
its de-legitimized by heing re-cast as 'demons'. In
contrast, the Zionist denominations in Machaze
that had been brought back by ~1achazians from
the mines decades prior to the war tended to
emphasize extended kinship obligations and to
realize and wor\" within, rather than challenge, the
terms of the established socio-moral order
(Lubkemann 2000a). Only within the terms of the
ne\\ socicrspiritual worlds afforded by Lhe
Charismatic movements in Chimoio wcrc radi
cally marginalized Machazian women empowered
to re-establish new networks with the li'ing and
ward off the unwanted sanction of spirits.
Conclusion: Social Power in
Reconstituting Socio-spirirual Worlds
Anthropologists h,ll'C long been anentive LO
the complex ,\ays in "hich religious beliefs can
serve to define social identities by delimiting the
membership of 'moral communities', by assigning
social actors particular positions "'ithin tl1em,
and h) providing interpretations of the moral
"alue of activit)' (Evans-Pritchard 1956; Barth
1969; Dumont 1970; Bloch 1986; Werbner 1989;
Geschiere 1997). However, the ways in which reli
gious heliefs authorize inclusion or exclusion or
structure behaviour is nOL simply a matter of
enacting self-evident and uncontested meanings.
Precisely becausc they carr) the 'symbolic power'
(Bourdieu 1991) to authorize action and demarcate
community, religious beliefs are critical resour
ces whose meanings are constantly conLested.
5110
Other forms of power - symbolic and material
are mobilized in these comestS in an attempt to
STEPHEN LUBKEMANN
shapc the terms of authori7.ation themselves. In
conclusion, this analysis focuses on the ways in
which other forms of social power bear on which
authorizing claims are socially legitimized and
which are not, and thus ultimately on the degree to
which 'voice', 'loyalty', and 'exit' options are avail
able to different catcgories of social actors.
The stratcgies rcvic\\ed in this article repre
sented the attempts by a range of social actors with
Notes
In f\1achaze mjilkwlI referred not to an essentialized
category of spirit but to a Sr.lte into which a spirit
entered because of violent death, being \\Tong",d in
the e:\treme, or having grievow.ty transgressed the
soeio-moral order in life. Thus particularly powerful
and/or oppressive chiefs (suspected of using ultli
themselves to become powerful) were often believed
to reappear as l/!fuL'1P11J after dcath. Those who COO1
milled suicide were also fcued as potential mfukllllls.
People reported that during the war their own rela
tiles who perished I-iolent])' assumed this state. This
appears to have been a wartime shift in beliefs, sinee
it was reported that prior to the \Tar the dead only
acted as vlldzimu vis-a-lis their own kin, a report
confirmed by scholar!) accounts ofNJau beliefs ear
lier in the century (Curtis 1920; Rennie 1973).
Historically, the distinction between l'ad-::,;mu and
lI1/i&",11 may have been categorical, although the evi
dence is unelear (Lubkemann 2oo0a).
2 Those men who did not mjgrate to South Afric,]
during the W'lr usually fell into ont of three catego
ries: those recruited by the military; vOllng men \Iho
had not yet unJertakel1 a migrator)' labour trip
abroad; and older Olen who had retired from migra
tory careerS. /\s the war progressed younger and
older men tended to move in patterns similar to
those of Machaz.ian women (and rrequently in their
company), with the exception that once in Zimbabwe,
younger men sought (illegally) work outside the ref
ugee camps on farms or in ot her wage labour oppor
tunities while retaining contact and mutual support
with camp-serried relatives.
3 Ln Machazian religious belief, spirits need physical
connectiuns to lead them to the living with whom the)'
interact. Thus in I/Ioi it is believed that a victim's hair
or nails, or touching a common object, or crossing a
victim's path, aHmv mjilklPas to find their victims.
very different levels of social power to reconstitute
socio-spiritual worlds that could presene or
- WHERE TO BE AN ANCESTOR?
enhance thcir own social positions. Which strate_
gies \\ere available to social actors in their attempts
to authorize post-conflict resettlement options
\I hose meanings were subject to bcing Contcsted
by other Machazian communit) members, was
highly dependent on lhe very different levels and
forms of social power available to different catego_
ries of Machazians.
[... ]
Despite being powerful, spirilli are seen to ha\'e human
like frailties such a.~ the ability to get lost, become con
fused, or even be tricked. Thus lor cxampk ol'dl
accounts focus on the importance of physical leIters in
assisting ancestral spirit~ to 'find' migrants who \\orkcd
otllside kno\1 n mine areas (Lubkemann 2000a).
4 Many Machazians identifted the post-independence
government's policy of prohibiting rain ceremonies
and desecrating the gr~lVes of chiefs as a pnmnry
cause for the war itst>lf (Lubkemann 20ll0a).
5 Polygyny allowed men to obtain old-agc support
through marriages 10 younger women as \I ell as from
ehildJ"en. Women, h()\\ever, \\ere more like!) III ha\e
a spouse die before the) did and less likely to rcnurry
arter being wido\\ed. Consequently, children pro
vided the only source of old-age support for older
Machazian women, making fertiJif) mOre critical to
tbeir old age securit) than it was for men.
6 Strategies of transnational polyg) ny depended
on the ability of Macha7ian men to keep their
\1.ozambican spouses from joining them in South
'\friea. M'lehazian men often eng:lged in misinfor
mation tactics or in attempts to indeltnitely defer
assistance to wives \\ 110 did attcrnpr to join them
(Lubkemann 2000J).
7 Within Machazian cu.lrura.l prescriptions fertili)
was a far more 'rime-embedded' (l\lalmberg 199i)
project - in Ibe sense that it bad 10 be realized "ithin
more narro\\ Iy prescribed temporal parameters for
women than it was for men. Thanks to culturally
prescribed polygyny and biology a.n adult man's rer
tilit) could span most of his lifetime. Dy contrast,
\1ach:t7j;m women's fertility was biologically more
lime-restricted and cultunlily limited to children
they a.lone gave birth to.
8 Chjmoio was an internal migration des.tination from
Machaze before the war. It garnered a large internally
displJced popul,nion from Machaze during the war.
~la.1l\
who returned rrom there to MachJZe after the
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 Introduction

"Dc\'elopment," "Governance," "Globalization" - three notions that refer to a broad range of

partia)]) overlapping ideas, practices, and dimensions of experience - ha\'e all ser....ed at one time
or anal her as master narraLi\'es around which international engagement with postcolonial Africa
h,lS been imagined and mobilized. Within the international community these notions have gen
erally been invoked to suggest something that Africa's postcolonial societies "lack," indicators
of "deficits" requiring external intervention to remedy. Africa's postcolonial period of "inde
pcndence" has thus been one in which former colonial rulers and contesting global po\\ers
rccast as "donors" and "aid provider,," - have formulated and reformulated blueprints for
socio-economic and political change and wielded their considerable power to influence the
dircction of economic policies and political practice.
:\rguabl) no poliq idea or practice has held greater sway for a longer period of time, or had
more pervasive, consequential. and contradictory effects on social existence in postcolonial
.-\fricd than "development." At the dawn of independence "development" was touted by many
.Uric-an leaders as the primary means by ,,"hich to achieve material progress and political rights
that the social exclusions and economic predations of colonial rule had denied most Africans.
\'isiona'1 postcolonial leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah (of Ghana), Julius Nyerere (of
Tanzania), and Samora Moises \-lachel (of M()~ambique) believed that development should
im'o!\'e dramatic and comprehensive transformation not only in economic activity but also in
social relations in order to engender national self-reliance and social justice, and not only material
progress. This transformation would require shedding the economic subservience of colonial
rule as well as what some political elites derided as "obsclu'antist tradition."
In the context of the global ideological and political struggle of the Cold War, this powerful
modemization narrative had both its Marxist and Liberal variants, which, despite their differ
ences, shared a common faith that African societies would replic.1tc the social and economic
steps that had been followed by nations in the already industrial world. In this narrative, urban
ization and a shift from agricultural subsistence to indusrrial production and mechanized
agriculture would signal progress and engender higher standards of living. However. for the vast
586 INTRODUCTION
majority of ordinary Africans most elements of this modernization vision remain unrealized.
In fact, as James Fcrguson has shown in Zambia (Chapter 41 in this yolume) and in Lesotho
(1994), Peter Uvin in Rwanda (Chapter 42 in this volume), James Howard Smith (2008) in
Kenya, Donald Donham (1999) in Ethiopia, and many others elsewhere, the record of de\elop_
ment policies across the continent has been a dismal one - whether measured in terms of
improved living standards, or even with the more lenient and less socially attentive metrics used
to gauge macroeconomic growth.
The reasons for this failure have been the subject of extensive debate and analysis to which
entire volumes of readings have been hard pressed to do justice. Instead the readings here were
selected because they focus on some of the most consequential social and cultural effects of
development and its failure. In no small part, those social effects haye been particularly pro
found because development has actually been highl) successful as a social myth that charters the
expectations and aspirations of ordinary Africans despite its failure to deliver on its promises.
Thus, as Ferguson (Chapter +I in this volume), Richards (Chapter 38 in this volume),j.H. Smith
(2008), Comaroff and Comaroff (1993, 2001), Moran (2006), and others have all e>..-plained, the
\ ision of material progress proffered by development has become an eminently ''Mrican'' vision
in which the "mythology of modernization" weighs heavily.
The material success that development policies have failed to produce - and the actual down
turn in standards of living to which some of its orthodoxies (such as structural adjustment)
directly contributed - have been a wellspring of such great frustration precisely because the way
things actually are stands in stark contrast to what the cosmological blueprint of modernizati(lO
suggests the) should be. The gap between development-driyen expectations and development
generated experiences - variously labeled as "abjection" (Ferguson, this volume) or as "struc
tural violence" (Uvin, this volume) - has thus underwritten political action and even a great
deal of the political violencc that has plagued Africa throughout its relatively short postcolonial
tenure (see also Lubkemann, Chapter 40 and Richards, Chapter 38 in this volume).
Development has nourished this frustration not onl) as a broadly subscribed set of unrealiz
able ideals or as a set of policies whose failures have often accenul3tcd the challenges of basic
subsistence, but also as a social presence - an effect that has been rare I) noted by most analysts.
Development practitioners are a pervasive and seemingly permanent social presence through
out much of the continent. As Uvin comends in Chapter 42 in this volume, the effects of
the "development tribe's" presence can significantly accentuate perceptions of injustice and
inequality, sometimes with the profoundest of consequences.
While analysts such as Immanuel Wallerstsrein (1974), Andre Gunder Frank (1991), and
Walter Rodney (Chapter 30 in thi~ voilillle) have noted ho\\ historical and global forces have been
esscntial to the production and perpetuation of Africa's underdevelopment, man) other analysts
and international donors in particular have tended towards emphasizing "internalist"explanations
for African development failures. Whereas earlier iterations of development ideology (such as
modernization theory) identified forms of culture and modes of social organization as the pri
mary impediments to development, the notion of a "crisis of governance" has g"ained grl':\tcr
sway as an explanation over the last rwo decades. In emphasizing the need to drastically shrink
the public sector, the structural adjustment policies of the 1980s already foreshadowed intern,l
tional skepticism about the African state, that has since given rise to a far more explicit critiquc
that emphasizes Africa's need for "good governance" and identifies the lack of the same for most
of its developmcnt woes and much of its political volatility.
Nco-patrimonial forms of political organization have been singled out most specificaIJy for
such criticism and often as a particularly ':I\.frican" poljtical form - a view that Bayart in this
INTRODUCTION 587
volume challenges and tums on its head in arguing thal it is rather the Weberian bureaucratic
model prevalent in the West that is the historical and sociological exception. Bayart's general
analysis of neo-patrimonial governance synthesizes and builds upon a distinction made by many
others previously (e.g. Berry, 1993) and since (Richards, 1996; Ashforth, 2005; Moran, 2006;
West, Chapter 45 in this \olume) that emphasizes the importance of patronage networks in
establishing and maintaining political power. In a context in which followers have been both a
far scarcer and relativel) more generative resource in sub-Saharan Africa than alternati\cs that
may hold that pride of place elsewhere (such as land has in Europe) patrimonial systems have
developed as mechanisms [or building "wealth in people" rather than "wealth in things." In such
~ystcrns power and wealth are therefore a function of a ruler's ability to a[(ract and maintain
subordinates.
While culturall) prescribed cxpectations ha\e plaved a role in sustaining this mode of political
organization, Bayart (Chapter 44 in this volume) along with many others such as Smith (Chapter
43), van de Walle (2001), and Chabal and DaJoz (1999) point out Ulat international interests have
been particularly well sen'cd by this mode of governance as weU and that the reprod uction of this
s~~tem has also depended upon their active and powerful collusion. Moreover, as botb Bayart
(this yolume) and West (Chapter 45 in this volume) point out, the latest "silver bullet" in the
arsenal of the good governance evanp:elists- "democracy" - has often significantly rein forced the
hand of predatory elites who have most benefitted from neo-patrimonialism. At the same time it
h,lS also undermined the benefits that clients once gleaned from such systems. Unsurprisingly
enough thcse corrosive effects have meant that democracy has not alwavs been held in the same
high reg"llrd that its proponents assume it would or should have.
West reminds us that democratization in the postcolonial African context has never been
merel) about the institutionalization of competitive electoral politics, bUI has generally in\'olved
a package deal that has bundled top:el her a variety of economic austerity me-Jsures, privatization
and market liberalization, administrative decentralization, and the promotion of civil and indi
\'idual rights (largely as conceived of in terms of Western values). West joins others such as
Mat") \t{oran (2006) and Adam Ashforth (2005) in pointing our how crucial it is to understand
that when Africans have evaluated and reacted to "democracy" it has been to this full range of
policies and their ramif}'ing effects rather than to the more narrow notion of the term that hones
in on political participation or elections alone. Moreover, these analysts along with Daniel
Smith, Stephen Lubkemann, R.'llph Austen (all in this volume), Donald Donham (1999), Jean
and John Comaroff(1993, 1999, 2001), James Howard Smith (2009), and others, have shown
that historically forged cultural understandings abOllt power and legitimate g"overnance have
remained highly relevant in the constitution of these, often quite critical, evaluations.
Globalization - both in the more precise senses of greater integration in markets and improved
access to communication technology, or the more yague notions of fuller immersion in globally
circulating ideological currents and trends (such as democratization) - has arguably been the
latest "remedy" touted for that which ails AfTica (Ferguson, 2006). Yet as all the pieces in this
section point out, Africa's ailments have not stemmed from any lad. of "connectedness"wirh
the rest of the world, but rather from tlle qualitJ of the connections it has. Suborclination is not
ill the final instance a matter of disconnection but a form of connection.
E\en more so than "de\ce!opment," globalization is a term that has come to mean man) things.
In the pieces we have selected for this \'olume we have placed emphasis on some of the culturally
shaped and transformative forms of social interaction that are among the most immediate
embodiments of globalization. These include the social interaction with development practi
tioners, virtual. interaction with e-mail scam \Cicrims on the internet, and interactions with
588 INTRODUCTION
kin members who have extended the coordinates of African social worlds through a relatively
new and still growing second wave of diasporization.
In what hc terms an "cthnography of decline," James Ferguson in the first article in this part,
examines thc social and cultural consequences of the failure of dcvelopment policies to sustain
economic prosperity in Zambia, even as the myths of dc\'eIopmenl cominued to capture the
Zambian imagination. In the four decades that followed World War II and spanned the transi
tion to postcolonial independence, Zambia experienced massive urbanization and rapid
illdustrialization that gavc many social scientists - and most importantly most Zambians them
selves - reason to believe the country was poised to become a "developed nation," much in the
mold of the Western nations on whose path to modernity it seemed to be so closely and success
fully following.
Declining terms of trade for copper in the wake of tJle global oil crisis of the mit.l- I970s
reversed Zambia's fortunes, starkly revealing the lack of diversification in an economy whose
growth had depended almost solely on mining - a sector that began to shed jobs at a socially
calamitous rate. Throughout the two decades that followed the international development appa
ratus' remedies of public austerity, the elimination of food subsidies, and the shrinkage of the
public sector - all classic clements of "structural adjustment" in its heyday - added further to
the woes of the growing number of unemployed Zambians who experienced a precipitous
decline in their standards of living. In a context of rising costs and reduced employment oppor
tunitya \\ ave of unemployed urban wage earners was compelled to negotiate the economic and
social challenges of rcturn to rural areas of origin to which many maintained onl)' the most
tenuous forms of social attachment and affinity,
To most Zambians the accoutrements of modernity (as modeled in the West) at their
fingertips - cars, air travel, higher education - seemed suddenly and inexplicably to be yanked
from their grasp and placed far out of reach, Zambia's de-industrialization, its re-ruralization,
and the c;hrinking of incomes and buying power seemed to everyda) Zambians as a form of
uninvited and undesired march awa) from modernity. This sense of "history running in reverse"
stemmed from the fact that the charter myths of dcvelopment had secured a firm grasp on the
ambian imagination of what the future ultimately should be about, despite the actual failure of
development to sustain the economic prosperity it had once started to deliver. It is in the dis
sonance between development as a myth that charters social aspirations, and the lived experi
ence of economic decline experienced under structural adjustment and because of a subordinate
and vulnerable form of commodity-driven industrialization, that Ferguson locates the primary
socio-cultural effects of development - a sentiment he labels "abjection."
bjection, he suggests, is a particularly humiliating and profound sense of social exclusion,
engendered by the experience of being excluded from conditions that have already been enjoyed
at one time rather than merely from conditions imagined but never realized. In abjection
Ferguson identifies a particularly volatile - and thus potentially politically generative and explo
sive form of social exclusion, in which deep frustration and despair well up and gi\e rise to a
sense that entitlement has been short-changed. It is precisely this experience of expulsion from
the "garden of modernity" that has underwritten a great deal of the outrage and violent political
mobili7.ation in many other contemporary African settings, ranging from Mozambique (see
Lubkcmann, Chapter 40 in this volume), to Sierra Leone, and Liberia (sec Richards, Chapter 38
in this mlume; see also Ellis, 2001; ~10ran, 2006).
Far from being "un modern," or in a condition that req uires the amelioration of "development"
and greater "global connectivity" (to markets, ideas, etc.), Ferguson pointedly establishes that
the rural Zambian's conundrum - often as an unemployed former miner and urban resident - is
INTRODUCTION
589
in fact the product of development as it is realized in an economically subordinate corner of the
global political and economic order. His or her experience as a simultaneous cognitive captive of
the development myth and of the economic conditions that make that myth impossible to realize
is an eminent -and perhaps in Africa, widely pre\-alent - form of "modemit;." This experience
of abjection is not in the final instance a result of global disconnection, but is the product of a
particular quality of global connection that represents what Ferguson describes as the "under
belly of globalization."
Peter Uvin further extends Ferguson's critique of the contradictory effects of development as
a myth that charters aspirations but also a set of policies that renders those aspirations largely
unrealizable for most ordinary Africans. In "Development Aid and Structural Violence: The
Case of Rwanda" he argues that the international development industr) not only ignored the
impending signs of the Rwandan genocide and thus did little to prevent it, but actually contrib
uted to the social conditions that made genocidal violence possible. On the eve of genocide
Rwanda was considered to be a model of development success as measured b) macroeconomic
indicators and the institution of donor-approved free market reforms. However, the lived reality
of most Rwandans was one of growing income and asset inequality, in which over half of all
households could not e\en meet basic nutritional requirements. The development enterprise
contributed directly to both the extreme economic disparity in Rwandan society and the abso
lute po, Crt) of its TUral majority by reinforcing the power and economic position of predatory
clites. Development projects populated their staff with these elites, and allowed jobs and projects
themselves to be assigned according to patrimonial logics rather than on the basis of merit and
in the process thus reinforced a predatory patrimonial logic that benefited only a very few.
;\10reover, by ignoring how "big men" used development projects to sequester large tracts of
rural land in Africa's most densely populated country, the development apparatus contributed
directly to making even basic subsistence less tenable for most rural Rwandans.
Even as development projects contributed in these ways to reducing the life chances of ordi
nary Rwandans the enterprise simultaneously contributed to raising their expectations. On the
one hand, it did this through the explicit message it conveyed to rural residents: namely that
their Jives were lacking and required change - supposedly of the type that development projects
could prO\-ide. On the other hand, and perhaps most consequently, it raised the expectations of
rural youth through the implicit messages that were conveyed by the heavy social footprint of
the international development community in Rwandan society. Thus, the socio-economically
privileged international development technicians and their elite local collaborators continuously
convcyed an image that shaped the aspirations and nourished the t.lesperation and frustration
of ordinary, and especially young, Rwandans. UV1n describes a sense of deep frustration
that emerged among starving and impoverished Rwandans in the face of a constant and
nagrant display of power and economic pri\'ilege by elites and international development
professionals - who were driven around in cars most Rwandans couJd not even ride in let alone
dream of owning, who led what were wildly opulent lifestyles by local standards, and who often
tTcuted e\cryday people wilh blatant condescension. Uvin traces the origin of the profound fury
that a regime in crisis was able to harness for purposes of genocidal violence, back to the pro
found humiliation and desperation engendered by development's policies and social effects. I1is
perspectj\c is particularly unique in examining development as a socializing presence.
If U\'in's development practitioners and projects represent globalization's \'isceral social
reach into and influencc within Africa, Dan Smith looks at how young Nigerians use the inter
net to react to globalization by using e-mail scams to reach out to, and renegotiate their own
pOSition within, a highly unequal world. On the one hand Smith reveals how the discursive
 INTRODUCTION
590
content of Nigerian e-m::lil scams re\ eals a critique by Nigerian yOllth of the national and
international actors \\hose collusion they believe to be the dri\ing force behind Nigeria's ram
pant corruption. "Corruption" as defined in this cultural context is rC\'ealed to be about the
perceived erosion of traditional mechanisms of patron-clientism and the distortion of the moral
economy that informs it because of collusion with foreign interests. Paradoxically, these same
youth simult::lneously usc e-mail scams in an effort to renegotiate personal fortunes and con
strained socia-economic opportunities that ha\e been shaped by the global inequalities and
corrupt collusions that they critique.
The issue of corruption is also at the heart of.lean-Franerois Uayart's effort to produce a more
general descr1ption of the neo-patrimonial forms of national go\emanee that have predomi
nated throughout postcolonial Africa. Tn h1s discussion of the "politics of the bell~:' Bayan
draws on a wide range of African cases to demonstrate lhe importance of patronage networks in
establishing and maintaining political po\\er, and to explain its broader political and soc;al
effects. In his \ ie\\, neither colonial nor postcoJoni<11 regimes eyer pro\ed capable of t)\ erwriting
longer-standing <1nd still operative logics for mobilizing and maintaining the persunal nct\\orl-s
that U1H.lef\uite political power throughout so much of Africa. In fact both colonial indirect rule
policil's and the neo-colonial and geo-<;tratcgic interests of international parmers during and
since the Cold War have arguabl~ reinforced palrimonial political ~stems organized around and
by "big men."
Bayarr first lays out the basic logic and eoncerru; that drive nco-patrimonial political systems.
In contradistinction to systems that organize groups around economic class, patrimunial social
networl-s extend the principles of kinship - including both paternalistic hierarchy and
tllia! rc!>ponsibility and loyalt~ - to organize larger social networks t hat ultimately create persllnal
bonds between leaders and foil owen. Goycrnancc in this mode becomes first and foremost a
matter of culti\'ating these personal social net\\orks often through the exercise of public pl)\ler
and by accessing public resources.
While the interests of external political ami economic actors has been \\ell served by this form
of political org,mization, Bay-art also argues that long-standing and deeply ingrained ideas ,lhout
power and expectations about how it should he used b~ tho.,e \\ ho have it and their subordin:lIes
alike has also phl~ed a role in reproducing this I) pe of system \\ ithin contemporary African state
politics. Thus, the pressure that subordinates exert on their leaders to usc thcir po\\er to g,lin
access to resources which can he redistributed to their followers plays at least as much of a role
in the "criminalization of the ~tate" as do I he personal ambitions of leaders or the foreign intcr~'sts
\\ith which thcy collude.
As Bayart e\plains it, "big men" confront two major challenge~ in gaining and maintaining
political power, and their strategies for contending with these are the drivers of nco-patrimonial
political systems in :\frica. They must cultivate followers - which must be done by llsing
t heir power to gain access ro (public) resources that can then be redistributed through priyatc
patronage networks; and the~ must maintain controlO'er the resource distribution process hy
pre-empting the emergence of potential rivals within their 0\\11 factions as well as from ri\al
onCl!. Ranging ao'oss a \ariel) of cases Bayarr explains how these two imperatives ha\"e forged a
polilical culture in "hich the state becomes a resource \\hose capture is hotl~ - and often
violently - contested in order to nourish personalized social ner\\orJ...s rathcr than realize pub
licly defined roles and responsibilities. Bayart's insights into the use to which rulers hay L put
austerit~ measures and democratic elections - in particular to pre-empt ri\-al claimants. pro
vides a very different and critical perspective on the role of democracy and de\c1opment polic~
in facilitating nco-patrimonial modes of goyernance throughout Africa.
INTRODUCTION 591
In "Democracy and Carnage" Harry West hones in on a more specific case study of what has
become since the earl) 1990s the standard donor prescription for Africa's "gO\ emance crisis":
"democratization." Focusing on a country that has largely been regarded by donors and outside
analy~ts as one of Africa's "triumphs in democracy'," West re\eals ho\\ ordinary Mozambicans
from the Mucda region have come to view the democratic and decentralization reforms that
have been instiruted since the end of the civil war (1992) as a source of danger and disorder
rather than welcoming it as a form of local empowerment. He focuses specifically on how his
torically forged understandings about the nature of political power and expectations about ho\\
it should be legitimately exercised have shaped local interpretat ions of the meaning of elections,
the effects of privatization policies, and the expansion of indi\idual rights and civil liberties.
ben though the effons by Portuguese colonial rulers ro control labor migration were often
resisted, as were also the compulsory villagization and communal labor initiaLi\'es of the <;ocialist
postcolonial state prior to and during the civil war, both of these regimes were viewed as operat
ing through a logic of governance that was f undamemally akin to those of precolonial rulers in
terms of the central focus on maintaining wealth in people. Effective goyemance in this mode
required constant negotiation with subjects who had considerable power to resisr (or simply
lea\e), through tlle provision of social and spiritual security - a task that required access to
extra-local power and authority, initially in the spiritual world, hut increasingly also in the form
of access to and leverage wilh the state itself. \Vest describes how Muedan skepticism about the
election of local officials - a cornerstone of Mozambique's democratization and decentralization
program - stems from their doubts that the state would listen to officials it had not had an) role
in appointing. Elections "efe thus seen as cutting such officials off from tllC resources of the
st.ate, and by extension as an eApression of the national government's abdication from the redis
tributive obligations expected of legitimate governance.
Drasl ic reductions in social services and the rapid privatization ofindustrial and agro-business
concerns (both the result of the liberal democratic and economic reform package) have only
reinforced this suspicion and O\'erall skepticism about "democracy." Privatization in pa.rticular
allo\\ed man) local government officials to rapidly acquire a great deal of wealth. This ne\\
source of wealth has reduced their dependence upon and responsiveness to local people, and, no
longer needing people these officials fail to redistribute their new found wealth. [n this sense
democrac)' is blamed for a rupturing of the long-standing compact between the governed and
those who govern. Moreover, in a context in ,vhich self-enrichment without accompanying
social largesse has long been characterized as illegitimate and designated as malevolent sorcery,
democracy came to be blanlcd for an alarming rise in spiritual malfeasance and accompanying
social disorder.
Official collusion in what is actually termed "government sorcery" has been further rein
forced by the refusal of state officials to inten ene against accused sorcerers. Whereas the gO\
erumenL and its international backers believe this non-interference is an expression of civil
liberties and religious tolerance, Muedans view lhis as an abrogation of the most fundamental
responsibilil ies of goyernance: that of wielding power against the inc\'itable actions of those who
see!" persoml advantage at the community's expense through the utilization of malcmlent spir
itual power. OnlY' sorcerers can benefit from this ne\1 state of affairs, many Mucdans reason, and
those most oln iousl)' benefiting are rapacious local officials. Ironicall~ enough, elections them
selves are seen as further accentuating the general climate of insecurity in which sorcery flour
ishes. B) institutionalizing the competition for political power, rather than definitiycJ) resolving
it, elections are yjewed as making permanent and far more prominent the forms of public con
tention that arc most likely to invite recourse to sorcery. Ultimatel), West's careful case stud~
592 INTRODUCTION
reveals how local languages of power are used to read, evaluate, and react to "democracy" in
terms that differ significantly from those that shape liberal enthusiasm for the "global march
towards democracy."
In ct,e fmal chapter in this part, Diana Shandy explores an intriguing particular instance of a
fairly recent facet ofAfrica's experience with globalization: its historically second, and still surg
ing, wave of diasporization. In the seven decades since Evans-Pritchard (Chapter 5 in this volume)
first described their customs, social structure, and subsistence strategies, the Nuer have weath
ered the effects of chronically resurgent civil wars and massive displacement (see Hutchinson,
Chapter lain this volume). As a result of displacement, the Nuer social world now spans coun
tries and continents, including economic migrants :md the internally displaced in Khartoum,
refugee camp communities in neighboring Kenya and Uganda, and growing communities as far
afield as Minneapolis, MN in the United St.1tes. It is in this last, seemingly improbable corner
f the Nuer social world that Shandy pursues her ethnography of a new African transnational_
ism that is increasingly "ital to subsistence strategies in southern Sudan itself, even as it is also
a site for the renegotiation of social relations and cultural meanings.
Unlike the historical first wave of African diasporization that was realized through the slave
trade, the Nuer like the many other millions of Africa's new emigrants are able to maintain
social ties with kin and community back on their continent of origin. A.s Shandy explains,
through their remittances and other transnational social and economic investments and
involvements, the N uer in Minneapolis playa vital role in the economic sun,ival of their rela
tives living back in Sudan or in displacement in neighboring nations. Culturally prescribed
obligations and social expectations thus continue to carry great \\ eight in shaping the beha\ iOT
of Nuer diasporans, often burdening them with heavy duties that they struggle to fulfill. At
the same time their greater access to resources has recalibrated the balance of power between
those in diaspora and those who remain behind in Africa, and afforded women in particular
with greater latitude for renegotiating the meaning and structure of gender relations. Cultural
meaning is at the very center of these renegotiations - both as a resource deployed in some
instances to im'oke, constrain, or otherwise mold desired behavior, and as a system of moral
prescription whose tenets are being actively contested and reformulated. While completing a
fascinating trilogy that traces social transformation among the Nuer throughout the last cen
tury (see also Evans-Pritchard, Chapter 5 and Hutchinson, Chapter lain this volume), the
transformativc process of transnationalism that Shandy describes is increasingly relevant to a
growing number of other postcolonial societies, as attested to by a rapid!) growing list of
recent studies such as those by Stoller (2002) of Senegalese in New York City, by ~latsuoka
and Sorenson (2001) of Eritreans and Ethiopians in Toronto, by Janet ]\rlacGaffey and Remy
Bazenguissa-Ganga (2000) of Congolese in Paris, and by Stephen Lubkemann (2008) of
Liberians in the United States.
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Press.
Ber!), Sara S. 1993. No COllditioll Is PermalleJIl: Tlte Social Dynamics o/.4grarian C/IQI7ge III Sub-.'li/!wr(1/7 /!frlclJ.
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Chabal, Patrick, and Jean-Pascal Daloz. 1999. . J{ricil lIorts: Dis(mler CIS PoliticallrlSlrument. Oxford: James
Currey.
Comaroff,John L., and Jean Comaroff, eds. 1993. ,Horlmlit)' 1ll1J ils Hi/lcolllmls. Chicago: Uniycrsity of Chicago
Press.
INTRODUCTION 593
Comaroff, John L., and Jean Comarof. 1999. Civil SOClel)I I/Ild the Poillical Imaglnatlflll ill Aftlca: Critical
Perspecllvrs. Chicago: Universiq of Chicago Press.
omaroft; John L., and Jean Comaroff. 2001. 1I1111elllll'al Capill/lism ,wd the Cullure ofNflJlil'eralism. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Donham, Donald, L. 1999. MarxISI Alodem: All l:.tll/lographic HistQlY 0/ the Elhiopiall Rel'olllllrJll. Berkeley:
niversity of C.1lifornia Press.
LUis, Stephen. 2001. The .Mask o/Anard!)I: The Destrlloion of LiberilJ alld the Religiolls Dimensioll 0/ Q./l African
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Fcrguson, James. 1994. The. IllIi-Polillcs ,Hachille: "Deulapmetlf ", Depolilicizatioll, and Bureaucra/ic Pamer in
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ferguson, James. 2006. Global Shadows: /Ifrim in Ihe Neo-/lbem! World Order. Durham, NC: Duke University
Pre~.
Frank, Andre G. 1991. "The De\'elopment of Underdeve!opment." Smndlnavlal1 Joumal of Del:elopmell/
_/liallath'e" 10(3): 5-72.
Lubkcmann, Stephen. 2008. "Liberian Remittance Relief and Not-Only-for-Proflt Entrepreneurship: The
Liberian Case." InJennifer Brinkerhoff, ed., Diasporas and In/emullOlwl Deoe/opmel1l: Exploring the Potemial.
Boulder, CO: Lynne RienneI' Press.
MacGafTey, Janet and Remy Bazenguissa-Ganga, 2000. Congo-Paris: Tralls1lluiona! TJ'atlers on the Margins oflhe
LIIIT'. Bloomington, TN: Indiana Unh'ersity Press.
~1atsuoka, Atsuoko, and John Sorenson. 2001. Gltost, and Shadows: ConslrIICliOIl ofldemil)' ami COmmU1/l1y In an
Africau Diaspora. Toronto: Lmiversity ofToromo Press.
Moran, l\lary H. 2006. Liberill: The Violence o/Demomlcy. Philadelphia, FA: University of Pennsykania Press.
Richards, Paul. 1996. Figltting for Ihe Ra;,~{orest: 1I11T. Youth allJ Resourres I" Sierra Leone. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann.
Smith, James H. 2008. Bewilchlng Development: /lVitchcra(i tllld Ihe Reinven/ion of Developmelll in Nealiberal
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Sloller, Paul. 2002. ,~10Iley 110.1 No Smell: ]'lIe AjhianlzlJtlon ofNerv York Ciry. Chicago: Uni\'ersity of Chicago
Press.
"'10 de Walle, Nicolas. 2001. Africall Eronomies and lite Politics of Perlll(ll/cnt Crisis. 1979--1999. Cambridge:
mbridge University Press.
\'\allcrstcin, Immanuel, 1974. Tlte AJotlem World Syslt'm: Capilalist Agrimllure and the Origl1lS oflhe European
Worltll:.rotlomy III lite Si~'/(mlh Century. New York: Academic Press.
Suggested Reading
.\rgenri, ~icolas. 2007. The !llIeslllles oflhe SllIte: Youlh, Violmce, Imd BL'latd IIistories III lite Cameroon Grussfields.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bayart,Jean Francois. 1993. Tlte Stare in Aji'lra: The Politics ofthe Belly. London: Longmans.
Bayart,Jean-Fran~ois,Stephen Ellis, and Beatrice Hibou. 1999. TI,e Crimi1/allzlllioll o/Ihe Srale ill./frica. Oxford:
James Currey.
13Crm.111, Bruce, Dickson Eyoh amI Will Kymlicka, eds. 2004. EI!rnicilY and Democrary in Africa. Oxford: James
Currey.
El}<lchar, Julia. 2005. Markets of Dispossession: NGOs. Ecollomic Developmenl, IIlId Ihe Siule in Cairo. Durham,
NC: Duke Universitv Press.
Ferguson, James. 1999. Expectatiolls ofModemlty: Mytlrs IlIId AIerwlngs of Urban Life on the Zambian Coppe,.bell.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ferme, Marianne C. 200 I. Tire Ullderrrealh ~rThlllgs: Vio!ellce, History lind tire E~eryrIlI'y ill .'lieI'm LeQ11e. Berkeley:
Un;"ersity of California Press.
Hart, Gillian. 2002. Disabbng G!obalizalillll: P!lIces o/Pomer ill Post-Apa,rlhtid SOlllh Africa. Pietermaritzburg,
South Africa: University of Natal Press.
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Mamdani, Nlahmood. 1996. Citizen anti Subject: ContemporarY.1frim alld Ihe ugacy of Late Colollialism.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton Universiq' Press.
59-+ INTRODUCTION
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lIvlembe, \chille. 2001. 011 lite PostcolollY. Berke1e), CA: University of California Press.

Pior, Charles. 1999. Remotel)! Global: Village ,Hodemil)' ill lI'e.<t Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
41

Reno, WilJiam. 1998. Warlord Politics II lid African Stu/(s. Boulder, CO: L)nne Rienner.

Shandy, Dianna. 2007. Nile,. . Imcricall Passages: Globalizillg SlIdllff':Je M,gratillli. Gainesville, FL: University

Press of Florida.
U"in, Peter. 1998. Aidillg I iolellc,:: The Deeelopm<'n/ ElllapriSf iff RaJ/lllda. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.
. Expectations of Modernity

West, Harr). 2005. Kupilikull/: Grn;ernrll/Cf alld the fllelsible Realm ill /tt1nzamhiqlle. Chicag(l: L"nil'ersin of
Chicago Press. . Myths and Meanings of Urban Life

on the Zambian Copperbelt

James Ferguson

Observers from early on \\ere stunned by the

From "Emerging Africa"
to the Ethnography of Decline
In the mid-1960s, everyone kncw, Africa was
"emerging." And no place was emerging faster or
more hopefully than Zambia, the newly inde
pendent nation that had previously been known as
\"onhern Rhodesia. The initiation of large-scale
copper mining in the late 19205 had set off a burst
of industrial development that had utterly trans
formed the country; by the time of Independence
in 196-+. that industrial growth seemed sure to
propel the new nation rapidly along the path of
what \\as called "modernization." From being a
purely rural agricultural territory at the time of
its takeover by Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa
Company in the 1890s, the modern nation-state of
Zambia had by 1969 arrived at an urban popula
tion of over 1 million (ncarly 30 percent of the
pop Illation), with total waged employment of over
750,000 (of a total population of just over 4 mil
lion) (Zambia 1973,1:1), and a vibrant industrial
economy 1hat made it one of the richcst and most
promising of the new African states.
rapidity and scale of thc social transformation that
had taken place along the urban, industrial "line of
rail" that ran from Li\'ingstone in the south all the
way to the Copperbelt in the north [... ]. Within a
few short years following the development of com
mercial copper mining, mining towns sprang up all
along the Copperbelt I...]. European colonists
settled the new towns in numbers, while "nativcs"
came by the thousands to seek work in the mines
and other new industries. Africa was lla\'jng its
"Industrial Revolution," thought the missionary
Sandilands, at a brutal and blinding speed; the proc
ess had "something of the suddenness and ruth
lessness and irresistibility, on the social plane, of
what, on the military plane, we have become famil
iar with as the Germ,lll 'blitzkrieg'" (Sandilands
1948, ix). The social anthropologist J. C. Mitchell
concurred: "We in Northern Rhodesia to-day are
living in a revolution, the intensity of which, as far
as we can judge, has not bcen equalled in thousands
of years" (1951,20).
Already in 19+1 Godfrey Wilson had sensed an
epochal transformation:

Fr0nJ James Ferguson, ExpeCiatio1lS ~r ~Iotlertlily: M)'/hs a/lll Meanings of Urban Life 011 lite Zambia/l Coppabd/, 1st
edition (1999), pp_ 1-7,9-13,234-47, 1999. Reprinted bv permission of University of California Press.
596 JAMES FERGUSON EXPECTATIONS OF MODERNITY 597

Over the heart of a poor and primitive continent
civilization has laid a finger of steel; it has stirred
a hundred tribes tog'ether; it has brought them
new wealth, new ambitions, ne\\ knowledge, new
interests, ne",' faiths and new problems. (Wilson
1941,9)
Thirty-five years later, Robert Bates remained
equally impressed:
Less than a century ago, Zambia was exclusively
agrarian; in the present era, it is a society
dependent upon large-scale industry. Once
characterized by village society, the territory
that is now Zambia contains a score of cities of
100,000 or more persons, and these cities con
tain over 40 percent of its population. Where
but a little over fifry years ago forests once stood,
there now stand copper mines; and the marketed
produce from these mines makes Zambia one of
the world's leading exporters of this mineral.
(Bates 1976, I)
There was already something a little off here.
Wilson's dramatic vision of "small-scale society"
being suddenly replaced by "large-scale" indus
trialism ignored both the shallowness of "the
ind ustrial revolution" (which was largely confined
to mining) as well as the way that Africans in the
region had been bound up in large-scale political
structures and long-distance trade for cCl1luries
before. Nor was wag'e labor so new in the 1920s
and 1930s as it appeared - Africans from Northern
Rhodesia had already been migrating in numbers
to work in the mines in Katanga across the border
with the Belgian Congo for at least twenty years,
and some had gone as far as Rhodesia and South
Africa even earlier (Perrings 1979, 14-23; Parpart
1983, 31-2; Meebelo 1986, 19). Bates's "score of
cities of 100,000 or more persollS," meanwhile,
turned out on inspection to be only five. [... ] The
overdramatic and exaggerated narration of the
rise of industrialism and urbanism here reflected
the extent to which the Zambian experience cap
tured something in the modernist imagination
and came not only to exemplify but to epitomize
the revolution that was understood to be taking
place in Africa.
It was neither rapid change nor the existence
of mineral wealth alone that made Zambia and
its industrial core, the Copperbelt, such a good
S)111bol of "emerging Africa." Africa, after all,
had seen plenty of both in the past. Instead, it
was the particular character of the social and eco
nomic transformation that captured the imagina_
tion. Zambia at its 1964 Independence was a
highly urbanized nation, and newly so. The min
ing towns that had sprung up on the Copperbelt
symbolized newness in a way that older cities
could not. Here, unlike many other parts of
Africa, the very idea of cities was a "modern"
one. [... JAnd "urbanization" was understood to
involve not simply a movement in space but an
epochal leap in evolutionary time. Cooper has
explained:
As Africans flocked into cities in ever greater
numbers in the 1950s, the dualist approach to
urbanization suggested that they were entering
the mainstream of history. The key word in the
urban anthropology of those years was "adapta
tion," and studies stressed how organizations
from ethnic associations to trade unions t'"Jsed
the - inevitable - movcment into an urban \Val of
life. The liberal affirmation that the African was
becoming an urbanite was an affirmation of
modernity. (Cooper 1983,12)
Urbanization, then, seemed to be a tdeolob-ical
process, a movement toward a kno\vn end point that
would be nothing less than a \\'estern-style indus
trial modernity. An urbanizing Africa was a mod
ernizing one, and there was no place urbanizing
faster than Zambia. \\That is more, the expanding
mining economy that was driving the urbanization
process was a stereotypically industrial one, \vhose
noisy smelting plants and sooty miners seemed to
reiterate a well-known chapter in the usual narra
tives of the West's own rise to modernity, evoking
particularly the iconic images of the early period of
British industrialization. And everyone knew \\here
that had led. A certain comergence with a familiar
Western model thus seemed to be no specul:uion;
it was directly observable in the smokestacks
that dramatically appeared on the horizon as a
traveler approached the Copperbelt from the south.
What was happening along the line of rail, as Max
luckman and others insisted, was nothing less
than "the African Industrial Revolution"
(Gluckman 1961; Moore and Sandilands 1948).
Until recently, this vision seemed to many a con
yincing and straightfon\'ardly descriptive account
of what was happening in Zambia. Throughout the
1960s and most of the 1970s, we must remember,
Zambia was not reckoned an African "basket case,"
but a "middle-income country," with excellent
prospects for "full" industrialization and even ulti
mate admission to the ranks of the "developed"
world. In 1969 its per capita gross domestic prod
uct (GOP) was not only one of Ule highest in Africa
(more than three times that of Kenya, and twice
that of Egypt, for instance), it was also significantly
higher than that of such "up-and-coming" mid
dle-income nations as Brazil, Malaysia, South
Korea, and Turkey. Indeed, with what appeared to
be a rapidly rising per capita GDP of $431, it did
not seem unreasonable to suppose that Zambia
might soon reach the ranks of at least the poorer
European nations such as Portugal, with a j 969 per
capita GOP of just $568, or Spain, with $867
(United Nations 1973, 627-9). Even as late as
1979, Zambia was still being reckoned a "middle
income country," whose GNP justified a ranking
above such countries as the Philippines, Thailand,
or Egypt (World Bank 1979, 126). [... ]
Somewhere along the way, though, "the African
lndustrial Revolution" slipped off the track. The
script of Zambian "emergence" via industrializa
tion and urbanization has been confounded by
more than two decades of steep economic decline.
According to the World Bank, per capita income
in Zambia fell by more than 50 percent from 1974
to 1994 (World Bank 1996, 562). GNP per capita,
mean\'hile, shrunk by an average of 3.1 percent per
year from 1980 to 1993, by which time the figure
amounted to only $380, leaving Zambia near the
bonom of [he World Bank's hierarchy of "develop
ing nations" (only 25 countries ranked lower)
(World Bank 1995, 162). As of 1991, the bank
rcports, about 68 percent of Zambians were living
in households with expenditmcs below a level
sufficient to provide "basic needs," and 55 percent
did not have sufficient incomc cven to meet basic
nlltritionnl needs (World Bank 1996, 563).
Many causes could be cited for this precipitous
decline. Probably the most important is the sim
plest: a steady decline in the buying power of
Zambia's copper on the world market. Copper is
the ovenyhelmingly dominant feature of the export
dependent Zambian economy and has historically
accounted for some 90 percent of its exports. And in
the years following the oil shock of the mid-I 970s,
the terms of trade for copper exporters declined
sharply. [... ] The market value (per unit) of
Zambian exports fluctuated but remained mostly
flat. The decline came about chiefly in relation to
the goods that those exports could purchase, the
cost of which rose markedly against copper, making
exports effectively worth much less. To put the
matTer concretely, where in 1970 a ton of Zambian
exports would have bought a certain quantity of
imported g;oods, by the mid-1980s it would have
taken more than three tons to buy the same quantity
of goods. Since the volume of Zambia's copper
exports also declined over the period, the buying
power of the nation's export, declined cven more
rapidly than did the terms of trade. [... ]
Not only the terms of trade but copper produc
tion itself declined through the period. Average
annual production in the decade following
Independence (1965-74) was some 672,000 tons
(Daniel 1979, 87), but by 1995 several mines had
closed, and the others were mostly showing declin
ing yields. Production had dwindled to 327,000
tons and looked likely to decline e\"Cn further
(World Bank 1996, 562). There is no doubt that
this drop in production reflected substantial oper
ating inefficiencies, as has often been charged, as
well as a declining copper content in the ore being
mined (as is typical of aging mines). But, as Jamal
and \,veeks have pointed out, it is not surprising
to see output decline while external prices arc dra
matically declining - indeed, this is just what clas
sical economic theory would predict, though such
obvious external factors have often been ignored
by the proponents of a simplistic "African mis
management" explanation for recent economic
contraction Gamal and Weeks 1993, 15,84; see also
Brown and Tiffen 1992).
Equally important to Zambia's hard times of
late has been the burden of external debt, which
continued to grow as the economy contracted, with

598 JAMES FERGUSON
disastrous results. At the end of 1995 Zambia's
total debt amounted to S6. 7 billion, and debt serv
icing tool. + I cents ofever) dollar earned by exporrs
World Bank 1996, 562, 565). Long-term external
debt in 1995 amounted to a staggering $650 per
capita - this in a COUnIT} whose 1995 GNP per
capita lias only $370 (the 199+ per capita GNP of
the United States, for purposes of comparison, was
$25,880) (World Bank 1995, 1996). The extreme
burden of debt has left the country lin1c choice but
to ) ield to the demands made by lenders (via the
International Monetar) Fund IIMF] and World
Bank) for measures of "structural adjustment" of
ule economy. Implemented on an on-again, ofT
again basis throughout the 1980s by a government
wat alternated bet'\een capitulation and defiance
and carried through more consistently since the
election of the Chiluba government in 1991, these
measures have included devaluation of the cur
rency and deregulat.ion of foreign exchange, the
removal of subsidies and price controls for food
and other essential goods, the abandonment of
governmcnt-guar-anteed entitlements in the fields
of health care and education, and the privatization
of the major parastatal corporations, culminating
in the selling off of the mines (underway at the
time of writing). The aim has been to reduce the
governmenr's role in the economy, to establish
"frcc markets" and a secure environment for capital,
and to reduce urban consumption that is under
stood to have distorted rural-urban terms of trade
and inhibited agricultural development.
his imporl:ant to note that these imposed policies
of srructltral adjustment deliberately aimed to
reduce urban living standards, in the belief wat
"high" urban wages and food subsidies had pro
duced an "urban bias" that had "distorted" the
economy. Jamal and Weeks have presented a detailed
refutation of this argument, sho\\ ing that the so
called rural-urban gap was largely illusory and had
in any case been closed before the harsh austerity
measures were applied to "correct" it Uamal and
Weeks 1993; see also Potts 1995). As Pons has put it.
"Unfortunately for Africa's urban populations the
I:.\U~ programmes were only too efficacious in deci
mating their incomes; even more unfortunately for
them, r11eir supposed privileged starting point was
largely exaggerated" (potts 1995,247). The evidence
is overwhelming, she goes on to say, "not only that
-- -
urban poor ha\'c become much poorer in many
countrics, but that their lives have become an almo;!
incredible struggle." Nowhere is this Outcome mure
evident than on the CopjX."Tbeit.
Between the declining mining cconomy ami the
IJ\1F measures to reducc urban consumption, the
lives of the Copperbelt's inhabitants have he en
"adjusted" to the point where hunger and malnu_
trition have become commonplacc. The \,"orld
Bank itself reports that the prevalcnce of urban
poverty in Zambia increased from 4 percent in
1975 to just under 50 percent in 1994 (World Bank
1(96). Jamal and Weeks. more cOJlcrctcl~, Cite a
srudy showing that the rise in cost of a simple fam
ily food budget from 1980 to 1988 was more than
650 percent; wages did not keep up, so the monthlv
supplies that cost 64 percent of an unskilled
worker's wage in 1980 cost 88 percent of it by 1')88
Uamal and Weeks 1993, 112). It is easy to under
stand, gi\'en these raw economic realities. \\hv
Copperbelt residents rioted so fiercely to prott:St ~
"structural adjustment" rise in the price of maize
meal in 1987; for the urban poor, the price of food
had become an issue of bare surviyal. Indeed, e\en
many fully employed workers, as I found OLlt in thc
course ofm) tieldwork in Kirwc in the late 19110s.
were simply skippin~' meals to make it through the
month. The majority who lacked formal employ
ment were almost cenainl) having an even harder
time. The following figures on life expectancy and
child mortalit), ta.ken from the 1990 census, gil'e
an idea of the terrible consequences of such cata
strophic economic contraction (Tablc ~l.l). [... ]
Economic decline is nOl the onl) cause of these
demographic trends; surely the -\.,IDS epidt:mic,
which has hit Zambia hard, had a part in them as
Table 41.1 Life expectancy and child mortality uf
urban Copperbelt residents, 1980-1990
1980 /990
Life expectancy at birth (in years) 5.5.3 50J
Infant mortality rate (deaths 8~.5 IOiJ
< age 1 per 1,000 births)
nder-five morralit) rate (deaths 9~.5 129J
< age 5 per 1,000 births)
SOl/ny: %:ambia j 995,2: 105.
EXPECTATIONS OF MODERNITY
IIt:lI, though it is \'ery difficult to say ho\\ large
thar part may be. [... ] Bur the dramatic economic
downturn has been paralleled quite closely by an
equally dramatic downturn in life itself, a down
[Urn su shanering as to shave a full five ycars off ,m
al't'.rage life within the span of a single decade.
Gi\en such hardships, it is not surprising to
find that the historically rapid growth of the
Copperbelt towns, long fed by rural-urban migra
rion, has dramluic:llly slowed. In fact, the 1990
census showed wat the rate of population grm\ th
for Ihe Copperbelt cities from 1980 to 1990 was
just 1.7 percent, while the national rate of
population growth was 2.7 percent, meaning that
the 10\\ ns of the Copperbelt were actually shrink
ing as a proportion of the total population (almost
certainly through urban-rural migration)
(Zambia 1995,2:23). This is a trend thaI Potts has
;llso documented for other African cities under
going "adjustment," which she terms "counter
urbanization" (Potts 1995; cr. Bayart 1993, 12;
Berry 1976; Champion 1989).
Oldlinearities here seem strangely reyersed. Urb
anization has given \\ay to "counter-urbanization."
Industrialization has been replaced by "de
industrialization." The apparently inevitable
processes of rural-urban migration and proletari
aniz.1tiun are nov" replaced by mass layoffs and "back
to the land" exercises. And now, with the privatiza
tion of the stare-held mining company (Zambia
Consolidated Copper Mines [Zec.\I]), it seems
that even "Zambianization" (we long-established
policy of independent Zanlhia to seek the gradual
replacement of white expatriatc management with
qualified black Zambians) is to bccome "de-Zanl
bianization." [... 1 Such, at least, was the term
applied in a recent newspaper article to describe the
new policy of rehirinr: \vhite expatriate executives to
manage the mines before the} go on the auction
block for 5<11e to private investors. [... ]
It is not my purpose to explain the broad eco
nomic pattern I have sketched here, which man)
bctter-qualified scholars have already set out to do,
[...) but rather to trace some of its effects on peo
ple's modes of conduct and ways of understanding
their lives. For the circumstances of economic
decline ha\'e affected not only national income
figures and infant mortality rates but also urban
cultural forms, modes of social ~oteraction,
511 9
configurations of identity and soJiuarity, and even
the very meanings people arc able to gi\'e to their
own li\es and fortunes. In a total of fourteen
months of field'~ork in Zambia in the late 1980s,
chiefl) in the Copperbelt town of Kime (and the
adjacent Nkana copper mine rformerly Rhokana 1),
I explored how the economic crisis was affecting
the lives of mineworkers and 01 hel's. [... ]
Everywhere, I found an ove1'\\ helming sen~e of
decline and despair. Mineworkers in tattered
clothes who were struggling to feeu their families
had to remind me that there was a time, not so long
ago, when they could nor only afford to cat meat
regularly but could even buy tailored suits mail
ordered from London - a time, indeed, when a
better-off mineworker could own a car. And what
had been lost \\ ith the passing of this era, it seemed,
was not simply the material comforts and satisfac
tions that it provided but the sense uf legitimate
expectation that had come with them - a certain
ethos of hopefulness, self-respect, and optimism
that, many seemed sure, was no\~ (like the cars)
simply "gone, gone never to return again."
I was struck hy this sense of an irrecoverable
loss of standing, of a demotion in the worldwide
ranking of things, as I spoke with a young officer
of the mineworkers' union, who was expressing
his dismay at hO\\ difficult it had become to find
neckties of decent quality. Soon, we were talking
about the two main retail shopping districts in
Kitwe, one located in what had once been in colo
nial days the "European" town center, the Other in
we forrner "location" reserved for "Africans."
What struck me was that these two shopping dis
tricts were still called (as they had been in colonial
days) "First Class" and "Second Class," respec
tively. \Vh)', I wondered, did people continue this
usage? Wasn't this an embarrassing holdover of
colonial thinking, and of the iuea of second-class
status for Africans? Well, m) companion replied,
nobody really thought of it that way' - it was just
what the areas were called. "Anyway," he blurted
out with a biner, convulsive laugh, "nO\\ iI's all
'second-class,' isn't it?"
The [... ] faith in a country and people "going
forward" seemed, in the Kitwe of tile late 1980s,
both absent and, in its very absence, somehow
present. Like a dream, the idea of Zambians mov
ing proudly into the ranks of the first class was

600 JAMES FERGUSON
both \'ividly renu'mbered and manifestly unreal.
The signs and symbols of modernity - within the
reach of ordinary workers, for a few brief years
had been abruptl) yanked away. Access to the
"first-class" things of the world - cars, suits, fine
clothes, a decent necktie - was not something to
look forward to in an anticipated future but some
thing to remember from a prosperous past - a past
now "gone, gone never to return again." What was
most striking here was the pervasive sense of
enduring decline - not just a temporarv patch of
hard times but a durable and perhaps irreversible
trend. As one man expressed it, "From now on, it's
just down, down, down ... "
The mythology of modernization weighs heavily
here. Since the story of urban Africa has for so long
been narrated in terms of linear progressions and
optimistic teleologies, it is hard to see the last
twent) years on the Copperbelt as anything other
than slipping backward: history, as it wen:, run
ning in reverse. Hov. else to account for life expect
ancies and incomes shrinking instead of growing,
people becoming less educated instead of more,
and migrants moving from urban centers ro remote
villages instead of vice versa? Tllis is moderniza
tion through the look.ing-glass, where modernity is
the object of nostalgic reverie, and "backwardness"
the anticipated (or dreaded) future.
[... J
Global Disconnect: .4bjectioll
and the Aftermath ofModernism
When Godfrey Wilson published his "Essay on
the Economics of Detribalization in Northern
Rhodesia" in 1941, he considered that the Africans
of Northern Rhodesia had just entered into an
econonUcally and culturally interconnected "world
society," a "huge world-wide commlmity" within
which they would soon find a place for themsehes
as something more than peasants and unskilled
workers (Wilson 1941, 12-13). The "ci\'ilized"
clothing and rnallilers to which so many urhan
Africans attached such importance, he argued,
amounted to a claim to full membersillp in that
worldwide community. Indt..'ed, Wilson suggested,
it was for this very reason that many white settlers
resented and feared the well-dressed African
who politely doffed his hat in the street, prefer
-
ring to see all Africans in suitably humble rags.
Fine formal evening wear, ballroom dancin
European-style handshaking ~ these, ,"\ ilso~
argued, were not inauthentic cultural mimicry, hUt
expressed "the Africans' claim to be respected hy
the Europeans and by one another as eiYilized, i'f
humble, men, members (1 the new IPorid Sociel)'''
(Wilson 1942, 19-20, emphasis added). [... J .
That claim to full membership in "the new
world society," of course, wa.<; refused in ;L rolcist
colonial societv. The color bar explicitly distin
guished between "first-class" whites, who held the
privileges of such membership, and "second-class"
natives, who did not [... J. But nationalism prom
ised to change all that, by overturning' the colonial
system and hanishing forever the insulting idea
that Zambians should be second~cJass citizens in
their own land. The earl) years of Zambia's inde
pendence seemed on the yerge of deliyering on
that promise. The color bar dropped as educated
black Zambia.ns took unprecedented positions of
power and responsibility; a booming economy and
strong labor unions meanwhile helped e\en ordi
nary workers to enjoy a new level of comfort and
prosperity. As an "emerging new nation," Zambia
appeared poised to en ter the \\"Orld of tbe "first
class." It would be like other modern nations
right down to its state-of-the-art national airline,
complete ,,"ith up-to-date attractive airline host
esses [... J. Zambia was no exception. With a rising
standard ofljving, bustling urban centers, and such
symbols of modern status as suits made in London
and a national airline, membership in the "nllll
worlJ society" seemed finally to be at hand,
Itwa.<; the falterLl1g of the "industrial re\'Olution"
that changed all that. For no sooner had the "blitz
krieg" of industriaLization turned the world upside
down for millions of Central Africans than rapid
industrial decline set in motion another, eyen more
devastating blitz. The economic hardships this has
entailed have been staggering [... ]. But equally
important, if harder to measure, has been the sense
of a Joss of membership in that "world sociery" of
which Wilson spoke, Zambia, in the good times.
had been on tlle map - a countrv among olhers in
rhe "modern world." It was, older mineworkers
renlinded me, a place regularly visited by int.:rna
tionally known musical acts conducting world
tours. One man recalled an early 1960s concert by
EXPECTATIONS OF MODERNITY
rhe American country-Wc.<;tern star Jim Reeves,
for instance, and asked me with great feeling why
such American acts no longer came to Zan1bia.
But it is not just countl') -Western acts that ha\'e
stopped coming to Zambia. In the 1970s, interna
tional airlines like British Caledonian, UTA,
Lufthansa, and Alitalia connected Lusaka via
direct fligl1ts to Frankfurt, Rome, London, and
other European centers; British Caledonian even
offered a flight to Manchester. Zambia's own
national airline, Zambia Airways, also flew an
impressive fleet of planes, proudly piloted by black
Zambian pilots, to international destinations both
expected (London, Frankfurt, New York) and sur
prising (Belgrade, Bombay, Larnaca). But as the
economic situation deteriorated, the European
carriers one by one dropped Zambia from their
routes. Finally, in 1996 it was announced that
Zambia Airways itself would be liquidated. Like
the "industrial revolution," it had all apparenu)
been a big mistake. Efficiency required that it be
shut down. Today, a thrice-weekly British Airways
plane to London is the only flight leaving Zambia
for a non-African destination.
For many Zambians, then, as these details sug
gest, recent history has been experienced not - as
the modernization plot led one to expect - as a
process of moving forward or joining up with the
world hut as a process that has pushed them out of
the place in the world that they once occupied.
The only term I have found to capture this sense
of humiliating expulsion is abjection (which
I adapt from Kristc"a 11982]; see also Borneman
(1996]). AbjeC/i071 refers to a process of being
thrown aside, expelled, or discarded. But its literal
meaning also implies not just being thrown out
but being thrown damn - thus expulsion but also
debasement and humiliation. This complex of
meanings, sad to report, captures quite precisely
the Sense I found among the Copperbelt mine
workers - a sense that the promises of moderniza
tion had heen betrayed, and that the) were being
thrm'11 out of the circle of full humanity, thrown
back into the ranks of the "second class," cast out
ward and downward into the world of rags and
huts where the color bar had always told "Africans"
they belonged,
With much talk today of globalization, of new
forms of worldwide interconnection, and of yet
601
another "emerging" "new world society," it is
useful to consider briefly where Zambia fits in all
of this, and what the story I have told here of
decline and abjection might have to say about the
nature of this "new world order." The meaning of
the Zambian case, I suggest, is not simply that it
illustrates a gloomy process of decline and discon
nection that has had no place in many of the rosier
accounts of the new global economy. Beyond sim
ply illustrating the down side of global capitalism,
what has happened in Zambia reveals something
more fundamental about the mechanisms of
membership, exclusion, and abjection upon which
the contemporary system of spatialized global
inequa.lity depends.
V.'hen the color bar cut across colonial Africa, it
fell with a special force upon the "Westernized
Africans" - tllOse polished, well-dressed, educated
urbanites who blurred the lines between a "civi
lized," first-class white world, and a supposedly
'primitive," second-class black one. It was they
the "not quite/not ,yhite" (Bhabha 1997) - whose
uncanny presence destabilized and menaced the
racial hierarchy of the colonial social order. And it
was they who felt the sting not just of exclusion
but of abjection - of being pushed back across a
boundary that they had been led to believe they
might sllccessfully cross (see Cooper and Stoler
[1997J on the colonial dialectic of membership
and exclusion). In a similar way, when the juncture
between Africa and the industrialized world that
had been presented as a global stairway (leading
from the "developing" world to the "developed")
revealed itself instead as a wall (separating the
"first world" from the "third"), it was the
Copperbelt and places like it - proud examples of
just bow modern, urban, and prosperous an
emerging Africa could be - that experienced this
boundal')'-fixing process most acutely, as a kind of
abjection. Tbe experience of abjection here was
not a maner of being merely excluded from a status
to which one had never had a claim but of being
c.\pelled, cast out-and-down from that status by
the formation of a new (or newly impermeable)
boundary. It is an experience that has left in its
wake both a profound feeling of loss as well as the
gnawing sense of a continuing affective anach
ment to that which lies on the other side of the
boundary. When Copperbelt workers of an older
602 JAMES FERGUSON
generation spoke to me with such feeling of having
once, long ago, o~ned a fine tuxedo or attended a
concert by tl1e Tnl- Spot~ or eaten T-bone steak at a
restaurant, thcy \\ere registering a connection to
the "first class" that they had lost man~ years
before but still felt, like the phantom pains from a
limb long ago amputated.
When the Copperbelt mine\\orkers expressed
their sense of abjection from an imagined modem
world "out there," then, they were not sin1ply
lamenting a lack of connection but articulating a
specific experience of disconnection, just as they
inevitably described their material poverty not
simply as a lack but as a loss. When we think about
the fact that Zambia is today disconnected and
excluded in so many ways from the mainstream of
the global economy, it is useful to remember that
disconnection, like connectioll, implies a relation
and not the absence of a relation. Dependency
theorists once usefully distinguished between a
state of being unde\'eloped (an original condition)
and a state of being underdeveloped (the historical
result of an actiye process of tmderdcvelopment).
In a parallel fashion, we might usefully distinguish
between being unconnected (an original condi
tion) and being disconnected (the historical result
of an active process of disconnection). Just as
being hung up on is not the same thing as never
having had a phone, the economic and social dis
connection that Zambians experience today is
quite distinct from a simple Jack of connection.
Disconnection, like abjection, implies an active
relation, and the state of having been disconnected
requires to be understood as the product of spe
cific stTI/((ures lind prOt:Csses of disconllectioll. \Vhat
the Zambian case shows about globalization is just
how important disconnection is to a "new world
order" that insistently presents itself as a phenom
enon of pure connection.
Global Redlining and the Neoliberal
~ew World Order: Zambia Is no
Exception?
The industtial complex is a new thing, and
for all the} know rna) disappear as quickly as
it came. ~rilliam Watson, Tribal Cohesion in
a ArIrwey El'O"oll~Y: A Sludy of the Ma1llbme
People of Zambia (1958, 8))
On the verge of Zambian Independence, in 1963,
Dudley Seers, one of the leading development
economists of the period, fc!tit necessary to di~l'ose
of certain fallacies about industrial development
that continued to linger in some minds. The first SCt
of fallacies was what Seers caBed the "classical falla
cies." I lis n'eatment of these was \-cry brief and
worth quoting in full.
[The classical fallaciesJ can be quickly disposed
of. In the strict laissez-joire tradition, the bl~1 of
all possible worlds is one in which e\'ery COuntn'
specializes in the lines of production in \\hieh it
has a "comparative athamage." This does not
ha\e to be worked out; it will automatically be
demonstrated by the free play of market forces.
pro\-ided that no tariffs, quotas, or exchange con
trols are imposed.
From the point of \'iew of under-devcloped
countries, this doctrine has one enormous draw
back. Without protection from industries estab
lished O\'erseas, new producers wi U find life
extremely difficult (except for cases like cem~nt.
where a local producer has a natural advant.lge).
Consequently, it means in effect that rich countries
ought to stay rich and poor cOtmtries ought to
sta) poor. It is a doctrine which has always appealed
to those in a strong competitive position; those who
were rclatively poor never embraced \'ery enthusi
astically the prospeet of permanent po\-crty.
(I write about it in the present tense, bt:causc
like many relics of VicLOriana, it is of eour~ still
with us - especially among non-economists. We
all cherish the heirlooms we inherit from our
grandparents, partly OUI of sentimentalit~ and
partly because taste changes more slowly in i,kas
than in obje1.i d'l/rl.) (Seers 1963, -J.61-2)
The passage shows nicely not only how much the
"development" world has changed since 1963 but
also how malleable are e,'en the most authoritati\-c1y
expressed certainties of the discipline of econom
ics. For 1e.1ding development economists today
pronounce with equally self-assured and sUJ'Crior
intonations (albeit with far less elegance and grace)
dogmas that are exactly opposite in eYery detlil to
those articulated by Seers in 1963.
For nearly two decades now, economists have
insisted that the new African nations' attempts at
industrialization were a foolhardy error flying
EXPECT.\TIONS OF MODERNITY
in the face of basic economic laws. Exponents of
",hat we might call "the African industrial counter
re\olution" have railed against "protectionism"
and "inefficient" state-subsidized industries and
demanded "free markets" as a panacea for African
economic ills. An industrialization that ho.d once
seemed \0 be a sclf-e\ idently necessary step on the
road to a new nation's economic progress is now
claimed to 11a\'e been JUSt a big mistake. The World
Bank's inOuential Berg Report (World Bank 1982),
tor instance, explained Ulat the only way forward
for Africa was to open up its markets to the world
,Ifld ~cek an export-led development based on the
production of the products for which it had a com
parat1vC ;}llv'antage - chiefly primary agricultural
commodities. If Zambia was having trouble with a
declining mineral export industry, it was explained,
it was time to take up promising agricultural
e"l'0r~ lil-e coffee instead.
Thanks largcl) to u1e debt crisis and the ll\ IF
\\lorld Bam. practice of conditional lending, such
wisdom can1e to inform national-level policy-making
in Zambia, as in other parts of Africa. As outlined
in chapter I, this development led to attempts
to "correct" a perceived urban bias by elimina
ting food subsidies and cutting real urban wages,
along with privatizing state-held companies and clos
ing dOlln "inefficient" industries. For those declared
"redundant" (laid off) or priced out of the urban
market, the a.n~-wer was clear: unproductive urban
itl~ wcre to go "back to the land," where an agricul
tural future awaited them.
Dut now the high priests of economics may be
changing their message yet again. No less a figure
than Jeffrl')' Sachs (director of the Han'ard
Institute for International Development and chief
guru of Eastern Europe's "transition") has recently
suggested that I he whole idea of an agriculture-led
development strategy for A frican economies
ma~ have been a mistake. With the same cavalier
disregard for economic histor) displayed by his
predecessors, Sachs reduces the variation in global
patterns of economic growth to four "factors":
initi.11 conditions, physical geograph~, government
polic\', and demographic change. Of these four, it
is physical geography, he suggests, 1hat turns out to
be decisively important for tropical regions like
sub-Saharan Africa. Permanently "penalized" by
the disadvantages of its tropical climate, Mrica may
603
never reach the income levels of temperate regions
no maner what policies are followed. 'What is more,
he claims, the virtul'S of agriculture-led growth
may have been ovcrsold. "Nowhere has tropical
agriculture led the escape from poverty," he
declares. "Sustained agriculture-led development,
whether in tllC United States, Australia, Denmark
or Argentina, has always been a temperate-zone
affair" (Sachs 1997,22). The better alternative, he
suggests, may be "to accept as normal a situation in
which Africa and other tropical rel?:ions arc fed by
temperate-zone exports, and in which the tropics
earn theil' way in the world through manufacturing
and service exports rather than primary commod
ity exports" (Sachs 1997, 22). "The advice of the
World Bank," he adds in passing, "may also have to
be rethought." Many former Copperbelt workers
recently forced against their will into a risky agTi
cultural existence made wretched by the "disease,
poor soil, unreliable rainfall, pests, and other
tropical ills" that Sachs (1997, 22) seems just to
have noticed - might agree. Did we say Back to the
Land? Sorry, that was supposed to be Back to the
Factory! ALI a big; mistake.
In fact, it is not clear that there is any place for
Africa at all in the new global economy being
designed by Sachs and his associan.:s, beyond its
historic role as an open field for pillaging mineral
wealth and a possible new one as a dumping ground
for the industrial world's toxic waste (Ferguson
1995). As Jane Guyer has pointed out, a recent
35-page feature in 7'lle Economist on "The Global
Economy," made almost no reference to Africa at
all, making only a passing note of the "threat" to
rich countries that may be posed by "the 500m or
so people, mo,t of them in Africa, who risk being
left out of the global boom." The article continues,
Guyer notes, "without a backward glance to the
startling intellectual- not to mention political and
moral - challenge of a theor) of global economic
growth that does nOt even address such a massive
anomaly" (Guyer 1996, 83).
As Neil Smith has recently argued, in ~pite of
aggressive "strucmral adjustment" and a rhetorical
celebration of "free-market capitalism," "what is
remarkable about the last two decades lin Africa] is
its vinual systematic expulsion from capitalism"
(1997, 180). With private ventures in the continent
falling by 25 percent in the 1980s, and even further
604 JAMES FERGUSON
in the 1990s, Africa "has been created to a crash
course in the most vicious aspects of free-market
capitalism while being: largely denied any of the
benefits" (Smith 1997, 180, 181; cf C.1SteUs
1998,90). Effectively "redlined" in !\Iobal financial
markets, and increasingly cut off from governmen
tal aid flows as well, sub-Saharan Africa today func
tions as "a veritable ghetto of global capita!"
(l997, 179) - a zone of economic abjection that also
makes a convenient object lesson for third-world
govcrnments in other regions that might, without
the specter of "Africanization" hanging over them,
bl: tempted to challenge capital's regime of "eco
nomic correctness" (Smith 1997; Ferguson 1995).
The very possibility of "redljoin!!''' on such a
massive scale reveals that the much-vaunted flexi
bility of thl: new forms of global economy involves
not simply new forms of connection but ne" forms
of disconnection as well. With increasing interna
tional wage competition and pressure on state wel
fare provisions, as Smith (1997, 187) notes, "the
global economy is ever more efficient at writing off
redundant ~-paces of accumulation: the flexibility of
investment and market options is matched b) a
wholly new flexibility in disinvestment and aban
donment" It is pn;ciscly this "flexibility" that
makes global red lining possible, and that makes
ambia's recent deindustrialization just as integral
a part of globalization as the appearance of Mexican
car factories or Shanghai skyscrapers.
10 speak of expulsion and abandonment here is
not to suggest that Zambia is today somehow out
side the world capitalist system (and thus needs to
be brought back into it). The mining indusrry,
though shrunken, continues to dominate the
<l.mbian economy, and may c~'en (if the cur.rent
plan for full priv'ltization brings the new capital for
exploration and development that irs boosters
promise) expand again in years to come; capimlists
continue to profit from Zambia's copper. Other
forms of capitalist production of course remain
important as well. But the more fundamental point
here .is that the llbjected, redlined spaces of decline
and disim'esunent in the contemporary global
economy are as much a part of the geography of
capitalism as the booming :wnes of enterprise and
prospcrity - they reveal less the outside of the
system than its underbelly (cf Castells 1998, 91).
Expulsion and abandonment (in Smith's terms),
disconnection and abjection (in my own), OCcur
\\ Ilhin capitalism, not outside it. They refer to proc
esses through which global capitalism constitutes its
categories of social and geographical membership
and pril'ilege by constructing and maintaining a
category of absolute non-membership: a holding
tank for those turned away at the "delelopment"
door; a residuum of the economically discarded,
disallowed, and disconnected - to put it plainly, a
global "Second Class."
In its "Industrial Revolution" era, it was copper
that connected Zambia to the world. The Ilorid
needed Zambia's copper, and it was copper that
put the new nation on the economic world map,
while bringing in the export earnings that financed
everything from cars for urban workers to state
prestige projects like Zambia Airways. But copper
not only connected Zambia economically, it also
provided a vivid symbol of a specifically modern
form of \\orld connection. The copper wire bars
produced by Zambian refineries literally did con
nect the world, via telephone and power cables
that were forming a rapidly ramifying net across
the globe. From the SO\ iet rural electrifie;uion
program, to the United States' model Tennessee
Valley Authority project, to the new South Africa's
township electricity programs, electrification has
provided the twentieth century with perhaps its
most vivid symbol of modernization and de\'c1op
ment. Fusing a powerful image of universal con
nection in a national grid with the classical
Enlightenment motif of illumination of the dark
nt'Ss, electrification has been an irresistible piece
of symbolism for the modernist state (expressed
perhaps most ,ividly in Lenin's suggestion that
the "backward" Soviet peasantr~' be uplifted by
melting enol1~h church bells into copper I\ire to
permit the placing of a light bulb in every village
[Coopersmith 1992, 154-5]). [... ] It was no ditTereot
in Zambia, where the electrification of the
to\\nships was a compelling symbol of inclusion, a
sign that Africans, too, were to be hookeJ up with
the "new world society." In the new Zambia, elec
tricity (like those other primary goods of modern
life, education and health care) would link all of
the country's citizens in a universal, national grid
of modernity,
Today, the Copperbelt mine townships arc still
wired for electricity. But the sen'ice is inrermit
EXPECTATIONS OF MODERNITY
tent, as equipment often breaks down, and the
copper power cables are from time to time stolen
for s:lle as scrap. What is more, few township resi
dents tan afford to pay the monthly ch'lrges for the
usc of electricity, so electric appliances go unused
as women huddle around charcoal fires preparing
the daily meals and the township's skies fill with
gra~ smoke each morning.
Nowadays, global interconnection does not
depend so much on copper. The developmenr of
fiber optics and satellitc communications technol
og~, for instance, means that there is roday much
less need for copper-wired telephone cables. This
"advance" in global connectivity is actually one of
the causes of Zambia's drastic economic margin
alization; the world "out there" can increasingly
connect itself without relying on Zambia's copper
(Mikesell 1988,40). [... JIronically, then, thl: com
munication revolution that is generally thought of
as "connecting the globe" is playing a small but
significant part in disconnecting Zambia.
There is a fundamental poim suggested in this
small detail. What we have come to call globaliza
tion is not simply a process that linh together the
world but also one that differentiates it. It. creates
new inequalities even as it brings into being new
commonalities and lincs of communication. And it
creates ne"" up-to-datc ways not only of connect
ing places but of by-passing and ignoring them
(cf. Castells 1998).
Most Zambians, let us remember, have ncver
made a telephone call in thcir lives. [... ] \.vith
nc\\' technologies, will telecommunications now
become more equally distributed, or even truly
universal? One wonders. According to one recent
rcport, at least, cellular telephone technology
promises not to "hook up" the African masses but
rather to make obsolete the very idea thai thcy
need to be "hooked up": man) of the poorest parts
of the world, the article claims, may now never be
II ired for phone service (Ec(II/lJlIlist 1993). For cel
lular technology allollS businesses and elites to
ignore their limited and often malfunctioning
national telephone syst'ems and do their business
lia state-of-the-art satellite connectivity, bypass
in~ altogether the idea of a universal copper grid
pro'iding service to all.
Wilson's "new world societ}," for all its faults,
implied a promise of universality and even ulti
60S
mate equality that is strikingly absent from the
current visions of the "nell world order" In the
plotline of modernization, some countries were
"behind;' it is true, but they were all supposed to
have the means to "catch up" in the end. And
Zambia r..
J was no exception. "Second-class"
countries could and (lhe story promised) surely
would e\"entually rise to the ranks of the "first
class" Today, this promise is still mouthed by the
ideologists of development here and there. But it
is without much conviction. t\lore characteristic is
Tlte EWlIllmist's casual casting aside of that trou
blesome 500 million "or so" I\ho have inexplicably
missed tI1C bandwagon of global growth. In the
neoliberal "new world order," apparently, Z:lmbia
(along with most of the rest of Africa) is to be an
exception.
Many' of the people J spoke with on the
Copperbelt understood this very well - understood
that "Africa," in the new global dispensation, was
becoming a category of objectioll. I noticed that
whenever people were trying to convey their
problems - to describe their suffering, to appeal
for help, to explain the humiliation of their
circumstances - they described themselves not as
Zambians but as Africans. On the one hand, the
term evoked aU the images associated with Africa
in contemporary international media discourse _
pictures of poverty, starvarion, and war; refugees,
chaos, and charity. On the other, of course, it
evoked the old colonial usage of African as a stig
matized race category. Putting the rwo connota
tions together suggested (tragically, if accurately) a
reimposilion of the old, despised "second-class"
status but within a nell' macropolitical order. As
one old man put it, at the end of a wrenching nar
ration of his country's downward slide: "We are
just poor Africans, now" (sec also Ferguson 1997).
The End of Development?
A number of recent critical analysts have heralded
the end of the "age of development." [... ] For
Wolfgang Sachs, editor of the influential critical
work The Detl elopl1lel/1 Dietiollllry (1992), the wbole
project of development tochl} "stands like :l ruin in
the intellectual landscape," a dis3Slrous failure now
made "obsolete," "outdated by history" (1992,
I, 2). It is not only that development has failed to
606
delivcr the economic growth and sociocultural
moderniz:ltion that it promised; mote fundamen
tally, thc whole ideal of de\-elopment can no longer
c:lrry any conviction. Economically, Sachs argues,
thc \-cry idea of the whole planet consuming at
first-\\orld levcls presents an ecological disaster if
not an imvossibility, while socially ami cultur
all); development ofTers only a thinly veiled
Westernization, a colonizing global monoculture
that must choke out the "traditional" world's
wealth of diverse local modes of life. To the extent
that third-world people have themseh-es sought
development, in this view, they have been mis
F;uided; the schemas of development have pro\'ided
on I) "the cognitive base for [a] pathetic self-pity"
(1992,2), which has been self-defeating, and which
must continue no longer.
Esteva arb'l.les in similar fashion that development
has led third-world peoples "to be enslaved ro oth
ers' e.xperience and dreams" (Este\a 1992,7). When
nited States president Harry Truman labeled
two billion people as "underdeveloped" in 1949,
tile) cea,ed being \\ hat the) were, in all (heir
divcrsit), and werc transmogrified into an in\'erted
mirror of others' reality: a mirror that belittles
them and sends thcm off to the end of the queue,
a mirror that defines their identity, which is really
that of a hetcrogeneous and diverse majority,
simply in the terms of a homogenizing and narrow
minoritJ _(Este\a 1992, 7)
According to Esteva. the world would be \vell
ad\,jsed to do without such a concept (which is in
any case "doomed to extinction" [1992,7]) and pro
ceed to emulatc ,Jle "marginals" at the fringes of the
capitalist eCOllom) who are rejecting the "needs"
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ltl/egrillillg l1'tJrld. Ncw Yurk: O:d<>rcl u niv('"I'sitl"
Press.
1996. Trmtl.< ill Det'rlnplllf, Economics 19%.
\Vashingron, DC.
Z:unbia, Republic of
1973. ee//SUS of Popula/ioll Illld Housing 1969: Fin.,1
Report. Lus'lka: Central Statistical OfJicc.
....
42
Development Aid and Structural
. Violence
The Case of R\Nanda
Pete Uvin
Introduction
Development practitioners and academics increas
ingly face unanswered questions about the role of
(he aid enterprise. Questions relate to aid's wC<1.k
ness ill promoting genuine improvements in the
quality of living of the vast majority of the poor; its
rop-<lown, external, and often unsustainable nature;
and its interaction with the forces of exclusion,
oppression, and powerlessness that are the root
causes of continued poverty and disempowerment.
The 'game' of development, played out in an almost
ritualistic manner between governments, bilateral
agencies, and international organizations (with
increasing NGO participation), often contributes
to exclusion, inequality, frustration, cynicism, and
a potential [or conflict.
The case of Rwanda is extreme, both because of
the horrific nalure of the violence, and bccatL~e of
the fact that, almost up to the last day, Rwanda was
considered by most people in the development
communit} to be a model developing country, at
least by African standards. What does 'develop
ment' mean if a country that is seemingly sllcceed
ing so well at it can descend so rapidly into such
From Peter Uvin, "Devclopment Aid and Structural Violence: The Case of Rwanda," Dweil/fill/ell/, vul. 42, No.3
(September 1999), pp. 49-56.
tragedy) And, on a dirferent, more operational,
level; how did development aid, as weU as the
presence of an expensive battalion of technical
assistants and experts interact \\ ith the processes
that led to genocide?
Structural Violence
Almost three decades ago, Johan Galtung (1969:
167-91) wrote about the condition of structural vio
lence, in which the poor are denied decent and digni
fied lives because their basic physical and mental
capacities are constrained by hunger, poverty, ine
quality, and exclusion. Galtung defined violence as
'those factors that cause people's actual physical and
mental realizations to be belo\\ their potential realiza
tions'. As such, violence of this type can be built into
the structure of;1 society, 'showing up as ... unequal
life chances'. One example:
in a society where life expectancy is twice as hj~h in
the upper class as in the lower classes, violence
is exercised even if (h.:re are no concrete actors
one can point to directly attacking othcrs, as when
one person kills another (Galtung 1969: 169-71).
610 PETER UVIN DEVELOPMENT AID AND STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE 611

l\ccording to Khan (1978:83+-57), structural
\ iolence can take four forms:
c1~sical, or direct, violence;
pO\'er~' - deprivation of basic material needs;
repression - deprivation of human righls;
alienation - of higher needs.
The latteT category includes such intangibles as
mental and emotional harm, denial of dignity and
integrit), and the 'destruction of the indi\ idual in
a psychological or spiritual sense'.
IIuman needs theorists ha\ e long agreed that
\ iolcnce against basic non-material needs for
identity/recognition, security, and autonom)/self
determination can be built into the structure of
society, and may well bc the foremost cause of acute
\iolence in this world (Button, 1997). And Paul
Farmcr (1996:261) writes about 'insidious assaults
on dignit), sllch as institutionalized racism and sex
ism" adding that 'for many llIaitians], life choices
are structured by racism, sexism, political violencc,
and grinding poverty'.
TIere as \\e define it, structural violence con
sists of the combination of extrcme inequality,
social exclusion, and humiliation/assaults on peo
ple's dignilY. The concept thus includes attention
TO the more social and spiritual dimension ofpeo
pIe's li\ es, unlike the one of de\"Clopment, which
has too often been reduced to the economic or
physical aspects of life. It tries to capture in a
holistic manner the meaningfulness and dignity of
life as seen by people themselves.
Structural Violence in Rwanda
Notwilhstanding positi\'e macro-economic indica
tors, Rwanda has been char:lt:terized for decades by
a high degree of structural violence; during the
years prior to the genocide, this structuml violence
greatly intensified. This reality contrasted greatly
with the dominant image of Rwanda, shared by
donors and government officials alike, of a cotmtry
in which development was proceeding nicely, under
lhe capable leadership of a free-market oriented
government.
Contmry to appearances, Rwanda was character
ized by great inequali~' of both assets and incomc.
According to the 198-f National Agricultural
Survey, approximately 15 percent of the farmers
own 50 percent of the land; at the same time, 211
perctnL of the population has become landless;
most of the farmers in the middle li\'e below sub
sistence. Although Rwanda has a poljcy that forbids
the purchase of land by those with t11ree or more
hectares, farmers have been able to circullWcnt that
through long-term leases, or by buying in blacl.
markets. Data from Andre and Platteau (1995:22)
for a particularly densel) populated region show
that land sales constitute approximately 30 percent
of all land owned by households; up to 65 percent
of these sales are dislress sates.
Like elsewhere in Africa, the majOJ'it~ of these
land purchases arc not by small farmers who
through shecr hard work manage to buy a few acrl'S
more, but by 'big men' \\ ith mone) earned outside
agriculture in government and aid agency wage.
or commerce. Emy and many others describe the
population as 'extremely unhappy with the accu
mulation of land by the privileged of the regime
and lhe constitution of large pastoral domains'
(199-k80). The situation in Rwanda, where almost all
the poor depend on agriculture and where public
pobe) renders migration to the city or employment
in the informal sector nearly impossible, \ca\es
peopl!:: with little hope for the future, and with
no possibilities of escaping extreme poYeny.
Income inequalit) h~ grown faSlcr, and is higher,
than asset inequality. Darn by Maron (199-+) suggest
that the income share of the richest decile in
Rwanda has increased from 22 percent in 198210
52 percent in 1994. And according to c\1nrysse amI
his colleagues (1993), ill a rural region of the
Province of Butare, the 20 percent richest eamed
66 percent of all income in 1992. At the same tim
43 percent of the households spent nothing un
education, while one-fifth had nothing left for
health care. The same holds for salaries in the
I"ormal sector. According to 1988 Ministr) of lhe
Plan data, the lowest paid 65 percent of all public
employees carned less than -f percent of all salaries,
while the share of the top 1 percent was 45.8 percent.
These dara do not include the weU-kno\m salaries
and lifestyles of technical assistants and consult
ants, which arc significantly higher still than those
of LOp civil servants, and hundrec.ls of times higher
than those of farmers. They ,lisa do not include,
b) definition, illegal earnings from smuggling,
corruption, and the like, accruing to the major
dignitaries of the regime.
1\11 in all, approximately half of all R"andans
aTC ultra-poor, i.c. incapable of feeding themselves
decently or imcsting producti\el}. Up to -fO per
cent more are poor, 9 percent non-poor, and maybe
1 percent positively rich. The latter consist of a
ICw thous.lI1ds of mostly foreign technical assist
ants and experts as well as a small elite of local 'big
men' using their state and aid connections for
rapid enrichment. It is this latter observation that
brings us to the next element of structural vio
!ence, i.e. social exclusion.
Social exclusion can be defined as a property of
societies in which 'the rules which enable and con
strain access and entitlemenls to goods, services,
acti\'ities and resources are unjust in the sense that
certain categories of people are denied opportuni
ties which are open to other persons who are com
parable. Social exclusion is a propert) of society if
racial, sexual, and other forms of discrimination are
present, if the markets through which people earn a
helihood arc segmented, or if public goods, which
in theory should be available to everyone, are semi
public' (ILO/L,~TJ)P 1996: 11), In R\\anda, like
elsewhere in Africa, social exclusion was deeply
embedded in the functioning of society. In Rwanda,
tbis exclusion was foremost 01" a social and regional
nature, with ethnicity coming a distant third. Such
social exclusion processes can be seen at work in
development projects, as witnessed in studies by
Lemarchand (1982) and myself (1998).
Oientelism, corruption, and abuse of po\\er
constantly intervene in project execution, deter
mining much of their impact on poveny, inequality,
and exclusion. This starts at the drawing board of
the project, when decisions are made on where to
locate projects. According to some data, from 1982
to 198-f, nine-tenths of all public investments
the main proportion of it financed by development
aid -wa5in the four provinces ofKigali, Ruhengeri,
Gisenyi, and Cyangugu (the first is the capital, the
others are provinces in the North), "hile Gitaranla,
the most populous province after Kigali, received
O.ln percent and K.ibuye 0.84 percent. This is the
same pattern of regional inequality observed by
Rcyntjens (1994:33), who writes that more than a
third of tl1e 85 most important government posi
tions, as well as the quasi-totality of direction
functions in the army and the securit} apparatus,
were held by people from Gisenyi, the president's
native province.
The wheels of the machinery of social exclusion
are further oiled when project-related jobs are allo
cated to the well-connected; when project employ
ees use project cars, buildings, and work time for
personal purposes; when farmers arc requircd to
pay kickbacks to get credits and when these credits
go to the family members and friends of the project
employees; and when significant proportions of
improved or reclaimed lands end up in lhe hands of
local administrators, political cadres, provincial
civil servants, military men or traders, etc. The
wheels turn further \\ hen, even if such abuses are
discovcred, no sanction follows. The number of
corrupt admiJlistrators promoted to better jobs and
unprofessional or unel hical managers protected
against all evidence and eventually given better paid
positions, for exan1plt, is much larger than the
numbcr of those who receive punishment.
In this respect, il is instructive to look at the
population's attitude to\\ ard development projects.
'-\.nyonc who has worked in Rwanda will agree tJlat
distrust is probably the predominant attitude,
combined with lack of involvement, if not outright
resistance. Thus a team of World BanI. experts
(1987: 12-13,27) writes with a straight face:
the local population does not, in general, ques
tion the nature of the projects to be carried out,
provided,
the) participate as paid labor (thereby earning
extra cash income);
land developments do not affect their farm
holdings (requisition of land or encroachment
for infrastructure or other works);
the works can be rc\-erscd (erosion control
measures); and
most of all the projects do not involve compul
sory participation in the form oflabor or result
in hea\')' financial charges.
This paragraph should provoke some very serious
thinking: it states quite correctly that most poor
people manage to live with/survive development
projects and the associated administration as long
as these projects do not hun them or force them
612 PETER UVIN
to participate. The main merit of projects for poor
people seems to reside in the fact that the) create
a plethora of (temporary) salaried jobs. This is a
far cry from the original intentions of the devel
opment mission.
On occasion, people's sense of alienation and
discontent with the \ny the development system
works goes beyond passivity and distrust to move
into actiYe resistance. Indeed, there are many docu
mented cases of farmers destroying project real.i.z<l
tions supposed to benefit them, such as wells,
electricity generators, reforestation areas, and other
project-created infrastructures. Other documents
report farmers invading uncultivated lands owned
by churches or dignitaries of the regime. Some tech
nical assistants have told me of stones repcatedly
thrown on their "ehicles by angry farmers. As a
former Rwandan student of mine wrote,
this resistance denotes a sense of disapproval, of
indignation by people against the humiliation that
is inflicted upon them in the trearment of 'their
prohlems' and in the satisfaction of 'their needs'
and denounces the derailment of the integrated
rural development programmes.
From tlle moment, in rnid-1990, that multiparty
ism was alJowed and the control by the single party
relaxed, peasants increased their acts of vandalism,
defiantly pulling out coffee plants, destro)ing anti
erosive structures on their own lands, and inyading
communal and project demonstration areas as well
as reforestation .lI'cas. A5 a 1991 USAID report
notes:
in the last 2 years, ... people have attacked local
authorities for launching development projects
that brought little or no benefit to the commu
nity, for being personaJly corrupt, and for being
inaccessible to and scornful of citizens in
general. ... Those who felt themselves injured
bv past communal decisions on such matters as
land-holding arc taking matters into their own
hands to reclaim their rights. People are refusing
to do compulsor) community labor and to pay
ta.'Xes. The} are refusing to listen to the burgo
master and even lock him out of his office or
block the road so that he cannot get there.
(USAID, 1992).
During the chaotic months of the genocide, there
was funher vandalism, including the complete
and systematic destruction of most development
project housing complexes, offices, storage places,
and experimentation fields.
The latter quote's mention of officials' SCornful
attitude [0 farmers brings us to the third e1emcnt
of structural violence, i.e. humiliation. Prejudice
existed in Rwanda not in one but two forms. One
was the official, racist 'Hutu' ideolog), designating
all Tutsi as evil, dangerous, cunning, and intent 1m
po\\er; this racism, in its most radical form, CllO
stituted the moral basis for the genocide. The
other is the prejudice of what arc locally called the
I?l'oilies - the urban, educated, modern, 'de\e1
oped' people - versus their backward, rural, illit
erate, 'underdeveloped' brothers. Some obseners
have '\Tinen about a 'fourth ethnic group', that
incorporates all those who have acquired an cdu
cation and a European knowledge and who tend to
denigrate the rural way of living. This group has a
lifestyle that is radically different from the major
ity of the population. It is their lifestyle, culture,
language, and dress code that is upheld as the only
desirable, modern one. For the fe,, who have
acquired it, it accompanies an often extremely
condescending, rude, and manipulative attitude
toward the masses. Even famiJy members are
treated as inferior and their habit~ often ridiculed.
As Ntamahungiro writes,
A bad habit bas installed it~clf in our mort'S, ill
which the rich, the powerful, the ci"il sen-ant, the
educated person always has priority O\'CT the poor,
the weak, the non--educated, the 'non-ci\'il scnllnt'.
This can be obsened in court, at the doctor, in the
administration and ('ven in taxis. (... ) This 1.Ick of
respect towards pe,lsaots manifests itself amongst
others in the way they are addressed. They are spo
ken to in a commandeering tone, often w'ith disdain.
They are required to behave as inferiors, to make
themselves very small. (Nt.lmahungiro, 1988).
A large part of the population has internalil.ed
these values, accepting this hfestyle as the only
'good' one, and judging its own fate as primitive.
inferior, and extremely undesirable. I -ittle is left of
the 'traditional' pride of the African farmer in his
'ullure, in Rwanda as elsewhere. ?\Iost farmers,
DEVELOPMENT AID AND STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE
especially the young, consider the need to farm a
demonstration of failure and lowness, and would
givc up farming immediately to become a simple
sentry, cook, or, especially, driver, in any develop
ment project, and to live in the cily.
In addition, relations between the administrative
and teclmjcal state system and the population in
Rwanda were vertical and authoritarian, making it
almost impossible for ordinary people's voices to be
heard. State personnel, whether agricultural exten
sion agents, health personnel, IjvesLOck officers, etc.
Icnd to be ill-trained and largely incapable of doing
more than relaying messages from above. They, like
their superiors, typically display condescending
attitudes toward most farmers, jf they do not seek
to avoid meeting them at all. This is typical for
Africa, but, given the omnipresence of the state and
the development machinery in Rwanda - much
more so than in other African countries - it led
to an almost military style development approach,
.m 'encadrement' on the verge of forced labour.
From Structural to Acute Violence
Structural violence promotes explosions of acute,
physical violence, whether in its organized com
munal/nationalistic forms, or in its more diffuse,
individualistic criminality/domestic abuse mani
festations. There are a number of processes t hat do
so, and here we wilJ focus on those that facilitate
communal violence. All componcnts of structural
"iolence promote despair and cynicism. Social
exclusion undermines the moral fabric of society
through impunity on the one hand, and loss of
credibiliryand legitimacy on the other. Humiliation
creates a need for regaining self-respect, often
done through scapegoating and prejudice.
If there is only one point that almost all people
in Rwanda are willing to agree upon, it is probably
that impunity was, and is, one of the key underly
ing problems in society. There were two types of
impunity in Rwanda, and each contributed to 'cio
lenec in different ways. One was the well known
and oft-discussed impw1ity enjoyed by the perpe
u'ators of violence. Before 1994, the org-dnizers and
perpetrators of violence were basicalJy never pun
ished - not surprisingly as they usually worked
closely with the powers-that-be. It is widely felt
that if this kind of impunity for grave human rights
613
violations does not ('nd, the cycle of violence in
Rwanda wiU continue, for unpunished violence
provokes further violence. This is the main reason
for significant donor investment in the judicial
sector in post-genocide Rwanda.
But t here existed in Rwanda as in many countries,
a second kind of impunity, which was a matter of
daily life and worked hand-in-hand with the process
of exclusion. Where judicial procedures often sec
the highest bidder prevail; where entry into second
ary and tertiary education i$ the result of money and
influence rather than kno" ledge and perseverance;
when the best jobs are allocated not on the basis of
competency but connections; and when cases of
manifest incompetence or abuse of power often end
in promotion of their perpetrators, people lose their
faith in the system, become cynical, and are easily
tempted Lo bre-ak laws ulemselves.
Social exclusion leads to an accumulation of
anger and cynicism directed at the institutions and
ideologies of the state and the aid system, for it is
the) who embody the devdopmcnt discourse that
has lost its meaning, "ho transmit the humiliation,
and who benefit from the processes of e:.c1usion.
As a former technical assistant from the !LO in
Kigali admits with rare candor:
our projects tell the farmers and artisans thal i
they organize and work hard, they will develop.
But what is for these people the real-life model of
success' (... ) Who is the person that becomes
wealthier fast? (... ) ~Iost of the time, the person
who becomes richer did not ha\e to join coopera
tives, did not have to attend training sessions, did
not need project credit. He became richer very
fast because he had 'friends' in the right places,
and because a little present given can always lead
to a little present received. ln that case, with our
development model that takes so much time and
effort, do we have any credibility at all?
In addition, when people are treated in a humiliat
ing and prejudicial manner, when they are made
to lose their self-respect, the result is frustration
and anger, as well as a strong need to regain self
respect and dignity. Recourse to ethnic identity,
scapegoating, and the projection of hOSlility onto
weaker groups consLitute important effects of
structural violence. A~ Staub explains elsewhere:
614 PETER UVIN
For many peoplc, the hatred of 'lhe Other' served
to combat the 10\\ selfesteem due to chronic unem
ployment and squelched aspirations; these young,
frustrated men were the ones most vulnerable to
the kind of ethnic appeals that led to genocide.
(Swub,1990:47-64).
In guise of conclusion, the notion of structural
violence allow~ us to understand the little people
who execule the acute \ iolence - the adolescents who
everywhere, from Rwanda to Liberia, are the first
ones to do the killing and to be killed; the ordinary
farmers \\ ho lake up arms against their neighbours;
the women who betra)' other women. Structural \10
lence, defined as the constant and humiliating reduc
tion in the physical, intellectual and social life chances
of people, tells us about ho\\ daily life becomes char
acterized by constraint and force - not of the gun
(although that is usually ne\er lOO far behind), but of
biased struCUlrcs and practices. It makes us under
stand how people's sense of self-respect is reduced,
their acceptance of the rules of decency and good
society put into question, their knowledge base
reduced to slog-ans. In man)' ways, strucmral violence
thus lays the groundwork for acute violence.
Furthermore, structural violence lowers the
barriers against the usc of violence. As the norms
of society lose legitimacy; as people's knowledge
base is reduced to slogans; as progress becomes a
meaningless concept; as communiries are riveted
by conflict and jealousy; as people's sense of self
respect is reduced; and as segments of society
sho\\ their contempt for the rules of decency as
well as for farmers, people become increasingly
unhampered by constnlints on the use of violence
to deal with problems.
In the specific case of Rwanda, genocidal vio
lence emanated from a racist/ genocidal ideolog)
that, in turn, fed on two basic structural processes,
one emanating from the top, a"nd one from the
bOltom. For decades, anti-Tutsi racism had served
as a deliberately maintained strategy of legitimiza
tion of the rowers-that-be, and was kept alive
through a systematic public structure of discrimi
nation, in which the 'Tutsi problem' was never
allowed to be forgotten. Under threat by political
and economic processes, pa.rts of the elite increased
their use of the old strategy and effectively managed
to spread it throughout socicty.
At the same time, racist prejudice was a means
for ordinary people, subjecl to structural violence.
to make sense of their predicament, to explain
their ever-growing misery ulrough projection anti
scapegoating. State-supplied racism provided
poor llutu a sense of value, as well as an 'explana
tion' for the mal-dcvelopment they faced dail~ in
their lives. As Simpson md Yinger stated in their
seminal work on prejudice:
the designation of inferior groups comes from those
on top- an expression of their right to rule - as well
as from frustrated persons often ncar the bottom, as
an expression of their need for security" (Simpson
and Yinger, 1953:83).
In Rwanda in the 1990s, the interaction between
structural violence and racism created the condi
tions necessary for genocidal manipulation b~ the
elites to be successful. It is the unique combinatiun
of these three factors that explains the Rwamlan
genocide. Structural violence is what provoked a
need for scapegoating among ordinary people; the
existence of longstanding racism is \vhat allowed
parts of the elite to build a genocidal mo\ emenl on
the basis of his need. Wilhout long-standing ra(;jsm,
we would have found not genocide but 'ordinary'
communaJ violence in Rwanda (as in so many other
places in Africa). Without elite manipulation, ~lruc
rural violence could have led to more diffuse,
anomie, modes of violence such as petty criminality,
sorcery, domestic abuse - all of them also increas
ingly widespread in Mrica.
The Role of the Aid Enterprise
What is the role of development aid in tbis? This
question is not eas) to answer. One can begin by
observing that the development aid systcm still
neglects most of thc non-economic aspects of
development in favour of a narrow economic-tech
nical approach. It does not include addressing
human rights violations, income inequality, author
itarianism, humiliation, fear, or persistcnt impunity
in dail) life to be part of its core mandate. There arc
I.ittle or no working relations between the dc\c1op
mem a.id system and organizations dcaling with
these issues, such as political movements, human
rights organi7J1tions, or unions. Eyen in tbe 19905,
DEVELOPMENT AID AND STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE
when these issues became vcr) visible in Rllanda,
the c1e\'e!opment aid community b) and large con
tinued its 0\\ n trajectory, unable to rethink its mis
sion, Of course, lhis willful ignorance does not
make these issues c1isappear, nor does it limit rheir
impact on de\ elopment, eyen narmwly defined,
Rather, it allows Ihe processes of exclusion and
humiliation to continued unabated, if not to become
strengthened, to the greater pleasure of those ben
efiting from lhem. Hence, much development aid
helps to lay ule groundwork for further inequality
and mal-dc\elopment, as well as structural, and,
evenlllally, aCUle, violence.
Rhetoric not\\ ithslanding, most of the de\'elop
ment aid system also continues to function along
top-do\\ n, extcrnall) defined, lines, bypassing
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D;lllo,~lIe, Scpt.-Oct. 130.
Reyntjens, F (199+) L'/ljriqlle des GrIlllds Lars ell crise.
Rwanda, BI/rl/ndi: 1988-1994. Paris: Katthala.
Simpson, G,E. and).\'!. Yinger (I 953) RaC/a ! alid Cultural
,VJi/lOrities: all Allalysis nfPrejud;re find D;saimillollOlL
Third edition. Ne\\ York: Harper and ROil".
Stauh, E. (1990) 'f\Joral Exclusion, PersonaJ Gual
Theory and Extreme Destructiveness', JOllma! of
Socia! Isslies +6.1.
USAID (1992) Delllorratic Initiatives flild Governallce
Prfljccr. Washi%'1on, DC: 1JSAID.
Uvin, P. (1998)Airlillg ViolCllre. The DC7:elopmelll EI1I''1prise
ill RlPIWdJI. West Hanford: Kumarian Press.
World Bank (1987) RTI'/JIII/il. TIl<' Role ~rlhe Commulles
ill SoC/n-Economic De-t-elopmrnt, Washington, DC:
South, Central anti Indian Ocean Department.
 NIGERIAN SCAI'/iS AS POLITICAL CRITIQUE 617

recreate the many genres of scam letters that appear Nigeria's then nearly 100 million people were less
43
in e-mail in-boxes around the ,'orld are creating than 15 years old. The subsequent economic crash
cultural objects that illuminate the authors' inter and the return of the military created a situation
prelations and critical understandings of inequality where this increasingly educated and ambitious
Nigerian Scams as Political Critique
and corruption, not only in Nigeria, but in the larger
world system.
young population was frustrated in its attempts to
secure gainful employment or other legitimate
economic opportunities.
Globalization, Inequality and 41 9
The History of Nigerian Achanced Second, the military governments of the 1980s
and 19905 were brazenl) corrupt, and they created
Fee Fraud
a climate where ordinary citizens believed rhat
Though familiar in law enforcement circles for they would have to resort to any means a\'ailable to
Daniel Jordan Smith (1\0 decades, Nigerian fraud catapulted to global achieve their own economic aspirations (Maier
prominence o\'er the past decade, as the internet 2000; Bayart 1993). Indeed, some of the mecha
gre" into a principal means of international com nisms used by Nigeria's longest serving military
munication. The current notoriety of Nigerian ruler, General Ibrahim Babangida (1985-93), t,
e-mail scams makes it easy to forget Ulat confidence enrich himself and his cronies, presaged the kinds
men and their tricks have been an important part of schemes proposed by the 419 letter writers
of t he histories of many societies (IIalttunen 1982; (Apter 1999). Many of the scam writers' seem
Rebhom 1988). The perpetration of fraud through ingly preposterous stories of huge slims of money
\\ hieh somebody obtains something of \'alue by somehow siphoned from Nigeria's coffers are in
first gaining the trust of the victim and then betray fact reminiscent of the actual methods corrupt
are also seen as a form of interpretation, and a ing that person is an ancient game. Further, confi Nigerian elites have used to steal the country's
Nigeria is a country infamous for corruption.
Nigerian response to larger systems of inequality dence tricks have by no means disappeared as a wealth for years. Indeed, both international agen
Perhaps the most potent international sy mbol of
and corruption. When one knOws, as 1 will explain, means of making mone) for people in many coun cies and internal Nigerian critics have suggested
Nigerian corruption is the notorious fraudulent
that the authors and senders of most of these e-malls tries around the world. Nigerians are not the only that the Babangida administration not only served
e-mail scam. Prior to the creation of more sophis
are rather ordinary young Nigerians, most of whom players in the multiple versions of international as a model for numerous 419 activities, I but that it
ticated spam-blocking software, many people
have some secondary school or university eduC"J financial fraud, many of which continue to depend also facilitated them (Apter 1999, 2005; Barart,
using e-mail in the English-speaking world
tion, then the style, content, and context of the-;e on ",orne sort of confidence scheme. But at the Ellis, and Hibou 1999).
received a regular deluge of messages from
letters and the moti\es of the authors must be read beginning of the new millennium, Nigerian e-mail Regardless of the actual levels of collusion
Nigerians purporting to be in position to transfer
differently. The top figures in Nigerian net\'or\{); of fraud is perhaps the most notorious of contcmporary between the ruling military elite and the kingpins
millions of dollars into tbe bank accounts of will
fraud are, no doubt, rightly considered kingpins of confidence tricks. of advance fee fraud, the record of the military's
ing foreign collaborators. The writers claim to be
international crime. They are criminals by almost Nigerian advance fee fraud, known in Nigeria, extensive corruption in 1980s and 1990s, and the
high government officials, senior military officers,
any definition, and they should probably be lumped and now internationally, as "419," first emerged as fact that Nigerian officialdom has long been open
oil illdustry executives, bank managers, politicians,
with military strongmen, corrupr politicians, \'cnal a worldwide phenomenon in the 1980s, following to all kinds of shady deals, contributed to the evo
and even "idows of dead dictl\tors. The scam
banking and oil executives, and all of their assorted the dramatic decline in oil prices that left Nigeria's lution of Nigeria's advance fee fraud enterprises.
letters are classic confidence tricks, wherein the
international collaborators as the chief culprits in national economy reeling (Watts 1984; Apter 1999, Indeed, the reality of official corruption in :,-)igeria
writers attempt to lure the recipients into adYanc
l'\igeria's continued poverty, inequality, and inSta ZOU5). The 1980s v\ere also a period in which is one reason why at least some of the people tar
ing money and bank account information against
bility. But an analysis of the history, social organiza '\igeria's military retook and retained control of geted in these confidence tricks take the bait.
the promise of much larger payoffs.
tion, and content of Nigerian e-mail scams suggests the government through coups, establishing a Babangida had earned a reputation for skillfully
Nigerian e-mail scams are cert-ainly emblematic
that these schemes reveal much more about Nigerian period of more than IS years of uninterrupted spreading the tentaclcs of corruption to every
of the country's worldwide reputation for corrup
corruption and its relationship to systems of global military rule. The declining economy and the mil sector within the reach of government for the
tion. However, perhaps the most deceiving aspect of
inequality than is apparent in stereotypical under ita~ 's entrenched power contributed to the gro"\\' th ultimate benefit of himself and his cronies. When
the e-mail scams is the tendcnq to see them only as
standings. The young men and women in Nigeria's of Nigerian advance fee fraud in a number of ways. General Sani Abacha took the reins of power in
a mode of Nigel;an corruption. They are certainly
burgeoning c)bercafes who write, reproduce, and First, the oil boom of tbe 19705 resulted in vastly 1993 he promi~ed, like every other new Nigerian
that. But they are much better understood if they
increased access to education for Nigeria's huge leader before and after him, to root out corruption.
population, meaning that by the 1980s the country A couple of years into the Abacha administration,
n had larger numbers of young people with higher many Nigerians joked that his strategy to clean up
from DaniclJordan Smith, A Culture nfCurrtlplioll: J:vcrJldtrJi Duepliml and Popular Disculllrnl ilJ ""igeria, Prim:cto
niversity Press (2008), pp. 2&--52. 11:' Princcton Univcrsity Prcss. Reprinted by permission of Princcton
expectations for their futures than at any time in corruption was to make sure that only he and his
the past. By the late 1980s, approximately half of very closest cronies profited from it. Abacha was
nivcrsity Press.
618 DANIEL JORDAN SMITH
notorious for clamping down on smaller-scale
corruption even as he set up mechanisms to transfer
the country's wealth directly to himself. For exam
ple, in the mid-l 990s, Abacha ordered the closing
down of all business centers, ostensibly in an effort
to stamp out 419 that was perpetuated using fax
and phone services in these estabJjshments. "While
Abacha justified the new ban as a measure to fight
419, human rights activists in Nigeria criticized
the move as a ploy to stifle Nigerian communica
tion with the outside world during a regime that
became increasingly brutal in its suppression of
dissent. It is not clear what effect Abacha's crack
down on business centers had on the level of 419
scam activity in the mid-1990s. Some of it surely
continued on phone and fax lines that could still
be obtained with bribes paid to the right people.
Other scams moved abroad, handled by \ligerian
ex'])atriates who had easier access to phone and fax
service in other countries.
Adyance fee fraud certainly did not suffer a fatal
blow in Abacha's crackdown on business centers,
and the transition to democracy in 1999 was fol
lowed s\\'iftly by the proliferation of internet and
cellular phone technology in Nigeria. By 2002,
ordinary Nigerians in urban areas experienced
remarkably improved access to international com
munication. Cybercafes and mobile phone call
centers replaced, and ultimately far surpassed, the
business centers of the early 1990s as the most
common form of communications-related small
enterprise in Nigeria. With expanding web access
and growing numbers of young people who \\"Cre
internet and e-mail sa\"vy, the worldwide web
quickly became the primary means for disseminat
ing 419 scam letters. E-mail technology multiplied
exponentially the numbers of potential dupes who
could be contacted at very little cost. It also opened
up the possibility that much larger numbers of
young Nigerians could try their hands at +19.
While many of the promised dividends of democ
racy have yet to be realized by ordinary Nigerians,
the democratization of 419 has been dramatic;
almost anyone who wants to participate can try.
The United States Secret Service Agency esti
mates that these scams yield the perpetrators
hundreds of millions of dollars each year, and that
in the 1990s total losses associated with Nigerian
419 schemes amounted to five billion dollars
(Smith, HolInes, and Kaufman 1999; Edelson
2003). A recent article in the Utlited SlaLes
Attorneys' BulletIn (Buchanan and Grant 2001)
describes seyeral successful prosecutions of
Nigerian 419 fraudsters in the US, with two of the
three primary cases centered in Texas. The preem
inence ofTexas in these fraud stories is not coinci
dental. Texas has one of the largest populations of
Nigerian immigrants in the United States and the
literature suggests that Nigeria-based scam artists
frequently have Nigerian expatriate partners who
further develop the scam scenarios and hook
potential dupes in places like Texas (Smith,
Holmes, and Kaufman 1999; Buchanan and Grant
2001; Edelson 2003). In addition, Texas is the hub
of the U.S. oil industry, and actual deals between
Texas-based American companies and the
Nigerian government are common. Sometimes
even the official deals are plagued by allegatio
of corruption. For example, recent contracts
between the Nigerian government and firms like
Emon and Halliburton haye come under scrutiny
for alleged fraud. 2
A Serpent without a Head: The Social
Organization of E-mail Fraud
Over the past few years 1 have been a regular
customer at cybercafes in Nigeria, which are now
numerous in every city and major tOW11. In Umuahia,
a town of perhaps 200,000 people, for example, the
number of internet cafes multiplied from just a
handful in 2002 to more than 40 in 2004. The sizes
of the cafes range from those \\"ith just four or he
computer terminals to one cafe with almost
40 machines. It costs less than a dollar for an hour of
access. In addition, at all the major cafes, customers
could pay the equivalent of about two dollars for the
privilege of "night browsing," meaning that one
could stay on the internet UIlinterrupted from
10 p.m. until 7 a.m. for one low fce.
Through inadvertent glancing O\:er the shoul
ders of the hundreds of Nigerian. cybercafc cus
tomers sitting in neighboring terminals, through
deliberate efforts to walk around cafes to see whdt
customers were doing on the internet, and through
inteniews with cybercafe proprietors and a few
scam letter senders who agreed to talk, I began to
put together an emerging picture of the social
NIGERI,,;, SCM/,S AS POLITICAL CRITIQUE
organization of Nigerian e-mail scams, at least at
the lowest levels of the 419 hierarchy. 1 have never
been able to interview anyone at tlle higher levels
of these scam operations, though I was told stories
about the 419 bosses by some of the young people
who send scam letters.
The Western criminology literature offers a
somewhat limited picture of Nigerian fraud, and
J think it is fair to say that very little scholarship has
heen able to penetrate 419 organizations in ways that
have generated reliable descriptions and analyses.
What I collected is partial at best; it is most empiri
cally valid at the lowest rungs of the enterprise.
~ly main interest, and the material about which
I have the most information, is the wider popular
Nigerian perception of +19, reflecting ordinary
Nigerians' critical collective awareness about cor
ruption. Before proceeding' to analyze e-mail scam
letters as texts that illuminate widespread Nigerian
understandings and critiques of corruption,
I describe what J have been able to learn about the
social organization of 419 e-mail scams.
'\t almost any hour of the day 1\igerian cybcr
cafes in Owerri are busy, with peak patronage in
rhe late afternoon and e\ening. The bigger opera
tions often have televisions with satellite sen'ice
mounted high em the walls at each end of the cafe,
typically broadcasting CNN or MTV - making it
all the less surprising that e-mail scam letters haye
cI'olved to include ruses based on the Iraq War, the
Asian Tsunami, the U.S. financial crisis, and other
recent current events. The scam writers compose
their letters in response to real-time information
about global events, observing and taking advan
tage of numerous worldwide crises that are rife
with corruption, and which therefore make ideal
fodder for scam letters.
The typical clientele ranges between ages 15
and 35, with those 18 to 25 years old being by far
the most numerous. In addition to personal e-mail
and chatti.ng, other common uses of the internet in
Nigerian cybercafes are searching for work, school,
and 1isa oppoTtunities outside Nigeria, viewing
on-line pornography, doing research for a school
assignment, reading the latest news or sports, and,
of course, 419.
Despite the fact that in nearly eyer)' internet
cafe I haye visited in Nigeria large signs are posted
warning customers against using the internet
619
for ..H9, on any gi\'en visit several customers are
typically writing and sending scam letters. j\1ost
writers looked to be between the ages of 20 and 30.
Alt.hough J did not do any scientific measurement,
and although the proportion of customers sending
419 e-mails \aried considerably each time J con
sciousl) tried to observe it, I think it is reasonably
accurate to say that in an internet cafe of 20-25 actiye
terminals, at anyone time at least 5-6 terminals were
being used to send scam letters. Over the course of
my longest recent fieldwork in Nigeria -when rwent
to internet cafes in Umuahia about eveT) other day
I was able to identify three young men and one
young woman at three different cafes who were
frequent internet cafe customers regularly sending
419 messages. J eventually approached each of
them and asked if they would talk to me.
In each case, the scam \Hiters initially denied
they were involved in 419. They were afraid that
I was in some way connected with law enforce
ment. Indeed, J recall numerous instances over the
past few years when young people obviously send
ing scam letters would switch screens when J
passed or stood behind them, no doubt concerned
about being observed. But just as common were
scam writers who seemed absolutely oblivious to
my presence, or to any possibility tllat they might
be caught or prosecuted for sending 419 e-mails.
Eventually, I managed to convince each of the four
scam writers to talk to me. I explained that r was
an anthropologist, that 1 was interested in under
standing how 419 actually worked, and that I was
not interested in prosecuting anyone. J assured
them that I didn't even need to know their names.
As \yas always the case, when I told them about
myself, and particularly the fact that my wife was
Nigerian and [gbo, and that I had lived on and off
in Nigeria for thc past 15 yr.'us, it changed the
whole way the) vicwed me. Instead of being a for
eigner suspected of possi ble ties to the la\1 J was
seen first and foremost as an in-law, and thus J am
fairly confident that what these young people told
me is true.
All four young people said they got started
sending +19 e-mails aftcr having been internet
cafe regulars for other reasons. Two of the young
men had learned about computers and internet
technology in previous jobs at cyhercafes, and it
was through those jobs that they became familiar
620 DANIEL JORDAN SMITH
with and eventually part of the somewhat loosely
organized bottom tier of Nigeria's e-mail scam
industry. The other two, a male and a female., had
spent time at cafes doing ordinary e-mail, chatting
on-line, and browsing the web. Other acquaint
ances in the cafes who were involved in sending
4 I9 messages introduced them to the enterprise.
My questions about where they got the e-mail
addresses ro send the messages produced predict
able ans" ers. J\lassi\'e numbers of e-mail addresses
can be accessed from on-line company directories,
chat rooms, electronic bulletin boards, and per
sonal ad sites. In addition, one can apparently pur
chase lists of tens of thousands of e-mail addresses
on the internet for as little as a fe,," dollars, though
my informants said that only the bigger players
did that, as it requires access to a credit card. All
four said that they sometimes shared and received
lists of e-mail addresses from friends who were
also sending 419 messages. Two of the four worked
direct!) with either the proprietor or the manager
of the internet cafe where they wrote and sent
most of their messages. The other two \vorked
more independently, almost like freelancers, and
were much more loosely connected to a larger
organization. The two who worked with their
manager or proprietor had regular access to free
internet time at the cafes where they sent the mes
sages, tllough they said that the managers or pro
prietors asked them to work mainly when legitimate
business volume was low, especially during the all
night browsing hours. In only onc case was it ob,"j
ous thar the cafe proprietor was directly ..v;are of
and involYed in 4 I9. Tn another case it seemed as if
other employees managing the cafe may have been
facilitating the activity behind the back of the pro
prietor, or perhaps they engaged in 419 with the
proprietor's awareness, but t11e proprietor was not
involved in any contact with the scam writers.
The fact that millions of 4 I9 e-mails in in-boxes
around the world fall into a few basic genres is a
product of how the scam enterprises are organ
ized. The people sending rue e-mails usually begin
with copies of other e-mails that have been used in
the past. Their themes are directl~ related to the
structure of rea) fraud and corruption in Nigeria,
to the ways in which the biggest forms of Nigerian
corruption occur at the nexus between the state
and the global economy, and to the unfolding of
current events. Those working directly within the
loose organizational hierarchy send most of their
e-mails based on the previously successful proto
types. Those working freelance also begin with the
prototypes, but are more likely to try stories that
could generate a direct transfer of money, since
the freelancers obviously don't have the resources
to concoct the elaborate scenarios that could pro
duce the biggest payoffs.
When a +I9 e-mail gets a repl), the scam writers
may follow up with a fell more communications in
order to further hook the respondent. They arc
particularly interested in getting personal informa_
tion like phone numbers, addresses, and, of course,
bank account numbers. The two writers workin
freelance said that their first aim was to try to get
the recipients to send them money - either b}
Western Union or by wire transfer to a bank. If that
did not work, they could pass on information about
a potential dupe to someone in the more organized
sector of the business for a small fee. Those "ho
worked more directly" ithin the structure said that
they were supposed to pass all responses to thl:ir
bosses. However, one young man admitted that he
sometimes tried to solicit direct transfers of money
to himselfand that he also sent his OIm scam e-mails
that were somewhat different from the typical
inflated contract, dead expatriate, and dictator's
widow letters that are the staple of the more organ
ized efforts. He and the two more independent
scammers described some of their more creatiyc
e-mails, where the writer sometimes presented him
or herself as a victim of persecution for reasons of
religion, gender, or disability, or as a young person
in need of assistance with education, health, or
family problems. Sometimes they simply sent new
versions of the more typical adl'ance fee themes.
None of my informants had ever actually recei\'ed
any money directly from a dupe, but they had all
received some money from people higher up the
hierarchy to whom they passed recipient responses.
The two young men who worked dircctly in the
Joose organization received fairly regular money.
None said the) could really support themse""es
from the effort, though they all repeated storit.'S
they had heard about people \\"ho had recei\ed
monev direct" from a scam victim. The dream of a
big p;yoff see~ed to be as much of a motile as the
small income they actually earned.
NIGERIAN SCAMS AS POLITICAL CRITIQUE
1 was curious how they viewed what they were
doing, especially in light of the widespread aware
ness in Nigeria that the country's international
reputation was dominated b) tbe stigma of 419.
All four expressed a certain amount of ambiva
lence. Each said they would prefer gainful employ
ment to sending 419 letters. Each blamed the
larger system of corruption in Nigeria for leaving
them with no choice but to find any means to SUf
vil'e. One said he regretted any harm to the \'icUms
of these scams, but the other three said that anyone
who would fall for the 4 I9 scams was both greedy
and rich enough so that there was no need to feci
I'ery sorry. The words of one of the young men in
Lhe loose 419 organization capture some of the
common sentiment:
For me, 1 am just struggling. 1 could not finish
unil"ersity because my parents did not have the
money and our government does not care about
the people. Obasanjo [then Nigeria's presidenr]
and his boys are stealing so much money while
the rest of the society is f'lliing apart. That's the
re:llf 19. What J am doing is just trying to survive.
1 would not be here sending these e-mails looking
for rich, greedy foreigners if there were opportu
nities in Nigeria. How much do I really get from
t his anyway? The people getting rich from this are
the same people at the top who are stealing our
money. I am just a struggle-man.
The large volume and typical styles of the
e-mail~ in \Vestern in-boxes suggests that much of
what we associate with Nigerian 419 begins with
ordinary young Nigerians like my informants.
A friend who owns a small cybercafe in Umuahia,
and who denies any involvement in 419, says he
knows many cybercafe businesses that either par
ticipate in or tolerate the 419 scams. He confirmed
much of what my scam-writer informants revealed
about the loose organizational structure of 419,
particularly at the lower le\'cls. Once a wriler snags
a potentia) dupe, the information gets passed up a
hierarchy, eventually reaching those at the higher
!eYcls \Iho are able to employ significant resources
in order to make the scam more believable and
eventually extract large sums of money from a fe\\
Iictims. When tens of thousands of e-mails are
being sellt e\'cr~ day by thousands of small-time
621
scanlmers like my informants, the success rate
need not be very high to make it worthwhile for
those who run these operations.
Western government criminal investigations,
the criminology literature, and the little research
that has been done in the tradil ional social sci
ences suggest that, c\en at the top, the networks of
Nigerian fraud are loosely organized. Nigerian
criminal networks purportedly manage tbese multi
million dollar illegal schemes using ties of kinship,
place of origin, cthnicity, and patron-client rela
tionships that cut across the government and the
pri\11te sector and link Nigerians at home to the
large Nigerian diaspora. Criminologists suggest
that the same networks that run the higher eche
lons of the 419 e-mail scams are also involved in
numerous other criminal activities, including
identity theft, bank fraud, and drug trafficking.
Although I am not in a position to verify the extent
of government involvement in Nigeria's infamous
419 activities, it is undoubtedl~ the case that the
whale 419 enterprise depends upon the percep
tion that Nigerians at t11e highest levels of govern
ment, banking, and the oil industry are corrupt.
This is certainly the reputation of Nigeria abroad,
and it is also thc view that most ordinary Nigerians
have of their government and their leaders.
Nigeria's global reputation for corruption and
local Nigerian interprerations of corruption in
their society arc reflected in the content of the
e-mail messages. As I suggest below, the scam letter
writers depend on (and of course contribute to)
the global dissemination of stereotypes about
Nigerian fraud in order to engage it themselves.
Scam Letters as Political Critique
and Cultural Commentary
Once one recognizes that the majority of Nigerian
scam letters are written and sent by fairly ordinary
YOUJ1g people rather than a few kingpins of fraud,
it is clear why analyzing them as popular cultural
texts might be a fruitful endeavor. In 2002, 1 began
saving e-mail scam letters that I received on my
university e-mail account. In addition, \~hen they
remembered, three colleagues, two at my own uni
versity, and one at another universit~, forwarded
me their scam letters. 1 saved approximately
100 scam letters over three years and my colleagues

DANIEL JORDAN SMITH
622
sent mc anothcr 60. Scyeral days of looking
tl,rough the many humorous and anti-419 web
sites rc\ealed a diversity of scam letter stories that
is wider than m~ own collection, bUI also con
vinced me that my sample is representativc of the
main genres.\ I use the letters I have recei\'ed to
sho\o\ how Nigerian scam letters can be produc
ti\ely analyzed as a form of popu1:lr interpretation
and critical cultural commentary
I use letters that have Nigeria itself as the loca
tion where the 419 plot unfo)us because i am inter
ested particular!) in what the letters re\eal about
the Nigerian writers' underst:lndings of corrup
tion in their own society. Howc\'er, almost half of
the letters [ reeei\ ed have other countries as their
focus. The increasing prevalence of non-Nigerian
scam stories is partly due to the fact tb~t can artists
in other countries are imitating the Nigerian
schemes, but research by information technology
specialists who analyLe e-mail headers that can
reveal the actual place of origin of the e-mails sug
gests tllat upwards of two-thirds of scam letters in
\\ hich stories focus on non-:.'ligerian locations
originate in Nigeria (Edelson 2003). Changing the
stories to non-Nigerian settings reflccts a growing
recognition on the part of the scammers that global
a\\areness of the Nigerian scams has become so
widespread that leners focused on Nigerian oppor
tunities to make quick money might be less effec
tive. While Nigeria's reputation for corruption is
essential for successful scams, the increasing asso
ciation of 419 e-mail scams with Nigeria is per
ceived to inhibit dupes from falling for these
confidence tricks. The expanding portfolio of
countries where the millions of ill-gotten gains arc
said to be available abo reflects the long-standing
capacity of scam letter writers to incorporate cur
rent cvents into their narratives. Nonetheless,
Nigeria itself rt'mains a staple location for, and
intern,ltional symbol of, the scam stories, in part,
no doubt, because the premise of most scams still
depends on the presumption of large-scale corrup
tion in the place ~here the easy money is available.
In the eX<lmples below, 1 show how the kinds of
corruption stories utilized in these scam letters
reveal Nigerians' critical understandings of cor
ruption in their soeier~ and of the profound cun
nections of Nigeria.n corruption to the country's
place in the global economy.
Over-invoiced Contracts
One of the most common 1'\igerian scam scenarios
builds on the supposed a\'ailability of funds from
an inflated or over-in\'oiced contract, typicallY
involving the petroleum industry. The "Titer usu
<lily portrays himsclf as a guvernment bureaucrat, a
national petroleum corporation executi\'e, or a
bank official who can gain access to the cxtra mil
lions, but only with the aid of the recipient who
~ ill provide a much needed advance fcc and a for
eign bank account. Note that in man) scam lettcr~,
such as this one, there is no attempt to solicit an
advance fel: immediately. This usually comes after
the potential dupe has responded and expresst..d
interest. This e-mail received Septcmber 20, 2002
with the subject heading "CONFIDENTIAL" is
rcpresentative of the m'er-invoiced contract genre:
From: Dr. Abubakar Usman
Attn: Director/CEO;
Sir,
1 am Dr. Abubakar Usman, a top managcment
staff in the Nigerian National Petroleum
Corporation (NNPC). I came to know of you
in my search for a rdiable and reputable persot1
to handle a very confidential transaction that
involves the transfer of a huge sum of monc)
to a foreign account. There were series of con
tracts executed b~ a consortium t\ lultinationals
in the oil industry in favour of NNPC.
The oripnal \'alne of tl1ese contracts was
deliberately ovcr invoiced in thc sum of
THIRTY EIGHT \lILLION SIX HL:--'
DRED THOUSAND UI\'lTED ST.\TES
DOLLARS (38.6M) which has now been
approved and is now ready tD be transferred
since lhe Companies that actually executed
these contracts have been paid and the projects
oHiciaJl) commissioned. Consequentl~, m~
collcagues and 1 are willing to transfer the total
amount to ~'ollr account for subsequent dis
burscme11l, sincc we as civil senants are pro
hibited by the Code of Conduct BureaLI (Ci\il
Service Laws) from opening and/ or operating
foreign accounts in our names. l\eedlcs5 to sa~.
the trust reposed on you at this juncture is
enormous. In return, we have agreed to offer
NIGERIAN SCAMS AS POLITICAL CRITIQUE
you 30% of the transferred sum, while 10%
shall be set aside for incidental expenses (inter
nal and external) between the parties in the
course of the transaction. You will be mandated
to remit the balance 60(~o to other accounts in
due course. You must however NOTE that tl1is
transaction is sLlbjcct to tI,e following terms
and conditions:
ur com iction of your transparent honesty
and diligcnce. That you would treat this trans
action \\ ith Lltmost secrecy and confidentia1it).
That as a foreign partner, you will follow our
instructions to the letter. PrO' ide thc account
required, and competent to assist us on profit
able investment areas in your Count!) in an
ad\ isor) capacity. Furthermore, I\ lodalities
ha\ e been worked out at tlle highest levels of
the l\linisrry of Finance and the Central Bank
of Nigeria for the inlmediate transfer of the
funds within 14 \yorking days subject to your
satisfaction of the above statcd terms. Our
,ls~urance is that your role is risk free. 'Ii.) accord
this transaction the legality it deserves and for
mutual security of the fund, the whole approval
procedures will be officiall) and legally proc
essed with your name of any Company you may
nominate as the Bonafide bencficiar). Once
more, J want yOll to understand that having put
., over 26 years in the service of my country, I
am averse to having my image and career
dented. This matter should therefore be treated
witl1 utmost secrecy and urgency.
Kindly expedite action as we are behind
schedule to enable us include this tran~fer in
the first quarter of this fmancial year. Please
acknowledge the receipt of ulis message via Fax
;'\0: 234-1-7592604; Tel No: 234-1-774+044.
NOTE: PLEASE FURNiSH .ME WITH
YOUR TELlFA.X# SO THAT I COULD
SEI\'D ACROSS DETAILS OF TJ lli
TRANSFER AND OTHER RELEY,\NT
DOCUMENTS fOR YOUR ENDORS
E\1.ENT TO ENABLE US TRANSFER
THE FL':'JDS TO YOUR PROVIDED
ACCOUNT I AWAIT YOUR IMMEDIATE
RESPO:-.lSE.
Yours Sincerely,
Dr. Abubakar Usman.
623
The fact that over-imoiced contracts are one of
the most common scam narratives reflects a \\ide
spread perception in Nigeria that inOated and bogu.s
contracts arc one of the princip,ll means by which
government officials and their private sector cronies
10()t the state. Official corruption is so takcn-for
granted by the Nigelian public that many popular
debates about the ethies of corruption focus not on
whether money was skimmed from a government
project for printc gain, bur on whcther the contrac
tor carried out the projcct at all, and, if so, ",hetl1er
the work was completed at ,mything ncar a profes
sional standard. \tlany '\ligerians arc so cynical about
official corruption that their primary pIca is that at
least some of the money should be used for the
intended purptlSes. Countless friends and in/ann
anLS ha\'C said about government officials and their
contractor collaborators. "let thcm eat their share,
bur let them not cat e\'erything!" The assurances in
Dr Usman's letter that the original contractors had
been paid and that the projcct had been completed
are meant to reassure thc recipients that tl1e money
is not completely taintcd. This concern may not
even be apparent to a potential dupe, most of whom
would be unaware of the nuances of moral assess
ments about degrees of corruption that arc normal
among Nigerians, but its promillence in the text
reflects the extent to which scam leners are revealing
cultural texts.
Perhaps even more illuminating tllan the nuances
of l\igcrian assessments regarding degrees of cor
ruption is the fact tl1at it is a government contract
associated with the oil industry that is lypicall) por
trayed as the source of tl1e millions. Nigerians arc
keen I) aware tllat government contracts are the main
mechanism by which elites divert national resources
into personal wealth. The scam letter writers' focus
on oil-industr~ contracts rellects widespread popu
lar recognition that thc biggest forms of n.ational
looting occur at the nexus of Nigeria's relationship
to the world econom), particularly in the transac
tions between the government, the NNPC and mul
tinational oil companies. '\ second popular scam
story also highlights international connections.
Dead Expatriates' Bank Accounts
This second common scam scenario rypically
involves miJlions of dollars left unclaimed in a
624 DANIEL JORDAN SMITH
Nigerian bank because of the death of an expatriate
account holder, wbo is IlsuaUy said to have worked
in the oil industry, or perhaps for a development
donor agency. In most cases he is reported to have
died in a "ghastly" motor vehicle accident on one
of Nigeria's highways. The letters almost always
explain that extensive efforts have been made to
locate the dead man's kin to no anil- indeed, the
description of the car accident often includes the
death of the expatriate's wife and children to help
buttress the claim that all efforts to locate heirs have
been futile. Several letters J reeeivcd included sug
gestions that if the money was not quickly trans
(erred from its current limbo, unscrupulous clites
would channel it to the milit:lry for nefarious pur
poses. This e-mail.receivedonJulyI7.2003.is
fairly typical of the "dead expatriate" genre.
Ann: sir,
Permit me to introduce myself to you. My
name is Johnson Elcndu. I am one of the Senior
Managers in the bank I work for (Union Bank,
Nigeria PLC) and [ work under the Director of
Foreign ExchaTlge Operations (International
Remittance). 1 am contacting You presently
because I need your urgent assistance in a busi
ness transaction that will be of immense benefit
to both of us.
I have the immediate need to transfer some
money that has long been declared
"UNCLAIMED" by the chairman and some
members of the board of directors of our bank.
The money is the closing balance of one of our
best customers ever, Late Engl'. C.J-lAW, I was
his personal account officer just before he died
in the ADC plane crash of 1996 in Nigeria.
Engl'. OIAW an American citi7.en was a
contractor with the Federal Government of
Nigeria, he supplied and installed eqllipment
and his company Creekland Contractors com
pleted some of the best construction conlracts
in the country. 1lis closing balance in the Bank,
Union Bank of Nigeria PLC (US$40.Million)
has been tagged Unclaimed because no relative
of Engr. CllAW has come forward to make a
statement of claim. We have no knowledge of a
next ofkin. At this point 1 trust you can picture
what the situation is like. We ha\e strong proof
that the chairman and the board of directors
will keep most of the money for themselves
and donate the remainder to a discredited
military Lrust here in Nigeria. This invariably is
an attempt to infuse more monc) into the acqui
sition of military equipment (arms and ammuni
tjon) for use in an already prostrate Africa.
This of course, is senseless, hence my mission.
M) colleagues and my self have made several
attempts at locating persons that could be
remotely related to Engr. CHAW and we have
been doing this for about 4 ye:lrs now. Right
now I am almost alone in this enterprise and
I have presently decided on moving the money
to a foreign account. r am hereby soliciting your
assistance and 1 will be ,'ery grateful if you will
be wilting to help in this regard.
We have access to most of what it will take to
transfer the money. The only thing we do not
have is a safe account. We will provide you with
answers to all the security questions, which you
will have to answer to move the process towards
completion. We will also provide you answers
to questions that only a person related to him
will know. You may however not need to make
any appearance; every thing will be concluded
on phone and email between you and the bank
ION BANK NIGERIA PLC, LAGOS]
for your participation you will get 30"0, 5%
has been earmarked for the expenses that may
be incurred on both ends. 65% shall be for my
colleague and 1.
T make this proposal in trust and in good
faith, therefore, if you are interested and you
agree to assist me then contact me immediately
you receive this email, there is a lot more to talk
about. If you are not interested, then, please,
do get rid of this email and please forgive me if
this message has upset you in any way.
Thank you and best regards.
~lr. JOHNSOJ\: ELENDU
While this scam writer goes to great lengths to
assure the recipient that 1\11'. Chaw's contract work
in Nigeria was legitimate - his company "com
rlcted some of the best construction contracts in
the country" - many other dead expatriates stories
simply tie the deceased to the oil or development
industry and presume that this connection is
NIGERIAN SCAMS AS POLITICAL CRITIQUE
sufficient to explain why he would have tens of
millions of dollars in a personal account. The scam
\I riters thus represent the widely-held Nigerian
assumption that expatriates \lorking in the oil
industry or with development agencies are getting
fabulously rich. Widespread awareness of the
exclusive enclaves in which expatriates live, rumors
about their large salaries, and the fact that big scan
dalS involving foreign oil companics are sometimes
exposed in the international and national media all
feed public perceptions that expatriates in Nigeria
arc making millions. The use of acronyms and a
"legalese" rhetorical style indicates the degree to
which ordinary Nigerians associate this son of offi
ciaI language and posturing with the mechanisms
of corruption that operate at the level of the rela
tionship between the state and powerful global
instirutions. BY' using this language the scam writ
ers both hope to participate in this form of corrup
tion and also implicitly condemn it. The prevalence
of the dead expatriate genre reflects a growing
understanding among Nigeria's young population
that corruption in Nigeria is intertwined with
larger global systems of inequality. Some of the
ambi\'aJence ordinary Nigerians feel about the -1-19
scams is related to a perception that Nigeria in par
ucular, and Africa in general, is often the victim of
much larger mechanisms of resource redistribu
tion in which \Vesterners are the primary winners
and Africans are the primary losers; as the scam
letter points out, Africa is "already prostrate."
A Deceased Dictator's Desperate
Widow
A third commo" genre reflects scam letter writers'
knowledge that J\:igeria's stolen billions are fre
quently expatriated to Western countries, high
lighting popular awareness that Nigeria's history
of military dictatorship was in many ways toler
ated, and even facilitated, by rich countries whose
primary interest \\ a~ access to Nigeria's oil. In
conjunction with popular discontent over the
country's stolen billions, the name employed more
frequently than any other in recent Nigerian
e-mail scam scenarios is that of I\,I(rs Maryam
Abacha, the widow of the late dictator, General
Sani Abaeha. When General Abacha died sud
denly in July 1998, it was widely reported in both
625
national and international media that he had looted
se\"eral billion dollars during his five-year reign.
Much of the money was believed to have been
hidden away in foreign bank accounts. Since
Nigeria's return to democracy in 1999, the civilian
government has made efforts to recover some
of the Abacha loot. Further, Abacha's son,
l\10hammed, was imprisoned for several years
accused of various crimes. Negotiations between
the Abacha family and the government at one
point reportedly included an agreement whereby
the Abachas could keep SIOO million in exchange
for facilitating the return to the gO\'ernment of
$1 billion. After considerable media scrutiny, the
deal fell through. In late February, 2005 the
i\igerian government reached a final arrangement
with S\liss banks to repatriate almost half a billion
dollars of Abacha's money that Swiss authorities
determined was criminally obtained. Forty mil
lion dollars was reportedly left out of the deal
becausc it could not be conclusively proven that it
was dirty money. Those accounts remain indefi
nitely frozen.
The Abacha family fought the Nigerian govern
ment's attempts to repatriate the late dictator's sto
len millions, and the Nigerian media carried
extensive accounts of the whole process. While the
predominant popular opinion seemed to favor the
repatriation of as much Abacha loot as possible,
there were also media stories and some public dis
course that portrayed Abacha's widow as a victim
of a vendetta by then president, Olusegun
Obasanjo, who had been imprisoned by Abacha for
two years for allegedly participating in a coup plot.
Whatever public sympathy existed for Mrs Abacha
was related, in part, to the common refrain that
plenty of other dictators have been allowed to keep
their money. Ordinary citizens also expressed cyn
icism about what would happen to the Abacha loot
if it were returned, the suspicion being that it
would simply further enrich the current president
and his cronies.
All of tbis plays into a common scam story in
which Mrs Abacha writes to appeal for help in
transferring millions of dollars that have somehow
escaped the hungry eyes of Nigeria's rapacious
rulers. The example below, received August 9,
2003, contains many of the characteristic features
of the Mrs Abacha genre.
626 DANIEL JORDAN SMITH
Attention:
I am ""irs marriam Abacha, the wife to the late
Head of State, of the feder-al Republic of Nigeria
from 1993 -1998 - General Sani Abacha.
:'viy late husband made a lot of money as the
Head of state of Nigeria for 5 years. He has
different accounts in many banks of the world.
He has not left an~ stone unturned in accruing
riches for his family. The present democratic
government of Nigeria led by Prcsident (Gen.
(Rtd)) OJusegun Obasanjo has not find favour
with my family since their inception. This may
be as a result of his hatred for my late husband
who kept him in jail for ovcr two years for a
coup attempt, before the death of my fadler.
He was released immediately my husband died
and he was later made the present President.
I Ie has confiscated and frozen all my family
account in J'\igeria and some other American,
Europe and o\sian continents. It has been in both
the local and international news. Presently my
son mnhammed Abacha has been languishing in
different prison centers in Nigeria for a case
against his father which he knows notJling about.
No\\\ my purpose of all these introduction
and proposal is just seekln.g for your candid ass
istance in saving this sum of $30.8.000,000.00
SD THIRTYEIGIIT Mil .LION.DOL
LARS] which m~ late husband had hidden
from the Nigerian goY!. during his regime, and
which is presently some\vhere in a financial and
security company outside the entjre Nigeria
and West African region. This is a huge sum of
mone~, J cannot trust much on most saboteur
friends of my family in Nigeria who could not
be trusted.
1 got your contact through our trade mission.
I deemed it necessary to contact you for this
trustworthy transaction. All whom 1 needed is a
sincere, honcst, trustworth~ and God-fearing
individuals \\hom my mind will absolve to help
me in mis deal. If you have feelings about mv
situation, don't hesitate to stand for me.
If my proposal is sudden to you, aU I need
now is for you to stand as the Beneficiary of this
mone~ to claim it and save for me. There is no
difficulty,} \\ill send your name as the recipient
as well as thc beneficiary of the money. On your
identification and confirmation from me, the
fund \\ ill be handle to you, all i need is your
confirmention of willingness and i will gi\'e you
thc full details. \ou will be compensated with
25% of the total fund for all your efforts in this
tramaction, provided this fund is save for me
for your account in your country.
Please this is a very serious matter, it is a saye
my soul request from you and 1 will be delighted
too much to recei\'e a positive response from
you in order to mo\'e into action. J will giYe you
details on request from you.
THANKS YOURS FAITHFULLY
MRSMABACHA
Although the primary conscious strategy of the
writer is to convince the recipient that me said mil
Iiolls are available for the taking, the Mrs Abacha
scam is instructive in what it reveals about ordinarv
r\igerians' assumptions regarding the workings of
corruption in their societ)'. In the Mrs Abacha
genre, scam writers assume that the recipients will
be aware of the large amounts of money thc late dic
tator allegedl) looted, as well as the effons of
President Obasanjo's govcrnment to recover it.
Most Nigerians also assume that no matter how
much money the government recovers, 1\1rs Abacha
and her family" ill be able to keep millions that are
somehow hidden [rom the inqui.~itors, or that they
will be allowed keep millions in exchange for large
bribes to the authorities. 419 scam letters frequently
allude to instances of corruption and to local cur
rent C\Cnts that ordinary Nigerians take for granted,
but that many Westem recipients are unaware of.
One variation of the Mrs :\bacha genre, an c-mail}
recei\'ed on October IS, 2004, explai~~ the orihrin of
the available money as "a result of a payb,lck con
tract deal betwecn my husband and a Russian fIrm
in our country's multi-billion dollar Ajaokuta steel
plant." Howevcr plausible or implausible such a
scenario sounds to ordinary Western readers, mil
!iOllS of literate Nigerians know mat over a period of
more than 20 years the Nigerian go\unment sank
over $8 billion into a steel plant mat ne\"Cr produced
cycn one sheet of steel. The primary technical con
sultants for the project have, in fact, been Russian.
To man) Nigerians, including this particular scam
writer, the Ajaokuta steel plant is a national symbol
of official graft. Ordinary Nigerians reco~'l1ize that
NIGERIAN SCAMS AS POLITICAL CRITIQUE
corruption is most profitable when it involves an
international dimension, and Nigerians are widely
aware that their leaders depend on these intcrna
tional connections for their most lucrative looting of
national resources.
Scam Letters, Corruption, and Global
Inequal.ity
The scam letters analyzed here are a tiny sample of a
huge body of texts through which one segment of
igeria's population produces cultural objects that
con\ ey popular conceptions of corruption.l\1y anaJ
) sis has focused both on what these e-mails reveal
about Nigerians' assumptions and understandings
regarding corruption in their own society, and on
hO\\ they illustrate Nigerians' a\\urcness that corrup
tion in Nigeria is intertwined with larger systems of
inequality that link public and private economic
spheres in the era of globalization. it is no coinci
oence that tJle oil industry, expalri3te contractors,
dc\dopment projects, and Swiss bank accounts are
central figures in the scam stories. If one broadens
the lens to include an analysis of the growing num
bers of scam letters that focus on settings other than
Nigeria, it is clear that the scam writers recogni:.:e
that corruption is intertwined with the larger
maclunery for producing and maintaining global
inequalil). Scam stories that focus on reconstruction
contracts in iraq, arms deals for Angola, refugee
assistance in the Sudan, emergency aid in Indonesia,
diamond dcals in the Democratic Republic of Congo,
or the pilfered millions of Charles Taylor, l\lobutu
Sese Seko, Gnassingbe EY'3dema, and other dead or
deposed African dictators demonstrate how attuned
the seam writers are to the ubiquity of corruption
and its links to larger structures of inequality.
Nigerian scam letters are evidence that tIle young
Nigerians who "'rite and send mese e-mails are aware
of I he importance of what Bayart (2000) has called "a
history of extraversion" in explaining pallems of
inequalit) in African societies. Bay,rrt argues that
rather than seeing Africa's relati\'e pm erty as evi
dence of the continent's marginalization or exclusion
l\otes
419 was the section of the "Jigerian criminal code
lhat referred to crimes of fraud (Smith, 2007:2).
627
from the world economy, we need to understand how
profoundly Africa has been integrated in the global
economy throughout history, in ways that deepen
poverty and incquality. Ba~'3n suggests that the
structures of cxtraversion not only impoverish
ordinary African peoples, they also Cf(.'ate the mecha
nisms by which African elites ,lccumulate wc-a!th and
amass power. The most common genres of Nigerian
scam letters also express, and indeed depend
upon, mechanisms of extraversion for their success.
\Vhile J'\igerian 419 scam letters arc an expres
sion of critical awareness of these mechanisms of
extraversion, the scams thcmselves are, of course,
also an effon to participate in and benefit from
these forms of corruption. But those who are actu
ally getting rich from the hundreds of millions of
dollars that are reportedly lost to Nigerian 419
scams are not the thousands of young people writ
ing scam letters in the internet cafes across
~igeria's cities and towns. The young people at
the bottom of the social hierarchy \\ho parricipate
in 419 commonly reap little or nothing, and they
participate with considerable ambivalence. On the
one hand, mey belicve that those at the very top of
the ~igerian political economy are corrupt to the
core. Corruption frustrates the scam letter writ
ers, as it does most Nigerians. In an ideal world,
almost all of these young people would prefer to
do something different. In the abstract, l\igerians,
including the scam writers} interviewed, know
that419 is inimical to their interests and the inter
ests of their country. On the other hand, they are
extremely cynical about the prospects for success
without participating in the larger system of cor
ruption, whether it is in scam letter writing or
some other arena of Nigerian society. Though the
numbers of young people who write e-mail scam
letters has multiplied with the advent of the inter
net and the relative freedoms of democracy, scam
writers still represent a tiny fraction of the popula
tion. But many other Nigerians participate in one
way or another in me social reproduction of cor
ruption, even as they simu1tancou~ly lament and
condemn it.
2 For examples of media coverage see: "I [alliburron's
S2.-l Million Bribe Revisited," I utlguurd (:-.Iigeria),
 DANIEL JORDAN SMITH
628
February 3, 2004; "Halliburton Seeks Distance
Berween Itself and Inquiry," Simon Romero, The
New yrnk Times, section c, p.9, June 14, 2004;
"Halliburton Severs Link With 2 Over Nigeria
Inquif)," Simon Romero, 77te Nal' York Times, sec
tion C, p.l, June 19, 2004; "Two More Enron
Executives Charged In Nigerian Energy Deal,"
Hector Igbikio\\ ubo, ll ungllard (Nigeria), October
References
.'\ptcr, A.ndrew. 1999. "lBB = 419: :'>ligerian Democracy
and the Politics of lllusion." In Civi! SQclety and the
Political Tmagina/io'l in Africa: Critical Perspccti;;es,
edited by John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Al)ter, Andrew. 2005. The PUl1-A.frican Nulioll: Oil and
1!J( Sputa de ofClllture iI/ Nigaia. Chicago: Uni"ersity
of Chicago Press.
Bayart, Jeal1-Fran~ois. 1993. The Stale ill Africa: The
Polilics ofthe Belly. London: Longman.
Bayart, Jean-Franc;ois. 1999. "The 'Social Capital' of the
Felonious State or the Ruses of Politica1lntelligence."
In Tire Criminali:::.aliol1 ofthe African State, edited by
Jean-Francois Bayan, Stcphen Ellis and Beatrice
I-1ibou. Bloomi.ngton: Indiana University Press.
Bayan,Jean-Fran~ois. 2000. "Africa in the World: AHistory
of Extravcrsion." Africall A.Oi,irs 99(395): 217-267.
Bayart, Jean-Fran~ois, Stephen Ellis, and Beatrice
Hibou. 1999. The Crimillafiza/ioll of the Stau 11l
Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
21,2003; and "Six Accused Over Enron Sham Sale "
Laurel Brubaker Calkins, Nrl/lona! Post's FillalJci~1
Post and FP Tllvenillg (C.1nada), p. FP II, September
22, 2004; "Halliburton and KDR to Pay Record
Fine," The Widl Street }or"nol, february 11,2009.
3 Examples of anti-419 and humorous 419 websites can
be fowld at: http://home.rica.netlalphae/419coall
fighters.hun, and http://www.scamorama.eom.
Buchanan, Jim and Grant, Alex J. 200 I. Investigating
and Prosecuting Nigerian Fraud. UI/ited Sltltr
Attomqi Bulletill: 39-47.
Edelson, E"e. 2003. The 419 Scam: Information Warfare
on the Spam Front and a Proposal for Local Filtering.
Computers and SUlIrit)' 22(5):392-402.
Halttunen, Karen. 1982. Confidence "-\lIen alld Pujllt~"
Womell: A Sludv ofMiddie-CliLss Cliiture ill America,
183(j.....l 870. New Haven: Yale University Press.
i\laie.r, Karl. 2000. This HOl/se Has Fallen: Nigeria ill
Crisis. Boulder, CO: Wesn-jew Press.
Rebhom, Wayne A. 1988. Foxes lind Lio/ls: /\iIachilll'~/I,'\
COlljidmce Men. Lthaca, N.Y.: Cornell Cniversity
Press.
Smith, Russell G., Holmes, Michael N. and Kaufmann,
Philip. 1999. "Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud, ~o. 121."
in Trmds and Issues III Crime amI Cmllinu! Justia.
Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology.
Watts, !'vLchael. 1984. "State, Oi.l and Accumulation:
From Boom to Bust." SOcil't)/li/lti Space 2:402-428.
44
The State in Africa
The Politics of the Belly
Jean-FranfOis Bayart
South of tbe Sahara, class relations are in no way
thc primary source of conflict, despite the acute
ness of social inequalit). [... ] In Ghana, for exam
ple, it has been remarked that factional or local
struggles have dominated over 'class politics' in
the decades following the proclamation of inde
pendence. This remark can be applied to the con
tinent as a whole.
The unloosing of the highly personalised antag
onisms, within the institutions of the postcolonial
State, appears increasingly to be one of its primary
modalities. [... ] Wbether of 'socialist' or 'capital
ist' persuasion, dominated by a party or by the
army, pluralist or monolithic, all these constitu
tional formuJac- whose attributes are furthermore
uncertain and changeable - rest upon one com
mon denominator: at bottom, the actors organise
themselyes in factions in ()TIler to win or conserve
power at the various echelons of the social pyra
mid, and this competition is the very stuff of
politieallife.
Leopold Sen ghar stigmatised this state of
affairs (from which he benefited and in which he
showed an lU1rjvalled talent) by speaking of 'poli
From Jean-Fran~ois Sayan, The Stare ill Africa: The Politics of/h,' Brlly, 1993, pp. 211-27, 231-43, 268-9. Copyright
Longman Group UK Limited, 1993.
ticking' (politique po!iticien7le) and 'Senegalitis'.
An eloquent neologism, In Senegal, factional
struggles, known as 'dan' struggles, have beset
the institut..ions. [... ] Political debate, at the
national level, has always opposed two personali
ties, conforming to the bipolar configuration
which is characteristic of all factional arenas. The
duel between Blaise Diagne and Galandou Diouf
during the inter-war years was succeeded by
Senghor's battles first against Lamine Gueye
(1951-57), then against his Prime Minister,
Mamadou Dia (1962-63) and finally against
Abdoulaye Wade (at the end of the 1970s). The
latter then became Abdou Diouf's challenger.
Nevertheless, these combats between leaders
reflected a more general reality. Even though
Abdou Diouf straightaway announced his inten
tion of putting an end to the 'clan politics', and
Moustapha Kil, the coordinator of the Groupe
d'tfilldes et de recherches of the Part; Socia/iSle (PS),
felt able to mention in 1984 that there had been 'a
reduction of the phenomenon at the regional
level' thanks to the policy of rotating the post of
secretary-general of the regional unions between
630 JEAN-FRAN<;OIS BAYART
the different secretaries-general of coord ination, I
all the evidence shows that the factional climen
sion has continued to predominate. [ ... ]
In truth, the recurrence of factionalism can
only be explained by its deep-rootedness in
Senegambian history. Donal Cruise O'Brien
discerns in it a 'bizarre but cffecti\e' synthesis
between the Islamic culture of the zarriya and the
electoral experience of the 'Four Communes'
under the Third Republic. 2 Far from being the
result of obscure manipulations of dominant
groups or of foreign imperialism, as was long
believed, the permanence of factionalism is an
expression of a consensus on the part of the social
actors.
l .. )
The current saying, 'do politics' (ftii"e de ta poti
tique), is simply a translation of the Wolof 1/gurgi
or the Pular laamllllga, which both mean to be a
devotee of a leader or a faction, and work actively
in their interests. 'It means that a whole body of
relationships, which are not obviously political,
are located in the parties,' quickly adds an anthro
pologist, emphasising that politics in Senegal are
not to be situated in the two-dimensional arena of
political reprcstntations. 3 On the one hand, all
insrinltions in society - the Islamic brotherhoods
or the trade unions, for example - are subjected to
the same type of action, and the development
planners start to take stock of the integrationist
force of the factional networks, resigning them
selves to making their peace with them rather than
trying to b) pass or confront them. r...] On the
other hand, the 'clan' struggles are a reflection of
the contradictions of the segmentary order of the
family, and more particularly of competition
between agnatic brothers, in relation to which the
differentiation of political and religious arenas
may be debatable. r.1
The Senegalese example - a textbook case - is
not unique. [... ) In Zambia, Sierra Leone., Ghana
and Somalia, keen personal ri"alries suck the life
out of the State.~ Does this mean that this model is
distinct from another, bener organised, type of
political organisation? Not at all. [n countries such
as Tanzania and Cameroon, where the mediation
of the part), administration and ideology seems
undeniable and autonomous, the power of net
lVorks, the acuteness of 'struggles for influence' are
more hidden and inhibited than truly exorcised.'
In the same way, in the Jvory Coast, the preemi_
nence of Felix Houphouet-Boigny presides Over
the unending conflicts which destabilise the POCI
and which necessitate the regular eonvocatiun of
meetings of 'reconciliation', sometimes in the
provinces, under the wing of special delegations
sent by the Political Bureau to the four Corners uf the
country, sometimes cven in Yamoussollkro itself
the regime's home base. The return to competitiv~
elections in 1980 was marked by a proliferation
of settling of scores between candidates, both
successful and unsuccessful. At the time of the
'Y,unoussoukro days' of ~ [a)' 1982, !'vlr Alliall, the
Keeper of the Seals, explained in a speech, \\hich
could be anthologised as part of the diScourse of
the reciprocal assimilation of elites:
The head of the Party's wager to put the train of
democracy back on the rails has been won, bur for
the train to progress it is necessary for the wagons
of all the activists of the PDCI, winners and los
ers, to be coupled to it. Fed by' tenacious opposi
tion, unsoothed raneours, unhealed wounds and
above all by a thirst for re"enge, divisions can only
hinder the progress of the train and dell\\" its
arrival. This is why u1e Political Bureau, on the
instructions of the presid<:nt of the Party, busied
itself in searching ever) where for the reconcilia
tion of divided cadres and activists, It did not,
however, succeed in dissipating all incomprehen
sion and misunderstandings. Here and there
islands of resistance held out, necessitating a
meeting under the authority of the president of
our Pa.rt).
'\fter several days of 'dialogue' there follO\\ed one
of those deceptively good-natured exhortations of
which lIouphouct- Boigny is the master. It is suc;h
a good example of the true texture of polilic.:al
action south of the Sahara that it, roo, deserves to
be quoted at length, Once the customary congrat
ulations had been offered ('Comrade acti'lsts,
I should like once again to offer you nw thanks and
congratulations. You have come to Yamoussoukro
where the accommodation is not as good as in our
capital, Abidjan," You have kept your scats for fi\c
continuous days, Etc.'), and after the audience had
been reminded of the institutional generalities,
the head of State proceeded to re"iew the six
THE POLITICS OF THE BELLY 631
-----------------------------------------
regions where factional struggles still prevented
'divlded comrade milit:mts from working together,
as reconciled brothers', Thus, for example, speaking
about Korhogo in the north of the countr):
\\e do not agree with those who propose the
separation of family problems from political prob
lems. If it was only a question of families we would
not be here. In the traditional family, hierarch, is a
golden rule which no one would dream of trans
gressing. There are the father, the brothers, the
nephews. The purely family problems should be
sorted out by family members and b) nobod~ else,
But because of the influence which the Gon family
still exercises in Senoufo country, arguments
between the members of this family on political
matters have always had unfortunate consequences
throughout the region. The traditional chiefdoms
have been abolished in several African countries,
including Upper Volta and Guinea. In the Ivory
Coast we ha"c retained certain chiefdoms, includ
ing that of Korhogo. The children of this family
arc in the process of destroying it by their behav
iour. These arguments, these fratricidal struggles,
prej udice the peace necessary for the development
of this region, which is so full of human and mate
rial potential. The trusry Senoufo peasants, and
the numerous cadres of the region deserve better
than this, I should like to remind the Gon family,
\\hom I consider as my own, that, as with nobility,
honour is in our blood. A nobleman neither insults
nor is insulted, We should put an end to this sad
state of affairs by forcing uncle Gon and nephew
Gon to bury their differences, which have lasted
roo long already. The prefect of the departemem of
Korhogo is delegated b) the government to guar
antee public order, Anything which migbt disturb
the public order should be rooted our. I solemnly
(".all upon these two political officers to inform
their followers publicly that they ha\'e once and for
all buried their fratricidal struggles which, I repeat,
do no service to the cause of peace in Senoufo
country. This country which is so dear to me.;
One should not have any illusions about the
capacity of the centre to pacify the periphery of
the political system. One of the regional officers of
the PDCI in 1985 did not disguise the fact that
'reconciliation m;ssiuns r...]
sent to put out the
fires at the time of the various election campaigns
of 1980' had frequently been no more than 'free
opportunities to play act whilst sealing a fictitious
reconciliation': 'the man) embraces in front of the
television and photographers' cameras were mere
camouflages, to put the Party officials off their
guard. As soon as the missions returned to Abidjan,
the protagonists lost no time in unearthing the
hatchet and returning with renewed bitterness [0
their internecine struggles'.~
Better than any abstruse academic lecture on
development, these long extracts illustrate the daily
realit) of politics in Africa: the bad-tempered froth
of factional conflicts and their uneas) resolution
within the framework of the State according to the
logic of the reciprocal assimilation of elites. In the
end, no institution, however 'massi"e' or 'bureau
cratic' it might be, escapes from the pernicious
miasmas of personal rivalries. The phenomenon
has been apparent since the time of the nationalist
struggles. In 1957-58, a cadre of the Parti democra
tique de Guinee was already remarking that his col
leagues 'were killing each other in an implacable
struggle for places'.Q The observation could just as
easily have b(.'en made of the Kenya African Union,
the Kikuyu Central Association, the Comention
People's Party or of the Urlion des poplliatirl/ls du
C(mltro/m. 1O Indeed, in neutralising the common
appeal of the anti-colonial ideal, the achievement
of independence left the way wide open for the
exacerbation of factional clca"ages. Today, the party,
the administration, the revolutionary movement,
the opposition in exile, are all prey to the demons
of di"ision. [... ) Ideology has nothing to do with it:
the personal attacks in avowedly :'vtarxist-Leninist
systems simply clothe themselves in the finery of
respect for dogma, the vulgate of the 'party line'
revealing itself to be singular!) well-adapted to the
task of setting indi"iduals apart, [". J
Furthermore, the insertion of African societies
in the international system (or, if one prefers,
their articulation within the historical postcolo
nial bloc) is also filtered through thjs factional
dimension. The 'Gabonese clan' is not a curiosity,
uniquely typical of the favourite sphere of French
influence south of the Sahara, [... ) The pivotal
role of a Bruce Macken7.ie or a 'Tiny' Rowland in
Eastern and Southern Africa, or of a Maurice
Tempelsman in Zaire or of a Jamil Said
Nlohammed in Sierra Leone, have been or still are

632 JEAN-FRANQOIS BAYART
similar II The para-judicial investigation of the
jonjo case in Kenya, in 1983-84, showed how a
'machine', controlling a good part of the wheels
of the State and the national economy, finnl)
established ill a Kikuyu constituency, making
remarkably good use of electoral and parliamen
tary divisions, was able to benefit from tapping
into the 'A.~iatic', Arab, British and South African
networks. 11 Daniel arap ~Ioi did not overlook this
tradition for long. U
There is nothing innately surprising in this
supremacy of the factional dimension. The legal
rational model beloved of Max Weber is an his
toric.1l aberration which, moreover, has been mod
ified b) various detours and practices of sociability.
L... JOutside the narrow time-space - the western
industrial societies - of Weber's model the logic of
factional struggles is predominant" One is entitled
to wonder about the hew-istic utility of a concept
which is applied to historical contexts in societies
as varied as those of Ule Melanesia of the 'big
men', of the Iran of the don1re, of the J\1exico ofthe
caciques and the Thailand of diques, of the China
of the great campaigns of politica.l rectification or
of the Japan of the !w!JUISti. [ ... J
It is clearly not enough just to cite the evidence
of factions. IL is important to restore the specific
historical background against which tlle factional
struggle is played OUI. Without prejudging either
the unity of the phenomenon across tlle continent,
or on the contraI") its particularity from one sub
Saharan society to another, we will simply observe
that the structuring of African political societies
around factional networks derives from historical
coni inuities and recurrent sociological realities. In
former times, the circulation of power and wealth
followed similar modalities. so much so that long
distance commerce or the intrigues of the old
kingdoms are in thc eyes of the political scientist
not without similarities to more contemporary
facts. In particular, what we today, in a somewhat
confusing way, call etlmicity, implying the inter
I ention of interregional chains of political and
economic transactions, is equivalent to this 'artic
ulation of intemal and eX1:ernal networks of
'xchange' through which the integration of the
continent and its docking to various world econo
mies was undertaken. [... J
THE POLITICS OF THE BELLY 633
space. In particular, family bonds and ethnicity, Whate\'er echo they may find and "hatever the
I-Iere is a constant, or rather a line of concatena
which appcar to be consubstantial with networks, passions they arouse around their respecti\ e habi
tion, which deserves further thought. Implicit in it
are above all instrumental arguments, idioJru; at the IUS, these identities constructed from family rela
we [md the social processes which we have already
sen"ice of actors. This is not a new phenomenon, rions, ethnicity, religion or locality are unable to
encountered: conflicts appearing to feed off 'trib
and its existence i.n the past has been demonstrated. hide the extreme social heterogeneity of the net
alism'; 'straddling' procedures between the pri"ate
[...J But the change of scale associated with the works. The task of the big men amounts precisely
and public sector and lhe personal accumulation
colonial era, the intensification of tnde and the to the achievement of a synthesis of composite
of capital; ule frequent recourse to proxies in the
creation of new communities in w-ban areas, has influence, whilst assuming multiple roles in lari
world of business; subtle and ambivalent coupling
systematised this cobbling together of identities. ous functions. [... J
of official political hierarchies and discrete local
Thus, in the new town of Pikine on the outskirts A second paradox now becomes apparent: the
hierarchies; the "igorous support of 'civil society'
of Dakar, the struggle for control over the health political integration of contemporar) African socie
for the architecture of the State; the jumbling up
committees certainly takes on an ethnic dimension ties follows in the first instance from the segmentary
of varied positions underlying the project of the
which results in 'disguising individual power con and compartmentalL<;ed nature of this network.
dominant class or of the historical postcolonial
!lices with more noble and motivating appear The central dynamic of the reciprocal assimila
bloc; and, finally, the attribution of status depend
ances'. One report revealed that in January 1982 in tion of clites rests on a more common incorpora
ing upon context along an axis of elders-juniors,
the medical centre of D., 'racism divided the tion of subordinate social groups in the mesh of
and big men-small boys. To a greater or Icsser
"lbucouleur and Wolof' and that 'lots of wrangling networks. B. Joinet has estimated, for example,
extent all these mechanisms derive from the uni
prevented the correct execution of the tasks that 80 per cent of U1C Tanzanian population and
verse of networks. The) all echo a global org'anisa
assigned LO each member of the office'. The 99 per cent of its leaders belong to one or more of
tion of Africall societies to which a growing
account of the head of the centre bears this view the horizontal chains of solidarity which emerged
number of studies devoted LO trade, the salaried
out: 'It is the Toucouleur who gave us problems' in response to the economic crises and poverty of
class, migrations and family relations all bear wit
However, analysis of the vote, which brought the 1970s.1 5 Similar estimates have been made for
ness. And as such they suppose that political
about the e\ iction of the Wolof president ill favour West AfTica. [... 1But networks are also Sl retched
entrepreneurs exercise their talent, lIeal'ing the
of his 1oucouleur opponent, contradicts this along a vertica.l axis II ithin I he framework of the
web of constant wheeling and dealing, capable of
explanation. On his own admission, the outgoing unequal exchange of goods and services. They
rationally managing their material and symbolic
president won five Toucollleur votes (56 per cent transcend, without nullifying them, the divisions
n:sources in their own best interests and in the
of his supportcrs), three '>Volof votes (33 per cent) of status, income and pOIl'er. The) link the 'lowest
interests of the community which has gi\'en them
and one Serer vot~ (II per cent). The new presi of the low' with the 'highest of the high' through
fame and influence, able to mobilise the forces of
dent claimed a different pattern of voti.ng with the agencies of continuous news, requests, gifts
the Word, of passion and aIlxiet)", eycn in the noc
eight delegates from the Toucoulcur quarter (54 and far from disinterested symbolic celebrations.
turnal world of the invisible, and, finally, educated
per cent), five Wolof (33 per cent) and two Serer The integration of African ~ocieties is all the more
in the knOll ledge of the white Il"lan to which the
(13 per cent) voting for hi.m, and two Toucouleur effective bccause, as we know, their populations
contemporary State claims kinship. In the absence
(67 per cent) and one Wolof (33 per cent) for his are small. Freely described in terms of famil) rela
of a true structuring of social classes, the predom
un fortunate adversary. In both calculations, the tionships, the personal knowledge that individuals
inance of the big men at the head of networks con
\Volof loser did not receive more \Volof votes, and have of one another is the rule rather than the
tinues to be circumstantial and in large measure
the Toucouleur winner did not collect more exception. The practice of 'dash' is a conseq uenee
dependent upon thc accomplishment of individual
Toucouleur votes. Each one of them only invoked of this personalisation of institutional relation
perfomlances.
the ethnic factor in their analysis of the vote ships, particularly in the eivil service. [ ... J The
An immeclinte paradox emerges, therefore, from
because it was advantageous for 'clan politics'. force and speed of social communication which
ule fact that one of the most visible continuitks
results is sometimes disconcerting.
between former politics and the postcolonial State
For the elected president, there are obvious What Call be observed in matters of daily socia
is ensured by such volatile proccdures and alZ:en
alh"antages in ethnicising his rivalry with his bility can be verified in the strictly political sphere.
ies. The networks arc not im-ariables which pm
predecessor in quarters with a majorir} of his own Eyen though one cannot, of course, accept without
vide us with the thread of continuity. They afe
ethnic group, the Toucoulcur. to increase the questioning the news bulletin~ on the 'Pavement
constructed and as such are ,"cry f1exible. In the
number of those who support him. For the outgo Radio' (Radio TrnlJ 0 ir), the 'small men' are fre
contemporary world they reflect the inherent fi%i
ing president. blaming his personal defeat on col quently up-to-date with the stratagems of the 'big
pant)' of line.1ge socicties. In no sense do they re.t
lective, even demographic factors, softens the men'. They follow these with sceptical attentiun,
upon fixed identities which can, without too much
blow of his own fall. Ii and demonstrate ,111 undeniable civic knowledge
alteration, bc simply translated across time and
634 JEAN-FRAN<;OIS BAYART
which contrasts strongl) with the poverty of the
media. [... ] Family celebrations, \Cillage reunions,
the circulation of women and mistresses and the
tangle of bars and popular caring places are sources
of much of this knowledge. Furthermore, access to
the 'boss', even if he is a minister, is much easier
than in western industrial societies. With represen
tations of witchcraft a factor, a notable cannot
evade with impunity the 'courtesy visits' of his
clients and his 'country' and deny them access to
his verandah. ll
In these conditions, as A. Cohen has shown in
his work on the Creoles of Sierra Leone, the
extreme personalisation of power relationships is
not necessarily diametricaUy opposed to politica'
institutionalisation. Ii In Senegal and in Kenya the
vitality of the part)' (or parties) system has tended
to be in proportion to that of the factional strug
gles which it shelters. In Tanzania, the integra
tionist potency of networks coincides with the
crystallisation of a political society strongly welded
around a far from insignificant socialist ideology. I.
It is even necessary to accept the hY'Pothesis,
advanced long ago by Ibn Khaldun, that factional
struggle is a mod(; of political production, not of
disintegration. At the price of a clearly alarming
human cost, the rotation which makes competing
entrepreneurs and political cliques succeed each
other in power legitimises the statist framework
inherited from the colonial era, in the image of a
bloody alternation. In doing so, it contributes
towards its reproduction. The fact that no Chadian
or Ugandan thought seriously about secession, in
ten or fifteen years of appalling civil war, speaks
volumes. In its cruelty, the contradiction is only
superficial because this model has the weight of
the longue duree. In the past, power was distributed
in this way, often to the advantage of 'men with
neither fire nor hearth' .I~ Jan Vansina's notes on
the former kingdom of San Salvador take on a
decidedly modern significance:
The kingdom was reduced to nothing and royalty
was no more than a symbol. Nevertheless, the pos
session of the ritle of knight and other titles of
nobility retained a fascinating prestige, and the
infantes who had broken the kingdom continued
to act as if this was still the im posing State that it
had been in the 16th century. [... J Clearly, the
processes of fragmentation which around 1900
were seen in a two hundred-year-old structure
cannot simpl) be thought of as a 'decadence' but as
a way of life, a structural socio-political system.~)
In less extreme cases, political centralisation in
the form of the progressive 'presidentialisation' of
the regimes has been effected through the agency
ofliege men or locally influential personalities Who
have negotiated and presided over the incorpora
tion of regions into the bosom of the State. In
Nigeria, for example, rhe Sardauna, in order to
federate the composite North in a 'united front',
relied upon representati\es whom he had delegated
to the various emirates and minorities of the
Middle Belt, and who acted as gatekeepers to these
groups; he also made use of family ties) age classes
and school friendships, and excelled in the ritual
joking relationships which traditionally united
members of the diverse communities of the
region 21 Other leaders, such as Kwame Nkrumah,
Felix T1ouphouet-BoigTlY, Ahmadou Ahidjo and
Ficld-Marshallvlobutu ruled in the same way. [... ]
Nguesso made use of his family in order to secure
the Congolese system: in 1984, the ambassador in
Paris was an uncle, the head of the cabinet and
several other ministers were also relatives and, last
but not least, the political Commissar of Hydro
Congo, the national oil company, \\as mother. 21
In short, the postcolonial State operates as a
rhizome rather than a root system. Although it is
endowed with its own historicity, it is not one
dimensional, formed around a single genetic
trunk, li:,e a majestic oak tree \\ hose roots arc
spread deep into the soil of history. It is rather:Tn
infini,d~' variable multiplicity of networks whose
underground branches join together the scatterecl
points of society. In order to understand it, we
must do more than exaJ11ine the institutional buds
abo\e ground ~nd look instead at its adventitious
roots in order to analyse the bulbs and tubers from
which it secretly extracts its nourishment and its
vivacity. [... ]
It is indeed through the medium of these rhizo
malic networks that the retroactive belt linking
African societies to postcolonial institutions IS
formed. [... J In the absence of almost any revolu
ti.onary threat south of the Sahara these factional
struggles represent the principal agencies of
THE POLITICS OF THE BELLY
change in government. [... ] BUl, whatever the
Africanist orthodoxy tcll~ us, the precariousness
of national political equilibria is not a manifesta
tion of the organic inadequacy of the State, nor
even a supplementary proof of its extraneity. On
the contrary, it re\eals its n~lrrow symbiosis with
the grassroots that sustain it.
In other words, factional struggle does not
belong to the periphery of political systems; it is
not the opposite of the centralising and presiden
tialist principle which has come to dominate under
the cover of the single part) or military regimes.
It is the mainspring of this evolution and reverber
ates at the heart of the State of which it is the true
dynamic. In many cases conflicts for influence
within the nationalist movements before inde
pendence prepared the way for the construction of
the postcolonial political order, in such a way that
it consisted of the autonomisation of a presidential
network among the competing factions.
In a few cases, the holder of supreme power
acquired an absolute preponderance b) politically
and physically eliminating his rivals and turning
his back on the logic of the reciprocal assimilation
of elites. With massive recourse to coercion,
the presidential network - one is tempted to say,
mob - appropriated all the resources of the State
and absorbed the political arena for its own profit,
even with a veneer of sometimes delinquent ideo
logical logomania. Ahmed Sekou Toure was the
person \\ ho came most quickly and closely to this
model. From 'plot' to 'plot', his 'family clan',
whjch formed 'the narrow circle of primary bene
ficiaries of the regime', brutally rid him of any of
the inclinations of restraint which were still held
by the other segments of the political class, the
former members of the Porti democratique de
GUIllee, or more recent converts who had been
caught up in the fever of the 'No' vote delivered to
General de Gaulle at the time of the constitutional
referendum of 1958. This network was flanked by
two half-brothers of the head of State, Amara and
smad Toure, by his half-sister Fatima Toure, his
paternal cousin i\lamourou Toure, another cousin
(or, on some days, nephew) Siaka Toure, and by a
whole line-up of other personalities more or less
closely related to himY
Nevertheless, the mob's monopoly is not always
perfect. When its monopoly does become closer to
635
perfection the mob soon becomes divided. tn
Guinea, for example, the trauma of the Portuguese
raid on Conakf} in No\ember 1970 encouraged the
wife of Sekou Toure, Andree, nee Keita, 10 throw
her lot in with her famil.\': her half-brothers Seydou
and Mamadi Keita, the husband of her younger
half-sister M.oussa Diakite, and Nfanly Sangare, the
husband of another half-sister2~ \1oreo\er, some
other influential networks survived, including that
of the Prime Minister, Louis Lan.sana Beavogui.
As all opposition to the inner circle of the regime
had disappeared, political life was restricted to a
'struggle to the death fought out bet\\ een clans who
ripped power out of each others' h,mds' and who
'fought their battles through proxies, directors,
deput) directors, women of high and low estate
[de gra/ld et petit milieu],.25 The sinister character of
the Guinean case lay in the fact that this pitiless
rivalry, knowingly regulated b) the head of State,
extended to the precincts of the Boiro detention
centre through obtaining, under torture, crazy con
fessions designed to 'take' one or the other of these
enemy groups. [... ] After the death of the old dicta
tor in 1984, the incapacity of the factional compo
nents of the regime to overcome their animosities
and to agree on the succession finally opened the way
to the intervention of the army. The saga of the
Toures and Keitas came to an end several months
later with their massacre in prison.
[ ... ]
Howe'. (;r.. ~or most of the time: iJolitic,!1 compe
tition has, despite appearances, remained relati\e1y
open, and the autonomisation of the presidential
faction has becn relativc. Even the most prestig
ious leaders ha\e seen their primac)', which had
been dearly bought, being perm2.;lcntly threatened
by the manoeuvres of competing networks, possible
rivals or dauphins in a hurry. [... ]
As with elders in lineage societies, or heads of
net\\orks in a suburban district, presidential
preeminence is also circumstantial and depends
upon the individual performance of the holder.
It is earned week after week in this hard world of
intrigue and 'court politics', [... ]
[T]he president attempts to limit the possi
bilities for political and ecr;;lomic accumulation
open to competing network, and (!iverse other
political forces and institutions. Certainly, the
constitutional and administrative evolution since
636 JEAN-FRANC;;OIS BAYART
independence - which is too well known for us to
need to rehearse it here- has gradually responded to
tbis demand by ensuring the presidentiaJisation and
centralisation of regimes. But other, perhaps morc
decisivc, procedures have also contributed towards
the necessa.r) autonomisation of the head of State.
Firstly, factional and ethnic conflicts have proved
themselves useful in this respect, even if they have
been constantly criticised by the official ideologues.
Thcy ha\'e confirmed the presidents ofthe Republics
in their role of 'Elder' or Mzee - to borrow the sur
names of, respectively, Felix Houphouet-Boigny and
Jomo Kenyatta -lifted above the political serum and
assuming the function of supreme arbiter. To this
extent, struggles for influence have frequently been
a necessary ingredient for political stability and not
the reverse. Draped in the noble cloth of conflicts
about 'principles' ('liberalism' versus 'statism' or
'nationalism', 'COnriJ1Uiry' versus 'change', and so
on) they have acted as points of equilibrium for the
regimes by safeguarding the autonomy of the presi
dential power, however able the holder might be at
playing off one 'clan' against another. [... ]
More or Jess manipulated either before or after
elections, universal suffrage - or, as one high
ranking municipal administraLOr in Cameroon
confused it in a phrase which was more accurate
thaD he knew, chifFage 1t11iversel ('universal count
ing') - is in this sense a priceless instrmnent for
eroding tlle positions occupied by the 'barons', in
other wmds (and stickmg to our botanical meta
phor), a first-class rhizome-killer. Furthermore, it
is not the case that the freer the elections the worse
they are at this partiClLlar job. The 'democratisa
tion' of the hoirian systems and of Cameroon's
single party hJlve given the base of the system the
task of carr)ring out purges, which would have
been difficu It to undertake from the top. [... ]
Secondly, the economic austerity programmes
made inescapable in the 1980s by worsening bal
ances of payments and pressure from credirors have
also in their turn been used to advantage. Many
commentators have failed to understand this. The
dismantling of the public sector which the interna
tional financial institutions demanded need not
condemn the regimes in power. By drying up the
principal channels of autonomous accumulation
without creating a true market, it suits r.he hand of
the president who finds himself restored to his posi
tion of principal distributor of sinecures. Abdou
Diouf (in closing down ONCAD, the unofficial
C3shbo;\: of dle 'barons' ofthe Pa,.ti socia/iste), Sassou
Nguesso (in launching a 'structural adjustment
plan') and Houphouet-Boigny (in dissolving the
State companies, in abolishing the posts of direc
tors-general., in accepting the demand of the World
Bank for separating the functions of management
and accounting in the civil service and in attachin~
the Department of Public Works to the Presidency
of the Republic) have all three recovered their fre;
dam of action with regard to a political class and a
bureaucracy which had cm loose financially from
lhe centre, and they have regained their control over
a patrimonial machine which had run out ofhand :u
Ule expcnse of a wild and n1naway foreign debt.'
The policies of structural adjUSTment are thus not
so very different from the policies of nationalisatiol"\
during the two previous decades. By different means
they both pursued the same ends.
r .]
Thirdly, 'moralisation' campaigns which wcre
launched from the very first days of independence
were aimed much less at the general level of cor
ruption than at restraining the growing power 0
the groups of 'nizers' which had a hold on the
apparatus of the State. They indicate the desire of
a network to confiscate prebendal currents for its
own purpose or the wish of a president to gain
control over the process of exploiting public insti
mtions in order to regulate thenl.
[.. 1
Thus there is no rea] paradox in seeing all nc\\
presidents stan off their terms of office with a
severe critique of corruption, only to allow thetr
own factions to help themselves to wealth before
even their first term is up. Faced with the manoeu
vres of the 'Royal Family' of Jomo Kenyatta or of
the partisans of Ahidjo, did Messrs arap .\[oi ,md
Biya have any choice' [... 1
At first sight the ferocity of the factional strug
gles south of the Sahara seems out of all propor
tion to the real powcrs invested in the posts for
which the political entrepreneurs are allO\ved III
compete. Was it reasonable, for example, in th
Ivory Coast in 1985 to resort to poison and the
forces of the invisible or to buy up the entire petrol
reserves of a constituency in order to deprive one's
rival, ~lll for the sake of the simple hope of winning
THE POLITICS OF THE BELLY
a seat in an Assemhly crushed by the preeminence
of the President? Apparently yes; and in the mid
dle of a period of economic crisis the hoirian
political class, taken in its totality, clid nut tljnch
from sacrificing huge sums of money to the
electoral rite, equivalent, according to some esti
mates, to the revenue of exporting 40,000 tonnes
of cocoa .... In cultures which attach value to the
'wealth of men' and which submit to this objective
'fortune in money' (in Hausa arzikil1 mutane and
ur::.ikill Jmd'i) the constitution of what Malinowski
called 'resources of power' is valoriscd in itself.
The Congolese 'partisans' offered this explanar.ion
in 1964-65:
The struggle for influence consists esseotially in
making use of all means a\aiJable to build up one's
prestige and authority at the expense of others and
in contempt ofrruth and justice. Tn political organ
isal ions, the administration, etc. one pursues the
struggle for influence in order eiTher TO achieve or
maintain oneseU' in positions of responsibility or to
install or consolidate one's personal power. 2J
Positions won in combat, e\'en if relativel) subor
dinate, permit a minimal accumulation of wealth
which can then be redistributed according to the
dictates of 'strategies of offering' in order to sat
isfy 'Illd increase one's clientele. [... ]
In any case, one should not make tOo much of
the principle of reciprocity - whether symbolic or
concrete - institutionalised by the personalisation
of social and pobtical relations within networks.
l\lalinowski went so far as to argue that 'the prim
itive state is not tyrannical for its own subjects'
since 'everyone is linked, in reality or in fiction, to
e,er) bod} else' ulrough kinship, clan membership
or through age groups. V> We cannoL a.1.10\\ our
sehes such an idealised conclusion as far as African
societies are concerned. Their intimate character
is in no sense the opposite to, nor even necessarily
a reduction of, domination and inequality. [... ]
It was certainly not through any generosity of
spirit that Leon Mba ruled Gabon 'in the manner
of a village chief', giving up an impressive amount
of his lime to sort out himself the many 'small per
sonal problems', such as the notorious divorce
between Ule butcher and the secretary. Z9 In this
respect the small population of most AfricaJl States
(,37
is a major advantage. It enables a leader in power for
one or two decades to acquire direct knowledge of
every individual with money or influence. Sekou
Toun~ took surveillance of the social elite to
extremes. He made a point of personally receiving
not just students returning to Guinea after study
ing abroad but also political prisoners released from
detention who were obliged to pay him 'whole
hearted homage' at the risk of appearulg 'to bear a
grudge' He also decided on 'the distribution of the
income from baLLxjte exports and from the thirty
four factories which he pompously called his 'hea,')'
industry' and on the allocation of foreign exchange
from the Central Bank: 'Nothing is done \\~dlout
his order. No operation is undertaken unless he has
ordained it The President of Guinea has become
the Papa Bondieu giving out thousands of francs
CFA here, sheets of metal, a sack ()f cement, a
motorbike or a bag of sugar there. 'J(l In some ways,
far from heing a threat to the regime, economic
sragnation and hardship have made this method of
regulating political society easier
Redistriburion of sinecures and other benefits
of power must be treated carefully. It is certainly
not unheard of for a 'big man', influenced by the
ethos of munificence, to make a point of honour of
doing so. [... J However, it is more common for it
to be imposed upon him by meetings of collectivc
savings societies in his home town or village and
by the continuous stream of beggars, masters
either of the language of kinship and flattery or,
more dislurbingly, of the accusation of witchcraft:
a man who manJges 'to make good' withom ensur
ing that his network shares in his prosperit\' brings
'shame' upon himself and acquires the reputation
of 'eating' others in the in\isibJe world: social dis
approval and ostracism and, in extreme cases, a
death sentence may in time be his reward. This is
not enough to ensure that the redistribution of
wealth always takes place: far from it. The per
sonal relationship on which reclistribution is sup
posed to depend is by definition highJy
inegalitarian and hierarchical. I...] The personal
nature of the system makes the communication of
grievances increasingly difficult as social stratifica
tions become petrified and as the habitus (to bor
row Pierre Bourdieu's concept for the world and
culture of the dominant class) become more
detached from society and as the dominant actors
638 JEAiJ-FRANCOIS BAYART
start to reproduce. As a railway worker from
Sekondi-Takoradi told Richard Jeffries: 'Have you
ever seen a wealthy man stop his Mercedes to get
out and dash [gi\'e money to J a poor man) Not at
all. It is we workers who h:1Vc to look after our
jobless brothers and friends. "I
The object of factional struggles is equally not
just the distribution of status and power. They also
resemble the distribution of wealth, or more accu
rately, the distribution of the possibilities of realis
ing a primitive accumulation, in the strict sense of
the concept, by the confiscation of the means of
production and of trade. [... J And because they
take place against :J double backdrop of material
scarcity and political precariousness, the combats
are ruthless. [... JWhen the GNP is low and when
the conservation of a position of power depends
solely upon the good humour of the Prince, the
lemptation to exploit 'the situation' as quickly and
::IS fully as possible is enormous: hence the unbri
dled pred::ltoriness and violence of political cntre
preneurs.
[... J
III reality, many regimes on the continent oper
::Ite as k/eptocracies. [... 1With the material stakes so
high no holds are barred in the competition
between the chiefs of the network, howeyer vio
lent they may be: homicides, arbitrary imprison
ment, forced displacement of whole conununities
or (simply) burning down buildings which contain
evidence of malpractice.
'Goats Eat Where They Are Techered'
We are now able to think of 'corruption' as well as
conflicts inaccurately dubbed as 'ethnic' as being
no more than the simple manifestation of the 'poli
tics of the belly'. In other words, the social strug
gles which make up the quest for hegemony and the
production of the State bear the hallmarks of the
rush for spoils in which all actors - rich and poor
participate in the world of networks. 'I chop, you
chop' was the promise of a Nigerian party. \Vhilst
one cannot deny this, one has to stress that not e\-c
rybody 'eats' equally. We recall the Cameroonian
proverb 'Goats eat where they are tethered'. r...]
Reality is often stranger than fiction. According to
the testimony of one of its own junior officers,
Za'ire's Air Force (FAZA) was actually cleared out
as a result of the looting of its personnel. The pilots
and other air cre\y first of all transformed it into
an air transport company, undercutting the rates
of the oflicial national ainl'a)' Air Zaire by more
than a half: 'With the money they got from this
they bought produce in the interior of the COUntrY
which they sold at three times the price on their
rerum to Kinshasa where the cost of living was
much higher. With this new ~ystcm of commerce
the crews hit upon a goldmine.' However, the
ground-based maintenance sf.1ff rook a dim view of
these profits from which they were excluded, and
took less and less care of the aircraft, 'which caused
numerous accidents and deaths amongst the mili
tary flight staff':
Finally, in view of so much uncertainty and the
fear of flying on board such perilOlls machines,
some air captains took stock of the seriousness of
the situation ',hich was deteriorating all the time,
and began to offer the ground slaff the possibility
of finding passengers of their own to enable them
to earn a modest daily income. Consequently, sc"
eral flights a day took off from Kinshasa with
clandestine passengers on board (approximately
two out of five!). Indeed, to alleviate the povert\
which affected all levels of society it was neces
sary for everybody to flOd a solution by exploiting
tl1eir profession or their workplace and thereby
inad\'ertently bringing about the ruin of the
nation. Those who had a right to fly on board the
military planes were no longer sure of finding a
place or, if rhey did, they were obliged, like civil
ians, to pay a fee, albeit smaller than usual in rec
ognition of their military status. (... ) This new
life for the air force had one important side-effect:
a dramatic reduction in the number of accidents,
thanks to the sol.idarity between ground and air
staff cemented by their mutual search for an
improvement in the harsh conditions of life
imposed on them by the ruling minority.
Alas! This 'solid solidarity bet\\een ground and
air' aroused the jealousy of the fighter pilots, de
/acto excluded from 'the alliance which existed
between the transporters'. Out of spite, the fighter
pilots, swiftly followed by the rest of FAZA, beg'an
to sell the spare parts of the plancs. Only the C-130
of the 'Guide' was spared. As a result of this 'thor
oughgoing campaign of pillage' the entire t1eet
THE POLITICS OF THE BELLY
was soon grounded. Chaos ensued within FAZA
as it was deprived so suddenly of its supplemen
t:lry income. The 'discover) of anoUler system of
compensation' became a priority.
This was quickly done. Everv morning pilots and
mechanics arrived at the base and towed n\ 0
planes to the fuel pump of Air ZaIre for a com
plete refuelling. As soon as they had been filled lip
they were towed back to the hangars where their
fuel tanks \\l;re emptied. The first clients of lhis
little operation were the wiYes of the soldiers
based at the CfTA training camp, who bought
the petrol at half price, then proceeded to resell it
in _Masina, Kimbaseke and especially Kisangani.
It was not long before the sale of air-force fuel
became semi-official, as no attempt was made 10
hide whm was happening: every day a flood of
empty barrels, big oil drums and all kinds of
receptacles passed thongh the main entry gate to
Ndjili airbase under the \\ atchful eye of guards
who, had they been above corruption, would
never have allo\yed so many customers to pass
through, let alone help them carry their barrels to
and from the hangar.
This account is interesting for reasons other than
its humorous detail. It is a good illustration of how
'corruption' is a method of social struggle, in the full
sense of the term, and how much it rests squarely
upon a liycly political consciousness of inequality:
'~'hilst all these operations were going on there
was al\\'a~ s plenty of gossip, directed principally
against the dishonesty of the establishetl author
ity which stubbornly refused to treat its subjects
decemly_ Everybody mumbled: 'It isn't possible
to live with that great jackal, he must go and give
way to somebody who might do a better job'; 'It's
not possible for us soldiers to live in our own
country. Our families are so badly treated ewn
though the rest of the country thinks we are the
righthand men of ~lobulU> These sentiments
were heard in military circles throughout the
country, even amongst the most illiterate of the
soldiers who were sick of the Guide, but above all
by veterans of the colonial army who were nostal
gic for the colonial period and by those who had
starred off in the ra.nks of the ANC umil that
unforrunate day of 24 November 1965 when
639
.\'lobutu became the guitle of our natil)n. Under
.\1.onsieur Joseph Kasa-Yubu, our first President
of the Republic, eyerybody in thc army was
neared fairly, as they were in other sectors, both
public and priYate, whilst now the child of
Mademoiselle Yemo has the lion's share and holds
the rest of his people hostage.J2
[ ... ]
Activit), within the informal economy is closely
tied to official State practice: the two spheres are
indiYisible. Furthcrmore, the strategies adopted
by the great majority of the popularion for survjY,ll
are identical [0 the ones adopted by the leaders [0
accumulate wealth and power. The line dividing
these two categories of actors is a thin one. The
hazards of the economic climate or the dealings of
competing networks under the pretext of cleaning
up politics or respect of the law which everybody
ignores, can bring ruin at any time - as, for exam
ple, \1alinke traders in Guinea discoyered in 1985
when their shops \\ere sacked following an unsuc
cessful coup attempt J3
Contrary to the popular image of the innocent
masses, corruption and predatoriness are not
found exclusively amongst the powerful. [... J
Rather, they are modes of social and political
behaviour shared by a pluralit) of actors on more
or less a great scale. The longest overhead power
line in the world joining the dams at Inga and
Shaba serves as a perfect symbol of this truth: the
corner irons of the pylons have been appropriated
by villagers living underneath to make beds, shoy
cis and other tools. The daily cannibalisation of
the line is a modest and popular counterpoint to
the huge profits made by foreign ci\'il engineers
and Zalrois decision-makers as a result of the con
struction of this grandiose and useless project.J~
The celebration of the 'cargo cult' of the postcolo
nial State, which is by definition inegalitarian,
affords the dominant actors the means of \'ocifer
ously defending their material interests whilst at
the same time laying claim to the highest ideals of
development and public order. In this sense the
'politics of the belly' is truly a matter of life and
death. Life - if one succeeds in taking one's part
of the 'national cake' without being taken oneself
Death - if one is forced to make do with a hypo
thetical salary that will only feed the family for the

JEAN-FRANCOIS BAYART
640
first three days of the montll; if one doesn't take
one's chances; if one is ambushed and beaten by
opponents no matter that they are dressed up in
tbe tawdry finery of legitimacy and coercion. Sncil
was the sad fate in ZaIre in July 1979 of the dia
mond miners of Katekel.ayi and Luamuela who
were fired upon by soldiers under direct orders
from central government and MillA, the Bakwanp;a
Mining Company. The majority of the miners
were already paying fees to the traditional authori
ties as well as the local police force, and thought
they were doing things by the book:
When the soldiers arrived tbey placed themselves
with their backs to the hills in such a way as to
allow us only one possible escape route - across
the river Mbuji-Mayi. Then they ordered us to
give ourselves up one by one and hand in to the
commandants tbe stones lIe had dug. We didn't
move. We were forced to react by the verv same
soldiers who dug for diamonds for the colonel, the
commandant of the regional gendarmerie who
made us pay lor mining permits, who claimed
they were there To protect us and took diamonds
from us in return. \Ve didn't move. As time passed
the order was given to lire into the crowd. The
order was carried out and some wcre killed. In thc
ensLling panic the survivors divided into twO
groups: one lot flung themselves into the rivcr and
attempted to swim across, whilst the others tried
to make their way through the line of soldiers.
That's when the shooting increased. l\len fellli1e
flies. Policemen sLripped the bodies to steal the
precious stones. [... ] In eastern N.lsal it has
become the norm for policemen to shoot clandes
tine diggers and in a cowardly fashion massacre
the young and rhe unemployed who ha\-e no olher
means of supporring I"hcmsehes in a 1"0\\ n \1 here
the only induslTy is MIBA. [... ] The situation was
all the more serious because we genuinelv belie\Ced
that we were (Jigging legjtimatel~ for diamonds. In
fact, the Zai:rois arnl~ was recei, ing a duty of 5 Z
from the clandestine diggers and 20 Z from the
smugglers. On top of Ihat the soldiers took rums
on the mines and demanded diamonds fTom us to
allow us to continue. Then to our great surprise as
we thought that all the soldiers were following
orders from the same boss, when the relief teams
arrived they came inro conOict with tl,e departing
teams of soldiers. Imagine our smprisc when, with
THE POLITICS OF THE BELLY 641
of democracy, authoritarianism, totalitarianism
tbe arri\-al of the shock forces (soldiers plus MlBA The Emergence of a Political Space
agents), the soldiers who were surrounding us and or the State with a single trutll which can be
We do not intend to succumb - as too often applied south of the Sahara - namely, that which is
who were digging in the mines belonging to the
happens - to the temptation of reducing African produced by histoD and '0\ hich is drawn by tlle
commandant of the gendarmerie began to hide or
social actors to no more than glutinous enzymes, long-term Lrajeclory. [... ]
run away or pack up.!>
motivated by the sole desire of stuffmg themselves [This] analysis must then move towards the illlel
as quickJy as possible with the fruits of western ligence of this mode of 'government" in the sense
The significance of this account can only be
modernism. The expression 'potitics of the belly' that the word was understood in the sixteenth cen
fuJly appreciated if onc remembers that Mobutu,
must be understood in the totaJity of its meaning. tury, that is, the 'way in which the coneluct of
aJong with his family and the politico-military
It refers not just to the 'belly' but also to 'politics'. individuals or of groups might be directcd'. 'To
hierarchy of the regime, were all personally
This 'African way of politics' furthermore sug govern [... ] is to structure the possibleficld of action
involved in the diamond t.raelc. 36 Within these
gests an ethic which is more complicated than that of others.'~! In order to designate this mode of
sorts of contexts sociaJ struggle is a zero sum game
of lucre. A man of power who is able to amass and 'government' - or, as Foucault would say,
where the only prize is the accumulation of power.
redistribute wealth becomes a 'man of honour' 'governmentality' - we have made use of the
[ ... )
(samba lingllff in Wolof).39 In this context, material Cameroonian expression 'politics of tJle belly'. [... ]
The social frustrations caused by the economy
prosperity is one of the chief politica.l ,irtues Plantu, the c-aricatunst of the Cameroon Trill/me
of survival force many 'little men' to make radical
rather than being an object of disapproval. whose c,utoon of the infamous goat saying, 'I graze,
choices: eithcr allow oneself to sink into dementia,
President Houphouet-Boigny, for ex.ample, once therefore 1am', suggests very precisely the contours
like t.he unemployed man in Douah who cut off
attempted to discredit a po.1itical opponent by of what is politically thinkable in postcolonial
his penis because he 'never had enough money to
describing him as a man who 'didn't own anything, African societies:I ., This is not to say thar this form
merit a woman' ,3~ Ot to seize by force that which
not even a bicycJe':!O The lvoirian President was of 'go\ernmentaJity' belongs to ~I traditional culture
societ~ denit.'S them.
proud of having been the first person to import a whose contours cannot possibly be avoided, nor that
The 'highest of thc high' are very much aware
Cadillac into the country, to the great annoyance it avoids the critique of a growing number ofAfrican
of this and increasingly live in a siege mcntalit~,
of Governor pechoux. He brought the full weigilt citizens, and nor finally that it COI-ers the rotality of
protected by their personal guards. They per
of his wealth to bear in a speech of epic propor the continent's political 'ideo-logic'. But it has
ceive banditry as a political threat to their abso
tions deliveret! to striking students: 'People are crushed mOst of the strategit.'S and institutions, in
lute seniority, 1\ thrcat which derives in the main
sometimes surprised that J like galt!. It's bccause particular the Christian churches, the nationalist
from the 'youth', the 'juniors' and the 'little
I was born in it.'~1 [... ] parties Illld the civil services, which have worked for
men'. [ ... ]
Other politicians - Nnamdi Azikiwe in Nigeria the advent of a modern Africa. The experiences of
The 'politics of the belly' is firmh located in the
or i\lajor-General Mobutu in Za'ire, for ex.ample governments which attempted to break free from
continuity of the conl1icts of the past. Today as
eonfirm that fortune is an attribute of a true chief, their grip have either not lasted a long time or have
yesterday, what is being fought for is the exclusi\e
sometimes because it helps presumably to discol\J in their turn been absorbed by' its practices.
right to the riches claimed by the holders of'abso
age the abuse of power. [ .. 1It may be a good thing Africa does not, however, 'eat' in a uniform way.
lute seniority'. The young challenge this claim.
that physicaJ corpulence is a sign of a true chief, The regimes of political manducation vary from the
\hat is perhaps more reveaJing is that women are
and from this point of vie\\ as well the expression Nigerian or Zairois bulimi"a to the Tan7~"lnian or
no more willing to accept the claim than the \,outh
'politics of the belly' carries a mucil richer symbolic Nigerien slimmers' Jiet, from the prophetic appe
and that they are waging an authentic 'sex \\Jr'
meaning than its polemical connotation might at tite of an Ahmed SH.ou Toure or a Macias Nguema
against the men.>lS Once again morality is not nec
first suggest. In short, we'llth is a potential sign of to the schizophrenic greed of Marxist-Leninist
essarily the victor: in order to achieve emancipa
heing at one with t11e forces of the cosmos. [... ] leaders, or from the redeeming austerity of a Jerry
tion and economic auvanccment, young \\omen
Social phenomena which western common Rawlings or a Murrah Mohammed to the voluptu
are forced to sell their bodies as well as engage in
other commercial actjvities or work in industry or
sense interprets as 'corruption' of t.he State or ous appetite ofa Felix Houphouet-Boigny or aJomo
on the land. [... ] With the spread of sexually
'political decay' l1e right at the heart of our uncler Keny-ana. One must be aware of these vari:ttions
standing of tbc Stale. They shed light on its social rather tban pontificate upon ~Ul eternal Africa. The
transmissible disease - and the tragic conse
struggles, its relative int!etermination and, finally, study of sequences of en~nts, ideological sedimcllta
quences of one of these diseases in particular - we
its moral culture, which condemns (and some tions, judicial codifications, institutional formalisa
see further proof of our proposition that south of
times prevents) Lhe monopolising of power, nour tions, structures for creating or redistributing
the Sahara 'to eat' is a matter of life and death. -\11
ishes a certain idea of liberty and, at the same time, wealth, political alliances and sociaJ exclusions and
the same, we need to verify that in the end it is still
makes some forms of social injustice illegitimate. of the geographic and demographic morphology
a political question, albei[ in a somewhat less than
In othcr words, they flesh out the generic concepts of each countT) should enable us to differentiate the
rig'orous use of the epithet.
642 JEMJ-FRAN<;OIS BAYART
national trajectories of politics, pursue comparisons
anu - perhaps - draw up a typology of the State
south of the Sahara, [ ... J
Africa, furthermore, holds no monopoly in
matters of the belly, nor of eseape. For proof we
need look no further than the increase in aca
demic ,",arks dedicated to the description of
'corruption', 'c1ientelism' and 'migrations'.
Assuming that such commonl) found phenom
ena should not be taken as simply morbid, we are
forced to admit that the analysis of politics in
Africa opens the door to a wider reflection on the
nature of politics. Yes, banal Africa - exoticism be
damned l - leads us to some general lessons of
methodology. If the majority' of phenomena
which it has allowed us to see and which taken
Notes
Pani socialiste du Senegal, Groupe d'erudes et de
recherches, Sill/ina ire sur Ie lheme: I~s Imdances el les
clans, Dakar, 1 Dec. 1984, p. 7; Le So/ei! (Dakar), 3
Dec. 1984 and tlllnw-Dimanrlte (Dakar), 19, Dec.
1986,p.2
2 D.B. Cruise O'Brien, 'Senegal' in]. Dunn, cd., West
,1fn'can StllleS. Fai/llre and Prumise. A SllIdy in
Cumparalive Polilies, Cambridge, Cambridge
niversity Press, 1978. pp. 187--8.
3 J. Schmitz, 'un politologue chel les marabouts',
Caltiers cI'ellules 4'rialillcs, 91, XXIII (3), 1983,
pp. 332 and 335.
4 M. Szeftel, 'The political process in post-colonial
Zambia: the structural bases of factional conflict' in
Cenrre of African Studies, Tlte Evolvillg Structure of
Zamb,u Socie~)I.Edinburgh, Un i\'ersit)' ofEdinburgh,
1980, rnultigr., pp. 6-t-.95; R. Tangri, Politic' ill sllb
salwnlfl Aj;iea, London, James Curre), Portsmouth,
40 I.. Gbagbo, Cote-d'h:oire. POllr llne altemati'!;e
Heinemann, 1985, chap. ii; N. Chua.n, A,l.lualum)'
dimocratique, Paris, L'Harmarran, 1983, p. 80.
of Ghallaiau Polilics. Managing Political Reressiol1.
41 Fraim/iIi-Malin (Abidjan), 29 April 1983, p. 16.
/969-/982, Boulder, WesrYie" Press, 1983, pp. 95
ff.; and on Somalia Afrira Crmjirlenlial, 27 (12), 4
Jun. 1986 and 27 (22), 29 Oct. 1986.
5 D.-C. \'lartin , 1ill/ZIlllle: l'i"1)(IIliol/ d'ul/e culwre
polttiqlle, Paris, Presses de ]a Fondatjon nationalc des
scienccs po1iriques, Kartha1a, 1988, chap. xi\'; J.-F
Bayart, L' Etat all Cllmerullll, Paris, Presses de 101
Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1979,
passim.
6 A rypical manifestation of courresy. The transfer of
the capital dates back only to 198-+.
together serve to typify it, are also found under
other skies without none the less being seen as
distinctive characteristics of systems of power in
Asia, America or Europe, it is perlnps more a
matter of degree or proportion. Let us first of 0111
establish whether strategies of 'straddling', for
example, are more or less decisive in Abidjan or
Lagos than in Moscow, Beijing, Singapore,
Washington or Paris! [ ... J The condescending
perplexity of the observer faced \I ith the politi
cal practices south of the Sahara derives less
from the fact that these are in themselves aston
ishing than that such an observer is unable (or
unwilling) to reconstruct the subjecti\"ity of Ihe
African actors and remains instead a complacent
hostage to the paradigm of the yoke. [... ]
7 PDCI, 'Seminaircs d'information et de formation dl:S
secrctaircs gcncraux. l:amoussOllkro: 3-7 mai 1982.
Abidjan: 10-11 decembre 1982. Yamoussoukro:
27-29 deeembre 1983' Abidjan, Fratemite-Hebdo,
1985, pp. 8-10 and 11-14. Sec also A. Bonnal,
'L'adminisrration et le pani face aux tensions',
'olitiqlle africa me, 24, Dec. 1986, pp. 20-8.
8 F Amani Go1y, Party inspector for the Centre West
area, 'Enrra\'es i.nternes etexrernes ala bonne marehe
des secrions' in POC[, Le Q!/Iltrieme SimimllTt drs
secretaires gblemu", Yamoussf/ul'ro: 7, 8 el 9 mars
/985, . \bidjan, Fraternite-Hebdo, 1985, p. 17.
9 Declaration of Ansoumane l\lagassouba, quoted in
1. Baba Kake, Sekou Toure, Ie heros el Ie IJ ran, Paris,
JeuneAfrique, 1987, p. 60.
10 J. Spencer, 101 U 17u Kel!)'a Africall L Ilion,
London, KPI, 1985; R. Urn Nyobc, Le PmNJme
national kamenmais. Prese:nt! par JA. Mbtmbi,
Paris, L'Harmarran, 1984; N. Chazan, All . JIll/Will)'
ofGhaul/iall Politics, pp. 95 ff.; R. Rathbone, 'Busin
essmen in politics: part)' struggle in Ghana, 19~9
1957', Journal of Developme:nt Slildies, 9 (3) April
1973, pp. 391-4DI; I).E. Apter, GllI/llo ill Trallsitioll.
Princeton, Princeton Uni\'crsit) Press. 1972.
11 M. Mamd.mi, Imperia/ism and Fast'ism ill C.ftlnlla.
Nairobi, Heinemann, 1983, pp. 98-9;J.-C. Willame,
aire. L'ipupie d'il/gu. ClJromque d'une pridalio"
il1llmlrielle, Paris, L'Harmallan, 1986, Pl' I ~i-8;
N. Swainson, The Deulopm/:'/I1 lif Corporal'
Capitalmll III Kenya. /9/8-/977, London.
Heinemann, 1980, pp. 274-6; C. Young, T. Turner,
THE POLITICS OF THE BELLY
TIl<' Rise lind Dalil/e oflhe Zairiall Siale, Yladison,
The Gni\'ersity of Wisconsin Press, 1985, pp. 171
and 176; Afn'ra Confidential, 198-t-.198i\.
12 Dossier 1401221, 'Elites politiques: Charles
Njonjo', Nairobi, CREDU, 1983-1984; Wuk(y
RC7Jiell' (Nairobi), 1983-1984; Republic of Kenya,
Report ofJudirial COlllmiSS/r/71 Appoimed to Iuquire
mlu Allega/i'il1s Involi'mg Charles \IIugalle Vjutljo
(Furmer .'HlIIister for C,mstitllliullal A/fiJin I//Id
,11t'11lber of Parliamml for Kikuyu Cutlslitumr)'),
N:tirobi, The Commissions of Inquiry Act, 198+.
13 ,lfn'ra Confidenlial, 28 (13), 24 Jun. 1987.
14 D. Fassin et aI., 'Les enjeux sociaux dc la participa
tion communauraire', pp. 217-18.
IS n. Joinet, Tanz011ie, ma/lger d'abord, Paris, Kanhala,
1981, pp. 189-91.
16 E. Terray, 'I.e dimatiscur et la ycranda' in AFiq/l~
pilltidle, ,Ifrique actuelle. HOinmage d Georges
Balandier, Paris, Kanhala, 1986, pp. 37-44.
17 A. Cohen, The Politin ofElite Culrure, LosAngeJes,
university of California at Los Angeles Press,
1981.
18 D.-C. Martin, Tanza/lie; D. Martin, G. Dauch,
L'Heri/age de KeIl)'attll; ].-0. Barkan, 'The elec
toral process and peasant-state relations in Kenya'
in F'VL Hayward, ed., Eleoions ill Indeperuleul
~frira, pp. 213-37; D. Bourmaud, 'Les elections au
Kenya: tous derriere el Moi devanr. .. ' and
13. Smith, 'Les elections au Kenya: du passe faisons
table rase!', Poli/it}ue afrirallle, 31, Oct. 1988, pp.
85-92; D.B. Cruise O'Brien, Saints and Pulitiri(t/ls.
1~ ]. Bazin, 'Gucrre et servitude a Segou' in
C. .\'leillassoux, ed., L'Esciavage en pinode prieolo
lIiale, Paris, Maspero, 1975, pp. 135-81.
W ]. \-ansina, Les Anciells Royall/nts de la savant,
p.149.
21 J-N. Paden, Ahmaelll Bel/o, Sardalllla of Sokolo.
Values a/ld Leadership in NIgeria, London, Hodder
and Stoughton, 1986, pp. 202 ff and p. 313 [f
22 Africa CO/ljidential, 17 Ocr. 198+.
23 1. Baba Kake, Sikou Tuuri, pp. 168 [f
2+ Ibid., pp. 171-2 and 179.
25 A. Diallo, La Mort de Dial/o Tel/i, premier seCi'il(/ir~
Kitlfral ele I'OUA, Paris, Kartha1a, 1983, p. 19. C.f
also M. Selhami, 'Un seu! gouvernment: 1a famille"
Jeu/lt Afrique plus, 8, June 1984, pp. 18-21.
26 )fri.a COlifirimtial, 28 (10), 13 May 1987; ,Harches
lropicau,\' elmidilerralleros, 7 March 1986, pp. 57/~0;
643
ibid., 28 'vlarch 1986, pp. 857~; ibid., 19 Sept. 1986,
flP 2375-6; ibid., 31 Ocr. 1986. p. 2750; 1\. Cassllcll,
'!\utopsie de l'ONCAD. La politique arachidiere au
Senegal, 1966-1980', Politique aj'rirlrille, 14, June
1984, pp. 66 fT.
27 Les Galriers dl' Gombo!l1a. fns/ruetions pulitiques 1'1 flJil
ilaim des partisans eOl/golais (/964-1965), Brussels,
CRISP, 1965, p. 57.
28 B. Malinowski, Freedom and Civilizatiun, London,
Allen and Unwin, 1947, pp. 266 and 253.
29 C. and !\. Darlington, A./i'iran Be/royal, New York,
Da\ id McKay, 1968, p. 121.
30 A. Diallo, La .Hurl de Dial/o Tt.lIi, pp. 18, 106
and 118.
31 R. Jeffries, Clliss, Pomer and Ideolog)' in Ghana: the
Railll'O)'ml'lt of Sekondi, Cambridge, Cambridge
Uniyersity Press, 1978, p. 182.
32 Anon., 'La Vic dans les forces aeriennes zai'r
oises', n.d.
33 '\. Y!orice, 'Guinee 1985', pp. 108-36; F Gaulme,
'La Guinee aI'heure des rHormes', Marehis Iropi
ralix et miditerroneens, 13 Jun. 1986, pp. 1565 IT.;
ibid., 2 Aug. 1985,pp. 1939-40.
34 J.-c. Willame, Zaire: Npopie dblga. Chrollique
lI'une: pridatiOfl il/riffstriel/e, Paris, L'Harmatran,
1986, p. 128.
35 'Les massacres de Kateke1ayi et de Luamue1a
(Kasal oriental)', Politilfue aFicaille, 6, May 1982,
pp.82-83.
36 C. Young, T. Turner, The Rise and Decline of the
Zai'rian Sill Ie, Madison, Uni\ersity of Wisconsin
Press, 1985, pp. 181 and pp. 452-3, note 27.
37 La Gazelle ele la /la/lOll (Douala), 2 Aug. 1984.
38 C. Vidal, 'Guerre des sexes a; .'\bidjan. Masculin,
feminin, CFA' in 'Dcs fcmmes sur l'Afrique des
femmes'. Calrius d'i!lIdes ajiieaines, 65, :x.'VII-l,
1977.pp.121-53.
39 C. Coulon, 'Elections, factions et ideologies au
Senegal' in CEAN, COO, Aux umes I'Afrique!,
p.160.
42 M. Foucault, 'Le pouyoir, comment s'exerce-t-il?'
in H.L. Dreyfus, P. Rabinow, M/chel FOl/raull, II/I
parcouI's philosophiqlle, Paris, Gallimard, 1984,
pp.313-14.
43 Calflrrootl 1i'ibllne (Yaounde), 8-9 May 1988.

45
"Govern Yourselves!"
Democracy and (:arnage in
Northern Mozambique
Harry G. West
The killings in Muidumbe district began in Ul
second half of the year 2002. In some cases, attacks
were wimesscd; in others, mauled bodies alone lOld
grisly stories. It was by no means unheard of in the
area for a lion to kill a person. But this was differ
ent. These lions - by collective reckoning, seven
lingered in and around villages and agricultural
camps on the southeastern edge of the J\1ueda
Plateau for months on end. taking victims one after
another. Afraid to venture outside their homes, area
residents abandoned their fields at the peak of U1C
agricultural season. As rhe preceding year's stores
ran out and the current year's crops rotted in the
fields, many went hungry. Women fetched water
from sources outside the village only en masse,
escOrled by men armed with bow and arrolV.
Bathing became almost impossible. Schools ended
classes early so that students could rerum hom
while the sun was still high in the sk). Well before
dark, makeshift chamber pots were placed inside as
l'iIIagers made ready for another long night behind
barricaded doors and boarded-up windows.
Hopes that the government would resolve the
crisis went unmet. Muidumbe district administra
From Harry G. West, "'Go\crn Yourselvcsl' Democracy and Carnage in Northern Mozambique," inJulia PaleY (cJ.).
Democracy: ~llllhrt!pologjral .1pprollches. Copyright -S' 2008 by the School for Adnllced Research, SanfJ Fl'.
pp. 97-1 19.
ha\ e greatly intensified in recent years, taking on
democracy. Anything is possible now. Everything
accused of sorcery were submitted to ordeals (Dias
cated their guilt and often ended their lives.
tor Pedro Seguro later asserted that provincial
authorities failed to respond to his requisition for
hunting rif1es and ammunition. Villagers \\ ondered
whether any petition was even made. '\s far as the)
remembered, no word to that effect was el'er issued
from the administrator's office, nor was any other
action taken to put an end to the carnage. As the
dealh toll mounted, villagers took martel'S inltJ
their own hands, killing several lions by laying
traps in the village or hunring them dOlm with bOIl
and arrow. They also began I) nehing fellow I'illag
ers whom they accused of malting, or tr:1I1sforming
inlO, lions to feed upon neighbors ,md kin. "'hen
mobs pulled the accused from their homes, bouml
and beat them, doused them with petrol, and set
them alight, those attempting to inten-ene became
the objects of potentiall) lethal popular suspicion
(lsrael n.d.; Limbombo 2003). [...]
For generations, l\tuedans have suspected a cer
tain few among them capable of making or tran-,
forming into lions. Sorcerers, by Muedan definition,
perform astonishing acts through which they feed
n the well-being of others. According to Illost
people with whom we worked, such pheno menn
"GOVERN YOURSELVES!"
alarming ne\1 dimensions. The reason? In a word,
democrat). One elder put it succinctly: "In the
past, sorcerers were regulated. Today, we ha\e
arc either outright dictatorships, like Rwanda and
is permitted." In pre-colonial times, individuals
and Dias 1970:370). The failing of these tests indi
Colonial and post-colonial regimes prohibited
anti-sorcery ordeals in Mueda and elsewhere in
Mozambique, but these restrictions were inter
preted b) most as elements of a broader poliC) also
rohibiting the practice of sorcery itself ('Vest
2005). But mis, no longer. When I asked the
administrator of neighboring Mueda district,
Ambrosio Vicente Bulasi, about a recent spate of
lion attacks and vigilante justice there, he, lOO,
linked such occurrences, in the present, to democ
racy. "Democracy," he stated, "means that each
one has the right to believe what he believes."
Personally, he did not "believe in sorcery": "Of
course, pe{)plc cannot make lions and send them to
attack other people. These things :lrise out of con
niets between families." Nonetheless, democracy
dictated that officials such as he remain uninvolved
in these affairs. "It is essential not to get drawn
into such matters," he told me. "If you try to adju
dicate, you wind up taking sides. It is better to
have [people] reach a resolution 011 their own," he
concluded. "I tell them that they must sort these
things out for themselves." According to residents
of Muidumbe, this is precisely what their admin
istrator did when lions besieged their villages in
late 2002 and early 2003 (see Israel n.d.).
During a 1998 tour of Africa, US president Bill
linton declared: "From Kampala to Capetown,
from Dakar to Dar es Salaam, Africans are being
stirred by new hopes for democracy and peace and
prosperity." In support of this, he pointed LO the
fact that "half of the forty-eight ruuions in sub
Saharan Africa [had] chose[n1 their own gO\'ern
ment!>" (Clinton 1998). By many account.~,
~ lozambique wa~ a - if not rhe - model for democ
ratization in Africa, hal;ng recently emerged from a
protracted civil war and successfull) staged multi
part) national ejections (Chan and Venfmcio 1998;
Manning 2001, 2002). Only a few years later, how
ever, the Democratization Policy Institute declared:
645
Despite high hopes following the end of the Cold
W:lr, promises of an ''African Renaissance" remain
largelv unfulfilled. Most of the countries chosen
by President Clinton as examples of a new Africa
Eritrea, or quasi-democratic autocracies, like
Uganda and Ethiopia. Most African countries
that adhere to democratic governance (loosely
defined) have shown some slippage, with demo
cratically elected leaders attempting to remain in
power by tweaking constitutions. [Democratiza
tion Polic), lnstitute 2001]
:\1eanwhile, observers have reported rising levels
of corruption in Maputo - punctuated by the fail
ure of the criminal justice system to detain those
responsible for the assassination of whislleblow
ers - and international observers have expressed
graIl' concerns over irre6"ul:lrities in the 2004
Mozambican general elections (The Carrel' Cenler
2005; Clemens 2002; Hanlon 2004). By Western
standards, Africa's new democracies, including
MOZ<lmbique, have had limited success in consoli
dating regime transition.
But what of African st.andardS? The Came
roonian historian Achille Mbembe has argued that
the project of democratization in contemporary
Africa depends nOI on the application of a Western
model of power t.o African realities bUl, instead,
upon the cult.ivation within Africa of "other lan
guages of power" that express emergent African
political ethics. (The same might be said of democ
ratization, political realities, and languages of
power in other regions of the world.) These lan
b"Uages, he asserts, "must emerge from the daily life
of the people, [and] address everyday fears and
nightmares, and lhe images wim which people
express or dream them" (Geschiere 1997:7).
Elsewhere (West 2005). I have examined sorcery
discourse as aIle such I:mguage of power spoken by
J\1uedans; I hale also suggested that, in speaking of
political realities, Muedans are not limited to uus
one language. Like most peoples, J\1uedans draw
on mUltiple languages of power that intertwine in
complex fashion in the world they inhabit. The way
in which lhey speak of political realities today bas
been shaped by historical encounters with various
others and the languages of power they have spo
ken, whether slal'e traders, Catholic missionaries,
646 HARRY G. WEST
Portuguese colonial administrators, Tanganyikan
plantation owners, FRELIl\lO nationalist guerril
las, or agents of post-independence state social
ism. At the broadest bel, the language of power
contemporary Muedans speak comprises multiple
languages. It is a linguistic mosaic produced and
sustained by speakers who have gained var}ing
degrees of fluency in other languages and wo\'en
them into their own - a system in constant flux. In
accordance with the topic at hand, its speakers
draw meaning from different experiential subs~'s
tems, geographical reference points, and historical
strata. In the current moment, i\luedans have even
engaged with the language of power spoken by
democratic reformers, adopting or adapting some
terms and concepts from the democracy lexicon
while dismissing or ignoring others.
In this chapter, I argue that the language of
power Muedans ha\'e spoken in the midst of neo
Eberal transformation of the Mozambican econ
omy and polity differs substantially from the
language spoken by democratic reformers, not
withstanding points of convergence, as well as
internal variations and dynamic complexities, in
both these languages. Recognizing that, in the face
of reform, J\luedans have not spoken with one
voice, nor have their ideas and actions derived
from some hermetic indigenous logic, I nonethe
less suggest that the language of power Muedans
generally speak reflects and sustains different
notions of contemporary political realities. In the
disjuncture between their language and that of
democratic reformers, I argue, l\1uedans have crit
ically engaged with the ongoing process of democ
ratization. Indeed, I suggest, they have articulated
their own vision of, and for, the working of power
in rhe world they inhabit. Before examining this in
detail, I provide an historical overview of demo
cratic reform in Mozambique.
The "Democratization"
of Mozambique
The southern African nation of Mozambique was
born of guerrilla war waged against Portuguese
colonizers by the Mozambican J ,iberation Front
(Frente de Liberta~o de Moyambique, or
PRELlMO) from 1964 to 197+ From rear bases in
the newl} independent and socialist-oriented
Tanzania, FRELThIO established its central base
early in the campaign on the Mucda Plateau amidst
~enerally supportive M.akonde populations. \\ ith
military support from China, the Soviet Union, and
other Eastern bloc countries, the Front expelled the
Portuguese from substantial portions of the north
ern Mozambican provinces of Tete, Niassa, and
Cabo Delgado (including most of the !\lueda
Plateau). In 1974, a military coup in Lisbon toppled
Antonio Salazar's appointed successor, Marcel
Caetano, and set the stage for FREU\lO to take
power in 1975 over an independent \ lozambique
(Henriksen 1983; MunsJow 1983). The party's offi
cial adoption of a J\tarxist-Leninist platform in
1977 consolidated FRELIMO's commitment to
socialism (Munslow 1983). In coming years, how
ever, brutal civil war undermined the realization of
"socialist modernization" in .\tozambique.
The Mozambican National Resistance (R~isl
eneia National MOyambicana, or RENAMO) was
born in the late 1970s of counterinsurgency opera
tions undertaken by the neighboring Rhode~ian
regime to harass Zimbabwean nationalist guerrillas
based, with l'vlozambican consent, across the border
in cenu'al ~lozambique. After Zimbab\\'ean inde
pendence, the South African apartheid regime
exu'acted, trained, armed, and redeplo~ed
RENMvlO fighters to "destabilize" a MozambiC'.m
state then harboring African National Conb'TC'>S
(ANC) activists. By the late 1980s, RENA!vlO had
put down roots in Mozambique - drawing malcon
tents and conscripts into its ranks - and was operat
ing in all ten Mozanlbican pro\inces.
In some areas, the insurgene~ enjoyed consider
able popular support. Not, however, in Mueda.
Deeply invested in the historical construction of
fREUMO nationalism, Muedans fended ofT
sporadic attacks and successfully denied the insur
gency any foothold on the plateau. Throughout
the country, however, nearly one millton
Mozambicans died, and up to six million were dis
placed from their homes as rival armies waged war
for more than a decade and a half (Africa Watch
1992; Egero 1987; Finnegan 1992; HaJJ 1990;
Ilanlon 1990; Minter 1994; Vines 1991). With the
end of the Cold War and then the end of apartheid
in the early 1990s, both sides lost external support.
making possible a negotiated settlement in Octohcr
1992 stipulating that national elections be held in
"GOVERN YOURSELVES'"
October 1994 (Alden 1995; Alden and Simpson
1993; Chan and Yenancio 1998; Hume 1994;
Mazula 1995). FRLIMO pre\'ailed at the ballot
box, taking the presidency and a majorit) of scats
in the national assembly (Hanlon 1994), as it would
ag-ain in 1999 and 2004.
The democratization of Mozambique has con
sisted of far more than the staging of regular
national ejections. In the shadO\\' of Soviet per
estroika and glasnost and the global ascendance of
neoliberalism, the ruling PRELI.\IO part} initi
ated comprehensive reforms from the latc 1980s
onward to liberalize the Mozambican economy
and polity. In 1986, fiscal austerity measures were
unilaterally adopted by the FRELIMO govern
ment, making possible an agreement with the IMF
the following year for structural adj USffilent sup
port (Hanlon 1991). In 1989, the FRELIMO part)
officially abandoned its commitment to Marxism
Lc:ninism. In the ensuing years, government pri
vatized a great many state enterprises (Myers
1994; Pitchcr 2002; West and Myers 1996). A new
constitution in 1990 established individ ual rights
of person and property, including freedoms of
religion and political expression, fostering foreign
and domestic investment and leading rapidly to
the: emergence of multiple political parties and
also a vibrant independent press (Africa Watch
1992). In 1997, government created a framework
for state decentralization and for subsequently
staged local elections in a number of cities and
to\\ns (Alves and Cossa 1997). Simultaneously,
government explored means of incorporating civil
leaders - including hereditary authorities - into
processes of local governance, eventually issuing a
decree on the matter in the year 2000 (Buur and
Kyed 2003; Hanlon 2000). All of these measures
\lcre underwritten by Western donor nations, as
well as supported by an arra) of international
organizations.
"-!though the democratization of Mozambique
has comprised these multiple, interconnected,
political and economic reform processes, three
aspects have been central to the Muedan experi
ence of democracy, namely elections, state decen
tralization, and the establishment of individWlI
rights of person, property, and free expression. In
the remainder of this chapter I consider these com
ponents in turn, focusing on how Muedans have,
647
through their own language of power, understood
and engaged with tJlem rather differently than
reformers might have hoped and expected.
Electoral Democracy, Perpetual War
Not only is the .!\1ueda Plateau one of the most
geographically remote regions in Mozambique.
but also it is one of the most politically isolated.
The region - often called "the cradle of the I'C\'O
lution" - has, in many ways, remained more loyal
to FRELIMO socialism than has the part)' itself.
Indeed, most Muedans took notice of democracy
only in 19\14. During that e\'ent-filled year. C~
peacekeepers established eamp in the town of
Mlleda to O\'ersee the demobilization of soldiers.
RENAMO set up offices in district seats. UN
election observers arrived en masse to coordinate
electoral registration and voter education.
RE:'HMO leader Afonso Dhlakama and FRE
LIMO leader ]oaquim Chissano each held cam
paign rallies on the plateau. Finally, in late October,
t\-1uedans voted.
In the context of the modern nation-state, multi
party elections are often the most celebrated com
ponent of democracy. Accordingly, great emphasis
has been placed on the successful staging of elec
tions in Mozambique. In the aftermath of the first
national multiparty elections in 1994, one observer
declared: "Peace in Mozambique first and foremost
mcans that the political conflict fought out between
FRELIl'vlO and REl'\AMO in a bloody wa.r has
been civilized in the sense that both its theatre and
instruments have changed: from the bush to parlia
ment and from weapons to words, respectively"
(Weimer 1996:43-4). Above all else, democratic
reformers in Mozambique conceived of elections
as a means of ending violent connict and of ration
alizing political contcstati.on by rendering
contestants and their respective politics directly
accountable to the ~lozambican people.
From the outset, however, ]\1uedans looked upon
elections - and democracy, more generally - rather
differently. Many Muedans first heard the \\'ord
democracy spoken on Radio Moc;;ambique and asso
ciated with RENAMO leader Afonso Dhlak3ma,
who proclaimed that he had fought for, and won,
democracy for the Mozambican people (lvl.anning
2002: 144-5). Muedans subsequently saw the word
648 HARRY G. WEST
in print on RENAMO flags and T-shirts appearing
in the region during the electoral campaign. To be
sure, UN representatives in Mozambique, from
1'1aputo to Mueda, also frequently deplo)ed the
term democracy in public discourse and in printed
matter distributed bcfore elections. Tellingl)" most
1'1uedans conceived of the United Nations
Operation in Mozambique (UNO~OZ) as a
"political party" that, likc RENAMO, contested
FRELIMO's historical right to gmern the nation it
had liberated from colonial rule. That many rank
ing UN military officers wcrc Portuguese, owing to
t:ompetence in the ~o:ambican nationallallguage,
exacerbated suspicions that ~OMOZ constituted
a stealth invasion force under the control of the
former colonizer.
In the months before elections, UNOMOZ
worked to demobilize both combatant armies.
Because there were no RENAM:O bases on the
plateau, however, l\luedalls bore witness only to
the disarmament of FRELThI.o troOps, whose
return as civilians to Muedan viJlagcs signaled to
them FRELlMO vulnerability or defeat.
\1eanwhile, UNOMOZ visibl) safeguarded the
establishment of RENAMO headquarters in
Mueda town, where "forcign delegations" fre
quently appeared to celebrate democracy's arrival
in Mozambique by bestowing largesse on those
l\luedans considered "bandits" and "murderers"
In these early days, Muedans conceived of democ
racy as the ideology of "opposition," the slogan of
ignoble enemies, past and present. Democracy's
arrival in Mucda signaled the potential undoing of
all that FRELIMO - and with it l\1uedans - had
accompljshed since taking up arms in 1964, includ
ing the achievement of national sovereignty.
When voter registration began, many Muedans
declined participation. When asked why, man~;
told me that they had no usc for the identification
cards issued by elections officials, for they "already
belonged to a political pany" (West 2003). When
local FRELLVIO leaders themselvcs spoke out in
support of democracy and urgcd Muedans to reg
ister for the "ote, many worried that FRELI~IO
was "growing tired."
With the ~tart of the electoral campllign, rival
political parties focused attention on potential vot
ers. This was the moment in which, according to
democratic reformers, parties would be requjred
to attune themselves to the desires of constituent~.
What actually happened was rather different from
this. Mozambicans everywhere uttered the pro\"
erb, "When buffalos fight, the grass gets tram
pled." Indced, the campaign was defined less b\"
"debate" than by contestants' activating network"s
of patronage and coercion. Voters ultimately "rec
ognized" candidates who most convincingly exer
cised power in their midst, RENAl\IO general!,
winning in regions it had come to control during
the war and FRELI~10 in regions it had held. The
campaign introduced new tensions - sometimes
violent - into communities throughout the coun
try, including Muedan villages. At the beginning of
the campaign, FRELlMO leaders circulated in the
Mueda region calling upon villagers to remain
"vigilant" against the appearance of RE~AMO in
their midst. This term - which in\'oked memories
of revolutionary wartime campajgns to detect and
eliminate "enemies within" the ranks of the
FREUMO insurgency (that is, spies, saboteurs)
accentuated Muedan resentment against, and fear
of, RENAMO in the very moment of democratic
"consolidation of the peace." Suspected RL'i
AMO sympathizcrs were idcntified and heaten.
Several times, Mucdans attacked RENAMO head
quarters in Mueda town, tearing down the
RENANIO flag and chasing RENA~IO delegates
out of town. When RENAMO leader Afonso
Dhlakama came to the plateau to stage a /"'ally,
Muedans "stoned" him with green (hard, unrip
ened) mangoes and then thc helicopter in which he
fled. By contrast, FRELIMO leader Joaquim
Chissano was met on the 1'1 ueda airstrip by throngs
of supporters, who carried him on a makeshift
throne to his rally in the center of town. [... J Weeks
later, Muedans cast their b,lllots, voting overwhelm
ingly in favor of Chissano and FRELI~lo. [.1
After ballots had been cast and results lJbu
lated most Muedans with \\hom we spoke
expe~ted talk of democracy to end, for the~, and
the nation, had recognized "Papa Chissano" as
their legitimate leader. To their surprise and indig
nation, the RENAMO flag continued to n~ at
pany headquarters in district seats on the p1ueau.
RENAMO delegates continued to lay claim to
power as they prepared for futurc elections. To
most .Mucdans, such "provocation" was unprece
dcnted. Under socialism, the one-party state knew
"GOVERN YOURSELVES!"
no contestants; within the ranks of the highly
centralized party, power struggles were quickly
if sometime!> violently - resolved. The colonial
state, toO, had admitted no rivals, within or with
out. FRELINIO's challenge to Portuguese rule
produced protracted, violent conflict, after which
only one of the two claimants to power remained
in Mozambique, namely, FRELIMo.
The model of singular, uncontested power res
nated even more deeply than this among
Muedam. To be sure, in pre-colonial times, young
men often challenged the authority of their
cIders - \\ hether on the basis of descent from
a founding elder, aptitude for leadership, or
courage - giving rise to struggles over settlement
headmanships. And such contests sometimes
turned "iolent. In any C;lse, such affairs were con
sidered finished only when all parties recognized a
victor or when parties refusing to do so abandoned
the settlement (often in the company of their sup
porters). Until the uncontested authority of one
man was recognized, the security of settlement
residents vis-a-\ is one another and neighboring
settlements remained unsure. In contrast to these
familiar models for dispute resolution, multiparty
democracy, from the Muedan perspective, prom
ised to sustain and even proliferate rival claims to
power at the highest levels in the land, with dra
matic implications for those Ii\ ing in every prov
ince, district, and village in the country Under
demOtT,lcy, it seemed, no defeat was recognized,
and, therefore, no war finished - a political realil)
to which ,'v1uedans ha\"e only slowly and partially
acclimated themselves. r...]
emocratic Decen tralization,
State Abandonment
Simultaneous with the staging of national-level
multiparty elections, democratic reformers in
\1ozarnbique have pursued a policy of democratic
decentralization. Just weeks before the 1994 elec
tions, go\"ernment passed a law (no. 3/94) devolv
ing responsibility for a variety of governmental
functions to "municipalities," to be formed of
urban and rural districts and administered by
elected officials. In 1995, before tlle law took force,
it was declared unconstitutional. A new law (no.
2197), passed in 1997, established the framework
649
for devolution to democratically elected local gov
ernments called "autarchies," to be established
only in the thirty-three laq~est cities and towns in
the country (Alves and Cossa 1997; Weimer and
Fandrych 1999). Elscwhcre, the government
would continue to appoint officials, from tile dis
trier administrator down to the village president
and neighborhood secretary.
In parallcl, reformers prcssed FRELIMO to
reverse post-independence policy that had abol
ished the chieftaincy. FRELIMO justification for
banning hereditary authorities from any role in
go\unment lay in arguments that such figures had
activel) collaborated with Portuguese colonial rule
(Monteiro 1989). Indeed, colonial administrators
had used chiefs at the highest levels as tax collec
tors, labor recruiters, and agents of law enforce
ment- tasks for which these individuals received
substantial rewards. FRELIMO therefore pro
claimed thc need to liberate rural M07..ambicans
not onl) from the Portuguesc but also from tlle
feudal hierarchies through which colonial rule was
consolidated. The party did so by establishing
party-based structures of authority that reached
deep into every village, displacing hereditary
authorities at !C\-els where they had collaborated
with the colonial regime (Hanlon 1990). Some
Mozambicans celebrated the abolition of the
chieftaincy. Others resented it as an attack on local
autonomy and custom. Still others manifested
ambivalence.
Over the course of the Mozambican civil war,
RENAMO insurgents played on mixed sentiments,
resuscitating and (re)inventing institutions of
heredjtary authority among populations in the
areas it came to control and using them to extract
information, food supplies, labor, and guerrilla
conscripts (Alexander 1997). Notwithstanding
compulsion in most instances, many communities
(particularly in the central part of the country,
from which key RENAMO leaders hailed) sup
ported the insurgency, in part because of resent
mcnt of various FRELlMO policies, including,
but not limited to, the abolition of the chieftaincy
(Englund 2002; Geffray 1990). By war's end, dem
ocratic reformers had taken notice of this and had
begun to advocate renewed recognition of "tradi
tional authorities" by the Mozambican govern
ment itself. Reformers sometimes suggested that

650 HARRY G. WEST
the institutions of "traditional authority" might
serve rural .'\10zambican communities as forms of
"civll society" where successive authoritarian
regimes - sla\ e-trading kingdom.s (in some places),
Portuguese colonialism, the FRELIMO guerrilla
(in its "liberated zones"), a centralized socialist
state, and the RENAMO insurgency (in some
places) - had rendered impossible the emergence
and maintenance of other collective social form.s
(Lubkemann 200\; see also Orvis 2001). Some
suggested that, through traditional authorities, the
will of the people might be powerfully expressed in
the ne" democratic era (Lundin 1995).
In 1991, the Ford Foundation provided funding
for the establishment of a research project on the
issue of traditional authority, to be housed within
the walls of the Mozambican Minisny of State
Administration. In 1995, the United States Agency
for International Development (USA1D) financed
the continuance of the project under the rubric of
its broader "Democracy in Mozambique" project
(Fry 1997). As project researchers toured the
country, holding workshops with ex-chiefs
(African American Institute 1997), FRELIMO
officials in some places sought to improve rela
tions with these figures, whose potential influence
over the rural electorate they deemed significant.
Defore elections, FRELLMO officials in many
parts of the country made substantial overrures to
cx-chiefs, particularly where they believed that
doing so might swing the balance of support away
from RENAMO
Elsewhere, FRELJ..M O cadres e.xpresscd grave
concerns that heredirnr) authorities were not nec
essarily qualilied to discharge the duties of modern
state administration. Perhaps more important, state
officials wondered what would become of them if
the chief" who had been displaced by the creation
oftheir positions were once more recognized. Some
FRELLMO leaders in Maputo wondered how
FRELIMO would hold power if it abandoned loyal
cadres in rural areas in favor of traditional authori
ties., most of whom had been marginalized by
FRELlMO rule (West and Kloeck-Jenson 1999).
Others, still committed to the socialist project, saw
recognition of hereditary authorities as the reestab
lishment of feudal hierarchies.
Despite promises in the mid-19<iOs from the
minister of state administration that a law officially
--
reinstating hereditary authorities was imminent,
no such law was ever passed. Government policy
on the matter eventually took the form of a decree
(no. 1512000) issued by the Council of ~linisters
in the year 2000. [... ] The decree mandated local
government consultation and cooperation with
"communit) authorities" in relation to various
governmental functions, including tax collection,
voter registration, policing, judicial proceedings,
land distribution, ovcrsight of public education
and public health, cnvironmental protection, road
construction, and other developmental issues
(Buur and Kyed 2003; Hanlon 2000) The decree
granted community authorities the right to wear
uniforms and to use "symbols of the Republic";
however, it neither stipulated that government was
required to heed their counsel nor strictly deline
ated who thev were. Included in the category of
potential community authorities were not only
traditional authorities but also "village or neigh
borhOOd secretaries" (historically, FRELIMO
appointees) and "other legitimate leaders" (Buur
and Kyed 2003; Santos 2003:83; Hanlon 2000;
1\1eneses et al. 2003:358). According' to the decree,
such leaders had to be duly "recognized as such by
their respective communities" (Hanlon 2000), but
the decree specified neither what constituted a
community nor the mechanism for recognition
(BuUf and Kyed 2003).
The Autarchies Law, as \\ell as the Community
.~uLhorities Decree, ultimately left it to the discre
tion of local state officials to craft relation.ships
with traditional authorities in their jurisdictions
in accordance with their governing stTategies and
agendas. In some areas of the country - especially
where RENAMO relations with traditional
authorities undermined FRELIMO hegemony
local government officials organized ceremonies in
which traditional authorities were formally recog
ni~ed as community authorities (Buur and Kved
2003; Institutions for Natural Resource Manage
ment n.d.), seemingly in attempts to deny REl\'
AMO a point of political contention while
rendcring these figurcs more beholden to the rul
ing party. [... ] Some administrators, in fact, began
using these duly recognized community authori
ties as tax collectors, granting them subsidies for
their services in accordance with the provi:.ions of
the decree (Buur and Kyed 2003).
"GOVERN YOURSELVESI"
Recognition of community authorities played
out differently in Mueda. There, in pre-colonial
times., dispersed settlements had sustained a high
degree of autonomy, one from another. Settlement
heads had generally exercised authorit) over very
small numbers of people. In order to administer
local populations rJJrough the intermediary of
hereditary authorities, the Portuguese admini.stra
tion had been obliged to construct hierarch.ies
among settlement heads where none had previously
existed. Colonial administrators interacted only
with the highest-ranking figures in this hierarehy
figures whose authority the vast majority of
Muedans considered illegitimate. At independence,
FRELlMO orchestrated Ule construction of com
munal villages on the plateau, where the former
populations of several dozen settlements would live
together. Former settlement heads were no longer
officiall) recognized b~' FRELIi\1.Q-appointed vil
lage presidents and neighborhood secretaries, but
\1uedan matrililleages continued to recognize them
in clandestine. In the post-socialist era, Muedans
openl) recognized these lineage heads. However,
they demonstrated no interest in resuscitating the
hierarchy of chiefs through which the Portuguese
had governed in colonial times.
Surprisingly, FRELlMO officials themseh'es
pressed for the recognition of community authori
ties in Muedan villages. Community authority in
Mucda, hmve\"er, would not look like it did else
where in Mozambique.. District officials in the
plateau region orchestrated processes whereby
village presidents - who held FRELlNIO-created
offices, b) FRELIMO appointment - would sim
ply be renamed "community leaders." [... ] Like
reinstated chiefs elsc"ilcre in the country, these
village-presidents-turned-community-Ieaders
\\ere given uniforms to wear and J'vlozambican
nags to plant in their yards, just as colonial-era
chiefs had once been given. Elsewhere in the
country, debates raged over whether it v.as appro
priate to stage elections to identify legitimate
claimants to the title of "community authority";
hereditary authorities themselves often resisted
the idea that popular ballot could determine their
status. In Mueda, FRELIMO officials decided to
stage elections to legitimatc office holdcrs in the
moment of renaming vilJage presidents as "com
munity authorities.. " Some polls took the form of
651
referenda, and others, multicandidate contests. Tn
some Yillages, incumbents pre\"ailed (because vil
lagers had, or felt thc) had, no choice or because
they truly respected incumbents); in others, chal
lengers unseated them.
Notwithstanding FRELIMO high jinks, the
process of recognizing community leaders pro
vided .\1uedans the opportunity to choose those
who would govern them at the most proximate
level. Ironically, to the extent tJ1at the election of
commul,itv leaders constituted a meaningful form
of democratic decentralization, Muedans saw in it
peril instead of promise. To be sure, man) were
displeased with the FRELfMO appointees who
had long governed them. As we shall see in the next
section, in the years following independence,
FRELIMO rule had brought fewer and fewer ben
efits to the ruled and more and more [Q the rulers.
Before village elections, however, most responded
to the idea of eleeting local authorities with a simple
question: "Who would rule us then?" Reading
such statements as capitulation to FRELIMO
authoritarianism would be a mistake, however.
Muedans with whom we worked understood the
dynamics of governance to be complex, echoing
popular understandings elsewhere on the conti
nent. Such understandings warrant close scrutiny.
Many scholars of African history have suggested
that, by varied logics, power in Africa has long
depended more on "wealth in people" than on
"\Yealul in things" (Bledsoe 1980; Cooper 1979;
Guyer 1995; Miers and Kopytoff 1977; Miller
1988; Vansina 1988), more on cultivating social
relations than on cultivating lands (Berry 2002)..
African rulers, they suggest, ha\e long sought to
transform matcrial wealth into loyal subjects, for
such subjects have been considered both means to
the (re)production of power and power's ultimate
end. Power in Mueda has, indeed, long been meas
ured in terms of one's ability to attract and sustain
subord.inates. In precolonial j\l ueda, warlords
depended upon loyal and productive subjects to
harvest goods - such as India rubber, gum copal,
beeswax, and sesame seed - that could be traded at
the coast for arms. Wiu, such arms, they not only
defended themselves and their people but also
mOlmted raids to capture slaves, many of whom
were ultimately absorbed into the group as
members with full rights and contributeu to its

652 HARRY G. WEST
streng'm like any Others. Rulers who abused subor
dinates or failed to defend thcm, or to create a
mutuall} beneficial em;ronmcnt in which they
might live, faced the prospect that their subjects
would abandon them. The Portuguese colonial
regime mostly relied (with limited success) on
coercive means to capture Mozambican subjects
and their productive potential, issuing passbooks
in which the required fulfillment ()f periodic labor
contracts was to be recorded. Displeased subjects
of colonial rule fled in \ast numbers across borders
where they found more favorable labor regimes.
In the post-independence period, FRELLMO
implored rural Mozambicans to produce in their
fields in order to produce the nation itself (Maehel
1978); the party also rounded up "unproductive"
city dwcllers and set them to wod. in rceducation
camps (Africa Watch 1992). One afrer another,
these successive regimes struggled through vari
ous means to secure "\\ealth in people."
Muedans with whom we worked were accus
tomed to the idea that the leg'itimacy of authority
depended in such varied ways upon "cultivating
people." They also recognized that the establish
ment of a prosperous domain was inextricably
bound up \yith the exercise of superior force.
Correspondingly, the) considered a ruler's power
commensurate with his ability to tap resources
beyond the reach of others - rcsources to be
deploycd in the construction of a mutually bencfi
eial order and in the maintenance of that order,
whether by force or by the cultivation of consent.
The authority of local officials, as they had experi
enced it in both socialist and colonial eras, derived
from the state, in \yhose voice and with whose
backing' local officials spoke. Local power depended
upon the resources of thc state - indeed, depended
upon the state as resourcc.
Such conceptions gave foundation to Muedan
anxieties about democratic decentralization and
elections at the local level. As long as anyone with
whom we worked could remember, the state had
appointed local officials who acted in its name.
Muedans feared that an official of their own nomi
nation would not speak for the state and therefore
would not bring' the force of the state to bear in the
maintenance of local order and in the resolution of
local problems. An official of their myn choosing
would speak only with their voice - a voice they
--
had no reason to believe the state would hear.
Mall)' saw local elections to the post of community
leader as an ominous sign. A state that no longe~
cared who occupied such positions, they reasoned
was a state no longer interested in the domain~
over which these office holders exercised author_
ity. A state that allowed them to appoint their Own
officials, they feared, was a state no longer pre
pared to bestow its largesse in the interest of culti
vating consent, a state preparing to abdicate
authority over people it no longer considcred a
source of wealth.
The dynamics of post-socialist reform dramat
ically confirmed Ivluedan suspicions. To secure
support from the International Monetary
Fund (lMF) and Western donor nations, thc
Mozambican government slashed state budgets
from 1986 onward. State enterprises, which had
provided a large proportion of employment
opportunities nationwide (many of which were
not economically viable), began to shut down.
The Ngmi agricultural scheme in the lowlands
immediately sl)utheast of the plateau, whcre large
numbers of l\1uedans worked, was among these.
Shrinking budg'ets also translated into dcclining
social services. In the Mueda region, teachers
abandoned schools and nurses left health clinics
as real salaries declined precipitously. Only those
schOOls and clinics enjoying the patronage of a
nongovernmental organization (NGO) continued
to provide quality services. For all intents and
purposes, the state ceased to provide an environ
ment in which Muedans might "produce the
wealth of the nation."
In the neoliberal era, the state lookcd elsewhere
for wealth. Government carved up state sector
enterprises, auctioning off some of the nation's
most valuable assets, or rights thereto, to foreign
imcstors (Alden 2001; Pitcher 2002). High rates
of economic growth yielded disappointing cmp
loyment prospects for Mozambica.ns because ne\v
enterprises tended to hire expert foreign workers
and use capital-intensive means of p.roduction.
Muedans watched from the side of the road as for
eign lumber companies truckcd massive loads of
hardwood from the plateau interior to the coast.
As a result of such arrangements, statc power was,
to an unprecedented extent, delinkcd from the
productivity of the Mozambican people. :"eeding
"GOVERN YOURSELVES!"
nothing from the people, the state offered them
nothing. Apart from periodic election campaigns,
the state betrayed ncar total lack of interest in
"cultivating people" and their productive power.
[... ] To Muedans, the state's devaluation of its
citizenry - of people as wealth - was nowhere
more clearly commuJlicated than in the mandate
given them under the rubric of democratic decen
tralization to "govern thcmselvcs."
Individual Freedom, Collective Dang'er
Also among the essential clements of democratic
reform in Mozambique was the ratification of a
new constitution for the republic (1990), giving
foundation to a wide range of civil liberties. Article
74 of the new constitution established rights to
freedom of political expression. The freedom to
"pursue religious aims frecly" was laid dO'~" in
article 73. Article 86 delineated the right to owner
ship of property. Whereas the rights of the
Mozambican people as a whole had been elevated
over those of the individual in the socialist era,
democratic reformers argued that, to secure pros
perity in post-war Mozambique, it was essential to
lift socialist-era constraints on individual creari\'
ity and entrepreneurship. The early 1990s wit
nessed the formation of more than a dozen political
parties, the growth and proliferation of relig'ious
communities, and the emergence of a robust inde
pendent media. Businesses, larg'e and small,
appeared on the economic landscape. InvestOrs,
including nationals and foreignc's, canvassed cit
ies, towns, and rural districts throughout the
country for investment opportunities. Bv the end
of the decade, Mozambique was able 10 claim
some of the highest annual economic-growth rates
on the African continent (Fauvet 2000).
Notwithstanding dramatic political and eco
nomic transformations, marked contimLities were
also observable. The faces of power remained
familiar. Such continuities were, in part, the prod
uct of the vcry processes defining transition. For
example, state officials controlled and often per
sonally benefited fmm state enterprise divestiture.
Calls for bids - many of which were issued before
the passage of legislation officially mandating and
giving structure to divestiture -- \\ere often posted
in inconspicuous places, such as bulletin boards
653
on state officials' office walls. Through what the
Mozambican attorney general later sarcastically
referred to as "silent privatizations" (Harrison
1999), officials at various levels privatized assets
unto themselves, their cronies, and clients from
whom they might extract rents (M yers 1994; West
and Myers 1996). [... ] Through such means,
national-level military leaders from the plateau
region took possession of military warehouses,
garages, and machine shops in!\ lueda. Agricultural
officials staked claims to large plots of land in the
Nguri State Farm irrig'ation scheme.
Advocates of privatization generally suggested
that, through market mechanisms, these yaluable
assets would ewntually pass into the hands of
those most capable of exploiting them, contribut
ing' to sustained economic growth and greater
national prosperity. Indeed, those who first took
possession of state assets often sold them at con
siderable profit to more capable investors. In other
cases, they kept controlling' interest over such
assets; seeking' manager-investors who might pro
vide essential expertise in exchang'e for a share of
the wealth to be generated by their exploitation,
Included among advocates of democratic reform
were those who criticized such forms of oppor
tunism. Participants in donor-sponsored work
shops on the topic of corruption railed against the
use of public office for the pursuit of private gain.
People spoke openly in the independent media
about the crimina}jzation of the Mozambican state
(Hanlon 2004); Mozambican officials themselves
were among the most vociferous critics of corrup
tion, some speaking out in earnest and some to
cover their own behavior. Ironically, public furor
over rising rates of corruption provided grist for
the mill of neoliberal condemnation of the
.Mozambican state and reinforced donor and NGO
tendencies to bypass the state in order to "work
directly" with intended beneficiaries, further
weakening the project of state governance.
Muedans, roo, looked critically upon the behav
ior of the national elite. They, however, expressed
criticism in a different language. The standards bv
which they condemned the powerful among them
derived from \'arious historical moments and
models of power. Indeed, !\1uedan experiences
with and expectations of power, in some \,"'ays,
licensed privilege. In pre-colonial days, Muedans
654 HARRY G. WEST
told us, settlement heads never went hlmgry.
These figures of authority enjoyed the best and
the most of everything available. According to
Muedan parlance, they not only "atc well" but
also "ate" their subordinates. Youngsters, when
successful in the hunt, offered tl1ese elders the
choicest cuts of meat . .'\len returning from coastal
trade expeditions were obliged to gi\"C these elders
the goods they had procm-ed. The most powerful
of these elders even "ate" potential rivals by forc
ing their neighbors to join their own settlements,
thereby augmenting the number of people paying
them tribure and defending them against potential
attackers. Through feeding their own appetites,
these elders expanded the social bodies of
which they were heads. At the same time, they fed
these socia) bodies and the individuals of which
they were composed. Successful settlement heads
spurred their subjects to produce the wealth of the
group, which they used to ensure the well-being of
those upon whom they depended. They demanded
that subjects fill their plates but abo used their
plates to feed their subjects. The satisfaction of
their expansive appetites thus gave foundation to
their subordinates' sustenance.
The power of the settlement head was dimin
ished under a colonial administration that required
subjects to fill the state plate instead. Onlv those
used by the Portuguese as administrative interme
diaries "ate well." When FREJ~IMO iniTiated its
guerrilla campaign in the plaTeau region, parry
"chairmen" displaced hereditary authoriTies alto
gether. But, like their predecessors, these figures
of authoritv mobilized subordinates to till the plate
from which all were fed (Negriio 1984). Follow
ing independence, the FRELlMO-orchestrated
project of collective production was reproduced
on a national scale. Faced with the prospect of
total economic collapse in the wake of the
mass exodus of Portuguese coloniaJs following
independence, FREL1J'\'IO "intervened" in the
management of abandoned plantations, farms,
factories, and machine shops and eventually
nationalized many of these properLies (Hanlon
1990). The pany coordinated production and,
through the management of trade and the setting
of prices, appropriated and redistributed the
nation's produce. Like senlement heads before
them, FRELlMO leaders fed their subjects from
the plate their subjects were required to fill. Of
course, state officials never went hungry. Although
the wealth of the narion purportedly belonged to
the people, these officials enjoyed it most directh-.
Goods were sometimes scarce, but ranking offi
cials had first dibs. \-ehicles belonged to the state,
but party bosses generally rode in them. To most
Muedans, this was not particularly surprising.
The behavior of the post-socialist elite was
another matter altogether. They ate well, accord
ing to Muedans, but failed to feed others. With
profits generated in the exploitation of former
state enterprises or with rents garnered from for
eign investors to whom they served as godfathers,
elites tightened their hold on power even as the
state weakened. On the plateau and elsewhere,
they built new homes surrounded by walls. They
sent their children abroad to be educated. Thev
manipulated and controlled banks and donor
funded credit schemes to acquire fleets of cars,
trucks, and tractors with which the} often pro
vided "services" at a charge, consolidating control
over local economic hierarchies. As we have seen,
the enterprises and transactions over which the)
presided generated few jobs. All bur the closest of
family members were denied access to the plates
they filled high to satisfy seemingly insatiable
appetites.
From pre-colonial days, .\I1uedans have associ
ated insatiable appetites ,....ith sorcery. Whereas the
fruits of one's own labor can satisfy the ordinary
appetite, the sorcerer is sated only by feeding on the
well-being - indeed, the very life substance, the
flesh - of others. This, it is said, sorcerers under
take in clandestine, through the use of a medicinal
substance called ShlJWpl, which renders them imis
ible to ordinary people. Such illicit consumption,
as well as dle social carnage (literaJJy; meat derived
from slaughter) to which iT gives rise, challenges
the prerogatives of legitimate authority to measure
appetites against one another and to nomish the
social body as a whole. According to :\Iuedans,
legitimate authorities have met this chaJlenge since
pre-coloniaJ times by folJmving sorcerers into the
invisible realm of sorcery, wherein they monitor
sorcerers' activities and quash their appetites. The
exercise of legitimate authority constitutes a form
of sorcer); according to Muedan conceptions.
Muedans have long distinguished between the
"GOVERN YOURSELVESI"
"sorcery of self-advancement" or "sorcery of self
enrichment" (uwa"l wa Imshlll/ga) practiced by
common sorcerers and the "sorcery of self-defense"
(umam wa kulishungila) practiced by responsible
tLUthority figures in behalfof the larger group. They
have also recognized the fine line bet\veen these two
forms of sorcery. In the socialist era, they were gen
erally convinced that FRELIMO leaders practiced
uwavi wa kulishungila. In the era of democracy, by
contrast, most suspected that authorities practiced
uwavi wa kushunga. Post-socialist elites \\-cre sus
pected of transforming kin into 1I1audandosha (zom
bie slave laborers) to tend their fields, work in their
factories, or guard their houses, cars, and other
possessions. "Ho\\ else could they get so rich'!"
Muedans often asked rhetorically. "How else could
they protect themselves?! Hoy\ else could they pro
tect their wealth?!"[ ... J
The idea that present-day elites act as malefi
cent instead of beneficent sorcerers arose from
and reinforced Muedan understandings of the
new regime of tolerance for political and religious
expression as well. In the socialist era, FRELl.MO
authorities in Mueda had prohibited sorcery accu
sations, proclaiming belief in sorcery to be a reac
tionary form of "obscurantism" that jeopardized
rhe emergence and consolidation of class con
sciousness and solidarity. Muedans, however,
interpreted socialist-era con demnations of sorcery
bcliefs and practices as the enforcement of a ban
on self-seEing forms of sorcery - in other words,
as the FRELI.MO enactment of a beneficent form
of (counter) sorcery. In the new democratic era, as
we have seen, FRELIMO officials demonstrated
"respect" for individual "beliefs" through toler
ance of sorcery discourse. j\luedans il1terpreted
such tolerance as official acccptance of - even col
lusion with - maleficent forms of sorcery. Indeed,
state tolerance of sorcery discourse confirmed
popular suspicions regarding the elite's practice of
sorcery of self-enrichment. Tellingl), Muedans
sometimes referred to the new, more liberal regime
as one of uwaI'i wa shilikali (government sorcery).
New constitutional freedoms of expression
contributed to an em-ironment in which i\Iuedans
heard daily evidence of sorcery's risco Radio
\fo<;ambique reported incidents of sorcery. New
independent churches - along with traditional
healers plying their trade openly after years in
655
clandestine - called attention to sorcery in the act
of treating its ills But to Muedans, freedom of
expression not only meant that one could speak of
sorcery but also meant that sorcerers could speak.
Muedans referred euphemistically to sorcery
when they lamented, "\Vith democracy, anything
can be said, and anything can be done." \Iv-here
state officials refused to intenme as responsible
figures of authority in sorcery-related disputes,
sorcery ran wild at all le\Tls of society, IvI uedans
told me. Under cover of democracy, it "-;lS said,
sorcerers formed political parties of their OlIn.
Their motto, "Each one for himself!" echoed ne\\
constitutional rights in a sinister register. In the
shadow of suspicion and resentment of the ne\\
elite, accusations flew among villagers themselves.
As the wealthy and powerful ate their fill, ordinary
Muedans went hungry or worse still, many feared,
satisfied their hunger by feeding on their neigh
bors and kin.
Democracy, Carnage
The same language of power through which
VIuedans had engaged with democratic reform
over the preceding decade and a half gave shape to
their understandings of and responses to the griz
zly attacks taking place in Muidumbe in late 2002
and early 2003. That provincial authorities took
nearly a year after the maulings to provide arms
and ammunition with which to kill the menacing
lions only confirmed suspicions that the FRELIMO
state was weak and that local officials did not have
its ear. [... ] Even more disturbing to Muedans was
that district administrator Pedro Seguro never
publicly condemned the sorcerers they knew to be
responsible for the attacks. They assumed Segura
a man of great authority - capable of seeing into
the invisible realm of sorcery and practicing (coun
ter) sorcery therein. But as the death toll mounted,
Seguro remained "silent." [... J
'Where provincial- and district-level authorities
failed to resolve the crisis, village authorities did
what they could. Hunting parties were organited,
and, in time, six lions were caught in traps or killed
with bow and arrow. [... J YIeanwhile, the commu
nity leaders in some villages summoned councils of
elders in attempts to discern \vho was responsible
for the killings. "When the situation got bad,"
656 HARRY G. WEST
r-\amakandi community leader Pedro Agostinho
told Radio Mo~mbique reporter Oscar Limbombo,
"\\e put out word that ifan) one knew who was mak
ing these lions, they had bener say so" (Limbombo
2003). Some communit) leaders made public pro
nouncements that the attacks must cease. Through
such acts, these village authorities attempted to play
the part of beneficent sorcerers. But in the wake of
democratic decentralizarion - meaning, in this case,
elections confirming the community leaders' "legit
imacy" at the ballot box - I'illagers perceived these
figures as representati\es not of some greater po\\er
who go\erned them all but rather onl~ of those who
had voted for them (generally, their matTilineage).
As such, community leaders were deemed able to
quash sorcery attacks within their own matriline
ages but not on the grander scale on \\ hich these
attacks were apparently taking place. Tellingly, the
proclamations and accusations of some community
leaders only fanned the flames of intermatrilineage
suspicion and hostility. In the villages of Litapata
and i\land'l\':1, community leaders themsehes
incited \illagers to lynch their neighbors (lsrael
n.d.; Limbombo 2003).
istrict administrator Seguro expressed frus
tration that he was able to respond to vigilante kill
ings only after crimes were committed and frenzied
mobs dispersed (Lirnbombo 2003). Villagers
blamed him more for failing to prevent the pre
cipitating incidents - the attacks of sorcerers
qualions. Rumors circulated that Seguro himself
was behind tbe attacks (see also Israel n.d.). Others
suggested that Seguro had "sold the district" for
"three sacks of money" to "three whites" (report
edly including an Italian dental technician working
at the Nang"ololo Catholic mission health clinic),
meaning that he had granted permission to these
foreigners (and, by most accounts, their local sor
cerer colleagues) to attack people within a domain
nominally under his protection. [... J That Seguro
was both the ranking state official and the leading
businessman in the district was interpreted by
man~ residents as e,'idence that he practiced sor
cery of self-advancement rather than sorcery of
self-defense in behalf of his constituents. He was,
b~ all accounts, the richest man in the district.
Whereas reformers saw in Seguro an energetic
entrepreneur bringing development to the district,
villagers generally saw in him a man of expansive
appetite who fed only himself. In i\iluidumbe, as in
"GOVERN YOURSELVES!" 657
his pre\Oious posts, his personal "deyelopment"
democracy would rationalize political competition, constitutional reform, the staging of elections, and
projects cannibalized the infrastructure of the col
render power more accountable to the people, and the devolution of power to the local level, an)
lapsed collective project of socialist modernization.
open greater space for individual contribution to a regime failing to create a beneficial order, by the
creating jobs for only a few close family members
prosperous poSt-l\ ar em ironment, Yluedans experi people's definition, can scarcely call itself a democ
(his wife, for example, ran a "restaurant" in the
enced democracy as a regime that promoted irresoh' racyo If democracy resides in the understandings,
town marketplace that captured meticals spent bv
able conflict in their midst and provided coyer for experiences, and expressions of the people, thcn
\ isitors to the district on official business). Whil~
dominant pol itiL'a1 actors to forego the rcsponsibili Muedans have enacted it- to the best ofthcir abil
Seguro "ate \Idl" in late 2002 and early 2003, those
ties ofautholity and to feed themsehoes at the expense ities, albeit with limited success even by their own
under his charge went hungry (for fear of harvest
of others. Yluedan perspectives on democracy have evaluations - through critical assessment of what
ing their meager crops) and, in some cases, were
resonated with the ctitical assessments olTered in reformers have called democracy, through expres
devoured by fellow villagers or literally eaten alive
recent years by various commentators of deepening sion of "the will of the people" in an altogether
b) lions. ll) the middle of 2003, lions had claimed
corruption and electoral fraud in 11ozambique. different language. [... J
the jives of forty-six men, women, and children
Their skepticism regarding the true objectil'es of Alas, democratic reformers rarely entertain such
and gra\ely injured another six. Eighteen villagers
democrati7..1tion has been validated by ongoing donor possibilities. In the run-up to the 1994 elections,
had been lynched.
support (notwithstanding these disconcerting phe the internationaJ community invested considerable
In mid-2003, provincial authorities finally con
nomena) so long as !llozambique has continued to resources ill civic education programs designed to
vened and prO\ isioned a hunting party, headed by a
adhere to I.\U" provisions and to sustain a friendly teach Mozambicans about democracy. If the mean
man named Fernando Alves, and dispatched it to
climate for foreign tnvestment and u'ade. ings and methods of democracy depend, by defini
Y1.uidumbe. 1\h cs killed the fifth lion, after Ivhich
villagers killed two more, bringing to an end the
.vIuedan conceptions of and reactions to democ tion, upon the political subjects in question, then
racy do 1/01 constitute a failure of understanding. such initiatives betray unfounded conceit and also
carna.ge that had beset the district for more than a
Seither do they support the idea that Africa and render democracy's actualization more difficult.
year. Alyes was a man of loc:l.1 legend long before he
Africans are ill ~uited for democracy. I would argue One can only imagine what might have come of
killed what Muidumbe residents identified as the
that, by critically engaging with democratization in im-esting such considerable resources in attempts
most vicious of the pride that had stalked them.
a language that differs profoundly from the one to discern what the Mo/..ambican people had to
The son of mulatto parents, Alves lived in Pemba in
spoken by democratic reformers, i\[uedans have, teach polieymakers about viable and desirable
the bairrn do cillle1llu (the "concrete neigllborhood,"
ironically, enacted democracy. :\fter all, if democ forms of governance. The notion reinforces the
composed most!) of houses built by Portuguese
nlCY is conceived of as "government of the people, idea underlying this volume, namel}, that anthro
occupants in the colonial period) and earned a liv
by the people, and for the people." following pologists - through the dialogical methods of
ing as a self-employed mechanic. Like his father, he
Lincoln's famous formulation, then democracy extended fieldwork and ethnographic writing
was an avid big-game hunter. According to
necessarily resides within the languages and termi potentially have much to contribute to facilitolting
\lakonde trackers employed by Alves, he Ivas adept
nologies used by "the people" to assess power's and strengthening democracy as variably defined
at recoloering IYII/Igo, the life substance o\'lakonde
workings in their midst. Accordingly, regardless of by people in divcrse locales around the globe.
say a predatory animal, such as a lion yomits in the
moments immediately before dying. Ailoes himself
attributed his success as a hunter to his ability to
find and ingest lyungo. Thus, the man I\'ho put an
end to the carnage in Muidumbe came from out References
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46
Nuer-American Passages
Dianna Shandy
The Transnational Sandwich
Generation
Slipping off my shoes and rapping on the "Juer
family's apartment door, I smiled in anticipation
of being overrun by the couple's two boisterous
young children. 'When Nyawa! Chuol opened the
door, I understood quickly that something was
wrong. Compared to the usual din, the small, one
bedroom apartment that Nyawal shared \\ ith her
husband Nyang Dcng and their t\\O children was
subdued. Nyawal explained that during the night
they had received a phone call from Ethiopia
informing her that her mother's sister's daughter
had been in a motor \ ehicle accident, Nyawal was
very worried about her sister. Yet she also was con
cerned with the dilemmas she no\\ faced in main
ta.ining her family in the United States, sending
enough money to Ethiopia to pa) for her sister's
medical care, and continuing to meet the existing
obligations she and her husband had to his famil).
Nyawal's dilemma represents an important
dynamic in the Nuer migration experience by
underscoring the intersection of transnational
linkages with gender and generational relations.
From Dianna Shand), .Yuer-.1merit'(l// Passages: Globalizillg Sudallese .\/igrnlioll, University Press of Flor.ida, 1st edi
tion (2007), pp. 109-26. Reprinted with permission by the Uni\'ersity Press of Florida,
in the Lnited States, therefore, is the proximate
It also pro\'ides insights into the contentious rcalm
ofNuer marriage in the Coited States,
In the transnationalization of Nuer marriage and
courtship the renegotiation of gender roles and gen
erational relations are key sites of contestation where
African-based elders' authority is challenged yet still
perpetuated by US-based Nuer men and women,
'larital tensions linked to familial investment of
remittances are a growing source of conflict for:\ uer
married couples in the United Stat~, Here I seek to
can'e out some conceptual space to mon: beyond
the superficial demonizing discourse some "Juer
ma.les use to disparage segments of the 1\uer female
population. In these cases, men refer to those
women \\ho do not conform to their version of
:--Iuer society's gender-role expectations by refusing
to "settle down" as tourist women. MigTation,
which often alters the demographic composition of
social groups along gender and age lines, provides
opportunities to reconfigure authorit) structures
and social relationships. for resettled Sudanese in
America, engagemcnt with the refugee resettlement
apparatus has resulted in a skewed demographic
profile, where the population is predominantly male.
Similarl); most l'utr in the United States are
NUER-AMERICAN PASSAGES
relati\ ely young. Absent from Nuer gender relations
influence of lTaditional ciders.
The experience of migration between Africa
and the United States introduced a whole comple
ment of new variables with which Nuer migrants
hay e had to contend. The conditions under which
the Nucr lived in Sudan arc not, for the most part,
replicable in the United States. Obvious changes
include the nature of work, the economics of daily
life, and living arrangements. These changes have
precipitated ongoing shifts in other domains sl!lch
as gender roles and generational interactions.
A fundamental shift in Nuer gender relations in
the United States is women's increased access to
education and income-generating opportunities
on par with ~heir husbands. In Arrica, Nuer women
are certainly not described as meek. Howe\cr,
processes of eommoditization or land and labor,
war-induced destabilization, and a truncation of
kinship ties due to displacement and increascd
mortalit) rates de\ ate \vomen's vulnerability in
these settings. In contrast, even Nuer women with
linle or no formal schooling before arrival in the
United States find themselves equipped to con
tribute to the maintenance of family in the United
States and in Africa. What this signifies, I sug'gest,
is a new, transnationalized version of the "sand
wich" generation, where one cares for and sup
ports one's family of origin on one continent and
one's family of procreation on another.
Ways Elders Exert Control
One half of the transnational sandwich equation
can be seen in the ways elders in Africa exert
control and command resources from Nuer in
America. The institution of marriage is the princi
pal an:TIue through ,vhich African-based elders
accomplish this. This control is seen most vividly
through the transfer of bridewealth, the selection
of marriage partners, and the naming of children.
Age still matters within Sudanese families. One
man whose father was killed in Sudan spoke to me
about the weighty responsibility of being head not
only of the family residing in the United States
but also of the remaining family members in
Africa. In another setting in a h\ ing room full of
men in their late twenties, a man in his late teens
661
seryed us food and drinks. The men joked that
since he was the youngest he would be the
"woman," illustrating the complex interplay of
gender and generation. The difference, however,
was that in contrast to what Nuer "'omen typically
do, when he finished sen'ing us he sat down and
joined us rather than retiring to another room.
This scemrio of a young man preparing and serv
ing food is reminiscent of settings in eattle camps
in Sudan, where males would fend for themsclYcs
\yhen away from mothers, \\'i\'es, and sisters.
A divorced Nuer woman in her late teens with a
two-year-old son, Kyajok, noted that her mother
and siblings were in Sudan; she said that she had
tried to get her mother to come to the United
States, but she refused. After finishing high school,
Nyajok hoped to return to Africa to visit her
mother; ho\yeyer, she is not interested in returning
to Africa to live because "there is no future there."
And, she appreciates "the freedom in America."
Since she came to the United States when she was
fourteen, she has enjoyed significant autonomy
from family control. Kyajok notes that if she were
living in Africa, she -would have "to do e\'erything
mother says," But here, she makes her own deci
sions, including divorcing her husband, who is in
his early twenties and who cares for their son.
Selectiun ofmarriage partners
Those familiar with the Nuer as described by
Evans-Pritchard (19+0,1951,1956) are undoubt
edly curious about the ways in which marital
alliances arc brokered among such celebrated cat
tle-keeping people in the seeming absence of cat
tle. While there arc exceptions, Nuer men are
marrying Nuer \\omen. I have documented one
case where a Nuer man in Georgia reportedly
married a woman from Thailand. Some Nuer men
married Ethiopian women while still in Africa and
resettled with them in the L'nited States. At
numerous gatherings, I have obseIl'ed a handful of
young Nuer men with American girlfriends, black
or white. Sin.ce these gatherings are, for the most
part, segregated by sex - the women and children
in one area and the men in another - the American
girlfriends stand out as they sit with their boy
friends in the men's area .
.\lany Sudanese men reported being married
and awaiting the arrival of their wives from Africa.
662 DIANNA SHANDY
"larriage in this context could mean a consum
mated marriage, which resulted in chiLdren, or
simply a girl who was promised to a particular
man \\ hen she reached an appropriatc age. Both
types ofmarriage are legitimate for N uer. However,
the latter form of marriag'e is more difficult to
document for immigration authorities.
Other men are s.ingle and will rely on family
members to broker a marriag'e for them or will
adopt the dominant practice in the enited States
and choose their own wife without the intervcn
tion of their parents or family members in Africa.
Tut Jak, a single GaajaJ.. man in his late nyenties
who has attended college in the United States,
asserted,
Marriage is a matter of decision. If we were in vil
lages in the South, we would bc married by now,
but here we are free. There we are told, Don't
marry girls who are .'inuak or Dinka. We are
encouraged to marry girls from Africa whose
backgrounds they [parents in Africa] know well.
We are very traditional. l\1e, I am the elder one.
My family needs my senices. If I marry someone
who is not Nuer, she mav control the money. Or
she may be surprised [in the sense oflooking down
on theml It's not th.t they hate others, but my
wife is the one that must give them the sen,ices
they need - clothes, cooking with them. We domi
nate women there. ;\ly brother did it. My father
did it. I won't do it. I \\ ill teach my wife my own
culture so she won't be surprised. I will alert her.
The geographic dispersal of the Sudanese in the
United States adds an interesting and challenging
dimension to courtship. Deng Kurjiok, an unmar
ried Gaajak man in his mid-twenties, lived in a
total of six different states during his first four
years in the United States. IIe said that traveling
throughout the United States to live in various
locales was important to his marriage strategy. In
his words, "you have to find a friend before you
can have a wife." There arc very few unmarried or
unbetrothed Nuer women in America. Howc\'cr,
divorce, canceling the betrothal, and putting in a
word for a girl not yet of marriageable age would
all be ways of increasing the number of Nuer
women in circulation. '\.nother young man, John
Thok, reportedly had the favor and consent of his
future wife and his future wife's brother, but he
did not have the blessing of his future \vife's sister
or her husband. To remedy this situation, John
moved away from the state where his future wife
lived to another state to live close to his futurc
wife's sister, in order to impress upon her and her
husband his fine qualities as a future affine by
demonstrating that he \vas a hard \\'ol'ker and a
decen t person.
Transfer of bndeTlJea!th cattle
Even among Nuer in the United States, the trans
fer of cattle to recognize marriage endures as an
important element in claiming paternity and cus
tody of children. This extends to Nuer marriages
that take place in the United States. This finding
COntrasts sharply with Holtzman's statement that
"in the United States there are no bl'idewealth cat
tle to be returned in the event of divorce" (2000,
40 I). In my research, I found the usc of cattle to
recognize marriage alive and well. One :\'uer cou
ple who married in the United States, she a widow
and he a divorce, described recei\'ing a call from
Ethiopia letting them know that a celebration had
taken place the night before to recognize their
marriage. They had been married eighteen months
earlier in a church in the United States, but it had
taken this long to save and transfer enough money
to .'\frica to pay a significant portion of the
bridewealth and funds for the celebration. John
Wal, a Gaajak man in his early twenties, gave the
following detailed financial account of bridewealth
reckoned in a transnational context, \\'here the
current rate is 53,900: "If you marr} here and the
girl's father is here, you will pay money by how
much one cow will take in money - twenty-eight
big cows, two small cows, and five bulls. One bull
is S200. One cow is $100. l\vo little CO\vS are S50
each. That's the way we marry here. That's not the
way they do it here, but we will keep this. In our
country, the girl cannot choose. We learn that here
the girl chooses. In our country we had a law for
the marriage." Another Gaajak man I interviewed
while in Ethiopia gave a more general accounting
of bridewealth, with a different scale for Africa
based and diaspora-based Nuer. "Rich !\'uer,"
especially those based in the United States, are
expected to pay twenty to twenty-fi\'e cows
(S 1,500-$2,000); Nuer in camps are expected to
pay ten to fifteen cows ($700-$1,000).
NUER-AMERICAN PASSAGES
i\ vanatlon on this theme can be seen when
males return to Africa to marry. Many men I inter
viewed were already betrothed to women in Africa,
usually through a family intermediary's efforts, so
in some cases travel to Africa was to fulfill immi
gration requirements. In one case, the young
man's mother "recruited" a wife, but the young
man knew her family. From his perspective, know
ing her family was akin to knowing her. He liqui
dated most of his possessions to purchase a plane
ticket. He said that he did not need to travel to
i\frica to marry according to what he called Nuer
law, but he had to do this for official immigration
purposes. In Ethiopia he participated in a Christian
ceremon) to obtain a marriage certificate and sub
mitted paperwork for his new wife to join him in
America. He returned to the United States to
work to pay for costs associated with his wife's
resettlement here, and she eventually joined him.
Upon arrival, she was greeted with a celebration at
the airport. After a few months, when the man had
savcd enough money to pay for a party, he pooled
resources with another man in a similar situation
and they held a joint marriage celebration with
food, dancing, and speeches, with the brides clad
in matching pale yellow suits.
Men are also linked to their families in Africa
through virilocal, postmarital residence practices.
Some men exploit the ambiguity associated with
the African concept of marriage as process rather
than an event. One man described his dilemma of
having a wife (or prospective wife) who was living
with his family in Africa and having met a non
Nuer Mrican woman in the United States with
whom he had had a romantic relationship. He con
fessed to being torn about what to do, as he was
betrothed to this young woman who was living
with his family in Ethiopia, but since he was not
truly married according to US norms, there was a
loophole that he was contemplating exploiting,
especially in light of stepped-up demands from
both his family and his future wife in Africa for
financial support.
Some transformation from virilocal [0 neolocal
residency practices may have been underway in
refugee camp settings, particularly in Kenya,
where young people were more likely to be sepa
rated from families that they left behind in
Ethiopia or Sudan. However, evidence that virilo
663
cal residence was still dominant can be scen in the
instances, like the one described above, where
Nuer men in America who \vere hetrothed or mar
ried speak of their wives living with the men's
families in Sudan, Ethiopia, or e\'en Kenya.
Thcrefore, another reason men scek wives in
Africa and marry with cattle is to draw upon
elders' authority to reinforce their O\\'ll control
over their US-based household. US-based Nuer
grapple with managing the migration-induced
shift from virilocal to neoJocal residency practices.
Economic and spatial realities of urban ~nd subur
ban residence in the United States P1\'e played an
important part in this shift, as refugees \\ ith lim
ited resources must rely on access to low-cost pub
lic housing. Yet, even more than in other housing
situations, there are strict controls over the defini
tion of the domestic unit eligible to reside in that
d\vclling. To be eligible for this housing, ~uer
refugees must at least appear to conform to US
nuclear family-based definitions of domestic units
(Ong 1996, 2003).
Nuer live in a range of kinds of dwellings from
single-family homes to public housing complexes.
In terms of horne o\\nership, Tmet only one family,
who were Anuak, who had taken out a mortgage to
purchase their home. One Nuer man cxpressed
regret that he had not followed the advice of the
voluntary agency reprcsentati\e who had resettled
him, who had recommended that he and his cohort
attempt to pool their resources and purchase the
house in which they were living. Most :--Juer rent
homes on the open market, qualify for state-run
public housing, or rent homes from landlords will
ing to accept state subsidies. The quality of accom
modation varied dramatically from state to state
and even within states. Unlike the urban public
housing towers I encountered when I lived on the
edge of Harlem in Ne" York City in graduate
school, Nuer in places like St. Paul, Minnesota;
Nashville, Tennessee; Des l\loines, Iowa; and
Omaha, Nebraska tend to reside in public or subsi
dized housing blocks of no more than eight units.
In Omaha, for instance, I \ividl) recall visiting
some Nuer who had just moved there from
Tennessee to avail themselves of what they had
heard was very incxpensive public housing. The
squat building looked okay from the outside, but I
was immediately overwhelmed by the potent odor

664 DIANNA SHANDY
of urine-soaked carpeting on the stairs upon enter
ing the building. It was as if the buildings had been
abandoned and used as a public toilet before being
turned into accommodation. In another of the
buildings someone had torn the carpet up and
removed it, exposing the bare, worn floorboards.
Aside from the stench and disrepair, the corridor
was rather tidy; there was no debris on the floors.
Entering the apartments from the corridors was a
pleasant surprise and reminded me of coming in
off the dusty, hectic streets in African cities like
Addis Ababa or Nairobi to find soothing com
pounds, which led to individual well-maintained
dwellings. Typical of many other apartments I vis
ited in various states, this particular apartment had
a kitchen, a bathroom, and a very large living room,
branching off to three bedrooms out of sight. The
living room ,,:as dominated by large, seemingly
new, matching sectional sofas, decorated with
purple-and-white hand-crocheted antimacassars.
There was a television and a rather sophisticated
looking stereo that blasted Arabic language music
over the sound of the television. The walls had a
picture of Tupac Shakur and seyeral pictures of
Jesus and were decorated at regular internIs along
the top by crosses made from decorative wall bor
der material. Perched on a shelf were a couple of
sports trophies inscribed with a Sudanese name.
The wall-to-wall carpeting, while not nearly as
filthy as that in the corridor leading into the apart
ment, was unclean, and the :";ue- family living
there hall covered it with throw rugs.
Residency practices influence other domains of
Nuer life in important \V~ys. Social service prO\'id
ers assert, based on anecdotal evidence, that the
incidence of domestic violence among Sudanese
refugees is increasing as a result of neolocaJ resi
dence. A refugee services worker told of one such
experience:
One Y.oman wanted to Ieaye her husband because
of domestic violence. The husband's family beat
the crap out of her, kicking her in the stomach
when she was si: munths pregnant. This hap
pened \'irtually on the steps of the ORR [Office of
Refugee Resettlement] office. She was rushed to
the hospital. There is a significant amount of
spouse abuse. At t11e same time, the women chase
the men do..... n the streel \", ith butcher kni\es.
a:::r
It is argued that this housing arrangement shifts
the focus from an alliance between families to a
more intense relationship between two individuals
who may ha\'c been only marginally involved in
the choice of the selection of their spouse. Tensions
arising from this arrangement are aggravated bv
such factors as long separations when one spous~
is resettled before the other (and the potential
incorporation of additional children from a geni
tor that is not the pater); the young age of the wife
at marriage; the absence of kin networks in the
nited States; and stress associated with incorpo
ration into life in the United States intensified by
a context of poverty.
One Nuer man in his early thirties whose wife
had divorced him in the United States said that
he intended to marry a woman from Sudan.
Ideally, she would be twenty-five or twenty-six
years old and have at least a few years of formal
schooling. He dismissed the available Nuer
women in the United States: "They come here,
and they claim their rights. They are crazy here.
They arc kids. They must be [are expected to be]
mature, but instead they like nightclubs
and clothes." In this way, Africa symbolizes
a repository of gender purity where women
are not corrupted by what men describe as
"the unreasonable levels of freedom for women
in America."
In addition to relying on elders to select mar
riage partners in Africa, US-based Nuer also
draw upon elders' knowledge of kinship and line
age matters to ensure that a prospective marriage
does not break incest taboos. One couple who was
married in the United States wrote letters to
elders living in camps in Ethiopia to ask for per
mission to marry because they risked breaking
incest rules. They genuinely wanted official sanc
tion of this marriage, in part because they
believed, as Hutchinson (1996) documents in
Sudan, that the health and well-being of their
progen~' depended on it.
And a final apparently noncontentious area
where it is possible to see the active elaboration of
transnational ties between elders in Africa and
US-based Nuer is in the naming of children [... ].
Many families whom I illlerviewed said that elder
kin in Africa had chosen the names for their US
born children.
NUER-AMERICAN PASSAGES
Ways Women and Men in Diaspora
Subvert Authority
Therefore, while there are significant and ongoing
threads of continuity bet\yeen life in Africa and
the way things are done in the United States, there
is also room for the subversion of authority and
the renegotiation of roles. One of the dilemmas
the Nuer population faces in enforcing social
norms is the relative lack of proximate elders.
Gender and generation vie with each other for
explanatory power in these situations. In some
cases, men appeal to elders' authority for rein
forcement and operationalize generational author
ity structures to influence gender relations. Simon
Wal, age nineteen, married Nyariek Deng, age fif
teen, in a Kenyan camp. Simon's father, who was
living in Ethiopia, paid three of the twenty-five
cows their family owed Nyariek's family, who were
also living in Ethiopia. The families had reached
an understanding that Simon would send his
lilther money to buy the remaining cows after he
reached America. Simon, his wife, and a friend
were resettled in Des Yloines. Two months after
arrival, according to Simon, Nyariek said, "I don't
want to be married. I want to go to school. I want
to divorce you. I don't want to be married. I don't
want to be controlled, because to be married is to
be controlled." Simon reported that he asked
~yariek to talk the matter over by phone with her
parents in Ethiopia, but she refused. He also said,
"Nuer people gathered in Des Moines to talk to
her, and she refused to cooperate." (In particular,
her only family member in the United States, her
mother's brother, came to talk with her.) The third
level of arbitration this couple sought was the
state's department of human senices. Simon
recounted the following conversation between
Nyariek, the department's representative, and
himself:
They asked Nyariek whether she wanted to be
with [me). And then they say to her, who can pay
your money [the loan for transport to America]?
When you came from Africa, you had money on
credit, and that money was documented for the
head of the family [Simon.] Do you want to pay
part and have Simon pay part? And she said yes.
And then they asked where she would live because
she was fifteen years old. She said she had an
665
uncle [mother's brother] in California. She would
go live with him. So they said they wanted to talk
to [her mother's brother1first. And I say to them,
we have some culture [a Nuer way of doing
things]. When we marry we pay something. My
father pays something to her father. \-Vhat can
we do? And they say: NO WAY HERE IN
AMERICA!! So, you can inform your parents
there, and they can do what they want, but here
NOTHING! They said ifl'\yariek wants to marry
again, we go to the court. If I want to marry some
other girl, we go to the court first. Or, when I get
a job I can go to the court and do the paperwork.
She [the social worker] told me when I get a job to
call her. So, I got a job, I called her, she got a law
yer, and I paid S660 to divorce.
Nyariek's story brings to mind what Ong describes as
"the feminist fervor of many social workers [that)
actually works to weaken or reconstitute the ... fan1
ily" (1996, 743). The push ofthe state and the civil
institutions work at times in tandem to create pres
sure that encourages refugees to adopt normative
roles with regard to behavior, particularly gender
roles. Pressure is exerted through legal, social service,
and other channels to promote assimilation to US
values. Annette Busby (1998) captures this dynamic
in her study of gender relations among Kurdish refu
gees in Sweden, where she writes that Swedes made
the following remark about the Kurdish immigrants:
"the problem is their culture." i\1.innesota, another
site that prides itself on its liberal values and has been
home to a s.izable Hmong refugee population from
Southeast Asia for more than three decades, provides
another example of this pervasive dynamic. In
autumn 1998, in the wake of a terrible tragedy where
a young I Imong mother murdered all six of her
young children, a local newspaper editorial arrived at
a conclusion similar to BUSby's - the problem was
Hrnong cultural norms regarding "patriarchal con
trol" within the family. In the Nuer situation
described above, the woman used the fact that elders
were at a distance to her adYantage. She appealed to
the department of human sen'ices to support her
efforts to divorce, as she was a minor. Divorce is a
vivid example of how Nuer refugee women wield
power and subvert the authority of Nuer males in
America and Nuer elders in Africa. The baseline
data provided by the work of Evans-Pritchard
and Hutchinson (1990) make this a fascinating
666 DIANNA SHANDY
phenomenon to follow over time. .-\t present, it is
onl~" possible to speak to the siruation of recently
arrived refugees, most of whose marri.ages reportedly
were recognized by the transfer of bridewealth cattle
from the husband's family's kraal to that of the wife's
fan1ily. Hutchinson (1996) has documented signifi
cant shifts in the transition from a cattle-based to a
cash-based economy. It is unclear why Holtzman
(2003, 40 I) did not encounter the issue of the trans
fer of bridewealth cattle, when it was such a pervasive
theme in my research. The transfer of cattle remains
an important element in claiming paternity and cus
tody of children. In the five divorce cases I have
documented in the United States - where children
were involved and where the man's family reportedly
had paid cattle- the young children went to live with
the father. In ilie words of one Nuer man in his thir
ties, "If you have a child in Nuer law, you cannot
leave your kid. If you divorce, the kid stays wiili the
man. The women don't like to leave the kids, but iliat
is ilie law." (See Hutchinson 1990.)
In one disputed case, where the man claimed to
have paid cattle and other Nuer reported that he
did not pay cattle, the child went to live with the
mother. I have not recorded instances where
the US court system was involved in decisions
about Nuer child custody in the event of divorce.
However, given the strong tendency in US court
cases for mothers to be awarded child custody, and
the challenge that would pose to Nuer practices, it
is likely that this will emerge as an area of conten
tion. In the two divorce cases that I haye followed
where cattle have been paid but no children were
yet produced, Nuer informants report that the
woman's family has returned cattle to the man's
family. (I heard of the case of an Anuak single
mother whose children had been taken into protec
tive custody, but she, understandably, was unwill
ing to meet with me to discuss ber experience.)
Six months after his divorce from Nyariek,
Simon married Sarah Kuach, a young widow who
had been recently resettled in the United States, in
the Covenant Church. Other Nuer people had
suggested that they meet one another. Simon and
Sarah knew each other only from a distance in
Sudan and the camps in Ethiopia. The cows that
were transferred from Simon's family to Nyariek's
family were not returned immediately to Simon's
family in Eiliiopia. It was only when, severa)
months later, Nyariek, \yhile staying with her
mother's brother, became pregnant by another
man that the cows were returned. At this poim
members of the Sudanese community sided in
favor of Simon and said that the man who had
impregnated Nyariek should send money to her
family to buy three cows to return to Simon's fam
ily. Simon and his second wife, Sarah, moy-ed to
South Dakota, where Simon finished his GED
and got a job. Sarah enrolled in ESL classes and,
pushed into the labor market by strict rules gO\'
erning public assistance introduced with welfare
reform, began working in a factory. Sarah and
Simon alternate shifts so that one of them is always
home to care for their three small children [... ].
Divorce, child custody, and bridewealth are all
areas of contestation and transformation. Pal Both,
a Nuer man in his late twenties, noted changing
sensibilities with respect to the economic realities
of having children in the United States: "When
they divorce, it is hard to say whether the children
will go with the man or the woman. In USA you
have to feed the children of another man. A woman
has a hard time to marry if she has children." .Many
factors contribute to divorce and men's concern
oyer the role of women in initiating dissolution of
the conjugal union. An obvious factor is the three
to-one ratio of adult males to females resettled in
the United States. Divorce and the keen interest
men take in this issue can also be linked to changes
in accepted practice with respect to adultery. :\Tuer
men reported grave consequences in Sudan for
men accused of adultery with another man's wife:
"These women arc married with cows. In Sudan,
this man would be killed!" In contrast, in the
United States, Nuer note that the law protects not
only the \1 ife from her husband's wrath but also
the man who committed adultery. Furthermore,
married Nuer men assert that it is the single men
who have more resources to "seduce women"
because they are not supporting a family.
Peter Buometet, a Gaajok man in his early thir
ties, whose wife was still in Ethiopia awaiting
resettlement through family reunification chan
nels, provided this perspecti\'e:
Marriage is very important. If three girls out of
one thousand divorce, it is too much. The reasons
for divorce arc: no food at home, no cow or money
NUER-AMERICAN PASSAGES
at home, or he's not a good worker. But these are
not reasons. In Sudan, the wife can go and grow
crops or go to the relatives, so they don't care with
the man. People share problems in Sudan. The
people gather and challenge these things and the
girl will go back home.
The inadvertent transgression of incest taboos
(maa!) is reportedly the only condition under
which divorce is reportedly acceptable. Mat Wal, a
Gaaguang man in his twenties who lived with his
wife, summarized:
It is okay to divorce if it is ruaal, if you didn't
know and married a blood relation. We call it
when an old man marries a young girl a stolen
marriage. If the girl is not a good cook, no, no, no
that is not in Lh" :-':uer law to divorce. We say the
girl is bach. She is not a good cook. She does not
work well.
Related Tensions in Nuer Gender
Relations: "Dancing before the Drum?"
\ll.any of my interviews with Nuer men elicited very
strong anel often negative views about certain Nuer
women. As with ilie disproportionate attention
divorce garners relative to the number of cases of
divorce I tracked, this seems out of proportion to
my observations of daily life in Nuer families. In
light of material presented thus far, it bears noting
lhat discourse surrounding gender relations is
jqdicative of and related t;; :>ther forms of social ten
sions associated with the ley-cling effects of migra
tion. A Gaajok man in his thirties put it this way:
There is a gap between the "knows" and the "don't
knOll'S" in Sudan. The\' become one group in the
U.S. If you give advice, the rural dwellers say they
already know. Now, the) are in one basket, includ
ing the ones who jump from nowhere. Machar and
Garang, for example, with Ph.D.s, would also be in
the same class in .'\merica. In this situation, there
are no people to lead or to be led. In this society,
women feel like they ha':e reached heaven. [n our
society, women and children are subordinate.
Therefore, men's anger directed toward women
that engage in adulterous liaisons or other trans
gressions is also related to men's inability to exact
667
compensation from the men involved in these
relationships. Similarly, the loss of control o\,er
\"ives also signals current and anticipated tensions
bet\\een fathers and children. Some Nuer parents
are contending with generational tensions already;
however, it is expected that this will be a more
pressing topic as the children of the relati\'cly
young Nuer parents in their twenties are raised in
the United States. While I did not encounter this
among Nuer I inter\'iewed, I did speak with one
Somali mother who sem her troublesome teenage
son back to Africa as a way of managing his delin
quency and other behavioral problems.
Given the disproportionately high number of
adult Nuer women relative to Nuer men, women
who choose not to remain with their husband have
mUltiple options in choosing eligible Nuer men.
Sudanese women whom men perceive as lcss com
mitted to their families are frequently called tour
ists. Men charge that the women in the United
States ha\'e life much easier than their counter
parts in .'\frica. Simon Deng, a Gaajak man in his
late twenties summed up this sentiment: "Women
in America are tourist women. They [may seem to]
do whatever they like. They may change men, but
they [still] do the kitchen work. These \yomen are
considered with low prestige - like a prostitute.
V\.'e presume a high chance of a second dilorce.
There is not really a second marriage. The woman
is just a concubine." Jok Jieng, a Gaajok man in his
thirties, put it this way: "Women face criticism
because women look at faJl1:ly, and men look at the
well-being of the whole community and see the
tensions between man and wife. Such a creature is
useless because she cannot manage her husband
and child. Women in the US have it easy. They
don't have to share food, etc. They just please
themselves. "
These women, according to the men, travel
from state to state visiting friends and relatives.
From an analytical stance, one could argue that
these women are maintaining and creating ties of
kinship, friendship, and ethnicity, but this is not
how Nuer men see it. According to some of my
male informants, these were women who did not
have jobs, were not caring for children, and were
not pursuing educational opportunities. Indeed,
Nuer arrangements for child custody - whereby
children for whom bridewcalth cattle had been
668 DIANNA SHANDY
paid remained with the father - facilitated the
mobility of these women. The emergence of the
pejorative moniker to/lrist momen may reveal less
about any reality of these women's lives and, in
effect, be more a lashing out by men to compen
sate for their diminished capacity to control
women.
In attempting to move beyond the he said-she
said roadblock, it is worth exploring the other half
f lhe transnational sandwich equation. In addi
lion to the pull of family in Africa, Nuer families
have the responsibility of raising their family in
the United States. Nuer are struggling with the
intersection of Nuer and American cultural ideals
about family size and the economic realities of
raising children in America. In light of this, Nyajal
Omol, a Nuer woman in her late twenties,
explained that she and her husband planned to
limit their family to the son and daughter that they
already had. Two children, in her estimation, were
expensive enough to raise in America. Women
spoke to me about using Depo-Provera injections,
condoms, and withdrawal before ejaculation for
contraception. Conversely, other Nuer couples
expressed a desire for six or more children.
Many Nuer couples assert that a key area of fam
ily tensions is related to remittances. Sarah Mahler
observes, "while a common household economy is
oftcn assumed, spouses frequently send remit
tances independently and for different purposes"
(2006, 8). Now that women are contributing sig
nificantly to family income, they are demanding
control over the allocation of remittances to sup
port their own kin in Africa, as illustrated in the
introductory ethnographic description of the
woman whose relative in Ethiopia needed money
for medical care. Mahler goes on to point out that
"when female migrants send remittances home
they improve their social standing in their families"
(ibid.). Given tensions in Nuer marriages, as well as
prospects for a durable peace in Sudan, women
remitting to their own kinship networks can be seen
as a specific means of investing in their own future
and that of their children, should their marriage
dissolve or should the) wish to return to Africa.
Nuer women's increased access to education and
opportunities to generate income is central to shifts
in other dimensions of social life. One Nuer man
explained Nuer women's access to educational
opportunities in Sudan: "Dinka women have more
education than Nuer women because the Nuer take
girls out of school to get married. We don't have
secondary schools for girls that were close to the
house. If girls go away to school, the people think
that they make prostitution. So, they don't send
them." (For a similar observation, see MacDermot
1972.) Yet, even Nuer women with little or no edu
cation before arriving in the United States find
themselves capable of earning in a month more
than their parents in Sudan, or in a camp in a
neighboring country, might earn in an entire year.
This is not lost on the Nuer. Peter Buometet,
the Gaajok man whose wife is still in Ethiopia,
introduced earlier described how he thinks the
system is biased toward women in the United
States: "There is bias in the workplace against
men toward women. It is easier for women to get a
job with higher pay. They don't need the husband,
so they divorce. The US government gives chil
dren to women. Sudanese women say, Ahhh, there
are human rights for women. They start dancing
before the drum [that is, they are getting ahead of
themselves.]" While Peter's observation about
gendered access to the workforce may appear to
run counter to discrepancies with respect to the
larger American workforce, his point may be valid
for certain segments of the workforce, such as
African Americans (Collins 1990).
Nuer themselves see gender relations as a prob
lem area in need of a solution. Paul Atak, a Madi
man from southern Sudan who aspires to hold a
Mutual Assistance Association leadership role and
serve as a liaison between Sudanese people and
social service providers, addressed a mixed group
of social service providers and N uer men to high
light gender issues tIlat Sudanese faced as a result
of migration:
There is a cultural element to accessing resources
through the women. Married women expect their
husbands to bring those things; it is their responsi
bility. How do we address the issue of the husband
spending money on luxury items such as the VCR?
Men go to the grocery store and buy all fresh food
and don't pay attention to the cost. It's an educa
tion issue regarding priorities of putting kids'
shoes before the VO~. IIusbands will, however,
become angry if confronted about these issues.
NUER-AMERICAN PASSAGES
You need friends and relativcs to com'ey the mes
sage through storytelling.
However, controversy docs not characterize all
Nuer marriages. William Jiech, a married Gaajak
man in his mid-twenties who lives with his wife
and two small children, provides a counterpoint to
the notion that all Nuer marriages are disharmo
nious, illustrating the limitations in a monolithic
characterization of gender relations among the
Nuer in the diaspora:
The women are good. The men are crazy. The
women organize themselves. They organize the
families. If a man marries, he has the right to con
trol the family. If you move, you decide a month
ago, but you don't tell her until the day before.
And you say, \\e move. The wife cannot fight with
him. I have a power. That is why I do that. It is
very bad. We see when we come to this country
that this is bad. Every member of the family has
rights. We have to share life. It's not good to be a
l\uer woman in Nuer law. \\\; cannot leave
American law and we cannot leave our mother
law. We take lhe good parts of both. 1'\uer law is
applied by agreement. People are punished by [do
not benefit from] fighting.
While there do appear to be limits to how far ~uer
women go in challenging Nuer forms of authority,
they do exhibit a great deal of independence in terms
of decision making and action, which is consistent
with how they lived in Africa but exceeds that which
might be expected :-mong a group of recently arrived
refugees given their low proficiency in English lan
guage and limited education. My research supports
Heldenbrand's findings in a Shilluk family case
study (1996) invoh-ing a mother who availed of the
services of community domestic violence shelters to
move to another state '.'.'ith her children and leave
her husband behind. :\s in the example Ong (1996)
'~)rescnts where a Cambodian woman wields control
over her domestic situation by using the women's
shelter and the social service agencies against her
husband, Nyariek (described earlier) and several
other young women who arrived in the United
States as minors made use of social services to
divorce their husbands. One possibly surprising
phenomenon, from a US perspective, is the willing
ness of women, for a variety of reasons, to migrate in
669
order to leave their husbands and, in the process,
their children. The distance to be tra\-eled or a lack
of familiarity with a location does not appear to deter
women who are contemplating a move. Yet, in con
trast to men, women seem less likely to set out to a
destination where they have no kin or other ties.
Women appear to pool resources in the form of
reciprocal gifts to mark life cycle events, but they do
not appear to use a formalized credit scheme to do
so. fvlary Gach, a mother in her early twenties, spent
about SIOO on food for people coming to her home
to celebrate the fi.rst birthday of her daughter,
Changkuoth. Const:quently, she had no money to
buy an American-style birthday cake to share at the
ESL class she attended daily. Her friends in the
class, she said, chipped in to buy the cake to share in
class. She also told me that when her daughter was
born, other Nuer "family and friends" came to visit
her and the baby. Each visitor typically gave her $20
"to buy soft things for the baby." In addition to her
nuclear family, Mary's kin in the United States
includes her husband's father's brother's son and his
wife and children; and Mary's mother's \')rather's
daughter and her husband and children. ~>~ary's
friends include another ~uer couple and their chil
dren who live in their apartment complex, Nuer
women whom she knew from Sudan or the camp in
Ethiopia, and women she had met in her ESL class.
-"lary Gach and other women do establish coop
erative bonds. To a certain extent, they form recip
rocal networks to assist one another with child
care. But there were limitations to these relation
ships. In one case, two Gaajak women who
appeared to be good friends lived in the same
apartment building with their respective families.
When I was visiting one, the other invariably came
to visit. Their children played together. One day,
when sitting and chatting with one woman, the
other knocked and came in the door carrying a
bowl of food and eating. She went immediately to
the refrigerator, grabbed a spoon and a jar of
Hellmann's mayonnaise and deposited a huge blob
on top of her food, continued eating, and soon left.
This event prompted me to ask the woman \'.ho
lived in the apartment whether the women pooled
resources and shared cooking. She quickly and
definitively said that they do not. Nor did she
seem disturbed by her neighbor's behavior. Parties
are another matter; there people do share food.
670
Women and families take turns visiting one
household on any gi\-cn Saturday. People drop in
and out of the hosts' home throughout the day. If
people are hungry, they ask the woman hosting
for food, or they go to the cupboard, get a bmvl,
which they rinse in the sink, and serve themselves
from the pot on the stove. The hosts also have a
large stock of soda pop for guests, which they dis
tribute in a ritualistic manner. If supplies run out,
the husband will go to the supermarket to buy
more. Visitors also go to the refrigerator and fill
children's bottles with whole milk or serve them
selves a glass.
Only about ten Nuer women whom 1 met had
even low levels of formal schooling before arriving
in the United States; most had none. My sample is
perhaps biased because many of the opportunities
that I had to meet women were through the ESL
class, which tended to cater to women with very
10\'.' literacy and English-language skills.
Nyandit LuaJ, a particularly dynamic woman in
her early twenties, took the recently arrived young
wife, Esther Kier, of her male relative into her
home to teach her about "things in America."
Esther and her husband, Ruey Kui, had been
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nrhropology, Sanjuan, Puerto Rico.
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Knowltdg", Conscio1J5rlfSS, and the Polirics ofEmpower Bacon.
ment. New York: Routledge.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1951. Kinship and A1arrillge
4111ongr!lt Nller. Oxford: Clarendon.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1956. Nutr Religion. Oxford:
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Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1940. The Nller: A Dtsmptioll of MacDermot, Brian Hugh. J972. Cult of the Sacred
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Transformations and Domestic Violence in a
Midwestern Sudanese Refugee Community." In
DIANNA SHANDY
officially married in Ethiopia, but she had been
awaiting resettlement. Nyandit taught Esther
many basics, such as how to use the gas stove and
the appliances in the laundry room of the apart
ment building; how to substitute ingredients Index
obtained from the Egyptian grocery for familiar
recipes; how to use voice mail and call waiting; and
what products were available in US stores for her
hair. Nyandit also took off days from her work at a
dry cleaner's to spend a few days at the home of
NyanpaJ Kuey, who had just given birth to a set of
twins. N}3ndit's husband and a Nuer woman who
lived in their apartment building cared for their
three smail children during her absence.
That Nyandit's husband cares for their children
in her absence suggests the ways in which fathers
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ples struggle to adapt to their changing environ
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couples seem to take the changes in stride, extract
ing what they find helpful from Nuer culrure and
incorporating US norms in other ways. This range Aba Riots (Women's War), 403-5, 407 witchcraft beliefs, 237-81
of experiences and ways of managing change is Abacha, Sani and his family, 617-18, 625-6 Africa, roots of the term, 4, 23
consistent with what one would expect for an abjection, 373-6, 588-9, 600-2 "Africa Observed" (Comaroff and Comaroff), 24,
emerging diaspora population. abolitionism, 24, 31-41 31-41
Achebe, Chinua, 25 African Cultural Society, 486-7
Adotevi, Stanislas Spero, 307 African mode of production, 117, 139-48
ad"anced fee fraud (419), 617-27 African philosophy, 283-8
aesthetics, 325-31 ancestors as elders, 287, 314-21
masks, 326-7, 335-46 Dogon, 285,286,291-301, 303-4
Immigralioll Research .(or 4 New Celllllr)!, ed. Nancy
music, 330, 354-69 myth and reality, 286-7, 302-13
Foner, Raben Rumbaut, and Steven). Gold, pp. 390
negritude, 481-3 negritude, 479-80
-f08. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
the new biology, 36-8 Africall Philosophy, ;H)!th and Reality
Holtzman, Jon D. 2000. Nuer }OUrtltys, Nuer Lives:
traditional-modern binarv in art, 329-30, 348-53 (Hountondji), 286, 302-13
Afikpo Igbo (people) Africanist discourse, 23
location, 17 Afrikaners, 101, 102, 106
Hutchinson, Sharon. 1990 "Rising Divorce among the
masks and politics, 326-7, 335-46 Afrocenrrism, 26-7, 44-7, 48-51
1\'uer, 1936-1983" .\!Ian, n.s., 25: 393-411.
Africa, perspectives on age-groups, relations between, 117,131-3,134-5
Hutchinson, Sharon. 1996. N,lel' Dilemmas: Copillg TVilh
art see art Afikpo Igbo masks and, 326-7, 335-46
MOlley, War, and the State. Berkeley: University of
colonization see colonization and colonialism Igbo political institutions, 400, 401
California Press.
conflict and displacement, 521-81 invention of tradition, 458-60
development, gO\"CTnance and globalization, polygynous marriages, 392-5
Spear: The Stor)l of the Nller Tribe ill Ethiopia.
583-670 virginity testing, -f 19
London: R. Hale.
economics as a cultural system, 109-65 see also elders
Mahler, Sarah. 2006. "Gender Matters." ID21 Insights
hunter-gatherers, 167-236 agricultural productivity
(Institute of Development Studies, University of
nations and nationalism, 471-519 colonial underdevelopment of Africa, 444-6
Sussex), no. 60 Uanuary): 8.
philosophy of religion, 283-322 economics of polygyny, 389-97
Ong, Aihwa 1996. "Cultural Citizenship as Subject
representation and its discourses, 4, 6, 8-14, Lele-Bushong comparison, 123-6, 128-9, 135
Making." Currml A1I/hropology 37 (5): 737-51.
19-60,194-7,212-15 see iilso farmers and farming
Ong, Aihwa 2003. Buddha Is Hidillg: Refugees, 011
sex and gender studies, 379-422 AIDS epidemic, 385-6, 411-20
zmship, the New America. Berkeley: Universiry of
social organization, 61-107 Akyca, \V. :\kunu, 375
California Press.
 672 INDEX INDEX 673

Algeria Babangida, Ibrahim, 617 the ne\\ biology, 37-40 economic productivity, 117, 123-31
colonialism, 440, 447 Bahoken, Jean-Cah in, 304, 307 power directed upon, 428 location, 17
Frantz Fanon, 474 Bakari, Mtoro bin Mwinyi, 366 Rwandan genocide, 527, 555-9, 562-3, 565 Bwezi (people), 90-1
nationalism, 491, 492, 494 Balandier, G., 142, 143 war as public communication, 527, 546-7
Alur society, 9] Balkan conflict, 544 Boer, 33-4 Cameroon
Amba (people), 90-1 BaMbuti see Mbuti Pygmies Bohannan, Laura, 89, 320 neo-patrimonial governance, 636, 641
Amo, Anton- Wilhelm, 308 Banfield, Edward, 273 Bohannan, Paul, lIS polygyny, 391, 392
ancestors banks, 441 Boserup, ESler, 384, 389-97 Camper, Petrus, 36
displaced M07.ambicans, 527-8, 569-80 Bantu ontology, 285, 286, 303, 304, 306, 307 Botswana, people see Kgalagadi; Kwena; Cape Coloureds, 101, 104, 106
as elders, 287, 314-21 Ban/ll Philusophy (Tempels), 285, 303, 307 San; Tswana capitalism
'~I\ncestors as Elders in j\frica" (Kopytoff), 287, Bantu rituals of rebellion, 531-42 Bourdieu, P., 561, 563-4 African mode of production, 117, 139-48
314-21 Bantu terms, 21+-15 Braeckman, c., 562 Africa's expulsion from, 603-4
ancestry, tribe concept, 88-9 Barber, Karen, 288, 356 Bravmann, Rene, 327 commodity fetishism, 117-18, 152
see IIlso lineage system Barnett, D., 500, 504 bridewealth, 114,384 ethnicit) and, 98, 99, 100-6
ancient civilizmions, 26, 45-7, 48-50 Barrow, John, 24, 33-5 Nuer diasporans, 662-4, 665-7 Mau Mau, 506-7
Anciem Model of bistory, 26, 45-6, 49-50 Barwa,213-14 Nuer wealth categories, 118, 119, 159-64 print, 506
Anderson, Benedict, 475,503,505-6 Bates, Robert, 596 polygyny, 384, 393, 394, 395, 396 underdevelopment of Africa, 427, 439-49
Angola, 440,441,442 Baule (people), 17,384-5 rituals of rebellion, 534 witchcraft, 272-8
anonymisation,350-1 Bayart,Jean-Fran~ois,586-7, 590, 627, 629-42 virginity testing, 418 Caplan, Pat, 367
antislavery movement see abolitionism Behrend, Heike, 525, 527 Brincker, H., 213 cattle
Appiah, KwameAnthony Beinart, w., 232-3 Britain Nuer concept of space, 80
Afrocentrism, 26-7, 48--51 Belgian Congo see Democratic Republic of Congo colonialism, 425, 426, 478 N uer diasporans, 662-4, 665-7
diversity of Africa's cultures, 12, 13, 27, 50-I Belgium, colonialism, 425-6 African political s\stems, 65-6, 86-8,104,385, Nuer wealth categories, 118-19, 152-65
religious beliefs, 288 hunter-gatherers and, 183, 197 399-408 punishments for stealing, 563
Apter, Andrew, 287 military campaigns, 524 brutality, 464-6 rinderpest epidemic, 100-1
armed conflict see postcolonial Africa, violent Rwanda, 564 coastal Ghana, 375-6 rituals of rebellion, 534
transformations underdevelopment of Africa, ++2-3, 447 dual mandate, 427, 431-8,502-3 San and, 224, 227-8, 229, 230, 231
armies, invention of tradition, 453 Bender, Wolfgang, 356 hunter-gatherers, 205, 224 virginity testing and, 418
art, 323-31 Benin (formerl) Dahomey) Igbo women, 385, 399-408 "The Canle of Money and the Cattle of Girls
cultural unity-diversity debate, 13 African mode of production, 144, 145, 147-8 imagined landscapes, 24, 31-2, 33-5 among the Nuer" (Hutchinson), 151-65
European settler culture, 463-4 British Puniti\e Expedition against, 22 invention of tradition, 450-2, 453, 457,501-2 Usme, Aime, 473, 477
exoticness of the Other, 27, 55-60, 349-50, 353 bronze plaques, 21-2, 325 Mau Mau, 475, 498--511 Chad, 634
masks and political power, 326-7, 335-46 colonial underdcvelopment, 447 military campaigns, 524 chain of being, 35-40, 58
Mbuti Pygmies, 178-9 Dalzel's account of, 11, 22 music, 357-9, 362, 365-6, 367, 368 Channock, Martin, 453-4
music, 330, 354-69 Bennett, Tony, 3 Nuer cattle and labor markets, 153-5 Char, Rene, 491
national consciousness, 481-3, 490-1, 495 Bergson, Henri, 478 representation, 22, 24, 31-2, 33-5 chiefly authority, 433-8
traditional-modern binary, 329-30, 348--53 Berlin Conference (1884-5), 426, 478 settler culture, 462-70 colonial invention of tradition, 455-6
transcultural representation, 12, 21-2 Berman, Bruce, 474-5, 498-511 tribe, 86-8, 104 colonial underdeYelopment of Africa, 447
"Art, Identity, Boundaries" (Oguibe), 329-30, 348-53 Bernal, Martin, 26, 49-50 underdevelopment of Africa, 440, 441, 442-3, ethnicity and, 104-6
Aryan Model of history, 26 Bens, R.F, 427 444,447 Igbo women and, 403-7
"As Plato Dul) Warned" (Askew), 330, 354-69 biology French scholarship compared, 286 Lele-Bushong com parison, 134
Ashforth, Adam, 241 Afrocentrism, 50 Brown, T., 213-14 childbearing
Asiatic mode of production, 139-41, 143-4, 147 chain of beings, 35-40, 58 brutality displaced ~1ozambicans, 578
Asiwaju, A.I., 427 Lese dehumanization of the Efe, 195 colonial mililary campaigns, 524 Lese-Efe social system, 193, 196
Askew, Kelly, 330, 354-69 black consciousness see negritude settler culture, 464-7, 469-70 Okumkpa skits and songs, 340, 343
atavistic tribalism, 475,499-501, 503-4, 509 black pride, coastal Ghana, 376-8 Bryant, A.T., 532 rimals of rebellion, 533-4, 538
Austen, Ralph A., 241, 270-9 Bley, H., 205 Bulibuli (people), 90-1 witchcraft beliefs, 275-6, 277
Australia, 89-90 Blixen, Karen, 465-6 Burchell, William, 31 childbirth, Rwanda, 557-8
authenticities, 7 Blumenbach, Johann F., 36 Burgkmair, Hans, 27, 56-8 children
~ande (people) bodies Busby, Annette, 665 displaced Mozambicans, 578--9
European colonization, 426 exoticness of the African Other, 56-8 bushmen, invention, 210-15 metaphors of Africans as, 195-7
location, 17 gendering of AIDS, 416, 417 see also San N uer diasporans, 666, 667-8, 669, 670
witchcraft beliefs, 239, 240-1, 249-{)9 invention of bushmen, 210-1 J Bushong (people) women's responsibilities for, 392
 674 INDEX INDEX 675

childwcalth payments, 114

indirect rule policy, 104-6,426,427,431-8
long-distance trading, 146 African philosophy and, 310

Chretien, jean-Pierre, 564, 567

invention of traditiOl1, 427, 450-60, 501-2
Marxist economics, 117 in MozambIque, 591-2, 6+4-57

Christianity
map of Africa, 16
national identity, 475, 514-18 neo-patrimonial governancc, 590,629--42

African philosophy and, 304

military campaigns, 524
neo-patrimonial governance, 630-1, 636--7, 641 Democratic Republic of Congo (Belgian Congo,
African religious beliefs and, 288
Nucr attitudes to cattle, 153-5, 159
polygyny, 391, 392, 394 formerly Zaire)
colonial invention of tradition, 457-8, 459
pOI',er relations, 427-8, 460, 462-70
cowry shells, 270 colonization, 425-6, +48, 524
ethnicityand, 102, 103---4
representation and its discourses, 12, 22-3
Cross, Sholto, 459-60 music, 362
Igbo women's political institutions, 406-7
colonializing structure, 27, 55-60
Cruise O'Brien, Donal, 630 neo-patrimonia1 governance, 638-40, 64 J
Lese-Efe social system, 197
imag.ined landscapes, 24, 31-41
cultural grammar of genocidal violence, 527, 555-68 people of see Azande; Bushong; Efe Pvgmies; Kong;
settler culture, 469
Lese-Efe social system and, 194-7
cultural pluralism, 8 Lele; Lese; ,\lbuti Pygmies; Suku
syncretism, 7-8
need to name, 212-15
culture(s),7-8 polygyny, 384
witchcraft beliefs, 245-8, 260, 273-4, 276
Rwandan genocide, 564, 566
economics as a systcm of, 111-19
Les Demoiselles d',1viglll)/l (Picasso), 326
circumcision settler culture, 462-70
African mode of prod uction, 117, 139-48
DenbO\l, james, 170, 171, 172,219,221
female, 413 sex and gender studies
Lele-Bushong comparison, 117, 123-31
denigration metaphors, 196--7
Mburi Pygmies, 182 changing male-female relations, 385 Nuer wealth categories, 118-19, 151-65
Depesrre, Rene, 491
civilization, origin, 26, 45-7, 48-50 Igbo women's political institutions, 385, 399-408 European settlers, 462-70 descent groups, 66,171,448
clans, study of, 171, 196 polygyny, 393 history of learning about, 5 see also lineage system
see al.w lineage system underdevelopment caused by, 427, 439-49
negritude, 13,473-4,477-83,484-97 Dttained: A I1'riler's Prison Diary (Ngugi wa Thiong'o),
Clarence-Smith, \\'., 205 use of anthropologists, 65, 501-2, 524
representation and its discourses, 6,10-14,19-27 460,462-70
Clark, Graham c., 9 writing anthropology, 3-4
Afrocentrism, 26--7, 44-7, 48-51
development, 583-6, 588-9
class writing history, 9
colonializing structure, 27. 55-1i0
economic and social behavior and, 119
African mode of production, 117, 139, 140, 144-7 color metaphors, Le,e-Efe social system, 193-4 imagined landscapes, 24, 31-41
Rwanda, 589, 609-15
colonial underdevelopment of Africa, 443 Colson, Elizabeth, 87, 456 Lese-Efe social system and, 194-7
Zambia, 588-9,595-606
comprador bourgeoisie, 460, 467-70 Comaroff,jean, 24, 31-41,194-5,427,428 need to name, 212-15
"Development Aid and Structural Violence: The Case
ethnicity and, 95, 98, 99,101, 102, 104-6 Comaroff, john, 24, 31-'1 I, 194-5,427,428 translation, 237-41 of Rwanda" (Uvin), 589, 609-15
Mau Mau paradoxes, 507-8 commodification of ethnicity, 514-18 moral economy of witchcraft, 241, 270-9 DeVore, I., 203-4
Clasrres, Pierre, 556 commodity fetishism, 117-18, 152 rainmaking, 239-40, 241, 245-8, 258 Dia, Tamessir, 328
Clinton, Bill, 645 communication, war as public, 527, 546--8 understanding primitive society, 240-1, 257-69 diamond industry
coastal East African music, 330, 354-69 comparative musicology, 330 witchcraft explaining misfortune, 240, 249-56, Democratic Republic of Congo neo-patrimonial
coastal identity, Ghana, 330-1, 372-8 competitive opposition, 359-60, 366--7 257-65 governance, 640

Cohen, A., 634 conception, theories of, 193 unity-dilersilY debate, 12-13,26--7,45-7,50-1, Sierra Leone, 548-9, 550

Cohen, David William, 8-9 conflict 486--7,492 underdevelopment of Africa, 442, 444

Coke Bottle in the Kalahari Syndrome, 220 postcolonial Africa see postcolonial Africa, violent Cunnison, Ian, 317 Diamond, Stanley, 85
Cole, Eleanor, 46+, 468 transformations CUI'ier, Georges, 36--8 diaspora, 592, 660-70
Cole, Galbraith, 466 for structural col1tinuity, 526, 531-42 diet, Lele-Bushong comparison, 127-8
Collingwood, R. G., 260 Congo, Belgian see Democratic Republic of Congo Dahomey see Benin Dinka (people), 91
colonization and colonialism, 423-8 Conner, Walker, 503 Dakar-Djibouti Mission, 285 Diop, Cheikh Anta
African mode of production and, 141, 148 contemporary art, 329-30, 348-53 Dalze!, Archibald, 11, 22 Africa's cultural unity, 12-13,49
African political systems, 65-6, 447
"Conversations with Ogotemmcli" (Griaule), 285, dance Afrocentrism, 26,44-7,49,50
ethnicity, 96, 97, 98, 100-6,448-9
291-301 dansi,365
Diouf, Mamadou, 368
Igbo women, 385, 399-408
"Conversations on Rain-making" (Livingstone), Ilf(oma, 330, 355-9, 365, 366, 367
discourse
tribe, 86--8,104,212,448-9,455-6,457
239-40,245-8,427 sec also Okumkpa plays
representation and, 19-27

see also indirect rule policy

Cookey, Syh'anus, 453 dansi (urban jazz), 330, 355-7, 361-8 Afrocentrism, 26--7,44-7,48-51

art, 326, 327~

Cooper, Frederick, 596 De Waal, A., 563 co10nializing structure, 27, 55-60

music, 330, 357-9, 362, 365-6, 367, 368

copper mines, Zambia, 373-4, 597, 599, 600-6 dead, the, ancestors as elders, 287, 314-21 imagined landscapes, 24, 31-41

postmodernism, 348-51
Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine, 117, 139-48 death indigenous language competence, 24-5

dual mandate, 427, 43]-8,502-3

corruption displaced Mozambicans, 527-8, 569-80
Lese-Efe social system and, 194-7

Ghanaian collective memory, 372-8

democratization of Mozambique, 645, 653-5
European settlers causing, 464-6
need to name, 212-15

hunter-gatherers and
neo-patrimonial governance, 590, 629-42
.Mbuti Pygmies, 181, 182
\\"ar as, 548
Mbuti Pygmies, 183, 196
.'[igerian e-mail scams, 616--27
witchcraft belief~, 252, 253-5, 267-9
"Discourse of Power and Knowledge of Otherness"
San, 201,205-15,224, 225-7
Cote d'hoire debt burden, Zambia, 597-8 (Mudimbe), 27, 55-60
independence see nations and nationalism;
Basilica of Our Lady of Peace, 7-8 defecation, 187 displaced Mozambicans, 528, 569-80
postcolonial A[rica
Baule see Baule (people) democracy, 587 Dobe San (people), 172,225-30,231
676 INDEX
INDEX 677

Doe, Samuel, 552 polygyny, 383--4 writing anth.ropology, 3--4 fetishcs, 58-9
Dogon (people) Egypt, ancient, 26-7, 45-6, 48-50 see also West, the fetishism, commodity, 117-18, 152
art, 48J-2 elders Evans-Pritcha.rd, Edward E" 6, 63 fieldwork
location, 17 ancestors as, 287, 314-21 ancestor worship, 320 functionalism, 64
.religious beliefs, 285, 286, 291-301, 303--4 invention of tradition, 458-60 colonial conquest and, 524 history of, 64-5
domestic servants, 452-3, 454 Nuer diasporans, 661--4, 665-6 first-fruits ceremony, 542 indigenous language competence, 2+--5
domestic sieges, 547 political power and masks, 326-7, 335--46 Griaule's scholarship compared, 286 paradoxes of, 5-6
domestic violence, 664 elites Nuer attitudes to cattle, 152-3, 159 Flgh/ing for the Rainfort'sl (Richards),
domesticity de\'e!opment aid in Rwanda, 589,609-15 Nuer diasporans, 665-6 527, 543-54
cult of, 277 excluded intellectual, 548-9 The Nuer, 64, 65-7, 71-82 financial institutions, 441
Victorianism, 407 power relations, 460, 462-70 tribe concept, 91 Firs/ Bloud (fJlm), 551, 552-3
Donner, Philip, 356 Elmina (Ghana), collective memory, 330-1, 372-8 witchcraft beliefs, 239, 240-1, 249-56, 257-65 first-fruits ceremonies, 532-3, 534-5, 540-2
Douglas, Ma.ry, 117, 123-31, 548, 549 Elphick, R, 213 evolution, 9 fishing, 126-7
dowries, 395 e-mail scams, 589-90, 616-27 exchange systems, 112, 113-16 folklorism, 309
Drewal, Henry, 327 Engels, F, 208,210 Lele-Bushong comparison, 130 football clubs, 359, 360
Driberg, J, 211 England see Britain Nuer cattle, 118-19, 151-65 foragers see hunter-gatherers
dual mandate, 427, 431-8,502-3 Enoch, Michael, 364-5 San, 219-33 "Foragers, Genuine or Spurious?" (Solway and Lee),
The DIIIII Mandl/te ill Brlli,h Tropical Aji'ica (Lugard), Esteva, Gustavo, 606 silent barter, 145 219-33
427,431-8 Ethiopia witchcraft beliefs, 272-3 Forde, C. Dary 11, tribe, 88
Durkheim, Emile, 63, 209,210 colonial underde\clopment, 447 see also trading, long-distance forest
Dutch frontiersmen, 33--4 e\olution of humanity, 9 exotic-familiar relation, 5-6 fighting for, 543-54
Dutch language, 212, 213 representation and discourse, 23 Sf!! also witchcraft beliefs Lese-Efe social system, 171, 184-98
Dutch leg'acy, Ghana, 372-8 ethnicity, 68-9,95-106,448-9 !c,:,'otic Tribe (painting), 27,56-8 Mbuti Pygmies, 169, 170, 175-83, 186, 188,196
Dworkin, Andrea, 351 commodification, 514-18 exoticness of the African Other, 27, 55-60,349-50,353 The Fores/ People (Turnbull), 169
genocidal violence, 527, 555-68 ExpwaliOlls ofMudemi/y (Ferguson), 373--4,588-9, formal economy, 119
Eboussi-Boulaga, Fabien, 303, 307 Lcse-Efe social system, 171, 184-98 595-606 formalism, 115, 116
economic activities, colonial system, 440-1 multiethnic states, nationalism, 474-5, 498-511, Fortes, Meyer, 63, 87" 314
economic decline 514-18 Fabian, Johannes, 3, 213 ancestor worship, 314, 315, 318, 319-21
coastal Ghana, 330-1, 372-8 "Ethnicity in Southern African History" (Vail), 95-106 Fair, Laura, 366 first-fruits ceremony, 542
Zambia, 588-9, 595-606 ethnography, 6 familiar-exotic relation, 5-6 Oedipal and Jobian principles, 287-8
economic de\'clopmcnt see development of decline, 588, 595-606 see also \\itchcraft beliefs Foster, George, 273
economics history, 169,200-15,219,220-1 Fang (people) Foucault, j\!lichel, 4, 39, 56,428,559
formalist, 115-6 wartime violence, 523-8 aesthetics, 354 (advanced fee) fraud, 617-27
informal economy, 119 ethnomusicology. 330 African mode of production and, 141 France, colonialism, 426, 478
money, Neurattitudes to 118-19, 151-65 ethnophilosophy, 305-8 location, 17 art, 326
production, an African mode of, 117, 139--48 Etienne, :\1ona, 384-5 theory of conception, 193 capital from slavery, 441
substantivism, 115-16,272 Eurocentrism, 26-7, 48-50, 330 Fanon, Frantz, 350,376,427,474,48+-97 changing male-female relations, 385
economics as a cultural system, 109-19 "Europe Upside Down" (Appiah), 26-7, 48-51 Fantes (people), 375-6 invention of tradition, 453
African mode of production, 117, 139--48 Europeans farmers and farming ~1alijndependence,473
Lele-Bushong comparison, 117, 123-31 African art, 12, 21-2, 326, 327-9 colonial undcrde\clopment of Africa, 444-6, 448 negritude, 473, 481, 492
Nuer wealth categories, 118-19, 151-65 on African philosophy, 286-7, 303-6 economics of polyg) ny, 384, 389-97 representation and its discourses, 22
see a./50 hunter-gatherers; social organization; colonization of Africa see colonization and hunter-gatherers and, 170-1 underdevelopment of Africa, 4+1, 442-3, 444,
labor force colonialism Efe Pygmies, 184-98 446-7
"The Economics of Polygamy" (Boserup), 384, 389-97 Ghanaian collective memory, 372-8 Mbuti Pygmies, 175-83, J86, 188, 196 Frank, Andre Gunder, 586
education representation and its discourses, 8-13, 22-7 San,20Q-2, 207, 219-33 Frobenius, Leo, 478
coastal Ghana, 374 Afrocentrism, 26-7, 4+--7, 48-51 Igbo women, 402 Fry, R" 59
colonial invention of tradition, 451-2, 502-3 colonializing structure, 27, 55-60 Lele-Bushong comparison, 123-6, 128-9, 135 Fulani (people)
ethnicity and, 103--4, 105 imagined landscapes, 24, 31--41 rituals of rebellion, 531--42 dual mandate, 433, 436
Igbo women, 407 indigenous language competence, 2+--5 Rwanda, 610, 612-13 polygyny, 392
indirect rule policy, +32 Lese-Efe social system and, 194-7 feminist anthropology, 381-2 Fulbe (people), 141, 146-7
Nuer diasporans, 668, 670 need to name, 212-15 "Femmes Noires" (Senghor), 474 functionalism, 63-7, 328, 502, 524
Sierra Leone war, 549, 550 representation of, 12, 21-2 Ferguson, Jarnes, 373-4, 586, 588-9, 595-606 conflict for structural continuity, 526, 531--42
Efe Pygmies, 171, 184-98 tribe and, 67-8, 86-8, 104,212,448 Fernandez,j.W, 193, 354 Okumkpa play analysis, 342-5
gift-giving, I 15 witchcraft beliefs, 241, 273-8 Festimask (COte d'Ivoire), 475,516-18 see also specific anthrupologlsts, eg Evans-Pritchard
 INDEX INDEX 679
678

Graebner, Werner, 365, 366
funerals, MbUli Pygmies, 182
Graham, J. Erskine Jr., 375
fur-trade period, San, 222-4, 226-8,229
great chain of bcing, 35-40, 58
Greek civilization, 26, 45-6, 49-50
Gabon
Green, M.M., 400
hostage t"king, 547, 548
Hottentot Yenus, 37-8, 210-11
Hountondji, Palliin J., 286-7, 302-13
Huuphouet-Boigny, Felix, 7--8,515,516,517,630-1,
636,641
imagined landscapes, 24, 31-41
imagined narional community, 475,505-9
"In Place of Slavery" (Holsey), 330-1,372-8
India
British colonization, 425, 432, 433, 450

fang see Fang (people)

Griaule, Marcel, 2, 3-4, 285-6, 291-301, 303-4 houscs women's status, 395-6

neo-patrimonial governance, 637

Grinker, Ro) Richard, 170-1, 18+-98 Lcle-Bushong comparison, 127 indigenous language
Gadibolae, M., 205
Grogan, Colonel, 464 Lese-Efe social system, 171, 184-98 anthropologists' competence in, 24-5, 103
Galtung, John, 609-10
Gruenbaum, Ellen, 413 Nuer diasporans, 663-4 use by African writers, 25
Gambia, polygyny, 390-1
Guinea "Houses in the Rainforest" (Grinker), 184-98 indirect rule policy, 104-6,426,427,431--8
Geiger, Susan, 365-6
colonial underdevelopment, 444 HOIIJ Europe Ulldudeveloped Africa (Rodney), 427, .Ie.' "iso chiefly authorit),
Gellner, Ernest, 503, 517
negritude, 492 439-49 industrialization
Gemeinschaft, 209
neo-pau-imonial governance, 635, 637,639 Hughes, Langston, 477 colonial invention of tradition, 454
gender see sex and gender
Guinea-Bissau, +40 human life, limiting notions, 266-9 colonial underdevelopment of Africa, 443-4
genealogy, tribe concept, 88-9
Guro (people), 117 humanism, negritude as, 477-83 ethnicity and, 97-8, 100-2, 105-6
see fJlso lineage system
Guthrie, M., 213 humor, masks, 326-7, 335-46, 482 Zambia, 588-9, 595-606
genocidal violence, 527, 555-68, 589, 609-15
G u)'cr, Jane, 603 "Humorous Masks and Serious Politics among Afikpo infantiJization, 195-6
Germany, colonialism, 426, 442, 447, 451,456,478,524
Igbo" (Orrenberg), 326-7, 335-46 informal economy, 119
Geschiere, Peter, 241, 645
Hahn, Carl Hugo, 213 hunter-gatherers, 167-72 initiation ceremonies, 182
Ghana
Hahn, Theophilus, 214 economic needs, 113 instrumentalism, 68-9
chiefly authority, 434

Hardinge, A.R., 467 Efe-Lese relationship, 171, 184-98 international tourism, 475,514-18
collective memory, 330-1, 372--8

Harrell-Bond, Barbara E., 526 Mbuti Pygmies, 169, 170, 175-83, 186, 188, 196 internet scams, 589-90, 616-27
religious beliefs, 287--8

Harris, J. S., 402 San, 169-70,171-2,200-15,219-33 "The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa"
Tallensi see Tallensi

Hart, c.w.1\1., 89, 90 see also specific peoples (Ranger), 427, 450-60
tribe, 87

Hart, Keith, 119 hunting "The Invisible Face" (Steiner), 475, 514-18
Giddens, A., 210

healing practices ancestors as elders, 317 !rle,].,213

gift-giving, 112, 113-15

cultural pluralism, 8 Lele-Bushong comparison, 126, 128 !roko, Abiola Felix, 270
Gilman, S., 210

Rwandan genocide and, 557-9

Hutchinson, Sharon, 118-19, 151-65,524,526, Iron Age settlements, 220, 221,225, 230
Ginzburg, Carlo, 274

health services, 440, 441

665-6 Islam and Islamic countries
girls, cattle of, 118, 119, 159-64

hegemony, 427-8
HUlU extremists, genocidal yiolence, 527, 555-68, African mode of production, 1.45-6

see also women

l-Ieldenbrand, Kathleen, 669

609-15 African religious beliefs, 288

Glassman,Jonathon, 367

H'cnley, Gerald, 463

Huxley, Elspeth, 463, 467 competitive opposition principle, 359

global focus, histories of Africa, 9

heritage, collective memory, 330-1,372-8

hygiene, Lese-Efe social system, 186-7 dual mandate, 436, 437, 438

globalization, 583, 585, 587-8

Herskovitz, M., 65, 205

polygyny, 384, 392, 394

coastal Ghana and, 375-8

Hesiod,203
Ibo see Igbo representation and its discourses, 23

diasporas, 592, 660-70

Hirschman, A.O, 574

Igbo (people) syncretic art forms, 327

;-.ligerian e-mail scams, 589-90, 616-27

history
civil war, 449 ltote, \\'aruhiu, 500
\\ar in Sierra Leone, 545

of anthropology, 63-9,169,200-15,219, location, 17 !turi Rainforest, ~\lhUli Pygmies, 169, 170, 175-83,
Zambia's disconnect, 601-2, 603-5

220-1,326,501-2,524-5
masks and politics, 326-7, 335-46 186,188,196
Gluekman,~1ax,64,91,524,526, 531-42

the colonized removed from, 446

women's political institutions, 385, 399-408 Ivory Coast see Cote d'lvoire
Godelier, M., 140, 147

of ethnicity, 100-6
identity
gold mining, 100-2, 106,441,442,444

representation, 6,8-10
collective memory, 330-1,372-8 Jahn, Janheinz, 51
Goody, J., 87

Afrocentric, 26-7, 4+-7, 48-50 national Jamal, Vali, 597, 598

Gordon, R., 212, 213, 221

siruating the San in, 171-2,200-15,219-33 Cote d'lvoire, 475,514-18

Jay, Martin, 2
Gouro (people), 146

"""'o\'ern Yourseh'es!' Democracy and Carnage in

witchcraft as discourse of, 272 Mau Mau, 498-511
Jazz
Northern Mozambique" (West), 591,644-57 HIV I AIDS epidemic, 385-6, .j 11-20
negritude, 473-4, 477-83, 484-97
national consciousness, 495
Hobsbawm, E., 210
ideology, 428 urban (dansD,330, 355-7, 361-8
governance, 583, 585, 586-7

Holsey, Bayo, 330-1,372-8

Tliffe, John, 211, 361, 453-4, 456, 457-8 Jeffries, Richard, 638
democracy, 587, 590, 591-2,644-57

Holtzman, Jon D., 666

illness Jewkes, Rachel, 416, 420
indirect ruk policy, 104-6,426,427,431-8

Holy Spirit Movement, 525, 527

healing practices, 8, 557-9 Johnson, Martin, 196
invention of traditions of, 451-4

Honwana, Alicinda M., 526

witchcraft beliefs, 250, 254 Johnson, Samuel, 88, 103
nco-patrimonial, 586-7, 590,629-42

Horton, Mark, 359

"The I1lusion of'fribe" (Southall), 83-93 JohnslOn Harry H., 195, 196
see also political S)'stcms

Horton, Robin, 241

images of Africa, symbol system, 27, 55-60 Joinet, B., 633
governmePl sorcery, 591-2, 654-6
 INDEX 681
680 INDEX

Kagame, _-\Iexis, 286, 304, 306, 307 San as, 224-5, 230-3
gift exchange, 114, 115
Madagascar
Kalahari San (people), 169-70, 171-2,200-15,219-33 women-witchcraft relation, 277
location, 17
colonial underdevelopment, 447
Kapferer, B., 556-7 labor markets marriage, 114
nationalism, 492
Kaplan, Robcrt, 544, 545 colonial underdevelopment of Africa, 445-6 polygyny, 383-4 tribe concept, 88
Kariuki, ).M., 500 :\uerland, 153-7, 159-60, 163 "The Lesson of the Pygmies" (Turnbull), 175-83 majisa herding system, 227-8, 229, 231
Katjavivi, P, 213 labor migrancy Levi-Strauss, Claude, 85, 202, 327 magazines see mass media
Kaunda, Kenneth, 454 colonial invention of tradition, 458-60 Lewis, 1.M., 89 magic see witchcraft beliefs
Kavirondo,86-7 colonial underdevelopment of i\frica, 444, 448 Liberia, 447,524 Mahler, Sarah, 668
Keita family, 635 ethnicity and, 100-2, 105-6 violence, 527, 544, 545-6, 551-3 Malawi, ethnicity, 100, 106
Kemetism, 49 hunter-gatherers, 233 Lienhardt, Godfrey, 91 Mali
Kenya Labouret, Henri, 87 Lienhardt, Peter, 360 Dogon see Dogon (people)

colonial invention of tradition, 460, 501-3 Lakwena, Alice, 525, 527 life, limiting notions, 266-9 Leopold Sedar Senghor, 473-4, 481-2

colonial underdcwlopment, 440, 441 Lan, David, 525 Limbombo, Oscar, 656 silent barrer, 145

comprador bourgeoisie, 460, 467-70 land lineage system Malinowski, Bronislaw, 112, 115,502,507-8,637
the Luyia, 86-7 colonial invention of tradition, 456-7
ancestors as elders, 287, 314-21
Mallki, Liisa, 526
1\lau Mau, 463, 475, 498-511 colonial underdevelopment of Africa, 445
the house and, 171, 192, 196
Mann, Thomas, 89
music, 357, 358, 36J, 365, 367, 368 economics of polygyny, 389-90
the ~4uer, 66, 67, 76-8, 79
Manning, Carrie, 647
nco-patrimonial governance, 631, 632, 63+, 636 ethnicity and, 101, 105-6
tribe concept, 88-9, 91) 448
maps, 16-17
settlcr culture, 462-70 Mau Mau paradoxes, 507, 508
Lipsedge, M., 547 Margaret, Princess, 357-8
Kenyatta, Jomo, 318-19, 507-8, 509-10, 636 Rwanda, 610
literature markets, 115-16
Kgalagadi (people), 222-5, 228-9, 232 umbilical cord payment, 114
African philosophical, 302-10 Igbo women's networks, 402, 403-5, 406

Khoi.khoi,214-15 land claims, imagined landscapes, 24, 31-4] language of African writers, 25 see also exchange systems

Kidula, Jean Ngoya, 330 "Land Filled with Flies" (\Yilmsen), 200-15 national consciousness, 473, 475, 494 marriage
Kikuyu (people) landscapes, imagined, 24, 31-41 Little, K.L., 390, 393 as gift exchange, 114
location, 17 language Littlewood, R., 547 Lese-Efe social system, 185, 191-2,383-4
Mau Mau, 475, 498-510 anrhropologists' competence, 24-5, 103
livestock Mbuti Pygmies, 181-2
Kingsley; Mary H., 59 Efe,189
Nuer concept of space, 80
Nuer diasporans, 660-70
kinship, 64-9 ethnicity, 103
Nuer diasporans, 662-4, 665-7
Nuer wealth categories and, 118, 119, 159-64
African mode of prod uetion, 117, 139, 142
in the imagined community, 506, 507-9
Nuer wealth categories, 118-19, 152-65
polygyn), 132-3, 13+,383-4
ancestors as elders, 314-21
Lese, 189
punishments for stealing, 563
economics of, 384, 389-97
ethnicity, 68-9, 95-106
.\Ibuti Pygmies, 179
rinderpest epidemic, 100-]
rituals of rebellion, 533-4, 541
nco-patrimonial g,wcrnance, 632-4, 635
negritude, 474, 479
rituals of rebellion, 534
transnationalization, 528, 571-3, 574, 575-7
Nuer cartle and, 159-64
represenration and its discourses, 23-4
San and, 224, 227-8, 229, 230, 231
R\vandan genocide, 527, 565-6
Nuer time and space concepts, 66-7, 71-82
Afrocenrrism, 49, 5I virginity testing and, 418
virginity testing, 386, 418-19
tribe, 67-8, 83-93
imagined landscapes, 24 Li,-ingstone, David, 222, 239-40, 241, 245-8, wartime spousal separation, 528, 571-3, 574,
Koitalel, assassination, 465 indigenous language in African literature, 25 427 575-7, 578--9

Kongo (people) indigenous language competence, 24-5 Lloyds of London, 441 woman-woman, 38+

African mode of production, 144, 146, 147 need ro name, 212-15 Lonsdale, John, 500, 507, 508, 509 see also bride\\"ealth

healing techniques, 8 settler culture, 468-9

Lovedu (people) Marshall, L., 213
Kopytoff, Igor, 12,67,287 tribe concept, 90-1
woman-woman marriage, 384 Martin, Stephen H., 356
Krige, Eileen]., 417, 418 witchcraft beliefs, 259, 263-4, 265-6
women as heads of state, 447 Marwick, \Vbx, 271
Kula ring, 112, 113, liS Leakey, I.ouis, +63, 499, 502 Lowie, Robert, 25 Marxism, African philosophy and, 309-10
!Kung San (people), 169, 171-2,200-15,225-30,231 LeClair, Edward E.Jr., 112 Lubbock, j., 207 Marx.ist economics, 117-18
economic needs, 113 Lederc-Madlala, Suzanne, 385-6, 411-20 Lubkemann, Stephen, 526, 527-8,569-81 an African mode of production, I ~ I,
location, 17 Lee, Michael, 502, 50S Lugard, Frederick, 426, 427, 431-8, 453 139-48
Kuper, .-\dam, 65, 66, 67,232 Lee, Richard B., 169, 170, 171-2,202, 203-4, 219-33 Lugbara (people), 9] colonial underdevelopmenr of Africa, 445-6
Kuper, Hilda, 65, 534-8, 539 Leightcn, Patricia, 326 Luo (people) foragers, 202-3, 210, 220
Kushner, Gilbert, 499 "LeJe Economy Compared with the Bushong" location, 17 money, 152
KwaZulu-Natal, virginity testing, 385-6, 411-20 (Douglas), 123-31 spheres of exchange, I] 8, 159 Masarwa, 214
Kwena (people), 222-4, 229 Lele (people) Luso-Africans, ethnicity, 101, 104, 106 masks, 325, 326-7
economic productivity, 117, 123-31 Luyia (people), 86-7 marketing national identity, 475,514-18
labor force location, 17 negritude and, 482
economics of polygyny, 389-97 Leopold II of Belgium, 425, 426 acGaffey, Wyatt, 21, 456-7, 458-9
performative character, 329
Mburi Pygmies as, 175-83 Lese (people), 171 acIntyre, Alasdair, 266, 267-8
political power, 326-7, 335-46
682 INDEX INDEX 683

mass media l\litchell, Sir Phillip, 452 au Mau, 475, 498-511 diasporans, 592, 660-70
the imagined community, 506, 507-9 l\1obuto Sese Seko, 639, 640, 641 negritude, 473-4, 477-83, 484-97 location, 17
representation and its discourses, 22-3 modern art, 329-30, 348-53 Swahili music, 365-6, 368 social organization. 6+, 65-7, 71-82, 91
Mau Mau, 463, 475, 498-511 modernization, 585-6 tribe and, 86 spheres of exchange, 118-19, 151-65
as religious movement, 475, 499, 500 colonial invention of tradition, 454, 457, 502 nature tribe concept, 91
l\'lauss, Marcel, 113-14 colonial underdevelopment of .'\frica, 443-5 chain of being, 35-+0, 58 \\calth categories, 152
Mba, Leon, 637 cthnicity and, 95-6, 97-8, 100-2, 105-6 Lese-Efe social system, 188-91 ,vue;-/J;/,..r;cai/ Passages (Shandy), 592, 660-70
Mbembc, Achille. 645 European witchcraft beliefs, 273-8 Ndembu (people), 125 He Nue,. (hans-Pritchard), 64, 65-7, 71-82
Mbuti Pygmies, 17, 169, 170, 175-83, 186, 188, 196 Zambia, 588-9, 595-606 negritude, 473-4, 477-83 Nyerer, Julius, 84
McEviJley, Thomas, 328, 329, 348-50, 352-3 l\lohamed, Bibi Titi, 365-6 African philosophy, 304, 307
McGregor, G.P., 451-2 Mohanty, Chandra, 383 Africa's cultural unity, 13,486-7,492 Obasanjo, Olusegun, 625
McKnig;ht, J.D., 321 monarchical ideology, 450-1 Fanon's critique, 474, 484-97 obsen'ation, anthropological, 2-6
Mead, Margaret, 25, 382-3 money, Nuer attitudes to, 118-19, 151-65 ":"Jegritude" (Senghor), 477-83 obstruction symbolism, Rwanda, 555-68
"The Meaning of Our Work" (Diop), 26, 44-7 Moore, Henrietta, 381, 382 nco-patrimonial governance, 586-7, 590, 629-12 Odera, Henry, 305,307,308
meilicine, popular, Rwandan genocide and, 557-9 Moore, Sally Falk, 65, 68 nco-traditions, 450-60, 501-2 "Oedipus and Job in West African Religion" (Fortes),
Mee, Arthur, 45+ "The Moral Economy of Witchcraft" (Austen), 241, Netherlands 287-8
MeiJlassoux, Claude, 117 270-9 colonization of Africa, 426 Ogot, Bethwell, 86
Meinenzhagen, Colonel, 465 Moran, Mary, 551-2 Ghanaian identity and, 372-8 Ogotemmeli (Dogon elder), 285, 291-301
Memmi, Albert, 446 Morgan, L., 207, 208 see also Dutch frontiersmen; Dutch language Oguibe, Olu, 329-30, 348-53
memory, collective construction, 330-1, 372-8 Morocco, colonialism, 447 New Barbarism thesis, 543-8, 549 Okumkpa plays (Igbo), 326-7, 336-46
men, sex and gender studies see sex and gender Moslems and Moslem countries see Islam and Islamic newspapers see mass media Omaar. R., 563
Mende (people) countries ngoma ("traditional dance"), 330, 355-9, 360-1, 365-8 "On National Culture" (Fanon), 474, 484-97
Musa Wo stories, 553 Mozambique Ngub,mc, Harriet, 416 Ona Odulate, Thomas, 12
polygyny, 390 colonialism, 440, 441, 447,524,591 Ngugi wa Thiong'o Ong, Aihwa, 665
metal tools, Mbuti Pygmies, 181 democracy, 591-2, 644-57 colonial invention of tradition, 460 ontology
microeconomics, witchcraft, 272-3 ethnicity, 100, 101, 104, 106 language of African writers, 25 African, 479-80
Middle Art (artist), 351 rituals of rebellion, 532 power rclations, 428, 460, 462-70 Hutu,556-7
Middleton, John, 91, 359 war's socio-spiritual con seq uences, 527-8, 569-80 socialism, 277 oral history, 10
migrant labor svstem see labor migrancy Muchembled, Robert, 274, 275, 276 Niger Company, 442 Ortner, S.B., 190
migrations, African mode of production and, 141 Mudimbe, VY., 11,23,27,55-60,328-9 Nigeria otherness
see also diasporization Mugesera, Leon, 559-60 civil war, 449 McE\'iJley-Ouattara interview, 349-50, 353
military tradition, invention, 453 multiethnic states, nationalism, 474-5, 498-511, colonialism symbol system of, 27, 55-60
Miller, Christopher, 23 514-18 dual mandate, 433, 434-8 Otjiherero, 213, 214
mining .\1urdock, G., 205 invention of tradition, 453 Ottenberg, Simon, 326-7, 335-46
colonial invention of tradition, 459--60 Murngin (people; :\ustralia), 90 underdevelopment of Africa, 440, 442, 443, 447, Ouattara, 329-30, 348-50, 352-3
colonial underdevelopment, 441, 442, 444 Murphy, Robert, 384 448,449 Ovakuruha, 213, 214
ethnicity and, 100-2, 106 1\1usa ,Yo stories, 553 e-mail scams, 589-90, 616-27 Ovatua, 213, 214
Sierra Leone war, 548-50 music, 330, 354-69 neo-patrimonial governance, 634, 641 O\\"Osu, Maxwell, 24-5
Democratic Republic of Congo nco-patrimonial ~[buti P\'gmies, 178-9 people see Fulani; Igbo; Tiv; Yoruba
governance, 640 national consciousness, 495 "Nigerian Scams as a Political Critique" (Smith), Padmore, George, 439
Zambia, 373-4,597,599,600-6 urbanjazz(dan~),330,355-7,361-8 589-90,616-28 pala\u men, 340-1
misfortune Muslims sec lslam Njama, Karari, 500, 504 Parkington,J., 212, 214
ancestors as elders, 316 N'joh Mouelle, E., 308 Parsons, N., 204, 206
explanations, 240, 249-56, 558-9, 569-70 Nama, 214-15 Nkrumah, Kwame, 304, 307 Passarge, Siegfried, 211
missionaries Namibia Noble, Kenneth B., 8 patrimonialism, Sierra Lt.'One war, 545--6, 548, 549, 551-3
adaptation theory, 457-8 colonial military campaigns, 524 Nok culture, art, 325 patronage networks, 587, 590, 629-42
David Livingstone, 239-40, 241,245-8 San see San (people) Northern Rhodesia see Zambia Pende (people), 124
ethnicity and, 103-5 Nandi (people), guerilla army, 465 "The Notion of Witchcraft Explains Unfortunate performancc thcory, war, 547
Igbo women's political institutions, 406-7 "Nat.ionalism, Ethnicity, and Modernity" (Berman), Events" (Evans-Pritchard), 240, 249-56 performative rituals
infantilization of Africans, 195 475,498-5 II Nottingham, Jobn, 475, 500-1, 503, 504, 506, 508 masks, 326-7, 329, 335-46, 475
invention of tradition, 451-2,456,457-8 nations and nationalism, 471-5 Ntamhungiro, J, 612 national identity, 475,514-18
Lese-Efe social system, 197 colonialism invention of tradition, 453-4, 501-2 Nuer (people) negritude and, 482
Mitchell, J. Clyde, 393-4 thnicity and, 95-6, 97, 100, 103, 105, 448-9 ancestor worship, 320 of rebellion, 531-42
684 INDEX
INDEX 685

Perham, Margery, 463 democracy in Mozambique, 591, 646, 648-50, 651, 652 Lese-Efe social systcm, 171, 184-98 !\orthern see Zambia
perspective, 2-6 Portuguese, in African visual art, 21-2
.\1buti Pygmies, 169, 170,175-83,186,188,196 Southern see Zimbabwe

Peters, Edward, 559 postcolonial Africa rainmaking, 239-40, 241, 245-8, 258, 427 Richards, Audrey, 64, 390

philosophy, African, 283-8 development, governance and globali,ation, 585-92 Rambo, 551, 552-3 Richards, Paul, 523, 527, 543-54

ancestors as elders, 287, 314-21

democratization, 587, 591-2, 644-57 Ranger, Terence, 211, 365,427,450-60 rinderpest epidemic (mid-1890s), 100-1

l)ogon, 285, 286, 291-301, 303-4

nco-patrimonial governance, 586-7, 590, 629-42 rationality, witchcraft belief." 237-41 ritual of purification, R"'anda, 555-68

myth and reality, 286--7, 302-13

Nigerian e-mail scams, 589-90, 616-27 misfortune cxplained by, 240, 249-56, 257-65 "Rituals of f.cbellion in South-East Africa"

negritude, 479--80
Rwanda, 589, 609-15 moral economy of, 241, 270-9 (Gluckman), 526, 531-42

Picasso, Pablo, 326, 482 Zambia, 588-9, 595-606 rainmaking, 239-40, 24 1,245-8,258 Rodney, Waltcr, 427, 439-49,586

Pilling, A.R., 89, 90 Ghanaian collectivc memory, 330-1, 372-8

understanding a primitiyc society, 240-1,257-69 Rosberg, Carl, 475, 500-1, 503, 504, 506, 508

Pin-Rivers, A., 208 marketing national identity, 514-18

red-white color metaphors, 193-4 Ruark, Roben, 466--7

poetr" negritude, 473, 477, 486, 488-9, 491 violent transformations, 521-8
refugees
rural areas

Polanyi, Karl, 115-16,272 Rwandan genocide, 527, 555-68, 589, 609-15 displaced Mozambicans, 527-8, 569--8 I
deyc!opment aid in R"anda, 589, 609-15

political systems, 64--7 Sierra Leone, 527, 543-53 :', uer in America, 660-70
ethnicity, 97-8, 100-2, 105-6

African philosophy and, 310 socio-spiritual consequcnces, 527-8, 569-80 religion and religious beliefs
European witchcraft beliefs, 273-8

colonial
postcolonialism, music, 330, 354-1i8 competitive opposition principle, 359, 360
labor migrancy from see labor migrancy

Igbo women and, 403-7

postmodernism, contemporary art, 329-30, 348-53 displaced Mozambicans, 527-8, 569-81
see also farmers and farming

indirect rule, 104-6,426,427,431-8

Potts, Deborah, 598, 599 cthnicit: and, 102,103-4
Rwanda

invention ofrradition, 450-4, 455-7, 501-2

poverty Igbo women's political insritutions, 406-7
effects of deye.lopmcnt, 589, 609-15

Lele-Bushong comparison, 134

coastal Ghana, 372-8
invention of traditional, 457-8, 459
genocide, 527, 555-68, 589, 609-15

au "1au and, 502-3 Lelc-Bushong comparison, 117, 123-31

Ltse-Efe social sy~tem, 197
symbolism of genocide, 555-8

undcrdc"clopmcnt of Africa, 447

structural violence, 610
Okumkpa skits and songs, 344-5

ethnicity, 68-9, 95-106, 448-9

power relations philosophy of, 283-8
Sab (people), 89

Igbo women, 385, 399-408

colonialism, 427-8, 446, 460, 462-70 ancesrors as ciders, 287, 314-21
Sachs, Jcffrey, 603

Lelc-Bushong comparison, 134-7

democracy in Mozambique, 591-2, 644-57 Dogon, 285, 286, 291-301, 303
Sachs, \Vo~gang,605-6

masks among the .\fikpo Igbo, 326--7, 335-46

displaced lVlozambicans, 573 myth and reality, 286-7, 302-13
Sacrifice as Termr: The RW(/Illian Gmocide of1994
nco-patrimonial, 586--7, 590, 629-42
hegemony, 427-8 representation and its discourses, 23 (Taylor), 527, 555-68
Nuer time and space concepts, 66--7, 71-82
ideology, 428 rituals of rebellion, 531-42 Sahlins, \larshall, 112-13,220
rituals of rebellion, 534-42
Igbo poli tics, 385, 399-408 settler culture, 469 Samia (people), 86, 87
role of music in changing, 330, 365-8
masks and, 326-7, 335-46 syncretism, 7-8 San (people), 169-70, 171-2,200-15,219-33
tribe see tribe
nco-patrimonial governance, 590, 629-42
witchcraft beliefs and, 245-8, 259, 260, 273-4, 276 SandiJands, A., 595
political violence Nuer (1iasporans, 592,660-70 see also spiritual beliefs Sankoh, roday, 547, 548-9
Mau Mau paradoxes, 499-510 ritllaJs of rebellion, 531-42 remittances, 668 Santoni, Gerard, 351
national identity, 474, 490, 491-7 virginity testing, 419, 420 representation, 6, 8-14 Sapir, J.D., 191
posteolonial see postcolonial Africa, violent writing anthropology, 3-4, 6 and its discourses, 19-27
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 464
transformations Pratt, M., 202, 214 Afrocentrism, 26-7, 44-7, 48-51
scams, e-mail, 589-90, 616--27
politics prehistory, 9, 26, SO colonializing structure, 27, 55-60
Sehapera, I., 211
email scans as political critique, 589-90, 616--27 San, 169-70, 206--8, 220, 222, 228-9 imagined landscapes, 24, 31-41
Schneider, Harold K., 112
Mau \.fau as political mo,'ement, 475, 499-510 press see mass media indigenous lang-uage competence, 24-5
Schrire, f';armcl, 221
politics of the belly, 590,629-42 primordialism, 08-9, 98-9 Lese-Efe social system and, 19'!-7
science
pollution ideology, sexuality, 416, 417 print language, 506, 507-9 need to name, 212-15
chain of being, 35-40, 58

polyandry, definition, 383 production, an African mode of, 117, 139-48 reproduction colonization of Africa, 426

polygamy, definition, 383 productivity, Lcle-Bushong comparison, 117, 123-31 displaced Mozambicans, 578 European settlers, 463

see also polygyny Prunier, G., 560, 567 Lese-Efe social system, 193, 196 Lese dehumanization of the Efe and, 195

polygyny, 132-3, 134,383-4 public communication, war as, 527, 546--8 Okumkpa skits and songs, 340, 343 witchcraft beliefs and, 237-41

economics of, 384, 389-97
rituals of rcbellion, 533-4, 541
transnationalization, 528,571-3,574,575-7
Poole, Petcr Harold, 464
Popkin, Samuel L., 273
population density-soil relation, 12~
pornographic object, the, 350-2
Portugal, colonialism, 426, 440, 441, 442, 447,524,570
Punitive Expedition (Benin), 22 rituals of rebellion, 533-4, 538
Pygmies see Efe Pygmies; Mburi Pygmies witchcraft belicfs, 275-6, 277, 278
"Research on an African Mode of Production"
Rabemananjara, Jacques, 492 (Coquery-Vidrovitch), 139-48
Radcliffe-Brown, A.R., 63, 64, 211,502 resources, Sierra Leone war, 545-6, 548-9
raffia weaving, 130 "Revolution of 1889," 478-9, 482-3
rainforest Rhees, Rush, 265
fighting for, 543-54 Rhodesia
misfortune explained b.,'.. 240, 249-56, 257-65
moral economy of, 241, 270-9
rainmaking, 239-40, 241, 245-8, 258
understanding a primitive society, 240-1, 257-69
Scott, James, 272, 273
sculptural art, 12, 325
secret societies, Afikpo Igbo, 335-46
sectarian movemcnts, 459-60
686 INDEX INDEX 687

Seers, Dudley, 602 Swahili coast, 360--4, 366, 367, 368 HI\'/ AIDS epidemic, 385-6, 411-20 Sykcs, Ally, 366

selfhood, the new biology and, 36-40 'Sitting on a Man'" (Van Allen), 385, 399--410 imagined landscapes, 24, 33-5 syncretism, 7-8, 327

Senegal slavery polygyny, 391

colonial underdevelopment, 443, 445 African mode of production and, 139--41, 142, Southall, Aidan, tribe, 67, 83-93 taboos, 254,417
negritude, 492 147-8 southern .\ frica Tait, Da\'id, tribe, 87
neo-patrimonial governance, 629-30, 633, 634 colonial underdcYclopment of:\ frica, 441,442, :\frican mode of production, J45 Tallensi (people)
polygyny, 391, 393 445,446 erhnicity, 100-6 ancestor worship, 319-20
Senghor, Leopold Sedar, 304, 307, 473-4, 492, 629 Ghanaian collective memory, 330-1, 372-8 rituals of rebellion, 53.1--42 location, 17
sen~mts, 452-3, 454 representation and its discourses San see S;", religious beliefs, 287-8
Setswana,213-14 Afrocentrism, 49 W:ltch Tower sectarian movement, 459-60 Tallis, "icky, 419
sex and gender, 380-6 Dalzel's representation of Dahomey, II, 22 see I1lso specific COlllllries amI peoples Tambiah, StanJcy ].,239, 240
delinirions, 382 imagined landscapes of Africa, 24, 31--41 Southern Rhodesia sec Zimbabwe Tanzania
economics of polygyny, 384, 389-97 witchcraft bcli,_.fs and, 270, 277 space, Nucr concept of, 66, 78-82 colonial underdevelopment, 141, +++
ethniciry and, 105-6 Slessor, Mary, +07 spheres of exchange, 118-19, 151-65 inyention of tradition, 453--4, 455, 456, 457-8, 459
Igbo women's political institutions, 385, 399--408 Smith, Daniel Jordan, 589-90, 616-28 spiritual belicfs music, 356, 357-9, 360-6, 368
Lele-Bushong di"ision of labor, 129-30, 132-3 Smith, Neil, 603--4 displaced :\lozambicans, 527-8, 569-81 neo-patrimonial governance, 633, 634
Lese-Efe social system, 171, 184-98 Soaqua,212,214 social relations of, 241 tribal societ~; 84, 457
Nuer diasporans, 592, 660-70 social change see also religion and religious beliefs; witchcraft tax system, +27, 434-5
Okumkpa skits and songs, 340, 342-3 Baule maJe-female relations, 384-5 beliefs Women's War (Aba Riots), 403-5
portrayal of Africa as woman, 24, 38--40, 194-5, Nuer diasporans, 660-70 Springer, Banolomaus, 56-7 Taylor, Christophcr c., 527, 555-68
473+ Okumkpa skits and songs, 340, 3+2-3 The Slate III Africa (Bayart), 586-7, 629--42 Tempels, Placide, 285, 286, 303, 304, 306, 307
rituals of rebellion, 532--4, 538 role of music, 330, 354-69 Staub, E., 613-14 terror
Rwandan genocide, 527, 565-7 social history, 9-10 Steiner, Christopher, 328, 475, 514-18 fighting for the rainforest, 543-53
"irginity testing, 385-6, 411-20 social organization, 61-9 Steward, Julian H., 85 Rwandan genocide, 555-68
wartime spousal separation, 528, 571-3, 574, 575-7, Afikpo Jgbo masks and, 326-7, 335--46 Stone Age art, 325 Thomas, E., 20+-5
578-9 African philosophy and, 310 Stone Age sctllement, 206-7, 220, 225, 226, 230 Thomas, Louis-\'incent, 304
witchcraft, 271-2, 274-6, 277 ethniciry, 68-9, 95-106, 448-9 Strobel, Ylargaret, 365 Thompson, E.P., 272
sexual metaphors, 24, 38,194-5,474 huntcr-gatherers see hunter-gatherers structural adjustment programs, 598 Thompson, Roben Farris, 329
sexual violence, 419-20 19bo women, 385, 399--408 structural-functionalism, 63-7, 327, 502, 524 Thomsen, Christian Jurgensen, 206
sexuality Lele-Bushong comparison, 131-7 conDict for structural continuity, 526, 531--42 Thornton, p.., 60
Okumkpa skits and songs, 345 Nuer time and space conccpts, 66-7, 71-82 see also specific illllhropologislS, eg Eval/S-
time, Nuer concept of, 66, 71-8, 81-2
rituals of rebellion, 533--4 rituals of rebellion, 531--42 Pritrhard
Tiv (people)
sex as a limiting notion, 267, 268 tribe see tribe structuraJ vioJence, 609-15 ancestor worship, 320
\ irginit) testing, 385-6, 411-20 see also economics as a cultural system structuralism, 327 economi~ exchange, 115
witchcraft, 275-6, 277, 278 social services su bordination, 452--4 location, 17
Shandy, Dianna, 526, 592, 660-70 colonial era, 439--41, 442-3 subsistence, 139-+8 tribe concept, 89
Shepperson, George, 453 :'\ uer diasporans, 664, 665 substanrivism, 115-16, 272 Tiwi (people; Australia), 89-90
sickness see illness socialism Sudan Tlou, T, 204, 228
sieges, 547 African philosophy and, 310 .\frican mode of production, 145-6, 147 Tomer, A., 552
Sierra Leone ethnicity and, 96 colonial military campaigns, 524 Tomer, H., 552
chieDy authority, 434 witchcraft beliefs, 277 colonial underdevelopment, 441,446-7 Tonnics, F., 209
coJonial underdevelopment, 443 socio-spiritual consequences of war, 527-8, 569-81 diasporization, 592, 660-70 Torday, E., 133
nco-patrimonial governance, 634 soil-population density relation, 124-6 people see Azande; Nuer torture, 559
New Barbarism, 544 Solis, Gabriel, 330 Suku (people) Toukoudagba, 352
polygyny, 390, 391, 393 Solway,Jacqueline S., 170, 171-2,219-33 ancestors as elders, 287, 314-21 Toure famil); 635, 637
visual art, 21 Somali (people), 89 location, 17 tourism, 475,514-18
war, 527, 543-53 Sonqua, 212,214 pO\-ert), 124 To\\'a, Marcien, 307
Silberbauer, George, 232, 233 sorcery sup~rnatura!, the see spiritual beliefs; trading, long-distance, 14]-2, 1+3-7, 154-6
Sillery, A, 205 government, 591-2, 654-6 '... ilcheraft beliefs Swahili music ~'nd, 367-8
Simmel, Georg, 151-2 South Africa Surct-C'nale, Jcan, J 40, 144 see also exchange systems; markets
Simpson, G.E., 614 colonial underdevelopment, 440, 442, 444, 448-9 S".;lhili coast music, 330, 354-69 tradition, invention of, 427, 450-60,501-2
singing displaced lVlozambicans, 569, 570, 572-3, 574, 575-7 Swazi, rituals of rebellion, 531, 53+ 3,539--42 traditional-contemporary binary in art, 329-30,
Mbuti Pygmies, 178-9 ethnieiry, 100-2, 104, 106,448-9 S,Yaliland, ethnicity, J 00, J06 348-53
 688 INDEX INDEX 689

"traditional dance" music (l1goma), 330, 355-9, 360-1, Vail, Leroy, ethnicity, 68, 69, 95-106
traditional African art, 329-30, 348-53 rituals of rebellion, 532-4, 538, 541
365-8
Van Allen, Judith, 385, 399-410
Rwandan genocide, 565-7
see also Europeans
traditional values, 103-6
van Binsbergen, Wim MJ, 271, 455
Western civilization, African origin, 26, 45-7, under colonialism, 399-408,441-8,455
transnationalism, Nuer, 592, 660--70
Van Der Post, L., 204
virginity testing, 385-6, 411-20
48-50
transnationalization of polygyny, 528, 571-3, 574,
van Zyl, Hendrik, 226
Western Kweneng San (people), 172,222-5,228-9 wartime spousal separation, 528, 571-3, 574, 575-7,
575-7
Vansina, Jan, 67, 634
578-9
"Where to Be an Ancestor?" (Lubkemann), 527-8,
Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 9, 274, 276
Vedder, H., 213, 214
witchcraft, 271-2, 274-6, 277
569-81
tribalism, 68, 84, 86, 448
Vi co, Giambattista, 266, 268-9
Women's \Var (Aba Riots), 403-5, 407
White, Leslie, 203, 204
ethnicity and, 95-7, 105, -148-9
Victorianism, 407-8
Wood, Kate, 416
Willis, Roy, 459
~lau ~1au,475,499-501,503-4, 509
Vierich, H., 232
Wilmsen, Edwin, 170,171,172,200-15,219,221 Worms et Compagnie, 441
tribe, concept of, 67-8, 83-93, 104,212
Vilakazi, Abso!on, 418
Worsaae, ].J.A., 206, 207
WiIson, Godfrey, 595-6, 600, 605
colonial invention of tradition, 455-6, 457,501-3
violence
Winch, Peter, 240-1, 257-69 Wright,]" 211-12
colonial underdevelopment of Africa, 448-9
colonial military campaigns, 524 Wright, .YI.a.rcia, 455
Winter, Edward, 90--1
tribute system, San, 222-4 domestic, 664 writing, 3-4, 6, 8-14
Wiredu, ].E., 308
Trobriand Islands, 112, 113, lIS Mau jv[au paradoxes, 499-510 see also representation, and its discourses
witchcraft beliefs, 237-41
Tshibangu, Tharcisse, 308 national identity emerging from, 474, 490, 491-7 as power discourse, 271-2
Tsonga (people), 532 postcolonial, 521-8 Xhosa, ritual pollution, 416
colonial invention of tradition, 459
Tswana (people) Rwandan genocide, 527, 555-68, 589, 609-15 government sorcery, 59J-2, 654-6
location, 17
Sierra Leone, 527, 543-53 Yinger,].M.,614
Mbur.i Pygmies, 181, 182
missionaries' infantilization of, 195
socio-spiritual consequences, 527-8, 569-80 misforrune explained by, 240, 249-56, 257-65, loruba (people)
rainmaking belief, 239-40, 241, 245-8
settler culture, 464-1, 469-70 canings, 12
558-9,569-70
San and, 205, 214, 220, 222-4, 225-8, 229
structural, 609..15 economics of polygyny, 384, 391-2
moral economy of, 241, 270--9
Tunisia, colonialism, 447
"Virginity Testin{' (Leclerc-Madlala), 385-6, location, 17
postcolonial violence, 525
Turnbull, Colin, 85, 169, 170, 175-83, 186, 188,
411-20 religious beliefs, 288
rainmaking, 239-40, 241, 245-8, 258
196 visual metaphors, 2, 4-5 tribe concept, 88
rituals of rebellion, 533-4
Turner, v., 193,524 Vugusa (people), 86, 87 youths
understanding a primitive society, 240--1, 257-69
Tutsi, Rwandan genocide, 555-68, 609-15 development aid in Rwanda, 589, 609-15
Wittgenstein, 1.., 263, 264, 265
Tylor, E., 207 Waehle, E., 185 Nigerian e-mail scams, 589-90, 616--27
Witwatersrand, 100-2
Tyson, Edward, 195 Wagner, Gtinther, 86--7 violent conDict, 543-5+
Wolf, Eric, 200
Wallerstein, Immanuel, 517, 586 women see also age-groups, relations hei.'.'. een
lAC (United African Company), 442 Wanjau, Gakaara wa, 508-9 Yugoslavian conDict, 544
changing male-female relations, 340, 342-3, 384-5,
ganda
war, postcolonial Africa see violence, postcolonial 660-70
colonial invention of tradition, 451-2
Warner, G., 90 Zahan, Dominique, 304
division of labor
colonial underdevelopment, 443
warrant chiefs, 403-7, 447 Zaire see Democratic Republic of Congo
colonialism and, 448
neo-patrimonial governance, 634
Washburn, Sherwood, 169-70 Zambia (formerly ~orthern Rhodesia)
Lele-Bushong comparison, 129-30, 132-3
polygyny, 390, 391
Watch Tower sectarian movement, 459-60 abjection of mineworkers, 373-4, 600--2

ethnicity and, 105-6

postcolonial \'iolence, 525, 527

Waterman, Christopher, 356 development myth, 588-9, 595-606

feminist anthropologists, 381-2

tribe, 90--1,104
Watson, William, 602 ethnicity, 100, 102, 106

invisibility, 407-8

Ulungu, Elungu Pere, 308 l1'ayward SerVlll1/S (Turnbull), 169, 186, 188 soil-population density relation, 125

Lese-Efe social system, 184-98

umbilical cord payment, 114 wealth categories, Nuer, 152 tribe, 87

I1goma societies, 357-9, 365-6

unanimiry, myth of, 305-6 wealth distribution Zande see Azande

]\;uer diasporans, 592, 660--70

underde\'elopment of Africa, 427, 439-49 African mode of production, 117, 139-48

Zanzibar, music, 357,358, 359, 366, 368
Nucr weal th categories, 118, 119, 159-64

"Understanding a Primitive Society" (Winch), 240-1, development aid in Rwanda, 589, 609-15
Zimbabwe (formerly Southern Rhodesia)
Okumkpa skits and songs, 340, 342-3

257-69 Igbo political institutions and, 400--1

colonial underdevelopment, 444

political institutions ofIgbo, 385, 399-408

nilcver, 442 Lele-Bushong comparison, 117, 123-31

decolonization struggle, 525

polyg}'ny, J 32-3, 134,383-4

IIpinZQni (opposition), 359-60, 366--7 Mau Mau paradoxes, 507, 508

displaced Mozambicans, 569, 570, 572, 578

economics of, 384, 389-97

Upper volta, tribe, 87 see also capitalism
village age distrihution, 39J-4

rituals of rebellion, 533-4, 541

urbanization Weber, Max, 276--7,632 Zulu (people)

transnationalization, 528, 571-3, 574, 575-7

erhnicily and, 97-8,100--2, 105-6
Weeks, John, 597, 598 rituals of rebellion, 531-4, 538-42

portrayal of Africa as woman, 24, 38-40, 194-5,

European witchcraft beliefs, 273-8
Weimer, Bernhard, 647 virginit\ testing, 385-6, 411-20

473-4
Zambia, 588-9, 595-606
West, Harry, 587, 591-2,644-5,
USA, Nucr diaspora, 592, 660-70 West, the
Uvin, Peter, 527, 586, 589, 609-15 inDuences on music, 330