Africa as a major culture area has been characterized by many writers as being -marked by a high development of law and legal procedures. In the past few years research on African law has produced a series of highly competent monographs such as those on law among the Tiv, the Barotse, and the Nuer. These and related shorter studies have focused primarily on formal processes for the settlement of disputes, such as those which take place in a courtroom, or those which are, in some other way, set apart from simpler measures of social control. However, many African societies have informal, quasi-legal, dispute-settlement procedures, supplemental to formal ones, which have not been as well studied, or—in most cases—adequately analysed.

The G/wi Bushmen referred to in this article live in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Although the census of the Reserve is not yet complete, its permanent Bushman population is estimated as being 3,000, plus another 2,000 summer migrants. The Reserve is 20,115 square miles in extent and its Bushman inhabitants enjoy exclusive hunting rights, unrestricted except for a prohibition on the use of firearms and certain types of steel traps. The puberty ceremony described here was performed in the central portion of the Reserve. Although I have not had the fortune of a field-trip coinciding with another ceremony I had previously been told by members of three bands what would happen. This agreed in detail with what I saw. Later descriptions from all five bands of the vicinity do not differ, so this version is presumably representative of the ‘wild’ G/wi of the region. These Bushmen have had almost no contact with Europeans other than the personnel of the Bechuanaland Government Bushman Survey.

Hausa is probably the most widely spoken language in Negro Africa. Besides being generally spoken throughout Northern Nigeria, its motherland, Hausa is, as Westermann and Bryan note, widely understood in other West African countries. They cite colonies of Hausa-speakers in Dahomey, Togo, Ghana, Cameroons, Chad, and ‘many of the greater centres in North Africa’. They could also usefully have mentioned the Sudan, where pilgrims from Northern Nigeria have settled in their tens of thousands. Indeed, it is often said that you will find Hausa-speakers from Dakar to Port Sudan, from Leopoldville to Fez. The explorer Heinrich Barth in the 1840's had his first Hausa lesson in Tunis, and fifty years later it was to Tripoli that Bishop Tugwell of the Church Missionary Society and his pioneer team of five went to study Hausa before undertaking their bold missionary thrust into the emirates. Westermann and Bryan point out that the total number of Hausa-speakers cannot be estimated in view of the enormous distribution of the Hausa and the great number of those who speak Hausa as their second language. Few of us would disagree with Cust's judgement that Hausa ‘has obtained the rank of a lingua franca and is the general vehicle of communication between the peoples speaking different languages’. Counting those who have recourse to Hausa as their second or vehicular language, it would be no exaggeration to claim that some 20 million persons ‘hear’ Hausa, as the West African languages so picturesquely express it.

Les villages guerzé (kpèllè), et ceux des groupes ethniques apparentés de la région forestière de la Guinée, sont généralement bâtis sur une hauteur, à proximité d'un point d'eau, mais jamais dans un bas-fond auprès d'un ruisseau. Us sont situés à l'orée d'une forêt ou au milieu d'une clairière. Le village est souvent entouré par une ceinture d'éléments de forêt secondaire. Cette zone est respectée pour protéger les habitations des tornades violentes. Elle est indispensable pour la pratique des coutumes d'initiation et des sacrifices, et, très probablement, dans le passé, elle était utilisée à des fins défensives, ce rideau de forêt dense étant favorable aux guérillas. Souvent l'endroit choisi est l'emplacement d'anciens champs de culture abandonnés. Ainsi, les habitants ont l'avantage d'occuper un terrain épuisé et en même temps défriché.

In a previous article published in this journal analysed one East African folktale in terms of its sociological significance. In this article I present a second, similar tale which deals with the same characters and which provides additional illustration of some of the points I tried to make in my earlier work.

This folktale is in Chikaguru, the language spoken by the Kaguru, a matrilineal Bantu people living in northern Kilosa and Mpwapwa Districts. The Kaguru have cultural traditions similar to those of other matrilineal peoples in this region of Tanganyika, such as the Luguru, Ngulu, Zigua, Sagara, and others. They are organized into about ioo non-localized, exogamous matri-clans (ikungugo or lukolo), each of which is divided into many matrilineages which cannot actually trace common descent. Traditionally, political rights over land and rights to perform certain ceremonies of rainmaking, purification, and fertility descend to men through women. The traditional system has been greatly disrupted and changed by colonial rule, missionary activity, and the introduction of a market economy, but this has little relevance to the significance of the material discussed in this paper, which is concerned primarily with the traditional system.