The attention that has been devoted to Sukumaland, Tanzania, by development specialists has been attributed by De Wilde (1967) to the rapid expansion of livestock and cotton production in ways which have been the despair of professional agriculturalists and veterinarians. Cycles of drought, famine and disease have recurred at intervals of five to seven years while soil erosion has been an ever present phenomenon. Administrative responses to these problems have followed a cycle of education, persuasion, resettlement and coercion, to little avail. A number of studies, spanning many scientific disciplines, have sought to understand, change, or merely criticize, the existing state of affairs.

The ‘great songs’ (antsa maventy) with which Sakalava praise their royalty extol them as unique and precious beings in whom all wealth in persons and things is, or eventually will be, concentrated, causing them to grow enormously and inexhaustibly fat, yet ever greedy for more. Solely because of their ancestry, their houses will be royal residences, their hats will be royal headdresses with special names. Above all, their people will be human beings owing allegiance only to monarchy, labouring only for monarchy. There may be indifferent or unwilling ones, as well as those who are eager to pay homage to the royal ancestors, but ultimately royalty will possess them all: ‘Royalty enslaves, royalty enslaves, royalty enslaves . . .’.

This article represents some of the results of three field research studies of urbanization in the Sudan. The research has focussed on two urban communities in the Khartoum area, those known as Tuti Island1 and Burn al Manas. The first study was conducted as doctoral research in 1970–72; a brief re-study took place in 1975, and most recently research was conducted in 1979–80. This ten-year period was a time during which major economic and demographic change occurred in the urban Sudan. A recent study in the capital city area of the Sudan by urban planners has concluded that ‘any sociologist or social anthropologist who approaches the problems of urbanization in Africa today has the privilege of witnessing a social transformation on a grand scale’ (MEFIT, 1974: I). I have already reported on some aspects of change in class structure, marriage, kinship and the family (Lobban, 1971, 1975, 1979), but these earlier articles have relied chiefly on earlier fieldwork. Among studies of culture change in general, and urbanization in particular, it is unfortunately uncommon to have data from replicated, longitudinal studies. In this respect this article may make an especially useful contribution.

Much attention has been given to the causes accounting for the rise of religious movements: inequality (Linton, 1943), racism (Lea, 1926; Sundkler, 1948), relative deprivation (Barber, 1941; Aberle, 1972), oppression (Lanternari, 1963), the colonial situation (Balandier, 1970), and white power (Ifeka-Moller, 1976) are among the factors which have been given prominence. These and other similarly ‘macro-social’ factors are very visible, especially from a distance. They can be, and often are, imagined to operate with general uniformity across entire social groups. This then invites the use of similarly general demographic measures to prove both the reality of the independent variable and its efficacy in accounting for the dependent variable – the rise of new churches and/or conversion to them.

The subject of Igbo traditional religion has aroused a considerable amount of interest among scholars in the past few decades. The works of early ethnographers like Talbot (1926), Meek (1937) and Basden (1938) eloquently spelt out some of its principal themes. Among these are what we may refer to as the three major pillars of Igbo traditional religion, namely the Supreme Being, divinities and ancestors.

One of the problems with most of the existing studies is the tendency to generalize for the whole of Igboland on the basis of evidence which is valid for some Igbo areas only. Given the Igbo type of political system which is characterized by the existence of a very large number of autonomous communities, it is not surprising that there is a greater amount of heterogeneity in the religious system than is the case in the centralized kingdoms of pre-colonial Africa. To understand the diversity of Igbo religious beliefs and practices there is an imperative need for the study of the religious systems of specific Igbo communities.