This article describes and attempts to analyse the nature and content of marital relationships in the ‘modern’ West African family. To an increasing extent educated young people apparently want a companionate marriage on Western lines (Marris, 1961). Evidence comes from interviewing and from studies made of the attitudes of students and of secondary school boys and girls in a number of countries, including Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. Omari, for example, collected data from 293 students in a sample of eight Secondary and Teacher Training Institutions throughout Ghana. About three-quarters of these subjects said they would like to be married either in church or before a magistrate (1960, pp. 197–210). A statutory marriage of this kind, unlike traditional marriage, makes bigamy a crime, and so we may assume that the young people concerned had monogamy in mind. A group of Nigerian secondary school girls also declared, with a single exception, that monogamy was the ideal form of marriage; they insisted that they wanted to choose their own husbands (Baker, 1957).

The object of this paper is to provide an answer to two questions:

(i) Is the colonial legislation on witchcraft (with special reference to Kenya Colony) satisfactory? and

(ii) If any alteration is desirable, what form should this take, and why?

The Kenya Colony Witchcraft Ordinance No. 23/1925 imposes the penalty of imprisonment for periods up to 10 years for various offences and fines up to 1,000 s. with or without imprisonment (Secs. 2-8). Deportation (Sec.9) can be ordered by a District Commissioner. Under Section 11 the liability to the death penalty where murder has been committed by witchcraft is unimpaired.

The article situates a new type of stand-up comedy, performed in Kinshasa's mourning spaces (matanga), within the city's social universe. This type of funerary joking, enacted by comedians unrelated to the bereaved, represents a clear departure from the customary funerary humour in which accepted jokers occupy particular social positions vis-à-vis the deceased. Following recent changes in the organization of mourning rituals within the circles of Kinshasa's wealthy, these rather intimate events are ever more open to ‘strangers’, who anticipate the spending capacities of the gathered crowd. Comedians constitute one among a wide range of outsider groups who approach the bereaved community as a space of opportunity. It is argued that this emergent cultural form is utterly urban, and could only appear within urban life worlds where conviviality with others, and in particular an understanding of people's need to make a living in precarious circumstances, transforms the mourning community into an audience that pays for a cultural performance. Humour is not only derived from a symbolic difference between the poor and the rich, but also through the performance of exaggerated flattery, producing the illusion of patronage and situating the comedian within a feigned patron–client relationship for the duration of that performance.

The Kru people of Liberia are well known as deck-hands and fishermen all down the west coast of Africa, and they have established ‘colonies’ in most ports from Dakar to Douala—as well as in such distant centres as London, Liverpool, and New York. Little, however, has been published on their history and social structure, and the first part of this article is a contribution towards filling this gap. The second part concerns socio-economic change in one Kru town, Grand Cess, during the present century, and in particular its fission into two geographically and culturally distinct sections: the traditional town and the modern Municipality. The outline of the development of Grand Cess, of present interrelationships between its two main sections, and of the status of each vis-à-vis the central government, serves as an illustration of the Republic's unusual system of local administration. The account is based on three weeks' stay in Grand Cess in 1958, and on discussions with Kru people over a period of a year in Monrovia (1958–9).

Studies of associations in West Africa have tended to focus upon the development of new development-related institutional forms. Other, so-called traditional, cultural groupings have tended to be ignored. This article points to transformations and changes in the masquerade society of the north-eastern Yoruba town of Ìkòlé and considers the continuing development of the masquerade society as an association. Changes in the masquerade society are being strongly promoted by younger men as a way to establish masquerade as a resource, promoting Ìkòlé's cultural identity. They are aided and funded by groups of elite citizens who are not necessarily resident in Ìkòlé. The article examines the relations between the various groups involved in masquerade, as well as the relationship between those often elite town members who support masquerades and Pentecostal Christian groups which would happily see their demise.

This essay presents Joshua Uzoigwe as a Nigerian intercultural composer. A short biography of the composer shows the influence of two cultur—Nigerian (Igbo/Yoruba) and European—on his creative outputs. Uzoigwe's experience in the two cultures has enabled him to compose music which is indisputably a synthesis of Nigerian and European musical idioms. His works are classified into five categories, while the creative style exhibits purely original compositions and works in which Nigerian musical elements are directly utilised. A discussion of Uzoigwe's music includes elements of tonal organisation, elements of dance, elements of musical conception and instrumentation. The issue of bi-culturalism, national identity and the search for a Nigerian audience are some of the problems Uzoigwe attempts to solve in his compositions.

Sutura (discretion, modesty) is a central element in Senegalese Wolof culture that, among other things, promotes feminine honour through chastity, silence with regard to discussing sexuality with elders, and refraining from articulating same-sex desires in general. Consequently, sutura is seen as limiting the space for non-normative sexualities. However, lesbiennes in Senegal strategically employ sutura to navigate this gender and sexual normativity, whereby they queer the initially heteronormative framework. This article explores how, at the frontiers of international sexual rights activism and its antithetical Islamic social code, young women open new avenues for thinking queer Africa. The article explores young women's diverse tactics to turn sutura from a heteronormative framework into a vehicle for queer expression. These women demonstrate the constant yet indeterminate possibilities to negotiate between normative expectations and queer lives. They furthermore propose an alternative to the international queer frontier of overt resistance and protest, and suggest that the silences that sutura prescribe are more productive for queering their urban environment. By balancing the simultaneous desires of same-sex intimacies, family life, societal expectations and urban success, these women are pioneers in offering new routes for ‘queering queer Africa’, as Stella Nyanzi has described it.

When Europeans came into contact with the Swazi, it was inevitable that, since the two cultures had not the same institutions, beliefs and practices, one and the same situation was criticized from different social viewpoints and judged from different standards of value. Even when certain actions were similarly classified, each milieu gave them its own distinct emphasis or pattern, while similar values were embodied in and maintained by very different institutions. Immediate practical considerations and the political theory varying with place and time determined to what extent the dominant culture controlled the development of the traditional African life. I have chosen to analyse the way in which the military organization of the, Swazi, one of the basic factors in the traditional culture, has reacted under that small arc of Western civilization which has impinged on the lives of the natives in the Protectorate.

The archaeological material described in this note is the result, like many other finds, of mining operations. Other collections of prehistoric human and animal figures have been found in Nigeria, usually in circumstances offering little evidence of their origin: these specimens, though there is as yet no concrete evidence of their age, origin, and cultural significance, have come to light in conditions which give good reason to hope that the further investigations contemplated will reveal associated evidence contributing to the solution of some of these problems.

In the late nineteenth century, Catholic missionaries among Tabwa southwest of Lake Tanganyika (now Zaire) sought to create a cohesive community of African Christians. The priests prohibited communal practice of Tabwa religion in the vicinity of their churches (established at points of densest population) and appropriated important means of food production like river-fishing grounds, for their own exploitation or to reward those loyal to them. As they enhanced their own economic and political influence, they contributed to Tabwa anomie, rather than community.

More than a generation has passed since the appearance of Professor Evans-Pritchard's The Nuer. The sub-title of this classic work, ‘A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People’ is, I believe, inaccurate. The Nuer is more an interpretation than a description, and it is difficult to isolate the descriptive material, which Evans-Pritchard as a matter of policy (1940a, p. 261) subordinated to theory. Although the theory of the book is an abiding part of anthropological discussion and controversy, having become a model for the study of other societies, we should still return to the facts, asking to what extent the Nuer ‘model’ fits the way of life of the Nuer of the southern Sudan.

The Barolong belong to the Western cluster of the Sotho group of the Bantu-speaking tribes of South Africa. The Western Sotho, who are commonly called the Tswana, are scattered over a considerable portion of South Africa, including the whole of Bechuanaland Protectorate, the portion of the Cape Province known as British Bechuanaland, the western Transvaal and a portion of the Orange Free State. Although the Barolong are to be found mainly in British Bechuanaland, they are in the peculiar position of being strongly represented in all the political divisions of Southern Africa referred to above, for they have important settlements in the Lobatsi district of Bechuanaland Protectorate; in the Lichtenburg district of the Transvaal, and in the Thaba Nchu district of the Orange Free State as well as in the Vryburg and Mafeking districts of British Bechuanaland (Cape Province).

Towards the end of my 1968–9 period of study in Ghana an audience was arranged for me with the late Asantehene, Otumfuo Sir Osei Agyeman Prempeh II. He was ailing at the time and his readiness to see me was largely attributable to his acute interest in the political affairs of Ahafo, the district in which I was working. One of the first questions he asked me was whether I had been told in Ahafo about a certain ‘Asibi Entwi’. I replied that I had heard a great deal about this person. Otumfuo then assured me emphatically: ‘Asibi Entwi is a lie. No such man ever lived.’

In the middle of writing a paper on the ‘roots’ of the Krio of Sierra Leone my attention was drawn by a colleague to an article in a recent issue of Africa, written by David Skinner and Barbara E. Harrell-Bond, two scholars who have been doing some work on Sierra Leone (Skinner and Harrell-Bond 1977). Aware of my interest in this area my colleagues suggested that I might want to react to the article. My own views on the Krio (Wyse forthcoming) can be read when published, but I considered that a reply to this article was needed for two reasons. Firstly, the article queried the validity of the term ‘Creole’ as used in the literature to refer to a cohesive group. And since Sierra Leonean scholars have begun to favour the use of the term Krio as the more acceptable one, it is eminently desirable to bring this development to the knowledge of non-Sierra Leoneans concerned with the study of the Krio. Second and more importantly, the authors have raised certain controversial questions as to the chronological evolution of Krio society. It is suggested that there was no Krio society even before the 1940s and 1950s, and that the popular notion of a Krio society was a figment of the imagination of articulate ‘Creoles’ who felt compelled to erect an ideological framework as justification for retaining their privileged status in Freetown during the pre-Independence period. The evolution of a group of people as an identifiable social entity is inevitably open to interpretation; and we in Sierra Leone are always grateful to outsiders who point out aspects of our history that need looking into. In this particular case I do not entirely agree with the submission made by the authors, and I shall be replying to them in the course of this article.

The streets of Kankossa's busy daily market often ring with laughter as female vegetable vendors joke with each other and passersby. This joking comes at a time when gender roles are shifting in Mauritania since it has become challenging for many men to provide for their families, causing women to take on roles as significant income earners. Likewise, as slavery has diminished over the last century, Ḥarāṭīn, a group consisting of ex-slaves or descendants of slaves, have been negotiating their places in the polity. To gain insight into the shifting social order, this article analyses examples of joking by Ḥarāṭīn market women who in this way engage with issues of gender and the social hierarchy. The social space of the market is a critical setting for such practices since it both facilitates their occurrence and also gives women's words weight because they are spoken in the presence of an audience. While jokes are always ambiguous, women's joking in front of others in this space makes their jokes bite, thus enabling them to give voice to deeply personal anxieties and make sense of changes in the social order.

This essay presents Lanrewaju Adepọju, whose work and ideas have been very influential on contemporary Yoruba poetry, as a local intellectual. In estimating his contribution to modernising ewì, an open poetic form that inhabits the interface between the oral and the written, the essay draws on biographical information, an extensive personal interview and relevant textual illustration. It correlates Adepọju's vision of poetry with the development of his creative consciousness and draws attention to aspects of his poetics and politically implicated poetry that deserve closer engagement. The article also offers a translation of a sample poem by Adepọju, while the online version of the essay offers more of his poems as well as an interview.

Recent economic and socio-political dynamics in the territories that form Equatorial Guinea are related, in different ways, to the extraction of hydrocarbons from its Exclusive Economic Zone since the mid-1990s. These transformations are strongly mediated by specific social groups, especially the family that has held power since 1968 and transnational oil companies, whose relationships are central to the exclusive political configuration in the country. The article analyses this particular form of extraversion of power as part of a broader history of the region, in which the role of the state's sovereignty as articulated during decolonization is shown to be instrumental in the allocation of rights and the political economy of oil today. The article also discusses the spaces that the new political economy of oil has opened for alternative transnational connections around the country.

Le peuple qui se nomme lui-même ‘Afar occupe entre la mer Rouge et le golfe d'Aden d'une part, et les premières pentes du plateau Abyssin d'autre part, un triangle dont les sommets sont en gros Obok, le pont du Chemin de Fer Franco-Éthiopien sur la rivière Awâch, et la pointe nord de la péninsule du Bôri, au sud-est de Massawa. La superficie en est voisine de 150.000 kilomètres carrés.

Many strategies of rural development in Africa propose greater reliance on local institutions (Girard 1963; Seibel and Massing 1974; The World Bank 1975: 33–40; Tall 1976). Sometimes these proposals are primarily political rhetoric (Migot-Adholle 1970; Cliffe 1970); but they may, on the contrary, genuinely take account of rural social organization and history (Hamer 1967; Magid 1972; 1976: 154-69). Despite their merits, such proposals often fail to consider sufficiently the changing social and economic bases of rural institutions. One factor which deserves more emphasis is the dependence of rural dwellers on wider economic forces. As producers of cash crops, purchasers of imported goods, and suppliers of wage labour, rural Africans are integrated into the national and ultimately international economy. Integration and dependence are facilitated and encouraged by numerous government policies. Peasants are increasingly drawn to the cities by the symbiotic, subordinate relation of rural villages to the urban capitalist export sector, whose interests require a supply of cheap labour (Amin 1974a; 1974b; Meillassoux 1975; Seidman 1974) and predominate in the making of policy. The consequent dislocation and disintegration of rural communities limit severely the possibilities of delegating new tasks to existing rural institutions or of using them to decentralize authority, foster mass participation, or promote self-reliance.

According to G. K. Nukunya, the contemporary social organization of the Aŋlɔ Eve—a people located in the southeastern corner of the Republic of Ghana—is ‘based on a [segmentary] lineage system … generalized at a higher level in clanship.’ (Nukunya 1969:20). The clan or hlɔ is the largest social unit in the Aŋlɔ social system and is defined as a group of males and females who observe the same totems and taboos, worship the gods of the particular clans to which they belong, and who claim to be the descendants, through approximately eight to ten generations, of a common putative male ancestor. Fifteen clans, dispersed throughout the towns, villages and hamlets of Aŋlɔ are recognized by the traditional political authorities as part of the hlɔ system. They include the Lafe, Amlade, Adzovia, Bate, Like, Bame, Klevi, Tovi, Tsiame, Agave, Ame, Dzevi, Vifeme, Detsofe and Blu.