This essay considers the role of Hindi films in urban Tanzania in writing new chronologies of Indian Ocean world history. Examining films and movie theatres through overlapping local, national and transnational lenses, the article contributes to our understandings of the encounter between the Indian diaspora and nationalism in East Africa, and extends the history of Indian Ocean world connections into the second half of the twentieth century. In order to escape the historiographical dialectic between nation and diaspora which splits scholarship on Hindi films overseas, cinema needs to be denationalized, and everyday social histories of urban cinema halls can then be framed within the Indian Ocean world. To do so successfully, however, we must challenge scholarship which asserts the collapse of this world in the early modern or colonial period (at the latest), in order to extend an Indian Ocean scale to capture the vibrant twentieth-century creation of a regional popular culture. The history of Bombay films in urban Tanzania thus enables a viewing of the transnational production of culture, and the ways in which cross-cultural flows are part of the construction of important categories like race and nationalism across the history of East Africa.

The way in which people approach ill health and its relief is often explained as a function of pragmatic evaluation. Through looking at a case of illness in the family of David Kaso, a Baptist pastor living in rural Malawi, this article suggests that trust or faithfulness may be more appropriate terms with which to describe people's approaches to healing and their social antecedents and outcomes. Pentecostal churches had grown in influence in the area where the churches David led were located. Pentecostal leaders often emphasized that experiencing divine healing, or successfully bringing it about, were the results of the ‘work’ that Christians did for God. David and his congregants recognized the difficult questions this perspective could raise about their status in church and emphasized instead that healing happened in God's ‘grace’, largely irrespective of the actions of the Christian. This being the case, the efficacy of prayer as a way of bringing about healing could not really be tested nor, as a corollary, could the outcome of prayer for healing stand as a proxy for evaluating the Christian. The uncertainties David and his church members admitted over healing meant that the basis of their relationships was better described in terms of trust or faithfulness than pragmatism.

I look at the image of a generation of youth as the vanguard force of an ongoing struggle for independence and a new nation on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Ivorian independence. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of Reinhart Koselleck, I explore the making of national time as layered temporality, with generations not succeeding each other but rather coexisting. My analysis of expressions and performances of ‘doing being youth’ helps in understanding how the label ‘youth’ is used to mark membership in or exclusion from a collective. I examine the process of how ‘youth’ is made into a meaningful marker and how and why political actors engage in performances of ‘being youth’. I embed this analysis in a genealogy of the nation as a metaphoric kin group and examine the ways in which Ivorians belong to and actively create ‘generations’, referring to independence as a lieu de mémoire. The paper explores the cultural expressions of contemporary Ivorian politics and analyses performances of the past in the present and the positions young people may take or are given in the nation's past, present and future.

Translated from the Portuguese expression arquivo morto, the dead archive is a site where files that have lost their procedural validity are stored for a determined number of years before they are destroyed or are sent to permanent archives. In Mozambique, where awareness and institutional capacity for proper archival procedures are still being developed, a common feature of the dead archive is the way in which files are untidily piled up with old typewriters, furniture, spare parts and other material debris of bureaucratic work and administration. In these archives, more than forty years of institutional and public memory lie ignored in leaky, damp basements across the country and in serious danger of irreparable damage. Drawing from various stints of historical and anthropological field research conducted between 2009 and 2016 in Maputo, Niassa and Inhambane provinces, this article examines the dead archive in order to explore the relationship between institutional memory and governance during the long period of austerity in Mozambique. Based on our investigation of the multiple layers of the dead archive, we argue that the Mozambican post-socialist government has sought to control institutional memory as a way to keep the ruling party in power in the context of multiparty politics. While the public sector has experienced conditions of austerity since independence, we show how, during the socialist period (1975–90) of single-party rule, the state's relationship with institutional memory was more progressive, with transparent and communicative archival practices. In contrast, despite the combination of public sector reforms and progressive legislation regarding the right to information, the multiparty democratic period (1990 to the present) has seen an exacerbation of administrative secrecy leading to less transparent and communicative archival practices.

The movement of school teachers to primary and secondary schools around South Africa and its Bantustans in the early and mid-1970s was an intentional part of the project of propagating Black Consciousness to school learners during this period. The movement of these educators played a key role in their ability to spread Black Consciousness philosophy, and in the political forms and methods they chose in teaching it. These were shaped by their own political conscientization and training in ethnically segregated colleges, but also in large part by the social realities of the areas to which they moved. Their efforts not only laid the foundation for Black Consciousness organization in communities across South Africa, they also influenced student and youth mechanisms for political action beyond the scope of Black Consciousness politics. This article explores three case studies of teachers who studied at the University of the North (Turfloop) and their trajectories after leaving university. All of these teachers moved to Turfloop as students, and then away from it thereafter. The article argues that this pattern of movement, which was a direct result of apartheid restrictions on where black South Africans could live, study and work, shaped the knowledge they transmitted in their classrooms, and thus influenced the political consciousness of a new generation.

Although the term culture contact implies the existence of several cultures in mutual contact with one another, the African anthropologist is primarily interested in the one-sided effect of European or Asiatic culture upon native African culture. The opposite influence of Africa on Europe and Asia in Africa he can for his purposes discard with a brief survey of those factors that in turn affect the native contact situation, such as the influence of native labour on the system of European farming, or the specific social and economic attitude which the existence of a large native majority calls forth among the European and Indian minorities.

Une Yoruba de la ville de Meko en territoire Ketu-Yoruba, dans l'ouest du Nigéria a donné, en Janvier 1951, une interview aux anthropologues William R. Bascom et Paul Merrier dans laquelle elle raconta sa vie de servante, au palais Simboji au Dahomey, quelque soixante ans arrière. Cette conversation est rapportée par l'auteur de l'article dans le cadre de la commémoration, en 1992, du centième d'anniversaire de la destruction d'Abomey. Cette servant eut deux maîtresses, l'une et l'autre du même rang, l'une se suicida à la mort de Glele; l'autre, elle la servit durant tout le règne de Béhanzin, au temps de la guerre contre les Français conduite par le Général Dodds et de l'exil dans le nord du royaume jusqu'à la reddition du roi. A son retour elle fut témoin de la mise en cage du roi avant son exil. Elle donna des informations encore inconnues sur le rang des épouses royales, comment on les rangeait en groupes, les cris qui annonçaient leur approche lorsqu'elles sortaient du palais. L'article se termine par des notes identifiant les lieux qu'elle mentionna, rassemblant des noms Fon et Yoruba et reliant son histoire aux récits déjà publiés de ces événements.

Princess Bahashule, daughter of the late King Bunu, was close on thirty and not yet married. No one, however, thought of calling her a saliwakati (unwanted woman). Late marriage was the privilege of her rank and Bunu's eldest daughter Ladluli was also single. This had not prevented them from having lovers; indeed Bahashule already had a child by a commoner. Both Bahashule's own parents were dead, and she lived at Zombodze, the former capital of the Swazi nation. She was on good terms with Sobhuza, the king (her half-brother), and the ruling queen-mothrr (her ‘big mother’) and frequently came to stay with them.

The existence of the country and people of the Gurage in Ethiopia has long been known in Europe from the writings of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. A few references to the Gurage may also be found in Ludolf's Historia Aethiopica (1681), and Bruce's Travels (vol. iv, pp. 147 et seq.) contain some amusing accounts of Gurage activities. Bruce thought they were ‘troglodytes and all robbers; their constant occupation is attending the Abyssinian camps, and stealing horses, mules, or whatever they can get, which they do in a very singular manner’. He then describes such a Gurage robbery in some detail and remarks that when the culprit was finally apprehended, he was found to speak ‘the Amharic language as well as his own, contrary to what the villain had all along pretended’.

Since the mass violence committed by Katangese against non-natives – mostly Kasaians – in the early 1990s in the Katanga province (Democratic Republic of Congo), Katangese and Kasaians have eschewed subjects relating to the past violence in their daily interactions. However, during the November 2011 presidential and legislative election period, expressions linked to the past violence, such as ‘This time, you will go back home by foot’ or ‘This time, you will not drive us out. We will fight’, were common. The paper documents and analyses how Kasaians and Katangese dealt with the memory of the violence during this election period, in Likasi and Kolwezi, two cities particularly affected by violence. Based on qualitative fieldwork research conducted between November 2011 and January 2012, the paper understands the November 2011 election as being a crisis situation informed by the fear of a violent outbreak in the event of the victory of Etienne Tshisekedi, leader of the opposition and a Kasaian. This crisis situation led to the simplification and polarization of collective identities: whether friend, neighbour or colleague, a person was perceived only as a Kasaian or a Katangese. In such a context, routine practices of coexistence based on self-censorship and avoidance tended to disappear.

This article revisits S.F. Nadel's study on land tenure in highland Eritrea from the mid‐1940s, and presents the current framework of the communal land tenure system of meret shehena. Under the meret shehena system, all land under the domain of the village is perceived as the common property of the village inhabitants. To restrict outsiders access to land, habitation rights (tisha) to the villages is guided by agnatic descent, and individuals obtain usufruct rights to land through residence in the village. The article proves that since Nadel's study almost sixty years ago, descent rules defining habitation rights have been changed, in order to restrict distant descendants returning to the village and claiming their land rights. Nevertheless, the overall workings of the system that redistributes all shehena land every seventh year to the village inhabitants, shows a remarkable resemblance to the observations made by Nadel. It appears that the customary operational guidelines of the system are virtually unaffected by wars and political turbulence during the last fifty years, following the core principle that each male adult individual with habitation rights (tisha) who marries and establishes a separate household, will be entitled to an equal share (gibri) of the village land, in order to secure the livelihood of all household members.

In Sierra Leone, transactional relationships – so-called agreement relationships – have a life-course dimension. Not only are they employed by young people but they are equally important among elders, and they serve different purposes as people age. Long-term ethnographic research with the elderly uncovers that they remember the past and engage with the present through agreement relationships. The elders’ love and life histories from the 1930s to today form ‘accumulated history’. They reveal a shift from kin-based rural hierarchies, where agreement relationships were carefully concealed, to larger, more dynamic urban networks that are openly held together through such relations. Leaving the former and finding one's feet in the latter become possible through transactional relationships that provide alternatives to fosterage and strategies of fictive or aspirational kin. The case of Sierra Leone invites us to rethink the focus on transactional relationships at a specific point in time for a life-course perspective that reveals the enduring nature of the phenomenon and sheds light on its changing texture in individual biographies, with the potential for capturing large-scale social trajectories within and across countries.

The Tiv, a semi-Bantu people numbering some 800,000 who live in the middle Benue Valley of Northern Nigeria, have not, according to their tradition, always lived in their present location. They account for their entrance into the territory they now occupy and the disposition of the lineages into which they are organized by means of stories which depict events of their migrations.

Tiv from every part of Tivland know bits and pieces of myth, relevant to their own lineages and those nearby, which they consider to be parts of the story of their descent (msen) from the hills. The stories vary from area to area, from individual to individual, and from situation to situation. In spite of the fact that the size of the population and its wide dispersal militate against anyone's knowing all these stories, it is an article of Tiv faith that it would be possible to correlate them all into a narrative.

L'article argumente que les grandes transformations économiques qui sont apparues dans la société Kipsigis, et plus spécifiquement depuis le début de ce siècle, ont fondamentalement changé les liens que les femmes créent entre elles au niveau local, en dehors de la famille la plus proche et le ménage. La façon dont les femmes vivent et travaillent ensemble, en tant qu'épouses et mères, a changé dans un sens qui mine sérieusement les sanctions collectives de solidarité féminine à travers les ménages. Dans ce procés de changement les manieres indigènes de s'associer des femmes se sont développés vers d'autres formes, et de nouvelles organisations féminines ont vu le jour avec le soutien ‘de l'exterieur’. L'article regarde surtout les changements dans les efforts de coöpération, traditionellement entrepris par les femmes Kipsigis. L'article se concentre principalement sur les groupes de travail des femmes au niveau des quartiers, mais examine également d'autres et plus récents groupes et organisations au niveau local, qui s'occupent de divers aspects de la vie des femmes.

Because the African continent looks a solid block, and because most of its inhabitants are dark-skinned and woolly-haired, we are apt to treat it as if it were really homogeneous and devise some general plan for governing and educating the whole. For in one and the same man one rarely finds the capacity for both the wide and the detailed view. But how vastly different in character, customs, capacity, and life are the innumerable tribes and nations which make up Africa. Even in such a comparatively small area as Kenya, after grouping together the more similar tribes there are quite a number of divisions which, if the true interests of the people are not to be sacrificed, should have different treatment. Their future development will be different, and it is neither wise nor humane to attempt to coerce them all to a pattern, a pattern devised by a race so totally different, and without the requisite knowledge to consider what is truly best for each group of people, especially from its own point of view.

Mit dem Terminus hamitisch im sprachwissenschaftlichen Sinne bezeichnet man seit Richard Lepsius eine Reihe afrikanischer Sprachgruppen, die charakteristische Erscheinungen mit dem Semitischen teilen. Bei Lepsius fungiert das grammatische Geschlecht als Hauptkriterium, ob eine afrikanische Sprache hamitisch sei oder nicht, und diese Unterscheidung trifft in der Tat überall dort zu, wo es alle Nomina umfasst und der Begriff ‘Männlich-Weiblich’ über ‘Gross-Klein’ dominiert. Als nichthamitisch erweist sich in diesem Sinne das Masai, wo en-duηani, das Femininum von ol-tuηani, ‘Mann’, nicht das ‘Weib’, sondern den ‘kleinen Mann’ bezeichnet. Dem-gegenüber ist Leo Reinisch, dessen hohe Verdienste in einer anderen Richtung liegen, nie zu einer Erkenntnis des inneren Gegensatzes zwischen dem Hamitischen, dem Nuba und den Nilotensprachen gekommen. Die Basis der modernen Hamitenforschung bildet Carl Meinhofs Werk über Die Sprachen der Hamiten, das erstmalig eine Scheidung der Sprachenwelt des nigritischen Afrikas von den Sprachen der hellen, lockenhaarigen Afrikaner bietet; diesem Prinzip zuliebe wurde allerdings auch das Ful (von Meinhof selbst dem Urbantu nahestehend gedacht) und wegen des grammatischen Geschlechtes auch das Masai in den Kreis der Betrachtung miteinbezogen, wodurch der Rahmen als zu weit gefasst erscheint. Dieser Umstand, noch mehr aber hemmungsloses Etymologisieren von semitistisch-ägyptologischer Seite haben denn auch Carl Brockelmann veranlasst, die Existenz eines hamitischen Sprachstammes überhaupt in Frage zu stellen. Nachdem aber Ernst Zyhlarz in seiner Arbeit über ‘Ursprung und Sprachcharakter des Altägyptischen’ die Schlüsselstellung des Ägyptischen in den Vordergrund gerückt hat, sei es im folgenden versucht, eine gedrängte Darstellung der Hamitenfrage nach dem gegenwärtigen Stande zu geben.

Frank Willett, in scrutiny of the evidence cited by M. D. W. Jeffreys to support the hypothesis of pre-Columbian maize in Africa, has helpfully reopened the controversy concerning the introduction of maize to tropical Africa, but on three points he curiously comes dangerously close to committing the major error he shows Jeffreys to be guilty of, viz., drawing ‘…on all manner of evidence, with more industry than discretion…’.

There are great and striking differences between the art products of Benin and those of the Yoruba towns through which one passes on the way across country to that city. Efforts to find woodcarvers or brass-founders at, for instance, Ibadan were in vain, in spite of the co-operation of the Resident, Mr. Ward-Price, to whom I am also indebted for general assistance on my journey. The native arts and crafts of Benin, in comparison with those of the Yoruba towns, are still in a highly nourishing condition; the wood-carvers in particular were fully occupied. Again and again I came across altars for ancestor worship, images, carved doors, &c., which have been made during the last few score years. They show a wealth of pagan artistic skill of a high order which is most impressive, especially in contrast with the stagnation at such places as Ibadan and Ife, and is even more astonishing, as Benin was overwhelmed by a catastrophe from which one might have expected that it would never recover. A British punitive expedition conquered the city and dethroned the king in 1897 and an extensive fire burnt down the whole place. At this time most of the Benin bronze work came to Europe. Of the older products only a few were left in their original home. Consequently the art of new Benin has been built up again on a tabula rasa. But the work of these forty years is plentiful enough. One has the impression that Benin is determined to make good the colossal damage that was done to it.