The Azande are a Central African ethnic complex to which some fifty different peoples, speaking Sudanic, Bantu, Nilotic, and Nilo-Hamitic languages, have contributed. This was brought about by the migrations and conquests of the Ambomu people, under their Vongara ruling family, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the course of them the Mbomu clans, including the Avongara, were scattered far and wide, and everywhere they imposed on the subjugated peoples their language and political institutions, so that these peoples, some more quickly, and some more completely, than others, became, or are in the process of becoming, absorbed in the Zande amalgam. Little by little their languages are forgotten and their distinctive customs fall into desuetude. But, as might be supposed, in the process of assimilation to the dominant Ambomu, the foreign peoples, both the subjugated and those bordering Zandeland, contributed much to Zande culture. This paper is designed to give some indication of the extent to which the Ambomu have taken over foreign usages and of the complexity of the cultural amalgam which these borrowings have brought about.

This historical reconnaissance is not concerned with the economic consequences of direct taxation or its relation to the dogma of colonial self-sufficiency but rather with what McPhee calls its ‘political, moral and social nature’. A revenue system reflects not only the circumstances in which the authority of governments is exercised, but some of its ideal premisses—a truism which can be illustrated from the tax history of British West Africa in general and by the comparison of the Northern and Southern Nigerian systems before the post-Amalgamation reforms of Lugard and his successors. Since direct taxation is an aspect of colonial administration which affects members of a tribal society regularly and generally and demands a voluntary or enforced accommodation, its study in a particular tribal area may provide some useful insights to students of social change. Where the tribal society already has a system of tribute or provisioning, the introduction of a different system presents the colonial Government's native agents with problems of reinterpretation as well as procedure.

Interest in African sacred kingship has for long been centred upon its ritual aspects; descriptions of highly colourful ceremonies have provided a convenient introduction to the study of a people's religious beliefs, yielding also examples of the ritual sanctions by which the ruler enforces obedience. As a result the constitutional aspects of kingship have been largely ignored.

The purpose of this study is to consider some of the changes that have taken place in the positions of political officials and in the administrative hierarchy of the Temne of Sierra Leone, British West Africa. The time period under concern extends from approximately 1880, towards the end of the ‘tribal wars’, as they are called by the Temne, through the establishment of the Protectorate and the later introduction of the Native Administration system, to the ‘disturbances in the Provinces’, November 1955 to March 1956.

In this paper I describe the band organization of the !Kung Bushmen. The !Kung word n//a besi was translated by the interpreters as ‘people who live together’. I use the word band for n//a besi, meaning by band, in this connexion, the grouping in !Kung social organization which is above the family grouping. It is a grouping precisely of the people who live together.

In his admirable study of the Mugwe, a religious dignitary among the Meru of Kenya, Bernardi reports a singular fact which raises a problem of comparative and theoretical interest: viz. that the left hand of the Mugwe possesses and symbolizes his ritual power. The issue is best seen, to begin with, in the following passage:

Among the Imenti [a sub-tribe] an unusual aspect of the people's conception of the Mugwe concerns his left hand. It is this hand…that should always hold the kiragu [insignia] and be used only to bless. It is a most sacred member of the Mugwe's body and no one is allowed to see it. During the day, the Mugwe spends his time playing kiothi, the Meru draughts, but even while he plays, he must always keep his left hand covered and no one must see it. Sudden death would overtake anyone who dared to look at the left hand of the Mugwe.

Children's paintings are interesting for what they tell us about children's perceptions of and feelings about their universe, and the choice and presentation of subject-matter within the paintings can be indicative of early socialization and of attitudes and values of the children. Such projective material is thus useful in providing hypotheses regarding the social backgrounds of those who produced them, and in relating personality traits exhibited to already established culture patternings in the lives of the authors. Paintings of children who are living in a period of social change can also be suggestive of changes in culture patterns and of the presence or absence of culture conflict in the change situation.

The jubilee of the World Missionary Conference, which was held at Edinburgh in June 1910, should be noticed by students of Africa, since it brought into prominence for the first time, as one of its two secretaries, a man who was to have considerable influence on African affairs and was the first Administrative Director of the International African Institute. This was J. H. Oldham who had been briefly a missionary in India and then secretary of the Missionary Study Council of the United Free Church of Scotland. ‘The conspicuous ability’ he showed in the organization and running of the great conference led to his subsequent appointment as full-time secretary of the Continuation Committee, which was set up to maintain the work of the conference and which became in 1921 the International Missionary Council. In this post, and as the first editor of the International Review of Missions, Oldham was in constant and daily touch with mission affairs from the whole world. He was, in fact, beginning a long career as a missionary statesman, with, from the First World War, his headquarters at Edinburgh House in London. In negotiating then with the Government over German missionaries and their property in India and the British African territories, Oldham began to build up a fund of goodwill in the official world.

The certainty of the individual's extinction as a human being contradicts so outrageously the value and effort of living that most cultures minimize the confrontation with this certainty, or cushion it with assurances of some form of immortality. I am going to describe some of the ways in which the Yoruba express their fear of death, and the response they make to it, especially through their traditional religion, which is still the religion of a good proportion of the five million Yoruba in South-West Nigeria and Southern Dahomey. These examples show the wide range of their attempts to cope with this recurrent fear.

(1) Sr. Rita-Ferreira disagrees with the ‘cultural identification’ which I am said to make between Thonga and Chopi. I cannot imagine what he disagrees about since my text merely states that Thonga and Chopi are ‘ethno-linguistically related’, which is, of course, irrefutable. (2) He claims that I dismiss the principles of agnatic kinship solidarity and the obligation of senior sons on behalf of the welfare of junior sons. The reader is given the impression that I argue that such norms do not exist, when in fact, the only issue in the text is the extent to which actual behaviour corresponds to the ideal principles. Apparently, Rita-Ferreira is not acquainted with the concepts of ideal and actual culture. (3) He says that I do not hesitate to contradict Junod on point (2) while I give no evidence from other reliable sources. Those who have not seen my article will no doubt be surprised to learn that my evidence consists of citations and quotes from Junod. (4) Rita-Ferreira's readers cannot help but gain the impression that I am ignorant of the basic similarity between Thonga social organization and that of other South-eastern Bantu peoples. Nothing in my text entitles Sr. Rita-Ferreira to harbour such illusions, especially since the sources which he uses to correct me are to be found in my own list of references.

Studies on the Bantu of south-east Africa by American anthropologists are rare. For this reason visits such as that of Dr. Marvin Harris of Columbia University to Moçambique should be welcomed.

However, on reading his paper on the political and cultural factors of the migratory labour of the Thonga his data seem incomplete and the inferences therefrom not altogether correct. He chose a social process of extreme complexity, and for it to be completely understood it is necessary to undertake more research on its correlations and implications, and to observe it in a broader perspective, taking into account geographical, historical, ecological, cultural, political, and economic peculiarities of this whole region of Africa. In the following comments I shall try not to become involved in moral or political issues but to observe the migratory process as objectively as possible.

This paper describes the infancy, childhood, adolescence, and marriage customs of the Efik of Creek Town, Calabar Province, Nigeria.

In former times, when polygyny was widespread, the husband was expected to have coition with his wives unless he was ill or the wives were either menstruating or nursing a child. Although he might have coition with any wife during the day, he was expected to sleep in strict rotation with the wives at night in order to prevent quarrelling and jealousy. If he possessed only three wives, a weekly rotation called urua mbri ebe, ‘weekly mat of the husband’, was expected, while a man with two wives performed ɔfiɔŋ mbri ebe, ‘monthly mat of the husband’. If he possessed several wives the husband followed usen mbri ebe, ‘daily mat of the husband’. The one with whom he slept prepared his food and bath water, and washed his clothes. Efik nicknamed wives iban ufip, ‘jealous women’, because of their frequent quarrels and feuds.

The Mambila social structure, unlike the majority of those studied in West Africa, is characterized by the presence of kinship groups with corporate functions which are not unilineal. All members of these units claim descent from a common male ancestor or his sibling, but descent may be traced through males, females, and in some cases through links including both sexes. A knowledge of the changes in both the traditional and present marriage practices is essential for obtaining an understanding of this kinship system. Changes in the two principal Mambila kinship groups—the memin and the man—over the past three or four decades will also be analysed.

The Yoruba Ogboni cult has been referred to as a typical ‘secret society’ for over fifty years, yet it has never been described in any detail, or analysed in accurate general terms. Frobenius discovered its controlling importance in Yoruba religious organization in 1910 and promptly became initiated into the Ibadan Ogboni, but only to get information from the priests of other Yoruba cults. He made no attempt to study the beliefs of Ogboni members, whom he dismissed as ‘mystery-mongering greybeards’. Two anthropologists have been initiated into the cult in the course of the last twenty-five years, but have declared themselves bound by its oath of secrecy, and so have published nothing about it.

I do not know if anyone has ever tried to see if classical Greek poetry can be translated into any African language, but I had always felt that such an experiment would be worth trying. Some years ago, therefore, I made my first attempt by translating the Antigone of Sophocles into Twi, one of the principal languages in Ghana. It was then that I discovered the possibilities of the Twi language as a medium for translating a classical Greek poet. I accordingly decided to embark on a more ambitious enterprise by translating the whole of the Odyssey into Twi prose, with a view to publishing either the whole or part of the translation. I chose for this purpose the story of the wanderings of Odysseus from Book VIII, line 461, to the end of the twelfth book. This was published in 1957, and the rest of the work was completed in 1958.

Many different examples of African art were made available to me while I was collecting material for a book on the subject, but my main interest was to observe systematically the way Africans work as creative artists. In order to do this, I decided to play the role of instigator and teacher while, at the same time, introducing them to a technique and art form unknown to them. I thought it would be interesting to teach them the art of etching and to see them at work as etchers.

In February 1957 we visited the homestead of Laduma Madela, member of a small Zulu clan. He belongs to the PondolweNdhlovu regiment, i.e. he was born about 1906. He had been described to us as a somewhat mysterious but particularly knowledgeable person. One of us had established preliminary contacts and gained his confidence. When we visited him for the first time, neither of us anticipated that we should meet in him a unique Zulu personality, a man who, although ‘uneducated’ in the Western sense, possesses a remarkable breadth of vision and grasp of detail concerning his own culture.

Labour migration is an outstanding feature in most contemporary African societies. It not only touches on nearly all aspects of the lives of the peoples involved, but is often the cause as well as the result of important social and cultural changes. It therefore holds a special interest for students of such changes. Here they can observe the movements of vast numbers of people, and the concomitant problems which arise with the exposure of these people to new social, political, and economic conditions. Furthermore, working with data from migrants and their home and host communities, social scientists are able to test many theoretical assumptions which are held about the nature of socio-cultural change.