Since the work of Durkheim and Mauss on systems of classification, it has generally been recognized that there is some structural relationship or ‘concordance’ between the social and symbolic orders of any society. The present analysis establishes a system of dual symbolic classification for an East Africa people and further indicates the widespread incidence of this type of classification in Africa (cf. Needham, 1960a; Beidelman, 1961; Wieschhoff, 1938; Werner, 1904; Evans-Pritchard, 1953, 1956; and others). It also provides a closer ethnographic comparison with the neighbouring matrilineal Kaguru, with whom Gogo share some linguistic and cultural features, and whose system of symbolic classification has been described by Beidelman (1961).

The pantheon of African national heroes houses a man forgotten by recent African history. He is Blaise Diagne, who became the first Negro African deputy of the French parliament by winning an unusual election in Senegal on 10 May 1914. This success not only launched Diagne upon a distinguished career of public service but also marked the beginning of African participation in modern politics in Senegal. Diagne, who was an incipient nationalist, broke the French and Creole domination of Senegalese representative institutions, introduced new campaign techniques and political methods, and gave a sense of purpose and unity to a badly divided African electorate. He was allowed to keep his parliamentary seat, despite attacks from many quarters, and thereby gave the French assimilationist theory its highest expression. He initiated a pattern of African involvement in metropolitan affairs that characterized French-speaking African politics for the next two generations; he set a style and created a mystique which inspired later African politicians; he can be called with great justice the precursor of modern African politics.

Like many other peoples, the Tswana of Bechuanaland Protectorate often cite proverbs and similar sayings to specify rules of conduct. In this paper I discuss a number of those generally used in the context of litigation; some are statements of general principles, akin to the ‘maxims’ of Roman law, others relate more particularly to judicial procedure. Many were actually quoted at trials witnessed by myself or recorded by clerks of tribal courts, the rest were mentioned incidentally by informants when discussing points of Tswana law. The great majority are classed by the people themselves as ‘proverbs’ (diane, sing. seane), and some of these (though not all) are included in the collections of Tswana proverbs published by Plaatje and Seboni; others were introduced simply by some such phrase as Molao ware, ‘The law says’, or Kamokgwa waSetswana, ‘According to Tswana custom’. Since I am not here concerned with their linguistic aspects, I do not attempt to distinguish recognized proverbs from other kinds of maxim.

En 1887, A. H. Post publiait son ouvrage intitulé Afrikanische Jurisprudenz—Ethnologisch-juristisch Beiträge zur Kenntniss der einheimischen Rechte Afrikas. L'Afrique semblait ainsi entrer de plein pied dans la science juridique moderne. En réalité, il n'en était rien, car davantage que son titre, le sous-titre de l'œuvre était caractéristique d'une orientation qui devait être celle de la science juridique africaine au cours des décennies ultérieures. Au cours de cette période, qui s'étend jusqu'à l'époque des premières indépendances africaines, ce qui aurait pu être le droit africain sera la juxtaposition de deux systèmes juridiques totalement distincts, celui du colonisé et celui du colonisateur, le premier nommé étant le plus souvent qualifié d'indigène (native) ou de coutumier (customary).

In his Frazer Lecture of 1952, Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa (1954), Professor Max Gluckman considers certain types of ritual behaviour as institutionalized expressions of rebellion against authority. He maintains that this expression is an important function of such ritual. The following quotations present the gist of his interpretation:

I shall therefore consider the social components of ceremonies, analogous to those which concerned Frazer, among the South-Eastern Bantu.…Here there are…performed, as elsewhere in Africa, national and local ceremonies at the break of the rains, sowing, first fruits, and harvest.…But whatever the ostensible purpose of the ceremonies, a most striking feature of their organization is the way in which they openly express social tensions. Women have to assert license and dominance as against their formal subordination to men, princes have to behave to the kings as if they covet the throne, and subjects openly state their resentment of authority. Hence I call them rituals of rebellion. I shall argue that some ritual rebellions proceed within an established distribution of power, and not about the structure of the system itself. This allows for instituted protest, and in complex ways renews the unity of the system (1954, p. 3).

We are here confronted with a cultural mechanism which challenges study by sociologists, psychologists, and biologists, the analysis in detail of the process by which this acting of conflict achieves a blessing—social unity. Clearly we are dealing with the general problem of catharsis set by Aristotle … the purging of emotion through ‘pity, fear and inspiration’. Here I attempt only to analyze the sociological setting of the process (1954, p. 20).

In his important pioneering study of migrations into Ghana, Rouch makes the observation that different tribal groups of migrants organize themselves differently in the foreign towns to which they migrate. The forms of their organization fall into a continuum between two extremes. At the one end are migrants who form only segmental, temporary, tribal groupings. At the other end are migrants who form autonomous, multi-purposive, tribal communities. Banton makes a similar observation in his study of migrants in Freetown. Neither Rouch nor Banton analyses this difference in detail, though both tend to explain it in terms of differences in tribal traditional culture.

For many social anthropologists the problem of divine kingship was solved in 1948 when Professor Evans-Pritchard, in a well-known Frazer Lecture, put a respectably structural interpretation on the facts of the Shilluk case. Divine kingship in Africa was rather an embarrassment because the central tenet of its doctrine—that the king must be killed when he fell sick or grew senile—was usually beyond empirical verification. There was also perhaps some reluctance to accept the explanatory theories of Sir J. G. Frazer when in so many other respects his authority had long since been overthrown. In a single essay Evans-Pritchard appeared to have effectively slain both the problem and its discoverer. Such problems and such intellectual kings, however, have a way of rising from the dead. In this paper I resuscitate in part Frazer's theory of divine kingship and try to show that it illuminates important aspects of the problem which are ignored by the structuralist interpretation. With reference to a single example of divine kingship, that of the Jukun of Northern Nigeria, I utilize two familiar conceptual distinctions—person/office and political/ritual. Complementary to these, and perhaps even more analytically fruitful, is the man-god dichotomy which was one of Frazer's main preoccupations.

To the Yoruba, divination is of great concern, as the means by which they discover and hope to influence the changes in their relationships with the gods and ancestors and other spirits in their complex cosmos, and so to gain their aid in their pursuit of health and good fortune. They employ a number of divinatory techniques. The one that yields the fullest information is the system of geomancy known as Ifa, for which there are three procedures of varying complexity, the two most complex being used by professional diviners (babalawo). The Ifa oracle is animated by a deity named Orunmila, but also often called Ifa.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the production and settlement system of the Bantu-speaking Turu of central Tanzania and to discuss its effects on the social system. Save for certain other peoples of this area who are historically close to the Turu, the practice of manuring of land and strictly sedentary settlement without slash-and-burn horticultural techniques or bush fallowing (except as ancillary to the main production processes) are an unusual combination in Africa.

In a recent paper Mr. C. K. Cooke, F.S.A., discusses the questions of the introduction of sheep into Africa and their arrival in southern Africa (Cooke, 1965).

Mr Cooke quotes Zeuner's conclusion (Zeuner, 1963) ‘that the first sheep in Africa were screw-horned hair sheep from Turkestan or Persia which reached lower Egypt about 5000 B.C. and Khartoum by 3300 B.C. This breed disappeared with the Middle Kingdom when it was replaced by a wool sheep and the fat-tailed sheep reached Africa only from the Roman period.’ Zeuner further asserts that

One breed of sheep descended from the Egyptian hair-sheep had reached South-West Africa before the arrival of the Europeans. In these animals the profile is convex, the eyes are placed high on the skull and close to the drooping ears. The rams carry thick horns and a long ruff on the throat.

Ce conte a été enregistré, transcrit, traduit et présenté sous les auspices du Centre Fédéral Linguistique et Culturel de Yaoundé (Cameroun) et grâce à une subvention de l'Institut International Africain. Après un rapide commentaire, nous le donnons sous la version française d'abord et ensuite sous sa version Eton avec une traduction linéaire.

This paper analyses factors affecting the variable character of urban marriage patterns in the predominantly African city ward of Kampala East, Uganda. Kampala city comprises two other wards, both of which accommodate considerable proportions of Asians and Europeans. Skirting the west and south of the city is the Kibuga, meaning capital in the local vernacular, Luganda. The Kibuga, like Kampala East, is also predominantly African. The city and Kibuga are administratively and culturally highly distinct. The city has its own council and is the nation's capital. The Kibuga is the capital of the quasi-autonomous kingdom of Buganda. The latter is alternatively a province of Uganda.

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).

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.

The religious government and society of contemporary Northern Nigeria have their historical roots in a jihād (Muslim holy war) which was waged there in the first decade of the nineteenth century. The leader of thai jihād, Usuman dan Fodio, sought to establish a Muslim form of government over the Hausa city-states of what is now Northern Nigeria; his movement had the effect of replacing most of the nonorthodox, and in some cases non-Muslim, Hausa rulers with orthodox Muslims who, like himself, were Fulani.

In the concluding paragraphs of Part I of this article it was pointed out that in addition to its judicial functions the Poro society possessed some important powers of administration. On the other hand, there was also evidence to suggest that the society carried on this wide range of activities, amounting almost to government of the country, as an instrument of the chiefs.