STALEMATE: A STUDY OF CULTURAL DYNAMICS Thesis for the Degree of Ph. D. MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY MARTHA BUTLER BINFORD 1971 Malaga- «21..~..u. I. was.“ ’ Luna «1121/ "E Nllf‘hu-z l filer-3 0:111 army T This is to certify that the thesis entitled STALEMATE: A STUDY OF CULTURAL DYNAMICS presented by Martha Butler Binford has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Ph . D degree in AnThrOQO l 09y / . .l f!’ f\\_" ‘ / '4 ; ;‘-\4L\Q H»! ‘\ &‘-1L4 4g Major professor Date May 20, I97! 0-169 ’ is! .. . .I‘ .fo Iv. .. t _ ‘k. e. .. 1. ,LF .L nu: “1v. ‘ “a rim”? Lr “r 2' .11....3'. , . (“h Ln"? an. ' t 1 s . J“ " o [In l J '.' . {'5'- ABSTRACT STALEMATE: A STUDY OF CULTURAL DYNAMICS BY Martha Butler Binford The thesis is in two parts. The first two chapters consist of a general and descriptive ethnography of the Rjonga of Mocambique, Portuguese East Africa. Included in these chapters is a correction to Henri Junod's work done in Southern Africa. The core of the thesis is the presentation of one extended case history and an analysis of it from the theoretical orientation known as "process theory." More specifically the analysis is an excercise in cultural dynamics which is a study of the relationship of values among themselves and with other forms of behavior over time. It is assumed that there is a dynamic or active interaction among the values and between the values people say they hold and their behavior. That is, there is eggmned to be a definite relationship between what people say they should do and how they actually behave. It is m-"e: . the purpose of a study of cultural dynamics to formulate Cflfllflflg Martha Butler Binford a series of propositions which account for observed behavior by analyzing the processes involved in people's behavior. The processes which are analyzed can be classified into two major groups: those processes which belong to the loosening class and those which belong to the cor- recting class. 'Loosening' is the name given to the general class of processes which make it possible for people to behave in ways which are not in strict accordance with behavior indicated by statements of values. Cor— recting processes are those whose effect it is to bring actors to behave in accord with shared views about the behavior in question. Correcting processes make the central actor's moral status better than it was after committing a value violation and after sanctions have been brought to bear by some of his friends, kinsmen, colleagues, or associates. The analysis of a case history using these concepts enables us to investigate how a culture 'works'; it shows who the people are who do not require a strict observance of values in relation to a central actor, and why; it shows which people or grOups implement their values by bringing sanctions to bear against a transgressor, and Why. A.series of studies of this kind should allow us to ‘flmbrstand better how internal change as well as radical change occurs among a people. Martha Butler Binford In the conclusion I show that there is a reasonably close correspondence between the stated values central to the case and the actors' behaviors. In order to appreciate this fully, however, it is necessary to have reference to values and attitudes which are not central to the case but which govern behavior. Consideration of these non—central values and attitudes defines the Rjonga value hierarchy and the flexibility or inflexibility of certain values. Knowledge of these, in turn, should provide a certain degree of predictability about the course of future change and how and in what areas of life it will occur. WTE: A STUDY OF CULTURAL DYNAMICS BY \ Martha Butler Binford . . nun-w. '- A THESIS Submitted to 3 Michigan State University «ggnrtial fulfillment of the requirements ‘1 e for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 1971 - A ve———_.- r94- ___. ©copyright by m 1971 BUTLER BINFORD - JV- Wm..- _. ; ofT’L AC'e sea a 3-‘ “I To Dzre:anr14....-....."u TABLE OF CONTENTS ., "Chapter I. INTRODUCTION .. . . . . . . Vx. Theoretical Background . Cultural Dynamics . . . . ,. Some Variables . . . . . -; " Loosening and Correcting. . "A;_ _ Field and Arena. . . . . Summary . . . . . . . "g ATI. HISTORY AND POLITICAL STRUCTURE. Tribe and Territory Junod's Informants. . ,- Orthography . . . . ; ‘ Rjonga History . . . ' Climate and Soil . . Kingdom Political Structure. Village Political Structure. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. . . . . Residence. . . . . . ' Subsistence . . . . . '.. ' . Kinship Roles . . . Marriage and Divorce . . _Inheritance and Succession . ¢Dispute Settlement Procedure V-Christianity and Education . “TflIxT CHURCH AND STATE: A CASE. Ni 1 Ancestor Wbrship and the Ndangu Doctors, Diviners, and Spir ts. Portuguese Administrative Divisions 3, A .. a.” 'i‘ w 1‘ .\ DVD ,7 b l ‘ .xml‘ NW Chapter V. ANALYSIS OF THE CASE . . Procedure . Phase I . . . . . PhaSe II. Phase III Phase IV. Phase V . Phase VI. . . Subsequent Events. VI. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION LIST OF REFERENCES. . . . APPENDICES Appendix A. Valente's Case. . . . B. Kinship Diagrams . . . vii Field and Arena "At Rest" Page 199 199 200 216 242 258 288 326 346 353 362 414 416 452 LIST OF TABLES Page . flhanntlogical Order of Processes . . . . . 365 f‘ - 7‘ u f 3, Iotarswin the Field (by Phase and Episode). . 370 f ‘ in Processes Grouped by Value (Chronological). . 393 .-¥' 3. Lia-'1‘.“ ° .Jfi 1‘. 3.1919: l (a _,p .\ '50 "'OA— ‘#v rwfl:!. , Yam: Mala igc': . ' r 2"“"31 . “V; f‘ ' ‘1'”V“; eagle 1.9J' {NJ—~‘3 if": ,zQ'u i r . '31 H13 39° ‘ "“‘ f- '{'z"i.t!‘r (191'1' ' :%$I;: 5. ‘3. .. A' .JS'XIC'.“ T _ A; W. :”*..:‘m11.)"51'l_ ‘ 3"]:1 fifigo' 5 Tc. fins .1' 1:" , its, flail) uzaflv, in .W 3,“ , ., 1"“ ‘._“ "LI_“'.. 4“ .5; 1‘)" L _ '1‘. {‘Nip _A 3‘ < r . \ ' ' “*u *" s '_ 9 $ (:ITEEB 2 C - 3‘3 ': ...o .. 1. .} 2. C ' ‘ ' A: \g'J ,- " o - .4 . figu,s 1 N067 .— . tiligure . lanai; I .‘H‘ .. ., 5. . s 0 v'. 6. ~ .1“: . LIST OF FIGURES Genealogy of Mabzhaya Kings . . . . . Counties of the District of Lourenco Marques . . . . . . . . . . Genealogy of the People in the Case . . Genealogy of the People in the Case . . ‘Male Ego's Terms of Reference to Own Family (1970). . . . . . . . . . . Eemale Ego's Terms of Reference to Own I, Family (1970) c o o o o I o I Male 390' 8 Terms of Reference to Wife' 5 Family (1970) . . . . . . . . greaale Ego' 3 Terms of Reference to Husband's “ Family (1970) . . . . . . . . -EhfleflE§b's Terms of Reference to Own Family (1927)- ,. o a o o I o o o I a 57ihflflle Ego' 3 Terms of Reference to Own family (1927) . . . . . . . . fio' 3 Terms) of Reference to Wife's {Baily (1927. . . . . . . . “v ”i; ' Q? sTerms of Reference to Husband's (1927) o o O I o I a o Page 44 48 197 452 453 454 455 456 457 458 459 CHAPTER I I A' By INTRODUCTION 81;." .d: ' The purpose of this study is twofold. First I give I v ,‘ .‘Jzflqeneral and descriptive ethnography of the Rjonga of cimambique. This was necessary because there has been no 4 ‘Mensive fieldwork done in that country since Junod, a - fi. 3. ?MBs missionary, lived there at the end of the last and r‘ffgil'ebeginning of this century, and published his two volume Wraph, The Life of a South African Tribe. Given the gaggissitudes of life, I feel much better putting some of 57"" t. to this thesis. I have tried to emphasize the f . v- «*fié Eras ”process theory." More specifically this analysis ‘4' '€E:an3exercise in cultural dynamics, which will be more ’I acuity explained later in this chapter. Briefly, I will ‘3trace out the processes which occur when people implement 3 1‘l'lfilite values, beliefs, attitudes, etc., they say they hold. I gay "implement" I mean how some people make other people ' ceither adhere to their stated values or how they fail to V ~Jflo So, and what the consequences of success or failure are. This approach deals with what people say they should do ‘ ("ideal culture") and what they actually do ("real 3 culture"). It goes further and tries to identify the processes which occur in the interaction of the "ideal" and the “real," holding that these are related and affect each t‘n‘; . ,other. "u ecnsc" . ' ' Theoretical Background 9 R‘-- . .‘l‘3 30 ”' When I left the United States to go do field work was: Africa, I' was not sure whether I would be able to go to I 5 i 57 :Aque or not. In an effort to cheer myself in the ,Sdh problem I had written for the National Institutes :49 Jifhbalth was one I could take to any country and linatheiworld. It was originally designed for a Hfikgthwwitchcraft beliefs; but by the very nature of l‘ E basal used, the problem could equally well be ‘fbelief-system. 'That this was so reflects fidafitly the interests, goals, and aMbitions I - I I .‘ ‘_ . I ‘ L ‘ ‘ a. ‘ “ ‘ . - _ of anthropologists today. In a sense we seem to have come full circle. One hundred years ago an anthropologist also could have gone anywhere in the world, but his goal was largely one of description to acquaint the interested world with rare and different customs. Skipping every- thing that has happened in between we come to what is occurring today. Bohannan and Stern (A.A.A. Newsletter; 8: 1970) characterize it this way: Indeed, we have returned to the days of rags and patches, but with the notable difference that each article now is a well reasoned entity; it has an argument and a point, in contrast to mere reporting of "facts." It can be characterized as the "Suffer Your Little Theories to Come unto Me" period. Within this larger movement of "middle-level" theories as they show up in professional journals and books, there is a smaller trend which urges a renewed concern with facts. Some have labelled this scornfully as a return to nineteenth century empiricism, thereby missing the whole point of a rather more ambitious orientation in our discipline: an attempt to use a theory and methodology which makes the reporting from varied societies comparable and thus will allow, ultimately, the formulation of general propositions and "laws." That has always been the implicit aim of anthropology, as I understand it, but there is a certain reticence and modesty among its practioners on this point. A bashful smile and off-hand ‘menner accompany statements to the effect that "someday we flight be able to make general statements about the _ -‘L functioning of societies.“ The operative word seems to be “someday." Perhaps this is because some have tried to do just this and have been proven incorrect in their attempts. The word "incorrect" in this context must be taken to mean that the general laws or theories put forth did not account for all the known facts, and thus were not useful. Certainly much work has been done, and many controversies engaged in as a result, on establishing terminologies and methods of reporting which would make material from different areas comparable. But these activities seem to have taken place in sub-fields of the total discipline, or perhaps even sub-sub-fields. The so— called controversy between Gluckman and Bohannan in political and legal anthropology is a case in point (Gluckman, 1969). With increasing specialization, anthro- P010gists have tended to retreat more and more within the fortresses of their particular interests and to engage in petty duels with other inhabitants of the same fortress. It is impossible to keep abreast of the entire field; but that should not preclude attempts to continue our efforts to arrive at general theories, laws, processes, or whatever. . One of the most serious drawbacks in an attempt to fitrive at general formulations lies in the nature of the r'fififlales done. There have been very sophisticated attempts .igfiifigoviding comparable material, many of them in the "‘u.r ,_ ‘ . "’0‘ \. realm of systems theories or models (Schneider, 1965). Southall (1965: 129-133) writes in a kind of despair when he says: We cannot generalize because we lack the data. We lack the data because we have not done the fieldwork. Most social anthropologists have studied one or two socie- ties intensively. . . . They have often chosen two societies not only radically different but far apart. The result is that there are hardly any instances in which the covariation of structural elements in neighboring systems over time has been effectively studied. How much more elementary can we be? This is the crux of the structural-functional problem. His analysis of the problem continues: In the past we have had debate between the extreme positions of those who see social anthropology as an emergent natural science seeking laws and those who see it as a special kind of history documenting particular and unique sequences of events. The next phase in the dialectic should be not synchronic structural analysis of laws, nor unique history, but diachronic structural analysis through history to establish generalizations. . . . We still communicate with one another so badly that the objective can only be reached, if at all, by all the necessary material passing through a single intellect. This presupposes intensive fieldwork, in several languages, over several contiguous societies of common or intermingled proximate origin. Southall is lamenting the problems of a particular theoretical orientation, structural-functionalism. It applies, however, to all efforts in social anthropology if we are going to go beyond "a special kind of history documenting particular and unique sequences of events." Since it is patently impossible for "all the necessary material [to pass] through a single intellect," how can the problem be resolved? Should all anthropologists publish their raw field notes so that anyone can then interpret ,vL-- them according to his bias and interest? I have heard several anthropologists say that this is the only possible solution. I find this hardly feasible, if for no other reason than that few anthropologists have the time to rework others' notes since they have their own to cope with. I think we have now reached a stage in social anthropology where the work and ideas of our predecessors of the last fifty years is of sufficient excellence to enable us to see, however dimly, what the next step must be. As Southall put it, we must have facts again, but with an important difference from the facts offered us a hundred years ago. The difference lies in the assumptions we make about societies, since the ideas we hold necessarily influence the facts we collect. This is precisely how the discipline has developed to date; new theories and as- sumptions lead to different methods of collecting data, which in turn influence the theories, etc. The data we gather are the beginning and end of all of our endeavors, and changes in our thought must be related to our methods in the field. New ideas in social anthropology, stemming largely .from the situation in Africa after World War II, have shown inadequacies in the structural-functional approach. I “think the position of the new orientation, called "process .Lfyshanmy,” has often been misunderstood. It is not an cr ‘ { rempt to negate the structural-functional viewpoint, nor I see it as an effort to build on previous vgngt and go further, which is what happens in all ‘ élines. Process theorists say we must know what the 'iitructure of a society is, must be able to identify its .: minatitutions, statuses, roles, and any other patterns or regularities . RU? It is assumed that the beliefs, attitudes, values, idnstitutions, etc., of a people are positively selected 7. 'rgr. No piece of behavior exists because it is "custom"; "the behavior which the anthropologist observes and the ideas and values he infers are an active, dynamic part of the people's life. This raises the interesting, and vital, jguestion of how? These assumptions, that there is always dhange (however defined) in social life and that there is a gguumm.for observed behavior, require different methods of V‘Igbéllecting data and different kinds of data than were .‘ 3... mthought sufficient some fifty years ago. And these -3 dmggnmptions also take us back to the beginning, as it were, jgigic‘ally. We have to begin anew in our interpretations 'ogr analyses as we explore the possibilities and eatidns of this new (revised) orientation. .REFThQPWEthod appropriate to process theory was first "-vifiy7whrner'(l957). Turner's "social drama" or aesfstudies, and thus focuses on social . ..¥'¥fi;:'> ‘ The extended case history follows-égg\ Vvuhy ‘;_"~g.::w?i f 7’“453‘ ,,‘ V‘VJ'EL ‘ ‘ 1‘. \gal one group of people as they interact over time, and attempts to analyze the processes involved in that inter- action. Another assumption, obviously, is that what a man does in 1950 will influence what he does in 1951, as will what others have done to him in the same time period. The greatest strength of this method, as I see it, is that the anthropologist may select the type of process he is interested in. Turner's explicit goal, as he stated it in Schism and Continuity, was . . . to isolate the cardinal factors underlying Ndembu residential structure. . . . These crises [social dramas] make visible both contradictions between crucial principles governing village structure, and conflicts between persons and groups in sets of social relations governed by a single principle (1957: xvii). The method enables an anthropologists to single out principles, processes, regularities, or institutionalized changes, as well as radical change, in such a way as to make his data and analysis comparable with other studies, while at the same time describing what actually happens. The model is reality in all of its complexity. Cultural Dynamics While the term "cultural dynamics" has long been in currency in anthropology, the sense in which it is used here is quite different from prior usages. The terms, defi- nitions, concepts, and theory which I use come from a paper fflsna Cultural Dynamics" (n.d.) by and from personal The phrase 'cultural dynamics' focuses interest on analyzing what actually occurs, taking into account the alternatives which may or may not be open to people in specific situations. It also calls attention to the assumption that there is always a reason for observed behavior which “custom" is not sufficient to explain. It further implies a temporal dimension which is a necessary part of understanding how and why behavior occurs, because we assume that social life is a continuum and people necessarily take into account not only what they have done but what others have done in relation to them over time. For the purposes of this analysis, "culture" can be defined as a system of values, beliefs, attitudes, and norms. Following Hallowell (1955: 85), I assume that any human society is not only a social order but a moral order as well." Thus, much behavior is held to be meaningfully related to concepts of good and evil, the nature of the universe, society, and men. If this is true, it follows that we must look to the cultural system for an explanation and understanding of behavior. Unfortunately, the problem is not that simple. Culture, in and of itself, does not 8atisfactorily explain all behavior. A society is defined a3 a patterned system of interpersonal relationships which flag a product of cultural dicta, environmental exigencies, .. LV- Eh .. blitigioal needs, and personal idiosyncracies. But an 10 behavior, either. Although these two levels must be kept analytically distinct, the phrase 'cultural dynamics' emphasizes the interaction between them. Cultural dynamics is a study of the relationship of values among themselves (value hierarchies) and to other forms of behavior over time. I am not here concerned with the internalization of values but with the relationship of values to behavior. There is assumed to be a definite relationship between what people say they should do in their relationships with other people, and how they actually behave. The correspondence between the "ideal" and the "real" is seldom an exact one, however. It is the purpose of a study of cultural dynamics to formulate a series of Propositions which will account for observed behavior. This also involves an analysis of the relationship of the values in question to each other. Some values are u"are important and inclusive than others, but the relation- Ships among them are no more static than the relationships of the people who hold them. The primacy of certain values may lessen or increase over time, as other factors change in the total environment. For example, the right of a tLS. citizen to bear arms, predicated on the value that he 8hollld be able to defend himself, is gradually being superceded by the value that individual action is detri- asTitial to the society at 1arge--that is, to the social or .1 ) conflicting; the actions of a handful of individuals in our recent history has made many feel that the smaller, less inclusive value (implied in the right to bear arms) should be dropped from the total repertoire of U.S. values. The behavior of some individuals has affected, for at least some other people, the relationship of the values they hold. This partiéular example might be analyzed as one in a series of events related to all the values involved in the history of states' rights vs. federal government's rights, and the changes in the values (realignment, exclusion of some, inclusion of new ones, etc.) which have occurred throughout our total history. My point is that I take the processes whereby the content Of values and the primacy of some values over others develop over time to be dependent on other factors in the environment. Analytically I give precedence to the values that are symbolized by the behavior of people engaged in interaction with one another, holding that developments in the content and meanings of values and changes in value hil-erarchies are a consequence of that interaction. Some Variables , ‘ There are several aspects, or dimensions, to the a:'-‘e‘Ilnship between shared values and behavior. This is I. ”bf-her way of saying that there are many variables which .. . Yaw » $911M be taken into account. Swartz (n.d.) has singled “-8.092 from a potentially unlimited number. A study of 12 the processes could focus, for example, on "the range and type of situations to which the meanings or values are applicable and the flexibility of their application throughout this range." An analysis made from this point of View takes as point of departure the fact that some values are less inclusive than others, and may apply to some situations, or to some people, but not to others. It then proceeds to analyze how weak or strong (flexible/ inflexible) these values are in the situations where they are applicable. The processes investigated are those which define the value hierarchy. It is assumed there is always some kind of development in this, as well as other, dimensions. Another possible variable, or dimension, is "the Operation and interplay of supports for the maintenance and for the alteration of the meanings and values shared by actors" (Swartz, n.d.). The analysis could investigate the processes involved in how the stated values of a people are enforced or how they are changed. Another variable, and possible analytical focus, is the "relationship between statements of values and mailings and the behaviors which are referents of those 'tatements" (I_big_.). The analysis investigates the ‘ processes involved in the central actors’ behavior and the . “actions of others to them. A“ -,. \\' l3 That these three variables or dimensions, and others, are intimately related is obvious. All of these dimensions are aspects of what actually happens; that is, they are a property of reality. Analytically it is possible to single out one for consideration, but this should not be taken to mean that the others are not also a vital part of the situation. Development is occurring in one car more of these dimensions always. “Development" is necessarily a neutral word which may mean rapid change or not. It is an indisputable fact that values everywhere change and often the actors become consciously aware of such change only after the fact. Much value change is probably accomplished gradually and virtually imperceptibly to the actors involved. It may 1Me a consequence of an aggregate of confrontations in a changing environment which introduces new factors which PeOple must take into account. We do not know what the Processes of internal change are and that is an ultimate goal of studies of cultural dynamics. It may not be Feasible to do but it is worth an effort to discover if there are patterns to the processes. To this end a detailed CaSe history is necessary, obviously. None of the more cI-‘Hcial theoretical questions can be answered by a single ,Mmded case history and its analysis; a series of studies ".4 -‘:§°11wing the same theoretical and methodological pro- ;$§§ures will be necessary. ‘u- 14 Lest I have misled my readers by talking about change I should make it clear than an analysis of the processes involved in the interaction between stated values and other observed behaviors is a useful thing, in itself. In my previous discussion I simply went a step further by emphasizing that the seeds of change must always be present in what people are doing every day. The primary assumption underlying my analysis is that What people say they should do actually affects what they do, and what they do affects their views on what they should do. Swartz says: I take the main task of the study of cultural dynamics to be to attempt to formulate propositions which account for whatever relationships are observed. These propositions will describe the specific processes whereby shared views about what must, ought or can happen influence what does happen, or whereby what does happen influences the views in question, or both (n.d.). My own case will be analyzed from the point of view of the relationship between the statements of values and the be- haviors which are referents of those statements, but other dimensions will be dealt with, although not explicitly, as they become crucial in the course of the case. Loosening and Correcting There are some four concepts used in the analysis 15 Loosening is the name given to the most general class of processes which make it possible for people to behave in ways which are not in strict accordance with behaviors indicated by statements of values. Since the study in question is a social and not an individual one, the important question becomes what processes loosen a value enough so that the actor can behave in a manner which is not in strict adherence to a shared value and still be accepted by at least some of his colleagues and associates. A person may justify a given act which is at variance with stated values in a variety of ways. He may justify his behavior by reference to others' behavior and the process could be called 'self-justification by refer- ence to another's violation.‘ He could deny that he behaved contrary to valued behavior, and the process is called 'denial'; he could say that the value in question does not apply in the case at issue, and the process is 'ambiguity of role and/or value.’ Or he might say that there are special circumstances which make his behavior correct (in accordance with the value) and not a violation, and this could be called 'redefinition of role.I However, the actor's use of ambiguity, or any of the other processes, is only a beginning. It is necessary to find out what it is that the actor does that makes it possible for at least some other people to accept what he did or is doing. A specific instance of loosening consists of three ‘3%§§§tst (l) the act which is a value violation; (2) the 16 process which made the value violation possible (e.g., denial, ambiguity, choice between alternative values, etc.); and (3) acceptance by at least some of the actor's friends and associates of his behavior. By definition, if no one at all accepts the actor's behavior then loosening has not taken place. Another aspect of the definition of loosening processes is that these occur before a value violation is taken exception to by at least some people. If I am going to play cards with Joe's friend, Fred, and before we go Joe warns me that Fred cheats at cards but I should not become angry because he is really a nice guy and very rich, and I still agree to go play cards, then Joe has successfully loosened the value "don't cheat at cards." He has loosened it for me because I accept that Fred's behavior is per- missable on the grounds that (a) he is rich and does not need the money, so cheating at cards is an eccentricity of his, and (b) he is otherwise a "nice guy"--that is, his over-all moral status is good. The process in loosening the value is one of emphasizing the positional element of Fred's status and not the behavioral element, and there is an implicit value hierarchy involved. One value states "you should not cheat," and not cheating at cards is a ndnor corollary of this. The other value, perhaps not explicit in our culture, is something like "Economically successful people can do things which economically un- .snseessfu1 people cannot." Since I accepted Joe's l7 explanation of Fred's behavior, I have expressed an acceptance of their value hierarchy also. If I refused to go play cards with Fred after Joe told me he cheated then the loosening was not successful with me, although it might be with some other people, but there must be some behavioral evidence for loosening. The actor's associates must accept his variation from the stated value and there must be evidence that they are aware of the violation and have accepted it. Correcting processes are the converse of loosening processes. The general class of correcting processes includes "all the processes whose effect it is to bring actors to behave in accord with shared views about the behavior in question" (Swartz, n.d.) [my emphasis]. Correcting does not necessarily mean that the actor returns to a strict adherence of the value. This may happen or the actors (transgressor and accusers) may agree on new values, or they pretend the violation never happened and that the old values and rules still apply. On the other hand, correcting might not take place at all, or it might occur through coercion rather than agreement. To return to the example about Fred's cheating at cards: If Joe does not warn me before we go that Fred cheats, and I start to complain when I discover the fact and then Joe says I should not mind because Fred is rich, etc., and I accept this and continue playing, then .-}§@r§ecting has taken place. It is called correcting 18 because the value violation had taken place and someone (I) had taken exception to it. I agree to Joe's and Fred's definition of the situation and to the implied value hierarchy, and permit Fred to continue cheating at cards because of the positional aspect of his status. If I do not agree with their rationalizations I have two options, I can stop playing cards and refuse to play with at least. Or Fred ever again; here correction has not taken place. I can get really nasty and file an official complaint against Fred (assuming this is possible in the society). If the law then demands that Fred make reparation there is cOrrecting through coercion. Of course, Fred might promise to stop cheating, and I then agree to continue playing Correcting has occurred. Cards with him. Just as loosening processes include what happens a~fter a value violation but before some associates or friends of the actor take exception, correcting processes il'lc:lude what takes place after a value violation and after somebody has taken exception to it. Loosening includes what people do to lessen the impact of their value vio- lations before any of their colleagues or friends bring 3anotions to bear against them. Correcting includes what g>§ople doto lessen the impact of their value violations 'ther they have committed those violations and after some §t their friends and/or colleagues have brought sanctions §° bear against them. Correcting may also take place ‘ '; 1:‘l-fihout loosening. That is, the value violation was never 19 accepted and the actor does something to redeem himself. Joe told me about Fred's habits in card playing and we both declined the invitation to go; the next day Fred sends us a $100 gift certificate at Sears. We take this as an apology for his habits and a tacit promise not to cheat; or, if he does, not to exceed $100 in his winnings from us. The value "don't cheat at cards" was not successfully loosened because we did not agree that Fred's behavior was acceptable; it was corrected, however, by Fred's $100 gift which we took to be his agreement that he was wrong and we Were right--that is, he was making reparations for his behavior. To repeat, loosening only occurs when at least sOme people who are aware of the violation of a value °°ntinue to accept the actor and there is proof of this. Eec:ause of his variant behavior, and that those relations Were improved by something which happened after his value violations and after sanctions were brought to bear against This means that the actor's relationships with his } him. r Q0lleagues and friends became more tolerable than they had been before the correcting process occurred. Field and Arena The concepts of loosening and correcting as i : Q1Scussed so far give only a two dimensional picture of 20 reality. In an actual case involving many people and having a temporal dimension of perhaps years it is not likely that the simple identification of an act as loosening or correcting can take us very far, because correcting and loosening can overlap. Further, what is correcting for one person may be loosening, or nothing at all, for another. The concepts of arena and field add a third dimension to the: study and provide some sort of boundary (only defined bY’ the real events, however) to the processes in question, while also focusing attention on important questions. In his Introduction to Local-Level Politics (1968: 9), Swartz defines the concepts: A field is defined by 'the interest and involvement of the participants' in the process being studied and its contents include the values, meanings, resources, and relationships employed by these participants in that process. The contents and the organization, as well as the membership, of the field change over time as new participants become involved; former participants disengage; new resources, rules, meanings, or values are brought to bear or old ones are withdrawn; and relations within the field change. Given the fluidity of the field . . . it seems to me that the value of the concept can be increased by defining a social and cultural area which is immediately adjacent to the field both in space and in time. . . . The contents of this second space, which I will call . . . the 'arena,’ depend upon relations with partici— pants in the field, but it includes more than the field. In addition to the actors who populate it, the arena also contains the repertory of values, meanings, and resources these actors possess, together with the relationships among them and with the members of the field. Values, meanings, and resources possessed by the field participants but not employed by them in the processes which constitute the field are also part of the arena. 21 Different kinds of loosening and of correcting can be going on at the same time in various parts of the field and arena, and different ones can occur at different times throughout the entire case. For instance, when people who are involved with the central actor are aware that he has not behaved as their shared values indicate he should have, and these people care about what he has done, they may react in a variety of ways. They may make mild comments to the effect that their friend has behaved oddly, but they Say this to others and not directly to their friend (the In this case the loosening of the value in Central actor) . If others of the central question has been successful. actor's colleagues, however, speak directly with him reItlonstrating his 'improper' behavior, and bring strong saxIotions to bear (or urge that these be brought to bear) a”gainst him, the loosening of the value has not been s"accessful, and a separate correcting process must occur. It is important to understand that in the case of colleagues whc agree with the central actor's definitions (i.e., a‘ecept the loosening), the correcting process is, in effect, the same process involved in the original loosening of the value. To return to my example of Fred, the card sharp, and our mutual friend, Joe: in the instance where I only Q:i‘3<:overed about Fred's cheating after we began to play Q§‘tds and I protested, but was ultimately won over by §§edw and Joe's arguments (Fred is rich, etc.), the cor- ‘VV [ting process which took place was a continuation of the 22 loosening process. I agreed to a new definition of the situation and the correcting process can be called 'stressing the positional aspect of a status rather than the behavioral element implied by that status.‘ This was the same process used in loosening the value "dont't cheat at cards." In the example where I refused to accept Fred's and Joe's definition of the situation and either Stopped playing cards or brought in the law, a separate Process was required for correcting, obviously--I had refused to accept the first process as sufficient to make FI-‘ed's behavior palatable or even tolerable to me. If the law forces him to make amends of some sort the process is ' Coercion'; if he agrees to stop cheating at cards then the process is returning to behavior implied by the strict I“eaning of the value "don't cheat." If many more people Ware involved in this card game and some agreed to continue Playing cards with Fred but others refused, we would be faced with the problem of the social scope of loosening and <2‘Drrectingn-that is, that loosening can work with some Dacple but not with others. If loosening were to work with all of the central actor's friends, colleagues, and associates who were aware of his variant behavior we would t‘01:. have a study in cultural dynamics of the kind I intend t0 do here. We would be studying value change, straight aJud (relatively) simple. That is not to say the problem {'8 not a crucial and little studied one; it is simply a ‘qiiferent sort of problem than the one involved in this ‘ .. ‘ I .. 'v ‘ .- pnv . o1. . p . a. 0 u— a - .. . a 'v v-. o-c. Do. u, .,_ H. 1(- un. >., 'v u.- v. -.. - ... 23 Study which proposes to examine the processes involved in the relationship between statements of value and the behaviors which are a referent of those statements. From a series of studies of this sort we may ultimately be able to arrive at generalizations about the kinds of conditions under which certain kinds of loosening and/or correcting Processes work, and of the kinds of results which might be e:q9ected.from the joint operation of both. I suspect that these kinds of studies are a necessary antecedent to fruitful studies of value change where this occurs as a result of something other than extraneous authority figures in'lposing their will on a people. The most important issue in this kind of study of <3I11tural dynamics, to phrase the problem another way, is t3<> discover how values work when some people do not behave 5L1! strict accordance with value dictates and some other pGOple continue to accept the central actor, and his deviant behavior, but others do not. To answer these zm. There are differences in who is aware of what the .. ‘ a!-'l‘_l:ral actor is doing (this is the arena) and who feels 25 Strongly about what he does and tries to 'bring him into line' (this is the field). These latter are the people who Lay begin the correcting processes; that is, they initiate a new series of events aimed at different goals than the central actor's. The central actor, himself, may initiate the correcting processes . Summary In this thesis I will present a very long, extended Case history which has a temporal span of two years. Following Gulliver (1969: 15-16) I have tried at least to (iealineate what he calls "the three main stages [of a dispute]: the prehistory of the dispute, the dispute itself, and the social consequences that follow settle— ment." Of these three stages the third has most interest for a student of cultural dynamics, perhaps. As Gulliver E3iays: A full consideration of the consequences of a dispute settlement is equally important, both for general analysis and in the examination of social processes among a particular cluster of people. . . . The form and content of the settlement, and its subsequent enforcement as relevant, must necessarily affect relations between the disputants and others involved in some way or other. . . . The settlement in effect defines, or redefines, statuses, rights, and obli— gations, both for the disputants themselves and for other people. Status expectations may be reaffirmed, weakened, strengthened, or altered, and all this has some effect on subsequent relationships and social action. That this last statement is very true was brought lT‘CIme to me by the very nature of my becoming acquainted with the case I present here. The actual events of the ‘\ 26 case occurred before I arrived in Mitini. Valente, the principal actor whose behavior was called in question by some of his colleagues and friends, volunteered all of the information pertinent in the case. He said he felt he Should tell me so that I would understand why he was the enemy of certain people with whom I saw him interacting frequently. In effect, of course, what he was trying to do was recruit my good opinion of him; I was a resource to him. My good opinion, in hi_s estimation, was not suf- ficient if I did not know the facts of his dispute and the eVients which took place throughout its course. Valente brought me into the field, purposely. As I think will be seen after reading the case, he was trying to extend the <2<>:I:‘recting process which occurred in his dispute settlement. The dispute was not resolved by village standards or ’Values; it was resolved by the intervention and support of a powerful authority figure extraneous to the Rjonga a3'stem. In me, for whom Valente worked, he saw another E><>v1erful figure whose support would continue to assure his “‘Oral standing in the village at least to the extent that no one would try to intervene in his conduct. Since I arrived just a few months after the last episode in his QGee (although it had formally ended some time earlier) I “as in a position to witness the types of relationships he had with people who had been principal actors in his mapute during the following twenty months. I will \\ 27 analyze these at the conclusion of my analysis of the case itself, because I think the iSSueS involved in this par- ticnilar case and the kind of resolution it had are of partxicular and vital concern for an understanding of how change (which, to me, necessarily implies value change) will occur among the Rjonga, at least. Throughout the ethruagraphy, particularly in the second chapter, I try to enmfliasize which rules (and values) are changing or have changed. It may be that any generalizations which can be made from data concerning the Rjonga will only be appli- cable, if at all, to other peoples who have also had a period in their history when they were in close contact with a foreign power. But this, also, would be useful to know. It would be a beginning in the search for answers to such questions as: does change in a society's rules and values come about as a consequence of technological ChaNQES, for example? Are changes in values a necessary antecedent to acceptance of other changes in the total environment? Do changes of values and changes in the total environment go hand-in-hand, changes in values being a c°nseCIuence of an interaction between old (traditional) Values and new factors in the environment? I have already indicated that I am biased towards this latter kind of explanation, but it is based on educated intuition and not On facts and figures. It is these which we need so deSperate 1y . CHAPTER II HISTORY AND POLITICAL STRUCTURE The Rjonga are a Bantu-speaking, agricultural tribe off southernmost Mocambique consisting of partially localized patrilineal clans and lineages. Their territory extends from the town of Manhiga, near the coast, to Ressano Garcia on the Transvaal border, to the southern boundaries of the Province. This area comprises the greater part of the District of Lourenco Marques. There are no census figures by tribe available to the general public. According to the Moqambique Year Book (1969: 13) the total population in the District of LOPrenco Marques in 1960 was 447,278 in an area of 16,118 8quare kilometers (Spence, 1963: 26). Spence (22' gig.) says that 374,464 of these people are "Non-Civilized" groups, a category which excludes assimilated Africans “mON he puts into the "Civilized" category. The Year Book states that 121,843 of these Africans of various tribes live in the capital city. Subtracting the city residents fFQN the District's entire population gives a figure of I think this figure too large for the Rjonga, 28 29 however, since it includes the entire population (black and white) of the concelho (county) of Manhiga, including the Shangaan and Chope tribes. The Rjonga live only on the southern limit of the county of Manhiga. Therefore I have subtracted the population of Lourenco Marques and of Marfllica county from the population for the whole district. I arufiye at a rough calculation of the Rjonga tribe which might be about 175,000 (Ci. Junod, 1962: 20). Tribe and Territory No discussion of any phase of Rjonga life is possible without first noting the rather serious confusion in the literature over the precise definition of the location of the tribe. Junod's excellent monograph, The Life of a South African Tribe (revised edition 1927 and 1962), deals with the life of the peoples of the "Thonga" nation of Moqambique and includes data on the Rjonga, whom he calls the "Ronga." Both terms, "Thonga" and "Ronga," have carried over into recent literature and are used by the Portuguese in the same sense that Junod uses them. The origin of the word "Thonga" is the Zulu language. A concise explanation of the word and of the history underlying it comes from Quintao (1954: 7-8). All translations from the Portuguese are my own: . "Thonga" is the pejorative term equivalent to vassal' which the Zulus applied to the tribes of the littoral when they invaded these regions in 1819; not i “ding any resistence they conquered without difficulty find eStablished their supremacy in the whole country which my 30 extends from the Maputo to the Save, and even to the Zambezi. Their principal conqueror was Manukosi who, deserting with some thousands of men, crossed the Pongolo river and, entering into Portuguese territory, crossed the Nkomati and established himself in Bilene, on the banks of the Limpopo. Allied with his rival Songandaba he conquered another Zulu invader named Nqaba who had pursued them. Afterwards he joined battle with Songandaba, pushing him to the North up to the Zambezi and perhaps to Nyassaland, remaining master of the whole Thonga tribe. Immediately he went to establish himself in Magapa, to the north of the Save, to strengthen his authority over the Ndjao tribe. His reign was of a long duration; he died in 1859. In 1860 war broke out between his two sons, Muzila and Mawewe. The latter, a bloodthirsty man whose allies were recruited particularly from the northwest part of the country, expelled his brother who fled to the north of the Transvaal. Muzila returned in December of 1861 with the aim of asking for help from the Governor of Lourenco Marques, promising to become a subject of Portugal. The Portuguese governor supplied him with weapons and troops and the two armies sustained a bloody war in the fields of Moamba, ending with the defeat of Mawewe. Muzila, COuneror and acclaimed king by the Vatuas, declared himself to be a tributary of the Portuguese crown. In 1884 when Muzila died he was succeeded by his son Gungunyana, who began by giving allegiance to the Portuguese governor but, since he was a great hypocrite and traitor, he sometimes betrayed this allegiance. Having Succeeded in getting the support of the hordes of Zixaxa, of Magaia, of Mahazule and Godide in 1894, he tried to assault the city of Lourenco Marques, thus originating the War of 1894, called "Gungunyana's War," which ended in 1895 with the defeat and imprisonment of all of the enemy chiefs and in which Mouzinho de Albuquerque had a pre- Ponderant role. With the aim of weakening the power of those black potentates the Portuguese government divided :heir lands and put in their place a large number of small ings. Junod divided the "Thonga" nation, which included all the peoples conquered by the Ngoni, into six lin- guistic groups: Ronga, Hlanganu, Djonga, Bila, Nwalungu, and Hlfingwe (1962: 14). These groups cover an area far 31 greater than that inhabited by the Rjonga. Junod uses the terwn tribe to refer to "the totality of the Thonga nation" (22' cit.). Later he says, 'They are hardly conscious that they form a definite :nation, and therefore they possess no common name for it. The name Thon a . . . was applied to them by the Zulu or Ngoni invaders, who enslaved most of their (clans between 1815 and 1830 (1962: 14-15). He £1150 notes that the Rjonga disliked the name and con- sirhered it an insult. In fact the Rjonga were never under Ngcuri dominion but were a protectorate of the Portuguese 100 years before Junod's time. Junod applies the term clan to "the smaller national units, which are called after some old chief . . . but . . . the name of the clan means not only a group of people, but a certain part of the country" (1962: 14). Last he says, "Now some of these clans, those which occupy the same tract of country, form groups because they speak the same dialect of the Thonga language" (1962: 14). These groups, in fact, composed six discrete FEOPles or tribes, and the "clans" are tribes composed of several different clans, a fact which got Junod into some difficulties when he discusses the composition of a Village, To return to Quintao again, he gives the lo- cation of Junod's six "groups" and comments briefly on each (1954: 9-10)= Xir The Thonga tribe comprehends six dialects, namely: on , ga, Xidjonga, Xihlanganu, Xibila, Xinwalungu, XIhlenQWe. 32 Of all of these dialects the one which occupies the largest area, without doubt, is Xihlengwe but because of the aridity of the country and its small population it does not have the importance of Xironga. Xiron a is spoken by more than 100,000 people in thezzregions 0% Maputo, Tembe, Mpfumo, Matola, Mabota, Nondjwana, Xirinda, and Manhiga. Xidjonga is spoken between the Nkomati and the Oljafant, from the Libombos to the hills of the Limpopo; it incfiludes the following groups: Khosa, Rikoto, Xiburi, Matie’, Nkuna, Nkabelane. Xihlanganu is spoken in the southeast, Libombo mountains, to the north of the Nkomati of this name. in the by peOples Xibila is spoken in the region of Bilene which iJuzludes the plains of the lower Limpopo leaving its junction with the Xengane. Xinwalungu is spoken in the triangle formed by the Olifant.and the Limpopo with the Longué mountains (an extension of the Libombos), by the Loi peoples. The Maluleke branch, at the junction of the Limpopo with the Pafuri, also speak Xinwalungu. Xihlengwe is spoken in a considerable area, found between the Limpopo and the Save, extending the entire length of the Xengane and including all of the Gaza Country and almost all of the District of Inhambane, including the following peoples: the Hlengwe of Xingombe, Pflengwe of Madzibé, Tsua, Makwakwa, Kambana. _ Xironga is without doubt the most important Thonga Chalect, so we can classify it as one of the three Euincipal languages of our Province of Mocambique, which are: .Xironga, Xisena, and Kiswahile. I quote Quintao rather than Junod here largely to illustrate the continuing effect of the latter's monograph (Nicurrent Portuguese literature. The Portuguese have comPletely accepted Junod's account of the Thonga tribe and continue to speak of the Thonga language group and its dialects. The Rjonga today occupy the same territory they did when Junod wrote about them; the major P01nt 0f 33 difference is that I treat the Rjonga as a tribe whereas .nnnod.called them a clan of the Thonga tribe. The latter is 21 construct: the name, as shown above, was derived from the: Zulu invasions which began under Manukosi. The name "Thonga" is even more confusing when we tak£3 into account the Tsonga, another name for the Shangaan triJoe immediately north of the Rjonga; the Tsonga or Shangaan are Ngoni, followers and descendents of Manukosi Shangaan. Also distinct from the Tsonga and the Rjonga art: the Bi-Tonga who live on the cost of Mocambique around Inhambane. Junod's Informants Because of the confusion resulting from any dis- cussion of the "Thonga" tribe, it is useful to know what refers specifically to the Rjonga in Junod's monograph. He carefully describes his sources of information in most cases, and he gives the names and origins of his in- formants (1962: 3-6)- Spoon, subsequently renamed Elias, was a Rjonga from Rikatla, where Junod lived on and off for approximately eighteen years. Rikatla is a village in the Rjonga kimJdom of Nondjwana . Tobane Mpfumo has a Rjonga clan name, but from Jun°d'8 description of his history I am not sure if Tobane is Rjonga, Djonga, or Shangaan. Junod does say, however, 34 "I owe him most of what I know about the tribal system of the Rongas" (1962: 4). Mankhelu Nkuna was from the Transvaal; Junod says of 111m, "as regards the Northern clans of the tribe . . (he was) an authority as excellent as Tobane for the Sorfl:hern Ronga clans" (1962: 4). Any information cited as conning from Mankhelu, then, probably does not refer to the chnnga. Anything Junod discusses as being peculiar to the "hkarthern clans" is not Rjonga, since the area referred to 1&5 completely out of Rjonga territory into Gaza District, or into the Transvaal. Viguet, Mawewe, and Simeon Gana also are not Rjonga: when these men are cited by Junod as sources, the data do not refer to the Rjonga. Mboza Mabzhaya was a Rjonga. Junod frequently divides his discussions into data pertaining to the "Southern clans" and the "Northern Clans." Anything referring to the latter may not be con- Efidered Rjonga. Data about the Southern clans include the E{longa‘tribe but also what Junod calls the Hlanganu and [Honga groups. Any general discussion about customs of the Southern clans must be considered cautiously since the information may or may not apply to the Rjonga. Here it is useful to keep in mind the names of Junod's Rjonga in- formants because he often puts their names in parantheses following a particular statement. 1|- . A . u fir»... 35 Orthography A brief discussion of the orthography I use is also necxassary for anyone interested in consulting Junod, who is the most important and primary source of information for the peoples of Mocambique. Junod follows Lepsius' rule "with its two main priJiciples: a letter must always have the same value, and a skingle sound must be represented by a single letter" (1962: 484). As a consequence the Rjonga /rj/ becomes /r/ in Junod. I have transcribed most native names and words in such a way that an English speaker pronouncing them would at least approximate the Rjonga pronunciation, This could become confusing when consulting a Portuguese map because many of the place names are native ones, and the Portuguese write these, understandably, so that a Portuguese Speaker can approximate the correct pronunciation. Pkmever, they have also simplified native names by elimi- hating many of the laterals, which are a characteristic of Xi-Rj onga . The Portuguese write the English /ny/ as /nh/; and EmgliSh /k/ is /c/. Thus on a map will be found /Inhaca/ 181andp‘Which I have transcribed as /Inyaka/. Rjonga /wa/ becomes /ua/ in Portuguese writing, and I have used the sPelling of literate Rjonga which is /wa/. I do not change the SPGIIing of major Portuguese cities. "Manhica," for example, would be written /Manyisa/ in EngliShr bUt I 36 leave it in Portuguese to facilitate its location on a map. The cedilla is important in Portuguese because it differ— entiates between /s/ and /k/. Thus the place name Manhica would be spelled /Manyika/ in English. The Portuguese and literate Rjonga transcribe the sound /sh/ as /x/. This is so common that I have also adopted it, although Junod does not use it. Thus the name of the Rjonga language is written /Xi-Rjonga/ rather than /Shi-Rjonga/. Other differences between my orthography and Portuguese orthography are most easily seen by comparing Quintao's transcription of Rjonga clan names (page 4) with my way of transcribing them. The major difference is that I adhere to the native pronunciation, whereas the Portu- guese simplify wherever possible. Thus the Portuguese /Maputo/ is /Maputcho/ in my system, since that is the way the Rjonga pronounce it. I write /Matola/ as /Matcholo/; /Xirinda/ is /Xirindja/. The Portuguese write the clan name /Mabzhaya/ as /Magaia/ and pronounce it /Magaya/. Several Rjonga told me that the Portuguese were incapable of pronouncing their names correctly, and they have two systems as a result. Among themselves they speak "cor- rectly": when dealing with a Portuguese they use the "simplified" version of their names. Where a difference is such that it would be difficult for a non—Portuguese speaker to correlate my spelling with Portuguese spelling, or with Junod's, I will indicate alternate spellings 37 and/or pronunciations in parentheses. I think this necessary for the benefit of any future ethnographic research in the area. It took me a long time to be able to correlate Portuguese transcriptions with Junod's and with information I was given while in the field. It would be wasteful to force anyone to go through the same process again. Rjonga History The Rjonga tribe was divided into eleven politi- cally autonomous kingdoms, which were, north to south: Manhica, Xirindja, Makandja (Makanda), Nondjwana (Nondwana), Makaneta, Mabota, Nwamba (Moamba), Mpfumo, Matcholo, Tembe, and Maputcho. The history of these kingdoms is confusing and complex, some being relatively recent in origin as a result of a younger brother successfully revolting against an older brother and establishing his own domain. Others were created by the Portuguese as recompense for some kingdoms being their allies against other kingdoms. I will sketch the history of some of these kingdoms briefly, using the Nondjwana and Makaneta histories as a detailed example of the sort of thing that happened. As Quintao said, where there used to be one king the Portuguese put many. Thus one of these kingdoms today may have several kings: in other cases (Tembe, for example) one kingdom has been merged with another. 38 Evidence from Junod, some history in Portuguese, a book on clan and praise names written in Rjonga-Shangaan, as well as information I was given, indicates that the original Rjonga kingdoms were completely independent of each other and had distinct territories. Furthermore they were often hostile to one other and fought battles which are still recorded in memory, as well as in some history books. For example, Mapunga Mabzhaya of Makaneta kingdom fought Musongi Maputcho, king of the Maputcho kingdom, and defeated him at the Battle of Malongatiba in 1870 (Junod, 1962: 394). Another Mabzhaya king fought against Tembe and defeated him; the various kingdoms extant at the time of the final, decisive war against the Portuguese, 1894-1895, fought on different sides. The deaths of kings were not announced until approximately a year following the event, at the coronation of the king's successor, so that hostile neighbors would not take advantage and invade a leaderless kingdom. Thus all of the evidence indicates that the people now known as the Rjonga tribe amalgamated slowly as a result of intermarriage between the royal lineages and, particularly, under the pressure of the Ngoni invasions. Junod notes that the kings of Mpfumo usually married royal women of Matcholo and Mabota, and the Matcholo and Mabota kings married Maputcho royal women (1962: 377). He gives no other data about marriage alliances, but I have evidence to indicate that the Mabzhayas of the relatively recent 39 Nondjwana kingdom married women of Manhica and Xirindja and Tembe. Junod (1962: 16) lists nine of the Rjonga kingdoms: All around the Bay of Delagoa [now called the Bay of Lourenco Marques], we find the Ronga group. This word Ronga is a very old one and very convenient, as all these clans consent to be called by it. The real Rongas are, I think, the Mpfumo and the Matjolo [Matcholo] clans, who are settled on the west of the Bay. South of the Bay is the Tembe clan and its two sub-clans, which have become independent: Matutwen and Maputju [Maputcho]. North of Lourenco Marques are the Mabota and Mazwaya [Mabzhaya] clans, the country of the latter, which extends on both sides of the estuary of the Nkomati, being called Nondwane. Further north are the two clans of Shirindja and Manyisa which form the transition to the following group. The new generation speaks a purer Rjonga dialect, the old one more the Djonga. Briefly the history of the kingdoms is this. Tembe and Mpfumo were probably the first comers, already established when the Mabzhayas arrived from Swaziland, and definitely there when the Portuguese arrived. At some point in their history, just when is not clear, a younger brother of Tembe rebelled and established himself as king over his own domain. This was the beginning of the Maputcho kingdom; apparently this happened prior to 1800 since the second or third king on the Maputcho royal genealogy gives the dates of his reign as from 1800-1850. The Portuguese mention the Tembe king in documents of 1554. Junod (1962: 27) cites Perestrello: Into the Bay flow three rivers. . . . The first one to the south, is called Zembe [Tembe]. It separates the land of a king of that name from the dominion of the king of Nyaka. . . . The second is the river of the Holy Spirit of Lourenco Marques. It separates the land 40 of Zembe from the land of two other chiefs whose names are Rumu [Mpfumo] and Mina Lebombo [Mabota]. The third and last is the Manhica, so called after a Kafir of that name who governs there. Similarly a younger brother of Mpfumo, which is the native name for Lourenco Marques, rebelled and established the kingdom of Matcholo. He is known as a traitor and the word means "knees" in Xi-Rjonga, indicating the manner in which Matcholo crawled to the Portuguese, betraying the secrets of his brother. It is probable that Matcholo rebelled in the period immediately preceding Gungunyana's war of 1894-1895. It appears from some sources that Mabota was another younger brother of Tembe; however, Mabota kingdom was in existance at the time of Perestrello, since it is mentioned in his accounts (see above). Mabota kingdom is in Marracuene county, geographically, but is administered by Lourengo Marques county. I have no information relating to the origin of the Nwamba kingdom: perhaps it also was a result of battles against the Portuguese. I doubt this explanation, however, since the king of Makaneta, who gave me the most accurate historical material I collected, listed the Rjonga areas as I give them (page 37), with Nwamba named separately. Manhica kingdom was extant at the time of Perestrello: Xirindja is its neighbor. Probably Xirindja was a younger brother who rebelled also, but there is less information about these two kingdoms than any others. 41 They are thought of as "strangers" by the other Rjonga, although they consider them to be Rjonga. Again it is probable that their incorporation into the Rjonga tribe was a result of the pressures from the Ngoni and the Portu- guese. Manhica and Xirindja are on the boundary of Rjonga and Shangaan territory, and it is here that almost everyone speaks both languages. These two kingdoms fall into the Portuguese county of Manhica today. The history of the Makaneta, Nondjwana, and Makandja kingdoms offers a good example of the development of the Rjonga areas. I lived in Nondjwana kingdom and thus collected more detailed information for this area than for any of the others. I translated from Rjonga-Shangaan the following history of the Mabzhayas in A. A. Jacque's book on clan and praise names; later I was told the same history by Santos Mabzhaya, the king of Makaneta. Honwana: Mahlangwana. The person who fathered this race was Munondjwana who had two sons--Honwana and Mahlangwana. Mahlangwana was the father of Nyongonyana, whom the people of Mabzhaya found when they came from Ngomana and from the Libombo mountains and Nhlanganu. The Honwana and Mahlangwanas began to fight, then the Mabzhayas said that "we can help you"; but they did not accept and showed them their assegais. Then the Mabzhayas made a hole in a hut and made an oil from the tihuhlu tree and put it in the hole in order to kill the Nondjwana king. They also cooked a good meal and made drinks and then went to tell Nyongonyana to come eat. When they invited him he was pleased, saying he would enjoy it. "You, Nyongonyana of Mahlangwana, king, come to eat." But they had put the oil in the hole and covered it with a mat. The Mabzhaya people sat around the edge of the mat to hold it down, 42 leaving the center for Nyongonyana. When the king entered he found the people seated in a circle and he saw the jug of beer and dish of food and sat down together with his men in the middle of the mat. And he said: "Today we are going to enjoy delicacies." And when he settled himself well, he fell and the people of Mabzhaya seized him and drowned him. The counselors [in'una] of the king fled to advise their people that their king was killed by the Mabzhaya. The Mabzhaya continued to kill many people and afterwards they built their homes there. . . . In that time the Ngomanas left their surname and called themselves those of Mabzhaya and said that they were Ba- Nondjwana, the owners of the country. From then until today they are known as the Nondjwanas. Everyone today agrees that the Mabzhayas conquered the Mahlangwana and Honwana clans and took over their country. The story given above is told with only minor variations, one of them attributing the introduction of iron knives to the Mabzhaya. The first Mabzhaya king was Xihehe, said to come from Psatine in Swaziland, "the place of the Mabzhaya." He established himself in the area known most commonly to the Rjonga as Matchinana (Makaneta to the Portuguese). This is the land of Nyaka mentioned by Perestrello. In the genealogy of the kings, Ngomana grandson of Xihehe, is shown as having twin sons, Matchinana and Nhlewana. Ngomana lived on the right bank of the Nkomati; the area known as Nondjwana is on the left bank of the Nkomati, or the "mainland." There was rivalry between the twin brothers, and their father sent the younger, Nhlewana, to rule as a chief in Nondjwana because there was no chief there at that time. Nhlewana's descendents 43 continued to rule as chiefs of Nondjwana until the time of Gungunyana's war. Then Muvetxa Nhlewana Mabzhaya went to the Portuguese and offered his help to them in fighting his classificatory older brother, Mapunga Matchinana Mabzhaya. Junod credits the beginning of Gungunyana's war to Muvetxa's machinations in an attempt to win a kingdom for himself. Mapunga fought the Portuguese sporadically but it was Mahazule Dumakazulo Mabzhaya, Mapunga's son, who fought against the Portuguese in 1894-1895 and was deported in 1896 after Gungunyana's defeat. As a reward for his help, the Portuguese established Muvetxa as king of Nondjwana, thus depriving the senior line of the better part of its territory. Since Mahazule was deported his father's younger brother, Magomanyana, ruled in his stead; today's king, Santos Mabzhaya, is his direct descendent. The kings of Nondjwana trace their descent from Muvetxa Nhlewana Mabzhaya; there have been seven of them since 1896. As recently as 1966 an heir to the Nondjwana throne was assassinated. Today Rafael Nhlewana Mabzhaya, a junior grandson of Muvetxa, is king of Nondjwana (see Figure l). The king Santos told me that Makandja used to belong to the Matchinana Mabzhayas but was given to a Makandja by the Portuguese when Filimao Makandja returned from the war and laid claim to it. Despite the diverse histories of the various Rjonga kingdoms, the people can be referred to as a tribe because they have a delimited territory, a common language, common I‘l- rAvo 44 MO .mmcflx mmmcunmz mooamwcwwln.a musmflm mEOUmQHM mamBmpcoz can meanesoumz “coma .UV mcwzcou magma: Ame Anal oozoz Ammmfl Am cmuuococv Aom-m may Ame AHHV A E mammom H aoz m4: ”~253me + «zgzmzoomz 33835 Aummmsm ‘ % mmmmnfidm 355 Amvmav Ame I mummmm mumconz Ammma .oe mnsmumzm .MW azxazxcz 4V m&sxs.c 2 Ave mamfiomz «zmszosdz % mcm3waaz “Hoe Acme: «zazooz «oszaz Avmmflv ¢><3Nm¢2 mmmme 45 political structure; cultural unity; and an awareness of themselves as a distinct group. In case of attack by another tribe, the Shangaan for example, I was told that the Rjonga kingdoms would unite to repel the invader. In point of fact, the kingdoms were divided and fought against one other during Gungunyana's war, but this does not refute the premise that they constitute a tribe. The word "Ba- Rjonga" means "people of the East" so that their name seems to have had a geographic rather than a cultural referent. However, as Junod says, it is a name accepted by all the peoples around the Lourenco Marques area. Climate and Soil The district of Lourenco Marques is drained by five major rivers: Incomati, Matola, Umbelfizi, Tembe, and Maputo. Most of the country is flat with only a few gentle hills in the Nondjwana area. The Limbobo mountains form part of the western boundary between the District of Lourenco Marques and Swaziland and the Transvaal. The country is sparsely covered with bush; the soil varies in quality from the rich black soil found in river valleys, to the white sandy soil most common in the areas farmed by the Rjonga, to reddish soils which extend in a fifty mile wide belt to the Save river (Spence, 1963: 14). The richest soil that the Rjonga of Nondjwana have access to is that found in the area they call Inyaka, on the left bank of the Inkomati river. 46 The Mocambique Year Book (1969: 20) classifies the climate in the area around Lourenco Marques as hot, which is defined as anything over a median of twenty degrees centigrade, annually. The range in each of the counties of the District is approximately from 17 to 30 degrees centi- grade annually. The climate is desert-like in that the temperature always falls off considerably at night, except in the very hottest months. The year divides into two seasons: the colder, drier one from April to August or September and the hotter, rainy season extending from September or October until February and March. The rains usually do not start until November and occur sporadically until February. The Year Book rates the Rjonga area as "moderately rainy" since it has a median annual rainfall of 768 milli- meters. There was a severe drought during my two years and the two staple crops, corn and peanuts, failed in the Nondjwana area. Those areas adjacent to the rivers can count on annual overflowing to fertilize the land, but it is seldom that any considerable portion of these areas is available to the Rjonga farmers. Portuguese Administrative Divisions The Rjonga situation is further complicated by the Portuguese administrative divisions which cross—cut the native areas. The Year Book (1969: 36) describes the divisions as follows: 47 The districts are composed of concelhos [counties is the best translation in my opinion] which are made up of parishes. Temporarily, in the regions where the economic and social development considered necessary for the purpose hasn't yet been attained, the counties may be replaced by administrative circumscriptions. The administrative counties and circumscriptions are grouped into districts under the authority of a governor of the district . . . and are made up of parishes or, where these cannot be created, of adminis- trative posts. The District of Lourenco Marques consists of seven counties (see Figure 2). Manhica county includes the Manhica and Xirindja kingdoms. The county of Marracuene includes Makandja, Nondjwana, and Makaneta kingdoms. I am not certain about Sabie county; there are two administrative posts, but the headquarters is located at Moamba (Nwamba). This leads me to believe that this county subsumes Nwamba kingdom. The Year Book lists eight chiefs in this area, and I cannot determine if one of them is king, or whether all are of equal status. The county of Namaacha is another enigma; two kings are listed in that area. The Year Book gives no surnames for the kings and chiefs it mentions, which makes it extremely difficult to determine their origin. I suppose that this area was carved out of the Mabota and Matcholo kingdoms. I had intended to visit all of these areas towards the end of my stay in the Province but was pre- vented from doing so by severe illness which resulted in my returning to this country somewhat earlier than I had anticipated. 48 3r :0 '7! I00 ,1: A n 3. fl ENHANCEEMU . Laurenfia ‘ Hat-7.1:. f E N + ‘Q E 6' ' U H "M, J, 93 Political MAPUTO 13 boundary +++++ 1' a!" County f d boundary ----- + County and ad- ‘ ministrative post - _._ q, 4. 4. .g. ... headquarters o NATAL Rivers and/or coastline Figure 2.--Counties of the District of Lourenco Marques. 49 Matcholo county, known as Vila Salazar since 1968, has its headquarters at Matcholo-Rio (Matola-Rio), and two administrative posts, at Boane and Machava (Mashaba). The Year Book lists three kings for the county, which means the kingdom has been divided into three parts by the Portu- guese. Matcholo rules in Matola—Rio and Machava; two kings are named as ruling in the Boane area. The county of Lourenco Marques includes the area formerly known as Mpfumo, which is the Rjonga name for the capital city. The city is divided into fourteen bairros; four Mpfumo kings rule in those quarters larely inhabited by the native population. The Year Book says (1969: 205), Lourenco Marques has other bairros. . . . The largest of these is that of Matola (Matcholo), which is already considered to be a very important Vila. But there are the bairros of the Zoological Gardens, of Machava, of Influene, of the Mahotas, and others which are be— ginning to be born now thanks to the interest the city- dweller has in procuring these surrounding districts in order to build his own house, with a garden and kitchen garden, and chicken coops. This county has two administrative posts, Benfica and Munhuana. Although Figure l, which follows the map in the Year Book, shows Benfica to be part of the county of Marracuene, it appears that administratively Benfica belongs to the capital. This area includes the Mabota kingdom. I was told that from Km. 5-20 on National Highway No. 1, all the area to the east of the highway is the area the Rjonga call Mabota, and the area to the west of it is called Matcholo. The kingdom formerly known as Mabota is now ruled by four kings. 50 The last county, Maputcho, includes the former Tembe kingdom. The county is divided into four admini- strative posts: Catembe, Catuane, Inhaca, and Manhoca; the headquarters is at Bela Vista. There are five kings listed for the entire county; I assume that the former two kingdoms have thus been divided into five parts. The Rjonga of Nondjwana and of the capital tell me that the language spoken in this area is slightly different from that of the other kingdoms, but that it is mutually intelligible with Xi-Rjonga and they consider it to be Xi-Rjonga. Some of the customs of Tembe and Maputcho are also slightly different, particularly in reference to marriage. I had occasion to speak with a South African anthropologist who had lived in the Ka-Tembe area for some time and he flatly denied that the people living there were Rjonga. Other Rjonga whom we called in to clarify the situation were adamant in saying that the people of this southern county are Rjonga. I think that there is no doubt that they are Rjonga; the anthropologist in question could speak neither Xi-Rjonga nor Portuguese, communicating with the people in Zulu, and he based his statement on the different origin and history of the Tembe-Maputcho kingdoms rather than on those criteria I list as definitive of a tribe. Furthermore I knew men from Tembe, and in response to my question they affirmed that they considered themselves Rjonga. 51 Finally, the Year Book lists the tribe of all of these counties as Rjonga, with the following exceptions: in Manhica county are found Ronga, Tonga [Shangaan], and Chope, and the languages spoken there are given as Ronga, Shangaan, and Chope. In Namaacha and Sabie counties are found Rjonga and Swazis, and both languages are spoken. Kingdom Political Structure All of the information which follows was collected in Nondjwana kingdom, county of Marracuene (see Figure 2), in a village which I will call Mitini, more than thirty kilometers north of the capital city. I visited several other villages of Nondjwana, and a few of the other Rjonga kingdoms in order to check the validity of my information in all Rjonga areas. I am satisfied that the condensed ethnography which follows is basically accurate for all the Rjonga areas. There are minor variations in such matters as lobolo payments; and the language of the Ka- Tembe area is slightly different, as I have noted. But everyone agreed that basic values and social organization are similar throughout the tribe. I was unable to visit Ka-Tembe and the region around Ressano Garcia, as I had planned. Nevertheless I did speak to people from these areas, as well as from others, and the few questions I asked bore out the contention that the entire tribe represents a cultural and social unity despite divergent histories for the various clans and kingdoms. 52 The Nondjwana kingdom today consists of many villages, which are grouped into seventeen districts, all under the rule of counsellors (indjuna), who in turn are subject to the king (hggi). Each village has its own chief (muntwana) also, and villages are subdivided into zones, each of which is in charge of a petty official whom I call the zone chief. The ruling principle of Rjonga life is seniority and hierarchy, as will become clear. The king is always the eldest son of his father; the son of the "wife of the country," that woman whose lobolo was paid by the entire kingdom, does not have automatic right to rule, contrary to Ngoni law. Because of the fear of being overthrown by jealous siblings it was not uncommon for a king to kill his brothers and father's brothers (Junod, 1962: 410). This is documented for several of the Rjonga kingdoms, the heir to the Nondjwana throne in 1966 was assassinated on the eve of his coro— nation. The first Nondjwana king, Muvetxa, had some thirty-six wives and he placed all of his first-born sons, as well as several juniOr sons, as village or district chiefs, replacing the Mabzhaya chiefs of the senior Mabzhaya royal lineage when Mahazule was deported in 1896. No one person could recount the names of all of Muvetxa's sons to me, but many villages still bear the dead chiefs' names since it is the custom for the succeeding chief to take his father's name, which is also the name of the 53 village in many cases. Muvetxa's son Magabeza had some sixteen wives, and his son Gonwine a more modest number. Nevertheless the effect is such as to confuse even the Rjonga because each king put in his favorites, including father's brother, own brothers, own half brothers, and sons as chiefs; and the villages changed names accordingly. Any one village, today, may have as many as half a dozen names. The heir to the throne seldom lives at the capital village, called Ntsindja, but is sent by his father as a chief to another village to learn how to rule. Mitini has had many subsequent kings as its chief for several years; before he became king, Rafael had been chief of a village on the outskirts of the kingdom for fifteen or so years. The king ruled with the help of counsellors, called tindjuna, who acted as a check to his (formerly) unlimited powers. Junod (1962: 421-423) mentions four different categories of counsellors: the "Principal Counsellors" (tindjuna letikulu) . . . whose province it is to discuss and decide the more serious questions which affect the country. These are generally the uncles of the chief. . . . These tindjuna watch over the chief, and have the right of finding fault with him if they are not satisfied with his conduct. I may note that Junod's "chief" is my “king,' given the confusion over the Thonga nation and its last ruler, Gungunyana. 54 Then there were those men who were in charge of the army, whom Junod calls "Military Counsellors." The third category is that of "Agents General" who "are especially entrusted with the business of adjoining countries . . . these officials form an indispensable link in the diplomatic, and even in the matrimonial relations, between one kingdom and another." Junod's fourth category is of the district chiefs "appointed by the chief [king] in the various districts to act as overseers or magistrates, to adjudicate the petty differences of the people . . . Apparently today there are only two categories of counsellors still effective. I say "apparently" because I found the king and his counsellors most reluctant to (iiscuss the structure of the kingdom so I had to obtain jJrformation where and how I could, in bits and pieces whixsh I put together as a jigsaw puzzle. The two cate- gorixes I observed were of the "Principal Counsellor" and the (district counsellor type. The king is constantly atteruded by one or two men, of his family but also of other? clans, and his court is always attended by most of the district chiefs and some village chiefs. Presiding at the ccnart, conducting all of its business until the king "cuts the case" by giving the final judgment, is a group 0f fiWNB or six men who are his "principal counsellors." In addition he has an ndjuna whom he calls his "secretary," “”“3 lives in the capital city and is supposed to attend all 55 Sunday trials in the king's court. This man has the most influence over the king of any I saw, although he belongs to a different clan; his father before him was one of the counsellors of the king Gonwine, but only while Gonwine was chief in Mitini village. The secretary's power was undoubtedly related to the fact that he was instrumental in supporting Rafael's claim to the throne when the legiti- mate heir was assassinated. Very recently the secretary in question was replaced by another man, of a still different clan, who was obliged to move to Ntsindja to constantly attend the king. Thus today the power structure is still in a fluid state while the king seeks to consolidate his tenuous hold on the throne. Similarly, another man very close to the king, of his own lineage, was recently replaced. That the present incumbent should feel uncertain in his power is not strange. He knows himself to be a junior member of the royal lineage, and at his coronation the royal drums were not played. These are still in the possession of the deposed regent; some old men told me that the king "stole the flag" and is not a real king because he does not have the drums and because the deceased legitimate heir's own son lives. The king's functions used to the threefold: military, religious, and judicial. Today the major function the king performs is to preside over the king's court, which is the highest native tribunal. All of the village chiefs are said to "occupy the same chair." This 56 means that they are of equal status and like brothers, even if not of the same lineage or clan. They may hear cases which involve men not of their own village, but they may not charge these "strangers" a fee for doing so since the chief is only "helping his brother." Only the king has the right to charge a court fee to men of all villages, or "to unite the flag." The chief is the father of the village; the king is the father of the peOple; and today the Portuguese county Administrator is the father of them all. The king is also said to be the country (31kg); a village chief only owns the country. However there seems never to have been, and certainly there is not today, any mystical association between the king's health and the land or his people. The king's ancestors cannot visit their wrath on the country, only on their own family; nor can the king pray to his ancestors on behalf of the country as in time of drought. The only first fruits ceremony performed today, and it was not performed while I was there, is for wukanye, an alcoholic drink made from the nkanye tree's fruit. The king with the aid of his diviners is supposed to determine the date for this festival, and he drinks the first fruits which have been treated by his doctors. Afterwards he sends word to the villages and the first fruits ceremony takes place there in every household (muti). This ceremony is the extent of the king's religious function today. 57 Formerly the king was commander-in-chief of the armies, although he had a general of the army who actually led the troops into battle. This function today consists of providing men for the Portuguese draft when he is requested to do so. The king's duties are primarily judicial now. Every Sunday the king has a court where two or three cases are heard. Any case which a Village chief feels he cannot resolve in the village bandla is taken to the king. The king charges each party to a trial the same fee as a village chief charges, seventy escudos (about $3.50), but his fines are higher than those levied in a chief's court and the trials are attended by district and village chiefs, with written records kept. These records are sent on to the Administration so that the awe felt by parties to a trial at the king's court is considerably more than that which they feel at a village chief's court. Permission to take a case to the king's court is supposed to be obtained by the village chief; he "opens the road" for the principals. Any case which the king feels he cannot resolve is sent to the Portuguese Administrator for adjudication. A king who is felt to be an unjust judge, as Muvetxa was, can be circumvented by the people who take their disputes directly to the Administration. This reflects severely on the prestige of the king, and deprives him of one of his largest sources of income. 58 The senior magistrate at a trial is supposed to give some money to his counsellors so that they can buy beer and everyone can drink to restore good relations after a trial. The party who wins at a trial is supposed to pay the court a "gratification" quite apart from the court fee and apart from the fine levied on the guilty party. In fact the guilty party is fined for his offense in three ways. First, he must pay whatever the winner deems he deserves, and the court often accepts the winner's esti- mate of this. Second, the court adds a fine which the king or presiding magistrate keeps for himself. And third, the gratification that the winner pays is tacked on to the fine. The fine is conceptualized as consisting of only two parts, but no one forgets to add a little extra to the winner's damages so that he will have sufficient to pay a suitable "gratification" to the court. From this money comes the beer which all drink together. In addition the senior member will give small amounts of money to those elders who habitually attend the trials and speak when the word "is given to the 2222:" (The bandla is the court; the hubg_consists of the men who compose the court.) After a particularly bitter dispute among family members, the senior official may levy a fine of a bull to be slaughtered at the court on a given day, with all the involved family members and all of the court members attending the feast to restore good relations. 59 In addition to the money he gets from holding court, the king also receives an annual salary from the Admini- stration. The king further charges a fee to all miners returning from South Africa, and he can request food, livestock, and labor from his people at will. While I was there the king charged all of his villages a large amount of money in order to lobolo his "wife of the country." In fact he recently eloped with a divorced woman of another tribe, and the people are distressed because he has eaten their lobolo. A divorced woman is not entitled to a full lobolo; in fact, she is not entitled to any lobolo at all, although often her family charges one and receives it. In addition to the counsellors who advise the king and can check his power, the king commands his own police, as do the village chiefs. The king is the liason between his people and the Administration, and any requests from the Administration for troops, labor, etc., are simply relayed by the king to his chiefs. The king's police will go to the various villages and, with the chief and the chief's police, draft men. This constitutes one of the greatest sanctions that either king or chiefs has. The other sanction is the ability to send men to the Portu- guese jail. It is part of the Rjonga ethic that no man can be forced to admit his guilt at a trial. If a man is "stubborn" and refuses to admit that he is in the wrong there is nothing today that the chief or king can do about it immediately except to send the culprit to the 60 Administrator. This is quite drastic, in itself, but the outcome is not always what the king intended. He re- members those who displease him, however, and the force of his power is felt at the time of the draft. He can also "punish" an entire village by always calling on that village whenever he needs money or labor for himself. Village Political Structure Each village has a chief who is the king's counterpart. Villagers will address the chief as "king" (hggi), although technically he is not entitled to this address. The salute to a village chief, and the term of address, is muntwana. A village chief is supposed to be the former chief's oldest son. This is not always the case, of course, particularly when a king replaces former chiefs with his own immediate relatives and favorites. However the norm is for the chief's oldest son to succeed him, and to take his father's name when he becomes chief. If a chief is very unfair or cruel or dishonest he can be deposed by the king and be replaced by another of the royal lineage. The people are said to have no recourse if their chief is a bad one; but, in fact, there are several instances of the people secretly sending representatives to the king to complain, and of the chief being removed. Another sanction the people have against their chief is to move out of his village, and this is bad for the chief's 61 reputation as well as depriving him of income in much the same way as the king can be. The chief "owns the country." No stranger can settle in his village without his permission and without being presented by him to the king who is the only one who has the power to grant "asylum." The chief also owns all of the land and its products, which is represented by the fact that all diviners and doctors who wish to practice their art must present themselves to the chief and pay him an annual fee. This fee is conceptualized in two ways. It is payment for the doctors' license to cut the roots and herbs he needs for his medicines, because the chief owns all of the trees and plants. It is also a sort of compen- sation to the chief for potential trouble. All seniors, be they king, chief, or head of a family, must know "the beginning of cases." This means any source of potential trouble, as well as all actual disputes, must immediately be made known to the apprOpriate senior so that he has complete and, where possible, prior knowledge and thus can be an effective judge at actual disputes brought to him. Rjonga ethic has it that no one who does not know the "beginning of a case" has the right to pass judgment nor even to voice an opinion at a dispute. Similarly all those people who make and sell beer within the village must pay an annual fee to the village chief. Drunk people are the source of many disputes and fights that the chief may have to adjudicate, and the fee paid to 62 the chief is like a license to brew trouble as well as beer. Men returning from the mines must also pay the chief a set sum; the chief, in turn, is obliged to turn over a part or all of this to the king. Finally, the chief receives twenty escudos of all lobolos paid into the village. Although the chief "owns the country," and this by gift of the king, he cannot dispose of the land arbitrarily. Fields, trees, etc., are inherited by the members of the family who own them. Only those portions of the bush which have never been claimed lie in the chief's gift. Similarly a field which has lain fallow for several years, or which is held to be owned by someone but has never been worked, becomes part of the "public domain" and can be given by the chief to a villager. Mitini village is divided into five zones, each of which has its own chief whom I call the zone chief. These zones represent areas which were settled primarily by men of one clan; their chiefs are descendents of these men, and in many cases the zones are named after them. These minor officials comprise the village chief's counsellors and they are supposed to attend all village trials. Each zone chief chooses another man, often a younger brother, to act as his second-in-command. The chief also has his own police. The position of zone chief is also hereditary, passing to the oldest son. If a zone chief is removed or resigns he is frequently replaced by the man who acted as his policeman, or deputy, whether or not they are 63 related. Shortly after I settled in Mitini, the chief, a classificatory son of the king, was removed from office because of the people's complaints against his unfairness. His ndjuna, or second-in-command, a man of another clan, then acted as regent until the king decided who should succeed. A man who has been chosen for, or who has suc- ceeded to, office in the village has this fact entered in his Portuguese identification book. He retains the responsibility of a "servant of the state" until the registration is rescinded at the request of the chief or of the king. Many of the men who occupy these jobs speak bitterly about the burden imposed on them. The people say that he who rules is alone and has no friends; he also should have no favorites and never show partiality in his judgments. The chief, as well as the king, when he succeeds to office is said to have been smeared with 23b3, the Rjonga word referring to a venereal disease. This metaphor for authority expresses the dilemma which those in power have in trying to be a "father" to their peOple while still complying with disagreeable demands from even more powerful PeOple. The chief is "father" of his people, and his duties include defending them from unpleasant jobs, etc. The chief is responsible for organizing and supervising all communal labor ordered by the king. If there be much of this the people blame the chief for not protesting to the king and defending them. 64 The chief, in turn, delegates authority to the zone chiefs so that in the last analysis it is they who are immediately responsible for all work. If they feel the chief demands too much of them, based on complaints from their zone inhabitants, they censure the chief. The sanction of the people, in cases like this, is to refuse to turn up for the ordered communal work. If the men do not come when ordered, the zone chief is blamed by the chief for lacking the respect of his men. The chief, in turn, is blamed by the king for the same reasons. And, finally, the king stands in fear of the Portuguese Admini— strator, who cannot afford to deal with someone who has no power over his people. Failure to comply with the chief's orders and, ultimately, moving out of his village completely are the strongest weapons the villagers hold. These are more than sufficient to give weight to the advice of a chief's or king's counsellors, who are like senators in that they represent the wishes of the people. There is no democratic process of election, of course; the counsellors stand at the apex of the chain of command and of communication; it is they who can influence the chief or king, and it is their ear the people must reach with their petitions or complaints. Junod speaks of the court vituperator (1962: 428); I have heard elders of the village chief's court Censure him in no uncertain terms, and elders in the 65 king's court instructing him in his duties and obligations when he was carried away by his own rhetoric. These old men, the most valued of advisors, serve the function of "vituperator" today. As is the case with the king, one of the chief's primary duties is that of adjudicator. The village trial days were usually Thursdays and all of the zone chiefs and the village police were supposed to attend. In addition there were two old men, among the wisest and the richest in the village, without whom no trial would begin. These two men, of different clans, are not of the Mabzhaya, or royal, clan; but their ancestors were among the first to settle zones in Mitini and they served their kings as counsellors. If both were absent at the time of a trial the chief would send his policeman to search for them, and he would postpone the trial until at least one could be present. These two men also were called to Ntsindja every Sunday to instruct the king from the time of his coronation ("inauguration" would be more appropriate), in his role as first judge of the land. After two years they asked the king to free them from their duties because the walk to and from Ntsindja each Sunday was an arduous one for them; he finally acceded to their request but only reluctantly because "no one likes to work alone." I mention these e1ders in this context because it is the rich and suc- Ceszul man in Rjonga life who is listened to, whose word carries most weight. He is a "big man." 66 Besides the village chief's court there are the zone chiefs' courts. When there is a dispute, the parties to it are supposed to negotiate together, with their friends and family. If these negotiations are unsuc— cessful, or if one or the other circumvents this step altogether, the zone chief and the elders of his zone are supposed to hear the dispute first. A zone chief charges only twenty escudos, instead of the seventy of the village chief or king, to hear a trial; his fines are also less and are more in the nature of a settlement which both parties to the trial arrive at. Because of the rules governing residence and the relationship between neighbors, a highly valued one, a zone chief's trial is like a family hearing of a formalized sort. A zone could also be thought of as a neighborhood which usually consists of kin; failing kin, the inhabitants of the zone are close friends. When a man wants to move his household (muti) and settle in another area of the same village, he must ask permission of the zone chief and of those people who will be his immediate neighbors. If a dispute reaches the zone chief's court, it is a public admission of failure on the part of the people involved in the dispute and on the part of their family and friends; they have failed to act as reasonable people. From this level upward, through the village chief's court and the king's court, there is always a statement in the 67 course of the trial that it is shameful there should be a trial: the dispute should have been settled at home. If the zone chief and his elders feel they cannot resolve the case, or if one or the other of the principals in the trial is dissatisfied with the court's ruling, the zone chief "Opens the road" to the village chief's court. In these cases the zone chief has failed because he was not wise enough to convince the guilty one of his guilt and demonstrate it cogently enough that the person would admit it and accept his punishment. No man can be forced to admit his guilt unless he is genuinely brought to see it and freely confess it. Although chiefs used to use various forms of physical persuasion, such as tying a "stubborn" man to a stinging ant heap, it is believed that if the guilty man is not brought to understand what he has done wrong he will err again. Further he will lose respect for his chief and the elders because he will think he was ill used and unfairly sentenced. This ethic does not prevent the two kinds of chiefs or the king from indulging in dire threats of the consequences to a person who stubbornly refuses to admit that he understands he was in the wrong. At every trial I attended at the village chief's court, and I went often, there were always dark references to the tree that shaded the court; it harbored one of the dreaded stinging ants nests. At times a person was tied up; on one occasion I saw a man at the king's court beaten. The 68 ultimate threat is to send the resisting person to the Portuguese Adminstrator. None of this, however, mitigates the conviction that the person himself must see and admit to his fault. I have also sat for several hours at the conclusion of a trial, both at the village chief's and at the king's court, while the court cajoled, threatened, and pleaded with the person they found at fault to admit he perceived his error. However, such a person loses prestige in the eyes of his peers; he is thereafter thought of as a man with little reason, an argumentative man, a man whose advice no one wants. The chief's, and the zone chiefs', role is primarily that of father to his people, and his duties are conceptualized in the same way that a father's are towards his family. He must defend his family and provide for them; he is responsible for their behavior; he must preserve peace in the family, and hear disputes settling them fairly and without partiality or favoritism. He must be an exemplar in his own behavior, or no one will listen to him. A proverb I often heard was "When a chief limps, his subjects limp also." Of course chiefs are people like everyone else and it is seldom that a man can live up to his role; chiefs or kings who did are still remembered in the people's frequent allusions to their wisdom and kindness. The chief who starts limping too badly, however, finds that he is not consulted when he should be; he is not advised of what is going on in the village; his elders 69 do not attend his trials; the men do not come to the ordered work parties. And, finally, he finds that his people have complained to the king and he is removed. This knowledge serves to put some check on the chief, and to make him more anxious to comply with the role as his villagers define it. CHAPTER III SOCIAL ORGANIZATION Residence The muti is the smallest corporate unit in Rjonga life. There are two referents to this term: "village," and "household" or family compound, this latter being my interpretation of the most common use of the term. When I refer to a EEE£.I always use it in this latter sense. A muti is the area of cleared bush, an oasis of sand, which can consist of from one to seven or eight huts or houses. The word for house is yindlu or kaya, the latter also meaning "hearth" or "country" (patria). Muti_refers to the aggregate of houses in one clearing. The core of the muti is the nuclear family: a man, his wife or wives, each with her own house and kitchen; his sons and unmarried daughters. Often a man's brothers and their families will live there also; this is the ideal. Unmarried or divorced sisters and their children make their home here, and widowed women who have refused to be in- herited usually go to live with their sons. Older couples' daughters' children will often be in residence for a few years from the time they are weaned. This is said to 70 71 create a friendship link between the two families bound by marriage; it is also a way of repaying the wife's household for the services it lost when she married out, although this is a major function of the lobolo also. More im- portant, if a child is living with his maternal grandparents, the child's parents will make more frequent visits than otherwise might be the case. The child living thus with his maternal grandparents is not entitled to inherit anything from them, and seldom does, in my experi- ence. It is also said by the Rjonga that a grandmother always favors her daughter's children over her son's children. When I inquired why, the answer I received was along the lines that the sex sticks together. This battle between the sexes is an intense one, although of the joking variety. When a woman has daughters she tells her husband that she has "conquered" him; she is stronger than he. The Rjonga had corporate lineages, a pattern which is perceived today only at certain rituals, notably the xidjilo, or service to the memory of the ancestors. Property vested in the lineage (cattle, other livestock, fields, cash) and was administered by the eldest male of the family on behalf of the family. When the eldest man died he was succeeded by his younger brother, and so on until all the elders of that generation died out; then the eldest son of the eldest "father" succeeded assuming the duties, obligations, and rights of his father. If a man's .- ‘\ no oran- gnu... O-. u... ‘n. n,‘ '- a. ‘- ‘- a H“ 72 father died while he was still young his inheritance was kept and administered by the family head until he was old enough to claim it for himself. Whatever his father left he could then call his own and dispose of at will, but he, as the eldest of his siblings, was obligated to provide for them at need: he must help his younger brothers and father's brothers' sons with their lobolo; he must clothe and feed the females in his family. Thus within one muti there would be a hierarchy of elders, each the immediate head of his own ndangu, or hearth. Lineage segmentation usually took place along ndangu lines; each wife had her own kitchen, or ndangu, and this is the origin of the term. Brothers of the same father and different mothers belong to different ndangu. When fathers, brothers, their wives and children all live together the head, is the eldest male, and although each ndangu can point to its individual holdings of stock or fields, they were administered (herded or plowed) by all on behalf of all, under the supervision of the family chief. This pattern of the large muti seldom is seen today; that it did exist is attested to by Junod (1962: 310 ff.) and by some of my oldest informants who lived in enormous EEE$.(593 muti) of twenty or more huts holding some 100 or more people. The last, and largest, muti in Mitini split up fifty-seventy years ago when several un- explained deaths occurred in a short period of time, 73 including the deaths of some of the youngest adult males. The two eldest males, brothers, built separate miti, taking their sons with them. When these two elders died their sons moved and built again. This time the sons built separately, each ndangu (full siblings) building apart. At each successive death.the muti was destroyed and the survivors split again. In this particular case the first two elders who separated and built separately went into what today are two different zones--that is, they lived very far apart. In the succeeding divisions, the brothers built apart from each other but near by so that they were neighbors. The Rjonga attribute the present day lack of large miti to several causes, the principal ones being fear of witchcraft between fathers and sons, or between brother and brother, and the introduction to the cash economy. As one old informant bitterly told me when recounting the grandeur of his lineage muti, "what kills us today is money." He meant that since the young men can find jobs in Lourenco Marques or in the South African mines they can earn enough cash to support themselves and are no longer dependent on their fathers and elder brothers to help them. This does not mean that brothers or fathers and sons do not live together at all today; a man's greatest happiness is still when his son asks permission to build his own house in his father's muti, where he can live with his wife. But no v-vb u... o I]! l to v. 74 muti of the dimensions of the one mentioned above exists anymore. There are approximately 200 homesteads in Mitini scattered throughout the village and separated from each other by fairly large areas of uncleared bush or by fields. I have complete census data for 105 of these 200 households, but the statistics which follow are based on only 101 of these; the other four households are headed by women, which is a very unusual circumstance. In each case these women are either widowed or divorced and have no living male kin. The heads of the 101 households in my sample represent thirty-eight clans; of these 20 per cent are of the Mabzhaya clan, 22 per cent of the Ngwenya clan, and 6 per cent of the Mashiana clan. These three clans represent the most powerful and important ones in the village; their ancestors settled the area and they have intermarried in almost every generation. The Honwana and Mahlangwana clans, the original settlers of this area conquered by the first Mabzhaya, are represented only by two and three household heads, respectively. The average number of people per muti is seven: this figure includes minor children. In 65 per cent of the households there is only one adult male, the head of the family. Twenty-one per cent of the households include a father and his married son or sons; 13 per cent include married brothers living together; and only 2 per cent consist of an elder, his married brothers, and their 75 married sons. This is the ideal composition for a muti; such a homestead inspires "fear" and "respect" in the other villagers. The actual composition of a muti fluctuates over time as women of the family marry out; divorced or widowed sisters come back; men go to the mines and return to marry, then later leave the muti to build their own; and so on. Often the apparent head of a household is a woman because all of the adult males are gone; some are in South Africa for eighteen months or longer at a time. Others have work in the capital city or elsewhere and have homes there where they take one of their wives, returning to Mitini only for vacations and weekends. But all Rjonga agree that every household has a senior male as its head; women who live alone, for whatever reason, are called xungwa which means "divorcee" and/or "prostitute." Mitini is a relatively young village, it began being settled more densely as a consequence of the 1894 war with the Portuguese. There are several peOple, however, who say that their ancestors came to the village to escape inter-tribal warfare, as well as intra-tribal wars. As nearly as I can tell the village became a pOpular place to settle in around 1850; the largest attraction was a sizeable lake which has since dried up. From the households for which I have census data, there are only 50 per cent whose heads were born in Mitini. Of those 50 per cent who were not born in the village, q on (I) (TI \4‘. “. (a I" flu. fie M V. -' ‘s ‘). 76 44 per cent came with their mothers because they had male relatives in the village. This move would most often take place after the death of the father-husband in his village. Thus a considerable portion of the heads of household are settled in Mitini in order to be near their uterine kin. The marriage residence rule is virilocality, and the ideal is for a man to take his wife, or wives, from outside his native village. In my sample 13 per cent of the native heads of households married women also native to Mitini; heads of household not native to the village who married women who are natives represent another 13 per cent. The 101 men in my sample have a total of 137 wives among them, of whom 54 are native to Mitini; that is, 32 per cent of all wives are natives of the village. Given the fact that agnatic kinsmen do not live together in the same muti to the extent they say they used to, and given the mobility of villagers after the death of their head or household, it is not strange that any given zone in Mitini is composed mostly of cognates and some friends who have asked permission to settle there. There are about 1,400 inhabitants in the village, and although I have not yet been able to collect genealogies from all the 200 or so heads of households and their wives, I have no doubt, from the individual maps of neighbors made for each household census taken, that most of the inhabitants of one zone can claim kinship (agnatic, uterine, or affinal) with one or more of their close neighbors. Many of the A» at ‘O ‘ v- .- ‘r~ an: £ .nq Ha. )- I an.» ~ .4 77 household heads also have close agnatic kin in other zones of the village, though again the analysis of the census data has not yet progressed to the point that I can say exactly what percentage this involves. There is a strong value about the relationship between neighbors. They are said to be the people one can depend on most; when you are in immediate need of help they are nearest you, whereas your agnatic kinsman may live far away. The people say "The huts burn together"; this indicates the basis for the value. If they do not co- operate with one another, help each other in small and big things, then they might suffer in time of need. Disputes between neighbors are as serious as those between near kinsmen because of the necessity of being able to rely on neighbors for help. There is a slightly more positive aspect to this value, though; if there were disputes between neighbors there would be little tolerance for marauding chickens, goats, and inquisitive children. These everyday occurrences would simply fan the flames of an existing dispute until a peaceful settlement would be very difficult and continued existence side by side virtually impossible. Thus the value of good relations between neighbors takes on the aspect of preventive measures. The ethic concerning neighbors carries over into marriage rules. It would be too strong to say that marriage between neighbors is absolutely proscribed, but .,n( \ , .uv- ~vv . .O.‘ "'v-r 0...! p AV Iv- v. (I. .- 'V It! ’0 '5 b. u. t. N} H.' :1‘ '¥ 78 it is definitely discouraged. People who are neighbors should not marry because this would impose too heavy a strain on the relationship of "neighbor." Furthermore people seem to consider a neighbor not just those persons who have adjacent miti, but all who live in the same zone. Perhaps this is a function of the ideal that close kinsmen should live together or near each other. Many reasons are given for the spatial separation of the miti, one of the most distinctive features of Rjonga villages. The reasons include the statement that Mitini is still a relatively uncrowded place so that peOple have room to spread out. I was also told that each muti must have uncleared bush to the west of it because the Rjonga have no bathrooms and must use the bush. Livestock must have room also, and if there is space between miti this lessens the chance of disputes due to wandering stock. For a variety of reasons these explanations lack cogency. I think fear of interference into family affairs and fear of witchcraft play a large part in the distribution of the homesteads. The Rjonga are quite defensive and constantly take measures to protect themselves from hostile people and forces. Whatever the reasons, the miti are usually separated by an extensive area of uncleared bush. Some miti do cluster more closely together; these are usually close kinsmen and/or friends. na It.- ..- q 5- av. nu. Udu In. ‘1! ‘b. 5": Ct *§ b, b’ \ 79 The fields are scattered throughout the entire village, as well as outside of it, and they are not immediately adjacent to the miti except in a few cases. Some householders have kitchen gardens just outside their homestead. A few have large fields adjacent to their miti, but the majority of the people have to walk considerable distances to get to their fields. Also any given indi- vidual may have several different types of fields, within and without the village, which are widely separated. All of the zones are separated from one other by large areas of fields and/or uncleared bush; the only exception are those two zones settled by the two brothers when their large lineage muti split up. These two zones have the same name, but they are distinct; each has its own zone chief and police. The boundaries of Mitini are more fields or uncleared bush separating it from its closest neighbors, which include some European farmers. The village is in the heart of the bush and is only accessible by passing through other villages first. Although I was unable to measure with any degree of accuracy, I estimate that the village encompasses some thirty square kilometers, perhaps more. Subsistence The Rjonga today are mainly subsistence farmers. The major crOps are peanuts, corn, beans, sweet potatoes, onions, rice, tomatoes, sugar cane, tobacco, and cassava. 80 The soil in Mitini is very sandy, except in the areas near the now dry lake; only corn and peanuts grow with any degree of success. There are several types of fields and each family owns at least two different kinds. A hlangwa is a field in a former lake bed, of dark and humid soil; it is neither wet nor dry. A tchobo is a wet field, with very dark soil. There are byela fields of wet clay. Of these three types, only the hlangwa and tchobo are to be found in Mitini; they are the scarcest and most valued, being the most pro- ductive. The byela fields are found only outside of the village on the margins and plain of the Nkomati river. The most common type of field in the village is called gimp, which actually means "field," but the word is used only to refer to the dry white sand fields (European and Oriental plantations are called mashamba). Dry fields are subdivided into three types according to the length of time they have been utilized: a lisindje is a dry field which is being plowed and sown for the first time; a EELS is a field which has lain fallow for two or three years and is being reused; and a hlanga is a field which is culti- vated every year and has never been put to fallow. Because of the increasing population in Mitini, and the scarcity of uncleared bush near the village due to the encroachment of European and Oriental farmers, the yield of the fields has fallen off drastically in the last ten to twenty years. Where a field used to yield fifteen to twenty sacks of 81 peanuts in a year it now may give only four or five; this is because there is not enough land to permit fallowing, and more and more land is brought under cultivation to make up for the reduced yield of old fields, thus instituting a vicious cycle. Agricultural activity goes on year round, but the period of greatest work is just before the rains in September when all of the fields are cleared by hand and plowed. The rains last sporadically through January or February; plowing, seeding, and weeding can take place during all of those months, but the best month for planting is said to be October or November. The harvest takes place between two and four months after planting, depending on the product and type of field. Wild fruits are also available in every month except August and September; often it is these fruits which keep the people from absolute starvation. Plowing is a man's job, but a woman will do it if she has no male kinsman to rely on or no cash with which to pay a friend to do it. A man yokes a small plow to two cattle; the plow was introduced into Mitini very recently, around 1940. Small boys help their fathers or other kinsmen with the plowing; men and women sow together; weeding is their joint responsibility although, in fact, women do most of it since the men are kept quite busy plowing all of their fields. Sowing of fields is often a joint effort of kinsmen and neighbors, as is harvesting. \n. Av- ’1‘ 3n Fro ‘ ’ Au— .- U. :- a. 82 A cooperative party to harvest a field is called a diimg, and the people who help are recompensed by a beer party afterwards. A man may mark off small portions of a field and may pay cash to people who need it to weed these portions and harvest them. This system is largely re- placing the diimg, or cooperative work party. Besides the staple crops (corn and peanuts) grown in Mitini, the people harvest cashews, mangos, and other wild fruits. Cashews are the major cash crOp, the trees jealously guarded and ownership carefully staked out and registered at the Portuguese Administration. From time to time, a woman may take a sack of corn or peanuts, or other vegetables in small quantities, to the bazaar in the nearest vila or in Lourenco Marques for sale. They do this when they want money for clothes, usually; it is a sporadic activity at best. Each wife is supposed to have her own field for which she is responsible and from which she prepares meals for her husband and own children. Her husband may give her permission to sell a small amount of produce from her fields for clothes, or other luxuries. The yield being small, however, they usually consume what they produce. Cattle play an important role in Rjonga life, a left-over from the days when wealth was in terms of cattle and only men could handle them. Their importance, I gather, was equal to that in the northern tribes of the East African Cattle Area. However, the large herds were 83 decimated during the Ngoni invasions and wars, and the people never recovered them. This was probably a major impetus in the wholesale migrations to work in the South African mines (Rita-Ferreira, 1963: 42), together with the need to acquire cash in order to pay the annual tax levied by the Portuguese. Nevertheless, a man's wealth and prestige is still measured in terms of the number of head of cattle he owns, although these are pitifully few for any one person today. Some men in the village are known as "cattlemen"; they have more stock than others and have been successful at raising cattle. Many who had enough cash to begin a herd were unable to care for the animals properly and they died. Thus there is a certain mystique about the "cattleman." A few successful men keep large corrals where their kin, neighbors, and friends also keep their stock. The owner of the corral hires a man to take charge of all of the cattle, be responsible for their being taken to pasture and water every day, and be in charge of the baths also. The cattle are registered in the name of the man who actually cares for them; I think this is to facilitate any necessary transactions with the authorities about the cattle. The individual owners pay the corral owner an annual fee, from which he pays his herder. More important than the money is the prestige which accrues to the successful corral owner. It is interesting to note that the corral owner receives the prestige due a successful cattleman although " 84 it is another person, the hired hand, who does the actual work. There is much mystery surrounding the successful raising of cattle, and I was led to understand that this has to do with witchcraft and/or potent medicines. I do know that men whose cattle were dying in the care of the village's biggest cattleman, while his were thriving, were afraid to remove their cattle from his corral. They spoke to him about it cautiously, observing that their cattle seemed to be cursed, but he put them off with platitudes and reassurances. The villagers told me they would not simply remove their cattle because then all of their stock might die and even worse calamities befall them. They would express their displeasure by not paying their annual fee, or delaying doing so for many months. This is a very common technique among the Rjonga; it is a generalized trait which I came to call "passive resistence." Small holders who have only four or five head each put their cattle in charge of small boys of about six to fourteen years of age; this is the traditional occupation of young boys and men. A boy begins his herding duties at age four or five, being put in charge of goats first. As his ability increases, and depending on the availability of other young boys and men, he is included in cattle herding activities until he is old enough to be put in charge of the "herd." Lobolo payments are always in cash and never in cattle. I was told that payments used to be made in 85 cattle, then in hoes, now in cash (see Junod also). However a man is supposed not to spend the lobolo money until there are children and he feels sure the marriage will be a success; if he were precipitate and spent the cash and his daughter returned home he would be embarrassed by the need to repay the lobolo. The one way men can spend the lobolo money prOperly is to buy cattle, because these increase and can be sold if another lobolo is needed or if one received must be repaid. Selling cattle is a major source of revenue, but the people hate to do it because they say they need the cattle for the plowing. More important, I feel sure, is the prestige which accrues to the cattle owner. Every family also keeps chickens, goats, and perhaps pigs. Meat is consumed maybe five times a year: at Christmas and New Year, when visitors arrive, for weddings, births, and deaths. Cattle are always slaughtered for a wedding; usually fowls, goats, and pigs, in that order of increasing importance, are provided for the other occasions. People usually sell the offspring of their stock rather than eat it themselves. The staple dish is a loaf made from grains of corn, eaten with a relish of boiled bean leaves, peanut butter sauce, or some other kind of vegetable. Usually only one meal a day is cooked, in the evening. In the mornings the people drink tea, heavily sugared if they have sugar, and eat plain bread purchased at one of the cantinas (trading 86 post); at noon they might eat the remains of the last evening's meal. They eat whatever fruits they encounter at any time. No family can survive on the produce from the fields alone. The need for cash to pay the tax; to pay the lobolo; to buy clothing, bread, sugar, tea, and medicine has combined with other factors to produce a large-scale labor migration. Between the two most popular places of employment, Lourengo Marques and the South African mines, it is the mines which attract the greater number of men. The reasons for this are many and complex; I shall not go into them here. It is sufficient to say that in every family there is at least one male member who has a cash- earning job, and the great majority of these go to the mines. Many men have gone as many as sixteen times, for a two year period each time, making it a career. There is a very strong machismo cult associated with going to the mines. Young men believe that they will be called cowards by the girls they want to court in marriage if they refuse to go to the mines to collect enough money to pay a lobolo. I shall reproduce one of the explanations I was given by an old man when I asked how the people started going to the mines, and why. It is a matter of record that these migrations to the mines began 100 years ago. In the beginning the people knew of a place called Babtin which is on the boundary of Swaziland and Pretoria. It was heard that there was a white man who came to Lourenqo Marques and agreed with certain individuals for 87 them to go work there in Babtin, and he promised to pay them a certain amount. These people, after they arrived there and liked it, began to write and draw their friends, and they told them how to go there. And thus, little by little, the people went there until from Babtin there was another white who did the same thing and took the people to South Africa. And in those times when someone had luck he could grab some rocks of money, worth gold. And they called that rock daimana. And the people knew that with luck they might find some of those rocks, and when they sold them they could earn a lot of money. They liked going there to that place a lot. During that time, when the owners of the mines saw that the people liked their work, they went little by little, building the mines, removing them towards South Africa. They also began to procure means of transports, because a person, in order to arrive at Babtin, used to have to Spend two or three weeks on the road; and many were eaten by lions and other savage animals. Going, as well as coming, they were eaten. The trip was dangerous because only a person who had luck arrived there. And thus, because of that, they began to construct the railroad. After it was finished they began making contracts for people going there. The most interesting thing for the people from that time until now is that each one tries his luck, thinking that he will find that rock worth gold when sold and that he will earn a lot of money to enrich his hearths (mindan u). But it is not everyone who succeeds in having luc . I it were only the_contract there would not be many people who would like going there, because they are ill-treated and many people die before they have the luck which most interests them. Kinship Roles There are fourteen kinship classes among the Rjonga, including all affinal relations. These are shown on Figures 5 through 8, Appendix B, and can be compared with Junod's kinship terms on Figures 9-12, Appendix B. As I have already mentioned seniority and hier- archy are the keys to Rjonga social organization. The 88 people say there must always be a chief, someone in charge who is responsible for the behavior of those inferior to him. The father is the head of his own family just as the chief is head of the village, and the king is the head of all of the chiefs. A father is obligated to help all of his sons in material and non-material things. He is responsible for arranging his son's marriage, helping him to gather the lobolo, asking other relatives and friends to be family representatives in the dealings with the wife's family. He must feed and clothe his children; buy their medicines when they are sick; pray to the ancestors on their behalf if he is pagan, and if they are ill. If a married daughter is ill or, particularly, if she has no children or they all die the father, as well as her husband, must do everything which the doctor-diviner prescribes for her cure. In this case the husband is primarily responsible for initiating the treatment because he is the "owner" of the woman; but in cases connected with children the treatment almost always must be at the woman's own home, and the father and her brothers have clear responsibilities and obligations. The father is responsible for teaching his children to be "good" peOple; he is, in fact, held responsible for their behavior as long as they live with him. In the case of daughters, the father is blamed if she is not a good wife and mother; he is shamed by her bad 89 conduct because it reflects on his training of her. In disputes the father is held responsible for his children's behavior, and he often acts as if he were the defendant in the case, arguing on behalf of his son, mobilizing support among their relatives, friends, and "big men" of the village. The good father is a man you can always turn to for advice; he is someone who will "help you with words," which is highly valued among the Rjonga. And finally a father should have no favorites among his sons, providing for them all equally but in order of seniority. The eldest son must be the first to marry; then the second son, the third, and so on. Similarly the younger daughters may not marry before their elders so that there be no unfairness in the distribution of the lobolo. The eldest daughter's lobolo should be given to the eldest son, etc. In return children owe their father complete obedience and respect, complying with his orders, working as he directs. He is their chief, and one does not quarrel nor disagree with the chief. Sons should give their wages to the father and he distributes it at need to buy clothes, pay lobolo, etc. Daughters are absolutely ruled by their fathers and by their elder brothers, as well. Sons are admitted to family consultations as they grow up and mature; daughters rarely are until they reach middle age and are fathers' sisters. Among themselves siblings have a hierarchy also. Although all siblings, and cousins of the four categories, 90 are called by the same term meaning "sibling" there are definite distinctions on the basis of age. A younger sibling is called ndjisana; an older is called nondjwa. This distinction is most apparent in those children who "follow each other"; that is who are consecutive in order of birth. The older, regardless of sex, takes care of the younger, carrying the baby on his back from the time the mother leaves it out of her exclusive care--not necessarily when weaned. The older child forms a very strong at- tachment to the infant put in his care and does most of the socializing of the child as he grows up. The younger child looks to this older sibling as to a friendly parent; the child in charge is often stricter than the mother would be, and the younger may well fear punishment from the older. Nevertheless this older sibling is the person closest to the child, and the one that the child seems to relate to most freely. The father, and even elder siblings, thus become relegated to another level and take on the aspect of rather remote and very powerful authority figures. The younger child will often call these older siblings "makwerju" (sibling) or, if they are much older than he, by the term for "father" or "mother." This is particularly the case after the death of own father and mother. Cousins who are older are always called "sibling" or by the term for "father" or "mother" which is extended to all people as a courtesy title if of the same approximate age, or of parents' age. If the cousins are of the same age or 91 younger they are called by their first name, as siblings call younger brothers and sisters by their first name. Because I think the relationship between the two children who "follow each other" to be crucial to under- standing Rjonga life I will give an excerpt from my field notes. At the funeral of an old man his elder brother spoke first, as is the custom. The deceased must have been over sixty—five; his surviving older brother about sixty- seven or sixty-eight years old. The eldest brother is the head of one of the miti composed of married brothers, their married sons, and their children. The deceased brother had left this muti to build his own so that of the three brothers only the eldest and youngest were actually living together. This one who died is my brother who follows me; after I stopped nursing I left a part of the milk for him. He is not [just] a relative nor is he a friend, but he is my legitimate brother. I prided myself because of him, knowing that I have a younger brother, advising him. But today things ended. He also prided himself because of me. If anyone wanted to do him harm sometimes they stopped knowing that he has an older brother. Even if I had a lot of money I could not buy a brother. I can only say that today I remained in a terrible place. In the beginning we lived well together. He had herded someone's cattle, with his younger brother who is hidden here [that is, standing behind the eldest while he spoke]. And they received a cow, the two [traditional recompense to herd boys]. And when Fernando [deceased] returned from South Africa with only a little money, but wanting to marry his wife, the one who died before him, we entered the house and we talked, and his brother Eduardo [the youngest of the three] said: "Brother, you can take the cow and use it for your wedding, because if you marry your wife she will give me water also." And it was thus. [The traditional duty of women is to carry water for the muti inhabitants; this is symbolized by a man going to a 92 woman's parents when he wants to marry and saying "I come to seek water".] He succeeded in marrying, but he did not have luck. His wife died first. My brother had no luck. He suffered much in his life. But after the first one died he agreed with this Ngomana [deceased's second wife's surname] who also had bad luck because her first husband died; and the two without luck met. And the mother of this woman was my wife's father's sister. That means that she was my sister- in-law. And when her parents knew they only asked 1500$ [instead of the full lobolo of 2500$] since she had been married. And he only had 500$ and I offered him 500$, leaving a debt of 500$. But as we agreed with the bakonwana [in-laws of greatest respect category: wife's rEIatives] we went to register her in our house [registered her at Portuguese Administration as lawful wife]. We said we would pay all of the money of which 500$ was lacking. Until now I can say we never paid it; I do not know if he was capable of having paid, but I think he would have told me. This one who today left me is my brother whom I loved much. At the time he left home I told him not to leave, but he did not hear me [referring to Fernando's leaving family muti and building his own]. And I cannot say more things about him. The other thing is that I thank all of you here for your help; and I can say that I also have helped him a lot. . . . The old man continued speaking for some time recounting all that he had done to help his brother in his last illness, and the trouble he was put to in arranging the funeral. In fact when Tomas, the eldest, was notified in the middle of the night that his younger brother was dying he refused to go to him. He said that he had told his brother not to move out of the muti so that the brothers could care for one another; that he had moved, despite his older brother's advice, and now there was nothing he, Tomas, could do. When Fernando died all that he had would be Tomas', the elder brother, and then Tomas said he would do what was necessary. 93 This excerpt from my notes provides excellent data on the conflict between ideal behavior between brothers and what actually often happens. What does happen is that the younger sibling grows to resent the elder's authority, demands, advice. That is, the more dependent the younger actually is or feels himself to be, the more hostile he is likely to feel toward his elder. The younger, as he grows up, tries to free himself from his elder's dominance by saying that only his father, or father's brother, has the right to make the demands on him that his elder brother makes. The elder brother does not see it that way at all since he has cared for this younger brother much as a father would, and thus feels completely justified. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the father, who should treat all of his sons alike, often concerns himself only with the eldest considering his duties fulfilled when the eldest, or perhaps two eldest, are married. Then the father often seems to act as if it were the brother's responsibility to provide for the younger siblings. The only relationship, of the possible four dyads among siblings, which is relatively free of this kind of strain is that of older sister-younger brother. In this dyad the younger brother comes to think of his older sister as a second mother which is a permissive role on both sides with the male half of the dyad not obligated to pay much attention to what the female says. The older sister- younger sister relationship is subject to much the same 94 kind of strains as older brother-younger brother. This is alleviated if the two sisters marry into different lineages; but there is a strong marriage preference for a man to take his wife's younger sister as his second wife because the younger sister is already accustomed to serving and obeying the elder. To return to the funeral oration, a brief analysis will make clear the realities of what I have dealt with in the abstract. The first paragraph makes clear the pos- sessive love the older brother feels towards his junior. Explicit in this is the role of protector assigned to the elder, which is a father's role par excellence; father and older brother are seen as protectors and providers. I have heard many men say that at the time of their father's death they felt bereft because they no longer had anyone to care for them; to protect them: to help them with words. They felt they would no longer be "respected" (which also means "feared") by others because of the death. I have heard a younger brother express the identical sentiment at the death of his older brother. This is made clear in Tomas' words: "If anyone wanted to do him harm sometimes they stopped knowing that he has an older brother." The same kind of protective-providing aspect to the older brother role is demonstrated in the words "after I stopped nursing I left a part of the milk for him." The people know that a woman stOps having milk (usually) only when she conceives again. They say that the toddler who is 95 thus forcibly weaned has surrendered his milk in order to provide for his sibling-to-be-born. Since siblings who are said "to follow each other well" are only two or two and a half years apart, the elder often does have to be weaned because his mother has conceived again. If she had not the toddler would continue nursing until he was three or four years old. "Milk" is a common metaphor for expressing kinship ties and obligations. Children of the same mother but of fathers of different clans are called "siblings of the milk." When men arbitrate or judge a case between siblings, own or classificatory, they will say the differences must be settled "because the milk can't die." If the elder brother is not head of his family, that is if he also has brothers older than he, then the tension between the two younger brothers might be even greater. The eldest, the head of the family, is the one who inherits his father's obligations and rights, and also becomes the intermediary with the ancestors. It is to him that the others are obligated to give their wages; for whom they must work; whom they must obey. However, a man's next older brother will make the same demands on his younger sibling without being able to compensate for them by acting as an intermediary in the spiritual realm, and he dis- claims any obligations to his younger brother on the grounds that the eldest is responsible. 96 In this case, though, the eldest brother, Tomas, is also the head of the family and thus feels a doubled responsibility, as it were, to his younger brother while also expecting strong loyalty and obedience to his orders on the grounds of being head of the family and the next older brother. That is, the older brother's emotional investment is really stronger than an own father's because of the intensive care he took of his younger sibling from a very early age. "In the beginning we lived well together." This alludes to the fact that the three brothers lived together in the same muti for some years, all of them married. The "living well together" means that the younger brothers obeyed their eldest brother. This is the first note in the sharper-than-a—serpent's-tooth theme which occurs through- out the rest of Tomas' oration, and was implicit in his refusal to attend his dying brother. Also in this para- graph is a glimpse of the relationship between Fernando, as older brother, and Eduardo, the youngest of the three. Eduardo "followed" Fernando. Tomas tells how Eduardo helped his older brother marry by giving up his share in the cow they received as payment for herding. In doing so Eduardo was complying with the obligations of a younger brother to his elder; in the family hierarchy the elder is always entitled to receive whatever help he needs before the younger. Also, Eduardo verbalizes the corporate nature of the brothers' relationship in saying "because if 97 you marry . . . she will give me water also." Even more interesting is the hierarchy implied by the fact that when Fernando was in need it was his younger brother's obli- gations to him, and not his older brother's equally strong obligations, which were activated. This is a common facet of Rjonga relationships; one is more likely to receive his due from the person over whom one has power and authority rather than from a person who is obligated merely by virtue of his status. If a Rjonga has the option of going to his senior and saying "You must help me in this as you have helped me in other things because it is your duty as my protector"; and going to a junior and saying "You must help me in this because I have always helped you and taken care of you, and if you do not do what I want now you need not expect any further help from me"--the choice always seems to be to go to the latter. In this the petitioner is not a supplicant throwing himself on the mercy of another, he is an authority figure demanding his rights. That this aspect should be stressed seems natural for the Rjonga whose organizing principle is seniority, and the rights of seniority are often given more emphasis than the obli- gations of the senior to his juniors. This, in itself, is a partial explanation of why senior-junior relationships are so often strained, although it does not explain why rights rather than obligations should be stressed. In the third paragraph Tomas is hinting, as other Rjonga explained it to me, that his brother's bad luck was 98 partly due to his failure to behave as a "good man," specifically as a good younger brother. Tomas also points out that Fernando was able to take a second wife for a reduced lobolo because the woman was Tomas' nhombe, a sister-in-law of the category of preferred wife. This woman is a preferred second wife for Tomas himself, since she is his own wife's classificatory younger sister. Thus, by extension, she becomes a preferred wife for Tomas' younger brother who would have inherited her when Tomas died, if Tomas had actually married the woman himself. Tomas fulfilled his obligations as head of the family, and as older brother, by getting a reduction of the lobolo, and by helping his brother with 500$. It is probable, although I do not know for certain, that since Eduardo had already helped his older brother to marry once (by giving up his share of their cow), the brothers agreed it was Tomas' "turn." At any rate it is clear that Tomas acted as head of the family in this second marriage by helping Fernando with words ("we agreed with the in-laws") and with money. He mentions the debt still owed on the lobolo which shows that Fernando was unable to fulfill his obligations without his older brother's help (and is also an example of another Rjonga trait which might be expressed "leave well enough alone"). And he ends by saying that perhaps Fernando had been able to pay the 500$ balance "but I think he would have told me." That is, Tomas cannot believe that his younger brother so forgot his obligations 99 to his older brother and head of family as to have not told him of all important transactions in his life. It must be remembered that in his role of protector and chief of the family, a man must always be told first, and immediately, of any important business which can affect the whole family if there should be a dispute. The head of the family, just like the zone and village chief, must know "the beginning of the case" so that he is equipped to negotiate, arbi- trate, or judge at need. The final paragraph is a repetition of the theme of love and bitterness felt by an elder brother whose younger brother rejected him, his advice, his right to loyalty and obedience. Tomas concluded by stressing that he helped Fernando in his last illness. This is true to the extent that he provided 50$ to pay for his brother's transpor- tation to a hospital at my request. He told me that I had done right in coming to him to ask for the money, because he was the eldest and the "owner" of that sick man. More than that Tomas refused to do, and he acted only when I interfered because Fernando called me to his house and asked me to help him. My assistant was vehement in saying that I should not help because that was not what I had come to Mitini to do, and I should not meddle in a family affair. Furthermore my assistant stressed that Fernando had been his enemy; this will be seen in the case which forms the core of the dissertation. By helping my assistant's enemy I was "taking sides against him." This 100 is another feature of Rjonga philoSOphy and one which I was able to overcome only by appealing to the Christian tenets which my assistant claimed he held dear--that is I appealed to his most important status symbol, in effect. Our compromise was to the effect that I could help only if I went to consult the head of Fernando's family first, Tomas, and asked him for the money and did what Tomas was willing be done. And so it was. However I was made very aware that Tomas resented my interference, particularly because he felt he owed his brother nothing since he had left his older brother's homestead, and thus rejected him as head of family. Tomas and Eduardo also indicated their displeasure that Fernando had dared to call me, and thus used me to shame Tomas in my eyes. The relationship between Tomas and his youngest brother, Eduardo, is a classic example (as I am told) of "good relations" between brothers. I take this to be the case in many similar relationships where there is little strain imposed because of the tension between rights and obligations. Eduardo was content to treat Tomas as eldest brother, or as a father. He behaved toward him as a young man does towards a much older man; his respect was easy and his manner affectionate. He sits at his brother's feet in the muti; he on the ground, his brother, Tomas, on a chair, a symbol of importance. When there are visitors Tomas is the one who receives them, speaks with them, offers hospitality; it is Eduardo who actually waits on 101 them and seldom joins in the conversation. This is the sort of relationship I often observed between siblings who did not "follow each other." The strains between consecutive brothers due to the stress the older places on the younger's obligations, at the expense of the elder's own obligations, is an important factor in the break-up of the lineage muti. The younger brother resents the demands his elder makes on him; often the younger sees no corresponding rights in his relation- ship with his elder, and this makes him unwilling to comply with the elder's rights to his material resources. This situation is particularly aggravated when either or both of the brothers have become Christian, as is the case with Tomas, Fernando, and Eduardo. There are no supernatural sanctions that the elder can invoke to force his younger siblings' compliance with his demands. Add to this the fact that younger brothers can go to South Africa or Lourenco Marques to earn the cash they need to pay a lobolo or a tax, and there is a situation created in which demands are made which have no sanctions to reinforce them. To requote my old informant "It is money which is killing us." The elders perceive the relative ease with which cash can be earned as a major factor in the breakdown of the ideal pattern of cooperation among siblings and respect owed to the eldest male of the family. Aging fathers are particularly bitter because they looked to their sons to take care of them and support them in their decline; 102 instead the sons leave home to find cash jobs and build their own miti. The tension generated between siblings by the discrepency between rights and obligations goes a long way in explaining why so many men leave their father's village, at his death, and establish themselves in their mothers' natal villages. In the father's village are older kinsmen who will succeed as chief of the family, and these sons stand to gain by leaving rather than staying as junior members of the muti. Sometimes only the younger sons of a man will leave, the elder remaining in his father's village if he succeeds to his father's position. More often the widow refuses to be inherited by her dead husband's younger brother and returns to her natal village bringing one or more of her sons with her. Widows in Mitini who are living with their sons in their dead husbands' village explained to me that they stayed on because it was their duty not to break up the dead man's muti. Obviously there are factors of prestige involved in a widow's decision whether to stay on in her husband's muti and village, after his death, or whether to return to her own village. A widow in her natal village is a father's sister which is a more prestigious status than wife or widow in her husband's village. One other factor probably plays a role in men establishing themselves in their mothers' villages. The ideal is for a couple to send their oldest child to his 103 mother's village as soon as he or she is weaned. Often, if the child is a boy, he remains there permanently, marrying into the village and eventually making a home for his mother after his father dies. Equally often the married couple do not send their eldest child but the second or third one, and it is even more likely that these younger siblings will remain in their mothers' village to make their home and establish themselves as heads of their miti. There are several instances of a family head's next younger brother asking his permission to leave the muti to build his own. In these cases for which I had census information the family head told me that he understood his brother's desire to be chief of his own family and to want to give orders, and thus gave his permission before there could be quarrels. Younger brothers decide whether they will stay with the eldest or move with the younger. The Rjonga deal a lot in might-have-beens where status is concerned. Thus one eldest brother, explaining to me why he let his younger brother leave to build on his own, said "My brother knows if he had been born the eldest, he would rule." I have heard other men say "If my mother had been born a man I would be chief of a village today." This I heard from sons whose mother was the daughter of a king. In yet other cases I heard men say that the father's sister was important and to be respected and obeyed because if she had been born a man she would be their "father" (father's brother). 104 A son's feeling toward his mother is warmly protective. Over and over I was told, and heard the men say among themselves, how much their mothers suffered in bearing and raising them. Rjonga men conceptualize their mothers as those people who fought for their rights against other competitors--father's other wives, his children by those wives, patrilateral cousins who shared the same muti, etc. A mother, for an adult son, is not someone you consult. A mother is a person you tolerate and cherish even if she is old and foolish, and has not very much sense as is the case with most women. In the poetry and short stories of a few Rjonga in Mitini the theme of love for a mother occurs frequently. In response to the Stewart Emotional Response Test, in that part dealing with either anger or unhappiness, there were frequent allusions to the suffering of a man's mother fighting against great odds to provide for and support her son until he grew to maturity. Daughters think of their mothers in much the same way. Before they marry girls confide in their mothers about love affairs; they tell things to their mothers that they are afraid to tell their fathers. They ask their mothers to intercede with their fathers on their behalf. After daughters marry, their children are their mother's favorite grandchildren, and mother and daughter are further united by the sense of being perceived as hostile and "foreign" women in their husbands' miti; women who have no word in the affairs of their muti, not even where their own 105 children are concerned. Thus a man grows to consider his mother as a rather inept partisan; a woman learns to consider her mother as an ally in a man's world where both are subject to the same sorts of stresses. This tie is surely reinforced by the presence of a woman's daughter's children in her muti from the time they are weaned. The Rjonga say that sending their first-born child, of either sex, to the wife's mother creates a bond of friendship between the two families; I think it also has the effect of binding mother and daughter more closely into a relation- ship which is more one of elder and younger sister. The seeds of this future relationship between mother and daughter begin in the daughter's early childhood when she begins to share her mother's work, and becomes increasingly responsible for the domestic tasks in the muti. Thus mother and daughter may share equally the brunt of husband's-father's wrath if things are not done to his liking; there is a difference in that the husband will accuse his wife of not training the daughter properly and, if the daughter tries to defend her mother, he may even say the mother is alienating his own child's affections. If a girl becomes pregnant before she is formally engaged her father is outraged and angered because his daughter has brought "shame" to his household. The mother more often takes the view of commiserating with the girl who has been deceived and ill-used by the man. Perhaps this might be partially explained by the father's concern in the lost 106 lobolo (because a girl who has borne a child is not entitled to be loboloed--she is "spoiled"), whereas the mother, who has little or no interest in the lobolo, is more free to respond in a supportive way to the girl's unhappiness and misery. Some women do come to hold an important status in their husband's miti, of course. These are usually powerful personalities who have lived to a successful old age. Often they are women who did not leave when their husbands died, but stayed on in his village raising their sons to maturity to become head of their own household in their father's village. In several of these cases, however, I have data which show the sons rebelled against their mother's tyranny (as the sons perceived it) and moved out to build their own homestead when they married. In these cases the woman has become too powerful and dominant and her son/sons rebel in much the same way they would against their own fathers or brothers. In some cases a son told me he moved out of his father's muti (mother's) because his mother refused to listen to him, to follow his orders. In other cases the son accused his mother of Wflitchcraft because his wife's children died, or she aborted each time. In all cases I think the conflict can be Oonceptualized as that of a person whose behavior was iJiterpreted as being in flagrant contradiction to expected Itble behavior. This conflict was often made overt in the rGelationship between the son's wife and his mother. The 107 wife demanded to be treated as the most important woman of the muti, as she should be failing the presence of her husband's sisters, whereas the mother--used to being head of the household--would emphasize her authority over the in-marrying woman. A daughter-in-law is treated as her husband's mother's servant, particularly in the first year of marriage; but as time progresses and she bears children her status improves accordingly and she becomes more important than husband's mother. But a woman who marries into a household where her husband is already the head (a very unusual circumstance in view of ideal residence patterns), she expects to be accorded immediately the respect she should have accrued slowly over long years, in the "normal" course of events. Thus mother-in-law and daughter-in-law engage in a struggle for dominance, each emphasizing a different aspect or phase, chronologically, of their proper roles. Another way of phrasing this dilemma is to say that a woman's status, among other women, is a function of her husband's status. If her husband is the head of household, then she feels she is "first lady." But her husband's mother still thinks of herself as her own husband's wife, and if he were alive she would be first lady. The resolution of these conflicts depends, of course, on the son's perception of his mother's behavior. If he feels his authority is threatened he will move out and build his own muti, or send his mother away. If his 108 relations with mother are good, then the wife is told to obey her mother-in-law as she should. These problems are relatively new to the Rjonga and are a result of the breakdown in traditional patterns of residence. The resolution of specific conflicts which come as far as one of the village courts, usually precipitated by a wife leaving her husband, demonstrates the tension between ideal norms and actual events today. Conflicting norms are held by each principal to the dispute, and the court must decide which they will uphold. Members of the court have increasingly little leeway in these matters because they know that if one of the principals takes the case to the Portuguese Administrator he will rule in such a way as to favor "women's rights." Women who abandon their husbands will try to claim their children to whom they are not entitled by traditional law. The Portuguese Administrator, however, takes the EurOpean point of view that a mother should not be deprived of her children unless there is definite proof that her care would be prejudicial to the children's welfare. Similarly a new widow who has been dispossessed by her husband's death, because her husband willed all of his goods to his brothers or sons, will go to the Portuguese Administrator and be fairly sure that she will be awarded whatever it is she seeks. Also, women who are unhappy in their marriages, or bored or dissatisfied with their role, have the knowledge that they can leave their husband even if they do not have their 109 father's or brothers' consent. This is possible because they can find work in the cashew factories, which employ women almost exclusively, and thus repay their own lobolo. The songs the Rjonga sing today, morality songs, have as their constant theme the disrespect of women for their male superiors and their wanton recourse, as the men see it, to the cashew factories. Women who work in these factories, among the Rjonga, all bear the stigma of being prostitutes because they are working to earn the money to free themselves from their protectors, their husbands. A woman who is unwilling to live with her male "owner" (as father and later husband are thought of) is a wanton woman whose only interest can be to sell her favors to as many men as she can. Complex as this situation is it is made even more so by the personality of each Administrator. Some Admini- strators try to use tribal law to settle disputes brought to them, and always consult their interpreters about this before ruling. Others, in difficult cases such as suc- cession to the throne, will go so far as to call in elders from all of the villages involved and take a vote. On the other hand there are Administrators who become agents of rapid change because they take no interest in tribal law and rule according to European law in almost all cases, taking only a token recognition of tribal law and custom. Most Administrators, for example, recognize the importance but not the meaning of the lobolo payment and will rule 110 that it be paid, or repaid, as the case may be. However they will so rule even in cases where tribal law holds the lobolo is forfeited thereby undermining a strong sanction. Briefly, the role of father's sister and mother's brother are much what one would expect after reading "The mother's brother in South Africa." Father's sister, particularly if she is living in ego's own homestead, is an important woman as women go. If she is widowed and has come to her brother's muti to live she is usually consulted in family affairs and has a voice in family councils. Her status, like a wife's, is dependent on the status of her brother. If there are both a father's sister and a wife in residence, in the brother's-husband's absence, it is the father's sister who is acting head of the household. Thus in one case for which I have full information a young boy was forced to go to his classificatory mother's brother's house, to live and be a herder, by his father's sister. His father was working in the mines; the boy did not want to go because his mother's brother's village had no school, and Mitini did, and he had just turned school age and was attending. His father's sister told him that if he refused to go she would throw him out of the muti and he would have no one to support him. He had to go; his mother could sympathize but she had no recourse to her sister's-in-law dictum. The mother's brother is a person to whom a man can turn and demand material assistance and/or support. A lll mother's brother often helps his sister's son in gathering a lobolo; and since first-born children are sent to their maternal grandparents' muti to live after they are weaned, the mother's brother truly takes on the aspect of "male mother." Junod (1962: 232-234) has more information on the role of mother's brother than I collected, particularly in the ritual sphere. My observations were that mother's brothers were called upon to give assistance in disputes; in making up the party to court a girl; and, finally, in the actual wedding were present and contributed something to the feast. The mother's brother has a small financial stake in his sister's oldest daughter's wedding; he receives 100$ of his sister's daughter's lobolo, but only at the marriage of the eldest. The only rituals at which I was aware of mother's brother playing a role were those which involved treating a woman who had difficulty bearing children or conceiving. In these cases it is specified that the woman return to her father's house, or if he is dead to her brother's, to undergo treatment. The mother's brother also plays a part in the ritual of cleansing widows; that is, his presence is mandatory sometime after his sister's husband has died. He must travel to his sister's son's muti (assuming sister's son was living with his father) and there he is in charge of the nk9§i_cere- mony, which is conceptualized as "offering their hand" to the widowed sister. The widow's brother, or his son, buys 112 the food and drink for the feast, and he also brings clothes for the widow. This ceremony is supposed to take place after the major cleansing ceremony for widows. Her relatives come again, a year or so after the deceased's funeral (which they also attended), with the intent of consoling the family and giving new clothes to the widow to "diminish the weight of her mourning." If the widow is a fairly young woman she is now free to remarry. At a ceremony I attended an old woman, the widow's brother's wife (and a widow herself) sang: "Solitude, solitude; we came to see the sadness; yo-we, yo-we, we came to see the anxiety." The ceremony includes a visit to the dead man's grave where his living oldest brother prays to him and says "Here are your in-laws come to visit you; they brought wine and tobacco for you." The widow's oldest surviving brother presides at this ceremony; lacking brothers, the widow's oldest brother's son does. Finally, mother's brother is potential head of male ego's household if his mother returns to her brother's village when her husband dies and ego is still a minor. I have absolutely no cases of an adult male residing with his mother's brother; he may return to his father's village, or--more often--construct his own muti in his mother's brother's village. In this case, however, he must look to his mother's brother when he needs to mobilize support as in disputes. I think this situation is much more complex than I can indicate now; my census data seems 113 to indicate that there may be marriage alliances between certain villages, but to be sure involves computations which I am unable to make now. If this is the case, however, then men may have agnatic kin in their mother's villages on whom they can rely. This is especially true in the case of brothers who have separated, one of them leaving the village altogether taking his wife and children with him. When he dies his sons may return to their father's brothers' village, where their mother may also have kin. If one woman marries happily into a village there is a preference for her sisters to marry into the same village and, later, for their sons to take wives from their mothers' natal villages. The role of wife among the Rjonga has already been analyzed to some extent. A new bride is a servant in her husband's home, having the most onerous and unpleasant chores relegated to her. At the same time during the first year of her marriage she is not permitted to have her own hearth (kitchen) and must help her mother-in-law in her kitchen. A wife owes her husband total obedience in all things; he "owns" her. Beyond all of her domestic chores she is charged with telling her husband everything that happens in their own family; she should communicate her daughter's confidences if these have information which may affect the family's standing in the community. A wife should never discuss the affairs of her household with others; "gossip kills the muti" the people say, and there 114 is a strong value against interference in family affairs which might be prompted by a wife's indiscriminate talk. If she is unhappy in her marriage she can go home to her father or brothers. They will judge the merits of her complaint according to their status and ability to repay. the lobolo if she is truly determined to divorce her husband. A husband should "follow" (ku-landjela) a wife who has returned to her parents, and asks them to encourage her return to him. They listen to his side of the story, and if they can convince their daughter that she must return, they tell the husband how much of a fine he must pay in order to get her back. This fine is to show the husband that the wife's parents do not send her back willingly; she has protectors in them and they would like to keep her. If they feel their daughter was unjustified in running away they charge only a token fine to the husband. Always, however, a woman's family reprimand her for having been "unwifely" and having abandoned her master's home. Her husband owns her; he is responsible for her; she owes her complete obedience to him and not to the male members of her own lineage. A woman's role in her husband's muti is always difficult; if her husband is not the head of the household, or if he is but has unmarried or divorced or widowed sisters living with him, she remains in a low status. She is not invited to attend family councils except as a distinct mark of favor; if she does attend she has little 115 or no say. She may speak, but no one feels obliged to take any real notice of what she says. Her husband is re- sponsible for feeding her, clothing her, and having sexual relations with her regularly. If he fails in this latter duty she is thought justified to complain to his family elders, or to her own family. In some cases she may take the case to court and there she often has the sympathy of the court. A wife, however, may not make any transactions without her husband's knowledge and consent because he is responsible for her behavior, including responsibility for all debts she may incur. This is true for all women. For example a woman who has married but whose husband has not paid the full lobolo may not be registered at the Admini- stration as belonging to the husband's household. Con- commitantly their children do not belong to the husband's lineage; jural rights are conferred only by a minimum payment of 1500$ of the 2500$ lobolo unless the husband and wife's parents have another agreement. The husband's acquisition of jural rights in his wife and children is symbolized by registering them as his own at the Admini- stration. In order to do this senior males of the wife's lineage must accompany him and his wife to the Admini- stration to act as witnesses. At the same time re- sponsibility for the woman's behavior and debts passes from her own lineage to husband's lineage. WOmen are long considered "strangers" in their husbands' miti. They are the first to be accused of 116 witchcraft if there are many inexplicable deaths in the household, particularly when their own husband dies. While he is alive they should care for their husband in every way, never abandoning him when he is sick or old, obeying him in everything. Their status improves as their husband's does and they reach their apex of power over other women in the muti when their husband is head of the household. This lasts only while their husband is alive, or until their sons' wives have borne many children and begin to reach middle age. Then they are again supplanted in their role of dominant woman. In the Emotional Response Test almost all the men said one of their greatest joys was when they married and thus became chief of their own ndangu (hearth or kitchen); the second joy was said to be at the birth of their first child which made them "people" in the eyes of the village. Similarly a woman's greatest joy was at the birth of her children because then she was a mother and "someone." The prospect of marriage made her happy because she thought she would live happily ever after as mistress of her house; almost all women put this into the past tense, qualifying the statement explicitly by saying the marriage had not worked out to be such a joy, after all. The Rjonga do not consider anyone who has not several grown children to be an "adult," a "person." Importance is measured in terms of live offspring, in general. As one man told me "this 117 is the African's greatest wealth; it is the beginning of his riches and fortune when he has children." Many of the young men today deplore women's status and say things are improving because women are not treated as slaves anymore. That is, a woman does not have to crawl to her husband and sons on her knees to offer them dinner. Indeed, a woman often eats her meals with her husband now, instead of waiting until all of the men have eaten apart, in the hubg, and then finishing their scraps with her daughters. These same young men also believe they should consult their wives about matters affecting their children; when there is strong disagreement, I noted, the men found it easy to discount their wife's opinion on traditional grounds. Other young men believe the lobolo should be abolished, blaming this institution for women's debased role. Others also agree that polygamy is not a practical institution because no man can adequately support more than one wife and her children. Also, polygamy disrupts the household because of the co-wives' jealousy. So these young men, many of them Christians, take only one wife allowed by church law and have many lovers instead. They expect and demand their wives to keep silent on this subject, and not object. If a man does want to take a second wife, usually because the first is barren, he should tell his first wife about it and discuss it with her. She, according to tradition, should not stand in her husband's way; but, also according to tradition, she should 118 agree willingly that the proposed second marriage is a good idea. The Rjonga idea that no one must be forced to accept something against his will informs many different areas of life. However, if she does object to the proposed second marriage too vehemently, or expresses her disapproval in other ways, her husband will divorce her because "she has lost respect" for him. If a woman does have junior co-wives then another hierarchy within hierarchies is begun. Her junior co-wives must work for her; her oldest son will become the head of the household, and not the junior wives' sons. She will be the one admitted to family councils, and not the others, and so on. In actual fact, junior wives are often their husband's favorites, and he should have no favorites. This naturally increases the bitter tension and rivalry expected of co-wives; the space between their huts is called the "quarreling place" in Xi-Rjonga. Polygamy is strongly valued by the old men and pagan men, in general. Multiple wives are a proof of a man's wealth and wisdom; each wife has to prepare a dish for her husband at each meal and many wives mean many dishes of food. Thus a man could invite friends to eat and his fame increased with his hospitality. The Rjonga say that a man builds a muti in order to receive visitors. A visitor confers honor on his host, and a visitor goes where he knows he will be well received and well fed; since much 119 of the burden for this hospitality falls on the wives of the muti they can contribute substantially to their husband's prestige. The more wives, the more children also, and this is the "African's greatest wealth." Sons help him in his work enabling him to cultivate more fields, harvest more food; the sons' wives are a further labor force in the muti. Daughters increase a man's wealth by their lobolo. As Junod puts it a pagan's ambition was to build a circular muti, each hut belonging to a wife or to a grown son and his wife. Finally, a man's ability to hold together a large muti is proof of his wisdom and fairness, and this makes him a "big man" in the eyes of the villagers; such a man is consulted by all who need "help with words"; he usually is an important man at all village trials. Polygamy is forbidden by all of the Christian churches which the Rjonga join and this fact creates much tension in village life. Christian men will forbid their children to play with the children of pagan men; the Christian men consider themselves to be better than their pagan brothers. More important, the Christian men are forbidden to take second wives and this becomes critical if they impregnate an unmarried girl. I will discuss this at greater length in the following sections, but this is an important factor to consider in relation to polygamy. One of the reasons the Rjonga give for the necessity of polygamy is the two year post partum sexual taboo; if a woman 120 conceives before the two years she may kill her baby because she will lose her milk. Christian men believe they may not take two wives; they also believe in the post partum sexual taboo, and this necessarily leads them into behavior which is condemned by the churches. Marriage and Divorce I have already indicated that the Rjonga have only partially localized patriclans and that the corporate nature of the lineages is breaking down. The clan consists of everyone of the same surname, and formerly a marriage between two people of the same name had to be preceded by a religious ceremony "to kill the surname." I know of no instance where this ceremony is still practiced although there are marriages between congeners. The men contracting these marriages say they cannot trace their exact relation- ship to the woman they are marrying, although all of the same surname are thought to be related. The men also say it is a way of renewing the family tie and strengthening it. But the villagers attribute the troubles in a marriage between congeners to the anger of the ancestors over the broken taboo. A man should not marry his neighbor because a wife should not live near her parents; the temptation to run home to them when there is an argument would be too great, and the martial problems of a couple impose too great a strain on the relationship of neighbors if these are also 121 affines. Ideally, a man should take his wife from another village and the preference is for him to marry a woman from his mother's village. This pattern also seems to be breaking down. Statistics on the marriages of all of the men of the Ngwenya clan over five generations for which I have data show a steady increase in the percentage of wives who are native to their husbands' village. In the first generation none of the wives were native to Mitini; in the second generation 10 per cent were native; in the third, 11 per cent; in the fourth, 38 per cent; and in the youngest generation 100 per cent of the wives are also native to the village. A man's preferred spouses are all of those women whom he calls nhombe which means "sister-in-law." These are of three categories. First are his older brothers' wives. A man inherits these women, usually only one of them since the others are distributed to other brothers, at his brother's death. I think this is properly the levirate because the children are thought of as children of the dead man (Bohannon, 1963: 79, 119-120). The Rjonga say that the surname must follow the lobolo; that is all of a woman's children should bear the surname of the man who paid her lobolo, and thus acquired all rights in her, despite the surname of the biological father. If a man's younger brother inherits the widow, as is the ideal, then the surname of course is the same. But the Rjonga say also that "a child must know his father" and children are 122 told who their biological father is whether or not they bear his surname. The child's rights, however, are supposed to be only in their legal father's lineage. The eldest son is responsible for all of his siblings, and these include his half-siblings born to his mother and father's younger brother. Thus if all of these siblings live together, the eldest son must help his own brothers and half-brothers, as well as father's brothers' sons, with their lobolo. Since lineage segmentation takes place along ndangu lines, however, the siblings born to an older man's own mother and father's younger brother may move out of his muti and claim their biological father's cattle and other goods as their rightful inheritance. This leads to trouble today, as I witnessed in several cases, because the oldest man considers these younger men to be his younger brothers of the same father, legally speaking. As such he has the right to retain control over all the goods and property, administering it as he sees fit, including that left by his father's younger brother. The younger men make a dis- tinction between their biological father and their legal father "of the lobolo," and claim the cattle, etc., which belonged to their biological father. This situation is also reflected by the increasing use of the biological father's surname where this man does not belong to the same clan as the man who paid the mother's lobolo. The second category of women called nhombe and thus considered to be preferred spouses are a man's wife's 123 younger sisters. These include all of the women whom his wife calls "younger sister." This is because the younger sister already respects and obeys her older sister, and thus makes an ideal second wife in a system where second wives are treated as the servants of the first wives. The last category are a man's wife's brother's daughters. The rationale for this is the same as that for marrying a wife's younger sister. This woman calls the man's wife "father's sister" and thus already is accustomed to obeying and respecting her. Co-wives who are younger sister or brother's daughter to the senior wife are called nhlampsa, which means "the one who washes" thus indicating their inferior position to the first wife. A man should not marry any woman whom he calls "mother," "sister," "daughter," or "sister's daughter." Besides these there are two other categories of proscribed marriages: those with a mukonwana, which include wife's brothers' wives, wife's older sisters, and wife's brother's son's wife; and with a nwingi. Nwingi are a man's younger brothers' wives, his sons' wives, and his wife's sister's sons' wives. A marriage is legalized by the payment of the lobolo which is set at 2500$ today. On payment of 1500$ a man acquires all rights in his wife and children, and this is symbolized by his registering them to his family at the Portuguese Administration. If a man does not pay at least this amount his wife and children belong to his wife's 124 lineage, and the wife's parents register the children as their own. Formerly the surname "followed the lobolo"; even if a woman remarried her subsequent children would have the surname of the man who paid her lobolo. This is no longer the case but the rule reflects the fact, still true, that a woman can be formally married only once. If she divorces or is widowed she may bear more children and be considered married, but no ceremony is performed and no lobolo may be requested by her lineage. In fact today widows and divorcées are demanding lobolos, or their male relatives are, and where the claim is allowed by the man (who has little choice if he wants to take the woman) the question of the ownership of the children is left open and depends on the goodwill of the parties involved. Lobolo payments and the registration of children form a large part of court cases today, as a result. There are four kinds of marriages. The traditional mode is called the ku-konisa which involves the bride's family escorting her to her husband's home where there is a mock battle. This kind of marriage was last practiced in 1952 and is the pagan form of marriage, as the Rjonga say. A Christian wedding, at which a church minister officiates whether in a church or not, is called ku-tchata. Both of these types of wedding are always preceded by the formal engagement ceremony, called the ku-buta. This involves the prospective groom and his family representatives calling on the family of the prospective bride to say 125 "they seek water." In most cases the young man has courted the girl with the help of a go-between who plays a major role in the engagement ceremony and wedding. In these cases when the young man and his representatives present themselves to the girl's parents and the parents ask the girl if she accepts the suit the conclusion is certain. In other cases, where the girl has not been courted prior to the request to her parents, she may refuse the man and her wishes are respected by her family because no one can be forced to do that which they do not want to do. If the girl accepts the suit the parents and the groom set a date when he will return with his family and friends to pay the ku-buta. At this ceremony the groom pays a part of the lobolo, as much as he can, and also brings jugs of wine and beer. He is supposed to give the mother of the girl 100$ for the cloth in which the mother carried the infant girl. He must also give a wedding ring and money for clothes for the bride and her parents. There are several other types of payments made at the ku-buta also, which are apart from the lobolo, and thus the total cost of a wedding is really around 3000$ or 4000$ ($105 or $140). From the time of the ku-buta the girl is thought of as the man's wife, although she continues living with her parents; but the couple may have sexual relations which, if they result in the girl's pregnancy, involves no disgrace to the girl or her family. When the man has accumulated enough money to pay the whole 126 lobolo he notifies the girl's parents and they visit the prOSpective groom's muti to collect it. Here the in-laws are treated without respect and are much abused until the actual payment is made. There follows a feast and the day is set when the bride will come to her husband's home accompanied by her go-between and friends. The go-between will also live with the new bride for a week or more until the bride "learns the life of her husband's muti." In both kinds of wedding, the traditional and the Christian, there is a large feast on the day the bride comes to her new home and there is a public presentation of gifts, with speeches, to the new couple. A few months after these two kinds of wedding there is another ceremony called the ku-kata which takes place in the man's muti. There the wife's mother and father's sisters come and admonish her and counsel her in her duties, telling her she must accept the hard work imposed on her by her mother-in-law, and warn her that she will be looked on with disfavor by her husband's female relatives, in particular. She is told that wives are suspected of killing their husbands by witchcraft, and that she must obey everyone in the muti to prove that she is a good woman. The other two kinds of marriage are related. There is the ku-tluba which is a secret elopement and which may take place whether there has been a formal engagement or not. When this happens the woman goes to live with the man as his wife immediately. Her parents pretend not to know 127 where their daughter is, waiting for the man to come present himself to them and formally announce that he stole their daughter. He has the status of "thief" in his wife's parents' eyes until he takes formal steps to announce his good intentions--that is, to pay the lobolo. If the man does not announce himself to his wife's parents within a reasonable amount of time they will visit him as the wronged parties in a dispute, demanding reparation. He is not treated as a potential son-in-law at this juncture but as someone who has committed a crime. From this point onward normal dispute settlement procedure is followed if the man does not immediately agree to pay part of the lobolo. Until one or the other side pays a formal visit, however, everyone ignores the fact that the woman is living with the man, and all principals act as usual toward each other. When a man pays the lobolo for a woman who is already living with him, after an elopement, this is called a xonxonela marriage. In this case the man goes with his representatives to his wife's muti to pay the lobolo. He must also pay a fine to her family above the lobolo for having eloped with her. After he has paid the minimum 1500$ he can register.the wife and children as his own at the Administration. In cases of elopement where the man never pays the lobolo and the woman continues living with him, or if she leaves him, the children belong to her father who registers them. In some cases, by agreement, a man lives with his wife and registers the children as 128 his own without having paid the lobolo. It is agreed that their first daughter's lobolo will be given to the mother's lineage as her lobolo. But always it is necessary for male members of the wife's lineage to accompany the man as a witness when he goes to register her and/or his children at the Administration. If a man impregnates an unmarried girl he should marry her because if she bears a child out of wedlock she is considered "spoiled" and her father cannot ask a lobolo for her. If he refuses to marry her he must pay a fine of 1500$ and loses his rights in the woman and child. Since this amount is the same as that required to legally register a wife and children the fine symbolizes a lobolo which has been paid and forfeited. The only traditional grounds whereby a man loses the lobolo he has paid for a woman is if he sends her away. In effect, this is the only ground for divorce which a woman has: that her husband no longer wants her. The husband loses all rights in the woman and in the children, who then belong to her father or brothers. A child born to an unmarried woman is called a "pregnancy of the hearth" and belongs to her father; the child takes his mother's father's surname. The mother has no jural rights in the child at all. If a man commits adultery in which no pregnancy results the usual fine is about 400$-600$. This fine is paid to the "owner" of the woman, her husband if she is married. WOmen are never liable for committing adultery, 129 but their families are. A woman who is known to have committed adultery can be divorced by her husband if he chooses, and her parents must repay him the lobolo. The wronged husband has the option of exacting a fine from his wife's parents (who, in turn, collect the fine from the woman's lover) and keeping his wife; of sending his wife home to her parents but keeping the children and not demanding repayment of the lobolo; of sending both his wife and children back to her parents and demanding that the full lobolo be repaid; or of ignoring the whole thing. The husband can make the conditions in cases of this nature but the limit of them is sending back his wife and children and being repaid the lobolo, whereby he loses all rights in the children also. Although the burden for a successful marriage is said to be the woman's, she is not held to be as much at fault in the case of adultery as a man. She is of a "lesser race" which easily forgets "how to behave" and is more susceptible to cupidity. Men have many ways of tempting a woman, the Rjonga say, and she must try to be strong in the face of unceasing assaults on her virtue, particularly since men are cleverer than women and can offer them money. A wife cannot protest if her husband commits adultery; she has no recourse and must respect and obey him in everything. If she runs away from her husband, for whatever reason, and he "follows" her to her parents' home to request her return she must go or she forfeits her 130 lobolo and children. That is, her parents will be forced to repay him the lobolo if his wife refuses to return to him, and he will retain all rights in the children. For this reason a wife's parents urge her to return to her husband and hold her lacking in respect to her own lineage if she jeopardizes the lobolo they received for her. If a woman's husband dies and she agrees to be inherited leviratically by his younger brother there is no problem; the children still belong to their father's lineage and there is no further lobolo payment. If a woman refuses to be inherited, and her lobolo had been paid, she may leave but her husband's lineage retains all rights in her children. A woman may refuse to be in- herited but agree to continue living in her dead husband's muti, or near it; in this case it is understood that all children she hears will belong to her dead husband's lineage, and they will have his surname. If a woman who has not been loboloed is widowed she will return to her parents' home taking all of her children with her. The dead man's lineage has no right in them since they did not pay the lobolo. She cannot be inherited by her husband's younger brothers unless they pay her lobolo. These are the traditional customs; as I have indi- cated they are being changed today under the combined influence of church and state. The church does not allow a man to have more than one wife, although in all other matters relating to marriage and children he is bound by 131 tribal custom. The Portuguese Administrators also rule, in cases which come to them, that women have rights to their children whatever tribal law may be. This undermines the traditional sanctions which prevented women from abandoning their husbands. The Administrator will require that the woman's family repay her lobolo, but rule that she may keep her children. Obviously this further contributes to the disintegration of corporate patrilineages. Inheritance and Succession Succession to office is supposed to be from father to oldest son. This is certainly the case for such positions as zone and village chief although the latter, as well as succession to the throne, is complicated by the rights of the younger brothers of the incumbent. As Junod puts it (1962: 410-411), . . . when a chief [king] dies, his elder son is the regular heir, but all his younger brothers must reign before the son, the true heir, is crowned. This system attempts to reconcile two principles which we have already met with as governing the family life: (1) the absolute preeminent right of the elder branch, (2) the community of property amongst brothers. Junod goes on to note that the younger brothers who rule are looked on as princes regent, but that if they reign for a long time they become reluctant to give up the throne to their nephew. The habit of dividing the power between brothers who soon become rivals, and of allowing the younger brothers to reign before the legal heir, both tend to destroy the unity of the clan and give rise to quarrels and unrest. . . . A chief, when he ascends 132 the throne, will do his best to get rid of troublesome brothers in order to reign alone and to ensure the chieftainship to his son (1962: 413). Junod cites the case of Mapunga (see Figure 2), a king of Nondjwana at the time of the 1894 war, who killed four of his brothers. A king usually places his brothers and sons as village chiefs and as district chiefs in an attempt to consolidate his power and placate potential rivals. This was done by the present king at the time I left Nondjwana; he began replacing all of the men who were already in power at the time he succeeded with his own favorites. When Gonwine ascended to the throne (Figure 2) his younger brother, Dique, was made chief of Mitini. Many of Dique's brothers and half-brothers moved to Mitini with him "to help him rule" and are still there. He was succeeded by his eldest son who was subsequently removed from office by the complaints of the people to the king. The son was succeeded, by the vote of the village zone chiefs, by his father's younger brother who was living in the village-- one of the dead chief's brothers who had moved with him to Mitini to help him rule. The Rjonga say that this man's eldest son will now succeed him as chief. Zone chiefs are succeeded by their next younger brothers or father brother's sons also. In one of the Village zones created when the large Ngwenya muti split up, iilready referred to, the eldest son by the second wife of the head of the family was sent with his brothers to 133 settle a new area of the village and to be its zone chief. When this man died he was succeeded by his father's younger brother's oldest son, who had acted as his second-in- command and policeman. When that man, in turn, died he was succeeded by a younger brother of the first zone chief. In the other Ngwenya zone, originally settled by the first head of the family who moved, the zone chieftainship passed to his eldest son by his first wife, an old man who still lives and holds that office. Since he has no living full brothers he said the office would pass to his eldest son who is living in the village. His eldest makes his home in the capital and so cannot succeed to the office. Succession to the head of a family is also adelphic. Since inheritance of prOperty is by eldest son there is a division of authority and property which introduces tension into the muti. Every father designates one of his sons as "the divider" of his cattle, fields, cash, and whatever else he possesses. The eldest son, if it is he who is designated--and this depends on his relationship with his father and whether he lives with his father--is charged with sharing the father's goods with his siblings equally and fairly, and providing for the needs of all of his family. A dying man will call his close friends and favorites, including women, to give them things such as fields which they would not ordinarily inherit. Whatever is left is to be administered by the person he designates as divider. If a dying man's sons 134 are still quite young he will charge one of his brothers with caring for his things until they are old enough to claim their inheritance. What frequently happens is that the brother so designated will spend the wealth left by his older brother before his brother's sons reach their majority. Then there is a dispute and these sons leave their father's brother's muti if they cannot effect a settlement. Or a succeeding family head will use the cattle and cash of the family to lobolo wives for the eldest men, whether full brothers, half brothers, or father's brother's sons, as he should; then when one of the younger men reach marrying age, and know their own father left cattle, they try to claim it to sell for a lobolo only to find it has already been used elsewhere. This also leads to disputes and the splitting up of a muti. Disputes over inheritances form a large proportion of the cases which go to the village chief's and king's courts. A brief account of one of the first trials I attended at the king's court over an inheritance will make clear the complexities which are introduced by the division of authority and inheritance to property within a family. Two full brothers lived together; the eldest had two sons by two wives, the eldest son called Simba, the younger Aluzio. Their father was Mundjisa. Mundjisa's younger brother, Mubeso, had three sons by the same woman, Vunda, Kotcho, and Mondjo (oldest to youngest). Many years ago the eldest brother, Mundjisa, died making no 135 Mubeso Mundjisa o - i= 0 (inherited) o - - o Mondo ii i '1 Vunda Aluzio Simba Kotcho verbal disposition of his cattle, sheep, and goats. His younger brother, Mubeso, inherited his wife and Mubeso took all of his dead brother's stock also, registering it in his name. He also registered Simba, still a minor, as his own son, which he had no right to do. Custom decrees that a man's younger brothers inherit his wives and his older brothers administer his stock and other property to provide for his wives and children; the younger brother who in- herited the wife is not responsible for providing for his brother's sons. The older brother sells stock to buy food, clothes, and to provide a lobolo for the dead man's sons. Since Mundjisa only had a younger brother, Mubeso, he took his dead brother's wife, stock, and registered his eldest son as his own. Mubeso and his brother's sons, Simba and Aluzio, lived together with his own sons, Vunda, Kotcho, and Mondjo until Mubeso himself died. When he was dying he charged Simba, his older brother's oldest son, to take care of his younger brothers, which included his father's brother's sons, selling cattle when necessary to provide for their lobolo. Sixteen years ago Simba complied with his father's brother‘s dying wish and divided the cattle evenly between 136 himself, his half brother, Aluzio, and Vunda, the eldest of his father's brother's sons. He kept four cattle; gave four to Aluzio; and another four to Vunda. When he did so he told Vunda that he was to use these cattle to help his younger brothers with their lobolo when it was time for them to marry. When a sister of Aluzio, Simba's own half sister, married Aluzio was still too young "to eat the money," and Simba gave her lobolo to Vunda, his father's brother's oldest son, to use as his lobolo. The case I attended was provoked because Mubeso's two younger sons, Kotcho and Mondjo, complained to their chief that they received no part of their father's in- heritance. It transpired, in the course of the trial, that they did not know that all of the stock had originally belonged to Mundjisa, Simba's own father. They only knew that the cattle were registered in their own father's (Mubeso's) name. These two young men said they never received cattle to sell to lobolo their wives. Simba had given cattle to Vunda to provide for his younger brothers, and Vunda had kept them all for himself never telling his younger brothers that this was their share of their father's inheritance. Simba had never told Kotcho and Mondjo about the inheritance, either, thus unwittingly keeping them in the dark, and the boys grew up in the belief that all of the cattle were their father's. When testimony proved that the cattle originally belonged to Simba's own father, the court agreed that Vunda, Kotcho, 137 and Mondjo, as father's brother's sons, had no legal claim to it. Only the eldest son has the right to inherit, and that meant that Simba could have kept all of the cattle to himself. Simba was praised by the court for his gener- osity and for fulfilling his moral obligation to help his "younger brothers" (father's brother's sons) by giving them a share of his father's inheritance. Vunda was severely criticized for not sharing his four cattle with his younger brothers, and he was told by the court to give each one head. Vunda tried to argue that Simba should have provided for the younger men, Kotcho and Mondjo, because he was the head of the family. However, when Mubeso died the three brothers had left Simba's and Aluzio's village and moved to another, thus rejecting Simba as head of the family. The court told Vunda that Simba had no legal obligation to share with his father's brother's sons; that a brother could leave things to a brother if he chose, but that it was the eldest son who had the right to inherit. The court also pointed out that when Mubeso registered Simba as his own son he had potentially disinherited Vunda, Kotcho, and Mondjo anyway, because Simba was then entitled to inherit from Mubeso as eldest son. The court was emphatic in its approval of Simba's behavior; he had given a lobolo from his half sister to help his father's brother's son, Vunda, to marry, as was his right as head of the family. Vunda had no legitimate grounds for complaint. But one of the elders of the court, when 138 giving his opinion, said that If we decide this case well, Kotcho and Mondjo should find something of the inheritance. They can't lose; the milk can't die, because they were all born in the same house. But they can't ask for their inheritance. It seems that Simba helped those two brothers, Aluzio and Vunda, and not those two, Kotcho and Mondjo. Simba can say that if Aluzio and Vunda didn't give anything to Kotcho and Mondjo it isn't his fault; because if he had he wouldn't have anything for himself. Look well at the words because if we don't decide well (morally), Kotcho and Mondjo could lose because they have no right. We know how to judge cases in our houses. Then the elder finished his speech on a slightly bitter note, saying "Let's return to the Rjonga proverb: why doesn't the son of the father go to work to earn his own fortune? If there weren't an inheritance what would he eat?" It becomes apparent that younger brothers are dependent on their elder brother's good-will to receive a part of their father's wealth. The older brother is morally obligated to provide for his younger siblings, doubly so if he succeeds as head of the family. But there is no legal basis for this unless there are witnesses to a dying man's disposition of his goods. This is a source of contention between brothers. It is also a source of contention between father's younger brother and his older brother's sons. I was often told by men that their father's younger brothers told them, when they reached their majority and tried to claim their inheritance, that the father's brother claimed all of the wealth had been spent in raising them. 139 Dispute Settlement Procedures There is a very strong value against interfering in family affairs. Disputes should be settled "reasonably" by the principals involved. If a dispute occurs between classificatory siblings an elder of the family may call on them both to ask what has happened and to "help them with words." But the principals cannot be forced to listen to nor heed the advice of their elder. Absolutely no one should interfere in a dispute or fight between a man and his wife. If it appears the man is about to kill his wife one of his brothers might interfere to save his brother from future punishment, but he does so without any legal sanction, and at considerable risk to himself since his brother might turn on him justifiably. People who inter- fere in others' fights or disputes can be fined at court for doing so. When a man feels he has been wronged by another he is morally obligated to call on the person and ask him for an explanation for his actions, and the two should try to effect a settlement. This obligation of the aggrieved to visit the aggressor is very strong. Anyone who goes directly to one of the courts is severely criticized for doing so. I frequently heard the following at trials I attended: "If you see someone's child stealing can you take him to jail without first telling his parents?" This means that if the aggrieved can find no satisfaction from the person who wronged him, he should next gather his 140 representatives and visit the elders of the aggressor's family to try to reach a settlement. If these, in turn, cannot negotiate a settlement acceptable to both principals the case should be taken to the zone chief's court where the principals' kin and neighbors form the court. The zone chief charges 20$ of each principal to hear their case, but the settlement is usually arrived at by the principals, although the zone chief can impose a fine also. If the zone chief's court fails to adjudicate or negotiate the case to the satisfaction of both parties, he "Opens the road" for them to take the case to the village chief. The fee for hearing a case there is 70$ each, and the fine is larger. In addition the loser in a case must pay an additional sum which the winner gives to the court members as a "gratification." The village chief levies a suf- ficiently large fine to enable him to keep a part, and to give a small amount to his zone chiefs and other elders of the court, and to buy beer for everyone at the conclusion of the trial. If the court fails to satisfy both principals, operating on the value that no one can be forced to admit his guilt, the village chief "opens the road" for the principals to take their case to the king's court. There the fee for hearing the case is also 70$, but the fines are much higher, the people attending are village chiefs, and records of the trial are sent to the Portuguese Administrator. If the king's court fails, the king "opens the road" to the Portuguese Administrator who 141 is the highest court of appeal for the Rjonga. At every level from the zone chief's court upward there is a feeling of failure on the part of all those who formed the court. In a case the plaintiff sits to the right, facing the court, and speaks as long as he likes, uninterrupted. If the defendant or witnesses try to interrupt they are fined 50$. When he finishes a member of the court may ask him questions, or may ask questions of some of the witnesses, but usually the defendant speaks immediately after the plaintiff, also uninterrupted except for neces— sary questions to clear up certain points. After both principals have spoken the witnesses for both are asked to speak and are questioned as needed. When all of the witnesses have been heard, the chief or his second in command "gives the word" to all of the peOple attending the trial--the hubg, Anyone can speak who wishes to at this juncture; only eye witnesses may give testimony, however. It is usually at this phase of the trial that everyone begins to speak at once, and a lot of yelling goes on. I noticed this pattern at the dozens or more trials I attended; everyone would begin speaking calmly, but the tension would steadily mount until everyone would cast off all restraint and there would be great furore. This usually occurred during the witnesses' testimony; order would be restored, but without fines, and the word given to the hubo. The chief of the court always speaks last 142 and his opinion "cuts the case." This is the judgment, and it usually represents the majority opinion as given by the elders who gave their Opinion first. As I have said, from the time a dispute leaves the hands of the families involved there is a stigma. At every trial someone always says: "this case shouldn't have come to court; it should have been settled at home." Failure on the part of the families, of the zone chief, of the village chief, or of the king to resolve a dispute indi- cates that they lacked in wisdom and did not have the respect of the loser in the case. They failed to explain the law and "right" behavior with sufficient cogency so that the guilty party was able to see and admit his guilt freely. No man can be forced to accept his guilt. Court officials indulge in dire threats to a man who is being "stubborn," who refuses to admit that he did wrong. The village chief would threaten to tie such a person to a stinging ant's nest, a frequent punishment used in the days of the absolute authority of village chiefs and kings. Formerly kings had the power of life and death, and of any means of corporal punishment. Village chiefs also had the right to beat offenders. Now, however, the only real sanctions that village chiefs have are to send a "stubborn" man to the king's court, and to remember him when the time for communal labor, or the Portuguese draft comes. Despite the threats used, however, the people believe that if a man does not admit his guilt freely, brought to perceive it by 143 the words of the elders of the courts, he will err again because he will believe he has been misjudged. He will also lose respect for his chief and not obey him in other matters. Ultimately he may move out of the village altogether. The people say that it is worse to be "stubborn" and deny one's wrong-doing than to commit the offense which originally brought one to court. This attitude could be paraphrased "To err is human, to repent and confess is divine." This attitude is clearly reflected in the fines levied. If a man quickly and earnestly admits he was wrong and asks forgiveness the fine is a small one. A man who denies his wrong for a long time, detaining the court for many hours, will find himself subject to a heavy fine. Before a case goes to court a man calls a family council which his father, father's brothers, own brothers, and close friends whom he invites, attend. Together they discuss the case: the evidence they will present; the argument they will use; the witnesses they will call; the amount of compensation they will exact if they win; how much of a fine they may have to pay if they lose. A man's father and his own brothers should support him in a case, financially and "with words." They will attend his trial, mobilize support among friends, neighbors, and other kin, and they will speak for him at the trial although they cannot act as witnesses unless they are directly involved in the case. At the family council the principal to the 144 trial is obligated to tell everything to his elders; this is telling them the "beginning of the case" so that they are adequately prepared to help defend him. A man's kinsman can be called as a witness against him, however, if he knows anything about the case; in this situation the kinsman is obligated to tell the truth even if it works against the principal, because he is morally obligated to help his kinsman "be a good person." Kinsmen who are not involved as witnesses in the case act and speak as if they were principals in the case, however, speaking on behalf of the real principal. If they feel their kinsman in the case is guilty without hope of being found in the right, the most they can do for him is keep silent or "ask forgiveness" of the court. A man's kinsmen are also morally obligated to help him pay the fine if he is found guilty; today this takes the form of lending him the money. Formerly, the eldest of the family was expected to pay the fine, without expectation of being repaid, because the family head was responsible for the behavior of all of the members. Being able to get the support of one of the "big men" of the village is highly valued because the opinion of these men carries a lot of weight in the hubg, and frequently influences the chief's judgment. A principal to a trial will try to mobilize support among those men he considers his friends and whose opinions carry weight in the village. He will always try to get the support of his 145 zone chief, of course, if the trial goes to the village chief's court. The zone chief, in his capacity of "father" to the zone inhabitants, is supposed to be fair and impartial so that his opinion also has great weight in a trial. At a trial a man's word is never sufficient proof in any matter because the Rjonga believe all men are inherently self-seeking and that they will, of course, lie to try to defend themselves. Thus there must be witnesses in every matter, whether in court cases or not. The people become angry not when a man lies to defend himself, but when he persists in the lie after he has been conclusively proved to be at fault: this is being "stubborn," and persistent stubborness denotes an unreasonable man. Cases between relatives, particularly (classi- ficatory) brothers, should always be "resolved in the house." If a dispute between brothers goes to court it is proof of the rupture of good relations and reflects on the good jugement of all involved. In a very complicated case I attended two relatives were involved, one of whom was classificatory father to the other. The younger, Souza, was the aggrieved but he did not go to visit his "father," Gela, because they had been involved in disputes before and Souza said he knew that Gela "couldn't be reasoned with." Instead Souza took the case to Gela's own father's brother, who is the oldest living member of the clan in the village. Souza stands in the relation of "grandson" to this old man; 146 he has an own father's brother to whom he could have taken his case, but he showed respect for Gela by taking the case to his father's brother. This old man called together other members of the family to hear the diSpute: two were father's father's brother's son's sons to Gela (that is, classificatory brothers), and the other was Gela's father's father's brother's daughter's son, a man of another clan, but also a classificatory brother. The old man told them they had to judge the dispute because "the tripe are biting each other." Gela refused to let his relatives judge the case saying they would all "take sides" with Souza, and he took the case directly to the village chief. There he was censured by everyone and fined. All of his relatives denounced him for bringing a family matter to court and for refusing to let his brothers judge the case. His neighbors attended this trial, as they had the court called by the old man, and equally denounced him for refusing to let them try to settle the matter. Gela was admonished in a long speech by Souza's father's brother (his own classificatory brother) and told that his relatives might refuse to help him in the future because they would "see the evil in your heart," and would remember that he refused to let them hear his case. This case demonstrates another feature of Rjonga disputes. If men are not fully satisfied with a judgment they remember the injustice they feel they suffered at another's hands, and they bring the same person to court 147 again and again. As the Rjonga say "a case doesn't rot." Gela and Souza had had several other cases together at court before the one mentioned above. Several of the trials I attended were, in effect, a continuation of old grievances. Also a Rjonga does not believe in neutrality, except in the village chief or zone chiefs. In any case everyone even remotely involved "takes sides"--a person is for you or against you, and a Rjonga does not forget over the years who took which stand. No close relative such as a brother, sister, son or daughter, or even an affine living in the same muti, can act as a witness for a relative because it is expected that these people will naturally "take sides" with the principal. Taking sides is evidenced by any bit of behavior, no matter how apparently trivial. If a man carries a message for one of the principals to the other principal he is endorsing the contents of the message; he has "taken sides" with the one sending the message. If a representative of one of the principals is trying to negotiate a settlement with the other principal and his representatives, and he does not like the terms proposed, he refuses to tell his own principal about them lest this one think his representative is "siding against" him. A representative of the opposing principal must carry the terms himself. These attitudes explain why cases between relatives and neighbors are so disruptive of regular social life, and why the principals should make every effort to negotiate a settlement among 148 themselves. A man who needs help in harvesting his crops, building a new corral, moving his muti, etc., will not go to a person who has "taken sides" against him in a diSpute. If this should be a close kinsman or neighbor he suffers, as do they when they need help. Cases heard by zone chiefs, village chiefs, and the king are all of the same sort dealing with divorce, lobolo questions, theft, damage to fields or livestock, and in- heritance. A Rjonga who is assimilated can be tried by Portuguese courts in civil and criminal cases which fall in the jurisdiction of these courts. He can also be tried in the village courts, however, if a dispute occurs with someone who complains against him or if he complains against someone. There he is subject to tribal law despite his " and the court makes no allowance status of "assimilated, for his status although his word may carry weight as a "big man" of the new breed. All the assimilated Rjonga I knew are relatively young men whose word carries great weight in any matter having to do with the Portuguese or city life; this produces a slight "halo" effect so that they might be listened to in other matters, even by their elders. But, all things being equal, they are subject to the same laws and customs in a dispute. Ancestor worship and the Ndangu The traditional religion consists in praying to the ancestors and making offerings of white wine and tobacco. 149 In those miti where this is still the practice there is a tree dedicated to the family gods usually near the principal entrance (lihlampfu) into the muti. This main path is always from the east, and everyone not an inmate of the muti must use it or be suspected of witchcraft. When a member of the family prays at this tree he is supposed to wrap a white cloth (tcheka) around the tree trunk and make an offering of food, white wine, or snuff at the base of the tree, which is called the altar (gandjelo). A man has three altars: the principal one is at the base of the tree, of any species, and it always faces eastward as do the houses; the second is inside his house on the right side, the man's side, at the "head"--again eastward. All Rjonga sleep with their heads pointing to the east; only corpses are laid out with their heads to the west. The third altar is in the mfungwe; this is the rear of the house where all important possessions are kept and it is a private place. If a man is a diviner he keeps his spirit basket used only for sacred items, his gods' clothes and other appurtenences, at the "head." A woman brings her own gods to her husband's muti, if she is a diviner, and she cannot pray to her husband's gods nor at his altars. Her altar is inside the house on the left side, the woman's side, and at the "foot"--facing westward. Diviners of either sex, however, built a hut for the spirits called an ndumba and this faces westward to 150 show it is a house of the dead, and most of the para- phernalia are kept here. To pray to the ancestors is called ku:pah1a. The head of a muti does this in time of trouble: when there is drought, if members of the family are sick, asking protection for a journey, etc. A man may not pray for his children, on pain of death, if he has not loboloed their mother; to do so is to risk the children's lives. Praying to the ancestors is not done on a daily or regular basis by those families who do not have spirits. The ancestors are appealed to in time of trouble and to appease their anger which has resulted in illness in the muti, or which has affected a daughter of the muti married elsewhere. Ku-pahla is also the ceremony performed after a person consults a diviner's bones to know the cause of an illness. If the diviner says the illness is not due to witchcraft but is caused by some angry family gods the client must pray at the family altar in the muti. He buys a white cloth, which is the color for the Rjonga ancestor gods, a white chicken, white wine, and some snuff and offers these to the gods at the altar. This is not considered to be a very serious matter if the illness passes off quickly. Ku-timhamba is another ritual, very like the kg: pahla, the major difference being that it involves going outside the man's muti to perform it. This is the ritual performed at a wife's father's muti. If a woman is barren 151 or aborts before coming to term the husband consults a diviner to discover the cause of their misfortune. Usually the diviner informs the husband that his wife's gods are angry for some reason: she did not take formal leave of them when she married, or 100$ of the lobolo were not offered to her mother's brother, or there are spirits in her home muti. Whatever the reason the husband is obliged to go to his wife's parent's house and set a date when he and his wife may come to perform the necessary ritual. The husband buys a white cloth, a female goat which has never given birth, white wine and snuff and he and his wife go to her parent's and spend the night there. At dawn the next day they pray at the altar, the wife's father officiating, and offer their gifts to the ancestors. The goat is not killed but is allowed to grow and give birth in this muti. If the ceremony was properly performed the woman will give birth. In some ceremonies a red cloth is used, but these symbolize a foreign spirit, an Ndjau. At all of these prayers the person officiating takes a slightly threatening note with the ancestors, telling them their wishes have been complied with and now they must leave the family alone. This is also an occasion for all present to air any grievances they feel against others. Another occasion for the ku-pahla is at the ceremony in honor of someone recently dead, the xidjilo. This is also a time of a large feast to which all members of the family, agnates, cognates (including affines), 152 neighbors and friends are invited. Only the more immediate family members go to the cemetary and pray at the grave, however. Here, also, there are offerings of white wine and snuff and a goat or a rooster is killed at the grave, and the meat cooked and eaten there by all present. Usually the oldest living brother of the dead man prays on behalf of all of the family, giving their news, telling the deceased he has not been forgotten, asking for his pro- tection and his intercession with the other ancestors. Again this is an occasion for everyone present to air their grievances. Then the family returns to the muti of the dead man where a cow is slaughtered and all of the invited guests eat and drink and dance until the next day. A clan is divided into Spiritual groups, called ndangu (pl.: mindangu). An ndangu is a hearth or kitchen, and all of those peOple descended from the same man and woman (full siblings) form an ndangu. The man from whom common descent is traced, however, seems to be one who has recently died, a father of the oldest living men of the clan. The Ngwenya clan members in Mitini can all trace descent from one of six half brothers, all dead now. At least four of these lived together, with their sons and sons' sons, in the large family muti which split up some fifty-seventy years ago. The other two lived in other villages, but many of their sons subsequently moved back to Mitini. Each of these six half brothers is the head 153 of a spiritual descent group, or ndangu, if they have living sons. In the cases where all of the sons of one of these brothers are dead, the sons' sons pray to their own father, calling him the "owner" of the ndangu. Thus men who have a common father's father's father will not belong to the same ndangu if the father's father's father is dead. A father's brother (classificatory) can pray to the ancestors on behalf of his brother's son. Ownership of the ndangu is from father to eldest son; that is, as each man dies he becomes the owner of the group for his living sons. The right to pray to the ancestors is adelphic; after all full brothers have died, the eldest half brother has the right to pray on behalf of his brothers' sons. Even when brothers and father's brother's sons are not living together in the same muti the appropriate man must be called to officiate at ceremonies to the dead. Thus when one fairly young man of the Ngwenya clan had the xidjilo ceremony in memory of his father he called his father's only living brother (half brother) to come pray at the grave. These men do not live in the same muti. At another xidjilo, also of the Ngwenya clan, the dead man's oldest living father's own brother officiated. Again, none of the participants live together although all of these peOple do live in Mitini. In both of the ceremonies there were older living Ngwenya men who attended but who did not pray; in the last mentioned service the father's brother who prayed has an older half brother who attended. Full 154 brothers, when living, officiate before half brothers, and eventually the ndangu will segment (in the fourth descending generation) so that the descendants of these men will belong to different groups. Doctors, Diviners, and Spirits The spiritual beliefs of the Rjonga are so varied and complex that I can only give a very brief indication of them here. Figuring prominently are two kinds of foreign spirits, the Ngoni or Zulu, and the Ndjao. A special class of practioners exists to cope with these, and this class is further subdivided into two kinds of doctor-diviners. The traditional healer, whom I can call a doctor for convenience's sake, is the nagga, A nanga_becomes such usually by virtue of inheritance or by being taught by his father or father's brother. This man knows what roots to cut to make medicines for specific diseases; one nanga may cure barreness in women as a speciality; another may be expert at curing vernereal diseases, and so on. Whatever diseases he is able to cure this doctor does so without benefit of Spirits. Usually he has been taught by his own father or mother who treated him with medicines, cutting the back of his hand with a razor and rubbing in the special medicine which gives him the power to cure. Not all sons of a doctor Show an aptitude to become doctors in their own right, and to this extent the power may be said to be hereditary. Knowledge of the proper roots to 155 use is insufficient to make a doctor, however; he must also be specially treated by another doctor. These men can usually be distinguished because they wear an open-ended brass bracelet on their right wrist. One old doctor I knew told me that before he made his medicines he had to pray to his father, who had taught him, to "open the road" for him. The bracelet he wears is open-ended so as not to "tie up" the power of the god, his father. There is another kind of healer who may also be a diviner. This is the mungoma, or "man of the drums," and the Rjonga frequently use the terms nanga_and mungoma interchangeably, although they say there are real differ- ences in their functions. For this reason I will treat the mungoma and the nyamusoro as a class distinct from the ganga. People who consult the doctor (nanga) should tell their symptoms accurately so as not to confuse him in his prescription. This man has no supernatural aids, beyond praying to his teacher or teacher's teacher (always a dead person, at any rate) for help in his work. The mungoma is the most powerful kind of practioner. He is diviner and healer, although he may specialize in only one of these tasks. A mungoma, like the nyamusoro, becomes such by virtue of possession and then attending a "school" where he learns to divine and to cure. He has spirits, and these are of two kinds: Ngoni and Ndjau. These spirits are said to "wake up" (ku-pfuka); that is, they come back after death to bring illness and death to 156 the people. A Rjonga ancestor god never wakes up to bring death; he may bring illness or barreness if he is angered, but he does not "spoil" the muti as the foreign gods do. Only the mungoma and nyamusoro can deal with these foreign spirits, divine their motive, and prescribe the proper steps to be taken to appease their wrath. This almost invariably results in a member of the afflicted family having to become a diviner himself, attending the school to learn how to do so. If a person who has been possessed by the gods refuses to join the fraternity the gods may kill him or her. A mungoma may only consult bones to divine the cause of misfortune. The mungoma who specializes in discovering who is at fault when two people are having an argument, each accusing the other of witchcraft, is called a muhlale. This is somewhat akin to the mondjo ordeal where two parties suspected of witchcraft drink a medicine administered by a mungoma; the one who becomes drunk from the mondjo is guilty. The muhlale does not administer a medicine, he merely consults his bones and discovers which is the guilty party. A mungoma may also divine by use of the bones and then prepare the medicine himself to cure his patient. Or he may divine the cause of the illness and then send the person to a specific nanga who specializes in this particular malady. He is also adept at finding "hidden things," whether these are material objects or causes of misfortune. The mungoma is usually a man, and 157 he does his consulting of the gods, his own particular spirits of the Ngoni or Ndjau tribes, by beating the drums. His gods claim kinship with him; the fact that they belong to another tribe is no deterrent in this. But Ngoni and Ndjau people can also return to possess any person they had contact with when they were alive, and they particularly return to afflict the families of a man who killed them in battle. In this sense the kinship is established by virtue of killing a man in war. In this way the real fighting supremacy of the Ngoni and the Ndjau are perpetu- ated in Rjonga cosmology. The cloths which symbolize the Ndjau gods are red; those used for the Ngoni gods are black. When the mungoma is evoking his gods by playing the drums he dresses as an Ngoni warrior, complete with spear and shield. When he is possessed the god speaks through his mouth in the appropriate language, almost always Zulu in the case of a mungoma because he works almost exclusively with Ngoni gods, the most powerful of all. Given this fact the mungoma always has an assistant (nyauti) who interprets for him since the majority of the pe0ple cannot understand Zulu. A nyamusoro is usually a woman, although both men and women are said to be able to become either a mungoma or nyamusoro. But the nyamusoro, who also becomes a doctor-diviner by having been possessed and having been another doctor's apprentice at a school, specializes in 158 the "smelling-out" (ku-femba) which is done only through an Ndjau god, never an Ngoni. A nyamusoro may also have an Ngoni god, the more powerful of the two always, but She can divine only by means of the drums or bones using the Ngoni god. The "smelling-out" can be performed by using the drums (and there are different rhythms used for the Ndjau and Ngoni) and a tchobo, a whisk made of ostrich feathers or the tail of a wildebeeste, which the diviner constantly brushes across her face and shoulders. This evokes the Ndjau god who possesses her and speaks through her mouth, telling the cause of the deaths or illnesses. The "smelling-out" can also be performed by consulting the bones, although the method employing the drums seems to be the more popular. A mungoma never performs a "smelling- out." Usually the nyamosoro does not know how to cure, and sends her patients to a doctor (nanga) recommended by her spirit. Some nyamusoros do use medicines, however, and these are the ones who aspire to become powerful mungomas. The people say the nyamusoro is like a dog because she can smell out possessing foreign objects lodged in a patient's body and discover hidden things, including illnesses caused by witchcraft and the master of the witchcraft. If the diviner only discovers hidden things, however, he is a mungoma. Both of these categories of diviner are powerful and are feared because they can fight witches and also 159 know the medicines and methods necessary to practice witchcraft themselves. A spirit who is sent to bring illness to someone is called a mulhiwa, and it can be said that one diviner's god is another's mulhiwa if they engage in a fight. Diviners call their teacher "father" or "mother" and all those who were apprenticed to the same person are considered to be siblings. There is only a loose kind of association binding all of these practioners, but they engage in subtle struggles for power which only become overt in court cases involving witchcraft. Village chiefs refuse to hear a case which seems to involve witchcraft these days, sending the principals to the king's court. The king's power is also seriously curtailed in these cases since the use of mondjo, the ordeal tradition- ally used in witchcraft cases, is forbidden by law. Witchcraft and the practice of divining and curing is also outlawed. The cases still occur, of course, and there is one village set aside on the outskirts of Nondjwana kingdom where all suspected witches are sent to live together. There are a variety of spirits which can possess a person and cause illness and death in his muti which are not related to the Ngoni or Ndjau spirits necessarily. There is a bush spirit which might possess you as you walk along a path or if you pick up an object which someone has lost on the path. Treatment for possessing spirits used by some nyamusoros involves transferring the 160 spirit to an object, such as a 100$ note or a cloth, and then dropping this object on a path where someone else will pick it up and become possessed. A diviner suspected of doing this can be expelled from his village because he is "killing the people." The treatment constitutes a form of witchcraft. These bush spirits (nhgba) are foreigners and "not of the house." Matlarji Spirits are spirits "of the spear"; they are warriors killed in battle and are the spirits of men who themselves had spirits when they were living. These are also called a mukwasana, and their motive in possessing someone is that they want to continue the work they did in their lifetime. They usually are related to the person they possess. The xibiti spirit is a god "of bitterness." He comes to kill in your muti, like the mukwasana, and often is the spirit of a person who committed suicide. The only way to appease all of these spirits is to join the fraternity and undergo treatment in order to become a host, a nyamusoro or mungoma. In addition to these spirits and the diviners who can control them there are witches who also can practice by use of medicines. All of these various beliefs are intimately related to other beliefs having to do with a person's shadow and his soul, two distinct properties. As I have said the subject is too complex to treat here. It is enough to note that most Rjonga live in a world 161 which they consider to be full of hostile forces and they feel it necessary to take precautions against these constantly. They are suspicious and defensive in almost all of their interpersonal relationships, and this is evidenced in many different areas of their life. One illness or one death or one misfortune of another nature will not prompt suspicions of witchcraft, but two or more of any of these occurrences will send a person to a diviner. And the people most often suspected are fathers, mothers, and wives. The Rjonga say that only a person past middle age, with grown and married children, can be a witch, however. The trait is also thought to be hereditary so that if one's father or grandfather was a known witch, then the children and grandchildren also will be when they reach middle and old age. This suspicion of middle aged and old men works against the respect and obedience that sons are supposed to give their fathers, and is given as a frequent cause for sons refusing to live with their fathers. Christianity and Education There are several Christian religions which the Rjonga join, but the most popular, in terms of converts, and the most prestigious is the Methodist established by Swiss missionaries in the last century. The most notable of these was Henri Junod, and he lived in a village of Nondjwana kingdom off and on for some seventeen years. Most of my discussion will center on the values introduced 162 by the Swiss Mission church, but they apply equally to the Zionists, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Catholics. All those belonging to any of these religions, or any other Christian religion, consider themselves to be far superior to their pagan brethern. One of the major reasons for this is the intimate association of education with religion. The mission churches, primarily Catholic and Methodist, have been the only agents of education in the bush; the missions built schools which children attend for education's sake primarily. Most of them, however, learn "the life of the church" whose school they attend and become converts. The only other schools which native children can attend are in the major cities, and here they must pay tuition. The result for the Rjonga is that Christianity and education go hand in hand, and the prestige of being Christian and educated is almost equal. The Rjonga recognize that the "school builds the church," and that the school is used explicitly by its missionary teachers as a means of making converts. One of the greatest strengths of the Swiss Mission church is that it accepts all children and does not discriminate against pagans. There is no such thing as a Rjonga teacher who is not a member of a Christian church, although there are educated Rjonga who are not Christian in fact and/or in practice. A Rjonga ordained minister has more prestige than anyone outside the traditional authority structure, 163 such as village chiefs or the king. Next in order of importance is a school teacher who combines his superior status as Christian with the status of one "who works for the people" by virtue of his education. In this respect it is useful to know that both to be an ordained minister and to be a mission school teacher a man must have a minimum of Standard 4 education. The minister's and the teacher's achievements are equal, educationally, but the minister has precedence in terms of status because he is God's representative. Christian men are supposed to be superior to the pagans in their beliefs and in their behavior. They may not smoke, drink, take more than one wife, nor participate in any of the traditional rituals, including praying to the ancestors. This, of course, creates a division in Rjonga village life. Brothers may be divided because one is Christian and the other not. Their values, therefore, are different and the Christian considers himself bound only by Christian values, whereas the pagans consider him to be bound by all traditional values and custom whether or not he is Christian. Junod is very explicit about the effect of Christianity on the Rjonga (1962: 543): The old customs, the sacred superstitions, many articles of the Native code, are rejected by the converts. They remain generally very submissive to the authority of their chief, pay their taxes, join the army, but, should the Authorities summon a "nyiwa," a gathering of the clan to smell out the witches, should statue labour be ordered for a Sunday, etc., their conscience does not allow them to obey. 164 On the other hand Native converts, under their white missionary, generally form a Church, which sometimes becomes a kind of imperium in imperio, subject to its own laws. This is the necessary consequence of bad, or immoral, heathen customs (beer-drinking, lobola, polygamy) which the Christian ideal cannot tolerate. A deep gulf is thus created between Christians and heathens, and this also weakens the tribal life. If a couple both belong to a church they may take their marital problems to their minister. If only one of them belongs, however, the church may not interfere because of the strong value against interfering in family affairs. It is not unusual for a pagan man to number a Christian among his wives. He is in no way bound by her beliefs, however, and she still owes him the absolute obedience expected of all wives. She may go to church, with his permission, but she should not involve him in the doings of the church nor should she consult the minister about any problems she has at home. I was told that most of the converts to Christianity are women, drawn by the proscription of polygamy by the churches. It is certainly true that women far outnumbered men at all Christian functions I attended. Besides the association of Christianity and edu- cation and the resulting shared prestige, education is valued independently as the only way that the Rjonga can come to terms with the Portuguese. Almost all privileges and well-paid jobs are predicated on a Standard 4 edu- cation: it is necessary to get a driver's license, to teach at an official or mission school, to become a nurse, 165 etc. Also the Portuguese reward education and command of the Portuguese language in various ways not directly related to jobs and wages. The Portuguese value education, verbal skills, cleanliness, and good clothing regardless of race. The Rjonga have been under direct control of the Portuguese, unlike other tribes in Mocambique, for the last 100 years and have learned this thoroughly. The Rjonga value these same traits not per se but because of the effect they will have on their status in Portuguese eyes. Another source of newly acquired values is the Portuguese themselves because their taxation of the Rjonga made it necessary for them to enter the cash economy. Thus the Rjonga have learned that money is necessary in order to survive, as well as to provide the outward vestiges of a "civilized" man--good clothes, metal pots and pans, a radio, a cement house with zinc roof, and--the ultimate--a car. But the Portuguese among themselves accord more prestige to a highly educated, well-mannered person than to a very rich person who lacks "culture." The Rjonga know this and thus have a double motive for according higher prestige to church and education than to material wealth. Furthermore this hierarchy of values is reinforced by the Rjonga's own value system which suspects undue wealth either because its possessor is a witch, or because he has failed in his obligations to help his family and to share (through hospitality) with his friends and neighbors. 166 All of the acquired values are superimposed on the traditional Rjonga value system. Less emphasis is placed, by all Rjonga, on upholding church or Portuguese-introduced values than on upholding their own value system. The values of the church are completely foreign to Rjonga life, particularly those which forbid polygamy, drinking, smoking, and the principal motive for abiding by them is their prestige value in the eyes of the Portuguese. And a Rjonga who gets along successfully in the Portuguese milieu is accorded a high status among his peers and elders. Christian values are expedient to a Rjonga, but this does not detract from their prestige one whit. In a dispute, however, the village considers a person as a Rjonga subject to traditional law and custom and his status as Christian will not protect him from the censure of the village should he not behave rightly. In fact, although the pagans do not share the Christian's values, they will censure him the more if he behaves contrary to custom because they agree that a Christian is better than a pagan. His fall from grace is consequently greater than a pagan's similar lapse. Thus there is explicit recognition of the two value systems and, in the ordinary course of events, the prestige and virtue of the Christian value system is recognized by everyone. The newer values become inef- fective, however, when they are brought into open conflict with the traditional value system, and this can put a Christian Rjonga into a dilemma. 167 Although all Rjonga admire Christians and edu- cated people, not all Rjonga are either or both. On the other hand, all Rjonga have fully embraced not only the necessity for but the desirability of money, and bend their efforts to that end. Thus a man will act to preserve his material status at the expense of his status as a good Christian and educated man if these two statuses should happen to conflict. This has the effect, slow but per- ceptible, of breaking down traditional patterns of co- operation and undermines filial obligations of respect to poor, less advantaged fathers and brothers. The old men say that money is what is destroying their old ways, and I often heard the proverb: "The white man has no kin; his kin is money." CHAPTER IV TWIXT CHURCH AND STATE: A CASE Mitini's first school was established by a member of one of the most prominent clans of the village on his return from a period of labor in the South African mines around the beginning of this century. This man has come to be called the "evangelist" by the people of the village, and he is their most recent culture hero because of his efforts on behalf of the village. One of the young men of Mitini recently wrote a short history of the school, dealing principally with the Evangelist's life and how he came to build a school for his people. The article is entitled "The Origin of Mitini," which in itself points up the importance pe0ple give to their school. "Mitini" was the name given to the school, and the village came to be known by that name, the school being its outstanding charac- teristic and principal point of pride. Since the article contains so much of the flavor of the people's attitude toward their Evangelist and towards education I will reproduce it here as background to the case which follows. 168 169 Mudondjisa was born in Mitini when the peOple still did not know how to count or read. When he was a young boy he went to live by the river, in the region which is called Matxinana, with his uncle. On attaining his majority he accompanied his uncle on the daring adventure that they undertook barefoot, cutting through the bush going to Benoni, bearing towards Johannesburg, to get the money to lobolo a wife. After a long time and innumerable suffer- ings they arrived at Benoni. For Mudondjisa it was the first time that he had gone and so he could not understand anyone speaking in Zulu. He and his uncle worked for some time, and afterwards they completed the rest of the journey by train. In Johannesburg they lived in the compound, and various tribes were mixed together although those from the East lived separately from the others. Mudondjisa did not cease to satisfy his curiousity, going to hear lessons in Zulu principally, because he had to know the language so he could work. In a short time Mudondjisa assimilated the Zulu language and during his free hours he read his books with a willingness which invited him to know more things about what he saw in that very strange environment. One day when he was strolling through a village which lay around the compound he passed a hut where he saw a Zulu mother seated with her son who was teaching his mother to read and write. Mudondjisa approached re- spectfully and heard the mother say: 'Enough, my son. I will study tomorrow.‘ Mudondjisa withdrew from the place but he nevermore forgot this sentence which became the foundation for the education of a village. "When I return to my land I will teach my mother and father to read and write and about the existence of God," said Mudondjisa. Truly when he returned to Mitini he told the children to gather firewood and at night he called near to him his parents and peOple of the family, and he began to teach them to write on the ground around the large fire. Thus was given the first step of education in that village, and the people were enchanted and attributed witchcraft to the art of writing, and said Mudondjisa was the biggest witch who, with a piece of paper, succeeded in speaking with a person who was far away. The reputation of this witch spread throughout the region and people came so that Mudondjisa could read to them the letters that their husbands and sons sent them from Jone [Johannesburg]. Some time later Mudondjisa ordered that a hut be bought and the classes began to take place inside that hut, and not out of doors. It was at this time that the pastor Junod appeared and encouraged him in the prestigious work 170 of teaching, which caused the numbers of his pupils to increase. Then they decided to take up a subscription and they succeeded in building a hut which, not long after, was succeeded by a masonry house. Mudondjisa was very intelligent. He foresaw the future of his generation and knew very well that those simple people needed to know how to spell out the letters of the alphabet in Rjonga so they could communicate with their people who were in the Jone mines. But, he knew, the next generation would need to make contact with European peoples and, thus, very early he sent his son, Nwavangela, to the city of Lourenco Marques to learn Portuguese. When this one returned he managed to continue and develop the work of his father, and in 1934 the school [Swiss Mission] was inaugurated which was_baptized with the name of "School of Mitini." There are several striking things about this article. First is its flavor of "fireside tale"; it is written in the same style used by the people when they gather around their fires at night to tell the old stories. This in itself guarantees that Mudondjisa's memory will live on in the stories of his peOple, because this tale is told much as it was written by the author of the article I have translated. The article was written in Portuguese because it was intended for publication in a city newspaper to demonstrate the ambition and will to learn among the Rjonga. Another important feature of the piece is the identification of education and Christianity; the two go hand in hand. Very significant is the fact that Junod's praise of the Evangelist's work "increased the number of his pupils." Last is the author's statement that the Evangelist's great intelligence lay in recognizing that learning to read 171 and write Rjonga would not be sufficient for the next generation who "would need to make contact with European peoples." The necessity of learning how to interact successfully in the Portuguese milieu is clearly recognized by the Rjonga, and this explains why those who do learn Portuguese, and who acquire jobs with the Portuguese, are accorded such a high status today. It should be noted that until 1969 no official schools, meaning government sponsored schools, were allowed in the bush. Only the various missions could build schools in the bush and the certificates they award are not recog- nized in the city when such are required for a job. This forces a Rjonga, or any other tribesman, to go into a city if he wants schooling which will be officially recognized. Nevertheless the mission schools served a vital function in teaching the children, and young adults, to read and write Portuguese so that they could then enter city schools if they chose. For those not interested in having jobs in the city the mission school taught them enough of the language to get by in their necessary transactions with the Portu- guese, and--at the same time--increased their prestige in the eyes of their fellows. The Swiss Mission subsidized the building of a school house-church in Mitini in 1934 and provided mission teachers for it. The mission owns the land on which the house is built, and owns the building, but it no longer plays any part in the school itself. After some time the 172 school was closed down by the authorities. It was opened again, briefly, after some time, then closed down again. Finally, just a few years ago, some of the elders of the village, including a brother (half—brother) of the Evangelist, requested some of the young men who were living in the city and going to school to help them open their village school again. After much discussion and many meetings the young men, who came to be known as the "city school-board members," agreed to help organize a village- run and sponsored school. In due course people were chosen to belong to the Mitini school board, most of them elders of Mitini but some also of other villages whose children would walk into Mitini for school each day. There were some women put on the school board also; these were important women, the people said, but the major reason in having them was their ability to pay the 100$ "foundation fee" charged of all school board members. Each household in the village was also charged 10$; all of this money was to buy books and equipment for the children. In addition there were "matriculation fees" charged of each child, but these were minimal (about a quarter). From these revenues the school teacher's salary was to be paid each month. In all the arrangements and planning, the young "city school board members" played a major role. The people of the village relied on them for their know-how in what to teach, how classes should be organized, choosing an appropriate teacher, and getting contributions from any Portuguese 173 they had contact with in the city. Thus the city members' board was held to be more important than the village school board because they had more power to effect results. Their collective success in the city (meaning higher education and better jobs) afforded them the prestige necessary to sway indifferent or even hostile villagers who could see no purpose in paying out 10$ for a school, particularly if they had no children who would attend the school. There was an early controversy regarding who would teach, and this is important to the background of the case which follows. In the beginning the village chief (since deposed because he ate the people's money and tricked and deceived them in other matters) was very interested and involved in the creation of the village school. When all of the arrangements were complete and the consent of the mission to use their building obtained, the question of who would teach arose. Muntwana, the chief, said he had arranged a man for the job, a stranger to the village. The young men from the city chose one of themselves, Valente (the main protagonist in the case), as the professor of the school to work with Francisco, the man lined up by the village chief. To Show their appreciation of the village efforts in obtaining a professor, the city members said they would pay Valente's salary out of their own pocket for the first three months. This was their financial contribution to the school. At the time Valente had a job in the city. 174 At one of the first school board meetings in the village, a "general assembly" meeting open to everybody who cared to come, Francisco was asked to speak to intro- duce himself and to tell something about himself. He said he had been promised the job by the chief and that he had been introduced to the Evangelist (then a very old man) and to his younger brother Tomas. The members of the school board were annoyed that none of these three people (the chief, the Evangelist, or his brother Tomas) had come to the meeting to present Francisco as custom and etiquette demands. When asked what financial arrangements he had made with the chief, Francisco said it had not been discussed; he had only agreed to teach in their school. The matter was dropped and arrangements were made for a villager who was teaching at a mission school in another village to come help Francisco and Valente divide the children into grades, and to help them make up a teaching program. At the end of the meeting Francisco requested a place to live, food, soap, and tea as part of his salary. The board told him he would have to wait until the chief was present before any commitments could be made. This meeting took place in October of 1963. Before the next meeting, scheduled for the next month, there was a dispute between Valente and Francisco, the chief's candidate for professor. One of the city members had been given several school books by a Portuguese friend as a contribution to the school. Valente was put in charge of 175 selling these books to children to make money to provide equipment for children whose parents could not afford it. Valente had gone to visit the Evangelist and left seven books on the table in his house. When he returned he found the books gone, and discovered that Francisco had sold them and kept the money. After waiting a day Valente went to Francisco and asked him about it; Francisco said he had kept the money "to eat on." At this time Francisco was living with the chief, who hoped to keep him as a "paying guest." Valente and Francisco quarreled and finally Francisco went off to get the chief who returned with him to Valente's house; the Evangelist also came with him. The chief was very angry and told Valente that the school would be closed because the authorities did not like it. The people had not gone to the Portuguese authorities to re- quest permission to run a school; according to the chief, this had angered them. The three men told Valente that the children should be sent home. The following day Francisco rang the school bell to open the school but Valente did not go. At recess Francisco went to Valente's house to ask why he had not gone; Valente said he had refused to go because the chief said the school should be closed. Francisco tried to appease Valente, saying the chief had only been angry and that the authorities actually had not said anything at all about closing the school. Valente still refused to go, and Francisco went off to get the 176 Evangelist to convince Valente. He still refused to go, even threatening the Evangelist with a beating if he did not leave his house and stop pestering him. The two men left and Francisco taught alone for two days; finally he went to Davida, the president of the village school board and the chief's ndjuna (lieutenant, second-in-command), who also was a good friend of Valente's. Davida persuaded Valente to return to the school. I was told about this dispute by several peOple and Valente had written it down in his diary, which is the actual source of my account. Valente said that he was annoyed by the chief's meddling, that the man's only concern was to eat the people's money by having the pro- fessor live with him. Also significant in this current dispute were feelings arising from an older one which directly concerned Valente and Muntwana, the chief. Muntwana had married Valente's younger sister some six years prior to this time, against Valente's express wish. Valente based his objections to the marriage on three grounds: his sister and the chief were too closely related, being classificatory siblings; Muntwana had married three other women who had divorced him and Valente worried about this, because it showed the chief must be a bad husband; and, lastly, the chief had not loboloed any of his wives. Valente did his best to dissuade his sister from marrying Muntwana but she did not heed his advice; she eloped with the chief, telling Valente that their 177 older brother, Nkosi, approved. The chief did not pay the full lobolo for this his fourth wife, but only 1000$ of it, which was not sufficient to register her at the Adminis- tration and thus give him all rights in his wife and children. Valente was outraged by his sister's stupidity and what he took to be his older brother's cupidity; he was sure that Muntwana had given Nkosi some money to buy beer and had thus obtained his tacit approval to the marriage. Nkosi was not a Christian, whereas Valente, Mandjia (his sister), and Muntwana were--the latter only nominally because he had multiple wives and was a beer drinker. He assumed this status as one befitting the village chief, but he played no active role in church affairs. He took a second wife after a few years of his marriage to Valente's sister. Furthermore Valente had always supported and cared for his sister, whereas their older brother Nkosi had done nothing. The deed was done, however, and a few years later Muntwana moved his muti next door to Valente's, after the chief's father died. Although they were neighbors there was still bad blood between Muntwana and Valente because the latter felt his sister had been tricked. He also accused his brother-in-law, the chief, of taking his chickens and eating them--a complaint made by many of the villagers about their chief. Given this background, the dispute between Valente and Francisco and the Evangelist takes on more meaning. The people say there is no recourse to a bad 178 chief (although this is not strictly true, witness Muntwana's subsequent deposition) and one must only submit to him. Add to this the fact that the chief was also Valente's brother-in-law, and neighbor, and there is a situation in which anger and frustration must necessarily be bottled up. Francisco was the chief's protege and so afforded a natural target for the displacement of Valente's anger; anyone aligning himself with Francisco would also be a target for Valente's wrath, and hence he threatened to beat up the Evangelist. This is an ex- pression of the Rjonga trait of "taking sides" in a dispute which I have mentioned earlier. The situation remained thus until the next meeting of the school board in November, which the chief attended. The president of the city school board asked if Francisco were coming and the chief said no. They asked the chief if he knew Francisco's house, which meant they were asking if he knew anything about his character. Muntwana said he did not and further said he would send the would-be pro- fessor away. Davida, the president of the village school board, took out and read a letter sent to him by Francisco; at this point the man appeared. The letter stated that Francisco had bought supplies at a local store on credit and that the village would have to pay his bill; in addition he demanded that a house be built for him, that he be paid a salary of 300$ a month, and that his food be bought for him. When questioned about his salary, 179 Francisco said he was not sure yet and would let the board know the definite amount he required by January of the following year. A big argument ensued; the chief took the teacher's part, but it culminated in the school board dismissing Francisco after paying him 300$ for the work he had already done. This left Valente as the only teacher of the school. The men from the city stood by their promise to pay his salary of 300$ for the first three months; after that he would be paid 500$ a month out of the monies collected from matriculation fees, sale of books, etc. At the next meeting, at the end of December of 1963, the minutes of the school board meetings Show that the chief, Muntwana, had been making trouble for the school board. He had demanded money of them, basing his claim on the chief's right to be paid at the beginning of any new venture so that he would know "the beginning of the cases" and be able to judge disputes. That is, a new doctor or diviner or vendor of beer must always go announce them- selves to the chief and pay him an annual fee so that he would know of their activities and be prepared to hear cases which resulted from these activities. The chief sent a man to Davida, who was also his ndjuna, making the demand. At this school board meeting Davida asked if anyone from the board had gone to speak to the chief about the matter, and Fernando (another younger brother of the Evangelist) said he had. Fernando had told the chief that 180 the board would call on him in a week to discuss his having sent someone to ask for money. The chief had told Fernando to tell them not to come to him but to go speak to Davida. In this way Muntwana put Davida into a quandry because his two roles of ndjuna to the chief and president of the village school board were in conflict. As the chief's second-in-command Davida had to reinforce the chief's claim to the money; as president of the school board he had to try to fight against it. Later in the meeting it came out that the chief had removed all of the chairs from the church (which was also used as the school building) and had taken them to his house. There was some discussion and it was apparently agreed that a delegation would be sent to ask the chief about this. The minutes gloss over this and the chief's claim to a fee from the school board. When I inquired about this from other members of the board I was told that the cases were finished; this is an expression of the Rjonga value that after a case has been judged and a person punished, there must be no further discussion of it. Nor should a person ever be reminded of his former sins if he has already atoned for them; this also extends to not discussing a person's trangressions with him unless one is a principal party in a dispute. However, when I first arrived in Mitini I was forbidden by the king and by my sponsors to speak with Muntwana, who was deposed about a week after my arrival. I was told that he had "funny 181 things in his head" and that I should ignore him. When I told the king that his classificatory son had come to visit me, I saw the king in a rage for the first and last time; he forbade me again to speak with the ex-chief and yelled that it was he who gave the orders, not Muntwana. One of the things I was told by some of the elders was that Muntwana had been an "enemy of the school" from the beginning. I do not know the resolution of the chief's demand for money; I do know that the chairs were returned to the church-school, but have no more information on how this was accomplished. However, the information I have is sufficient to Show that Muntwana was indeed an enemy of the school, and this will be significant in the case which follows. After Muntwana was deposed, his ndjuna Davida acted as chief of the village. About a year later (in 1969) there was a meeting of the whole village called by the king to elect a new chief because, he said, many people had come to complain to him about Davida's lack of fitness for the job--among other things he was Mitini's most notorious adulterer, and adultery is easily the village's favorite pastime. That is another case; however, there are two important points to be made about this. One is that the chief's second-in-command is, like our vice-president, the acting chief in the absence of his superior; he is also supposed to be of one mind with the chief, at least publicly, in all things. The second point is that 182 Davida, after he became the acting chief, acted in much the same way Muntwana had. The people said the situation was the king's fault because the two should have been removed from office at the same time; that is, the acts of one are thought to be the acts of the other. If the chief is bad so is his ndjuna, because it is the ndjuna's duty to advise his chief and correct him if he behaves in an unseemly fashion. Davida's dilemma at the time of the case which follows was because of this: In all things per- taining to the village it was his duty to support his chief; but he was also supposed to advise him. However, the ndjuna has no sanction and a chief can easily ignore his advice if he chooses, which means the ndjuna must then follow him and be tarred by the same brush. The only sanction against the chief is that the peOple can go directly to the king, as they did in this case, and by their complaints succeed in having the chief removed from office. Davida, obviously, had to follow Muntwana's lead because Muntwana, as an elder told me later, refused to "hear the words of his advisors." At the same time, though, Davida was also president of the village school board, and the chief was an enemy of the school. Further- more, Davida and Valente were good friends; but Muntwana and Valente were not, despite being neighbors and brothers-in-law. All of this is pertinent to Valente's troubles which began in 1966, the second full school year of the new village-run school. 183 Resume Valente, the school teacher when the school was supported by the village, and a good member of the Swiss Mission church, impregnated an unmarried girl. This act violated one of the strongest values of the pagan Rjonga who say that an impregnated, unmarried girl is "spoiled" because she is not entitled to a lobolo if her despoiler refuses to marry her. It also violated strong church values because a Christian is supposed to be better than other people, and adultery is a sin against God. Further— more, a man who is a school teacher is obligated to be an exemplar in his behavior for the children who are in his care. In many ways a school teacher is conceptualized as a minister of the church. Trying to redeem his wrong, Valente took the girl home as his second wife, thus bringing the wrath of the church and school board, closely associated with the church, down upon his head. His impregnating Anna offended the pagans on two counts: Firstly, she was his neighbor, and neighbors are even closer than kin; they are the people who are near in time of trouble and answer calls for help in time of need whereas relatives may be far away. Secondly, it is very bad to impregnate an unmarried girl, at least before becoming engaged; after going through the engagement ceremony (ku-buta), a couple are expected to have sexual relations, and no stigma attaches to either if the woman should become pregnant. 184 When the case came to trial Valente denied that Anna was his wife, saying that they had made no arrangement for marriage, but only to live together. This statement was prompted by many of the pressures which had been brought to bear on him, and was designed to appease the church and school board members, thus safe-guarding his job. It satisfied the church but not the pagans, and this was Valente's dilemma throughout the case: by virtue of his achieved status he held contradictory values; in trying to uphold one set of values he violated the alter- nate set, and thus could not succeed in pleasing anyone. The case was resolved only by the intervention of an outside authority figure, the Portuguese chief of police. Valente managed, with this powerful man's help, to get rid of Anna and to preserve his job and status as Christian without even paying the traditional fine. That is, the correcting process in this instance consisted of ignoring Valente's breach and not bringing it up anymore. As will be seen, the matter still rankled in his mind and apparently in the minds of other principals in the case, and had consequences which were apparent several years later. The dominant values in this case are: l. A Christian should not commit adultery; and he may not have two or more wives, simultane- ously. 185 2. A Rjonga should not impregnate an unmarried girl; if he does, he must marry her or pay the 1500$ fine and lose woman, child, and money. Given the hierarchy of values discussed earlier, all Rjonga hold their traditional values to be more important than any of the introduced values, whether the’source be church, state, or some other agency. Thus a man's violation of the church values would affect only members of the church who are deeply committed to it, and whose group image would be threatened by the actions of one of their members. On the other hand, a man's violation of the traditional values regarding unmarried girls would offend everyone. From the point of view of correcting the value violation, only the payment of the 1500$ fine could satisfy pagans and Chrisitans alike, although not in the same degree. That is, the pagans would far prefer to have a man marry the girl he has impregnated; this is unac- ceptable to the Christians, who can only insist that he pay the fine. But both groups do insist that some reparation is necessary. Dramatic Personae Since some forty or more peOple are involved in the case which follows it is best to give a very brief sketch of each one's position in the village. As can be seen from the genealogy (Figures 3 and 4) all are related 186 to each other in some way, several having more than one kind of kinship link. 1. 2. ABEL ALFONSO ALFREDO ANDRE ANNA ANTONIO Present at Valente's trial, but did not speak. Abel came to the village many years ago with his mother; he married into Anna's clan, one of the most powerful in the village. Not a Christian; lives in Valente's zone. Anna's father and a principal in the case. He came to the village a few years ago with his two younger brothers, because his father's sister lived here. He married into one of the most powerful clans of the village, as did his brothers--each into a different clan. They are all nominal Christians, but Alfonso has two wives and thus is not considered a Christian by members of the church. His younger and favorite wife lives with him in the city where he works, the senior wife in the village with their children. He lives in Valente's zone. A zone chief of the village, and Anna's mother's mother's brother's son; a principal in the case. Alfredo also belongs to the school board, and is a Christian. He is chief of Valente's zone. Valente's life-long friend; his mother belongs to Anna's clan and is the Evangela's sister. Andre's mother and Anna are classificatory siblings, so Anna is actually Andre's classificatory mother's sister although Andre is older. He is a Christian and lives in Valente's zone. A major principal in the case, the un- married girl whom Valente impregnated. Her mother is the Evangela's classificatory sister (patrilateral parallel cousins). She is a Christian and lives in Valente's zone. Full brother to the zone chief, Alfredo, also Anna's classificatory mother's brother; a principal in the case. He is also married to a relative of another 7. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. BELU BERNARDO CELESTE DAVIDA ELIZA ESTEL EVANGELA FAMBA FENIAS 187 principal in the case (Marcos). A Zionist; he lives in Valente's zone. A principal after the case was ostensibly ended. President of the city member's school board and a prime mover in opening the school; also a life-time friend of Valente's. He is related to Anna also; their mother's are classificatory siblings, although Belu is older than Anna. A Christian; his house is in Valente's zone where his mother, Eliza, lives. Full brother of Alfonso, and Anna's father's younger brother; thus a principal in the case. Married into one of the powerful clans. A Christian; lives in Valente's zone. Anna's mother, a principal in the case. She is her husband's senior wife but lives alone in the village with their children. She and the Evangela are classificatory siblings. A Christian; lives in Valente's zone; a member of the church board. President of the village school board; ndjuna to the village chief; member of one o the most powerful clans; a very good friend of Valente's. A principal in the case. Not a Christian; chief of another zone. A principal in the case; mother to Belu, president of the city school board. Eliza belongs to the church board; lives in Valente' 3 zone. Full sister to Anna; present at the trial. Lives in Valente's Zone. (See MUDONDJISA.) Chief of another village, present at Valente's trial because he had come to hear another case on the same day. Spoke against Valente; not a Christian. Absent throughout most of this case, but becomes important in later events related to the case. An elder of Davida's clan (the president of the school board); 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. FERNANDO FRANCISCO JACOBE JORGE KOKWANA MAHETCHE MAKALABASI MAKWAKWA 188' member of the church and school boards. Lives in Davida's zone; a Christian. A principal in the case; member of one of the most powerful clans; younger half- brother to the Evangela. He is also Anna's classificatory mother's brother, since he and Celeste are brothers' children. Member of the church board, but not of the school board. A Christian; he lives in Valente's zone. A minor character in the case; he is the stranger introduced by the village chief to be the new teacher in the village school. Dismissed by the school board; he continued to live in the chief's house afterwards, and attended Valente's trial. One of the elders of Davida's clan; related to Valente's wife's head of household, and present at a family meeting. A Christian; he lives in Davida's zone. Anna's full brother; a principal in the case. He acted as Anna's head of house- hold in this case, in his father's absence. A Christian; lives in Valente's zone. Anna's mother's mother; wife to the Evangela's father's brother; father's sister to Alfredo and Antonio. She spoke against Valente at his trial; not a Christian. Lives in Valente's zone. Present at Valente's trial; came to the village many years ago to live with his mother's parents. Related to all of the powerful clans; married to a woman of Anna's clan. Not a Christian; lives in neither Valente's nor Davida's zones; an elder of the village. An elder of Davida's clan; related to Valente's wife's head of household. Makalabasi is also a village elder and co-chief of Davida's zone. Present at Valente's trial; village elder and a zone chief. Member of Anna's clan. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. MANDJIA MANDLOVO MANUEL MAPULA MARCOS MUDONDJISA 189 Not a Christian; lives in a fourth zone (distinct from any of the others mentioned). Valente's younger sister who eloped with the chief. A Christian; lives in Valente's zone. Present at Valente's trial; village policeman, village elder. Is Valente's classificatory mother's brother. Not a Christian; lives in Valente's zone. An elder of Davida's clan, and the man whom Valente treats as if he were his father. Manuel and Valente are classi- ficatory siblings, but because of the great difference in their ages Valente calls him "father." Also a close friend, associate, and kinsman of Tomas, half brother to the Evangela, thus related to Anna also. An elder of the village; his presence is required at all trials. Formerly a Christian; lives in Valente's zone. Present at Valente's trial; elder of the village; a policeman of the village. Came to the village many years ago with his father's younger brother; related to all the powerful clans, married into Davida's clan. Not a Christian; lives in Valente's zone. A principal in the case; a member of both the church and school boards. Came to the village long ago with his mother who was a daughter of the Evangela's father's brother. He is Anna's classificatory brother, although much older than she. A Christian; lives in Valente's zone. (He is also own mother's brother to Belua, the president of the city school board.) Also called the EVANGELA; elder of one of the most powerful clans; introducer of education and Christianity to the village. He is Anna's classificatory mother's brother. A Christian; lives in Valente's zone. vuurrrvwsrua PHJEHDEKSI . INAQMSA: .3. 'NBKMSI 34. RATKRUX 35. ROSA 36. RUTI 37. SUHHA 38. SOLOMON 190 A principal in the case; village chief; divorced from two women of Anna's clan. Valente's neighbor, brother-in—law, and classificatory sibling. Not a Christian; lives in Valente's zone. Present at Valente's trial. Muntwana's mother; moved here with her husband and family when her husband became chief. Lives with her son. Not a Christian; lives in Valente's zone. Present at Valente's trial. Eldest living member of Davida's clan; village elder; zone chief. Not a Christian; does not live in Valente's zone. Present at Valente's trial; Valente's and Mandjia's own older brother. Lives next door to Valente; not a Christian. Present at Valente's trial; a relative of Anna's, exact kinship link unsure. Not from the village. Principal in the case. Member of the church board. Matrilateral cross-cousin of Makwakwa, also of Anna's clan; related to the two other powerful clans also. Married into village. Christian; lives in Valente's zone. Principal in the case, indirectly. Valente's wife, married into village. She has a classificatory grandmother, and classificatory head of household is Solomon (see below), because his bio- logical father had the same surname as hers. Christian; lives in Valente's zone. Valente's mother, married into village; belongs to chief's clan. Not a Christian; lives in Valente's zone (in his house). Principal in the case; member of both church and school boards. His social father, whose surname he uses, was brother to Davida's father's father; he is also head of household to Ruti, Valente's wife, because his biological father and hers are of the same clan, and he is the only person in the village of her clan besides 191 her classificatory grandmother (who married into the village). A village elder. Christian; does not live in Valente's zone, but in Davida's. HJZPUEA A principal in the case. She is Fernando's second wife, thus the Evangela's sister- in-law. She is also father's sister's daughter to her husband's older brother's wife. Member of the church board. A Christian, she lives in Valente's zone. TCHUKELA Present at Valente's trial; Valente's own father's younger brother. Not a Christian; lives in Valente's zone, but not with Valente. TOMAS Present at Valente's trial. Village elder whose closest associate is Manuel, the man whom Valente treats as if he were a father; Tomas' presence is also required at all village trials. He is half-brother to the Evangela, older full brother to Fernando, and also a classificatory mother's brother to Anna. Not a practicing Christian; lives in Valente's zone. Member of the school board. VALENTE Major principal in the case; village school teacher, secretary of the village school board. His father and father's brothers moved to this village many years ago; later all of the father's brothers except Tchukela moved back to their native village. Related to Manuel and Davida as well as to the chief, Muntwana; he is classificatory sibling as well as brother-in-law to the chief, his neighbor. A Christian since he was eighteen years old and cured of a near-fatal disease in the Mission hospital. VICENTE Present at Valente's trial. Belongs to Davida's clan; his brothers-in—law are the Evangela's brother, Anna's father, and the chief's classificatory father. Not a Christian; does not live in Valente's nor Davida's zone. (His son lives with Tomas.) 192 44. ZAKARIA Principal in the case; of another village; member of both the church and school boards. Classificatory son of the Evangela, thus classificatory sibling of Anna's, although much older. A Christian; lives in neighboring village. 45. ZINYAWA Present at Valente's trial. Life-long friend of Valente's; classificatory sibling of Anna. Not a Christian; belongs to chief's clan; lives in Valente's zone. It is evident that not all of these people are important to the case, for some were involved because of a status which required their presence at Valente's trial, or because of a close kinship connection with principals in the case. Others were brought into the case, at least peripherally, because Valente tried to recruit their support. As will be seen, he failed in all cases to mobilize active support until he began to operate in the traditional mode, as it were. One of the most interesting features of the case, which it is useful to know before the fact, is the personal sense of grievance Valente felt against his erstwhile friend, Davida. I have already outlined Davida's dilemma caused by his conflicting roles as ndjuna to the chief (enemy of the school) and as president of the village school board. Also Davida and Valente have a very tenuous kinship link (see Figure 3); they usually do not address each other by a kinship term, however, each using the term "father" in addressing the other. This is the standard term of respect used by men of the same approximate age if 193 they do not recognize a kinship connection. Occasionally I heard Davida address Valente as "son," and when I inquired I was told this was because of their kinship connection through Manuel who is Davida's classificatory father' s brother. Davida used this term only when he was trying to win Valente's assenting opinion to a specific issue , however. From my personal knowledge of these two men, and through long conversations with Valente about it, I know that some of his behavior in this case was dictated by his sense of outrage at being abandoned and betrayed, as he saw it, by Davida who ultimately opted to follow his chief's lead. Also most of the people in this case live either in the zone of which Davida was chief, or in the zone Valente lives in. A full account of the events in Valente's case, written double space for the reader's convenience because the case is long, can be found in Appendix A. All of these events transpired several years before my arrival in Mitini. Valente, himself, told me about the case to explain his enmity with certain people in the village, and to explain the background to some current disputes involving school affairs. The school had been closed down by the authorities just a few months before my arrival, but there was still school business pending which was the cause of much agitation among those involved. I had access to the minutes of the school board 194 stings because Valente was secretary for the board and ateiflmm. There were also several meetings of the board, :errmrarrival, and I was allowed to tape these; the muting transcripts run into hundreds of pages which make 3rclear the factions and issues whose source was the sent case. A year after my arrival an official school, ght by professors sent from the city, was authorized by Governor-General and inaugurated by him. He made a t of money to the village school board as a gesture of reciation for all their efforts on behalf of their ple. The disposition of this money created great >re and provoked many more meetings of the board at :h Valente's case with Anna again became an issue. That the consequences of this one case should be -reaching in time is partially explained, I think, by fact that the case was never resolved by traditional ga means, nor even by Rjonga Christian values. It was d by the intervention of a powerful authority figure aneous to the village. Thus there was never a aring of the principals in the case and the traditional ciru; together to Show that the "case had died." Nor ralente ever meet with Anna's parents to have a family together, with the same object. Thus the case "did 13t," and the hard feelings generated continued to occasionally when related matters came up. {The source of any conversations are Valente's es; he has kept detailed accounts of everything which 195 3 happened to him, and which has occurred in the village, hmxmtance since he learned to read and write at the age eighteen. Every evening before going to sleep, no :ter how tired, he writes in these diaries. I have had w occasions to check the accuracy of his written :ounts, and am most impressed by them. He might leave e information out, at times; everything which he ludes is correct to the minutest detail. Figures 3 and 4 The complexities of Rjonga kinship and marriage can seen in these two figures. The forty-five people who in an appearance in this case are all shown on these figures which actually comprise a single genealogy. :ral have multiple links to each other. The numbers resent their alphabetical order in the biographical :ches which are on pages 188-194. People represented by a letter of the alphabet (I ot use the letter "0") are connecting links and are to show the relationships between peOple on Figures 3 4. In some cases the same person, represented either number or a letter, appears more than once on the :Eigure and/or on both figures. See, for example, J 30 on Figure 3. The principals in Valente's case belong primarily 1e (If three clans, or are related to one of these : cilans. Figure 3 shows the relationships from the 196 intcfi'view of the Evangela's clan (he is 13/29). guna4 shows the relationships from the point of view of nuelksand Davida's clan (26 and 10, respectively). I notgnovide a genealogy from the point of view of the irdcflan which is the royal one. These connections are mnxthrough the chief (30) and the two kings (Figure 4). The virtual impossibility of providing only one malogy is shown by the complications represented by ida's (10) kin ties. Figure 3 shows he is brother-in- 'to the Evangela (13/29) and also shows that his son ried the Evangela's grandaughter (her father is 4). ure 4 shows Davida's close connection with the royal n, and thus with the chief (30). The exact relationship :he two kings shown on Figure 4 can be determined by :ing at Figure l. 197 .s mesons spas means msoem, .mmmo on» sH mHmomm mo mmonocmwul.m musmHm no HH :1 e a .1 n h u C q .3 _m q.umiw me s «OH «cm s n... a m m .m C E C AV On 0 Que 4 wfllmnqna we cm H me NH mH m we em om H mm s a a a m EC." “En: Hm “m. mm rm 2 Hm N « Monumncma «unlea- qn q... “E1 film 4 4 2 mm mm mH H h OH H mm x h H m N m 1mm « « «\MH « a e e k. .I d$u$Pllws c‘uu_1illllL%‘ 198 King(3) Chief \l——l—c—nwana g 'Orjarj ana 3 ”Enwingi 21m nhombe '4 nwana I0 nwana 'P——0. '0 rjarj ana '3 I? nhombe [0 nwana V 21 “Q makwerju L4 nwana IO I""—Q kokwana II hr 9 nhombe q 0 1—0 kokwana 3 IQ makwerju II 2‘» '4 I0 _gmakwe rj u nwana | ql nwingi ~< nwana El makwerju I nwana makwerj 11} lg o W A.— tatana rjarjana tatana Figure 10.-Female ego's terms of reference to own family (1927). *Namu is an alternate term. 458 0 <1 I Q I:— a? "Q l O (‘0 namu JO 0 ' 5 14 N g I0 <1 L, '0 ‘ (0 nwana Q q makwerju " A II <,nwana “'0 8 p nhombe* o nwingi ”' I L, nwana if q makwerju ‘4 I0 nwana A :LA LO mukonwana E-Q mukonwana ‘4 nwana - \F—— nwana A. .0 EGO u 8 ”q mukonwana A iii <1 mukonwana v gto nsati Rnwingi nwana ‘Q A II 0 mukonwana '0 nsati* é *0 a? §~Q namu <1 namu V ’0 nsati* O mukonwana g makwerju ‘I 0 ,. i‘r i—Q ’5 I gig mukonwana Jamukonwana 2‘, “G V 4 namu IO namu L: Q I: 5 '4 3 E3 0 Figure ll.-Male ego's terms of reference to wife's family (1927). *Namu is an alternate term. 4S9 10 I0 W: O <1 ‘4 I Q Q ‘r——43 fi— -«3 ‘<3 -4 ' I0 C Q o in 'Q F—Iq Q I? I° L4 I-q *3 ntukulu I q mukonwana II q A R; q ntukulu "Q 3 -Q nhombe" IOntukulu ~' I (fit nuna(ntukulu) ‘ 1 Q mukonwana J‘O ntukulu LO wi i a " nwingi 14 ' n ng ~'K3 nuna(ntukulu) “r nwana '3 IQ nwingi Ir d mukonwana V 0 a 0 ’~ nwingi PING nuna H q 9. nwana A II 0 makwerju nwana 8 Io A “A 1° 3 ~q namu ‘ld nwana v ,0 nwana .___Lq u L O makwerju Q nwana IF 0 “I I:— 0 "'0 A I 3% nwingi II nwingi EERG 3 El 3 1‘1 0 Lb Figure 12.-Female ego's terms of reference to husband's family (1927). [ll Itllll-Il-llllu IIIIII' .l AIIII l IIIIII III