The Lugbara are a Sudanic-speaking people of the Nile-Congo divide and number 242,000, of whom two-thirds live in north-western Uganda and the remainder in the adjoining area of the Belgian Congo. Their political system is a segmentary one, with no form of centralized political authority. There is a system of polysegmentary patrilineages, the largest series of which are the exogamous units. Within the territorial section associated with the agnatic core provided by such a lineage there is, or was, the obligation to settle disputes by discussion between the parties concerned so that feud was avoided, and it was only between these sections that a permanent state of hostility could exist. Each of these territorial sections consists on an average of some 4,000 people living in an area of some twenty-five square miles. They, the largest of the groups called suru by Lugbara, and which I refer to as maximal sections based on maximal lineages, are the largest political units of the system. Like the three levels of segmentation within them, they bear specific names, most of which are found in all parts of Lugbara. I call these names clan-names.

In recent years the question of Ghana has acquired new importance for two reasons: firstly, the recent excavations made at Koumbi Saleh in Southern Mauritania, the most probable site of the medieval Western Sudan capital and, secondly, the belief expressed by some Gold Coast authors that the Akan are descended from the ancient Ghana people. This paper is mainly concerned with the first of these.

Le territoire occupé par les Ba-pende forme une bande de largeur variable de la Lutshima au Kasaï entre le 5° et le 6,30° latitude sud, chevauchant le cours d'une série d'affluents du Kasaï dont le Kwilu et la Loange. Comme l'indique la carte ci-jointe, cette bande chevauche même la Lutshima à son confluent avec le Kwilu. Quelques milliers de Ba-pende y forment sur la rive gauche une poussière de petites chefferies.

Much recent research has been concerned with obtaining an acceptable definition of the terms ‘leader ’and ‘leadership’ to provide a basis for a theory of leadership. Some results have been achieved in the study of leadership in the ‘face-to-face’group. It is when large-scale social movements are involved that the techniques of the sociogram and personality tests, which have been the main tools of analysis in the ‘face-to-face’ studies, are not sufficient, and the investigator has to employ the institutional analysis, which places the individual aspect of leadership in a secondary position.

The scope of this subject and convenient chronological divisions for it may be suggested by three quotations. The first comprises questions put to the Undersecretary for the Colonies in the British House of Commons, 1 and 8 September 1909, by Keir Hardie:

Les populations konkomba qui se partagent équitablement de part et d'autre de l'Oti entre les deux Togo français et britannique, ont déjà fait l'objet d'un certain nombre d'études tant à l'époque allemande que du côté britannique et françcais.

Population belliqueuse, sympathique et fière, les Konkomba ont longtemps tenu en échec les forces allemandes de l'Oberleutnant Thierry, fondateur du poste de Sansane Mango, du docteur Gruner et du Leutnant von Massow (campagne de 1897).

Au point de vue linguistique, le konkomba est très proche du bassari et appartient au groupe gourma.

In the latter half of the eighteenth century, as a result of the British Government's anti-slavery legislation, negroes began to arrive in England in increasing numbers. Although there is no evidence of the operation of an anti-negro colour bar in England in those days it soon appeared desirable to repatriate them. Since it was not possible to return each ex-slave to his own original home, or that of his ancestors, the British Government negotiated with local chiefs the purchase of twenty square miles of coastland in the Sierra Leone peninsula, and in 1787 landed there the first batch of 400 freed slaves accompanied by 9 officials and (according to the records) a number of English prostitutes. Not many of this first group survived, owing to climatic conditions, but a second group of 1,131 Negroes arrived from Nova Scotia in 1792.

Les Bantous n'ont pas envers leurs Pygmées le même mépris que l'Européen moderne professe envers les peuples de couleur. Pourtant, malgré toute l'estime de fait qu'ils manifestent souvent pour eux, les Bantous considèrent les Pygmées comme trop anciens pour valoir les ‘moderns’ qu'ils se croient. Le respect qu'ils témoignent pour les Batwa ne dérive, quant au fond — et au fond institutional de leur vie — que du fait qu'en mentalité clanique on honore toujours ceux qui sont ‘devant’, c'est à dire dans l'ordre chronologique des vies. Et cela parce que la primogéniture est toujours la voie par laquelle on se rapproche de Dieu, premier père, et par laquelle on se raccorde à Lui.