Through narratives of an anti-‘fetish’ movement that swept through north-eastern Gabon in the mid-1950s, the present article traces the contours of converging political and religious imaginations in that country in the years preceding independence. Fang speakers in the region make explicit connections between the arrival of post-Second World War electoral politics, the anti-fetish movements, and perceptions of political weakening and marginalization of their region on the eve of independence. Rival politicians and the colonial administration played key roles in the movement, which brought in a Congolese ritual expert, Emane Boncoeur, and his two powerful spirits, Mademoiselle and Mimbare. These spirits, later recuperated in a wide range of healing practices, continue to operate today throughout northern Gabon and Rio Muni. In local imaginaries, these spirits played central roles in the birth of both regional and national politics, paradoxically strengthening the colonial administration and Gabonese auxiliaries in an era of pre-independence liberalization. Thus, regional political events in the 1950s rehearsed later configurations of power, including presidential politics, on the national stage.

Among a number of interlacustrine Bantu languages the nominal prefix is commonly of a shape V1CV2 (vowel, consonant, vowel). It is convenient to refer to V1 as the ‘initial vowel’ of the prefix, even where—as in Class 9—the prefix comprises only a single vowel or a vowel followed by a nasal. In certain contexts the prefix has been noted to occur without this initial vowel, and while no full study of such contexts has yet been made, the recently published Luganda Grammar establishes a number of practical rules for the omission of the ‘Initial Vowel’. Here, there is a reference to the ‘…loss of the I(nitial) V(owel)…to distinguish certain nouns when indicating close personal relationships…’, but there is no further reference to the important series of contexts provided by kinship terminology.

The Oron, who call themselves ɔrɔ, number approximately 50,000 individuals, and inhabit 90 villages in Calabar Province, Nigeria. Lexicon and morphology establish the affiliation of Oron with the Ibibio-Efik dialect cluster recognized by Westermann and Bryan, and with Efik in the Central Branch (Cross River languages) of Greenberg's Niger-Congo family.

The material is based on the speech of Mr. Okon Ukam of Eweme village. Since the informant did not speak English the writer communicated with him through Mr. Dimo Udoh Eyo, an Ibibio from Etobodom, Uyo District, who became conversant with the Oron language in his youth. Between March and May 1953, 10,000 words of text and a vocabulary list of approximately 1,700 morphemes were transcribed. Although it is not assumed that all possible tenses or tone permutations have been obtained, it is believed that most of the tenses are described. The writer acknowledges his indebtedness to Ward's study of Efik, and Lounsbury's study of Oneida verb morphology since each has served as a model for the presentation of certain aspects of Oron morphology.

Les Nkundo ou Mɔngɔ forment une ethnie importante de la cuvette centrale du Congo beige. Ce sont des patriarcaux. Pendant vingt ans j'ai habité parmi leurs tribus du centre-ouest.

In the second half of the twentieth century the population of Kampala grew substantially and the long-remarked surplus of men over women began to level out. These general trends are equally evident in other African cities, but important differences show up when the balance of age cohorts within the male and female populations is considered. Thus in Kampala, along with population growth and a declining overall sex ratio, censuses show a growing excess of girls/young women over boys/young men. The article reviews these population data and two levels of (unenumerated) explanation for them. The first is extrapolated from Uganda's recent history; the second from observation and narrative in one densely populated parish. The argument is that changes in the age–sex ratio follow from change in the map of work options in Kampala. The disappearance of young males stems from the collapse of the formal economy, once the employer of men, and the developments in the informal economy which favour young women. This conclusion is supported by census data from Nairobi, where the formal employment structure remains relatively buoyant, and the comparable age–sex ratios are less extreme. The health policy relevance of the Kampala trend is underlined by official calculations of increasing HIV/AIDS incidence among teenage women. As long as sex work remains dominant among their options in the informal economy, one effect of their economic advantage is extra vulnerability to fatal disease.

Ce n'est pas sans angoisse qu'un jeune citadin du Sénégal envisage aujourd'hui de se marier. La littérature sénégalaise de langue française en témoigne: de plus, il n'est guère de numéro du journal dakarois Réveil qui ne reflète cette préoccupation. Elle est si caractéristique de la vie sociale de ce qu'on appelle ‘les escales’ dans la terminologie sénégalaise, qu'un envoyé de la presse métropolitaine n'a pas craint de donner pour titre à son reportage sur cette question: ‘le marché noir des noires’.

Après avoir analysé le mythe d'origine de l'ugao—médecine tharaka—comme la charte constitutionnelle de sa ‘juridiction’, l'étude décrive l'initiation de l'auteur par trois agao (guérisseurs) au territoire réservé de l'ugao pendant une période de dixsept journées, par plusiers types d'enseignement et de performances rituelles et qui se conclu avec un apprentissage pratique. Dans le détail, une description complète est donné par le giciaro, la fraternité de sang schellée par le muma, le serment sur le sang de la chèvre entre les maîtres et le novice; et de la livraison rituelle des cornes, les instruments de l'art de la guérison du mugao.

Dans le deuxième partie de l'étude, les principaux symboles dominant des rituels thérapeutiques de l'ugao sont analysé dans le détail dans le but de cueillir la particulière structure qui le met en ordre, en définant le modèle de guérison. A ce sujet, l'auteur met en discussion la validité d'une classification duel sur la base de ses résultats, en discutant les faiblesses de l'analyse proposée par Rodney Needham sur le symbolisme méru. Alternativement, il suggère quʼune classification triadique peut mieux considerer le modèle générale de la correspondance symbolique propre de l'ugao comme de la culture tharaka.

This paper was drafted many years ago and it was against the background of this and other unpublished material that I came to the view about the nature of bride-wealth indicated in my paper ‘Social Character of Bride-Wealth, with Special Reference to the Azande’ (Man, 1934, 194).