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LINEAGE AND SOCIETY IN PRECOLONIAL UGANDA*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

RHIANNON STEPHENS
RHIANNON STEPHENS
Affiliation:
Institute of Historical Research, University of London
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Abstract

This article examines the changing nature of patrilineality in east-central Uganda from the sixth century. While traditional anthropological models of lineality have been largely dismissed in recent scholarship, the problem remains that patrilineages and patriclans have played important roles in the lives of the Ganda, Gwere, Soga and their North Nyanza ancestors. By carefully examining changes and continuities in the form and content of patrilineality it becomes possible to understand it as historically contingent. In North Nyanza, patrilineal descent was the norm for inheritance and for household formation, but relationships formed through mothers were also crucial in the creation of new communities and in the legitimation of political power. This was not static: as communities negotiated their changing circumstances, so they adapted the form of their particular patrilineality to serve their needs.

Keywords

PrecolonialUgandafamilykinshiplineageslinguistics
Type
Governance and Inheritance in Precolonial Uganda
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , July 2009 , pp. 203 - 221
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 This is an extract from the foundation myth of Buganda based on the version of the story in H. Le Veux, Manuel de langue luganda comprenant grammaire et un recueil de contes et de légendes (Algiers, 1914), 456. For other versions, see H. H. Johnston, The Uganda Protectorate, vol. ii (London, 1902), 700–5; A. Kagwa, Engero za Baganda (London, 1951), 1–8; J. Roscoe, The Baganda: An Account of their Native Customs and Beliefs (London, 1911; reprinted Kessinger Publishing's Rare Reprints, n.d.), 460–4. For a detailed discussion of the story of Kintu and Nnambi, see N. Kodesh, ‘Beyond the royal gaze: clanship and collective well-being in Buganda’ (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 2004), 100–26.

2 The fourth language descended from North Nyanza is Rushana, but so little evidence for the language and its speakers is available that it is not explored here in any depth.

3 It is possible to go substantially further back in time on these issues than I do here. J. Marck and K. Bostoen, ‘Proto Oceanic society (Austronesian) and Proto East Bantu society (Niger-Congo), residence, descent and kin terms ca. 1000 bc’ (unpublished paper for the 105th Annual American Anthropological Association Meetings, ‘Kinship and Language: Per Hage (1935–2004) Memorial Session’, 2006).

4 C. Ehret, An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History, 1000 B.C. to A.D. 400 (Charlottesville, 1998), 154–5, 253; D. L. Schoenbrun, A Green Place, A Good Place: Agrarian Change, Gender, and Social Identity in the Great Lakes Region to the Fifteenth Century (Portsmouth NH, 1998), 94–7.

5 Schoenbrun, Green Place, 101.

6 MacGaffey, W., ‘Changing representations in Central African history’, Journal of African History, 46 (2005), 197–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar MacGaffey, as he acknowledges, is not the first to express anxiety about the use of lineality in the study of the non-Western world. See D. M. Schneider, A Critique of the Study of Kinship (Ann Arbor, 1984).

7 A. Livingston, ‘Aristocratic women in the Chartrain’, in T. Evergates (ed.), Aristocratic Women in Medieval France (Philadelphia, 1999), 46–7.

8 K. Lo Prete and T. Evergates, ‘Introduction’, in Evergates (ed.), Aristocratic Women, 4.

9 K. O. Poewe, Matrilineal Ideology: Male–Female Dynamic in Luapula, Zambia (London, 1981), 4.

10 N. Tadmor, Family and Friends in Eighteenth-Century England: Household, Kinship, and Patronage (Cambridge, 2001).

11 This is not limited to patrilineality. M. G. Peletz, A Share of the Harvest: Kinship, Property, and Social History Among the Malays of Rembau (Berkeley, 1988).

12 MacGaffey, ‘Changing’, 198.

13 Ibid. 199.

14 Ibid. 200.

15 Ibid. 200.

16 Ehret, African Classical Age, 154–5, 253; Schoenbrun, Green Place, 94–7; J. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforest: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa (Madison WI, 1990), 106–14.

17 L. Cliggett, Grains from Grass: Aging, Gender, and Famine in Rural Africa (Ithaca NY, 2005), 65–7. See also Poewe, Matrilineal Ideology.

18 Schneider, Critique. MacGaffey makes a similar point. ‘Changing’, 189.

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23 For the supporting evidence for this classification, see R. Stephens, ‘A history of motherhood, food procurement and politics in East-Central Uganda to the nineteenth century’ (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 2007), 30–58, 239–55. See also M. J. Mould, ‘Comparative grammar reconstruction and language subclassification: the North Victorian Bantu languages’ (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1976); D. L. Schoenbrun, ‘Great Lakes Bantu: classification and settlement chronology’, Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, 15 (1994), 91–152.

24 Glottochronology is a persistently controversial aspect of historical linguistics. Recent studies which have made correlations between dates from radiocarbon-dating on objects, flora and fauna named by linguistic groups inhabiting the area have tended to confirm dates from glottochronology. See C. Ehret, ‘Testing the expectations of glottochronology against the correlations of language and archaeology in Africa’, in C. Renfrew, A. McMahon and L. Trask (eds.), Time Depth in Historical Linguistics (Cambridge, 2000), 373–99. For the Great Lakes region, see Schoenbrun, Green Place, 46–7. For critiques of glottochronology, see T. Crowley, An Introduction to Historical Linguistics (Oxford, 1997), 183–6; C. Renfrew, ‘Introduction: the problem of time depth’, in Renfrew et al. (eds.), Time Depth in Historical Linguistics, ix–xiv; Vansina, How Societies are Born, 8 fn. 17.

25 For detailed discussions of using comparative ethnographic evidence, see Schoenbrun, Green Place, 52–5; Stephens, ‘History of motherhood’, 61–5; Vansina, Paths in the Rainforest, 17–31.

26 Schoenbrun, Green Place, 55.

27 J. Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison, 1985); B. A. Ogot, History of the Southern Luo, I: Migration and Settlement (Nairobi, 1967).

28 D. P. Henige, Oral Historiography (London, 1982).

29 D. P. Henige, The Chronology of Oral Traditions: Quest for a Chimera (Oxford, 1974).

30 L. White, Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (Berkeley, 2000).

31 Blier, S. P., ‘The path of the leopard: motherhood and majesty in early Danhomé’, Journal of African History, 36 (1995), 391–417CrossRefGoogle Scholar; R. L. Tantala, ‘Verbal and visual imagery in Kitara (Western Uganda): interpreting “The story of Isimbwa and Nyinamwiru”’, in R. W. Harms (ed.), Paths Toward the Past: African Historical Essays in Honor of Jan Vansina (Atlanta, 1994), 223–43.

32 Kodesh, N., ‘History from the healer's shrine: genre, historical imagination, and early Ganda history’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 493 (2007), 527–52.Google Scholar On the renewed recognition of the role of oral tradition and oral history in writing African history, see McCaskie, T. C., ‘Denkyira in the making of Asante, c. 1660–1720’, Journal of African History, 48 (2007), 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Adapted from Schoenbrun, Green Place, 23.

34 I. Kopytoff, The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies (Bloomington, 1987). See also Klieman, Pygmies, particularly 69–78; Schoenbrun, Green Place.

35 D. W. Cohen, ‘The River–Lake Nilotes from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century’, in B. A. Ogot (ed.), Zamani: A Survey of East African History (2nd ed., Nairobi, 1974), 135–49; Ogot, Southern Luo, i.

36 D. W. Cohen, The Historical Tradition of Busoga: Mukama and Kintu (Oxford, 1972), 126.

37 D. W. Cohen, ‘The face of contact: a model of a cultural and linguistics frontier in early Eastern Uganda’, in R. Vosser and M. Bechhaus-Gerst (eds.), Nilotic Studies: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Languages and History of the Nilotic Peoples, Cologne, January 4–6, 1982, vol. ii (Berlin, 1982), 341.

38 Schoenbrun, ‘We are what we eat’.

39 The Luo origin of the Nyoro rulers was first described by the missionary J. P. Crazzolara in his work The Lwoo, vol. i (Verona, 1950), 91–3, 101–4. Cited in R. L. Tantala, ‘The early history of Kitara in Western Uganda: process models of religious and political change’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1989), 14–15. An early overview of the argument of the Luo influence in Buganda, Bunyoro and Nkole, by one of its most prominent proponents, is R. Oliver, ‘The traditional histories of Buganda, Bunyoro, and Nkole’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 85 (1955), 111–17. See also C. Wrigley, Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty (Cambridge, 1996), 202–6.

40 Cohen, D. W., ‘The political transformation of Northern Busoga, 1600–1900’, Cahiers d'Études Africaines, 22 (1982), 465–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, Mukama and Kintu, 1. See also D. W. Cohen, Womunafu's Bunafu: A Study of Authority in a Nineteenth-Century African Community (Princeton NJ, 1977).

41 D. L. Schoenbrun, The Historical Reconstruction of Great Lakes Bantu Cultural Vocabulary: Etymologies and Distributions (Cologne, 1997), 85, Reconstruction Number (RN) 117. Asterisks denote reconstructed words.

42 The numbers in square brackets refer to the reconstructed vocabulary in the appendix.

43 R. R. Atkinson, ‘Bugwere Historical Texts’, Text 24 (n.p.) (hereafter ‘BHT’); D. W. Cohen, ‘Collected Texts of Busoga Traditional History’, Text 41 (n.p.) (hereafter ‘CTBTH’).

44 Y. Bastin and T. Schadeberg (eds.), ‘Bantu Lexical Reconstructions 3’ (hereafter referred to as ‘BLR 3’), Musée Royale de l'Afrique Centrale, Tervuren, www.metafro.be/blr (accessed 28 Aug. 2007), RN Main 7240. See also M. Guthrie, Comparative Bantu: An Introduction to the Comparative Linguistics and Prehistory of the Bantu Languages, iii (Farnborough, 1970), 287, Comparative Series (CS) 1092; 304, CS 1176; 305, CS 1177.

45 Cohen, Womunafu's Bunafu, 51.

46 C. Meillassoux, Maidens, Meal and Money Maidens, Meal, and Money: Capitalism and the Domestic Community (Cambridge, 1981), 38.

47 Cohen, Womunafu's Bunafu, 99. See also A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, ‘Introduction’, in Radcliffe-Brown and C. D. Forde, African Systems of Kinship and Marriage (London, 1950), 49, 51.

48 GW-ETH-BUL-F-27/10/04, interview by author, 27 Oct. 2004, Bugwere, digital recording and transcript in possession of author.

49 L. P. Mair, An African People in the Twentieth Century (London, 1934), 82.

50 Ibid. 84.

51 Ibid. 88–9.

52 Ibid. 247–48; Roscoe, Baganda, 357 fn. 1.

53 See Stephens, ‘History of motherhood’, 166, for further discussion of kukuza.

54 Bastin and Schadeberg (eds.), ‘BLR 3’, RN Main 3498 *-jìpύá. See also Guthrie, Comparative Bantu, iv, 188, Comparative Stem (CS) 2091.

55 Schoenbrun, Cultural Vocabulary, 86–7, RN 120.

56 Atkinson, ‘BHT’, Texts 37, 47, 48; Miss Laight and Y. K. Lubogo, ‘Basoga death and burial rites’, Uganda Journal, 2 (1934/5), 120–44 (this was initially erroneously published as by E. Zibondo; a letter rectifying this was published in Uganda Journal, 2 [1935], 255); Mair, African People, 46–8; SO-ETH-BUG-F-20/01/05 interview by author, 20 Jan. 2005, Busoga, digital recording and transcript in possession of author. Tantala lists some of the ritually dangerous tasks Nyoro *-ihwa were expected to undertake for their mother's brothers. ‘Early history of Kitara’, 297. See also Beattie, J. H. M., ‘Nyoro marriage and affinity’, Africa, 28 (1958), 19–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 R. L. Tantala, ‘Community and polity in southern Kigulu’ (Makerere University, Kampala: Department of History Research Seminar Paper, 27 Nov. 1972 [n.p.], 12; Tantala, ‘Gonza Bato and the consolidation of Abaisengobi rule in southern Kigulu’ (Makerere University, Kampala: Department of History Research Seminar Paper, 21 Aug. 1972 [n.p.]), 18; Roscoe, Baganda, 191.

58 Tantala's work on Bunyoro-Kitara notes that there too ‘matrilateral links were recognized and were fairly significant as part of the bwihwa relationship (the mother's brother/sister's son relationship)’. It is quite possible that North Nyanzans' recognition of matrilateral ties was inherited from their West Nyanza-speaking ancestors, but an in-depth exploration of the broader range of this relationship lies beyond the scope of this work. ‘Early history of Kitara’, 90.

59 This is the plural reflex of *-ihwa in both Lugwere and Lusoga. The singular form is mwiwa.

60 Atkinson, ‘BHT’, Texts 37, 48, 47, 45.

61 GW-ETH-IKI-F-16/11/04a; GW-ETH-IKI-F-16/11/04b interviews by author, 16 Nov. 2004, Bugwere, digital recordings and transcripts in possession of author. Kulya embenenwa literally means ‘eating embenenwa’. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is no meaning for embenenwa outside of this specific context, where it describes a mixture of roasted seeds and nuts.

62 GW-ETH-BUL-F-11/11/04.

63 Atkinson, ‘BHT’, Text 16.

64 Cohen, ‘CTBTH’, Texts 95 and 125.

65 Cohen, ‘Political transformation’, 473.

66 Cohen, Mukama and Kintu, 10; Laight and Lubogo, ‘Basoga death and burial rites’.

67 Y. K. Lubogo, A History of Busoga, trans. Eastern Province (Bantu Language) Literature Committee (Jinja, 1960), 9–10. This contrasts with the relationship between baihwa and their matrilateral kin in Bunyoro where a mwihwa could be called to go to war for his mother's kin, but the converse could not occur (Beattie, ‘Nyoro marriage’, 20).

68 Cohen, Mukama and Kintu, 14–16.

69 Bajjwa (sing. mujjwa) is the Luganda reflex of *-ihwa.

70 Mair, African People, 46–8.

71 H. Médard, Le royaume du Buganda au XIXe siècle: mutations politiques et religieuses d'un ancien état d'Afrique de l'Est (Paris, 2007), 227; Schiller, L. D., ‘The royal women of Buganda’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 23 (1990), 460.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

72 Mair, African People, 62. The Ganda situation has some parallels in the role of baihwa in Bunyoro where there was ‘a manifest ambivalence in the bwihwa relationship’ (Beattie, ‘Nyoro marriage’, 18).

73 The maternal uncle – sororal nephew relationship is not, of course, exclusive to North Nyanza and there is an extensive literature on this topic.

74 Marck and Bostoen, ‘Proto Oceanic’, table 1; Schoenbrun, Cultural Vocabulary, 97, RN136.

75 Schoenbrun, Cultural Vocabulary, 93, RN 130.

76 Cohen, Womunafu's Bunafu, 27–8; Le Veux, Manuel de langue luganda, 456; W. H. Long, ‘Notes on the Bugwere district’, J. R. McD. Elliot Papers, Rhodes House Library, Oxford, 459; J. Roscoe, The Northern Bantu: An Account of Some Central African Tribes of the Uganda Protectorate (Cambridge, 1915), 217; Tantala, ‘Gonza Bato’, 15; Tantala, ‘Community and polity’, 12.

77 Schoenbrun, Green Place, 194, but see 184–95 for an overview of the whole process.

78 Ibid. 193; Stephens, ‘History of motherhood’, 189–90.

79 Maternal kin were an essential ‘non-royal’ support base for competing princes and their mothers at a time when lineage ties dominated North Nyanza polities. It seems most likely that it was only later that rulers created multiple sources of non-royal support by creating alliances (frequently on the basis of marriage) with unrelated commoners. According to Cohen, the kingdom of Luuka is one example of a more recent polity following such a pattern (Womunafu's Bunafu, 29).

80 Médard argues that the most plausible explanation for the move from collateral to filial succession in Buganda was as a result of mimesis (Royaume du Buganda, 233). The argument is applicable here too: the growing power of the maternal uncle in the political system could have been reflected in society more generally.

81 This is the reflex of *koiza in Luganda.

82 H. Le Veux, Premier essai de vocabulaire luganda–français d'après l'ordre étymologique (Algiers, 1917), 546; Mair, African People, 61–2.

83 Mair, African People, 63.

84 Long, ‘Notes on Bugwere’, 459; Tantala, ‘Gonza Bato’, 15; Tantala, ‘Community and polity’, 12; Cohen, Womunafu's Bunafu, 27–8.

85 Médard argues that this was decreasingly the case after the reign of kabaka Semakookiro (c. 1800–c. 1812). Royaume du Buganda, 429.

86 Schiller, ‘The royal women of Buganda’, 460.

87 Roscoe, Baganda, 73; see also 104–10 for a description of the role of the Ssaabaganzi in the preparations and rites following the death of the king.

88 Tantala, ‘Gonza Bato’, 18.

89 Meillassoux, Maidens, Meal and Money, 76. Emphasis original.

90 Ibid. 77.

91 See also Stephens, ‘History of motherhood’, 274–5, 277–8, 280–2.

92 Schoenbrun, Cultural Vocabulary, 86–7, RN 120.

93 Ibid. 89, RN 123.