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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
The language of African scholarship, like Africa itself, is a harp of many strings. It allows for countless variations, even though the central theme may recur. ‘Power’ is undoubtedly one of the most familiar of such themes: the variations played upon it are legion, ranging from the popular to the esoteric, from the classical to the lyrical.
Jean Ziegler's tune in his latest work, Le Pouvoir africain (Paris, 1971), clearly fits into the latter category. Even though the settings he has chosen for investigating African power – Burundi (indigenous) and Brazil (imported) – are likely to capture anyone's imagination, the author's manifest enthusiasm for the exotic seems to exceed the limits of the ‘sociological imagination’. Quite aside from the question of whether generalisations about African power are at all feasible on the basis of such limiting cases, Ziegler's handling of his subject matter raises a number of difficulties for the uninitiated reader – not the least of which is his tendency to lump together the form and substance of power in an ethnographic present seemingly fixed once and for all in time and space. Another difficulty stems from his peculiar terminology, at times so elusive as to confuse rather than illuminate the phenomena discussed: what, exactly, is meant by ‘la spécificité irréductible africaine”, or ‘la sociabilite africaine’ is anyone's guess. Ziegler's constant preoccupation with the surface manifestations of power – or, better still, with his own vision of these phenomena – occasionally leads him into a vein reminiscent of the worst examples of journalistic sensationalism, from which he only extricates himself by lapsing into calculated imprecision.
Page 306 note 1 For a more balanced appraisal, see Silla, Ousmane, ‘L'Afro-Brésilien dans sa nation’, in Bulletin de l'lnstitut fondamental d'Afrique noire (Dakar)’, XXXI, 2, 04 1969, pp. 531–73.Google Scholar
Page 307 note 1 The terms are borrowed from Leach, Edmund, ‘Golden Bough or Gilded Twig?’, in Daedalus (Boston), 90, 2, Spring 1961, pp. 371–87.Google Scholar
Page 308 note 1 See Gorju, J., En Zigzags ́ travers l'Urundi (Namur, 1926),Google Scholar and Face au royaume hamite du Ruanda: le royaume frèire de l'Urundi (Brussels, 1932)Google Scholar; and Zuure, B., L'Ame du Murundi (Paris, 1932).Google Scholar Cf. Perugia, P. del, Les Derniers rois mages (Paris, 1970).Google Scholar
Page 310 note 1 Lloyd, P. C., ‘The Political Development of West African Kingdoms’, in The Journal of African History (Cambridge), IX, 1968, pp. 319–29.Google Scholar This conclusion also emerges from Joan Vincent's interesting study of local-level politics in Teso, , Uganda, , African Elites: the Big Men of a small town (New York and London, 1971), especially pp. 187–208.Google Scholar
Page 310 note 2 Illustrative of these analytical dimensions are Lloyd, P. C., ‘The Political Structure of African Kingdoms: an exploratory model’, in Banton, Michael (ed.), Political Systems and the Dictribution of Power (London, 1965), pp. 63–109Google Scholar; Goody, Jack, Succession to High Qffice (Cambridge, 1966)Google Scholar; and Walter, E. V., Terror and Resistance: a study of political violence (London, 1969), pp. 304 ff.Google Scholar As regards the influence of social variables on power relations, see my Rwanda and Burundi (London and New York, 1970).Google Scholar The most ambitious attempt so far to develop a coherent model out of a combination of structural and normative variables has been made by Apter, David in The Political Kingdom in Uganda (Princeton, 1967), pp. 20–8,Google Scholar and The Politics of Modernization (Chicago, 1968).Google Scholar
Page 311 note 1 Smith, M. G., Government in Zazzau, 1800–1950 (London, 1960)Google Scholar; and Lloyd, ‘The Political Structure of African Kingdoms’.
Page 311 note 2 As the late Roger Le Tourneau observed, in his excellent study of The Almohad Movement in North Africa in the 12th and 13th Centuries (Princeton, 1969), p. 43Google Scholar: ‘too many historians disregard the role of individuals in the evolution of societies, and take into account only mass actions or economic and social situations. No one to-day disputes that these elements must automatically be considered in the study of the past. It does not follow, however, that the influence of some individuals must be reduced to the role of a mere symbol.’ For a tentative effort along these lines, see René Lemarchard (ed.), African Kingships in Perspective (London), forthcoming.Google Scholar
Page 312 note 1 Agden, Godfrey, The Basutos (London, 1969), p. 39.Google Scholar
Page 312 note 2 See, in particular, Fred Greenstein and Lerner, Michael, A Source Book for the Study of Personality and Politics (Chicago, 1971).Google Scholar
Page 312 note 3 The attack of gonorrhea suffered by Mutesa of Buganda in 1862 ‘was serious enough to have been recorded in Ganda history, and must have temporarily checked both his active life and his growth in political power’; Rowe, John, ‘Revolution in Buganda, 1856–1900’ Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1967, p. 69.Google Scholar
Page 313 note 1 The fruitfulness of this approach is made clear by the research currently being conducted by Catharine Newbury in the Kinyaga region of Rwanda. For some preliminary findings, see Catharine Newbury and Joseph Rwabukumba, ‘Political Evolution in a Rwandan Frontier District’, in Rapport de l'Institut national de la recherche scientflque pour les années 1965–70 (Butare, 1971), pp. 93–119.Google Scholar
Page 314 note 1 See Terray, E., Le Marxisme devant les sociéetés primitives (Paris, 1969),Google Scholar and Canale, Jean Suret, ‘Les Sociétés traditionnelles en Afrique tropicale et le concept de mode de production asiatique’, in La Pensée (Paris), 114, 04 1964.Google Scholar Cf. Verhaegen, B., Rébellions au Congo, vols. 1 and 2 (Brussels, 1969 and 1975).Google Scholar
Page 314 note 2 Coppans, Jean, ‘Pour une histoire et une sociologie des etudes africaines’ in Cahiers d'études africaines (Paris), XI, 3, 1975, pp. 422–47.Google Scholar
Page 314 note 3 The New Tork Times Book Review, 12 March 1972, p. 30.