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The Political Survival of Traditional Leadership

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Norman N. Miller
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Extract

Viewed from the higher echelons of government in the new nations, the rural leader is an insignificant individual who goes about managing his local affairs and carrying out—with varying degrees of success—the policies and hopes of the government. Viewed from below, from the inner recesses of the village, the leader is a man of authority; a man who has used wealth, heredity, or personal magnetism to gain a position of influence. As seen by nation builders and development experts, the rural leader is tacitly pointed to as the key to success. It is he who can mobilise the people. It is through him that more energy will be expended, more muscles used, and more attitudes changed. Conversely, it is the leader's lack of initiative that will entrench the status quo and doom the modernisation schemes before they begin.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , August 1968 , pp. 183 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

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References

Page 184 note 1 The term ‘syncretistic’ is occasionally applied to prophets' movements and separatist church movements in the sense that they derive a part of their doctrines and ritual from traditional religion. It can also have broader meaning, as Hodgkin points out, in the search for some form of synthesis between European culture and traditional values. See Hodgkin, Thomas, Nationalism in Colonial Africa (London, 1956), pp. 99 and 171.Google Scholar

Page 186 note 1 Apter, David, The Political Kingdom in Uganda (Princeton, 1961), p. 27.Google Scholar Also see Apter's, ‘The Role of Traditionalism in the Political Modernization of Ghana and Uganda,’ in World Politics (Princeton), XIII, 10 1960, pp. 45–68.Google Scholar

Page 187 note 1 The writer is indebted to Mary Eaton Read Nicholson and Richard Simpson for helpful comment and criticism on this portion of the manuscript.

Page 187 note 2 See discussion of the political organisation of the related Sukuma people in Liebenow, J. Gus, ‘Responses to Planned Political Change in a Tanganyika Tribal Group’, in The American Political Science Review (Menasha, Wisconsin), L, 2, 1956, pp. 442–61.Google Scholar

Page 188 note 1 The Nyamwezi number some 363,252 (1957 census) and are the second largest of Tanzania's 120 ethnic groups. They mainly inhabit Tabora, Nzega, and Kahama districts in the central plateau region. Tabora district is the focus of the present study. The most important background literature includes Rev.Boesch, Fr., Les Banyamwezi, peuple de l'Afrique orientale (Münster, 1930),Google Scholar and Abrahams, R. G., The Political Organization of Unyamwezi (Cambridge, 1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 188 note 2 Some of the ritualistic functions of the chief included magical preparation of seed, control of rain, village cleansing after twins were born, and control of epidemics and calamities such as famine, rinderpest, hail, or man-eating lions. The responsibility of each chief was to find the cause of the problem and to initiate measures against it, usually with the aid of a diviner.

Page 188 note 3 Within the memory of living elders, death sentences were given for treason, cattle theft by a stranger, adultery with a chief's wife, and occasionally for witchcraft. Murder, arson, and assault generally received less severe penalties. Execution in the Unyanyembe chiefdom, for example, was by mutilation and leaving the condemned to the hyena.

Page 189 note 1 Tabora had 12 chiefdoms in 1961. The other Nyamwezi districts of Nzega and Kahama had a total of 20 chiefdoms.

Page 190 note 1 By the African Chiefs Ordinance (Repeal) Act of 1963 (Act no. 13 of 1963, effective on 1 January 1963). The Act states that the African Chiefs Ordinance, Cap. 335 of the Revised Laws, is repealed (section 1) but that if any Chief is an ex-officio member of a Council or Board he may continue to be a member if the Minister concerned concurs (section 2). Earlier, in 1957, the powers of the chiefs had been curtailed by the African Chiefs (Special Powers) Ordinance, which laid down that any chief whose chiefdom was in a district where a District Council was being formed remained the authority for the chiefdom, but ‘must not… encroach on the jurisdiction of the new district council in any way’.

Page 191 note 1 Source: author's research. A survey of other Tanzania districts, including Nzega, Mpanda, and Rungwe, indicates that 25–35 per cent of the chiefs were able to remain in governmental positions of power.