En 1887, A. H. Post publiait son ouvrage intitulé Afrikanische Jurisprudenz—Ethnologisch-juristisch Beiträge zur Kenntniss der einheimischen Rechte Afrikas. L'Afrique semblait ainsi entrer de plein pied dans la science juridique moderne. En réalité, il n'en était rien, car davantage que son titre, le sous-titre de l'œuvre était caractéristique d'une orientation qui devait être celle de la science juridique africaine au cours des décennies ultérieures. Au cours de cette période, qui s'étend jusqu'à l'époque des premières indépendances africaines, ce qui aurait pu être le droit africain sera la juxtaposition de deux systèmes juridiques totalement distincts, celui du colonisé et celui du colonisateur, le premier nommé étant le plus souvent qualifié d'indigène (native) ou de coutumier (customary).

In his Frazer Lecture of 1952, Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa (1954), Professor Max Gluckman considers certain types of ritual behaviour as institutionalized expressions of rebellion against authority. He maintains that this expression is an important function of such ritual. The following quotations present the gist of his interpretation:

I shall therefore consider the social components of ceremonies, analogous to those which concerned Frazer, among the South-Eastern Bantu.…Here there are…performed, as elsewhere in Africa, national and local ceremonies at the break of the rains, sowing, first fruits, and harvest.…But whatever the ostensible purpose of the ceremonies, a most striking feature of their organization is the way in which they openly express social tensions. Women have to assert license and dominance as against their formal subordination to men, princes have to behave to the kings as if they covet the throne, and subjects openly state their resentment of authority. Hence I call them rituals of rebellion. I shall argue that some ritual rebellions proceed within an established distribution of power, and not about the structure of the system itself. This allows for instituted protest, and in complex ways renews the unity of the system (1954, p. 3).

We are here confronted with a cultural mechanism which challenges study by sociologists, psychologists, and biologists, the analysis in detail of the process by which this acting of conflict achieves a blessing—social unity. Clearly we are dealing with the general problem of catharsis set by Aristotle … the purging of emotion through ‘pity, fear and inspiration’. Here I attempt only to analyze the sociological setting of the process (1954, p. 20).

To the Yoruba, divination is of great concern, as the means by which they discover and hope to influence the changes in their relationships with the gods and ancestors and other spirits in their complex cosmos, and so to gain their aid in their pursuit of health and good fortune. They employ a number of divinatory techniques. The one that yields the fullest information is the system of geomancy known as Ifa, for which there are three procedures of varying complexity, the two most complex being used by professional diviners (babalawo). The Ifa oracle is animated by a deity named Orunmila, but also often called Ifa.

In a recent paper Mr. C. K. Cooke, F.S.A., discusses the questions of the introduction of sheep into Africa and their arrival in southern Africa (Cooke, 1965).

Mr Cooke quotes Zeuner's conclusion (Zeuner, 1963) ‘that the first sheep in Africa were screw-horned hair sheep from Turkestan or Persia which reached lower Egypt about 5000 B.C. and Khartoum by 3300 B.C. This breed disappeared with the Middle Kingdom when it was replaced by a wool sheep and the fat-tailed sheep reached Africa only from the Roman period.’ Zeuner further asserts that

One breed of sheep descended from the Egyptian hair-sheep had reached South-West Africa before the arrival of the Europeans. In these animals the profile is convex, the eyes are placed high on the skull and close to the drooping ears. The rams carry thick horns and a long ruff on the throat.