The research that led to the writing of this paper began with a puzzle. The four volumes of K. E. Laman's Kongo ethnography (1953–68) are based on texts written by BaKongo. Who were these men and why is there no explicit reference to them in the books? The lack of any indication of who wrote what and on what authority deprives this ethnography of much of its potential value (Janzen, 1972). In search of biographical information, I turned to the bulletin Minsamu Miayenge (MM), published by the Swedish Missionary Society (SMF) from 1892 onwards. From its pages emerged a clear sense of a group of men whose position in the nascent colonial order explained both their ethnographic ambitions and their subsequent disappearance from the record.

In a previous essay (Austen, 1986a) I attempted to trace a particular type of deviant hero in African history and culture: a ‘social bandit’ or criminal figure identified in the popular imagination with resistance against alien or indigenous oppressive elites. The search proved frustrating within its original terms of reference but it did suggest an alternative paradigm for identifying the entire relationship between cultural norms and criminal behaviour in Africa. The present article attempts to develop this paradigm through the analysis of six African narratives dealing with heroic and/or anti-heroic figures in a variety of contexts.

In Part I of this article (McCaskie, 1983a) I discussed the relationship between accumulation, wealth and belief in Asante to the close of the nineteenth century. In this concluding part I analyse these and cognate themes in the twentieth century. I remain wedded to the approach outlined in detail in Part I; an attempt to locate action and motive within a cognitive or ‘intellectualist’ framework. But this article is more episodic and less directly narrative than its predecessor. There are reasons for this change of stylistic gear.

The subject of weavers has until recently received surprisingly little detailed attention from writers on Africa, given the importance of cloth in local and regional trade, particularly in West Africa. Yet, even here, cloth trading has received scholarly attention in the works of Hodder (1967, 1980) and of Johnson (1973, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1980). In addition crafts and craftsmen have been the subject matter of occasional papers and collected works (for example, d'Azevedo, 1973; Hallpike, 1968; Llovd, 1953; Murray, 1943), but few authors have concentrated on weavers alone. More specifically African cloth and textiles have received greater coverage in the works of Picton and Mack (1979) and of the Lambs (1975, 1980, 1981, 1984), though the actual organisation of production has by and large been overlooked. Before the publication of Esther Goody's collection From Craft to Industry in 1982, which has provided us with two examples of the development of cloth production for market in Nigeria and Ghana, possibly the only article to deal with the organisation of traditional weaving is Bray's (1968) contribution on weaving in Iseyin, Nigeria.

The settlements of Bantu-speaking people in Southern Africa vary widely in size and distribution, ranging from the dispersed homesteads of the Nguni to the large towns of the Tswana. These two extremes have interested Africanists since the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Europeans first encountered the Thlaping at Dithakong near present-day Kuruman. Today the contrast between Tswana and Nguni settlements are most often attributed to differences in social stratification, cultural preference or environmental conditions.

These conventional explanations provide a focus for considering the meaning of settlement patterns among the southern Bantu. I first develop a model of political and settlement hierarchies to isolate the essential differences between Nguni and Tswana communities, and then I present archaeological evidence that calls into question the conventional explanations.

Until quite recently little was known about the output of traditional ironworking centres in sub-Saharan Africa. Although some estimates were made for a few centres by colonial administrators and agents, the reliability of many of these figures is doubtful (see Pole, 1983; de Barros, 1985: 270–71) and some of the more interesting data still lie buried in colonial archives. The first serious scholarly attempt at quantification of precolonial African iron production was made by Warnier and Fowler (1979) who investigated iron production in the Iron Belt of the Cameroon grasslands, particularly that associated with the nineteenthcentury Babungo chiefdom. Since then Goucher (1981, 1984) and Pole (1983), and to a lesser extent Haaland (1980), have provided some important quantitative data regarding both large and small iron working centres in West Africa.

Following the growing interest in recent years in social stratification in Asante in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Arhin, 1983a: 2–22; 1983b: 475; McCaskie, 1983: 23–44; Wilks, 1975: 166–719), this note offers a preliminary study of a body of men who became known in Kumasi and the capital towns of the other Asante chiefdoms – in particular Bekwai, Juaben and Mampon – as the akonkofo in the first phase of colonial rule, 1896–1930. The argument of the paper, written in the light of the views of Daaku (1970, 1971) is that the akonkofo, an intermediary group between office holders and non-holders of office (Arhin, 1983a) could emerge as a distinctive sociopolitical category only in the colonial period. The first section of this article, on the origin of the akonkofo, describes the factors that inhibited the rise of ‘merchant princes’ in Asante before colonial rule; the second, on the akonkofo in Kumasi, offers a kind of social portrait of the akonkofo; and the third section, on the position of the akonkofo in Asante society, examines the relationship of the akonkofo to traditional authority. My sources are archival and written. I have also recorded interviews with Barima Owusu-Ansah, over seventy-five years old, and a leading authority on Asante law and constitution, and with Baffour Osei Akoto, senior spokesman (okyeame) of the Asantehene and just turned seventy, as well as conversations with sundry officials at the Asantehene's court.

From the earliest years of colonial government in Kenya, cattle raiding by Africans against their neighbours, and in particular livestock thefts from European farmers, presented the administration with their most persistent policing problem in the rural areas of the colony. As the period of colonial rule in Kenya was drawing to a close, reported cases of stock theft were once again showing a sharp increase, climbing from 1578 cases in 1955 to 4243 in 1962 (Kenya Police Dept, 1955 and 1962). In a pattern by then familiar to the Kenya administration, this prompted the renewal of demands from the European settler community for more extensive and concerted government action to deal with the activities of the thieves. Settler opinion held that the continuing prevalence of stock theft had much to do with the ‘social prestige’ attached to the crime in many African communities. The unwillingness of the African public to assist in the prevention and detection of stock theft had long been interpreted as a tacit sanctioning of such theft, leading to the conclusion that, within the ‘moral economy’ of many African communities, stock theft was not thought of as a crime at all. ‘After all,’ commented the Provincial Commissioner of the Rift Valley Province in 1959, ‘stock theft is the traditional sport of the young men of many tribes, and the elders cannot be expected to act as kill-joys and stamp it out unless they themselves are liable to suffer.’ This view was applied most readily to the pastoralists of the Rift Valley and western Kenya, the Maasai and Kalenjin, who were commonly involved in crimes of this sort. The belief that stock theft was an acceptable form of accumulation within Kalenjin and Maasai society determined the nature of the legislation put forward by the colonial administration to deal with the crime. Policing and punishment were accordingly based upon the notion of collective responsibility for acts of stock theft, with wide powers to extend collective punishments to families, villages and even entire locations found to be implicated in thefts.

This article examines the extraordinary outbreak of violent deaths which occurred among the Annang and Ibibio of eastern Nigeria in the mid-1940s and was described by the colonial police as ‘probably without parallel in the history of violent crime of any country in the world’. Between 1943 and 1948, but especially after 1945, one mutilated body after another was found in quick succession in a restricted border area shared by 130 villages in the Abak and Opobo districts of the Old Calabar Province. Over 200 such deaths were recorded in a short space of time. Initially medical officers who examined the bodies of the victims seemed to agree with the local people that the deaths were caused by genuine leopards, which were a constant menace to life in the area. The local police were preoccupied with other matters and showed little interest in deaths attributed to wild animals. But vague rumours were current, especially in missionary circles, that a ‘leopard cult’ of professional assassins might be engaged in murderous activities in the area, covering the tracks of their crime by simulating the clawmarks and ravages of wild beasts. Preliminary inquiries by local officials in 1945 appeared to confirm the suspicions and, in spite of strong doubts and protests from various quarters, a large force of police was let loose on the ‘infected’ area to suppress the murder gang and any other local organisation associated with the killings. At least 102 suspects were convicted for man-leopard murders, seventy-seven of whom were actually hanged in one of the most bizarre anti-crime campaigns of the colonial period.

The immigration of food-producing groups into areas occupied by hunters and gatherers must have been a common occurrence in prehistory. How were the hunter-gatherers affected by this? I describe here two groups of Kalahari Basarwa (‘Bushmen’), one living along the flood plain of the lower Botletli river, the other occupying the savanna a short distance away from the river. These two groups differed in subsistence and social organisation and were affected by immigrant herders and farmers in strikingly different ways. Today the Basarwa of the flood plain are wealthy cattle owners, whereas those of the savanna are poor and have few or no cattle. How and why did the two groups respond so differently to the same competitive threat?

This is an examination of the history, characteristics and decline of the making of water coolers, formerly a speciality of Ilorin. In order to place this in context, a brief overview of Ilorin pottery making in general is first essayed, including its derivation, continuing importance and future prospects. The association of water cooler making with particular Ilorin compounds is noted, together with the mode of transmission of this skill. Five types of cooler are described, with a sketch of what can be reconstructed of their history and origins. The decline of Ilorin cooler making and sale is demonstrated, and the factors responsible are examined. In conclusion, an attempt is made to suggest the wider significance of the study.

One of the more interesting historiographical debates that emerged in the course of the great burst of research into Akan (actually primarily Asante) history during the 1950s and 1960s concerned the ‘structure’ of the Asante empire, or ‘Greater Asante’ as one of the contributors to the debate, Kwame Arhin, has termed it (Arhin, 1967). The debates have largely been informed by a synchronic, ‘centrist’ approach; that is, by an approach that views the imperial structure at a given point in time, and primarily from the perspective of the political centre, the capital town of Kumase. The 1970s have seen a proliferation of regional studies of the Akan and their neighbours, and so it is perhaps time to reopen the debate on the nature of the Asante imperial order from a broader perspective, one that is both more sensitive to change over time and includes the emerging views from the periphery (see, for example, Berberich, 1974; Case, 1979; Ferguson, 1972; Greene, 1981; Haight, 1981; Handloff, 1982; Sanders, 1980; Weaver, 1975; Yarak, 1976). The present paper first briefly sketches the social and political setting in nineteenth-century Elmina (εdena), then critically reviews the historiographical debate over the structure of Greater Asante, and lastly offers an alternative approach to the study of Greater Asante based on a case study of the history of Asante relations with Elmina.

This study on the concept of oral tradition is based on three years of fieldwork, between 1980 and 1983, amongst the Gabra of northern Kenya, an Eastern-Cushitic (Oromo) speaking people who originated in southern Ethiopia and who live today on both sides of the Kenya–Ethiopia border. According to the 1978 national census figures, there are about 30,553 Gabra living on the Kenyan side of the border, mainly in the arid waste of the Eastern Province. In this hostile landscape, in the volcanic, boulder-strewn country on the edge of the Chalbi Desert east of Lake Turkana, the Gabra roam with their herds of cattle, camels, sheep and goats in constant search of pasture for their animals.

Recent studies of African pastoralism have come more and more to concentrate on its political economy and to note the increasing social and economic differentiation occurring within pastoral societies. As Swift and Maliki write of West Africa: ‘Since the 1973 drought, there has been an increasing process of proletarianization in the countryside which has particularly affected herders, who are in many places being transformed from independent rural producers into cowboys herding other people's animals on land they no longer control’ (1984: 2). In Kenya this process has become increasingly apparent since independence, as pastoralism has become dominated by a town-based elite (see Dahl, 1979a; Little, 1983, 1985a and b; Ensminger, 1984). In this article I trace the origins of a new kind of pastoralism in northern Kenya, and argue that poverty and dependence is becoming a permanent way of life to many pastoralists.

Dr Nwaka, in writing his paper on the ‘man-leopard’ killings of southern Annang, Nigeria, 1943–48, has performed a good public service for Nigeria. During the past few years a number of Nigerians have expressed to me the view that the killings should be written up. Now Dr Nwaka has done just this, and only after a very considerable amount of research, as his extensive references indicate. The fact that I do not accept his main conclusion is not the point. His paper forms the basis for a comprehensive discussion of the circumstances surrounding the killings from 1943 to 1948, and for this we owe him a real debt of gratitude.

The Gezira scheme has been the focus of considerable attention in the literature of development in tropical Africa, especially during the colonial period. This was because the scheme represented one of the largest agricultural projects initiated by a colonial government. Views on the scheme have been divergent: Gaitskell (1959) describes it as a ‘story of development’ while Barnett (1977) calls it an ‘illusion of development'. The focus of the studies, which are extensive compared to other Sudanese studies, has largely concentrated on the relationship (or so-called partnership) between tenants and government, production requirements and output, as well as occasionally on various aspects of the tenants’ lives and activities. Wage labour, which is the main form of labour, has only been given scant consideration. Even so, the focus has been on its contribution to the total labour requisite and its supply and demand patterns. The social relations of wage labour, and especially relations between tenants and wage labourers as the essential core of production relations in the scheme, have been awarded very little attention. This is the main concern of this article. Compared with most labour-market studies, my intention is to go beyond a mere study of factors affecting supply and demand. In conditions of transition to capitalism and fragmented labour markets, the perception of the social and cultural aspects of labour is indispensable for an adequate understanding of the internal mechanisms of the labour market.

This paper describes the emergence during the 1960s of two forms of neighbourhood organisation, drinking companies and vigilante groups, in Bugisu District in eastern Uganda. The main interest of these groups is that they were both explicit responses to a perceived state of anarchy and lawlessness. The drinking companies evolved to control the most popular, and the most dangerous, social activity: the drinking of beer. They were essentially voluntary associations which developed into forms of rotating credit association. The vigilantes, as a self-appointed police force, tackled the problem of community security in a different way and, patrolling their areas at night, were dedicated to the eradication of thieves and witches. Evolving at the same time and often in consort, both movements were united in their aim to provide a distinctive ‘Gisu Government’.

One of the major, and perhaps the most embarrassing, problems still facing African populations today is hunger. It is described by Lofchie and Commins (1982: 1) as ‘the most immediate, visible, and compelling symptom of a continent-wide agricultural breakdown in tropical Africa,’ thereby making ‘sub-Sahara Africa … the only region in the world where food production per capita has declined during the past two decades.’ This condition has been blamed on many factors, the most frequently mentioned being climate, environmental degradation, outmoded and inefficient traditional agricultural methods, customary land tenure systems which inhibit innovation by individual farmers, lack of incentives to farmers to increase food outputs, bad agricultural policies, high population growth rates and agrarian dualism. A growing body of literature focusing on women's contributions in the development process has revealed another very crucial, but often ignored, reason why hunger is still prevalent in Africa: the disregard of the role of women, who are the main food producers in Africa, in efforts to promote agricultural development (Baumann, 1928; Boserup, 1970; Bryson, 1981; Guyer, 1980; Robertson, 1983). A recent book by Odero-Ogwel (1983), which discusses the food problems in Africa, pays no attention to the fact that a major contributory factor to the food crisis in Africa is the disadvantaged position of women. This exemplifies the failure, even by African intellectuals, to realise the crucial role women can play in increasing food supplies if only certain constraints are removed. Claire Robertson (1983) warns that, unless women are fully included in the development process, the food problem in Africa will deteriorate even further.

A considerable part of the anthropological literature on Africa is devoted to the description of African ideas about the causes of misfortune and illness and the steps which should be taken to remedy them. In the early days of African ethnography information on this aspect of culture was usually presented as part of a general ethnography or included in a more specific description of an African cosmological system. As the general ethnographic literature on Africa accumulated, and as the need for more focused information for application in health and development work arose, studies which investigated the more narrow domain of African therapeutics became more common. As Janzen has observed (1978: 121), the study of African therapeutic systems has now moved into a phase of exemplary field studies which gather data in a number of different areas: illness taxonomies, curative techniques, healing roles, health-care decision-making resource allocations, course of illnesses through distinct episodes, and the relationship between bioecological and sociocultural factors. No one would deny that an ideal study would gather data in all these areas. The study of Lugbara medicine reported on in this paper, however, was carried out under difficult conditions and was abruptly halted after one year because of the worsening political situation. No epidemiological or biomedical data were collected.

The masks and associated traditions of the people of the central Guinea coast of West Africa are among the most obvious and well-known features of the contemporary cultural landscape of the region. For some time social anthropologists have described the functions of the masks as social control mechanisms (Horton, 1976). Recently anthropologists have been elucidating these cultural items in terms of symbolic or structural analyses (Fischer and Himmelheber, 1976; Jdrej, 1976; MacCormack, 1980; Phillips, 1978). So far the studies concerned with symbolism, where they have not been explicitly general and theoretical (Jdrej, 1980; Tonkin, 1979), have confined themselves to a particular culture or a particular mask or subset of masks.