In their accounts of the war in Angola, refugees from south-eastern Angola who now live in Rundu (Namibia) draw a distinction between warfare in the past and the events that happened in their region of origin after Angolan independence in 1975. Although they process their experiences through recounting history, these refugees maintain that the incidence of torture, mutilation and massive killing after 1975 has no precedent in the area's history and forms an entirely new development. This article investigates the reasons for this posited modernity of killing, torture and mutilation. The placement of the recent events outside local history is shown to represent an expression of outrage, anger and indignation at the army's treatment of the civilian population during the recent phase of the war. The outrage not only concerns the scale of the killing, torture and mutilation but is also linked with the issue of agency. The informants accuse UNITA army leaders in particular of wanton disregard for the lives and livelihood of their followers. They furthermore maintain that UNITA ordered ordinary soldiers to take part in killings which released powers the soldiers were unable to handle.

The article examines a murder trial in the Nigerian city of Ibadan during 1902. In the course of the trial a senior chief stated that those found guilty of the homicide should be fined, not executed, as a more severe punishment. The meaning of this statement is closely investigated in the context of the political climate in Ibadan at the time, of past judicial practices and through a reconstruction of the murder incident. It was argued that the assertion related to increasing competition between Ibadan chiefs and was an attempt to define constitutionally the economic and political value of a follower’s body.

This article analyses an acute moral crisis in the colonial administration of Basutoland in the late 1940s. It was provoked by a contagious rash of what became known as ‘medicine murders’, apparently perpetrated by senior chiefs. Two particular murders of this kind are examined in detail, as a result of which, in 1949, two very senior chiefs and some of their followers were hanged. This harshly dramatic episode brought into stark question the meaning of generations of the ‘civilising mission’, the fitness of the chiefs as leaders of the people, the moral integrity of the Basotho nation and the legitimacy both of colonial rule in general and of certain specific practices of the police. The political context of the murders is outlined, and the judicial process is dissected with special reference to the question of the validity of accomplice evidence.

The circumstances of a child’s birth define his or her starting point in life, and they will be inscribed in the child’s file, so to speak, by means of a set of rule-governed birth names. These ‘child names’ are perfectly suitable for this initial stage of life, but all Baatɔmbu aspire one day to replace this original set of ‘orthodox’ names by another orthodox name, an inherited title name, corresponding to an achieved social and spiritual status. Commoners and nobles have separate institutions of gɔɔbiru, ‘inherited title names’, but in both cases the successive bearers of a gɔɔbiru share an exemplary essence that each must honour and perpetuate with his life. Baatɔnu nobles bestow baptism names on children around the age of seven, allowing these young candidates for the various gɔɔbiru to be matched, according to their potential, with a name whose influence will guide them into adulthood. Joking names and teknonyms can be classified as non-orthodox or informal names and seem to fill a gap left by the orthodox names, allowing personal and family relations to be expressed and negotiated. These names carry no prestige, but their use affords pride and pleasure and, unlike orthodox names, they can be used without infringing ‘shame’-based taboos.

Gender distinctions in personal names are quite remarkable in African naming traditions. Such names are attractive to linguists and anthropologists alike, especially as they reflect preferences in semantic hierarchy and deeply ingrained gender biases. This article studies the gender naming in Igbo personal names that contain a key religious concept: Chi.

The debate over the indigenous versus the European roots of ‘African democracy’ has regained importance recently. Using the critical tools of cultural anthropology, the social and political thought of Julius K. Nyerere from Tanzania is examined for its African and European sources. The most recurrent themes in his writings are ‘traditional African values’ and the centrality of ‘the traditional African family’. They constitute the core element of Ujamaa. The aim of this article is to show that Nyerere’s statements on African socialism and on African democracy are not merely rhetorical devices employed by an aspiring politician. Nor are they the romantic appeal of a Westernised university graduate to a mythological or even ‘invented’ African past. Nyerere presented his own specific version of ‘traditional’ African values because he was socialised in a non-hierarchical ‘tribal’ society. He sought to synthesise these ‘traditional’ values with Western elements in order to create a Tanzanian identity that would cut across ethnic lines. In those cases when African and European value systems collided, however, Nyerere’s politics became problematic.