Wyatt MacGaffey

Concepts of race in the Historicography of northeast Africa

Recent accounts of the proto-history of Africa use data from physical anthropology, but also concepts of race which physical anthropologists in general have abandoned as unsatisfactory; the paper seeks to explain this phenomenon sociologically. Late nineteenth-century political and sociological trends helped to produce patterns of thought which can no longer be regarded as affording adequate explanations of social processes. These patterns combined idealism, or the method of contrasting ideal types, with pseudo-Darwinism, which sought the origins of political development in the interaction of differently endowed groups. In African ethnography of the early twentieth century such concepts led to the view that the continent was inhabited by two groups, Caucasoids and Negroids, and by mixtures of the two which remained mixtures, to be analysed as such. The Caucasoid and Negroid types were regarded as absolute and universal, represented equally in the biological, linguistic, cultural and political aspects of man.

Fetishism Revisited: Kongo Nkisi in Sociological Perspective

Fetishism, a word much in vogue in late nineteenth century anthropology, no longer appears in serious scholarly use, except among art historians, psychoanalysts, and Marxist economists. Tylor, the most influential voice in the definition of fetishism, regarded it as a development of animism; fetishism was ‘the doctrine of spirits embodied in, or attached to, or conveying influence through, certain material objects. Fetishism will be taken as including the worship of ‘stocks and stones’ and thence it passes by an imperceptible gradation into Idolatry’ (Tylor 1874:II:144). Tylor went on to speculate that primitive man originally imagined the soul of a deceased person to inhabit some relic such as a bone; this idea once established, it evolved into a propensity to associate any unusual object with a spirit. If the spirit, with its capacity for action, were embodied in an object specially made to represent its character, the ethnographer would recognise an Idol.

Death of a king, death of a kingdom? Social pluralism and succession to high office in Dagbon, northern Ghana

The ongoing dynastic dispute in the kingdom of Dagbon in northern Ghana, which led to the killing of the king in 2002, remains unresolved and perhaps unresolvable. This paper updates Stanilands account of Dagomba politics from 188o to 1974, and elaborates on the contradictions inherent in the social pluralism of a post-colonial state.

CHANGING REPRESENTATIONS IN CENTRAL AFRICAN HISTORY

This article examines how historiography makes its objects and includes critical reflections on the epistemological frames that have shaped historical representations of Central African states and social structures. The article examines the seductive quality of migration narratives; mythical features of some classical models, creating order from reduced totalities; historiographic burdens imposed by questionable anthropological models of kinship and matrilineal descent; and asks if the prevalence of dual regimes of priest and king is a product more of ideology than history. The article argues for increasing recognition of the value in political studies of data relating to religion and art.

African objects and the idea of fetish

William Pietz has written a series of provocative and wide-ranging articles on the origin of the idea of fetishism and the role of that idea in European social thought, particularly in the last century (Pietz 1985, 1987, 1988, 1991). Currently we are ashamed to apply nineteenth-century labels and explanations to African culture without some attempt at modification, but in some areas we have not really developed any strong substitutes. In an attempt to move in that direction, this article makes use of the outline of Pietzs argument as a framework for describing some aspects of the religion of the BaKongo of western Zaire.1

Lineage Structure, Marriage and the Family Amongst the Central Bantu

Using the factors of family structure examined by Audrey Richards in a well-known essay, this article suggests that a more productive concept for the historical study of Central Africa than either the unique tribe or a group of societies identified by their rule of descent may be the lineage mode of production, in the restricted sense developed by P. P. Rey. Analysis of the organization of political, economic and ritual functions among the BaKongo, BaSuku, BaPende and other Zairean peoples shows the complementarity and flexibility of patrilateral and materilateral relationships. It is suggested that the greater ‘quantity’ of social structure exhibited by coastal peoples, as well as their matrilineal development, may result from the prolonged effects of the great Congo trade, especially the trade in slaves, modifying an old and generally bilateral system organized by networks of permanent matrimonial alliance. This system is characteristic of the Congo basin, Zimbabwe and Angola.

Kongo and the King of the Americans

In this article, I try to translate what America means to a MuKongo, the ordinary inhabitant of the province of Kongo Central in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The subject has the advantage of being to some extent marginal among Kongo beliefs, and therefore more readily isolable, but it is not without relevance to international affairs.

On The Moderate Usefulness of Modes of Production

The concept of modes of production was originally hailed with excessive enthusiasm; having now failed, like structuralism, to lead us into the Promised Land of total human self-understanding (Willis, 1982), it is now being widely abandoned, often with a sigh of relief. It is paradoxical that anthropology, proclaiming itself a science, should apparently proceed by a series of religious movements. This brief review pleads for greater pragmatism.

The Beloved City: Commentary on a Kimbanguist Text

The Eglise de JIsus-Christ sur la Terre par le Prophete Simon Kimbangu (EJCSK), which claims a membership of at least a million, is the leading indigenous church of the Republic of Congo and has legal status equivalent to the Catholics, the Protestants, and the Salvation Army. 1) Most Kimbanguists are Bakongo from the western Congo, but the church has important congregations in Kisangani (Stanleyville), Lubumbashi (Elisabethville) and other towns in Congo and in neighbouring countries. The EJCSK, like almost all of the numerous indigenous churches of the western Congo, claims spiritual descent from Simon Kimbangu, nominal leader of the great messianic movement of I921. 2) Since Kimbanguism in general, and EJCSK in particular, have been the subject of several studies and usually appear on short lists of African messianic movements, it is regrettable that no Kimbanguist theological texts of any length have been published or studied. It is sometimes suggested that Kimbanguists have no theology, and make do with a syncretic assortment of heterogeneous beliefs. Here is a representative comment:

Lulendo: the recovery of a Kongo nkisi

Lulendo was a kind of chiefship intended to control markets. It was developed during the 1880s by BaKongo in the area near modern Luozi in Lower Zaire, in an attempt to resist increasing European pressure on local trade. The central act of Lulendo was the ritualised execution of a criminal in the marketplace. KiKongo texts in the Swedish National Archives enable us to reconstruct and interpret the ritual, and also cast light on the occupation of the area by the forces of the Congo Free State.