chiefdoms and kingdoms in africa: why they are neither states nor

CHIEFDOMS AND KINGDOMS IN AFRICA:

WHY THEY ARE NEITHER STATES NOR EMPIRES

Peter Skalník, NIAS Fellow 2001-2002

Introduction

When I first began to work on political centralization in “traditional” Africa

back in the 1960s, I was influenced by two schools of thought. One was the critical

revaluation of Marxist historical materialism by scholars who rediscovered the

relevance of Marx’s concept of the Asiatic mode of production, the other was the

political anthropology tradition derived from the collection African Political Systems

(Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1940). Both of these schools were evolutionistic. The

third influence came a bit later when I started to work with Hans Claessen: it was neo-

evolutionism (for a summary, see Claessen 2000). The common denominator of all

these three influences was their stress on the state as an obvious climax of the

development of political centralization. The term ‘early state’, which I suggested to

Hans Claessen instead of his ‘primitive state’ when we first met in 1973

, was a

reaction to the inadequacy of the Russian Marxist term “early class state”

(ranneklassovoe gosudarstvo). The point was to question the (early) class

character of

the state, but not the state as such

. The state could, in our thinking of the 1970s, be

early, perhaps even inchoate, but there was no doubt about the very concept, the state,

as the political form which crowns the social development in pre-state periods

(Claessen and Skalník 1978). The early

state was early because a mature state was to

follow, the state which we know today. Marxist evolutionism and neo-evolutionism

may have disagreed on many points, but they agreed on their understanding of

political forms as developing from less sophisticated towards more sophisticated.

Self-critically I have to admit that I did not pay adequate attention to the fact

that the literature I was using in the 1960s and 1970s, abounded with the term

‘kingdom’ (also used were related terms such as kingship, divine or sacred

kingdom/kingship, monarchy) and ‘chiefdom’ (also chieftaincy, chieftainship, in

French chefferie) rather than with ‘state’. For me at that time kingdoms and

monarchies were just states, which carried various epithets such as primitive, archaic,

traditional, tribal or early to distinguish them from the modern state. It was the

“purgatory” of fieldwork in Nanun, northern Ghana, which since 1978 led me

gradually to the idea that there is a fundamental difference between the state on the

one hand and kingdoms respectively chiefdoms on the other. It took another deep look

We met in Chicago during the 9

International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological

Sciences where Hans’ paper - perhaps inspired by usage of ‘primitive’ by Mair (1962), Eisenstadt

(1959) or Kaberry (1957) - was presented under the title “Balance of power in primitive states” and

mine as “The dynamics of early state development in the Voltaic area”. Both were published in Seaton

and Claessen 1979. See also my Candidate of Science dissertation (Skalník 1973) and cf. introductory

remarks in Skalník 1996a: 84). My usage of ‘early’ came from the Czech historian of antiquity Jan

Pečírka (1967) who edited a book on early forms of civilisation and in turn was inspired by the

economic historians Polanyi and Pehrson‘s (1957) writing on early empires.

This was well grasped by Ernest Gellner who intercepted the first Soviet work on Africa which stated

that the state (in this case Kubbel’s study of Songhai derzhava [empire]) could emerge prior to social

classes (Gellner 1979).

into the facts that made me realise that differentiating between kingdoms and

chiefdoms is very problematic and perhaps equally erroneous as the automatism of

identifying centralized polities with the state. The main argument of this lecture is

that, as far as Africa is concerned

, the best solution is to collapse chiefdoms and

kingdoms into one overarching etic category which I would call ‘chiefdom’

and

restrict the use of the concepts such as ‘state’ and ‘empire’ to the areas where they

were coined as genuine emic conceptions and those areas where they spread since.

Deconstruction

Let us attempt a deconstruction of the concepts kingdom and chiefdom in

Africa. The main thrust of theory appeared in the 1960s. Without giving much reason

why they used ‘kingdoms’ and ‘kings’ in their comparative surveys and collections

instead of chiefdoms or states, the anthropologists Richards (1961), Lloyd (1965),

Lewis (1966), Forde and Kaberry (1967), Mair (1977) as well as the historian

Vansina (1962), must have been aware that their conceptual framework of kingdom

was hardly innovative. They have merely followed inspiration from earlier

comparative volumes (e.g. Gluckman and Oberg used ‘kingdom’ in Fortes and Evans-

Pritchard 1940, and Maquet in Forde 1954) as well as from modern anthropological

monographs about Jukun, Dahomey, Nupe, Bunyoro (Meek 1931; Herskovits 1938;

Nadel 1942; Beattie 1960). The fact that the use of ‘kingdom’ continues unabated

even after the Year of Africa suggests two things at once. For one thing, the political

correctness of the early post-independence times did not allow the use of ‘chief’ and

‘chiefdom’ anymore (similarly ‘tribe’ and ‘tribal’ disappeared from the literature of

the period). On the other hand, the authors clearly saw the fundamental difference

between the state in Europe (most of them were European and American Africanists

anyway) and African polities they were studying. The perfect escape was of course

the easily understandable concept of ‘kingdom’, coming from the past but preceding

or overlapping with the absolutist and early modern state in Europe. You do not

offend anyone, including the masters of the colonial and postcolonial states, if you use

the label ‘kingdoms’ for the original African polities which might in quite few cases

further exist in parallel with the modern imported statehood.

It could also be suggested that the reason for using ‘kingdom’ may just be

inertia received from the historical accounts. Starting long ago with Kongo by the

chroniclers Pigafetta (1598), de Piña (1950) and de Rome (1648, 1964), and Guinea

by de Marees (1602, 1987), many well-known historians of Africa preferred

I leave to specialists the right to do similar rethinking as to the data on other continents (cf.Galey

1990). I have suggested to convene a workshop on “Chiefdom: a universal political formation?” in

2003 where anthropologists, archeologists, historians and political scientists/political sociologists

would discuss both concrete cases and theoretical questions without limitation to either space or time.

Whereas chiefdom has a plethora of emic, i.e. original African, terminological manifestations,

kingdom and empire when used to denote African polities appears to be a transposition of European or

Asian categories (from the ranked triad princedom, kingdom, empire) to an alien ground. I shall try to

explain this statement further in this paper.

For example, anthropological monographs of Interlacustrine zone, Benin, Swazi, Kongo, Ndebele,

Yatenga, Bandia, Oyo,Gyaman, Katanga, Bamoum and Nyamwezi by Richards (1961) and d’Hertefelt,

Trouwborst and Scherer 1962; Bradbury 1964; Kuper 1964; Balandier 1965; Lye 1969; Hammond

(1966) and Izard (1970, 1985, 1987), Dampierre (1967), Morton-William (1967), Terray (1974, 1995),

M’Bokolo 1976; Tardits (1980) and Tcherkezoff (1983) respectively, all are using ‘kingdom’ or ‘king’

in their headings.

‘kingdom’ as well. Kongo received most attention, see accounts by Ihle (1929) and

Cuvelier(1946, 1962), Cuvelier and Jadin (1954), Bal (1963) Randles (1968) and

Thornton (1983). Le Herissé (1911) writing on Dahomey, Vansina on Rwanda,

Kasanje, southern savanna, Tio and finally the Nyiginya (1962, 1963, 1965, 1973,

2001), Haberlandt (1965) on Ethiopia, Steinhart (1967) on the Interlacustrine area,

Smith on the Yoruba (1969), Kent (1970) on ‘early kindoms’ of Madagascar,

Kiwanuka (1971) on Buganda, O’Fahey and Spaulding (1974), on the Sudan, Wylie

(1977) on ‘political kingdoms’ of the Temne, were all historians using the term

‘kingdom’ in the titles of their works.

There are also special cases in which either unclear or borrowed terms were

used. Tardits (1987) edited a volume on princes and servants of kingdoms in five

selected ‘African monarchies’. The historian Tymowski (1970) wrote on ‘princes’ in

Songhay. The anthropologists Kuper (1947) and Lewis (1965) wrote monographs

about Swazi ‘aristocracy’ and Galla ‘monarchy’ respectively. Kuper went even

further by using the term ‘rank’ in the subtitle of her famous monograph. Maquet

(1961a) described pre-colonial Rwanda in terms of the concept of ‘inequality‘. A

number of historians working on islamicised polities used the terms derived from

Arabic: emirate (Hogben 1966), sultanate (Holt 1961; Lange 1977 writes about Bornu

sultans in an ‘African kingdom’, O’Fahey 1980; O’Fahey and Abu Salim 1983),

caliphate (Last 1967; Smaldone 1977).

Other writers, mostly historians, and prominent ones among them were

African authors, operated with the term ‘empire’. Among them were pre-

independence writers such as Monteil (1929) writing on Mali, Dim Delobsom (1932)

on Mogho (the Mossi), Braud-Villars (1942) and Boulnois with Boubou Hama (1954)

on Gao, Urvoy (1949) on Bornu. After 1960 Ba and Daget (1962) and Sanankoua

(1990) applied ‘empire’ concept on the Fulbe of Macina, Akinjogbin (1966) on

Dahomey, Hunwick (1966), Kubbel’ (1974) and Cissoko (1975) on Songhai, Person

(1967) on Samory, Hopkins (1967) on Western Sudan as a whole, Margarido (1970)

on Lunda, Saint-Martin (1970) on Toucouleur, Wilson (1972) and Reef (1981) on

Luba, Oloruntimehin (1972) and Kasteloot (1978) on Tukulor of Segou, Quinn (1972)

on Mandingo of Senegambia, Randles (1975) on Monomotapa, Ingham (1975) on

Toro, Law (1977) on Oyo, Ly Madina Tall (1977) and Person (1981) on Mali,

Steinhart (1981) on Bunyoro-Kitara, Chrétien (1985) on the Bacwezi, Dieterlen and

Diarra Sylla (1992) on ancient Ghana. The same explanation as in the cases of

‘kingdom’ usage also applies to the use of ‘empire’. They would be inspired by the

empires in the Eurasian past or even put African cases into parallel with the British or

French colonial empires. However the use of ‘empire’ in African context was in

many cases a silly exaggeration, nobody seemed to question it. It may have been

uncritically used in most recent writing (cf. de Bruijn and van Dijk 2001).

Few have chosen ‘civilisation’ as their hallmark. In this way Balandier and

Maquet (1968) treat whole of Africa, Kochakova (1986) describes Ife, Oyo, Benin

and Dahomey, and archeologists Shinnie (1987) and Connah (1987) wrote on Meroe

and tropical Africa respectively. Also the French translation of Völkerkunde von

Afrika characterizes political centralization as civilization (Baumann and Westermann

1957)

A more special case is literature on divine and sacred kingship or chiefship,

explicitly or implicitly harking upon seminal work of Frazer. Early on Seligman

(1934) compared Egypt and ‘Negro Africa’, Parrinder (1956) wrote on ‘divine

kingship’ in West Africa and Monica Wilson (1959) on Africa in general. The most

consequent student of structural aspects of the sacrality of African kings is de Heusch

(1959, 1972, 1982, 1984, 1987 and 1990). Also Abélès (in Claessen and Skalník

1981) relates sacred kingship with the formation of the state in Africa. Muller (in

Claessen and Skalník 1981), however, tries to work out a ‘single ideological model’

of the role of the divine kingship in both chiefdoms and states. The archaeologist

Fagg (1970) illustrates ‘divine kingship’ for whole of Africa. From among concrete

African cases I should mention Evans-Pritchard (1948) on Shilluk, Lloyd (1960) on

Yoruba, Dittmer (1961) on Gurunsi, d’Hertefelt and Coupez (1964) and much later

Bäck (in Claessen and Skalník 1981) on Rwanda, Palau-Marti (1964) on Benin,

Young (1966), Hecht (1969)and Yamaguchi (1974) on Jukun, Lebeuf (1969) on

‘principautés’ Kotoko, Drucker-Brown (1975) on Mamprusi, Muller (1980) on

Rukuba, Adler (1982) on Moundang, Simonse (1992) on southeastern Sudan. The

amateur anthropologist Meyerowitz (1951) wrote a book on the ‘sacred state’ of the

Akan. Whether many African original polities were ‘divine’ or ‘sacred’ is to be left to

specialists. What is however intriguing is the richness and originality of African cases

vis-à-vis the (early) state proposition. Even if only the religious side of authority in

African polities without going into the intricacies of sacredness would be considered,

the specificity of original African politics would be apparent!

Chiefdoms and chiefs are mentioned in literature either as composite parts of

kingdoms or as paramount chiefdoms/chiefs. It is characteristic that the latter case is

typical for particular areas where the term was used for designating clusters of fairly

small but originally independent polities, such as is the case in Sierra Leone (Dorjahn

and Tholley 1959; Finnegan 1963; Little 1967, cf. with Temne ‘kingdom’ by Wylie

(1977) ; Finnegan and Murray 1970; Murphy and Bledsoe 1987; Fanthorpe 1994,

1998), Côte d’Ivoire (Amon d’Aby 1958) or Cameroon (Chilver 1960, 1965,; Warnier

1975; Geary 1976 and 1985; Barbier 1977; Nkwi 1987; Kopytoff 1999; contrasts

with the usage of ‘kingship’ for the same polities in Koloss 1992 and 2000). That does

not prevent the same authors to use ‘chiefdom’ and ‘kingdom’ for the same polities

(cf. with ‘’kingdom of Kom’ in Chilver and Kaberry 1967; see also Geary 1980). In

other areas of Africa chiefdoms and chiefs were also described by e.g. Tanner (1957)

in Sukumaland, by Launay (1988), Some works describe chiefdoms in a particular

region. Such is the survey on Francophone Africa in Le Problème des chefferies en

Afrique Noire (1959) and the article by Cornevin (1961).

The ‘state’ enters writing on Africa only fairly late, as if as an exception. Very

few used the concept before the appearance of the The Early State (Claessen and

Skalník 1978). (A large portion of the authors were influenced by Marxism which

starting with Engels introducing ‘state’ as a generic term.) A special place takes the

synthetic historical work by Westermann (1952) who searched in Africa for the

‘Statenbildungen’, mostly by way of the once popular conquest theory of the

formation of the state

. Also well-known is the description of the ‘segmentary state’

among the Alur (Southall 1956, cf. Southall 1965, 1988 and 1991), the already

A critical assessment of Westermann’s influence on later African and Africanist historical writing on

states in pre-colonial Africa is still to be written.

mentioned article by Kaberry (1957) on ‘primitive state’ based on her work in

Cameroon, by Czekanowski (1961) on ‘pastoralist states’ in the Interlacustrine region,

monographs by Malowist (1964; cf. Tymowski 1967) on western Sudan, Kochakova

(1968, cf. 1978) on the Yoruba ‘city-states’, Beattie (1971) on Nyoro (who shifted to

the state after he used ‘kingdom’ in his earlier monograph). Apart stand Goody’s

(1971; cf. Terray 1973) general theoretical contribution and de Heusch’s (1972)

monograph on the drunken king and state origins. The historians Holt (1970)

described the early colonial resistance state in the Sudan, Mudandagizi and

Rwamukumbi (1974) the personal dependence in the Rwandese state, Terray (1974)

Gyaman in Côte d’Ivoire (cf. his ultimate ‘return’ to kingdom term in Terray 1995)

and Miller (1976) ‘early Mbundu states’ in Angola.

After The Early State there is visible shift towards the use of the concept of

‘state’ or ‘early state’ also among anthropologists, archaeologists and historians of

Africa. One should mention a general discussion by Claessen (1981), the special

number of Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines on African state systems (1982), edited

volumes by Bazin and Terray (1982), Eisenstadt et al (1988), the general

archeological treatise on African civilizations by Connah (1987), works by O’Fahey

(1980) on Darfur, Piault (1982) on the genesis of Kabi, monographs by Adamowicz

(1992) on Great Zimbabwe and Waliński (1996) on Zulu. The series of volumes on

early states, edited by Claessen and his collaborators between 1978 and 1996, have

contained analyses of a number of African cases

. The Polish historian Michał

Tymowski (in Claessen, Smith and van de Velde 1985, in Claessen and van de Velde

1987,1991) wrote on ‘political organisation’ in western Africa and finally published a

whole synthetising volume The States of Pre-colonial Africa (Tymowski 1999).

Some authors avoid using state (as well as chiefdom, kingdom or empire) by

either referring to government (Smith 1960 on Zazzau, Mair (1962) on eastern

Africa), leadership (Shack and Cohen 1979), political organization or political system

(Trouwborst 1962 on Burundi, Kaboré (1962, 1968) on Mossi, Stevenson (1968) on

tropical Africa, Ndaywel è Nziem 1992 on Luba and Lunda). Paul Nkwi (1976), an

eminent political anthropologist from Cameroon, chose to write on ‘traditional

government’ and ‘political institutions’ among the

Kom (i.e not Kom chiefdom or

Kom kingdom!).

For a while African traditional centralized politics was seen as feudal. The

hypothesis was suggested more generally by Maquet (1961b), and applied by

Czekanowski (1961) and Steinhart (1967) on the Interlacustrine region, by Kaboré

(1962) on ‘feudal character’ of the Mossi ‘political system’, by Beattie (1964) on

Bunyoro, by Lombard (1965) on Bariba ‘feudal type structures’, by Cohen (1966) on

Bornu, by Ghislain (1970) on Burundi. Goody (1963, 1971) refuted it effectively, at

least for the western part of Africa. Some authors, on the contrary, chose not to

characterize polities studied by them. They just use the name of the polity. Cuvelier

and Jadin (1954) wrote on ancient Congo, Southall (1956) on ‘domination’ in Alur

society, Egharebva (1960) on Benin, Smith (1960) on government in Zazzau, Skinner

(1964) on political development of the Mossi, Cohen (1966) wrote on Bornu, Polanyi

(1966) on Dahomey, Levtzion (1973) on ancient Ghana and Mali, Wilks (1975 on

The reader is referred to Claessen and Skalník 1978, 1981, Claessen, Smith and van de Velde 1985,

Claessen and van de Velde 1987 and 1991, Claessen and Oosten 1996.

Asante, Arhin (1961) on Greater Ashanti, Kobishchanov (1979) on Aksum,

Tymowski (1979) on Mali, Tomanovskaia (1980) on Loango, Kakongo and Ngoyo,

Boulegue (1987) on Jolof.

This obviously incomplete survey reveals a variety of approaches to the

problem of understanding of original African centralised polities. Perhaps with

exception of early state approach, eclecticism was the rule. The authors often used

interchangeably kingdom, empire or chiefdom, or avoided the issue at stake by using

neutral terms as political organization, political system, government. With exception

of the Islamic terms such emirate, caliphate or sultanate, no truly African emic terms

were used in any major works. It would be fairly easy, perhaps facile, to accuse the

writers (majority being non-Africans) of Eurocentrism. Their ‘opportunism’ consisted

in trying to make their writings understandable to their readers who were, again,

mostly non-Africans. Vansina can be cited as an exception. He used the concept of

‘kingdom’ consequently and only once was seduced on the side of the ‘state’ by his

editors (Vansina in Claessen and Skalník 1978). We could stop here and say that there

reigned conceptual disunity, indeed lack of conceptual clarity, in most academic

writing on original African centralised polities. Only with the emergence of the state

in its specific derivate early state a paradigm arrived which made professional debate

finally possible. In a way it is true because it seemed for a while that a tool was found

and that many scholars began to use it. The question is that the key appeared to be a

wrong one, at least it did not fit there where it was needed and expected to open door

to new vistas of knowledge.

Chiefdom versus the State

The proof of the pudding is in eating it. Once we use one term, i.e. ‘state’, and

it does not really matter that we add various adjectives before the noun, we logically

must presuppose that all phenomena thus labeled are part of one category, or one

evolutionary line. I am afraid this did not happen. The early state in a number of

concrete cases but also by its theory of inchoate (incipient) state, ‘swallowed’

chiefdom as an independent category. On the other hand, the attempts to document

concrete transitions between the ‘transitional’ early state to the mature state with its

refined taxation, army, police, judiciary, bureaucracy and executive government

agencies failed (Claessen and van de Velde 1987). The core manifestation of the early

state, i.e. the ‘typical’ early state, would have to be tested in confrontation with the

existing state. The editors and contributors to the early state volumes did not carry out

this test. They were interested in the generic structure and functioning of early states

but not in their comparison with the modern mature states. In Europe no coexistence

was observable of early states with mature states. Fortunately in Africa such situation

did exist. Due to the policy of indirect rule and other factors, the would-be early states

were preserved and functioned in parallel with the modern (i.e. mature) imported

colonial and later postcolonial state. For reasons of colonial expediency, later

administration of development or simply search of models of coexistence of these two

forms, scholars started to work on the relationship. This relationship between

chiefdoms/kingdoms on the one hand and colonial and postcolonial states on the other

has been broached by the famous monographs by Busia (1951) and a seminal article

by Fallers (1955), followed by collective volumes edited by Richards (1960),

Crowder and Ikime (1970), Lemarchand (1977), Van Rouveroy (1987), van Rouveroy

and Ray (1996) and van Rouveroy and van Dijk (1999). The same problem was

tackled monographically by Southwold (1961) for Buganda, Fallers (1956) for

Busoga, Holleman (1969) for Rhodesia, Skalník (1975) for the Voltaic area,

Geschiere (1982) in his monograph on the Maka of Cameroon and van Rouveroy

(2000) on Tyokossi of Togo. My work (Skalník 1979b, 1983, 1987, 1989, 1992,

1996a) in Nanun, northern Ghana, moved on a similar line.

What this work made clear was that the logics of structure and working of

original African centralized polities sharply contrasted in no ambiguous terms with

the logic of the modern state in Africa. But the proof of it was not in their deemed

competition which in some areas led to the abolishment of the original institutions but

exactly in the opposite. Original African political institutions, often known under the

term of chieftaincy, chieftainship, chiefdom or simply chief, were no competition for

the state, they could comfortably coexist with it. In spite of the fashion of the study of

African armed resistance to the introduction of colonial rule, these studies implicitly

revealed incompatibility of the opponents, indeed helplessness of the armies of the

would be African states vis-à-vis armed European conquerors. In most cases,

however, the conquest happened peacefully, as if the African political institutions did

not have anything in common with the introduced state institutions of the colonizer!

Only if the original African officeholders tried to jump on the bandwagon of the state

logic, either by armed resistance, or openly contesting the legitimacy of the new rulers

(and their collaborators from among the Africans) the original institutions were

abolished or threatened so. If this did not take place these institutions, however

encapsulated and harnessed as lowest levels of state administration, have survived and

even strived until this very day. There lies the secret: original African centralized

political institutions are and were no states, with or without epithets such as early,

archaic or traditional. They were and still remain genuine, authentic, original African

institutions, each with its name and emic terminology consisting of hundreds of

specific denominations of titleholders and their functions, tasks and procedures, many

not having any equivalent in contemporary or historical mature states. Obviously, the

point is not in depriving Africans of their ability to build and run states. The point is

to recognize the African genius fully by stressing the originality of the political

institutions created in Africa without the supervision of Europeans and Asians, Arabs

included.

That was exactly what I discovered in Nanun during my fieldwork. First I

realized how impossible it is for modern Ghana to rule in its Nanumba District (whose

territory almost overlaps with the territory on which people recognize the

paramountcy of the naam of Bimbilla) without the naanima, holders of the naam.

Both the modern district bureaucrats and Nanumba youth organized into the Nanumba

Youth Association had to respect the chiefs not only by paying them courtesy visits

(this had to be done by any important outside visitors as well) but informing them,

and especially the Bimbilla Naa of any innovation and seeking his approval. It was

through the Bimbilla Naa that national and regional policies were spread,

implemented and monitored. The population, literate and illiterate alike, would not be

happy with any state measure if it did not receive the sanction of the incumbents of

the naam

. It was the flouting of Bimbilla Naa’s authority by the Konkomba settlers

that has triggered off the armed conflict in 1981 and may have contributed to the

This would support the thesis about collaborationism of the ‘traditional’ authorities during the

colonialism but also ever since its demise. There are, however, many examples of latent resistance of

African chiefs during the period of state hegemony.

following clashes in 1994 and 1995 (Skalník 1985, 1986, 2001c). The state of Ghana

stopped these conflicts by the threat and actual use of modern weapons and

confiscated several thousand of bows and arrows and other ‘traditional’ weapons used

in the conflicts. Though the conflict was pictured as a result of a weird imbalance

between the ‘feudal’ demands of the Nanumba elite (various tributes, taxes and

payments which every settler must fulfill), it became apparent that the ‘traditional’

concerns of the Nanumba and the Konkomba have their ‘modern’ dimensions. The

‘war’ between Nanun and the Konkomba woke up those who thought that

‘chieftaincy’ in Ghana is a matter of past or at best a cultural tradition to be preserved

like any museum object. The Konkomba, widely known as ‘acephalous’people

suddenly thought that it is necessary for them to have their own chiefs, their own

chiefdom (Skalník 1986, 1989). The ‘traditional’ discourse seemed to both parties in

the conflict as more important than any modern issue of development or democracy.

Rather it seemed that the so-called ‘chieftaincy’ or ‘ethnic’ conflicts flare up best

under the conditions of civilian or democratic regimes. Under military rule they are

rare.

On the other hand, the chiefdom such as Nanun functioned internally so that

modern democratizing state regime could, or even should, learn from the succession

mechanism in Nanun which involved both mandatory alternation of two chiefly

houses and sanctioning of it by the ritual specialists from among the autochthonous

pre-chiefly population (who were believed to conclude a ritual pact with the

immigrant chiefly group) (Skalník 1996b). What was at stake in Nanun was the need

to find an optimal way of coexistence of naam with the state of Ghana. Similar need

has been facing many a chiefdom and state in present-day Africa. The more the state

in Africa fails to fulfill the expectations of its citizens the more people turn for

solution to their original institutions, chiefdoms and chiefs (cf.Skalník 2001b). The

future of Africa will have to be a consensual and creative synthesis between the

chiefdom and the state. These two logics of centralized politics in Africa are very

different, indeed they represent two poles of politics, that of authority and power

(Skalník 1999). Yet a successful future of Africa will depend on their balanced

synthesis.

Literature

For practical reasons most references are not given here. The reader should

consult bibliographies in Claessen and Skalník 1978, 1981, Claessen and van de

Velde and Smith (1985), Claessen and van de Velde (1987, 1991), Claessen and

Oosten 1996, Galey 1990, Rouveroy 1987, Rouveroy and Ray 1996, Rouveroy and

van Dijk 1999, Tymowski 1999.

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