Introduction: Strange but Inevitable Bedfellows

Abstract

Religion and politics have a most ambiguous relationship in African studies. Among African students of religion, it has become an acknowledged orthodoxy that, at least from a precolonial perspective, religion and politics are one in Africa.1 Certainly, my research among a contemporary pastoralist people (Knighton 2005a) does not show this to be a trite statement, but one supported by the profound overlap of religion and politics in personnel, functions, and institutions. After all in a region of uncertain and uncontrolled environments and livelihoods, where the weak went to the wall, or rather to the hills minus their cattle (Sutton 1990; 1993), issues of power and religion were vital for the preservation or expansion of identities and solidarities, and autonomy in the limits that the transcendent would allow was the prized goal of each community. With Arab and European invasion, the religions of traditional societies were not simply overrun by a secular modernity. The Arabs had little interest in proselytizing Africans beyond those who would prepare their food, while the European administrators, even if sons of the clergy,2 were frequently more animated by the secular trends of Victoriana or an ethnographic fascination sparked by Kipling or Rider Haggard.3