Authority Of Chiefs Research Articles

Chieftaincy and Kingship in Africa: How Lessons from the Government in South Africa Can Address Ghana’s Maladroitness in Inter-Ethnic Relations

Although the Authority of chiefs was undone by colonial rule in Ghana, traditional rulers have served as important adjuncts in the administration of post-colonial governments in Africa. This paper examines the evolution of chieftaincy, particularly as an agent of administration, with particular reference to the Ghanaian and South African experiences. Indeed, post-colonial Ghanaian and South African governments have all come to rely on traditional rulers to aid in development activities. Historical tensions related to chieftaincy conflicts in South Africa led to government intervention post-Apartheid to address colonial injustices. Ghana can learn from this approach to resolve disputes, especially among the Konkombas and Dagombas in its Northern Region. As such, the paper concludes that the administration of justice by the Government, coupled with positive institutional political interference, will bring trust and an end to the banner of traditional conflicts through resolution mechanisms.

Nuancing the spheres of authority of chiefs: State perspectives on hybrid governance

AbstractIn this paper, we develop a framework for understanding the different spheres of authority of chiefs aiming to widen the perspectives on how government‐chief interactions affect the governance process. The framework is applied in our analysis of interviews with government actors involved in area protection in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area (GLTFCA). Our results illustrate the variety of approaches and perceptions towards governance with chiefs that exist amongst government actors within the same governance system. Although government actors perceive chiefs in the GLTFCA as a parallel system, chiefs can act as a rival, mediator, adviser, or partner to the government; thus, both enable or hamper government governance. The informal governance arrangements found in the data between government actors and chiefs moreover underscores the importance of qualitative case studies of hybrid governance systems

Problematizing Chieftaincy Succession Squabbles in the Cameroon Grassfields Studies

Chieftaincy institution constitutes a significant aspect of the socio-cultural heritage and feature within the Bamenda Grass fields. Its historical role in the maintenance of peace and promotion of development at the local level is incontestable. Recently the institution that was yesterday a symbol of harmony, development and cultural pride has suddenly become an object of discord and rivalry. In reality, the authority and legitimacy of chiefs in the Cameroon Grassfields is increasingly being contested and questioned. It is sustained in this paper that chieftaincy that used to be a problem shooter in communities in the Bamenda Grassfields has become itself a problem to the socio-economic and political developmentefforts of grassroots population. Following a critical historical approached based on the content analysis of primary and secondary sources, the study reveals that the multiplication of dual chieftaincy crisis in the Bamenda Grassfields is the historical product of the socio-cultural degradation of the chieftaincy institution. In order to carry out this workboth quantitative and qualitative approaches were used in interpreting and analyzing Data. A thematic cum chronological approach was used in presenting the findings.

A community-based approach to wildfire prevention in Ghana

Form Ghana is a forest plantation management company based in central Ghana that produces timber and carbon credits for local and international markets. From 2017, it has worked with communities to improve livelihoods in Tain II Forest Reserve, Bono Region, through the Forest Landscape Restoration Programme. Most community land is managed under the traditional authority of chiefs and their families, and farming is the main sole source of income. This article describes how a community based approach has reduced wildfire outbreaks by 78% between 2018 and 2021. From a situation in which wildfires were frequent, where nobody felt responsible and from which everybody suffered, people now make efforts to manage the risk and help to prevent wildfire outbreaks.

Authority that is customary: Kitawala, customary chiefs, and the plurality of power in Congolese history

ABSTRACTThis paper uses the history of the religious/healing movement Kitawala in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a lens to explore the relationship between forms of state-sanctioned “customary” authority and alternative nodes of “authority that is customary.” Focusing on three different case studies from different eras of the colonial and post-colonial history of Kitawala, the article explores the history of how the movement became part of the broad field of authority in Congo – at times cutting across, at times transforming, and at times subverting or fracturing the authority of customary chiefs. The article emphasizes not only how state-appointed customary authorities had to negotiate their position between emergent institutions like Kitawala and the colonial state, but also how Kitawalist communities themselves cultivated ideas and institutions of authority, legitimacy, and morality that were often explicitly critical of the state and its institutions and representatives (whether colonial or customary). The article argues that alternative nodes of authority like those cultivated by Kitawalist communities were and are, even in their innovations, rooted in the dynamic history of Central African ideas and institutions of power and must therefore be considered in histories of customary authority in the region.

Ebbs and Flows of Authority: Decentralization, Development and the Hydrosocial Cycle in Lesotho

Dominant development discourse holds that water scarcity reflects geophysical limitations, lack of infrastructure or lack of government provision. However, this paper outlines the ways in which scarcity can only be fully explained in the context of development, specifically, neoliberal economic policies and related notions of good governance. Water is Lesotho’s primary natural resource, yet many of its inhabitants remain severely water insecure. Presently, decentralization and Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) are embraced in Lesotho as a philosophy and method to engage varied stakeholders and to empower community members. Using a water committee in Qalo, Lesotho as a case study, this paper explores the micro-politics of water governance. As individuals contest who is responsible for managing water resources for the village—by aligning themselves with traditional chiefs, elected officials, or neither—they transform or reinforce specific hydro-social configurations. While decentralized resource management aims to increase equity and local ownership over resources, as well as moderate the authority of traditional chiefs, water access is instead impacted by conflicts over management responsibility for water resources. Drawing on theories of political ecology and governmentality to extend recent scholarship on IWRM, this paper re-centers the political in water governance by situating local tensions within national policies and development agendas and demonstrating how scarcity is hydro-social.

Witchcraft as a Social Diagnosis: Traditional Ghanaian Beliefs and Global Health by Roxane Richter, Thomas Flowers, and Elias Bongmba

Reviewed by: Witchcraft as a Social Diagnosis: Traditional Ghanaian Beliefs and Global Health by Roxane Richter, Thomas Flowers, and Elias Bongmba Sjaak Van Der Geest Roxane Richter, Thomas Flowers, Elias Bongmba, Sjaak van der Geest, witchcraft, African witchcraft, social theory, global health, African healthcare, African magic, Ghanaian magic, Ghanaian witchcraft, modern magic, modern witchcraft, contemporary magic, contemporary witchcraft, sociology of witchcraft roxane richter, thomas flowers, and elias bongmba. Witchcraft as a Social Diagnosis: Traditional Ghanaian Beliefs and Global Health. London: Lexington Books, 2017. Pp. xx + 148. In northern Ghana there are about seven "witch camps" or "witch villages," where women who have been accused of witchcraft and expelled from their communities find asylum. Reports estimate that the total number of women in such places is around one thousand. Some of these women have children with them, but their estimated numbers vary enormously. Most of the women are between forty and seventy years of age. About one percent of the residents in the camps are men, either accused witches themselves or relatives/partners of the women. The camps fall under the authority of local chiefs and/or traditional priests who guarantee the safety of the inhabitants and provide medicine to clear them of witchcraft. When they arrive at the camps, the women are often tested for the presence of witchcraft. The local people living in the towns where the camps are situated do not tend to worry about the presence of these "witches" and live with them in relative harmony. The women earn a living through petty trading, doing odd jobs at the market, and working on the farms of the local population. In theory, after some time the women can return to their communities if they wish, once the air has cleared, but most refuse to return, out of fear of violence or worse. They prefer to remain in exile. Several attempts by political authorities and humanitarian organizations to bring the women back to their homes have failed in the past. These are some general features of the witch camps, though there are many details that differ locally. The literature on these camps suggests that they are not a recent phenomenon, but that sanctuaries for expelled witches [End Page 293] existed already in the precolonial period. The expulsion and persecution of suspected witches seems, however, to have increased in the past few decades. It is further believed that Ghana is the only country in the world where such witch camps exist. This brief description will probably "fascinate" historians who study witchcraft beliefs and practices in Europe between the Middle Ages and the eighteenth century, including the readers of this journal. Ghana's witch camps, with their public management of occult evil magic, might appear as a phenomenon from their own distant past, occurring in present day Africa. The camps present themselves as locations where anthropologists and historians could meet and work together, as was the case in the 1970s and 1980s. In Ghana, however, the camps are first of all the subject of heated debate between politicians, human rights activists, and humanitarian organizations such as NGOs and churches. Understandably, these debates are fuelled by journalists' reports, Internet blogs, and students attracted by this dramatic phenomenon who choose the camps as a topic for their theses. By now, the literature on the camps, popular as well as academic, is overwhelming. The book under review, Witchcraft as a Social Diagnosis by Roxane Richter and co-authors, is part of this growing interest in the plight of women in these witch camps. Two of the authors (Richter and Flowers) are medical doctors and prominent members of World Mission Possible, a nonprofit organization that "offers vision and medical care to the underserved in rural communities and indigent in sixteen nations." The third author, Bongmba, is a Christian theologian. The title of the book is somewhat misleading; it suggests that the authors use the phenomenon of witchcraft as a lens or perspective for exploring social conditions in local communities. But the book is rather an engaging plea for relieving the plight of marginalized and stigmatized women with an emphasis on social and medical suffering. The authors' field location is the witch camp near Gbani, a...

Community Security and Justice under United Nations Governance: Lessons from Chiefs’ Courts in South Sudan’s Protection of Civilians Sites

This article examines the public authority of chiefs’ courts within the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) Protection of Civilians Sites (PoCs). After December 2013, UNMISS peacekeepers opened the gates of their bases to around 200,000 civilians fleeing war. This unintentionally created a legal and political anomaly. Over time, conflicts and crimes rose within the sites, and UNMISS improvised a form of administration. But while the internationals sought technical solutions, people displaced within the sites turned to familiar ‘customary’ methods to manage problems of insecurity, establishing chiefs’ courts. The PoC sites became an arena of plural authorities, with chiefs working alongside camp administrators, peacekeepers and humanitarian actors. We explore how and why the chiefs responded to insecurity within the sites and whether they engaged with, or diverged from United Nations actors and international norms. We demonstrate that justice remains central to the provision of security in contexts of war and displacement. International peace interventions are rightly wary of ‘customary’ justice processes that prioritise communities and families at the expense of individual rights, but this unique case shows that they are sources of trust and consistency that are resilient, adaptable and can contribute to human security.

The Chiefs of Community Policing in Rural Sierra Leone

ABSTRACTThis paper argues that when police reform in Sierra Leone was instituted to consolidate a state system after the country's civil war ended in 2002, it reproduced a hybrid order instead that is embodied by Sierra Leone's primary local leaders: paramount and lesser chiefs. In this sense, policing has a distinctly political quality to it because those who enforce order also define what order is and determine access to resources. The hybrid authority of Sierra Leone's chiefs emanates from multiple state-based and localised sources simultaneously and comes into play as policing takes place and police reform moves forward. This argument is substantiated by an ethnographic exploration of how and with what implications community policing has been introduced in Peyima, a small town in Kono District, and focuses on one of its primary institutional expressions, Local Policing Partnership Boards.

REFASHIONING CHIEFTAINCY IN GHANA: FESTIVAL DRESS, CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP AND NEW LOGICS OF VALUE

ABSTRACTAnnual festivals in Ghana celebrate the agricultural harvest and commemorate the political authority of local chiefs. Today, multinational corporations such as Guinness, MTN and Vodafone sponsor almost all aspects of festival production. Sponsor participation has transformed festivals into sites saturated with images of commodities and corporate brands. While some chiefs support corporate participation, others deplore sponsors, who they perceive as threatening chiefs' control over the festival arena. A critical medium through which chiefs police and participate in discourses about cultural and political legitimacy is dress: chiefs clothe members of their entourages alternatively in T-shirts with corporate logos and T-shirts with images of chiefs. During festivals, chiefs orchestrate embodied practices to assert new claims to their political authority based on the nobility of their lineage or their participation in global economic networks. Through an exploration of contemporary dress practices, I argue that what is at stake in corporate-sponsored festivals is the emergence of new logics of value that challenge people to reassess the social and economic relations that underlie the production of political power in Ghana.

Hunter-Gatherers’ Self-Governance: Untying the Traditional Authority of Chiefs from the Western Toba Civil Association

The Integral Law for Aborigines (426/84) was the first legal instrument in Argentina systematically addressing indigenous peoples’ rights. It was modeled on the Paraguayan Law for Indigenous Communities (901/81). Both granted collective property rights. I discuss Article 9 of Decree 574/85 in Law 426, requiring that former hunter-gatherer bands would form civil associations, like those in the non-profit sector. The policymakers later amended the clause on governance inserting the authority of chiefs along that of democratically elected delegates. I describe the Western Toba’s journey to obtaining collective land title by introducing characteristics of traditional leadership, discussing local antecedents leading to the law, comparing it to the Paraguayan law, and analyzing the process through which the Toba complied with legal requirements.

‘Somebody Must Necessarily Go to Bring this Drink’

ABSTRACTThe rise of smuggling in eastern Ghana is directly related to the establishment of the colonial state. Elderly Ghanaians discuss gin smuggling in the context of a colonial state which tried to curb it, but also emphasize the authority of chiefs and elders who encouraged it. Based on a combination of interviews and archival research, this article first examines the uses of imported gin and suggests why it became one of the most important smuggled goods. There follows an in-depth look at the organization of the smuggling enterprises, and an exploration of how smugglers managed their dealings with the colonial state as well as local society. The complex and changing relations between African smugglers, traditional chiefs, local communities and the colonial state illustrate the irrelevance of the colonial state in the moral picture, and also how the gin smugglers' engagement with the wider world was shaped by an utterly local perspective.

The other Zulus: the spread of Zulu ethnicity in colonial South Africa

In 1879, the British colony of Natal invaded the neighboring Zulu kingdom. Large numbers of Natal Africans fought with the British against the Zulus, enabling the British to claim victory and, ultimately, to annex the Zulu kingdom. Less than thirty years later, in 1906, many of those same Natal Africans, and their descendants, rebelled against the British in the name of the Zulu king. In The Other Zulus , a thorough history of Zulu ethnicity during the colonial period, Michael R. Mahoney shows that the lower classes of Natal, rather than its elites, initiated the transformation in ethnic self-identification, and they did so for multiple reasons. The resentment that Natal Africans felt toward the Zulu king diminished as his power was curtailed by the British. The most negative consequences of colonialism may have taken several decades to affect the daily lives of most Africans. Natal Africans are likely to have experienced the oppression of British rule more immediately and intensely in 1906 than they had in 1879. Meanwhile, labor migration to the gold mines of Johannesburg politicized the young men of Natal. Mahoney's fine-grained local history shows that these young migrants constructed and claimed a new Zulu identity, both to challenge the patriarchal authority of African chiefs and to fight colonial rule.

Land, graves and belonging: land reform and the politics of belonging in newly resettled farms in Gutu, 2000–2009

The return to ancestral lands has been at the centre of the land reform rhetoric in Zimbabwe. This argument is premised on the fact that many communities were displaced from their ancestral lands during the colonial period hence they saw the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) in 2000 as an opportunity for them to ‘return’ to their old homes. This article explores and analyses the issues surrounding land disputes in one village model A1 after the land reform programme and the role played by the regime of traditional authorities in determining how belonging is negotiated. It also analyses the conflicts between autochthons and migrants over the control of the new resettlement areas and over the authority of village heads and chiefs. Claims to land based on ancestral graves and autochthony are also analysed in view of the power of political authorities in land allocation. This paper offers an analysis of the intricacies of land reform in the newly resettled areas and examines the interface between politics and traditional authority on how belonging is negotiated in these contexts. The article is largely based on qualitative interviews with resettled farmers in Gutu, informal interactions as well as personal observations.

From Pentecostalism to politics: mass literacy and community development in late colonial Northern Ghana

This article takes as its starting point a strike among African trainee literacy workers in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in 1952. While the existing literature tends to concentrate on the tensions and contradictions in British colonial education policy, this article uses the strike to investigate how these agendas were experienced by, and engendered opposition from, literacy workers on the ground. It argues that, in their efforts to link mass literacy to community development, and to secure legitimacy for their campaigns, colonial officials depended heavily upon the authority of chiefs. This strategy backfired because it ignored both shorterterm instances of chiefly venality, and the longer history of colonial taxation and labour demands which had been enforced on Northern peoples through chiefs. The African trainees went on strike because they were astute in recognising how different forms of educational provision fitted into the re‐ordering of local, regional and national power relations as the Gold Coast approached Independence.

Big City Superintendent as Powerful CEO: Paul Vallas in Philadelphia

This case study of the leadership of Paul Vallas as CEO of the Philadelphia city schools from 2002–2007 demonstrates that No Child Left Behind has enhanced the formal authority of big city district chiefs even though they are constrained by its accountability mandates and by the pressures from a growing number of influential stakeholder groups. In Vallas's case, he was also able to take advantage of powers conferred on him and the district's School Reform Commission by the state's takeover of the district. District leaders such as Vallas who augment such positional power with their own persuasive brand of leadership are particularly well suited for the task of urban district improvement.

Violence, Sacrifice and Chiefship in Central Equatoria, Southern Sudan

AbstractThis article explores specific oral histories and chiefship debates in the aftermath of the SPLA war in two Southern Sudanese chiefdoms. It argues that these local histories reveal much about the historical relationship between state and society – and in particular the mediation with external violence – which is central to understanding the legitimacy of local authority. Rather than being the strong arm of the state, chiefs have ideally mediated and deflected state (and rebel) violence. Unlike other African examples, they have been marginal both in landowning and patrician structures, so that chiefship has offered a more inclusive and pragmatic definition of community than have patrilineal discourses. As elsewhere in Southern Sudan, the early chiefs were often proxy mediators with marginal or outside origins and their access to government force has been balanced by the continuing authority of rain chiefs, elders, senior lineages and ‘maternal uncles’. Current governance interventions which treat chiefs as sole custodians of community land and customs may not be compatible with local understandings of the role of the chief. Oral histories of chiefship origins reflect a symbolic bargain made with government and with chiefs, whereby the latter use their ‘good speech’ to mediate violence, and if necessary sacrifice themselves to ‘bail’ people from external/government force.

Violence, Sacrifice and Chiefship in Central Equatoria, Southern Sudan

This article explores specific oral histories and chiefship debates in the aftermath of the SPLA war in two Southern Sudanese chiefdoms. It argues that these local histories reveal much about the historical relationship between state and society – and in particular the mediation with external violence – which is central to understanding the legitimacy of local authority. Rather than being the strong arm of the state, chiefs have ideally mediated and deflected state (and rebel) violence. Unlike other African examples, they have been marginal both in landowning and patrician structures, so that chiefship has offered a more inclusive and pragmatic definition of community than have patrilineal discourses. As elsewhere in Southern Sudan, the early chiefs were often proxy mediators with marginal or outside origins and their access to government force has been balanced by the continuing authority of rain chiefs, elders, senior lineages and ‘maternal uncles’. Current governance interventions which treat chiefs as sole custodians of community land and customs may not be compatible with local understandings of the role of the chief. Oral histories of chiefship origins reflect a symbolic bargain made with government and with chiefs, whereby the latter use their ‘good speech’ to mediate violence, and if necessary sacrifice themselves to ‘bail’ people from external/government force.

The Politics of Land Reform: Tenure and Political Authority in Rural Kwazulu‐Natal

When South Africa's land reform programme finally reached rural Umbumbulu, a potential for conflict over land emerged unexpectedly. Strategically located near a major urban centre, residents of this region have long relied on wages and social welfare grants. Land was valued primarily for residential security and as a symbolic representation of community membership, rather than for productive purposes. This emphasis on community membership, however, created the potential for conflict when a local chief challenged a civil society group over their authority to claim land. With the government's continued hesitancy to challenge the authority of chiefs, land reform provided an opportunity for local chiefs to reinforce their position and potentially to expand the amount of land under their jurisdiction. This agenda conflicted both with the government's interest in developing commercial agriculture and local residents’ desire for rural land as security in the context of high levels of unemployment.

Species Protection, the Changing Informal Economy, and the Politics of Access to the Bushmeat Trade in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Our understanding of the linkages between the bushmeat trade and the wider informal economy is limited. This lack of knowledge is particularly problematic for conservation under conditions of political instability, when the informal economy can be highly dynamic and impacts on wildlife populations can be severe. To explore these interlinked processes, we conducted a study of the bushmeat trade in Garamba National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo, through a combination of market surveys, semistructured interviews, and direct observation. We focused on the sale of protected and unprotected species in urban and rural markets, and the bushmeat commodity chains that supplied these markets, under conditions of political stability and armed conflict. During peacetime, protected species from the park (predominantly elephant and buffalo) rarely appeared in the rural markets, but they comprised more than half of all bushmeat sales in the urban markets. This pattern reflected differences in the rural and urban commodity chains. Automatic weapons were urban trade. The use of such weapons was discouraged by the traditional chiefs, who administered the village markets. During wartime, the sales of protected species in the urban markets increased fivefold because the military officers fled, leaving behind an open-access system that led to a massive increase in the exploitation of protected species. In contrast, the rural markets remained relatively stable because of the continued authority of the village chiefs. Our results indicate that sociopolitical factors can be an important determinant of species offtake and, therefore, that knowledge of the bushmeat commodity chain can be vital to controlling theprocesses that drive species extraction. In addition, our findings suggest that traditional authorities can be potentially valuable partners for bushmeat management.