The natives of British Central Africa

by Alice Werner

The Yao chief, Kapeni, belonged to the Abanda clan, and was succeeded on his death, not by any of his sons (who, of course, were not Abanda), but by the son of his sister, born of the same mother. Had any younger sons of his mother survived, they would have had the preference; but half-brothers or sisters (children of the same father, but not of the same mother), are not counted as relatives—except that they cannot marry. According to the Yao system of descent, a man should be able to marry his father’s sisters, but this is seldom done, and is, in fact, considered very wrong; but he may marry their daughters. Where chilawa prevails, however, these too are forbidden—they are really reckoned as sisters.

Native terms of relationship are often very puzzling. Mbale is a word which may be applied to a brother, sister, cousin, or relative of almost any sort—sometimes even to a friend. There is no word for ‘sister’ or ‘brother’; but there are words meaning ‘elder brother (or sister)’ and ‘younger brother (or sister)’; and these are never used apart from their possessive pronouns. There is a word which means ‘sister’ when used by a brother, and ‘brother’ when used by a sister, but is never applied to one of the same sex as the speaker. A man will call all his father’s brothers ‘father,’ and all his mother’s sisters ‘mother’; and the term ‘grandparents’ may include all the great-uncles and great-aunts.

Mr. Duff Macdonald well shows the process by which a family may grow into a small state. A man wishing to found a new village asks permission of his chief—which in most cases is readily granted—and moves out into the bush with his wives and children. Temporary shelters are built, and then the man cuts down the trees, while his wives hoe up the ground for gardens; and, when these are ready, and planted, more permanent dwellings are erected. If there are daughters old enough to marry, the village is soon enlarged by the sons-in-law who come and build their huts there. The new chief may be accompanied by his younger brothers, or by friends who call themselves by that name, and place themselves under his authority. As the new settlement grows in power and importance, it will be joined by others, and may grow wealthy by trading.

In general, the Bantu have everywhere much the same system of government: the same features can nearly always be traced, even when modified by local circumstances. The Anyanja, when they first became known to Europeans, lived in small villages (as they do now), each under the control of its own head-man. A district, containing a large number of villages, was ruled by a sub-chief: such were Chinsunzi and Kankomba, in the Shiré Highlands, in 1861; and over the whole country was the Paramount Chief, or Rundo (Lundu), who at the same period was Mankokwe.[31] Mankokwe’s dominions appear to have extended from Lake Chilwa to the Shiré, and down the latter river as far as the Ruo; below the Ruo was another paramount chief, Tingani. Above the confluence of the Shiré and the Zambezi, between Kebrabasa and Zumbo, were two other independent Nyanja chiefs, Sandia and Mpende. All these chiefs seem at one time to have been ‘united under the government of their great chief, Undi, whose empire extended from Lake Shirwa to the River Loangwa; but after Undi’s death it fell to pieces, and a large portion of it on the Zambezi was absorbed by their powerful southern neighbours, the Banyai.’[32] This process has been repeated over and over again in the history of Africa. The Anyanja, being an agricultural (and on the whole a peaceable) people, kept up no national life outside their little village communities, but tended more and more to what German historians call Particularism. Consequently, they were unable to withstand the shock of an invasion; and their organisation, such as it was, went to pieces before the onslaught of Yaos, Makololo, and Angoni.

Women chiefs are mentioned several times by Livingstone as ruling in various parts of this region: Chikandakadzi, near Morambala (her position with regard to Tingani is not stated); Nyango, who seems to have ranked as Rundo in part of the Upper Shiré Valley, and Mamburuma, near Zumbo on the Zambezi; also Manenko and Nyamosana in the Lunda country. More recently, we find Nalolo, a sister of Liwanika, occupying the position of a chief in the Barotse country. The present Kazembe appears to be a woman. Sebituane, the Makololo chief, appointed his daughter as his successor, ‘probably,’ says Livingstone, ‘in imitation of some of the negro tribes with whom he had come into contact.’ She, however, soon resigned what proved a distasteful position; for her father, unwilling that she should transfer her power to a husband, directed her not to marry, but to contract any number of temporary alliances. It may be, however, that this feature of the situation was due, not so much to Sebituane’s Bechuana ideas of the husband necessarily being ‘the woman’s lord,’ as to some lingering Rotse and Lunda traditions of polyandry; and a writer in the Livingstonia Missionary Magazine characterises the present Kazembe as ‘a thoroughly bad woman—a woman of Samaria over again,’ which may be due to a misunderstanding of a very peculiar institution.

It is impossible not to connect these scattered indications with those afforded by the Yao system of kinship, and marriage customs, as to the state of things in an earlier period of which we have no record.

The Yao tribal organisation is in itself much the same as that of the Anyanja, but it was more closely knit, owing to the exigencies of war; and the relations of the conquerors to the conquered tribes must be distinguished from those which obtained among themselves. But it must be remembered that the Yaos were not an aggressive tribe, organised for conquest, under a chief like Tshaka or Mziligazi. In their own country—between Lake Chilwa and the Upper Rovuma—they seem to have been both a pastoral and an industrial people. ‘Yao-land proper,’ says Archdeacon Johnson, ‘had plenty of smelting-furnaces, cattle, and peas and beans, plenty for man and beast.’ They cultivated ‘down both sides of the Lujenda, till the valleys were full of Indian corn, and settlement extended its fields to those of the next settlement.’ The Machinga, who occupied this country, were dislodged by the Alolo (Makua) from the south-east, who themselves expelled from the north by the (Zulu) Magwangwara, drove them into the country of the Mangoche, forcing the latter into the Shiré Highlands. This was the so-called invasion of 1861.

There are five branches of the Yao nation: the Makale, near the sources of the Rovuma; the Namataka (or Mwembe people), on the hills west of the Lujenda; the Masaninga, Mangoche, and Machinga. The last three were the tribes who entered the Shiré Highlands. Their chiefs seem to have been quite independent of one another; Kapeni of Sochi was perhaps the most powerful.

The chieftainship is hereditary, and passes, as already stated, to the deceased’s younger brothers in succession, or, failing those, to the eldest son of his sister. The new chief takes, at the same time, his predecessor’s official name, so that there is always a Kapeni, or Malemya, or Mponda, as the case may be. The Angoni chiefs, however, observe the Zulu rule of inheritance, and are succeeded by the eldest son of the principal (or ‘official’) wife, who is the one married after accession—earlier ones do not count.