NATIVE CHIEFTAINCIES
The institution of native chieftaincies, due to the decree of 6th October, 1891, realises an idea too just and too politic for it not to receive all the extension possible. If during the first days that followed the promulgation of that decree the district Commissioners displayed praiseworthy emulation in recognising native chieftaincies, it is not less certain that these have not rendered, up to the present, all the services which we could expect, so far as they were called upon to create between the European authority and the natives a natural intermediary, having its duties and responsibilities, and calculated to facilitate the action of the Government.
The cases in which it has been applied still show the advantages of the system and testify to the greater facility with which the natives rally to the new order of things when it is personified in their eyes by the chief whom they have always recognised. It is proved that respect for the orders of authority, obedience to the laws, the execution of legal obligations, such as military recruiting and the payment of taxes,—in a word the principles of an organised social state, are more easily accepted by the natives forming part of a chieftaincy than by those who are quite independent. The chiefs, besides, have generally a real influence over the population, and thus, as has several times been said, if they feel themselves supported they will succeed in making our ideas prevail and in imposing them on the natives through our support.
Another appeal has just been quite recently made by the local government to all the chiefs of districts and zones in order to inspire them with these views, and so that they may increase the official chieftaincies to a great extent.
The instructions issued are inspired by a double object: to maintain and even to extend the authority of the chiefs over their subjects, to avoid all intervention in the internal affairs of the tribes which would be of a nature to compromise the prestige of that authority.
“It is the right of the chief,” these instructions declare, “to assure the execution of his orders according to native rules and particularly to bring to his decision the sanction demanded by native custom.”
The only restriction on the authority of the recognised native chiefs lies in the necessity for them not to run counter, in the decisions taken, to public order, that is to say, principles which are at the base of the organisation of society, as it is comprehended and wished to be by the legislator.
The chief’s authority ceases as soon as the measures taken are contrary to that public order.
Thus, in matters of private right, the native chief could not legitimately take any course which would assail the organisation of families constituted under the régime of the civil Code, and according to its prescribed form,—in other words, entered on the European statute.
On the other hand, he could not establish slavery, oppose religious liberties or commercial liberty, or order acts contrary to the penal law.