An African on African Life

Brian Cathcart selects an article from the New Statesman archive. This week an article from 17 September 1938 by HN Brailsforda former foreign correspondent and a passionate socialist

Facing Mount Kenya
By Jomo Kenyatta, with an Introduction by B. Malinowski. Secker and Warburg. 12s. 6d.

Bantu Beliefs and Magic
By C. W. Hobley, with an Introduction by Sir James G. Frazer. Witherby. 15s.

The Origin of Inequality of the Social Classes
By Gunnar Landtman. Kegan Paul. 21s.

Facing Mount Kenya counts as an event in anthropological literature. How often has a man of a primitive race written a book about the customs, rites and institutions of his own people, and done it, moreover, with scientific competence and some literary power? One classical instance there is. Garcilaso de la Vega wrote two notable books about the Incas, but if he had a Peruvian mother, he had a Spanish father. Several Indian primitive races of their country, but they are Brahmins, as far removed from the aboriginals they studied as any European. Mr. Kenyatta, on the other hand, is a full-blooded member of Gikuyu (usually spelt with a K) people, reared in its traditions, duly initiated a warrior and a member of his tribal council, proud of his African blood and ways of thought. He has, however, studied anthropology in Europe, and one must congratulate Professor Malinowski on his brilliant pupil. While he is at pains to be accurate in his detailed accounts of the family system of the Gikuyu, their economic life, their rites and magic, he is not afraid to write with strong feeling, and when he does so, he can use our language with power and skill. Like the Inca, de la Vega, he is addressing the people who conquered his own fold, and like him he tends to idealise the vanquished culture, but he has a sense of his scientific duty that the sixteenth century writer lacked. The result is a book unique in anthropological literature, for it is an account of the social institutions and religious rites of an African people penetrated by the emotions that give to customs and observances their meaning. It is only the rarest of Europeans who possess the imagination to feel a primitive rite, as it were, from within. The average observer sees only the externals, the movements and the trappings. Anthropologists will prize this book, but it should interest everyone who cares to inform himself about the ways of life and modes of thought of an African people, once happy and well adjusted to its environment, whom we have disturbed and wronged.

The student of religion will find much to interest him in Mr. Kenyatta's account of the ideas and rites of the Gikuyu. Their high god, Ngai, is a sky-god, who has his seat on "the mountain of brightness," Mount Kenya, towards which his worshippers turn in prayer. Man may approach him and enlist his concern, never for an individual’s needs, but only on behalf of a social group. The whole tribe may do this, notably to avert a drought or an epidemic, but normally the social unit that may invoke his aid is the patriarchal family of perhaps one or even two hundred persons. The occasions when a family may call on him are the four crises in human life, birth, initiation, marriage and death, and then only as a group affected by these events. Sacred trees, symbolising mountains, serve as the houses of god in some of these rites de passage. The form of prayer used by the elders at all public gatherings beseeches Ngai for wisdom, health, tranquillity and the increase of the fields and flocks. In personal emergencies, which do not concern this high god, who cares only for the tribe or the family group, the individual may seek the aid or avert the wrath of an ancestor. Mr. Kenyatta insists that ancestors are not "worshipped." The idea that penetrates the whole social life of this people is rather "communion with ancestors." This is perpetuated through contact with the soil in which the ancestors are buried. It is felt that they continually guide the elders. They are the guardians of the tree of god, and are physically present in the processions which pace around it. The gifts of beer or mutton offered to them are not, we are told, sacrifices so much as "tributes symbolising the gifts which the departed elders would have received had they been alive." Though ancestral spirits may injure a descendant who has offended them, they are evidently regarded, contrary to Sir James Frazer’s opinion, as primarily benevolent. It is their especial concern to maintain harmony with the family group and the tribe, and all quarrels must be composed before any solemn rite. The ancestors are, moreover, the guardians of the aged and the weak. The pages dealing with religion gain much from the actual text of prayers used in each rite.

Sometimes this quotation of the actual words used affords a valuable clue. Brides in this tribe, as in so many others, must behave with an ironical reluctance and modesty. Does this spring, as Crawley argues in The Mystic Rose, from a dread of sex? Or does it mean that in this rite, as in others, the protagonist is a spiritual person, who behaves as spirits do? The words she uses seem to be a case of "backward speaking" (p. 172), such as is characteristic of ghosts. Again, Mr. Kenyatta's account of the initiation rite brings out very clearly the significance of its several phases, which run parallel to many others the world over. Particularly interesting is the mimic enactment of a delivery, when the initiates are "born again" as children of the whole tribe. Again, the author helps us to realise the emotional tie that binds together as companions for life all members of the same age-class, who were initiated at the same time. This even involves, as a recognised obligation of hospitality, the sharing of wives with members of one's age-group. Finally, he gives a clear account of the working of the singular form of dual organisation, the itwika, by which successive generations replace each other in the government of the tribe. But how did this peculiar institution originate?

This book is, however, something more than a lively and objective account of the way of life of the Gikuyu. Throughout it runs the protest of a deeply wronged people, whose traditional institutions are in decay, while civilisation has brought them as yet little more than taxes, armed police, hired labour and a sense of bondage and frustration. The main wrong was, of course, the appropriation of their land for European settlement. But Mr. Kenyatta dwells on two further evils due to possibly interested ignorance. The assumption was made that the land of the Gikuyu was under communal ownership: consequently it now fell to the Crown. Actually, he maintains, ownership is individual, and is vested in the head of the family, who, however, acts as a trustee, and may allow others to cultivate it, but never charges a rent. Further, he maintains that the traditional democracy of the tribe has been destroyed. Its governing body was the council of elders: it had no "chiefs." To-day, under the European official, a native chief or headman has been nominated, who can wield no moral authority, since he represents not the people but their conquerors, and is in fact both venal and arbitrary. The abandonment of the old sanctions for law, the oath and the curse, has led to the corruption of justice. The general picture is of a people rapidly degenerating, because it is losing its old system of education for social duty, and the cement of the age-classes that give it solidarity and discipline. To this moving and readable book is prefixed a dedication to all the dispossessed youth of Africa: "for perpetuation of communion with ancestral spirits through the fight of African freedom, and in the firm faith that the dead, the living and the unborn will unite to rebuild the destroyed shrines."

Much of the same ground is covered by Mr. Hobley, a retired senior official of Kenya Colony. His description of the institutions, rites and magic of the Gikuyu is both accurate and ample, but it lacks the emotional insight of Mr. Kenyatta's account. When he turns to the social and political outlook of to-day, though he writes from a conservative standpoint, he is hardly more complacent than our African critic. He admits (p. 319) that the original alienation of tribal lands was indefensible, and concedes the hardship of the native "squatters'" case. He believes that white prestige suffered severely in the war, and that the confidence of the natives in the Government has greatly lessened in recent years. He is almost as outspoken as Mr. Kenyatta in condemning the nominated "headmen," whose numerous retainers commonly practise "extortion" (pp 314-5). He says, frankly, and he is doubtless right, that Christianity, as a religion of personal salvation, is unsuited to the social mind of these Africans. Islam may be more congenial, but he thinks it politically dangerous. He describes the missionary system of education as narrow and inefficient, but in any event 90 per cent. of the children escape any formal schooling, good or bad. After pondering this cheerless picture drawn by a former official, the reader is not impressed by his exhortation to trust the man on the spot.

Professor Landtman's title promises rather more than he performs. This big book is the fruit of enormous industry. The whole literature of anthropology is laid under tribute to furnish accounts from all over the world of primitive conditions viewed from the standpoint of class-structure. We start from the original undifferentiated classless society. The influence of personal talent, occupations and wealth is then considered. The two fullest chapters deal with wizards and priests (surely rather an occupation than a "class"!), and with slavery. So we pass to the nobility and therefore to councils of elders (surely the more primitive institution). One cannot praise the book too highly as a compilation of recorded facts. It is regrettable that the author uses his first-hand knowledge of the Kiwai Papuans so sparingly. His method is throughout that of the comparative school. The canvas is flat. Peoples of the most various levels of culture are juxtaposed and no allowance is made either for the possibility of degeneration or for the diffusion of culture. The treatment of the institution of aristocracy is peculiarly disappointing. Can one grasp the meaning of nobility without at least discussing the possibility that it arose as a by-product of the institution of quasi-divine kingship? But analysis in this book is almost wholly absent, and it leads to few conclusions that might enlighten the student of sociology. As an orderly collection of material, however, it deserves our gratitude.

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