Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 501
Chapter 3.21
Two ways of decision making in Dghweɗe of the past
Introduction
In this chapter we want to look at two aspects of decision making in Dghweɗe of the past.
One was to do with the political power of majorities, promoted during the colonial period as
'clan councils' to stimulate self-governance in the Gwoza hills, and the other was decision
making through the belief in divination. We already learned in Chapter 3.15 that divination
was a tool for assessing sorcery claims before the accused had to go through an ordeal of
proclaiming innocence in public. This was part of the the traditional justice system, but there
were many other situations in which divination was required. While the first approach to
decision making was to do with lineage majorities and their political representation by elders,
the second was controlled by gifted individuals often referred to as Ɗagha diviners. We know
there were two groups of Ɗagha in Dghweɗe, one known as the Ɗagha peacemakers and the
other to whom we referred as the Ɗagha Kadzgwara (Chapter 3.4). While the first was an
associated lineage of the Tur tradition, we connected the Ɗagha Kadzgwara tradition to the
Lamang of Hambagda and their links to Kwalika. In our Gwoza notes we also followed a
wider Ɗagha tradition along the western foothills to a place called Mutube, which we traced
back to the Margi of Mulgwe. In Dghweɗe any specially gifted individual who was not a
member of either of these Ɗagha groups could also be referred to as a Ɗagha diviner.
The reason why we have put these two categories together in one chapter, one being
individual actors and specialist diviners, and the other being related to the political structure
of the Dghweɗe, is the underlying cosmological worldview that both represented. We want to
show that decision making in late-precolonial Dghweɗe had a strong egalitarian aspect, within
which divination played a key role as a social belief system. We will begin with the colonial
history of the power of majority (gadghale), starting with the concept of gadegal or gidegal
as it was discussed during the 1940s and 1950s by various colonial officers, and then present
our own research from 2010. We will show how it was interpreted in particular by Eustace
(1939) and then by Reynolds (1955), whereby Reynolds came closest to its actual meaning
according to how our oral sources explained it. Unfortunately these notes were only made in
2010 and contain only a few examples of the type of majority decisions made by the
Dghweɗe. What we can establish however is that the protocols differed greatly from the ones
the administrative colonial officers had in mind for montagnard self-governance. One of the
main problems for the colonials was their idea of 'lineage heads' who were supposed to act as
traditional chiefs, but the original Dghweɗe concept of gadghale did not contain chieftaincy.
In the next section we will start by presenting the different ways of practising divination in
Dghweɗe of the past. Again we are not able to make an informed decision as to which of the
divination systems was most frequently used, but will try to come up with a suggestion. We
will also present photographs from 1996 of how our diviner and healer friend Katiwa ga
Ghuda of Dzga demonstrated the use of a floating type of Cissus quadrangularis called vavanz
mandatha as part of a divine treatment to bring back a lost human spirit. We excluded
divination from the chapter about Dghweɗe ideas around what we referred to as existential
personhood, but will revisit the possible meaning of what a lost or abducted spirit once stood
for. By discussing the Dghweɗe belief that divination was not only an application for humans
but also a method of determining the hidden truth behind an environmental event or social
circumstance, we will look at the link between divination and the wellbeing of individuals.
The Dghweɗe themselves did not necessarily distinguish between natural and divine causes,
as we know from their worldview and their past relationship with phenomena of the physical
environment, such as rain or the lack of it, and there were many other decisions influenced by
divination which we do not know much about.
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