Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 505
ethnic majority they were asked to advise and recommend in situations of crisis. In that
context, the concept of gadghale clearly did not refer to one single person as decision maker,
but rather to a council of elders representing the largest group being gadghale (majority) who
came to a decision or recommendation, which according to our Dghweɗe protagonists was
then mostly accepted by everybody else.
I have doubts as to whether there was ever such a council of elders representing the whole of
Dghweɗe, and perhaps the opinions of our oral sources were still influenced by the
administrative role of the gidegal/gadegal from colonial times. Perhaps the concept had been
confused with the perception that 'Johode' (Ghwa'a) was traditionally seen as the early arrival
zone of many groups of the Gwoza hills who traced their ancestry back to Tur. We remember
the role of Durghwe as a subregional mountain shrine, and how the various groups that had
gathered in Dghweɗe to organise the arrest of Hamman Yaji shortly after the end of World
War One decided to make the Ghwa'a ward head Vaima/Baima the leader of a group of
representatives from various ethnic groups as far away as Tur, because they had all suffered
from Hamman Yaji's attacks. We know that Vaima was the first bulama of Ghwa'a (see Lewis
1925) and also a member of the Ɗagha peacemaker lineage, and that he ritually swallowed a
type of Cissus quadrangularis which reportedly would have killed anyone who was not a
Ɗagha peacemaker. Whether there was a council of elders representing the largest lineage of
Ghwa'a which supported the choice of Vaima remains unknown, but Vaima was certainly not
a member of that majority lineage, but he belonged to one of the specialist lineages which was
a minority lineage not only in Ghwa'a but across the whole of Dghweɗe.
According to John's inquiries about the power of lineage majorities (gadghale) in Dghweɗe, it
was the descendants of Dzata (Dzata-Washile) who represented the most numerous lineage in
Ghwa'a. In terms of population number they were followed by the descendants of Ngaladewe
and Btha, while the Nighine were reportedly the smallest local lineage group:
1. Dzata
2. Ngaladewe
3. Btha
4. Nighine
(gadghala = majority lineage)
(thaghaya = custodian lineage)
If we compare the above list with Figure 13 in Chapter 3.6, and consult the oral history of the
Dzata and the Btha lineages, we realise that the descendants of Washile had indeed increased
most out of all the other major lineages. They then split up, and we recognise that all the
'brothers' of Dzata had left Ghwa'a to settle first in Taghadigile and then in Kunde, as
explained in Chapter 3.4. The other point we might want to recall here is that Ghwa'a,
Taghadigile and Kunde formed a traditional war alliance (see Figure 8a). In terms of an
internal conflict, we remember that the expanding descendants of Washile had a fight that led
to Dzata remaining in Ghwa'a. This highlights that a local majority lineage (gadghale) such as
Dzata did not continuously grow in size in one locality but fragmented as a result of
infighting. We remember that the most powerful example of lineage infighting was between
the lineages of the expanding Vaghagaya-Mughuze, and that the Vaghagaya eventually
became the largest late pre-colonial Dghweɗe lineage section. The other point we need to note
when looking at the above list of four lineages is that the Btha lineage, as the lineage which
traditionally provided the seventh-born earth priest for Ghwa'a and Durghwe, was not a
member of the most numerous lineage and neither a member of the most senior major lineage.
This also confirms our earlier conclusion that the increase in population number of individual
local Dghweɗe lineage groups was in oral historical terms most often the most recent
development. In contrast, a smaller lineage group might have represented the earlier settlers,
as the narrative concerning the war between the Gudule and the expanding Mughuze-Ruwa in
southern Dghweɗe demonstrated. But still, we consider it unlikely that there was ever an
overall majority for Dghweɗe as a whole. Instead, the descendants of Vaghagaya (in what
became administrative Korana Basa) and those of Thakara (linked to Ghwa'a) were, in terms
of a gadghale type of lineage majority, two separate parts of late pre-colonial Dghweɗe.
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