Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 506
However, Ghwa'a still had a ritual lead role when it came to subregional emergencies,
especially when it involved a sacrifice to Durghwe, but that had nothing to do with lineage
majorities and only with the fact that Durghwe was part of Ghwa'a.
If we try to imagine what kind of circumstantial situation might have occurred in the past
which required a gadghale majority to make a recommendation to the minority groups of
Ghwa'a, we presumably need to think of some form of environmental crisis. One scenario
could have been ongoing aridity leading to a food shortage or even famine. According to John
such a scenario could have meant that the Dzata lineage would have tried to trigger a majority
decision in which the Gaske rainmakers would have been advised to carry out rain rituals in
specific localities. If the rainmakers were not successful, the majority of the lineages of
Ghwa'a could authorise their punishment or even force them to leave. Another potential
scenario might have been that the seventh-born lineage priest from the Btha lineage would be
advised via the gadghale majority (presumably even from outside Ghwa'a) to carry out a
certain ritual at the Durghwe mountain shrine. Such specific ritual interventions most likely
also involved divination carried out by a Ɗagha diviner to determine the type of sacrifice
required. Another case might have been a severe sorcery accusation or any other conflict
situation among the different local lineage groups, an inference which would suggest that
some gadghale majority decisions could also be seen as part of the pre-colonial justice
system.
Also, the paying or non-paying of tribute while still under Mandara rule during pre-colonial
times might have been triggered by a council of elders representing the majority system
known as gadghale. Such a situation might have occurred when the Wandala attempted to
reinforce tribute payments after they had lapsed. The latter point would also explain why the
British system of indirect rule tried to bring about its own customary approach of 'Clan
Councils' in order to establish self-governance in the hills in order to introduce their tax
collection system. Unfortunately, trying to promote representatives of such colonial
institutions to encourage the hill populations to pay taxes did not work out and led to even
more conflict. As a result, the hill populations were accused by Eustace in 1939 of being
backward and primitive, and this might eventually have led to the application of force by the
newly emerging colonial elite district heads of Gwoza. We know that in 1953 they attempted
to force, in association with the shehu of Bama, the selected group of men from Ghwa'a to
accept resettlement in the adjacent plains if they did not cooperate with the new system of
self-governance. It is indeed possible that bulama Fulata, who was beaten up by his lineage
brothers in Ghwa'a in 1953, was a member of the Dzata lineage. However, the reason why his
life was threatened was not that he had disappointed his people as a representative of the
gadghale system of self-governance, but because he had tried to force tax collection upon
them in his function as an official representative of the newly forming local elite of indirect
rule in Gwoza.
Many of the above examples are conclusions drawn from our earlier description of Dghweɗe
oral history retold, and are therefore meaningful speculations based on our insights about the
egalitarian aspect of Dghweɗe political organisation. We have cast them in clan and lineage
terms not because we want to present the Dghweɗe as an example of descent theory as
promoted by British social anthropology of the 1940s or 1950s, but have used the terms only
in a very loose interchangable way to describe Dghweɗe local group formation. In the context
of this we see lineages as branches of clan groups, while the colonial officers in question
obviously saw lineal descent as a customary means that could be used to introduce selfgovernance in the context of indirect rule. Instead, the gadghale system of majority suggests
that clans and lineages as local groups were equal to one another and that there was no
attached chieftaincy element. This underpins our hypothesis that the Dghweɗe were a truly
egalitarian society, and that the only factor which brought about such a lineage majority was
population number as a result of successful socio-economic reproduction, and not descent.
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