REFERENCE MARKS IN LAND SETTLEMENT
| Author | J. W. Wright |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1956.tb00513.x |
| Published date | 01 January 1956 |
| Date | 01 January 1956 |
38
JOURNAL
OF
AFRICAN
ADMINISTRATION
is discontent
with
those headmen who are
thought
to be ' new people.' Their
loyalties are
thought
to be changed,
and
it is
thought
wrong
that
young men
should
have
authority
over their elders.
Being'
new
people'
they
often
have
different notions of personal responsibility from more old-fashioned Lugbara,
and
the
frequent accusations of personal dishonesty have considerable
justification.
Headmen realise this of course.
They
see their traditional status, as
the
controllers of
what
political power there was,
threatened
and
to a large
extent
superseded by
the
chiefs, who appear to
have
control over
the
distribution of
the
new power
that
comes
untimately
from
the
Europeans. The headmen
try
to
keep as much as possible of
their
old power
and
to obtain as much as
they
can of
the
new. Their powers to
arbitrate
in cases
at
'
moots'
are
important
to
them
in
this
respect
and
they
attempt
to settle as
many
cases as possible
and
to
enter
into
as
many
others as sponsors as
they
can.
Their position in this regard is ultimately a hopeless one. They
must
try
to
regain
their
vanishing power,
but
they
do
not
realise
that
it
must
vanish
with
changes in
the
nature
of political power.
With
the
present
day
develop-
ment
of local government from a system concerned
primarily-in
practice at
any
rate-with
the
transmission of orders downwards, to a far more complex
system concerned with
the
new
and
manifold tasks of modern local administra-
tion
and
social development, there goes
the
greater transfer of power to
the
, new people.' Change in
Lugbara
is generated, as it were, from above,
and
the
, new
people'
are
the
only ones in contact with its source.
They
are
the
only
people who can manipulate
the
new bureaucracy machinery of government.
The
only
way
aheadman can maintain his vanishing
authority
is not to vie
with
the'
new people,'
but
to become one himself. In so doing he tends to
lose
the
support
of his own subjects, who have
not
yet
realised
the
nature
of
the
change
that
is taking place. Since
they
cannot maintain their power by
participation in administrative activities without losing their idcntitv as
,
traditional'
people, an alternative would be to acquire power through the
exercise of informal leadership in non-administrative spheres.
But
here abo,
in
the
present
state
of
Lugbara
society,
they
must
become'
new
people'
in
order
to do this. The spheres open to them arc at present centred mainlv in
supporting, or opposing, mission activities,
and
here ' new
people'
hold the
power. An anti-mission cult might give
them
the
opportunity
and, in this
respect, be analogous to
the
1919 Y'akan revolt.
But
so far
what
movements
of this kind have appeared in this area all originate from outside, among the
non-Lugbara who are linked in local opinion with
the'
new people.'
REFERENCE
MARKS
IN
LAND
SETTLEMENT
13v
J. W. WriRht,
M.A.,
F.IU.C.S.
Introduction
There
have been recently in this
Journal
a
number
of references to the
extremely
successful resettlement of Africans in Southern Rhodesia!
and
an
interesting
paper
by Col. J. E. S. Bradford presented to the Conference of
Commonwealth Survey Officers
at
Cambridge in August on the same sU!)jeet
has also been published in this
journal.t
The writer, who has
had
expencnce
of cadastral survey in
the
northern Sudan, drew
attention
at
that
ｃｯｮｦ･ｲ･ｾ｣･
to
the
danger of allotting rights over individual demarcated plots of land wIthout
-------------------------------
ISee
list
of
references
at
the
end
of
this
paper.
2See
journal
of
African
Administration, Vol.
VII,
Xo. 4, 1955.
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