Religions and philosophy

African religions were conceived by early European observers in terms of *magic, and as such they were generally condemned by *mission-aries as pagan superstition. This attitude changed with time but it was only through professional anthropological research that enquiry on traditional religions became free of conversion bias. John Middleton’s monograph on the religion of the Lugbara (1960) may now be reckoned as a classic of the East African literature on religion. A turning point in understanding African religions came when the subject was approached in terms of *cosmological ideas and philosophy. In 1969 a chair of African Religions and Philosophy was instituted at the University of Makerere, Uganda, its first tenant being John S.Mbiti. His work, African Religions and Philosophy (1969), provides a general synthesis of African cosmological views. Though not without debatable interpretations, as when he describes the African concept of *time as involving the idea of past and present but no future,” Mbiti’s book has met with highly popular favour and has been translated into various languages: Japanese, French, Korean and Italian.

The most recent trends in the study of East African religion have focused on cosmological views and their symbolic values, and have especially stressed the ethics of *rituals leading to reinforced communal relations and traditions (Harris 1978; Parkin 1991). A new interest in traditional medicine and the professionalization of African practitioners, encouraged by the ambitious programmes of the World Health Organization, may also be mentioned as one of the newest fields of anthropological research in Africa as well as in East Africa (Semali and Msonthi, in Last and Chavunduka 1986).

Age-systems and stateless societies

The two editors of African Political Systems were correct at the time in stressing the need for ‘a more detailed investigation of the nature of political values and of the symbols in which they are expressed’ (Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1940:23). Though they had tried to clarify the political system of stateless and non-centralized societies in their introduction, they failed to explicitly include *age-systems as a discrete kind of political organization (Bernardi 1952). It was only a few years later that †Isaac Schapera drew attention to these systems, recommending them as a special item of enquiry in his survey of anthropological research in Kenya (Schapera 1949). The general category of agesystems included much local variation in sets, classes and generations. These systems had long baffled the early colonial administrators, and only intense research by professional anthropologists was to dispel this puzzling enigma, showing how age-systems formed the political backbone of stateless societies such as, among others, the Maasai (Spencer 1965) and the Borana (Baxter 1954; Bassi 1996). A remarkable contribution by †Monica Wilson brought to the fore a peculiar age-system related to the establishment of new villages by newly initiated age-mates among the Nyakyusa of Tanzania (Wilson 1951, 1959).

The emphasis on social institutions

The new style of social anthropology, introduced in the 1930s by the teachings of *A.R.Radcliffe-Brown and *B.Malinowski, soon began to affect the type of ethnographic research conducted in East Africa, especially its emphasis on social institutions. This trend was also greatly influenced by the fieldwork of †E.E.Evans-Pritchard in the neighbouring southern Sudan among the Bantu Zande and the *Nilotic Nuer.

It is within this general context that †Jomo Kenyatta’s monograph on the Kikuyu, Facing Mount Kenya (1938), should be specially mentioned. In his introduction, Malinowski testified to Kenyatta’s competence as a trained anthropologist and to the excellence of his work. Malinowski’s words were not mere pleasantries, but a clear statement of the need for professional training as a basic requirement for ethnographic research (Malinowski in Kenyatta 1938:viii). Of course Kenyatta displayed his own bias in writing, as he put it, ‘for the benefit both of Europeans and of those Africans who have been detached from their tribal life’ (Kenyatta 1938:xvi) and in defence of the land claims of his countrymen. This may at once justify the emotional passages in his writing, and also explain the freshness of his insider’s account. Though Kenyatta was involved in the political struggle for independence in Kenya, and went on to become the President of the new republic, his monograph remains the best record of traditional Kikuyu society.

Evans-Pritchard’s influence is made evident in his introduction to †Peristiany’s monograph on the social institutions of the Kipsigis in which he makes two points: firstly ‘that the Kipsigis have a political system’, and secondly ‘that the †age-set system of the Kipsigis has a very political importance’ (Evans-Pritchard 1939:xxiii, xxxi). In the following years these two aspects of East African societies were prominent in anthropological research, especially in Kenya and Tanzania where most societies were based on stateless and decentralized systems. This kind of social organization had been mapped out by †Meyer Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, the editors of African Political Systems (1940): out of the eight essays, five were related to African kingdoms, three to stateless and segmentary societies. East Africa was represented by the kingdom of Ankole in Uganda (Oberge in Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1940) and by the stateless society of the Logoli, one group of the then so-called Bantu Kavirondo, now called Luyia (Wagner in Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1940). The Ankole were one link in the chain of the Great Lakes kingdoms of Buganda, Rwanda and Burundi. The efficient bureaucracy of these kingdoms, and the majesty of their kings, had provoked such great admiration among early European observers that they became seen in an idealized way—‘fetishized’ according to one modern commentator (Chrétien 1985:1,368)-as heirs of a mythical empire believed by the Europeans to have been founded by the Bacwezi, supposedly a superior race of ‘whitish’ immigrants. This historical invention was readily endorsed by the standard handbooks of East African history.