Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

BANGWA SOCIETY AND CULTURE

Description of the Bangwa Area, its people and their origins

In the beginning,
so the story goes, God was making his final touches to the creation of the world when he arrived tired and weary at Nsoko, a Bangwa village just over the river separating the Bayang and Bangwa countries. Since by this time it was getting dark, he asked the people for a lamp so that he might see what he was doing. Somewhat wary of a stranger in the night who wanted to borrow their possessions, they refused. God’s tired labours in the darkness, spiced perhaps with a hint of revenge, resulted in a landscape that looks hastily made, magnificently uneven and difficult to inhabit.

That story is hardly complimentary to the people of Nsoko who are normally very cordial and hospitable but it does give some idea about the topography of the Bangwa area and the nature of the people who live there. The Bangwa area can be described as a long rectangle running from the Bamileke savannah, the ‘grasslands’, in the east down to the forests of the low lying Mamfe Basin in the west. Towards the grasslands the mountains rise to 8,000 feet, part of the chain which runs from the Adamawa Plateau down to the coastal region. Mount Cameroon on the coast at Buea, the provincial capital of the south west province, and Fernando Po out in the Bight of Biafra are the only remaining active volcanoes of the range and the last vestiges of the early torment of the continent’s birth. As one descends down the steep escarpment from the grasslands to the Bayang forest, oil palm groves give way to dense rain

forest a mere 500 feet above sea level. There is, therefore, a varied climate and fauna, all within a mere 600 square miles.

There are nine chiefdoms within the Bangwa area and each chief recounts the same myth of a founding ancestor having come from the grasslands with nine retainers to settle in the forest to hunt the prolific game (Brain 1971:8, cf. de Latour 1991:147). Only Fontem, chief of the most populated kingdom, claims that his ancestors were not immigrants. That assertion, however, originates more from local politics and in his need to proclaim independence[2] from his Bamileke neighbour. The ‘emigrating hunter’ myth would seem to be borne out in the nature of traditional kinship and commercial links. Each chiefdom tended, less so in recent times, to maintain ties with the Bamileke chiefdom directly to the east rather than with the Bangwa chiefdom to either the north or the south of it. In fact, there was often a certain hostility between the neighbouring Bangwa chiefdoms which still persists to this day. The rituals of inheriting power and property, the cult of venerating ancestors through their skulls, the character of the secret societies, dances, religious beliefs and, above all, the closeness of language further attest to the close cultural similarities of the Bangwa and the Bamileke living on the grasslands around Dschang (de Latour 1991:16-17). Generally speaking, the Bangwa are a sub-group of the Bamileke but they have absorbed

2 Brain (1971) does not support Fontem’s claim but tends towards the idea that his ancestors were Bayang. Dunstan (1965) records the apparent (perhaps even wilful) confusion created by Fontem in his interview with her about his origins. My own research suggests that Bamileke immigrants from the grasslands intermarried with the Bayang and the Beketshe, an extinct group perhaps distantly related to the pygmies who were the original inhabitants of Fontem’s area, but both of these groups were quickly absorbed by the more dominant Bamileke immigrants. Fontem’s claim to being independent of the powerful Bamileke chiefs, therefore, is correct to some degree but culturally his roots are Bamileke.

and adapted a few elements of the Ekoi culture of south eastern Nigeria through contact with the forest Bayang[3].

Given the separateness of each of the nine Bangwa chiefdoms mentioned earlier, it is doubtful if the Bangwa ever thought of themselves as ‘we, the Bangwa’. The name ‘Bangwa’ derives from the stem Ngwe, a corruption of the word meaning ‘up’ and is used to refer to both the country and the language. ‘Bangwa’ is correctly written MbaNgwe, literally meaning the Up People. Today the people write the term as Nweh. The name first made its appearance with the Germans, the first Europeans to visit the area. They had come up from the Bayang area to trade (Conrau, 1899). The grouping together of the people of the area by the British colonial administration in 1921 as a unit of local government (Cadman, 1922) was prompted by a recognition of the ‘grasslands’ nature of their culture as opposed to the Ekoi/forest culture of their neighbours, the Bayang to the west, the Mbo to the south and the Mundani to the north. With the division of the German colony of Kamerun into the French and British Cameroons under the Trust Mandate of the League of Nations after the First World War, ‘Bangwa’ effectively became a Bamileke enclave under British jurisdiction and was isolated by the Bamboutos mountain range which now formed the international border. During the 1960 United Nations referendum asking the people of the southern part of the British Cameroons whether they wanted to become part of the newly independent states of Nigeria or (French) Cameroun, the Bangwa were active in campaigning for a reunification with

3 This exchange was mutual to some extent and some elements of Bamileke culture are evident among the Upper Bayang who share a border with the Bangwa. See Ruel 1969. The exchange was probably intensified with British colonial rule which administered both groups together under the one district and which put an end to the sporadic but persistent warfare between the Bayang and the Bangwa.

the latter since their traditional ties and sympathies lay more with the Bamileke. After reunification the Bangwa area was established as a sub-prefecture of local government but all major decisions, particularly about finance and development, were taken in Mamfe, the seat of the divisional (prefecture) headquarters, and the ‘capital’ of the Bayang country, the ancient enemies of the Bangwa. Nothing did more to mould the sense of a ‘Bangwa’ identity than the injustice meted out by the Bayang who pursued a policy of calculated neglect towards the busier, more enterprising people of the Bangwa area. In 1992 the area was elevated to a full prefecture with the headquarters located at Menji in the Fon of Fontem’s chiefdom. Since then the old divisions between many of the Bangwa chiefdoms have resurfaced with a vengeance in a cauldron of local politics and vying interests. Ironically, it would seem, ‘progress’ in Bangwa has produced a return to traditional enmities.

SOCIAL ORGANISATION, CULTURE AND ECONOMY

One might be tempted to think that the people who live in the dark, misty valleys of the Bangwa area lead simple, uncomplicated lives. The isolated compounds that dot the steep hills would seem to confirm this impression and yet nothing could be further from the truth. An intricate web of forest paths, kinship ties and intrigue have always connected all the Bangwa homesteads.

The Village and the Compound

The Bangwa do not live in villages in the conventional sense of that word but in compounds several hundred yards apart. The topography dictates this to a great extent but the Bangwa are famous for jealously guarding their personal independence. Villages are understood more in territorial terms with a chief,

sub-chief or noble being the landowner and having jurisdiction over all those who live within its confines. The larger compounds are arranged in the form of a fenced stockade with the meeting house dominating (see Fig.1) a flat area which has been laboriously levelled by hand (Brain 1971:10). Traditionally this building would be up to forty feet high in the form of a cube on a shallow foundation of stones surmounted by a conical thatched roof. The walls would be made of tree trunks and ant-resistant fern poles, sometimes incorporating elaborate carvings or painted designs, and covered in clay. The upper portion sometimes housed valuables such as royal paraphernalia and the skulls of the compound head’s ancestors. This large structure would always face the hillside from which the main path would descend. In keeping with the very hierarchical nature of Bangwa society there were precise regulations about how many doors and windows this building could have and where they were positioned according to a man’s rank. Similarly the etiquette regarding seating arrangements inside reflected the elaborate hierarchy of social position. Although these meeting houses were an essential feature of a chief or noble’s compound, wealthy commoners would also have them. The area in front of the meeting house was used as an open dancing place. This practice is still retained today. The traditionally built meeting houses have all disappeared, the last one having burned down in 1987. However, they have been replaced by similar structures made of concrete and zinc.

The compound head’s personal quarters were usually hidden behind the meeting house in an area surrounded by a fence of tall fern poles. It was here that he kept his heirlooms and ancestors’ skulls and received his close associates. Where the compound belonged to a chief, this area would be even more secluded and this added further to his power and authority,

wrapping it in the mysterious and mystical. This part of the compound was not to be entered casually - it was the seat and source of the chiefdom’s power and life. That secrecy and spiritual power were most potently located in the sacred forest, the Lefem, a small copse near a chief’s compound. Only the chief, his nobles and retainers could enter it. Women and commoners were debarred on pain of death.

Fig. 1 Chief’s Compound

On both sides of the compound and set at ninety degrees to the main building would be the wives’ “kitchens”. Here they would live with their children. These would be low, simple dwellings which would also incorporate a social pecking order with the first wife’s kitchen being first in line on the compound head’s right (man hand side) as he faces out. If there were a large number of wives (polygamy is a traditional norm) more kitchens would be built facing the main building thus creating a square. In most cases the square would be closed by a solid fence

with a gateway which can be closed at night. Entering these compounds one is very conscious of material wealth and social order, as if encountering a self-sufficient society in miniature (Cf. Conrau, 1899; Cadman, 1921 and Brain, 1971, 1972). Although the houses today no longer use traditional materials and building methods the compound layout has been maintained. Even in the townships the pattern is still followed, albeit on a reduced scale. These large compounds of a chief, sub-chief or noble are the focal point of the social life of the surrounding compounds, the owners of which are often ‘sons’ of the chief or noble, i.e. related through the paternal line.

Chiefs and the Social Structure

The nine Bangwa chiefdoms do not simply have one chief. Each of the chiefdoms has a paramount chief. The practice during the past ten years has been for each of them to adopt the grasslands title of Fon in order to stress their importance not only within the Bangwa area but also to the Cameroon government. Previously only the chief of Lebang was known by this title in Bangwa. Within each chiefdom there are lesser chiefs, designated as sub-chiefs (efwante). The most distinguished of these are descendants of formerly independent chiefs who were conquered or who submitted (sometimes under colonial pressure) to the paramount chief. The same pattern is duplicated within each sub-chiefdom. The sub-chief is a ‘chief’, with his palace and sometimes his own market and he also has his own ‘chiefs’ who are nobles (Nkem). There are also quarter heads and family heads who, although some may not be nobles, do have considerable standing within the social and political structure (cf. de Latour 1991: ch.10). Titles, with the rights and obligations associated with them, could be granted by the Fon or a chief to one of their subjects because of friendship,

favours rendered or simply financial inducement on the part of a wealthy commoner.

A chiefdom was ruled by the Fon through contact with his sub-chiefs, individually or in a council at his palace (Brain 1971:13). All chiefs wielded considerable power and were feared and respected by their subjects. The Fon, for example, could not be touched by anyone or be looked upon when addressed by a commoner. Chiefs were not considered divine but they were considered to have sacred attributes and had to perform important annual rites for the well-being and fertility of the land and people. One of their major functions was to settle disputes which in Bangwa were, and still are, considerable in number and complexity. They also judged cases involving theft, adultery and witchcraft but only the Fon had the power to execute witches by hanging.

One other figure of great social importance in the social organisation of Bangwa society was the retainer. In the past these were always slaves and servants who had come to be trusted by the Fon or chief. In fact, a powerful chief normally tended to trust his retainers more than his counsellors and royal sons. They were effectively the real governors of the country, a form of administrative class. There have been examples, though, where the power of some of the Great Retainers came to rival that of the chief who, for his own security, forcibly ousted them from office by poisoning them, accusing them of witchcraft or selling them into slavery. Often they were married to the titled sisters of the chief and it was common that after their master’s death the most important would be granted titles, usually as nobles.

The Night Society and the Gong Society

There are many ‘societies’ in Bangwa. These are a number of groups associating individuals of common status, interest or function such as the mothers and fathers of twins, age-mates, warriors, women, recreational dance groups. These all meet and take part in any important occasion, often presenting their own dances. However, the two most important societies in the social organisation of Bangwa are the Night Society (Troh) and the Gong Society (Lefem).

The Night Society was the feared arm of the law, the fearful weapon of the chiefs in carrying out punishment for serious crimes. The senior members of the Great Night, its inner sanctum, were the Nine retainers (the original retainer companions of the chief in the myth of origin - see page 1, par. 3). The Nine, today, are powerful lords, sub-chiefs and nobles, who are the descendants of princesses who were married to retainers. Their most important function was to rule and protect the palace during the often turbulent interregnum after the death of their chief. It was to them that the chief revealed the name of his successor and it was they who presented the new ruler to the people (See Brain, 1971:65-83). They are often known as the ‘kingmakers’ of Bangwa. When appearing in public they are disguised in sackcloth and leaves and their presence invokes a profound, fearful silence particularly when their leader, the Lord of the Night (Troh Ndi), makes his entrance. The Night Society accompanies the chief and other important members of the royal family on witchcraft excursions during which they transform themselves into flying animals and feast on (imaginary) human flesh (cf. de Latour 1991: 166-170).

While the Night Society is concerned with the terrifying use of power, the Gong Society is somewhat more relaxed.

The Gong Society known as Lefem, the same name as the sacred forest where they meet, is reserved for sub-chiefs and nobles. They meet to offer sacrifices to the ancestors, feast, play their gongs (iron bells) to bless the people and country and discuss matters of state. While it is not as secretive as the Night Society, non-members are not permitted entry into the forest when discussions are taking place, although men can enter to play the gongs if their father is dead. It is in the meetings that the carved figures of the royal ancestors[4] are brought to light, the belief being that the statues render the ancestor present. The Gong Society ultimately is where decisions and policy about the village life are reached in agreement between the living and the dead (Brain 1971:84). It is a presentation of the good side of chiefly power and the corporate nature of Bangwa social organisation.

The Family

The Bangwa trace relationships through both parents, although most property and titles are inherited patrilineally by a patrigroup head who as the heir becomes the custodian of his father’s skull. However, there are no wide patrilineal groupings[4], no clans or lineages with a common name and marriage taboos. Half brothers, for example, own no property in common (cf. Brain, 1972:95). Female links are stressed in

4 Bangwa carving is famous in its own right and the object of Brain and Pollock’s fascinating study (1971). Many of these statues were taken by the Germans in the early part of the 20th century. One, “The Bangwa Princess” was bought by an American museum from a German collection for one million dollars in 1989.

5 The Bangwa are not a ‘patrilineal’ people. Patrilineal ties do not give rise to corporate lineages in the accepted anthropological sense. Therefore, the use of the term ‘patrigroups’ here represents the shallow grouping of kin clustered around a line of patrilineal skulls which are inherited vertically from father to son, never collaterally, by brothers and cousins. (See Brain, 1972:92-104)

the kinship system and the most important family relationships are those of a person’s own kindred in which the solidarity of the ‘children of one womb’ and their children is opposed to the weak half-sibling relationship within the polygamous family.

There are no initiation ceremonies within Bangwa culture. Children are named and grow to adulthood without any formal rites. Marriages were arranged before a girl had reached puberty, sometimes even soon after her birth, and were legalised with the payment of the bridewealth which was often high. Polygamy rates were always high which was due to the late marriage age for men: a commoner could not afford to marry until he was in his thirties. A man’s widows were inherited by his successor although some would be handed out to unmarried sons or brothers.

As in many societies where polygamy was practised, one of its main functions among the Bangwa was to act as a sign of the material, social and spiritual power of the husband. As well as acquiring wives when they were young, many were slaves imported from the grasslands. In fact, this practice was so common that everyone in Bangwa today claims descent from a slave wife (Brain, 1971:19). If the Bangwa culture is so closely akin to that of the Bamileke then it is due primarily to these slave girls who continually refreshed and strengthened that cultural contact. Girls were also frequently given as signs of friendship or alliance by their fathers to important figures as a means of gaining or granting favours. However, a paramount chief, such as Fontem, could take any girl within his chiefdom. Polygamy was also a means of obtaining not only children but also of enlarging one’s population and having the economic advantage of possessing a larger workforce to work on one’s farms and palm oil groves. The practice of polygamy became

all the more necessary after the colonial authorities put an end to the slave trade since previously the bulk of a man’s workforce would have been male slaves from the grasslands (Brain, 1972:15).

The Economy

The peculiarities of the physical environment have often been a determining influence in Bangwa society and culture and this has extended into the economic sphere as well. Within all of the Bangwa chiefdoms there has always existed a dual division between the upper and lower regions. These correspond to two distinct ecological environments and means that the Bangwa are able to produce a variety of crops. This gives them an economic advantage when it comes to trading with their neighbours on the grasslands and down in the forests.

There was a division of labour between the sexes which has seen little change with modern times. Women carry out most of the heavy labour of clearing forest areas, subsistence farming and portering goods to the markets. They would sometimes be helped in these tasks by their children. On the upper areas they farm maize, beans and groundnuts while on the lower farms they produce cocoyams, the staple food, and cassava. Land is a ‘free good’ which the chief distributes among the women annually. Crop rotation has been long established due to the poverty of the soil, particularly in the upper region. Men, on the other hand, disdain an excess of hard physical labour which was seen as part of a woman’s remit. This perhaps is due to the fact that wives originally were slaves who had been bought and paid for in order, among other things, to carry out farming labour. Men cultivated plantain and raised livestock such as goats and pigs which were tended by the younger children or

left to roam free, much to the despair of the women whose farms they plundered. However, it was in harvesting kola nuts, palm wine and, above all, palm nuts for oil that men obtained their greatest source of income. Every chief, noble or wealthy commoner had his own area of palm groves in the forest. Slaves and servants would be sent there to supervise oil production. This oil was the main export to the grasslands (cf. Brain 1971: 21).

The flourishing Bangwa economy has always depended primarily on trade. Because of its location, Bangwa lay at the heart of a trading pattern linking the Bayang forest markets, the Bangwa markets and the grassland markets. Much of the internal trade was in the hands of women who carried smoked fish and meat bought from the Bayang and cocoyams and oil from their own Bangwa farms to the grassland markets. They returned with raffia palm wine, salt, groundnuts and maize. The external trade was conducted by the men, principally by the chiefs and wealthy nobles, who would attend the grassland and Bayang markets with their wives, slaves and servants, acting as middle-men in the commerce of slaves, guns, European articles and prestige articles made locally. The slave trade, however, was the mainstay of the nineteenth century Bangwa economy. Slaves would be bought from grassland markets in the east, some of whom would be kept as wives or labourers, but the majority would be sold to the Bayang for onward transport to the coastal region.

For the scattered compound dwellers the numerous markets in the Bangwa area served as an important meeting point where not only goods were exchanged but also news, gossip, marriage proposals, bridewealth payments and summonses to court. It was the forum for public announcements and general

entertainment. The market was a display of Bangwa society in all its shades and subtleties, a visible expression of all the interweaving strands that made up a complex pattern of social relations.

Change in the Traditional Society

While social relations were hierarchical and stratified, they were characterised by a general courtesy between the sexes and ranks, between the rich and poor, and even the humblest could express his or her opinion and be listened to. However, as I said in the introduction, while in some respects Bangwa communities could be ‘closed’, it would be wrong to draw from all this that a Bangwa chiefdom is or ever was a typical ‘small-scale’ society. Although the population may be small, sometimes only a few hundred, the community was involved in complex political and economic relations both inside the chiefdom and far afield. In political and social terms Bangwa has always been a changing society; chiefdoms rise, fall and fragment; individuals gain power and lose it (cf. Brain, 1972:71). Two factors were responsible for this continual flux.

The first arises from the fact that, contrary to the practice in some small-scale societies, the two processes of inheritance and succession are separate. The succession to the status of a patrigroup head does not imply inheritance of his whole estate. This system of partible inheritance means that a patrigroup head has several heirs; there is, however, only one successor to his title and his patriline skulls. On a man’s death, property is shared among kinsmen and non-kinsmen through oral bequests. Persons who are heirs but not kin include a man’s chief, and if he is a retainer, his master. The successor usually takes the bulk of the property, but important and sometimes sizable shares

go to a man’s other sons, sons’ sons, matrikin and his patrigroup head in death duties. The dead man’s status affects the distributions as well, since there are different rules for heads of patrigroups, married men, childless men, chiefs, commoners and retainers (Brain, 1972:98). One consequence of this system was that a new chief might start off his reign less wealthy than his father, his power reduced, the position of his chiefdom less secure. Another consequence was that this system was, and still is, liable to create enormous divisions and litigation among those who feel they have some claim on a dead man’s estate. A father’s allies could quickly turn into enemies. There are numerous examples, particularly if the successor was a minor, of ambitious sub-chiefs, nobles and retainers conspiring to see the downfall of the new chief and the rising of one of their own number either as the new chief or as the most important chief in the area.

The second factor contributing to the continual change experienced in traditional Bangwa society is the fact that it is not ‘lineage-based’ (see footnote 5 and Brain 1972:45-91). Bangwa social life is not carried on in the all-embracing idiom of kinship, with personal loyalties and resources pooled in discrete unilineal descent groups. Kinship here is an individual business, with a person in the centre of a ramifying network of ties linking him with matrilineal and patrilineal kin, affines, creditor-lords, political superiors, associations, societies and so on. The most noteworthy fact about Bangwa kinship is the lack of bonded groups. A Bangwa claims no clan or lineage membership, and no corporate group takes responsibility for any of his actions. Kinship is an aid to the business of making a living: trading, inheriting, acquiring a title, farming, ruling, and marrying. The Bangwa kinship system is as complex as the business of Bangwa living. This engenders a high degree of

competition among the members of society and through political skill, guile and astute alliances an individual can advance his own position socially and financially.

These two factors, the separation of property inheritance and title succession and the fact that kinship is not lineage-based but a highly individual business, were responsible for the changes that occurred in Bangwa society before the arrival of the Germans. These changes involved a shifting of power from one individual to another, the fragmentation of one group into several, the collectivisation of groups into single units such as a chiefdom through force or alliance. However, although the sense of the identity of the group could be highly fluid with individuals allying themselves to focal points of power such as a chief, the destructive or disorganisational capacity of change was contained, controlled and neutralised because it occurred within what was essentially a closed system of political relations. Contact with the grasslands was limited by distance and difficulty of terrain. The other neighbouring groups, the Bayang, Mbo and Mundani, were of a completely different culture and were regarded as hostile at the best of times. Therefore, the effects of the sometimes random rise and fall of powerful individuals or groups were ultimately controlled by the Fon and his council of sub-chiefs and nobles. However, notwithstanding the power and authority of the Fon and his sub-chiefs, government in the Bangwa chiefdoms was informal, probably due to the distinct territorial distribution of family compounds. In other words, each family head had a fair degree of independence. There was a finely balanced dynamic of power relations in operation which somehow or other managed to maintain a degree of social equilibrium. The inhabitants of each of the various Bangwa chiefdoms may have always demonstrated a strong sense of solidarity in the face of external

pressure and threat but they have often bemoaned their tendency to be easily divided among themselves on internal matters.

All this makes for a society which is extremely vibrant and characterised by a substantial freedom of opportunity to enhance one’s position and role: what Lucy Mair describes as room for manoeuvre (Mair, 1969:123) which has always been present in all societies and which lies at the heart of all social change and history. The Bangwa may be well known in Cameroon as having a reputation for being highly individualistic, stubborn and dedicated to exploiting any opportunity for their own success but that is only one side of the coin. They are also a strong, reliable people who are afraid of nothing and who will quickly and readily establish relationships which are direct, honest and enduring. Change, and indeed the desire for it, has always been a part of Bangwa society and the Bangwa character. It is, therefore, not a recent phenomenon but there is a distinction between the change which occurred in pre-colonial times from that which occurred during the colonial and post-colonial period. In former times what precipitated change arose almost exclusively from within Bangwa society and was subject to a controlling mechanism for coping with it. The colonial and post-colonial periods saw the erosion of Bangwa isolation and the arrival of external causes of change over which the traditional society was less and less able to exert control.