During the first few months of 1978, at the height of the rainy season, mourning lamentations hardly ever ceased at the mortuary of Mbala General Hospital. Infants and children were dying. Inadequate food intake, malabsorption of nutrients and malarial infection were the main causes of death.

Those who survived the ‘hunger months’ of 1978 lived in overcrowded quarters and were fed a diet consisting mainly of diluted maize meal (‘mealie meal’) porridge. They suffered from poor dietary variation and an unprecedented shortage of basic foodstuffs. The small and isolated township of Mbala could not provide for itself; it relied on maize flour imports from the Copper belt and from Lusaka. The arrival of a truckload of flour–the road to Kasama had not yet been tarred– was sufficient to bring the town community to its feet and cause long queues of despairing people.

On 15 November 193 5 a riot took place in Wiawso, the capital town of Sefwi Wiawso district in the then Western Province of the Gold Coast. It followed weeks of struggle to bring destoolment charges against the omanhene, Nana Kwame Tano II. Four people died of gun-shot wounds, forty were injured and the omanhene was assaulted. On 2 December the State Council completed its hearing of fifteen charges against the omanhene and brought in a majority verdict in favour of destoolment, which in due course was confirmed by the Governor.

Studies of the deposition of chiefs in the Gold Coast have tended to focus on the changing reasons for and, particularly, the increased frequency of destoolment (Busia 1968: passim; Owusu 1970: 63ff.). Arhin especially has looked at the effect of the cash economy upon the relationships between chiefs and their subjects (Arhin 1976). Others have described the increasing complexity of the politico-jural structures surrounding the office and functions of chieftaincy as revealed in destoolment cases (Dunn and Robertson, 1973; Robertson 1976).

II se fait sur le terrain un consensus autour du terme Gbe pour désigner l'ensemble des parlers plus ou moins intelligibles dont le territoire s'étend en gros du fleuve Amugán (connu dans les documents en langues étrangères comme Volta) à l'ouest, au fleuve Wógbó (connu dans les documents en langues étrangères comme Ouémé et Weme) à l'est, puis de l'Océan Atlantique au sud jusqu'en dessous de la latitude 9° nord (cf Capo 1980a). Ce continuum dialectal, mieux connu comme Ewe depuis les importants travaux de Westermann (en particulier Westermann 1930), est maintenant divisé en cinq sections (caractérisées par des innovations précises), à savoir les dialectes Vhe, les dialectes Gen, les dialectes Ajá, les dialectes Fon et les dialectes Phla-Pherá (cf Capo 1980b). En fait, aux expressions comme ‘continuum dialectal’, ‘complexe linguistique’, ‘groupe de parlers’ Gbe, je voudrais proposer qu'on préfère la désignation de ‘la langue Gbe’. Le but de cette étude est done de mettre en lumière certains critères qui permettent d'identifier une langue, et de montrer ainsi que l'option pour ‘la langue Gbe’ n'est pas arbitraire.

Although the Khoikhoi or so-called Hottentots are still discussed in social anthropological literature, there is relatively little interest in them nowadays in comparison with the San (Bushmen) or various Bantu-speaking peoples. This lack of interest is really quite surprising since Radcliffe-Brown drew heavily on the Nama Khoikhoi material in his essay on the mother's brother in South Africa (Radcliffe-Brown 1924). Radcliffe-Brown, incidentally, based his knowledge of the Nama almost entirely on his interpretation of the field work of Mrs A. W. Hoernlé, using two unpublished papers and personal communication with Mrs Hoernlé as his sources. There is, however, a more important reason why the Khoikhoi are of interest. Many aspects of their way of life, ranging from the status of wives to religious beliefs and practices, are very ‘unAfrican’ if we equate African with Bantu-speaking Africa as is so often done.