Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-cnmwb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-24T14:25:39.015Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Political Man and the Heritage of Hair: Some African Perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Extract

In 1953 the King of the Baganda entered into a political confrontation with the British Governor of Uganda, Sir Andrew Cohen. The issues at stake ranged from whether Uganda should be forcibly tied to Kenya and Tanganyika to form an East African federation dominated by white settlers to the more immediate issue concerning the limits of the Governor's authority over the King of the Baganda. The British finally decided to send the Kabaka away into exile in England. There thus started one of the most fascinating wrangles between an African tribal community and the Colonial Office in London. The Kabaka's people were plunged into grief, but not into a spirit of resignation. Debates, petitions, and demonstrations in favour of the Kabaka's return became part of the strategy of his people to get him back to his throne.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Mutesa acknowledges this gesture by some of his subjects in his book Desecration of My Kingdom (London: Constable, 1967), pp. 123–4.Google Scholar

2 See Uganda Argus and East African Standard, 16–29 October 1955. See also Southwold, Martin, ‘Was the Kingdom Sacred?’ Mawazo, 1 No. 2, (1967), 21–2.Google Scholar

3 White, Charles, An Account of the Regular Graduations in Man (London, 1799), Vol. I.Google Scholar See also Lovejoy, A. O., The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass., 1936).Google Scholar For an attempt to trace the long-term implications of some of these theories consult Mazrui, , ‘From Social Darwinism to Current Theories of Modernization: A Tradition of Analysis’, World Politics, XXI (1968), 6983.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The article occurs as Chapter 4 in Mazrui, , Violence and Thought: Essays on Social Tensions in Africa (London: Longmans, 1969), 85101.Google Scholar

4 Lovejoy, , The Great Chain, pp. 233ffGoogle Scholar; also Lovejoy, , ‘Some Eighteenth Century Evolutionist’, Popular Science Monthly, LXV (1904), p. 327.Google Scholar

5 Darlington, , The Evolution of Man and Society (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969), p. 56.Google Scholar

6 Darlington, , The Evolution of Man, p. 56.Google Scholar

7 Darlington, , The Evolution of Man, p. 55.Google Scholar

8 Darwin, The Descent of Man. Consult also Smith, J. Maynard, ‘Sexual Selection’ in Barnett, S. A., ed., A Century of Darwin (London: Mercury Books, 1962), 231–44.Google Scholar

9 Combe, George, A System of Phrenology (New York, 1845).Google Scholar I am indebted to Curtin's, P. D. book, The Image of Africa (London: Macmillan, 1965) for bibliographical guidance and stimulation.Google Scholar

10 Morton, S. G., Crania Americana (Philadelphia, 1839)Google Scholar and Crania Aegyptiaca (Philadelphia, 1844).Google Scholar Cited by Curtin, , The Image of Africa, p. 367.Google Scholar

11 Asimov, Isaac, The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science, Vol. 2, ‘The Biological Sciences’ (New York: Basic Books, 1962), pp. 690–1.Google Scholar Darwin refers to ‘savage’ communities elsewhere – the Aymara and Quichua Indians. Darwin says: ‘The men of these two tribes have very little hair on the various parts of the body where the hair grows abundantly in Europeans, and the women have none on the corresponding parts’ (The Descent of Man). In fact among the least hairy of the races of the world are the yellow peoples as well as the black peoples. As compared with East Indians and Caucasians, the Chinese are singularly hairless. Among the Africans there are in fact variations. The Nilotes tend, on the whole, to have even less hair than the Bantu groups.

12 Sundkler, , Bantu Prophets in South Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 279.Google Scholar

13 For a brief version of his views on this, see Diop, Cheikh Anta, ‘The Cultural Contributions and Prospects of Africa’, Proceedings of the First International Conference of Negro Writers and Artists, Présence Africaine, Special Issue, 06/11 1956, 347–54. The meaning of Egypt for African cultural nationalism is also discussed in my inaugural lectureGoogle Scholar, Ancient Greece in African Political Thought (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1967).Google Scholar

14 Davidson, Basil, Old Africa Rediscovered (London: Victor Gollancz, 1961), p. 28.Google Scholar

15 Bois, W. E. B. Du, The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History [1946] (New York: International Publishers, 1965 edition), pp. 120–1.Google Scholar

16 Smith, J. Maynard, ‘Sexual Selection’, p. 244.Google Scholar

17 See East African Standard (Nairobi), 29 July 1966.

18 See Mazrui, , ‘Miniskirts and Political Puritanism’, Africa Report, 13 (1968), 912.Google Scholar

19 P'bitek, Okot, Song of Lawino (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1966), pp. 5960.Google Scholar

20 Asimov, Isaac, The Intelligent Man's Guide, p. 668.Google Scholar

21 See Apio, Mary, ‘African Hair Saloon on the Decline?’, The People (Kampala), 8 July, 1970.Google Scholar

22 Rembrandt's vision of ‘The Conspiracy of the Batavians’ postulated a vow. Rembrandt was also interested in Samson and his power.

23 Percival Spear has argued that the Sikh attitude to hair is partly an outcome of Islamic influence on the founding fathers of Sikhism. ‘The wearing of long hair is related to the orthodox Muslim custom of wearing beards.’ See Spear, , India: A Modern History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), p. 250.Google Scholar

24 Moffat, , ‘The Spring Rivalry of Birds’, Irish Naturalist (1903).Google Scholar

25 Ardrey, Robert, The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations (London: Fontana Library, Collins, 1969), pp. 6870.Google Scholar

26 Darlington, , The Evolution of Man, p. 55.Google Scholar

27 Beidelman, T. O., ‘Some Nuer Notions of Nakedness, Nudity and Sexuality’, Africa, XXXVIII (1968), 113–31, pp. 128–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Consult Reverend Mbiti, John S., African Religions and Philosophy (London: Heinemann, 1969), p. 90.Google Scholar