Word: headman
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Headman. For 50 years, his father was headman of a village of 47 families who share common grazing land for their prized livestock. Having inherited that position of respect, he now rotates cattle guard among the families, collects taxes, presides over quarrels, grants divorces and mediates disputes. He is entitled to eight acres of land, two more than the six other members of his kraal (family group...
...harder for him to be a headman than it was for his father. Local leaders have become assassination targets. Even though he was jailed by the government for four years as a nationalist sympathizer, he can no longer be sure how his political record will be judged. He rarely sleeps at home; he rubs his long, thin fingers together to ease the stress as he talks. What "frightens me," he says, is the way harm can come from any quarter. If there is fighting in his area, he flees. "If the soldiers come, they might think I am the troublemaker...
Before the advent of colonialism, the Africans had lived in tribal groups. The social structure was purely communalistic. The tribal headman or chief established the legitimacy of his authority either by birth or by his prowess in battle. All the other paid their loyalty to him. The chief in turn was answerable to a council of elders. Every individual was a part of the decision-making body. And a chief could easily be deposed either by a decision of the majority or by the elders, if they found him tyrannical--an event that is almost impossible in present day Africa...
...their man--they appointed him, after all. To the community he is their spokesman, against the administration if the need arises. A case in point was the recent development scheme proposed by government agencies for the Berawan. The Berawan did not like the scheme at all and expected the headman to speak out against it. The government officials expected just the reverse. They assumed that his duty was to wean the community out of its backward conservatism. As with the tua kampong, loyalty to the home community usually takes precedence. It is difficult to be at loggerheads with the people...
Occasionally a headman comes along who is adept at manipulating these conflicting forces. The trick is to utilize the threat of external power, which cannot really be mobilized by a humble village headman, to bring about his own ends within the longhouse. By failing to perform one of his trivial administrative functions, such as signing an application for a national registration card without which a man cannot get a job in a lumber camp, he can harass his opponents. Over matters of importance such as a land dispute, he may hold the entire house to ransom, if he is careful...