Justice and Judgment Among the Tiv

Paul Bohannan

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138489561
• eBook ISBN: 9781351037280
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Since publication in 1957 the importance of Bohannan's study of judicial institutions and procedures among the Tiv has been widely recognized. It has contributed widely to the continuing discussion concerning the objectives and methods to be followed in the anthropological study of law and the contribution this makes to comparative jurisprudence. the work describes and defines Tiv ideas of 'law' as expressed in the operations of their courts known as Jir. The analysis is based on and illustrated by numerous cases which the author attended and discussed with leaders in the Jir.

CHAPTER IX

MOOTS: THE JIR AT HOME

I. THE ELDERS OF THE MOOT

ONE major sort of jir remains to be investigated. It is held in the compound or homestead of the person who initiates the jir; all the elders of his lineage come as guests, to be his judges and mentors. Tiv call this sort of jir a ‘jir at home’ (jir sa ya), or ‘jir of the agnatic lineage’ (Jir ityô), if it needs to be distinguished from the jir mbatarev.

Jir at home differ· in many ways from those jir which the Administration calls courts. Three ways are of most significance. First, the personnel of the jir at home is different and differently organized from the personnel of the court; second, its institutionalization and procedure are conceptualized differently; third, the subject-matter of the disputes handled by the jir at home is different from the subject-matter of the courts. To put it another way, the personnel, the substantive law, and the procedural law are all significantly different in the two institutions.

The jir at home is made up of all the important members of the community. The ‘community’ can usually be taken to be the smallest or minimal tar, though on some occasions it may be larger and include a larger tar, and hence members of a more inclusive lineage; and on others it may be smaller and include only the members of one of those small lineages that Tiv call ‘segments within the hut’. Collectively, the elders of such a group are called the jir, and can be summoned by any one of themselves to come to ‘discuss matters’.

This jir, which is made up of all the elders of the community, I call a ‘moot’, to distinguish it from that jir which is called a ‘court’ by administrative officers. A moot, according to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, is ‘an assembly of people, especially one forming a court of judicature’. A court is ‘an assembly of judges or other persons legally appointed and acting as a tribunal to hear or determine any cause’. The difference obviously is that a court is a formal organization, with appointed and recognized judges and other officials. Its internal structure is quite precise; as a unit it is part of a larger structure. The moot is an assembly of neighbours and kinsmen who decide disputes. A court is an organized body with appointed officials; the moot is a community activity. The moot is a condition or mode of a social group (the lineage) which also exists in other conditions or modes; the court is a group of officials who have but a single mode or condition. Tiv moots are what Durkheim would have called mechanically solidary. They repeat themselves. The courts are organically solidary, and form a hierarchy.

For people to belong to the same lineage is sometimes expressed as their being ‘those of one moot’ (mba jir i môm). To be counted among those of the moot (mbajiriv—the same as the word for participants in a court action) a man must be an agnate in the lineage concerned, and he must be considered an elder (or vesen). In order to have influence in a moot, an elder must have a good memory for genealogies, for most of the cases touch on genealogies in some way or other. He needs an extensive and sure knowledge of the principles and details of Tiv religion, magic, and witchcraft. Perhaps most important, he must know all the ramifications of personal relationships within his small community, for most of these important factors are not brought out in the case, but are presumed to be known to all hearers.

‘To sit in one moot’ (tema jir môm) is a phrase frequently heard in Tivland. It refers to a group of people, but does not identify any particular group. Tiv may say of a lineage of any order, or indeed of a large compound, ‘we sit in one moot’. The size of the group actually called to a moot depends, as in all lineage activities, on the importance of the people concerned in the situation, and on the magnitude of the situation itself. A smaller lineage ‘sits in one moot’ when the case concerns the illness of a young man than when it concerns an old man. A smaller lineage ‘sits in one moot’ for a minor illness than for a funeral.

The number and kinds of meetings of the jir of a community vary. In Iyon of Shangev Ya, a jir discussed two or three minor matters every week; a bigger and important case, for which representatives of all Iyon gathered, occurred every two or three weeks.

The other lineages with which I am acquainted convened moots less often than did Iyon. When I first worked in MbaDuku, few moots were held in MbaGôr, the minimal tar in which I lived. During our second tour, when we worked in Raav in northwestern Tivland, there were almost no moots of importance within Ukusu, but many within MbaAliko. We hypothesized that the difference was to be found in the effective leaders of the different communities. In MbaGôr there was one, in Ukusu there were two, effective leaders. All problems of the sort which Iyon and MbaAliko heard in moots were brought to them for consultation. In communities with no outstanding elders, there are many moots.

Our third trip was spent partly in Iyon and MbaDuku; we found that the leader of MbaGôr—Chenge’s father, Kyagba—had died. There were moots almost every week; had I attended them all I should have been unable to complete my other work. The sort of problem which had formerly been taken to Kyagba was now discussed in open moots.

Those men who are considered the most influential elders of the community ‘by day’ are said to be the ‘witches’ by night. ‘Witches’ is not a good translation of mbatsav, even in the light only of other African data. Leadership—indeed, all ability—is an attribute, Tiv say, of a substance called tsav which grows on the heart of some men. A man of tsav (or tsav) is a man of talent. The talent includes mystical power.

The leaders of the community are ipso facto men of tsav. It is they who ‘repair the tar’ by daylight by sitting in moots and acting as peacemakers and by keeping the community running smoothly. They also ‘repair the tar’ ‘by night’. The mystical aspect of repairing the tar is the subject of my next book, but it must be reviewed here briefly.

The elders who repair the tar by day—what we could call secular governing—form, Tiv say, an organization which meets at night in order to carry out secret rituals for the religious protection of the community. As such, they are called ‘the mbatsav’, those with talent. Tiv say that for the mbatsav to deal adequately with the supernatural forces of the universe there are some activities which require sacrifice of life—what our fathers would have called ‘life force’. The sacrifice may be a chicken or a goat, but a few each year are said to demand the supreme sacrifice of a human being. ‘Human sacrifice’, I hasten to add, did not occur in Tivland as it did, say, in Dahomey, though it may have occurred sporadically. Tiv say that in sacrificing a human being the mbatsav of the community, as a group, first decide on a victim from within the lineage. They then must ‘kill him by tsav’. All Tiv profess ignorance of how this is done. But the intended victim dies and is buried. The mbatsav must then remove him from the grave and restore him to life. Only then can they perform the sacrifice of his body before the emblems of the fetish.

The mbatsav are ‘dangerous’ (kwaghbo); they are feared; they are also trusted. In times of political upheaval, the trust disappears. As Tiv put it, the mbatsav begin to use their talent to kill for personal gain and for the sheer love of the taste of human flesh. Tiv revolt always takes the form of anti-tsav uprisings. This usually means that the revolt is directed against the most influential elders of the community, who are ‘by night’ the mbatsav. In peaceful times, the mbatsav of the community protect its members from evil and from the mbatsav of other communities. That is the reason why times are peaceful. But protectors of the community have licence to destroy its individual members for purposes considered legitimate and for the good of all.

The elders who form the moot by day, then, form the mbatsav ’by night’. Death is either ‘legitimate’ killing by the mbatsav or else it is the illegitimate ‘permitting’ of the death by the mbatsav, or it is their weakness or the malice of some of them. Seen from the Tiv point of view, death is not merely caused; it must also be willed. They recognize the same causes of death as we do. But mere cause is for them insufficient explanation. They must also know who willed the death and who, by tsav, allowed the causes to cause death.

Tiv see all leaders in two lights: as their protectors and as their eventual vanquishers.

Moots are concerned with actions involving tsav, and hence often with charges against the elders of the community. The workings of tsav are known by the presence of illness, death, and evil omens.

Moots are also concerned with a lesser mystery: curses. The word here translated ‘curse’ is ifan. It is guilty knowledge as well as a curse, but the ifan must be uttered. Once uttered it can ‘seize’ someone—usually but not always the person against whom it was uttered. I know one instance in which a woman spun enough yarn for a cloth for herself. She gave it to her son and asked him to weave a cloth for her, because weaving is work for young men in Tivland. The son wove the cloth, but when it was finished he gave it to his new wife instead of his mother. In the circumstances, the old lady could say little. As mother-in-law and provider she could not rail at either her son or her daughter-in-law. Yet Tiv assumed that the loss of the cloth rankled. At a jir a year or so later, when the divining chains indicated an ifan or curse, she was told that she had muttered a threat or wish about this act of her son’s which she resented, and this threat or curse, and especially the resentment leading to it, had created sickness and omens of ill feelings. Arrangements for restitution were made.

The ostensible subject-matter of the moots is thus different from that of those jir which can also be called courts. Moots deal with matters concerning tsav, and some of its accompanying or related beliefs: fetishes (akombo) and curses (ifan). All these beliefs and any of the practices that occur are called ‘witchcraft’ by the Administration and the missionaries. This being the case, all disputes concerning tsav come under the ordinance which makes witchcraft a crime.¹ Tsav, therefore, is recognized by administrative officers only as an evil—as ‘witchcraft substance’. All disputes which turn on tsav, whether they be the activities of the mbatsav as a group acting for the benefit of the community, or of individuals of the mbatsav acting from motives of greed and personal gain, must be discussed before the moot. The court cannot concern itself in such matters.

Thus, to Tiv, the really important matters—matters of life and death—are heard before the moot, not before the court. The courts, they say, settle minor matters. The moot must exist to deal with major matters. The moots, as we shall see, also settle minor matters, but their doing so is considered incidental to their more important functions.

II. THE STRUCTURE OF THE MOOT

The action of a moot is simpler than that of a court, and has two main sets of components: the first is called ‘convening (lôhô) the moot’, the second ‘discussing (ôr) the moot’.

Convening the moot

The phrase ‘to call a jir’ refers only to courts. One never ‘calls’ a moot, but rather ‘convenes’ or ‘invites’ it. In both contexts the word jir itself refers to both the gathering and the cause: in order to put one’s jir, one must convene the jir.

The moot is always convened by an elder who is an agnatic member of the lineage associated with the tar, and hence what we might call (but Tiv do not) a member of the moot. In most of Tivland no one else can convene a moot. There are several ways in which non-agnates can bring pressure to bear so that a moot must be convened. A woman can run away and precipitate a moot. A man can run to his mother’s agnatic lineage and get them to take action on his behalf. Although I have not recorded it here, I attended a moot in the tar of MbaYongo to which almost two hundred MbaDuku elders went to ‘ask’ the MbaYongo agnates of their sister’s son to explain the illness of the latter’s children. A man who lives permanently in the tar of his mother’s lineage cannot convene the moot of that lineage; he must ask his mother’s close kinsmen to do so on his behalf. He is, Tiv say, a ‘woman’, because he is related to the lineage through women.

In Utisha, in the south-eastern part of Tivland, there is an exception to these restrictions on convening moots. Utisha people have a form...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface to the Second Impression
• Preface to the First Impression
• Table of Contents
• Register of Cases
• List of Plates
• I. The People and the Problem
• II. The Grade-D Court
• III. A Day in Court
• IV. The Structure of the JIR
• V. Tiv Marriage Jir
• VI. Debt Jir
• VII. ‘Criminal’ Jir and the Problem of Self-Help
• VIII. Market Jir and Age-Set Jir
• IX. Moots: The JIR at Home
• X. Conclusion
• Glossary of Tiv Terms
• Index