AFRICAN POLITICAL SYSTEMS
offer satisfaction when they have been at fault. Public sentiment may be strong enough to compel the parties to a conflict to settle the matter by negotiation either directly or by means of a go-between.
A step towards the establishment of a judicial system is taken in some societies by the recognition of certain persons as having authority to act as arbitrators, or to give judgement on the rights and wrongs of a dispute submitted to them, and suggest a settlement, though they have no power of physical coercion by which to enforce that judgement. The authority of the judge or judges may be conceived in different ways. He or they may be thought of as the representatives of the community, giving voice to the public sentiment; or as persons whose wisdom enables them to settle disputes; or as having special knowledge of right custom; or, again, as having qualities that may be called 'religipus/ similar to those of the priest or the medicine-man; and they may even be thought to be divinely inspired. Thus the court, if we may call it so, even where it has no coercive power, always does have authority.
Recourse may sometimes be had to ritual or supernatural sanctions in cases of disputed rights. If evidence is so conflicting that the judge or judges find it impossible to come to a decision they may resort to the application of an ordeal or oath. If a person refuses to abide by a decision of the court they may, by imprecation or the threat thereof, compel him to do so.
In a fully developed court of civil justice, the judge has power to enforce his judgement by some form of penal sanction. The chief of the Ngwato tribe, for example, has that power.
In seeking to define the political structure in a simple society, we have to look for a territorial community which is united by the rule of law. By that is meant a community throughout which public sentiment is concerned either with the application of direct or indirect penal sanctions to any of its own members who offend in certain ways, or with the settlement of disputes and the provision of just satisfaction for injuries within the community itself. Thus, for the Nuer, Dr. Evans-Pritchard has indicated that one character by which the political unit—the tribe—is to be defined is that it is the largest community which considers that disputes between its members should be settled by arbitration But we have to recognize that in some societies such a political