74 AFRICAN POLITICAL SYSTEMS
Their former function has now disappeared, but the latter has been greatly intensified owing to the new forms of activity resulting from the introduction of Western civilization. They can be called up, whenever the chief wishes, for such tasks as making dams, rounding up stray cattle, building schools and churches, hunting beasts of prey, cutting down bushes in the chief's fields, building his huts and cattle-kraals, making roads and aerodromes, cutting boundary paths, preparing agricultural showgrounds, rounding up offenders against the law, and escorting distinguished visitors. The women's regiments, again, are employed to put up the walls and thatch the roofs of the chief's huts, draw water for any royal or tribal work, get wood for the chief's wife, clean the village, fetch earth and smear the walls and floors of the chief's homestead, and weed his wife's fields. Only the chief can mobilize a whole regiment for work, but district governors and other headmen may summon their own followers by regiments to perform purely local tasks of a similar nature.
Regimental labour is both compulsory and unpaid, and failure to answer a summons to work can be punished by a fine or thrashing. Within recent years, with the spread of education, on the one hand, and the increased burden of work, on the other, complaints have become common about the brutal methods sometimes use i for rounding up defaulters and stragglers, and about the hardships and losses imposed by such calls upon people engaged in work of their own. These were among the grievances mentioned in a petition lodged against Tshekedi in 1930 by eight members of the tribe, and largely substantiated in the Administrative inquiry that followed. As a result of such abuses, present also in other tribes, the Native Administration Proclamation has made it illegal for the chief to exact free labour from his people except for certain clearly specified purposes.
IV. Rights and Responsibilities of Chieftainship
The authority of the chief is derived in the first place from his birthright. The chieftainship is hereditary in the male line, passing normally from father to son. In the days when polygamy was practised, the rightful heir was always the eldest son of the 'great' wife, i.e. of the woman first betrothed to the chief. Failing a son in her 'house', the eldest son of the wife next in rank succeeded. Sometimes, however, there were disputes regarding the