90 AFRICAN POLITICAL SYSTEMS
described, as well as existing villagers which have been given, with or without the inhabitants' goodwill, to a relative of the chief. Besides these new headmanships, there are those founded in the chief's predecessors' reigns and described as such, and on the whole less dependent on the present ruler. The proportion of new to old villages in Citimukulu's district in 1933 was as follows:
On 160 villages: perc^
New villages .. .. • - • • • • 28
Villages with one previous holder of the headmanship 16
Villages with two previous holders of the headmanship 10
Villages with three or more holders of the headmanship 40
Villages constituted from remnants of two old villages 6
The skill with which he allots headmanships, and the positions in which he places his own relatives, contribute greatly to a chiefs power.
In spite of the provisions for inheritance of headmanships, the Bemba village is an impermanent community from many points of view. It moves every four or five years, in keeping with the practice of shifting cultivation, and is liable to disruption at the death of an important member or at any loss of popularity by the headman. The plentiful supply of land and the many alternative possibilities of kinship grouping provide ample opportunities for a man to change from one village to another if he pleases, and in any case he is almost bound to live in a series of communities during his lifetime, e.g. the village of his birth, that to which he moves when he marries, any other village he may go to when he acquires the right to move his wife and family from her people's care, and lastly, in some cases, a community of which he may acquire the headmanship through succession to his maternal uncle. Hence, although a man's companions and fellow workers are those of his umushi and he speaks with some aifection of the village of his birth or of his mother's people (icifulo), yet the bonds of kinship are much stronger than those of the impermanent local group. A Bemba is a member of a ulupwa and may move as he pleases to live with any of the relatives composing it, and he is the subject of a chief and may obtain permission to live in any part of the latter's territory, but his ties to a given locality are not necessarily strong.1
1 cf. my Land, Labour and Diet in Northern Rhodesia (1939), chap. vii.