THE BEMBA TRIBE OF NORTH-EASTERN" RHODESIA 119
money in the same way as food, and in any case has not sufficient to enable him to reward his people adequately. So that at a time when he is asked to take on new functions of administration his following is becoming smaller and smaller. I have seen Citimukulu hearing cases alone with his paid clerk and watched the bakabilo melting away during the midst of the discussion of important matters owing to want of food. This makes an impossible situation which may be changed for the better by the greater measure of financial control which the Government has recently granted to the native authorities,1 though the sums now allotted to native treasuries are small, and lack of funds has always prevented the compensation of chiefs for the lack of their tribute labour and other perquisites that has occurred in Nigeria, Barotseland, and elsewhere.
Government recognition of the political organization of the tribe and its purposeful adaptation to modern conditions is also essential at the present time. Apart from the economic breakdown at the chiefs' courts which has just been indicated, much of the trouble has been due to the fact that no serious investigation of the judicial, executive, and advisory machinery of Government was made in the first instance. Chiefs were constituted as authorities with little study of the wray in which their orders were to be enforced. They were listed as 'members of court', but, though headmen and council were mentioned as eligible to sit on such courts, the presence of the latter was not apparently compulsory. The bakabilo''$ important advisory functions as a tribal council and a potential regency council were not recognized until anthropological research in the area had been made.1 The unfortunate result was that the chief felt free to act without this former check on his power and openly expressed to me his delight in the fact. The councillors, on the other hand, felt discouraged, and declared: 'The Government likes the chiefs. It does not listen to us, the Babemba* Hence a political system that could never have been described as democratic now provides less check than ever on the chief's authority.
The difficulty from an administrative point of view is evident. Here is a system of political authority based largely on hereditary ritual privilege. To abandon the bakabilo council is to do without a body of men with strong traditions of government and a sense of
1 Twenty-five of the bakabilo are now given Ģi a year (see Report cited, p. 144).