134 AFRICAN POLITICAL SYSTEMS
of the Mugabe and his chiefs lay more in giving judgements than in meting out punishments. Moreover, there was no police organization to guard life and property. How then did members of the community guard themselves against criminal actions and aid in the carrying out of sentences passed by the Mugabe ? It is just here that the extended family fulfilled its important role. As a political unit, it discouraged attacks upon its members by individual malefactors. Once a crime had been committed, the head of the extended family took the matter before the Mugabe. In cases of murder, the Mugabe would grant the right of blood revenge, which, however, had to be carried out by the members of the injured extended family. In lesser offences the judgement of the Mugabe was generally sufficient to settle a dispute. The extended family, therefore, guaranteed the rights of its members in the community against the attacks of individual offenders of customary law and practice. In matters concerning an extended family alone, judicial authority was left almost entirely in the hands of the head of this group. Murder within the extended family was not a matter for the Mugabe to decide, but was settled by the nyinyeka, or head of the extended family.
In summary, we might say that from the standpoint of political and legal status the members of the Banyankole kingdom did not form a homogeneous mass, but were distinguished by a wide range of rights and prohibitions, resulting in a stratification of society into classes. At the top was the Bahima State with its governing nucleus centring around the Mugabe. Below were the subject classes of the Bairu, the Abatoro and the Abahuku. The caste nature of this stratification was pronounced, resting ultimately on racial and economic differences.
The complex working of this political society becomes intelligible, not only by determining the roles played by the various parts, but by observing the genetic relationship of these parts. The status of the Bairu, for instance, as a subject class, is not fully explained by stating that they paid tribute and were prohibited from possessing cattle, but by showing that this status was imposed and maintained by the Bahima as a militarily organized group. The Bahima-Bairu relationship was a Bahima invention. If we contrast this class difference with the political relationship existing among the Bahima, the distinction becomes clear. The politically organized Bahima State was an association of free men expressing