i5o AFRICAN POLITICAL SYSTEMS
as a terrible event and say that 'the entuma are like lions which attack at night when the men are drunk'. Ekyitoro was open to the worst phases of abuse in tribute collection. The entuma took what they wanted, keeping many cattle for themselves and if a cattle-owner threatened the collectors with exposure to the Mugabe he was simply speared to death. The Bahima also apply the word ekyitoro to a form of compulsory tax levied upon their cattle by the Mugabe. If through disease or raid the Mugabe had lost many of his cattle, he claimed the right, as supreme protector of all the cattle herds of Ankole, to send out his entuma to bring in as many cattle as were needed in the royal kraal. I have never heard the Bahima object to this levy. They claim that this right was seldom exercised by the Mugabe and was always practised with due consideration to the needs of the herdsmen. Ekyitoro was a royal privilege and was extended to the Mugabe's mother and sister and the mother's brothers. The greatest honour which the Mugabe could confer upon a chief was the right of ekyitoro. Very few men received this privilege for life but many able warriors were given the right temporarily. While a man had the right: of ekyitoro he could take what cattle he wished within the kingdom, excepting only those of the king. Along with this privilege went the right to kill any one who resisted the confiscation of his cattle. The Bahima claim that any man who had been given this right used it to damage his enemies by taking their cattle and by killing any people who had formerly harmed him.
V. The Cult of Bagyendanwa
A visitor to the royal enclosure on Kamukuzi Hill, near Mbarara, to-day would be shown an old ramshackle, mud-walled, grass-roofed hut, the shrine of Bagyendanwa. If he were to enter into the dim, smoke-grimed interior of this shrine, he would see on a raised platform or altar a number of drums surrounded by milk-pots and partly covered with bark cloth robes. Before the drums he would see a number of bleary-eyed natives squatting beside a fire which, he would be told, is never permitted to go out except upon the death of a Mugabe. A European acquainted with the Banyankole would tell him that these drums are the royal drums of Ankole and would add that no white man has been able to solve their mystery. He would gain little, if any, insight into the true meaning of the drums to the Banyankole, the tremendous magical