THE KINGDOM OF ANKOLE IN UGANDA 161
Forest as an offering to the dead Mugabe. In the kraal of the king's mother there was a shrink for the four ernandwa of the king— namely, Wamara, Mugasha, Kagoro, and Nyakiriro—where during every new moon she made offerings of cattle and of meat. If the diviners said that it was necessary for the king to go through an emandwa ritual (okubandwd), he was said to have gone to his mother's kraal for the rite. Besides these ritual duties, the king's mother had judicial and administrative functions. No man could be executed without her consent. She sat beside the Mugabe at all important judical cases and helped in deciding questions of war and peace. If messengers came from foreign kings, they had first to go to the king's mother, her consent being necessary for an audience with her son. The function of the mother as a protector is in these cases a better indication of her status than any hypothetical assumption of a former matriarchate. But the fact that the mother assumed these duties seems to be correlated with the fact that the king had no living brothers nor father's brothers.
VII. Conclusion
In the brief analysis of the political organization of the Banyan-kole given above, I have tried, not only to describe the form of the kingdom of Ankole in its political aspect, but also to point out the underlying forces which contributed to its formation and maintenance. We can readily see that this kingdom falls into that larger class of political structures known as conquest states, wherein ethnically different groups come into contact, resulting in a stratified society and a mechanism for maintenance.
The political relationships of clientship, serfdom, and slavery may be classified on the basis of their origin, as contractual and compulsory, differing in this from the relationships based on kinship which formerly were predominant and still play a fundamental role in Banyankole society. As to their nature or constitution, we might say that clientship was a well-balanced relationship arising from the need for political co-operation. Serfdom and slavery, on the other hand, were unbalanced relationships and exploitational in nature.
In my treatment of the Abachwezi myths, the drum cult, and the succession rites as forms of political ideology and practice, I have stressed the fact that even their particular form is explicable