i9a AFRICAN POLITICAL SYSTEMS
Conclusions. We may say then, in conclusion, that economic co-operation and community life only underline the political and tribal divisions which cut across Kede society. As integrative forces which could foster a solidarity pertaining to the political system at large, they fail. Only the ideological influences, myth and religion, succeed in this. They anchor the external political unit in more deeply rooted interests and sentiments. They add to political coercion the more subtle persuasion of supernatural arguments, of beliefs in the necessity and fore-ordination of the existing system.
I have been using the present tense with some liberty. It was applied correctly if we are thinking of the last ten or fifteen years, but inaccurately if we consider the immediate present and, above all, the future. The rite of the Chain of Tsoede is still performed annually, in completely Mohammedanized Muregi. The bull sacrifice at the Ketsd was performed when the present Kuta succeeded to the chieftainship; whether it will be repeated for his successor is open to doubt. The Nddduma, at any rate, although still existing as a local rite, is no longer carried out by the Kede chief. We have spoken before of the decline of authority of the Kede chief. It may seem surprising that a chieftainship which had been forced to give up most of the qualities from which it formerly drew its strength should so easily discard these 'binding forces* of religion. The explanation lies, again, in the changed conception of Kede chieftainship. Kede rule has exchanged its dynamic and expanding nature for the secure, aquiescent authority under the Pax Britannica. It can dispense with the binding forces of religion, which used to uphold the autocratic rulership of a small minority; it can, above all, afford-to discontinue a practice which, to the Mohammedan chiefs of Kede country, appears as a concession to their less enlightened subjects. Kede rule has thus paradoxically weakened itself in its new-found security. And .in this the chiefs of Kede do not stand alone; this paradox is, I believe, a not uncommon feature of modern, static, Government-backed chieftainship in Africa.
The incipient dissolution of the 'binding force5 of religion in the Kede State is only following in the wake of the general dissolution of the solidarity which it was meant to uphold. The economic development of the country led, as we have seen, to an extensive co-operation with outside groups and to the founding of colonies