2I2 AFRICAN POLITICAL SYSTEMS
after somebody's death, various people make use of the occasion to restate their own claims, not because they want to realize them, but because they want to keep them generally known. The elders then nod in agreement and the validity of the claim is thereby publicly recognized. The surest way in which a liar is detected is by his inability to provide witnesses who can vouch for his claim.
(b) The Transmission of Law and Custom to Succeeding Generations. The second factor that disrupts the continuity of relationships —the coming and going of the generations—raises the problem of transmission of law and custom to succeeding generations. This problem has two aspects: It involves, on the one hand, the imparting of practical and theoretical knowledge, of ethical and moral standards of behaviour, and of general rules of etiquette which are common to the whole tribe or even to wider groups. On the other hand, it involves the initiation into the successive phases of life, i.e. die acceptance of the individual into different and ever-widening social groups or types of relationship, each of which is governed by its own set of customs, rules, and values.
The first, aspect of the task of transmission, the imparting of general knowledge, values, and manners, chiefly takes the form of a general education through example and precept which is accomplished without organized effort by the up-bringing of the child in the family and its adjustment to its everyday surroundings. It does not concern us in this analysis of the political organization.
The second aspect, however, requires a closer examination as it demonstrates the process by which the individual gradually gains his place in the tribal structure. As every individual enters a new phase of life and thereby attains a new status, the rights and duties and the new types of relationships, implied in his new status, are marked by a ceremonial initiation. If we follow up the life-cycle of the individual among the Bantu Kavirondo, we can distinguish six major phases, the entrance into all of which is marked by a very similar ceremonial procedure: (a) Earliest infancy during which the child is not yet socially acclaimed, (b) Later infancy and early childhood, the entrance into which is marked by the 'feast of washing the child' and the name-giving ceremonies by which the child is acclaimed as a member of the individual family and the father's dan. (c) Boy- and girlhood, marked by the teeth-knocking rite and the child's formal acceptance into its maternal kin-group as well as its admission to the