220 AFRICAN* POLITICAL SYSTEMS
object or the non-fulfilment of an obligation an attempt is made to reach an agreement between the two immediate parties concerned. If a debt is not returned or the obligation not fulfilled, the claimant at first takes resort to self-help, fetching the object in question-usually an animal—by night, assisted perhaps by one or two brothers or friends. If a neighbour encroaches upon his garden, he goes there at night or while the neighbour is away and remarks the boundary-line by digging new ditches or by pulling out his neighbour's seedlings wrongfully planted on his land. This form of self-help is still frequently resorted to, especially among the illiterate section of the community, and gives rise to much disciplinary action by the elders of the new tribal courts, who are anxious to settle every dispute in court for fear of losing their court dues. In other cases, where self-help of this nature is impracticable or impossible, the aggrieved person takes recourse to the spelling of a curse or to engaging the services of a rain-maker to obtain justice. Curses are mainly employed by older people, as their efficacy is supposed to increase with the age of the person who utters them, or in cases where the offender is unknown or where the evidence against him is not conclusive. I have myself witnessed a few cases where stolen property was secretly returned within a few weeks after a curse had been uttered. Threats to engage the services of the rain-maker to divert the rain from the offender's garden or to devastate it by directing a hailstorm towards it are said among the Vugusu to have been the most common means of pressing the payment of a debt.
When disputes or quarrels could not be settled by self-help, the person who believed himself wronged appealed to the old men of his sub-clan, and the accused person, if he belonged to the same sub-clan, was called by them or he came on his own account to defend his case. The old men then listened to the case as presented by the two disputants and any witness. The decision could be announced by any of the elders present as, with the facts ascertained, there was only one possible judgement which was common knowledge to all. Nor was there any organized judicial assembly. The elders of the sub-clan met every morning on a pasture, where, sitting round the fire (oluhia), they discussed the news and the gossip of the previous day. These informal gatherings provided the main occasion for dispensing justice within the sub-clan. If the evidence could not be established by hearing the two parties