On the Politics of Traditional Rulership.

The place of traditional rulers in contemporary society is a knotty one in practically all of the Third World. Supposedly caught between modernity and traditionalism, few of these societies have been able to provide more than make-shift solutions to the problem. There is clearly an insufficient understanding of both the dynamics of institutionalized traditional rulership and of the different factors, historical and environmental, which interact with it. The issue of the survival of the institution has often been reviewed without regard to its ideals, values and realities and with scant analysis of how these might be reconciled with the impact as well as the aftermath of colonialism and its concomitants. The place of traditional rulers in modern Africa is essentially a political issue. It is political because at stake are such basic questions as the survival of what has been an entrenched institution, and the calculus of benefits and liabilities that various interests derive from it. Traditional rulership brings various subtle techniques of manipulation and maneuver into the play of present-day post-colonial policies.