bers of a ruling lineage, they included people of different descent groups,
and they frequently incorporated aliens-people
who had quarreled with
their original chiefs or had left drought-stricken areas. They even incorpo-
rated individuals from the aboriginal hunting communities and, in and
after the sixteenth century, from European shipwrecks. For example,
"There are two clans, the Lungu and Mholo, still living on the Transkei
coast, who trace descent from the survivors of shipwrecks, and whose
appearance and ritual practice support this claim."67 The Western concept
of tribalism, which is usually taken to refer to closed populations re-
producing fixed cultural characteristics, is not applicable to' African
farmers.
A chief spent much of his time in the open-air meeting place near his
personal hut. There, in cooperation with his councillors, who were drawn
from the heads of homesteads, he regulated the affairs of his people, listen-
ing to complaints, settling disputes, and receiving visitors. He was the
richest man in his territory. His subjects paid him sheep and cattle for
settling their disputes, his men handed over to him any livestock they seized
from neighboring chiefdoms, and he had the right to summon his people to