In search of kola nut crackers

In my search to trace the replication of traditional chieftaincy systems from the Cameroon and Nigeria in South Africa, my friends said I was on a fool’s errand.

‘I don’t think you will find any. All these guys call each other chief. How will you be able to tell a real chief from the many ‘chiefs’ who are out there?”

In Nigeria, being addressed as a Mr or Mrs in the continent’s most populous country is taken to mean that you don’t matter that much and, as a result, people go to extraordinary, if at times ridiculous, lengths to be called chief. If they fail to get a chieftaincy, then an honorary doctorate may suffice.

‘We indeed have real chiefs here,” said George Kiyang who I met downtown. ‘The chief you will find here is not a paramount chief, as these are not allowed to live away from their people,” he explains. ‘But I know one who lives here. His name is Chief Mbancho.”

Referring to Chief Mbncho, Cameroonian Lawrence Chamba says: ‘You do have chiefs who go away, but these are minor chiefs.”

A Nigerian called Tony elucidates further: ‘If want you to break kola nut [a ritual gesture when friends meet], this should be done by the oldest member of the group.

‘If a chief or a person with titles is there it is he who breaks kola.”

The M&G does not have a kola nut but our host, a chief, extends his arm in a firm handshake. He goes to another room to don his traditional garb — colourful headgear, a thick cotton shirt and bead necklaces around his neck. ‘My full name is Formbeuh Ndia Mbancho Fosungu, a chief of the Bangwa tribe, a community based in the southwest of Cameroon.”

He expounds on traditional systems of support in South Africa.

When someone dies, Mbancho explains, the community organises a hall where a vigil is held. ‘We perform certain rites and intercede to the ancestors to grant that person eternal rest. We also sing Ndem a tonoue, a song that means God has called him.”

The vigil is held for people who attend the monthly meetings on the second Sunday of every month. At these gatherings people contribute a minimum amount of R50 each.

Mbancho exercises authority away from home because of the community’s belief in the rituals of death, the centrality of older people and traditional authority in the necessary practices to ensure an afterlife.

Some people stop attending their network events but death always provides a wake-up call — if not for the deceased then for those who remain.

‘There was a Cameroonian who was not attending the meetings,” he says slowly. ‘When he died he had not saved money for his burial in Cameroon. He was buried in Soweto,” the chief says with obvious distaste. It costs around R40 000 to transport a corpse to West Africa.

‘It is the ultimate humiliation for one of our brothers to die and be buried in a foreign land,” Mbancho says. ‘It is a sacrilege when that happens. In my tribe an old person should be buried in the village.

‘We have to impose a tax so that a brother is buried back home. The chief delegates a friend or a next of kin to accompany the corpse back home,” says Mbancho. In the event of death his community is expected to contribute R400.

Mbancho points out that the community also has its own dispute settlement system so a brother never takes a brother to court in a strange land. ‘We convene a meeting where we bring the disagreeing parties together. We look at the facts and decide what to do.”

If the cause of the disagreement is related to debt, the debtor admits the debt and explains how the money will be paid back. ‘If he refuses to pay we tell the creditor to do whatever he can to get his money back.” He says no one has refused to abide by the decisions reached at these meetings.

Mbancho says he didn’t buy his chieftaincy but inherited it from his father, though there is an increasing trend in Nigeria for people to pay more than R60 000 to be given a chieftaincy or an honorary doctorate.

‘You inherit it from your father when he disappears. Chiefs don’t die; they disappear,” he says simply. ‘I still work with the chief’s council back home. They propose something and if I agree it becomes a binding decision on the community.”

Later, I continued mysearch for a Nigerian chief. People pointed me in the direction of Prince, who owns a restaurant on Biccard Street in Johannesburg.

‘Indeed there is a chief here,” says a man claiming to be a close friend. ‘You have to bring two cartons of Castle Milk Stout, a live goat, seven kola nuts, seven yams and pay his house rent of R5 000. Please write this down.

‘It’s not easy for a chief to leave his country and suffer in a foreign land. You are an African and you know you don’t appear before a chief empty-handed,” he says, quite seriously. ‘Don’t come back again if you don’t have those things.”

I left without an interview. My newspaper hadn’t given me the Castle Milk Stout or the live goat.