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Vampire Priests of Central Africa: African Debates about Labor and Religion in Colonial Northern Zambia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Luise White
Affiliation:
National Humanities Center

Extract

When I was a girl, I was taught not to gossip by a school game. We would sit in a circle, and someone would whisper a phrase into the ear of the person sitting next to her. By the time the phrase was returned to the first speaker, it was totally deformed—hilarious proof that hearsay distorted facts. I had already published a book based extensively on oral interviews when I realized how insidious this game was, that it rested on two extremely authoritarian principles: Information should be transmitted passively, and no one has the right to alter or amend received statements.

Type
Modern Uses of Myth
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1993

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References

This essay, perhaps more than most, has been socially constructed. Not only did Leslie Ashbaugh, Kieth Breckenridge, David William Cohen, Ian Cunnison, Johannes Fabian, Karen Hansen, Sharon Hutchinson, Ivan Karp, Corinne Kratz, Pier Larson, Hugh Macmillan, V. Y. Mudimbe, Mwelwa Musambachime, Peter Pels, Lucy Simler, Megan Vaughan, and Ann Waltner and two anonymous readers comment on earlier versions, but seminars at Boston University, the Institute for Advanced Research and Study in the African Humanities at Northwestern University, and the University of Amsterdam, and Anthony Appiah's murder mystery, Avenging Angel, transformed how I thought about writing this material. The research for this article was funded by the American Philosophical Society, the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

1 I take this point from a somewhat different study of Catholicism in Central Africa, Ranger, Terrance O., “Taking Hold of the Land: Holy Places and Pilgrimages in Twentieth-Century Zimbabwe,” Past and Present, 117(1987), 159–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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5 E. H. Jalland, Provincial Commissioner, Abercom, comments on tour report 3/1936; R. L. Parr, District Officer Abercorn, tour report 4/1936; A. F. B. Glennie, District Commissioner Abercorn, tour report 1/1937, NAZ/SEC2/819, Tour Reports, Abercorn 1932–36.

6 Societé des Missionaires d’Afrique, Rapports Annuels, No. 25 (Alger: Maison-Carrée, 19291930), 206Google Scholar, quoting the Monsignor of Chilubula Mission. Societé des Missionaires d’Afrique, Rome: Diaire de Chilubula, 22 February 1929; 18 April 1931; and for sisal plantations in Tanganyika, Diaire de Kayambi, 13 June 1922.

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8 Richards, Audrey I., Land, Labour and Diet in Northern Rhodesia: An Economic Study of the Bemba Tribe (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), 23Google Scholar. Men often tried to shirk their marital obligations by saying “they are resting after their work in the mines, or are about to take other jobs ‘soon,’” thus placing a heavy strain on the resources of the matrifocal group (p. 172). Thus migrant labor and participation therein was a social strategy a given household and village.

9 Moore, Henrietta and Vaughan, Megan, “Cutting Down Trees: Nutrition and Agricultural Change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1920–1986,” African Affairs, 86:345 (1987), 529CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

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11 Gann, Lewis, A History of Northern Rhodesia, 254Google Scholar, quoted in Ferguson, , “Mobile Workers,” 398Google Scholar. This was the description of wage labor officials seemed to like most: “those who go further afield are for the most part … those whom the ‘glitter’ of life in the large industrial areas attracts, and those who have tasted the luxuries of life … and have developed a taste for such things” (E. Bolton, DC Mpika, tour report 2/1938, NAZ/SEC2/836, Mpika Tour Reports, 1933–38).

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14 Richards, , Land, Labour, 304Google Scholar. This may have been because mound gardens were exclusively women's domain, see Moore, and Vaughan, , “Cutting Down Trees,” 354–6Google Scholar, and Guyer, Jane I., “Female Farming in Anthropology and African History,” in di Leonardo, Micaela, Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1991), 257–77Google Scholar.

15 Diaire de Chilubula, 14 July 1927; Diaire de Kapatu, 31 March 1933.

16 Moore, and Vaughan, , “Cutting Down Trees,” 534–40Google Scholar. I argue that citemene was a system to control the spread of tsetse fly, see my “Tsetse Visions: Narratives of Blood and Bugs in Colonial Northern Zambia, 1930–39” (unpublished essay manuscript).

17 Richards, , Land, Labour, 176Google Scholar; Moore, and Vaughan, , “Cutting Down Trees,” 525Google Scholar.

18 Diaire de Chilubula, 18 June 1924, 6 September 1926; Diaire de Kapatu, 9 June 1925; Diaire de Ipusukilo, 14 January 1928, 30 April 1935; Diaire de St. Mary's, 7 March 1938; Diaire de Mulilansolo, 11 May 1942; see also Fields, Karen, Revival and Rebellion in Central Africa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 313, 129–34Google Scholar.

19 D. Willis, Provincial Commissioner Kasama District, Report on Banyama, 24 March 1931, NAZ/ZA1/9/62/2/1; see also Gann, L. H., A History of Northern Rhodesia: Early Days to 1953 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1964), 321Google Scholar; Musambachime, Mwelwa C., “The Impact of Rumor: The Case of the Banyama (Vampire-Men) in Northern Rhodesia, 1930–64,” International Journal of African Historical Studies, 21:2 (1988), 205–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Willis had the confidence of the White Fathers more than any official who came after him, as he and his French wife were regular visitors at Chilubula (see Diaire de Chilubula, passim).

20 Diaire de Chilubula, 18 March 1932.

21 In many vampire accusations the technologies of Western biomedicine, especially injections and bandages, were used to subdue victims. K. D. Leaver, “The ‘Transformation of Men to Meat’ Story,” Native Affairs Department Information Sheet No. 20, November 1960, National Archives of Zimbabwe; Shepperson, George, Myth and Reality in Malawi (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 78Google Scholar; Brelsford, W. V., “The Banyama Myth,” Native Affairs Department Annual, 9:4 (1967), 5455Google Scholar; Ceyssens, Rik, “Mutumbula: Mythe de l’Opprimé,” Cultures et development, 7:34 (1975), 483536Google Scholar: Musambachime, , “The Impact of Rumor,” 207Google Scholar; White, Luise, “Bodily Fluids and Usufruct: Controlling Property in Nairobi, 1917–1939,” Canadian Journal of African Studies, 24:3 (1990), 418–38Google Scholar.

22 Gervas Clay, Taunton, Somerset, England, 26 August 1991.

23 Musambachime, , “The Impact of Rumor,” 208, 211Google Scholar.

24 Mwelwa C. Musambachime, personal communication, 29 January 1992.

25 V. W. Brelsford, tour report 1, 1939, NAZ/SEC2/751, Chinsali District Tour Reports, 1939–40.

26 Ian Cunnison, personal communication, 4 February 1992.

27 Brelsford, W. V., “The Banyama Myth,” Native Affairs Department Annual, 9:4 (1967), 5455Google Scholar.

28 Ian Cunnison, field notes from Luapula, March 1949.

29 Brelsford, , “The Banyama Myth,” 4960Google Scholar.

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31 Roberts, Andrew, A History of the Bemba: Political Growth and Change in North-Eastern Zambia before 1900 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973), 259–69Google Scholar; Garvey, Brian, “The Development of the White Fathers' Mission among the Bemba-Speaking Peoples, 1891–1964” (Ph. D. thesis, History Department, University of London, 1974), 149–53Google Scholar.

32 Garvey, , “The White Fathers’ Mission,” 153Google Scholar; Fields, , Revival and Rebellion, 129–34Google Scholar; Ipenburg, Arie N., Lubwa: The Presbyterian Mission and the Eastern Bemba (Lusaka: Teresianum Press, 1984), 2628Google Scholar.

33 Rapports Annuels, No. 19, 19231924, pp. 189, 206Google Scholar; Garvey, , “The White Fathers’ Mission,” 149ffGoogle Scholar.

34 Diaire de Ilondola, 15 January 1934; Diaire de Kapatu, 7, 12, 18 January 1938; Diaire de Chilubula, 8 June 1931; Hineflaar, Hugo H., “Religious Change Among Bemba-Speaking Women in Zambia” (Ph. D. thesis, University of London, 1989), 111–2Google Scholar.

35 Diaire de Chifobwe-Ipusukilo, 11 December 1926.

36 P. W. M. Jelf, DO, Tour Report Fort Roseberry, June–July 1932, NAZ/SEC2/888. Mee was with Thorn Stores, a manager of which figured in vampire accusations in Northern Province in the mid-1940s. Geoffrey Howe, PCNP to Chief Secretary, Lusaka, 29 January 1944, NAZ/SEC2/429, Native Affairs, Banyama; Hugh Macmillan, personal communication, 21 August 1991.

37 J. Moffatt Thomas, SNA, 18 August 1932, Tour Reports Fort Roseberry June–July 1932, NAZ/SEC2/888.

38 Diaire de Chifobwe-Ipusukilo, 9 August 1932.

39 Diaire de Chilubula, 27 December 1931.

40 Ibid., 22 February 1936.

41 Ibid., 27 July 1937, 15 May 1939.

42 Diaire de Kapatu, 31 March 1933.

43 Diaire de Ilondola, 27 April 1948.

44 Diaire de Chifobwe-Ipusukilo, 15–19 April 1931.

45 Diaire de Chilubula, 23 February 1927; 14 July 1927; 22 July 1927; 1 May 1928; 16 November 1933; Richards, , Land, Labour, 145Google Scholar. Richards' footnote clarifies the use of the term: “Ukupula is loosely applied to all forms of scrounging, but technically speaking means labour in return for food only” (p. 145n). It had become very common in the early 1930s as one of the survival strategies available to “deserted wives … during the bad times of the year” but in general “only an absolutely destitute person or an imbecile would reckon to subsist in this way as a regular thing” (p. 145). White Fathers accepted this translation, at least on principle: Kapula was defined as a person who earns a living helping others (Fathers, White, The White Fathers' Bemba-English Dictionary [Capetown: Longmans, Green and Company, 1954], 246Google Scholar).

46 Garvey, , “The White Fathers' Mission,” 155, 157–8Google Scholar. This comparison might have been lost on Africans themselves, since in 1934 there were not many jobs of the Copperbelt. See Moore, and Vaughan, , “Cutting Down Trees,” 528–9Google Scholar, and Ferguson, , “Mobile Workers,” 397405Google Scholar.

47 Diaire de Mulilansolo, 21 June 1940.

48 Ibid., 24 December 1943.

49 Diarie de St. Mary's, Fort Jameson, 7 March 1938.

50 Ibid., Fort Jameson, 2 January 1940.

51 Rapports Annuels 1948–49, 39, pp. 212–3Google Scholar.

52 Diaire de St. Mary's, Fort Jameson, 25 February 1958; 28 April 1958.

53 White, Hayden, “Historical Text as Literary Artifact,” in Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 8687Google Scholar, and his “Inter-pretation in History,” especially 51–58; see also Lienhardt, Peter, “The Interpretation of Rumour,” in Beattie, J. H. and Lienhardt, R. G., Studies in Social Anthropology: Essays in Memory of E. E. Evans-Pritchard by his Former Oxford Colleagues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 105–31Google Scholar.

54 I take these points from two works by Carlo Ginzburg, Morelli, Freud, and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method,” History Workshop 9 (1980), 536CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Ecstacies: Deciphering the Witches Sabbath (New York: Pantheon, 1991), 130Google Scholar.

55 Diaire de Kapatu (Saint-Leon de Kaliminwa), 29 March 1929.

56 Thomas Fox-Pitt Papers, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, PP.MS. 6/5, Correspondence 1952–53.

57 Brelsford, , “The Banyama Myth,” 49Google Scholar; D. Willis, PC Kasama District, 24 March 1931, NAZ/ZA1/9/62/2/1; Musambachime, , “The Impact of Rumor,” 205207Google Scholar; van Binsbergen, Wim M. J., Religious Change in Zambia (London: Kegan Paul, 1981) 349nGoogle Scholar.

58 Gervas Clay, DC Isoka, Memorandum concerning “banyama” and “mafyeka,” 24 January 1944; R. S. Jeffries to SNA, 24 April 1944; LegCo Debates, Hansard 31 August 1945, cols. 221–22, 248–49, 254–55, NAZ/SEC2/429, Native Affairs: Banyama. This was based on genuine customs of human sacrifice—to honor departed royalty, not to feed commoners—and a 1920s Bemba bogeyman, Ne Koroma, and some well-placed anti-royalist feeling among educated Bemba (see Rapports Annuels 24, 19241925, pp. 293–94Google Scholar; Stephen Bwalya, Customs and Habits of the Bemba, typescript, Mpika, 1936, Rhodes House, Oxford, RH Mss. Afr. s. 1214; and Clay's memorandum).

59 Bynum, Caroline Walker, “Women Mystics and Eucharistic Devotion in the Thirteenth Century,” Women's Studies, 11 (1984), 179214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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61 Richards, Audrey I., “A Modern Movement of Witchfinders,” Africa, 8:4 (1935), 456CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 There is a literature that suggests that “the person of Jesus Christ” is difficult for Africans to incorporate in their belief systems, partly because of his association with a colonial past and partly because his power is both divine and ancestral (see Schoffeleers, Mathew, “Folk Christology in Africa: The Dialectics of the Nganga Paradigm,” Journal of Religion in Africa, 19:2 [1988], 157–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

63 Where transubstantiation was taken seriously, blood accusations frequently involved the host. European accusations of Jewish ritual murder often included the theft of the host which, once outside a church, turned into a bleeding baby Jesus (see Po-chia Hsia, R., The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988], 1012, 5051, 5456, 128, 131, 222Google Scholar). Other accusations of ritual murder in Christian times conflated blood and bread: Early Christians in Rome were accused of hiding in dough the infants they were about to eat and, a thousand years later, it was said that Jews needed the blood of Christian children to make matzoh (see Ellis, Bill, “De Legendis Urbis: Modern Legends in Ancient Rome,” Journal of American Folklore, 96:380 (1983), 200–08CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Dundes, Alan, “The Ritual Murder or Blood Libel Legend: A Study of Anti-Semitic Victimization Through Projective Inversion,” in Dundes, Alan, ed., The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore [Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991], 337Google Scholar).

64 Note pour Monsieur Toussaint, Department MOI, Elisabethville, 15 Fevrier 1943, Archives du personnell, Gecamines, Lubumbashi, Zaire (loaned to me by T. K. Biaya).

65 Bynum, Caroline Walker, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 31112Google Scholar.

66 See Moore, and Vaughan, , “Cutting Down Trees,” 523–40Google Scholar.

67 Thomas Fox-Pitt, DC Mpika to PCNP Kasama, Re: Banyama Rumors, 6 March 1939, NAZ/SEC2/429, Native Affairs: Banyama.

68 For diverse examples, see Bynum, Caroline Walker, “The Body of Christ in the Later Middle Ages: A Reply to Leo Steinberg,” Renaissance Quarterly, 39:3 (1986), 399439CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Farmer, Paul, “Bad Blood, Spoiled Milk: Bodily Fluids as Moral Barometers in Rural Haiti,” American Ethnologist, 15:1 (1988), 6283CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bledsoe, Caroline H., “Side-Stepping the Postpartum Sex Taboo: Mende Cultural Perceptions of Tinned Milk in Sierra Leone,” in de Walle, Etienne van, ed., The Cultural Roots of African Fertility Regimes (Berkeley: University of California Press, in press)Google Scholar.

69 Richards, , “A Modern Movement,” 69Google Scholar.

70 Richards, , Land, Labour, 449Google Scholar. Indeed, children could not suckle from women who had not gone through initiation (Audrey Richards Diaries, 6 March 1931, Audrey Richards Papers, London School of Economics Library, London).

71 Geoffrey Howe, PCNP Kasama to Chief Secretary, Lusaka, 29 January 1944; Cantrel-Robinson, Chief Secretary, LegCo Debates 31 August 1945, Hansard cols. 221–22, NAZ/SEC2/429 Native Affairs: Banyama; Gervas Clay, Taunton, Somerset, England, 26 August 1991.

72 Epstein, Arnold Leonard, “Unconscious Factors in the Response to Social Crisis: A Case Study from Central Africa,” Psychoanalytic Study of Society, 8 (1979), 339Google Scholar; see also Gintzburger, Alphonse, “Accommodation to Poverty: The Case of Malagasy Peasant Communities,” Cahiers d’etudes africaines, 92:23–4 (1983), 419–42Google Scholar . Locating active, “irrational” beliefs in hunger or tainted food supplies is not unique to African studies, however. See Lefebvre, Georges, The Great Fear of 1789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary France, White, Joan, trans. (New York: Schocken, 1973)Google Scholar and Matossian, Mary Kilbourne, Poisons of the Past: Molds, Epidemics, and History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

73 See Copjec, Joan, “Vampires, Breast-Feeding, and Anxiety,” October, 58 (1991), 2543CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 Epstein, A. L., “Response to Social Crisis: Aspects of Oral Aggression in Central Africa,” in his collection of previously published essays, Scenes from African Urban Life: Collected Copperbelt Essays (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992), 158207Google Scholar.

75 Hinfelaar, , “Religious Change,” 90Google Scholar.

76 Musambachime, , “The Impact of Rumor,” 208Google Scholar; see also Epstein, , “Response to Social Crisis,” 167–9Google Scholar.

77 Fox-Pitt, Thomas, “Cannibalism and Christianity,” 1953Google Scholar, Thomas Fox-Pitt Papers, Correspondence 1952–53, PP. MS.6/5, SOAS Library. A government-owned newspaper marketed for Africans described mupila as “white balls of drugs” used by Africans to capture Africans by paralysing them, causing them to lose their memories, and making their clothes fall off (see Banyama—Copper Belt Myth Terrifies the Foolish,” Mutende 38, 1936Google Scholar, NAZ/SEC2/429, Native Affairs: Banyama). For a more mechanical interpretation of mupila, see White, Luise, “Cars Out of Place: Vampires, Technology, and Labor in East and Central Africa,” Representations, 42 (1993), 84107Google Scholar.

78 Brelsford, , “The Banyama Myth,” 49Google Scholar.

79 Hinfelaar, , “Religious Change,” 8Google Scholar.

80 Richards, Audrey I., “Mother-Right Among the Central Bantu,” in Evans-Pritchard, E. E., et al. , Essays Presented to C. G. Seligman (1934; reprint, Westport, CT: Negro Universities Press, 1970, 276)Google Scholar; Hinfelaar, , “Religious Change,” 322Google Scholar.

81 Richards, Audrey, Chisungu: A Girl's Initiation Ceremony among the Bemba of Zambia (New York: Routledge, 1982), 34Google Scholar; Hinfelaar, , “Religious Change,” 32Google Scholar.

82 de Heusch, Luc, The Drunken King, Or, The Origin of the State, Willis, Roy, trans. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 168–70Google Scholar; Turner, Victor, “Color Classification in Ndembu Ritual: A Problem of Primitive Classification,” in The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Rituals (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 5992Google Scholar.

83 In much of British colonial Africa, including Northern Rhodesia, Africans were forbidden to consume European-type bottled beers and wine (Ambler, Charles, “Alcohol, Racial Segregation and Popular Politics in Northern Rhodesia,” Journal of African History, 31:2 [1990], 295313)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84 Feeley-Harnik, , The Lord's Table, 155–56Google Scholar.

85 Richards, , Land, Labour, 7781Google Scholar; Ambler, , “Alcohol, Racial Segregation,” 295305Google Scholar.

86 Richards, , “A Modern Movement,” 449Google Scholar; Diaire de Chilubula, 29 June 1934; Diaire de Kayambi, 5 June 1934.

87 E. E. Hutchins, DO Morogoro, Report on “Mumiani” or “Chinjachinja,” TNA, Film No. MF 15, Morogoro District, V. I. Part A, Sheets 25–26, August 1931 but inserted into file marked 1938. Hutchins believed that one reason the rumor spread through Morogoro was European surveyors drinking red wine in bottles. I am grateful to Thaddeus Sunseri for taking notes on this file for me.

88 Trant, Hope, Not Merrion Square: Anecdotes of a Woman's Medical Career in Africa (Toronto: Thomhill Press, 1970), 127–44Google Scholar. I am grateful to Megan Vaughan for this reference.

89 Turner, Victor, “Color Classification,” 5992Google Scholar; Richards, , Chisungu, 81Google Scholar.

90 NAZ/SEC2/1297, Northern Province Annual Report, Native Affairs, 1937.

91 Ipenburg, , Lubwa, 57Google Scholar; Fields, Revival and Rebellion, 114–23, 163–74, 179–85Google Scholar.

92 Morrow, Sean, “On the Side of the Robbed’: R. J. B. Moore, Missionary on the Copperbelt, 1933–1941,” Journal of Religion in Africa, 19:3 (1989), 249–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93 The Golden Age, quoted in Meebelo, Henry S., Reaction to Colonialism: A Prelude to the Politics of Independence in Northern Zambia 1893–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1971), 175Google Scholar; Rapports Annuels 30, 19341935, p. 328Google Scholar; Rapports Annuels 39, 19381939, p. 257Google Scholar; Diaire de Kapatu, 12 June 1940; 7 October 1940.

94 Richards, , Land, Labour, 220Google Scholar.

95 Ibid., 153.

96 Ibid., 218–20.

97 Diaire de Kayambi, 23 January 1927.

98 Harris, Olivia, “The Earth and the State: The Sources and the Meanings of Money in North Potosi, Bolivia,” in Parry, J. and Bloch, M., Money and the Morality of Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 233–34Google Scholar.

99 See Hart, Kieth, “Heads or Tails? Two Sides of the Coin,” Man (N. S.), 21 (1986), 637–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

100 H. A. Watmore, Tour Report 3/1932, NAZ/SEC2/835, Tour Reports Mpika, 1931–33; Breckenridge, Kieth, “Minelords, Migrants, and Gold: The Cultural Politics of Metallic Money before the South African Gold Standard Crisis, 1920–1933” (unpublished essay, 1993)Google Scholar.

101 J. W. Sharratt-Horne, DC, tour report 6/1932, NAZ/SEC2/767, Isoka Tour Reports 1932–33. White ants do eat paper money (see Hutchinson, Sharon, “The Cattle of Money and the Cattle of Girls among the Nuer, 1930–83,” American Ethnologist, 19:2 (1992), 294316CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

102 Diaire de Chilubula, 10 February 1932; 14 February 1932; 24 February 1932.

103 Musambachime, , “The Impact of Rumor,” 204Google Scholar; Annual Report on Native Affairs, Chinsali, 1935, NAZ/SEC2/1298, Annual Report on Native Affairs, Chinsali 1935–37.

104 Gudeman, Stephen, Economics as Culture (London: Routledge, 1986), 100–01Google Scholar.

105 I have taken the chronology of banyama scares from Gervas Clay, DC Isoka, Memorandum concerning “banyama” and “mafyeka” with special reference to the Provincial Commissioner, Kasama's Confidential File on Banyama and to incidents in the Isoka District during the latter part of 1943, 24 January 1944, NAZ/SEC2/429, Native Affairs: Banyama.

106 Most of the Europeans accused of being banyama are not in the written record. The most notorious one was Arthur Davison, a labor recruiter based at Ndola. Musambachime, , “The Impact of Rumor,” 206Google Scholar; S. R.Denny, “Up and Down the Great North Road,” (typescript, 1970, Rhodes House, Oxford: RH MSS Afr r. 113).

107 Ramsay, Clay, The Ideology of the Great Fear: The Soissonnais in 1789 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 138–55Google Scholar, and White, , ℌCars Out of Place,” 84107Google Scholar.

108 Geoffrey Howe, PCNP, Kasama, to Chief Secretary, Lusaka, 29 January 1944, NAZ/SEC2/429, Native Affairs: Banyama.

109 Gervas Clay, DC Isoka to PCNP, Memorandum concerning “banyama,” 24 January 1944, NAZ/SEC2/429, Native Affairs: Banyama; John Barnes, Fort Jameson to J. Clyde Mitchell, 10 October 1948, J. Clyde Mitchell Papers, Rhodes House, Oxford, RH. Mss. Afr. s. 1998/4/1; Megan Vaughan, personal communication, 26 June 1990; Parpart, Jane L., “Sexuality and Power on the Zambian Copperbelt, 1926–54,” in Bennett, Norman R., ed., Discovering the African Past: Essays in Honor of Daniel F. McCall (Boston: Boston University Papers on Africa 8, 1987), 5764Google Scholar.

110 Diaire de Chilubula, 10 February 1932, 24 June 1932.

111 Bishop of Northern Rhodesia, member for Native Interests, LegCo Debates, 31 August 1945, Hansard, cols. 221–22, NAZ/SEC2/429, Native Affairs: Banyama.

112 G. Howe, PC, Northern Province, to Chief Secretary, Lusaka, 29 January 1944; A. T. Williams, for PCNP, Kasama, to Registrar of High Court, Livingstone, confidential, 30 April 1944, NAZ/SEC2/429, Native Affairs: Banyama.

113 S. R. Denny, “Up and Down the Great North Road,” (typescript, 1970, Rhodes House, Oxford, RH MSS. Afr. r. 113); Hobson, Dick, Showtime: The Agricultural and Commercial Society of Zambia (Lusaka: The Agricultural and Commercial Society of Zambia, 1979), 42Google Scholar; Richard Hobson, personal communication, 7 July 1991.

114 Geoffrey Mee, son of L. G. Mee, manager of Thorn Stores in Fort Roseberry from 1940–54 (Lusaka: 10 August 1991, interviewed by Hugh Macmillan).

115 Rat tails themselves were a medical metaphor, even in such unsophisticated hands as Glieman's: Anti-rat and anti-plague campaigns in East and Central Africa rewarded Africans who brought rat tails to their chiefs; in Central Africa most of the rathunting was done by young boys or, less commonly, women (see Vaughan, Megan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991], 4043Google Scholar).

116 Jean, and Comaroff, John L., “Goodly Beasts, Beastly Goods: Cattle and Commodities in a South African Context,” American Ethnologist, 17:2 (1990), 209Google Scholar.

117 Hutchinson, , “The Cattle of Money,” 302–3Google Scholar.

118 V. Y. Mudimbe, personal communication, 10 January 1992; “Banyama—Copper Belt Myth Terrifies the Foolish,” Mutende [Lusaka] 38, 1936Google Scholar, NAZ/SEC2/429, Native Affairs: Banyama; “Five Years for African Who Threatened to Kill Broadcasters,” Central African Post [Lusaka], 27 01 1953, p. 1Google Scholar; Brelsford, W. V., Generations of Men: The European Pioneers of Northern Rhodesia (Salisbury: Stuart, Manning, 1966), 140–1Google Scholar; Musambachime, , “The Impact of Rumor,” 206–7Google Scholar. Similarly, mestizos reported “with much hilarity” that they would kill a pig or a dog and leave its entrails beside blood-drenched clothing to convince Indians that the fatextracting phantom mestizo of the Peruvian Highlands was nearby, and would punish them for not working harder” (Oliver-Smith, Anthony, “The Pishtaco: Institutionalized Fear in the Peruvian Highlands,” Journal of American Folklore, 82:326 (1969), 363–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

119 For two food rumors, see Fine, Gary Alan, “The Kentucky Fried Rat: Legends and Modem Society,” Journal of the Folklore Institute, 17:23 (1980), 222–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Turner, Patricia A., “Church's Fried Chicken and the Klan: A Rhetorical Analysis of Rumor in the Black Community,” Western Folklore, 46:4 (1987), 294306CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kapferer, Jean-Noel, Rumors: Uses, Interpretations, and Images (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1990), 5051Google Scholar.

120 District Officer, Abercorn, 16 June 1934, quoted in Fields, Revival and Rebellion, 87.

121 Ceyssens, “Mutumbula,” 483–84; Higginson, John, “Steam Without a Piston Box: Strikes and Popular Unrest in Katanga, 1943–45,” International Journal of African Historical Studies, 21:1 (1988), 101–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

122 John Higginson, “Steam Without a Piston Box,” 102.