In the shade of the palaver tree
Jasmina Sopova, UNESCO Courier journalist
The palaver is a traditional
African institution of debate and consensus whose democratic potential has been overshadowed
by modern political systems
In the early 17th century, a Portuguese Catholic missionary, Father Mariano,
made strenuous efforts to convert the people of the small kingdom of Sahadia, on
the west coast of Madagascar, north of modern-day Morondava. Despite lengthy expeditions
to the area, however, he did not succeed.
One of the main reasons for his failure, he noted in a letter, was the kingdom’s
political system. “If the king at least had some authority,” he wrote, “we could
have hoped for some success. But the king only controls the area around his home
town, he is poor and not feared, and his subjects do as they please without his daring
to complain. In fact, the people form a kind of republic. Whenever a big local issue
comes up, everyone gathers to discuss it in a council.”
Father Mariano was talking about the fokonolona, an ancient tradition which has to
some extent survived in Madagascar to this day (see the UNESCO
Courier, March 1999). But
it is also found elsewhere in Africa, where it is known as the palaver.
A key socio-political institution of pre-colonial Africa, the palaver is an assembly
where a variety of issues are freely debated and important decisions concerning the
community are taken. Its purpose is to resolve latent and overt conflicts in certain
highly specific situations. The participants usually gather under a “palaver tree”
where everyone has the right to speak and air their grievances or those of their
group. A complainant may opt to be represented by a griot (a poet, storyteller and
traditional singer), or some other spokesman.
The status of women in these assemblies, where the elders try to reach a consensus,
varies from region to region. Among some peoples, women actively take part in the
decision-making. Among others, they settle for advising their menfolk outside the
assemblies.
One form of the palaver is the Ethiopian debo, a mutual aid system where the men
of the community get together to help a neighbour (the aba debo, “father of the debo”)
carry out a major task. The group chooses a leader, who in turn designates a walle
to do the talking. He has to be eloquent and have a good voice because his job is
to lead the singing while the work is being done and provide words of encouragement
in particularly arduous moments. He also defends the interests of the workers before
the aba debo and reports back to them.
Wider participation
by women
Palavers operate in various ways, e.g. to deliberate about a marriage or a sale,
settle a dispute, look at the circumstances of a crime and then decide how to find
and punish the culprit. But the underlying principle does not change. This is one
of the democratic institutions of traditional African societies which many African
intellectuals feel could be used in the transition to a modern political system,
as long as it opens itself up more to women.
In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, South African President Nelson Mandela
stresses the part these assemblies played in his political career. “My later notions
of leadership,” he writes, “were profoundly influenced by observing the regent and
his court. I watched and learned from the tribal meetings that were regularly held
at the Great Place. . . . Everyone who wanted to speak did so. It was democracy in
its purest form. There may have been a hierarchy of importance among the speakers,
but everyone was heard. . . . As a leader, I have always followed the principles
I first saw demonstrated by the regent at the Great Place.”
However, such institutions are usually dismissed by African politicians as old-fashioned.
African leaders “tend to distrust the palaver and prefer a superficial legal structure
imported directly from the West,” says Cameroonian philosopher Jean-Godefroy Bidima.
Since political independence in the 1960s, young African elites trained in “white”
Western ways have encouraged the adoption of Western models, including legal codes
which are largely unsuited to African conditions. Even today, rural Africans find
it very hard to accept that a “custom” from outside can override sacred customs inherited
from their ancestors.
“This is why bush people don’t bring their grievances to the courts (which only exist
in the capital) and prefer to settle their differences using traditional structures,”
says Ethiopian scholar Béseat Kiflé Sélassié1.
“So-called modern institutions in Africa are like make-up on an old lady’s face:
it only beautifies the surface. It’s like trying to modernize a building by cleaning
up the façade and doing nothing to renovate the inside.”
And so in Africa where, as the Malian scholar Hampaté Bâ once said,
“different worlds, different mentalities and different eras are superimposed on each
other,” the palaver is “a kind of parallel authority.” Mali is the only African country
where it has been integrated into the modern political system.
1 Editor of Consensus and Peace, UNESCO,
1980, and author of a study on “The palaver in Ethiopia” published in the UNESCO
quarterly Cultures, Vol. IV, No. 3, 1977.
