From equal to better: investing the chief among the northern Yaka of Zaïre

Abstract

IntroductionAmong the Northern Yaka of Zaïre the office and function of the chief is thought of as prior to and as the source of all things: the chief represents and surpasses his subordinates by his twofold function. First, he is asovereign rulerwho alone personifies unity, perpetuity and high authority. But the chief fails to live up to these chiefly ideals since his physical body ages and he cannot escape death or transcend the succession of generations and political scenes and factions. This failure seems to be remedied, however, not so much by concealing the chiefs bodily transitoriness through a mystifying cult, but by identifying the chief in his body with the origin of the political institutions. Embodying the founding ancestors, the chief ‘re-presents’ or makes present ‘the primal space–time order’ (yitsi khulu). The ruler thus personifies the legitimate political order: he re-presents and imposes the perennial hierarchical social organisation, territorial unity and moral order. In his enthronement and rule, he must re-enact the founding dramas of conquest and life transmission to renew cultural time by linking it to the ‘primal and permanent space–time order’. Sacrificial death, mortuary ritual, rebirth, purification, etc., re-enact the founding dramas and provide transformative metaphors, linking men and women, life and death, inside and outside, ascendant and descendant, before and after, the local territory and Yaka society.