The metaphysics of Mafa and Dughwee bull festivals

Gerhard Müller-Kosack (1999). In: Mandaras Publishing (www.gmk.clara.net),  London. Paper delivered at: Colloque Mega-Tchad: L’homme et  animal dans las bassin du lac Tchad. EMRES Orléans, 15-17 October 1997.

Abstract

The bull festival is an important feature amongst most ethnic communities of the northern Mandara Mountains (N. Cameroon and N.E. Nigeria). The sacred bull can be identified with power and fertility on the political as well as on the social level. In Mafa culture the sacred bull can be interpreted as the metaphysically constructed power of local chiefs and as a political symbol of ethnic integration. Among the Dughwee the sacred bull appears rather as a symbol of social success and seems to metaphysically incorporate more the aspect of land fertility than that of territoriality. This presentation intends to explore the cultural rationale in these neighbouring terrace farming societies. Metaphysical thinking is useful when examining a discourse which contradicts western theories of truth. 

Descriptive metaphysics and the person as a basic particular

Metaphysics goes back to Aristotle who, after his writings on nature, inquired into the possibility of a science of being as being (Simons 1995:311). This later became known as ontology. The question whether it is possible to find scientific answers to the question of what it is simply to be, without reference to specific kinds of things, is also known as ‘first philosophy’ since it deals with basic principles upon which all other sciences rest (Hamlyn 1995:1). It is concerned with questioning what knowledge is in the first place, which led, in social science, to a model of understanding borrowed from the natural sciences (Overing 1985:3). The western tradition of defining knowledge has its roots in the age of reason, during which transcendental idealism was criticised for not being empirical but rationalist, and therefore not suitable for a scientific method for metaphysics. The claim for empirical knowledge as the only basis for a fruitful inquiry into metaphysics is still maintained today, but there is a turn about in anthropology which has become known as the ‘local knowledge’ approach (Geertz 1983). This is an attempt to show through which cultural and institutional means other people claim epistemology for their own (Rabinow 1986:241) and descriptive metaphysics seems to be a useful approach for anthropology to critically examine some metaphysical traditions still obstructing the way.

Transcendental idealism goes back to the Cartesian mind/body dualism, which gives ontological priority to states of consciousness, seeing the body only as a corporal feature of the mind (Long 1995:474). Such a view tends to give priority to thought and not to thinkers, to universals and not to particulars, to minds and not to bodies, to representations and not to representatives. Strawson’s ‘essay in descriptive metaphysics’ (Strawson 1959, 1996) offers an alternative approach to such rationalist views of the general nature of knowledge. He claims from a logical and linguistic point of view, that the concept of pure individual consciousness could not exist as a primary concept  to be used in the explanation of the person, yet it might have a logically secondary existence (ibid 115). In order to become a person it needs as a primary condition a physical body someone can refer to as his own. 

Such an approach has very much to do with what individuation and identity is, and Strawson emphasises in the context of these questions the ontological significance of the person as a particular by referring to its ‘completeness’ as a kind of an ‘empirical fact’ (ibid 185). He sees it as a kind of a ‘stubbornly held belief’ (ibid 247), a rather instinctive way of self-reference in the first instance in order to make rational claims about the world only in the second instance. The continuing identity of the person as a basic particular supplies the principle on which one particular collects different characterising universals. 
Strawson refers to the continuing identity of the person as a particular by calling upon its physical reality. What counts for a universal is the resemblance of particulars and not their continuing identity, whereby he gives particulars ontological priority over universals (ibid 167ff). 

Strawson points out that an object of reference can appear in discourse as a subject or a predicate, but only universals can appear as subjects and predicates, while particulars can appear as subjects only (ibid 137). Material bodies, animals and persons are ‘paradigm logical subjects’, since it is the completeness of particulars as empirical facts which supplies the universal with the necessary truth condition to appear as logical subject as well. Basic particulars lend their completeness to universals in order to become facts. Predicates remain incomplete without basic particulars, although the latter are themselves incomplete until they are predicated as such (ibid 212). The required fact for universals is a fact about language and not a fact about the world (ibid 184). This means that making truthful universal claims is about using the right language which is more a matter of description, while particulars are a matter of reference supplying the empirical condition for universal claims to be generally true.

Strawson’s descriptive metaphysics is seen in the context of the so-called rationality debate (Hollis 1982, Overing 1985) as a useful approach to divorce anthropology from the damaging influences of the objectivity claim of natural sciences. The debate has recently been picked up again by refreshing it with the question of the usefulness of the concept of an ethnography of moralities (Howell 1997). The raised critique of relativism against a moral system approach in anthropology can be overcome with Strawson’s descriptive metaphysics, since it allows a notion of a cultural rationale which is relative and objective at the same time. Although the ontological priority given by Strawson to the person as a basic particular does not finally resolve the debate between Aristotelian and Platonist approaches to metaphysics, it successfully removes the claim of western sciences to hold the only key to what knowledge is about in the first place. By approaching the ontological question of being such from a logical and linguistic angle he maintains the empirical tradition of the age of reason without falling into the trap of objective universalistic thinking which characterises a notion of science dominant throughout the twentieth century.

Ethnographic brief of the Mafa and Dughwee bull festivals

The Mafa live in the centre of the northern Mandara mountains while the Dughwee live on the western periphery. While the Mafa are a large group consisting of local clans of differing ethnic-regional origin, the Dughwee are a small group with all its local lineages claiming to be descendants of one ancestor with the name Mbra or Ngra, who came from Turu (Müller-Kosack 1996). While a typical settlement unit of the Mafa consists of a large local chief-lineage and some smaller local non-chief-lineages, a Dughwee settlement does not show any type of vertical political stratification. Mafa ethnicity can be understood from their historical role as melting pot for groups of various regional origins. This becomes most obvious when we study Mafa clans of today and see that many of them claim to have descended from one of the smaller neighbours of the Mafa. The local integration of ethnic diversity among the Mafa is reflected in the way the Mafa celebrate their bull festival, the maray. Other than among the Dughwee, who call their bull festival har daghile, which simply means ‘slaughtering a bull’, the Mafa word maray does not carry the meaning of slaughtering, but rather that of fattening a bull (compare Lexique Mafa 1990:231).  

While there are several ethnographic descriptions of the Mafa bull festival there is only one for the Dughwee (Müller-Kosack 1996). This has to do with colonial history (Müller-Kosack 1997) and the fact that the Gwoza Hills are already situated in Nigeria. Apart from it being mentioned by Lavergne (1944:60), who was the first to publish a monograph about the Mafa, the only other, and the first account dealing exclusively with their bull festival is from Boisseau (1975), a catholic priest who lived and worked among the Mafa for many years. Unfortunately his work remained unpublished. It is interesting that the monograph written by Martin (1970) does not only neglect the bull festival, but also the very complex system of traditional officeholders connected with it. The same is true of Boisseau (1975), mentioned before and, to my knowledge, all other writers on Mafa culture. I mention here, in particular, Hinderling (1984) and Santen (1994) since both claim to give a comprehensive account of the political and religious culture of the Mafa. Although most writers do mention the bay (great man) and biy gwala (great follower) and the ta (sacred rope) ritually used by the latter, they don’t seem to recognise the complexity of the Mafa political system (Müller-Kosack 1997). 

In the context of the bull festival the Mafa distinguish between two sets of traditional officeholders, first the bay and second the biy gwala. The word bay as a dignitary title for social and political representatives of different degrees of local or even regional unity can be derived from the adjective biya’a meaning great. A bay is a great man in terms of somebody holding traditional power, while a biy gwala is his fellow man, that is, his follower. In the context of the bull festival it is the biy gwala who has the task of ritually releasing the bull while the bay stays outside awaiting the release. Bay and biy gwala are found on all social levels of Mafa ritual life, but it is during the bull festival that they gain proper political significance. We find the distinction between bay and biy gwala on the family level as well as on the level of the political community representing clan groups of various origins as well as the village community as a whole. The bull festival of the Mafa is devoted to the territorial community of the traditional village (wudam) represented by the village chief or biy wudam, while the bull festival of the Dughwee is very much a family event. The bull festival is also a family event among the Mafa, which is shown by the fact that an owner of a bull can be called biy maray, but the real biy maray is the traditional chief of the village.

To understand the political culture of the Mafa it is important to distinguish between two sorts of bay. I refer to these as social bay and political bay. Social bay can be understood as representatives of local clan or lineage groups, and are generally referred to as biy dza. The word dza is a topographical metaphor and can be translated as the sacred local mountain site of a particular clan group within a village. A traditional village is a unit of several clan groups of various regional origins. Political bay is a dignitary title for those representatives who link those local clan or lineage groups to the traditional village chief, the biy wudam. In this context a biy dza as the custodian of the local mountain site (dza) of a clan group within a traditional village (wudam) can be bay to the village chief at the same time. Only a member of the chiefly clan, kr bay or ‘son of the great of the village’, can be biy wudam (traditional village chief). Sometimes a biy wudam is biy dza as well, but this is fairly rare, since genealogical seniority as a precondition for being a chief of the mountain goes along with being small in number. Those local lineage groups who provide the traditional village chief are normally great in number, but genealogically not very senior. 

The bull festival of the Mafa is an event of creating political unity among all Mafa going back to pre-colonial times. The political history of the Mafa is encoded in the bull festival. The complexity of the linkages between social and political office holders indicates that the bull festival is interwoven with the traditional life style of the Mafa to such an extent that it is impossible to imagine that this has evolved only in recent times. The roots of the formation of the Mafa lie in their historical role as an ethnic melting pot for the region, which can be comprehensively linked to the history of slavery (Müller-Kosack 1997). The same applies to the Dughwee, but in a different way. Unlike the Mafa, the geopolitical position of the Dughwee, situated on the eastern fringes, meant that they did not become an ethnic melting pot. The same applies to the other groups surrounding the Mafa, east and west. They are all smaller as well and none of them seem to have developed such a complex structure of political office holders. The only exception is possibly the Mofu-Diamaré (Vincent 1991), but they too remain ethnically far less integrated than the Mafa. It is interesting that the Mafa bull festival seems to have been inspired by political traditions coming rather from its eastern than its western neighbours.

This seems to be the case with the biy gwala, an office known even among the Gisiga (Pontié 1973), but let us not indulge any further in regional ethnography here. Among the Mafa biy gwala can be translated as ‘follower of the great’ or ‘great follower’ forming as biy gwala hiy (plural) the following of the great or biy hay (plural for bay). The word gwala alone means ‘fellow’, and refers to ordinary men as equals, normally married. As an office holder, a biy gwala, is one whose part in the bull festival procession is to follow the group of the bay.  When the bull gets released, the bay take a seat under a major tree, while the biy gwala are responsible for the ritual release of the bull from his enclosure. There are different types of biy gwala, and this can vary depending on the region. In the area of Guzda, we find biy gwala ta (great follower with the rope), biy gwala madzaf (great follower with the medicine) and finally the biy gwala mutsor (great hidden follower). The ‘great hidden follower’ is secretly know by the owner of a sacred bull, and he is the one who arrives first in the early morning, before anybody else, to prepare the safe release of the sacred bull from his seclusion. The local village chief (biy wudam) of Guzda ,for example, has, as his secret follower, the custodian of the earth or chief of the mountain (biy dza) of his local chiefly clan group, the kr bay of Guzda, but nobody is supposed to know.

The biy gwala ta and biy gwala madzaf come later with the procession, which begins in Guzda with release of the sacred bull of the local chief or biy maray of Guzda. Next the bay hiy associated with the local village chief are visited. They are called gad bay hiy (gad bay, singular) which means ‘the great staff’, referring to a forked branch of a tree as his symbol of dignity.  There are two of them in Guzda. They are his first representatives and need to belong to the major lineages of the chiefly clan. The gad bay hiy are considered as the official envoys of the local village chief. When the procession of the bull festival is branching out later in order to visit the different clan and lineage wards of the village the gad bay go ahead of three sub-processions. They then represent the local village chief who is ahead of one of the processions. Within the different wards the three sub-processions divide themselves again and the political bay of the various kin groups, mostly lineage elders (tsuva) go ahead together with their biy gwala respectively to release the sacred bulls in their quarters. Later on, the processions join together again in order to move on, the dividing and rejoining always taking the same pattern. The bay go ahead, followed by the biy gwala who are joined by the feasting crowd, but at the very front of each procession we find the black smith (ngwazla), whose role it is to remove all bad influences in the first place.

We find the pattern of bay and biy gwala not only at the public or communal, but also at the family level. It is always linked with the idea of someone being older and younger if it comes to ceremonial beer drinking. The first to drink is considered as the bay of the family and his younger brother, to whom he passes the calabash, is his biy gwala. Among the Dughwee such structure does not exist. There is no stratification of chief and non-chief clan groups within the local settlement communities. There is no political equivalent of bay or biy gwala, although the ritual release of the sacred bull was (the Dughwee no longer practise the bull festival anymore) performed by a representative of a specialist lineage. This links in with information we have on the eastern fringes of the Mandara Mountains, from the Zulgo and Gemjek for example. Graffenried (1984) reports the same family level of local celebration of the bull festival as I might reconstruct from oral historical data among the Dughwee. It is the family head who is in the political focus of the ritual release of the bull. There are other similarities as well, like the large forked branch of a tree being implanted in the centre of the house. This symbolised the successful slaughter of a bull when the meat was hung over the upper ends of the forked branches. The Dughwee planted this branch in front of the main granaries in the foyer of their houses, the foyer being 
considered as a sacred spot. An umbrella made of fibre was build on top of the flat roof of the foyer and fixed around the actual fork of the branch. Not only was the meat hung there, but also all sorts of items which symbolised the family wealth.

The Dughwee have, unlike the Mafa, specialist kin groups who deal with rain making and corn blessing, and it is the corn blessing lineage which is in possession of the ritual means to release the sacred bull successfully from his enclosure. We will see further on how this is articulated on the mythological level. Another important ethnographic difference between the Dughwee and the Mafa is that the Dughwee have knowledge of initiation rites. These rites have not been practised for about 50 years, but they link the Dughwee to a specific tradition of initiation rites found everywhere in the Gwoza Hills, but this leads us into a different subject area. It is interesting that similar initiation rites are found in other groups surrounding the Mafa at their western and southern ends (oral communication with Judy Sterner). This leads us to consider briefly the two Mafa tribes, known as bulahay and the mafahay (Lavergne 1944).

The Mafa can be ethnographically divided into mafahay and bulahay or kwokwarhay. The mafahay are those Mafa who originate in the boundary area (previously mentioned) in the central east of the Mafa land known as Soulédé, Roua and Durum, already part of Mofu-Diamaré. The second group is known as the bulahay or kokwarhay as simply those who live in the higher mountain ranges. These higher mountain ranges are mainly found along the western hills with their highest and most massif mountains known as Ziver and Upay. Let us take a closer look at the composition of Mafa clans on the eastern slopes of Ziver and Upay, a chiefly clan known as wula-sakon who are settled today in the village, Mckar, north of Guzda. Local traditions indicate clearly that the wula-sakon were first settlers in this area, but with the arrival of the vuzay, a so-called real Mafa clan of the Soulédé tradition, the wula-sakon migrated to the next village north and left Guzda to the vuzay. The wula-sakon of Mckar became Mafa and the ethnic names Wula and Sakon became a name of a clan among other Mafa clans. The Mafa way of celebrating the bull festival was adapted and any memory of initiation rites are now forgotten. We can only assume from our knowledge of the western neighbours of the Mafa, like the Wula, the Sakon or Sukur, for example, that initiation was once an important part of the traditional life style of the area.

We see from this example how complex the ethnic history of the northern Mandara Mountains is and it can only be the task of a short ethnographic introduction to point to this. Before I move on to the actual theme of the paper, the metaphysics of the Mafa and Dughwee bull festivals, I want to comment on Santen’s work on the bull festival. Santen speaks in ‘They leave their jars behind’ (1994:200ff) of a female and a male sacred rope (ta) of the Mafa. I never came across a female or a male sacred rope, but know that Mafa refer to female and male components in the context of their ritual object representations. It might well be that such a reference has been made with regard to the sacred rope. What I would criticise is that Santen applies the methodology of structural anthropology in a far too finite way. The method becomes the contents and the actual ethnographic record gets reduced to dualistic structural principles claiming to be an objective truth in itself. This is unfortunate since Santen does not interpret the bull festival of the Mafa in the context of the complexity of their political culture, but sees the institution of the mountain chief (biy dza) and the family heads as the ritual focus of the bull festival (ibid 210). Santen’s understanding of the political culture of the Mafa repeats a regional tradition of ethnographic writing wherein the Mafa are presented as a politically non-stratified society, only distinguishable from their smaller neighbours in size but not in structure. This is particularly important when attempting to understand the local historical mode in which the political culture of the Mafa is reproduced in the context of the bull festival.

Mythology as a focus for the rationale of the bull festival

The ontological question whether it is possible to inquire fruitfully about what it is simply to be, without reference to specific kinds of things, cannot be applied to what I see as the Mafa and Dughwee first philosophy. The notion of a thing is not marked by such sharp dualism, and it would not hold good for the Mafa and Dughwee way of constructing their reality by disconnecting knowledge from being. For this reason we need to inquire into the cultural rationale of the bull festival from a point of view which identifies objects of reference like power and fertility or land rights and territoriality from a completely different conceptual angle. 

The unified framework of reference of the Mafa consists of the bull as a universal, which has a different meaning as such. The sacred bull as an object of reference conceptualised by traditional Mafa and Dughwee is good or bad in a moral sense. He carries moral qualities a Western cultural rationale would not ascribe to animals. Among Mafa and Dughwee a sacred bull can be spoiled by bad influence coming from particular types of humans, who are normally referred to as sorcerers. The cultural rationale of the bull festival lies in the bull as being referred to as an animal which seems to carry features of a person by those Mafa and Dughwee who identify themselves as traditional representatives of their cultural heritage. 

If we ask these Mafa and Dughwee how the bull festival came about in the first place they refer to a mythological past. While Mafa do this from the point of view of still practising their bull festival, Dughwee refer to it as a matter of the past which is now part of their recent history. The Dughwee bull festival ceased to exist about fifty years ago. For the reason why it has ceased we would have to inquire into the colonial backgrounds of these two ethnic communities. Although they share a common cultural history their colonial history differs. The Mafa came under French colonial rule after the First World War and the Dughwee under British colonial rule. 

The appearance of the first sacred bull of the Mafa and Dughwee can be conceptualised in the context of the natural elements, water and soil. A man took the first ceremonial bull of the Mafa from the water spirit by applying a trick. The man knew that if he put some soil on the bull’s back, the water spirit was unable to take his cattle back into his realm of water. Among the Dughwee, it was the son of the ancestor of the rainmaker and corn blesser lineage who cut off the white tail of his father’s cow without having asked for permission. His girl friend had asked him for something beautiful for her to show off at a traditional dance party. His father found out and asked for the truth by promising something special as a reward for honesty and so the son told him what he had done. He was subsequently banned by his father from rainmaking and his task from then on was the blessing of the corn only as well as the ceremonial release of the bull which had been enclosed in a stable for a whole season. The ritual disclosure of the bull among the Mafa was also something the man who had originally stolen a bull from the water spirit had to achieve. In order to prepare himself for this task, he had to acquire a sacred rope, made of some sorrel fibre, representing a snakelike being, which he used from then on to release the bull safely from his long enclosure. What was the sacred rope for the Mafa, was euphorbia  for the Dughwee. The descendent of the corn blesser lineage came to the owner of the bull before he got released from his enclosure and cut euphorbia into water to be poured  over the bull’s feeding place.

The cultural rationale of the bull festival in both ethnic communities lies in the conceptual function of the bull as representative of elementary forces being mastered towards moral ends in order to make them accessible for the well being of the local community. The substantial powers of these forces need to be ritually renewed in the context of the seasonal cycle so as to keep them under human control. The bull being a most powerful animal is an adequate representative of these forces and we will see later how the Mafa identify their local chiefs with the bull. The bull is not only a representative of unfolding natural forces, but also a representative of the person as a moral being. He is especially vulnerable to bad influences during the time of his release and it is important to ensure that all ritual means are applied to protect him, the only aim being to sacrifice him. His sacrifice marks the change of seasons and entails as such the hope for the coming one to be as successful or better than the one just completed. The bull festival is therefore a moral event which must be interpreted from the conceptual perspective of its local practitioners. 

To interpret the bull festival in the first instance as a moral and not as a social event is important, since it gives the metaphysical worldview of traditional Mafa and Dughwee philosophical priority over that of western science. The social sciences tend to consider the study of social systems as more empirical and therefore as the better way to understand cultural issues. From such an angle mythology could only be interpreted in functional terms as social charter (Malinowski 1954), or  in universalist terms as any cultural reality sub-consciously underlying conceptual structure (Levi-Strauss 1972). Weiner (1994) gives a fine discussion of these classic anthropological approaches to the interpretation of myth, and refers to current anthropological ways of understanding the secrets of myth neither as self-evidently political in function in all societies, nor necessarily concerned with social control. He claims they control something more personal and creative, ‘by particularising what is at any given time contrastively identified as some collective image of sociality’ (ibid 609). Such a view stresses the point that the power of mythological discourse is more about expressing the conventional wisdom of a given collectivity through individual perspectives rather than about individuals upholding a conventional order. The notion of a social discourse now becomes that of a moral discourse of  persons as hearers and speakers sharing a unified framework of reference without locating themselves in it every time they actually hear and speak. This might apply to any cultural rationale and the philosophical question seems now to become a less metaphysical and a more hermeneutical question as to how a conceptual difference can be described between a unified oral and written framework of reference (see Ricoeur 1981).  

Mafa and Dughwee do not necessarily refer to their mythological past since their metaphysical worldview does not consist of such sharp dualism like between mental and physical states. Material objects can have moral properties, which is very much the case with the snakelike rope of the Mafa. The first rope was a thing and a being at the same time. The Mafa refer to it as sukwiy, which is also the word for a non-domestic animal in general. The sacred rope of the Mafa is an object of great political power since it helps to release the bull safely from the darkness of its enclosure into the daylight to suddenly face a feasting crowd. This is the task of a specialist who stands in front of the enclosure in order to remove all bad influences which have possibly been inflicted on him by bad tempered human beings. The Dughwee did not have such a rope, but instead used euphorbia. The task to remove the potential bad luck from the bull was not one of the specialists, known as the biy gwala hiy, we can find in almost every lineage of the Mafa, but by a specialist lineage, which had inherited this task in the mythological past.

Genealogical links and the rationale of the bull festival

The seasonality of the bull festival can be related to death and birth, which is most apparent among the Mafa, since their social organisation reflects the bull as a representative of these most existential issues of change. In the case of the death of a male person of some local importance a bull is slaughtered by the endogamous blacksmith, the ngwazla or biy ngwazla. The dead body is subsequently covered with the skin of the bull and then carried on the blacksmith’s shoulders to the grave to be buried. The identification of the bull with a head of a family of some wealth is striking here. The fact that it is the endogamous blacksmith who is responsible for the funeral and not another member of the family, as is the case among the Dughwee, has to do with the political stratification of the Mafa. The blacksmith is 
also the one who walks in front of the village chief during the local processions of the bull festival to protect the chief from being injured by any dangerous forces which might  be activated by the release of the bull. 

This role taken by the endogamous blacksmith can be interpreted as the blacksmith being somehow politically sterile, thus enabling him to handle these forces safely. Blacksmiths are a minority of about 4% (Müller-Kosack 1987:65-82) and they are excluded from the majority of family heads by genealogical means. They can never be chiefs and they cannot participate in the same way in the bull festival as an ordinary member of a local community can. They are detached from the generational links of the majority of family heads which means they are excluded from celebrating rights over land since they have not inherited the communal guardianship shared by the majority. They are not in touch with the spirit of the land in the same way as the majority of traditional Mafa. Those who are not blacksmiths, known as vavay, seem to be associated as such with the ancestors who once cultivated the land and therefore made the profits of the seasonal forces of fertility politically accessible.

The genealogical links of managing the seasonal forces of fertility among Dughwee is allocated to the lineages of the rainmaker and the corn blesser. We have already seen above how the mythological link is socially conceptualised in genealogical terms by separating rain making from corn blessing, and how the lineage of corn blessers is associated with the release of the sacred bull. The corn blesser lineage represents the blessing of the corn which extracts the substantial forces from the soils of the cultivated land, cared for by generations of previous family heads. The funeral arrangements of the Mafa wherein the successful head of a family is covered with the fresh skin of a bull can be interpreted in this context as being metaphorically connected to the same concept. The land and all wealth comes from the ancestors who once cultivated that land. 

The bull is a representative of all male power over fertility. As such he must be seen in context with the female side of fertility, which is interpreted as being very powerful. This becomes obvious if we look at marriage and the significance of cattle as a means to pay a dowry. In order to take control of female fertility it seems to be a most important feature that cattle, the possession of men, as a symbol of male power over the fertility of land, are given as a dowry. The Mafa and Dughwee bull festivals conceptualise male rights over fertility in a universal manner. These rights are morally expressed not only as rights over land but also over women, and, in the form of endogamous and genealogical minorities, over whole sets of families as well. The justification of these rights must be derived from a more general rationale, as we will see in the next chapter.

God provides the most general rationale for the bull festival

The bull as a representative of power and fertility needs to be derived from the cosmological worldview of Mafa and Dughwee. Their traditional universe is conceived as a building with a floor and a roof. The floor is the surface of the earth and the roof is at the same time the ground for heaven, while the floor is the roof of the world beyond (Müller-Kosack 1997). This is  an anthropocentric world view which is drawn from the concept of the person even more obviously among the Mafa, who see the pillars which hold the roof as the legs of God. The substantial forces of nature transcend everything including persons and material objects, having their most general and abstract representative in God himself controlling them from far above to keep the world in order. It is therefore, in the first and last instance, God who has given the bull to humans, since he is responsible for everything that happens. The belief is that God’s will transcends the world and power and fertility are granted to those who live a decent life and hold good the values which have been handed down to them by their ancestors in the name of God.

This is the most general and abstract explanation we can find, but, if we take a closer look, we find that God has created for his service a whole army of helpers and disciples who carry out his duties in this world. Such an ensemble is involved in the most extensive manner in the celebration of the Mafa bull festival, not only securing a safe release of the bull to make a successful sacrifice, but also to unify a local community of ethnic diversity with regard to its origins. The principles of first comer and late comer and being small or great in number play a significant role in claiming rights over political functions in the context of the bull festival. 

It is remarkable that the temporal principles of earlier and later are in terms of power allocated to rights over land, while the spatial principles of size and number of local groups are measured in rights over institutions. It seems, in this context, that the rights over institutions are a secondary historical development derived from rights over land. Fertility can be therefore attributed in the first instance to land and in the second instance to individuals or groups who hold these rights. This includes gender as well, since rights over women seem to be presupposed by rights over land in order to be able to claim rights over a new born child. All these rights are morally derived from God, who has given these rights to man. God is referred to as the cause for everything that exists.

Rights over land and its fertility (including rights over women) with regard to the sacred bull as representative of such rights did not develop into a territorial dimension among Dughwee. Their bull festival was conducted on the level of the family only. No local chiefs, only family heads were identified with the powers of the sacred bull. A trunk of a tree was erected in the centre of the compound in front of the granaries and the meat of the sacrificed bull was displayed under an umbrella of fibre mats on the flat roof covering the centre (Müller-Kosack 1996). The sacred bull is a representative of the unfolding natural forces of fertility during the seasonal cycle. In a lital sense he has a connection with the land and the forming of a good harvest. The bull himself is a resource of fertility since the manure he produces is brought out to the land to fertilise it. Live stock keeping as a means of maintaining land fertility is essential for terrace farmers like the Dughwee Soil fertility has to be produced by the head of the family who owns the land. This has now changed with the application of chemical fertiliser. 

The same applies to the Mafa, but due to the identification of the sacred bull with the local chief a territorial principle has developed as a secondary rationale overpowering the original connection. Dughwee are much smaller in number and consist only of two or three major clans which all claim the same ethnic origin. Therefore the sacred bull did not develop such a political significance for ethnic integration. 

The bull festival as social imagery to claim ethnic identity

The question of ethnic identity among Mafa and Dughwee is inherently connected with a cultural rationale which allows a person to be identified with a bull as an object of reference. The identity of the person can be metaphysically derived from its spatial-temporal continuity as a basic particular (the self in form of body and mind) and it is a reasonable next step to conceptualise the person as a metaphor for 
the identity of groups. Among various identities groups can claim for themselves, I refer in this presentation to ethnic identity in particular. We want to know whether the bull festivals of the Mafa and Dughwee can be related to the ethnic identity they claim for themselves. 

It will become obvious that the meaning of ethnic identity has to do with the truth condition we have to assume if we talk about a Mafa or Dughwee claiming ethnic identity. One truth condition we are examining here is the bull festival as a means to claim a Mafa or a Dughwee identity. For example, is it essential for a Mafa or Dughwee to conduct the bull festival in a specific way in order to claim to be a Mafa or Dughwee? Since the Dughwee no longer practise the bull festival  but  can still claim to be Dughwee, the answer is no. The question would be better asked  whether it was true for Dughwee in the past, and the answer would be yes.

This example shows that the truth condition for ethnic identity has an historical dimension, and that ethnic identity is an historical phenomenon. If we bring ethnic identity under an historical concept it makes sense to say that, from a local cultural perspective, the bull festival was a means for Mafa and Dughwee to claim ethnic identity. However, not every man could sacrifice a bull and it was a matter of good moral conduct and a sign of personal success to be able to acquire a bull for sacrifice. It was, nevertheless, an event to enable a Dughwee or a Mafa who was not able to own a bull for sacrifice to refer to himself as being a member of the same group. Among the Mafa this was even more important, since the power of the bull was identified with the local chief being a representative for the political integration of groups of different ethnic origin. To live on the same local territory and participate in the local bull festival made a man a member of this group and he could claim with full right to be a ‘true’ Mafa.

The difference between the ethnic design of the Mafa and Dughwee is displayed in the bull festival being a means to claim ethnic identity. It also shows in which direction the cultural rationale of the bull festival developed by undergoing historical change. We can assume, with good reason, that the Mafa bull festival displays a development in the structural context of local knowledge from the sacred bull being a representative for land fertility to being a representative of territorial power. The bull festival seems to provide an adequate framework of representation of what must still hold good for traditional Mafa today and for traditional Dughwee, in the past, to claim ethnic identity. 

It is not the bull festival as a cultural institution which must be held responsible for providing this framework, but Mafa and Dughwee as individuals who re-identified it as theirs by actively referring to it as theirs. The cultural rationale they inherited made it possible for them to historically develop it in a certain way and it is, in fact, the moral community of individuals who actually make the identifying reference. Under the influence of historical development the cultural rationale of Mafa and Dughwee is currently in a process of change, and new ways of constructing ethnic identity are in the making. Conversion to Christian or Islamic faiths which provide spiritual guidance for a transformation of ethnic identity goes with the cultural appropriation of a Western concept of rationality. This includes the development of literacy skills and a capitalist market economy.

The re-constitution of ethnic identity is for the Mafa not so much a matter of conducting the bull festival but more to state that the Mafa is a growing ethnic community and simply claiming to belong to it seems to be almost enough. This is more difficult with Dughwee since they are not so great in number. For them it seems to be more important to claim, for example, not to be Mafa, because they don’t want to be identified with them, their neighbours, for rather negative historical reasons. Being Mafa or Matakam had, in the past, a bad connotation, and claiming a Mafa identity was considered as being regionally 
inferior. This feeling of ethnic inferiority has now been turned by Mafa into feelings of ethnic pride due to their increasing number and economic success, while Dughwee still refer to it in negative terms in order to distinguish themselves from a group with whom they share a common cultural past. 

Conducting traditional festivals in a serious religious manner is nowadays considered to be primitive and there is considerable moral pressure in both ethnic communities to get rid of such traditions. On the other hand there is a tendency to identify with the cultural past by reviewing it as an outdated religious ideology which needs to be replaced by a new way of thinking, perceived as being more powerful and real. There is an increasing interest in local history and the correct ethnographic documentation of the bull festival by the visiting anthropologist is given great attention. The appropriation of local history plays a genuine role for the transformation of ethnic identity among Mafa and Dughwee with and without an actual bull festival.

To describe the metaphysics of the Mafa and Dughwee bull festivals is therefore not only a task to describe what holds good for them and the world which constitutes their reality, but also to shed light on the changes currently taking place. Descriptive metaphysics has to account not only for the most general features of our conceptual scheme, but also for the changes in styles of thinking which emerge from that. This is of particular interest for historical anthropology since it is confronted with theoretical problems reflecting the specific dilemma of belonging to a completely different style of thinking all together. 

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