The author examines the traumatic fate of the African woman in the patriarchal African royal oligarchy and the conspiracy of women against themselves within this realm, in the play Jakadiya by Ahmed Yerima (2017). The disposition of women in the royal establishment is oppressive. This paper is anchored on the principle of Thomas Carlyles’s The Great Man Theory, and Molara Ogundipe-Leslie’s Stiwanism, an African variant of the feminist ideology which advocates women’s social inclusion in Africa. In Jakadiya, Yerima portrays and laments the objectification of women by the royal patriarchy. The main protagonists are two slave consorts, who are only to satisfy the sexual urge of the monarch, but not allowed any aspirations in life. In Jakadiya, Yerima relates the utter injustice that the patriarchal system in Africa commits against women aided, however, by women against fellow women. The dramatist suggests that Africa cannot progress in the age of globalization with feminine dehumaniza-
This paper examines how the Turkana follow (and do not follow) rules and norms in negotiations about their livestock entitlements. Previous studies on livestock ownership in African pastoral societies tended to concentrate on the ideological and legal levels of property relations, namely, norms, rules and institutions. Although these rules and norms indicate what actions are appropriate and desirable, people do not necessarily follow the rules and norms unconditionally, because they are effective only in specific contexts. The metaphor of “bundle of rights” has been utilized in the literature to describe how people have overlapping, complicated and multiple rights in livestock. However, the “bundle of rights” has been examined only on the ideological and normative levels. This paper demonstrates how the Turkana tenaciously negotiate in daily practice to persuade others of their legitimate entitlement to livestock. Rules and norms are only evoked to assert the logic and explanation in these negotiations. Likewise, the “bundle of rights” does not exist as a tangible, unchanging entity. It always emerges “performatively” in the process of a negotiation at a specific time and place. This author advocates the position that it is essential to thoroughly scrutinize the Turkana daily practice of negotiations in order to understand livestock property rights in the Turkana and other African pastoral societies.
