La condition servile en pays makhuwa

Servile condition in Makhuwaland.- This study is based upon the life-story of a Makhuwa epotha (person of servile status) whose grandmother was kidnapped into slavery at the beginning of the present century. Women's abduction was common enough in Makhuwaland, the victims being either sold away or kept by the abductor for his own use. In both cases, they were forcefully cut off from their matrilineage and originated a new affine group, at first completely dependent on the captor's or buyer's authority. Among freemen kinship was matrilineal and marriage uxorilocal, the husband being bound by a complex network of duties and obligations which did not obtain vis-à-vis the epotha group. This resulted, four or five generations after the initial capture of the first epotha, into the formation of a new discrete group with a social and political identity of its own.