Patterns of Control on Medicine, Politics, and Social Change 
451 
Anthropos 85.1990 
accidental. As we have seen, tfu is basically a 
morally neutral power including the options to use 
its potencies either destructively or constructively 
with the help of special medicines. A prominent 
example in this context is the above mentioned 
ngambe man, himself mostly a lineagehead (fai) or 
another elder (lingnwe) who holds ritual authority 
within the family. Despite his highly ambivalent 
reputation he is said to utilize his tfu in a con 
structive manner which enables him to help other 
people affected by witchcraft through his knowl 
edge of medicines. In the same direction goes the 
general assumption that all people bearing high 
ranking traditional offices in which they take care 
of the medicines attached to the office are in one 
way or the other always in possession of tfu even 
though, if one asks directly, the persons concerned 
never really confirm such opinions openly. The 
whole issue is rather like a play in which the office 
holders are fond of being viewed as powerful nga 
tfu, i.e., people who have witchcraft, but reject any 
such convictions when they become confronted 
with them directly. The point we need to em 
phasize here is that these offices, and therefore 
also the medicines attached to them, are said to 
always fulfill a social function in the sense that the 
duties which define the purpose of that office and 
its respective medicines are for the benefit of the 
society in general. To see what this means in de 
tail, we must make some few explanatory remarks 
concerning the traditional features of authority in 
Wimbum society. 
Traditional political ideology defines a man 
of power and prestige as a man holding an office 
and a title either in one of the different men’s 
societies, in his lineage, or in both of these cor 
porate institutions. As such his office and title 
qualifies him to know and to use certain parts of 
the secret medicines over which these institutions 
have a monopoly. Remember that we stated the 
existence of a direct relationship between the status 
of an office, the power of its attached medicines, 
and the latters’ grade of secrecy. Now, within this 
system it is important to note that to hold an 
office and hence to know the medicines attached 
to it, always demands an oath not to misuse the 
acquired position for one’s own selfish purposes. 
The oath is addressed to the ancestors (quvibsi) 
and the most important divinities of the Wimbum, 
nyu ngong and nyu la, who are said to watch over 
the observance of the oath and are capable of 
punishing the person in case he breaks the oath. 
The underlying logic in this act is obvious. Just as 
the office is only part of a wider body which itself 
is for the benefit of all, the attached medicines 
over which the office takes care are also meant 
to serve the group as a whole and not its leading 
members. Consequently, the “bad” medicines of 
the Wimbum, i.e., those which are monopolized 
by lineages and secret societies, serve not so much 
to enhance the power of their office holders, but 
rather as a focus of corporate life whose cohesion 
is mobilized in the fashion of corporate rituals set 
ting the effect of the common medicine in motion. 
(We follow here Nadel’s [1954] remarks on Nupe 
religion.) 
Coming back now to the connection between 
witchcraft and traditional authority, it becomes 
clear that such witchcraft ascriptions based on the 
holding of a high ranking office and hence on 
the possession of powerful medicines are primarily 
positively defined. People of this sort are thought 
to use their power constructively, for they have 
made an oath to use their position and prestige for 
the benefit of all. Nevertheless, the Wimbum know 
very well that moral standards are an ambiguous 
affair, and there is a lot of gossip that certain 
traditional authorities do in fact use their tfu for 
personal enrichment, but it is a difficult matter 
to discuss because everybody avoids expressing 
such speculations in the public. The reason for 
this lies not only in the fear of the powerful secret 
medicines the suspects are in possession of but 
also in the still valid social ethos which legitimates 
the connection between medicines, witchcraft, and 
traditional authority by the moral obligations each 
office holder is bound to obey. 
In former times, this kind of moral obligation 
demanded from the traditional authorities to spend 
their time exclusively for the exercise of their of 
fice. Because paid labour was and, to some extent, 
still is incompatible with traditional status many 
lineageheads had to stay at home and, therefore, 
could not pursue any of the new careers offered 
at the dawn of national independence. The result 
is well known: in the course of time these cultural 
restrictions which forbade traditional authorities to 
take up positions in the modern capitalist con 
text gradually encroaching on Wimbum society 
gave rise to a new “modern elite” whose basis 
of power and prestige depended no longer on the 
access to secret medicines and rituals but on the 
access to money and political influence within the 
modem institutions of the nation state. This raises 
the question of how the Wimbum adapted their 
concept of the political implications of witchcraft 
and medicines to these modem conditions in which 
power and prestige are no longer integrated into 
the hierarchical structure of corporate institutions 
and hence legitimated by an office which puts the