West African Law Enforcement, Way Back When & Currently Now

As Told by Dr. John Aden, African/African American Historical Society and Museum (AAAHSM) of Allen County Volunteer Executive Director

Dr. Aden also teaches the Introduction to African History and the Intro to Chinese Philosophy courses at Canterbury High School.  He has a doctorate in history from Indiana University Bloomington, with a focus on Africa and Chinese history.

Dr. Aden first traveled to the Republic of Mali in West Africa in 1995, after receiving fellowships and grants in order to begin doing fieldwork.   

Dr. John Aden: In the pre-colonial period before European contact, African cultures were built on the rule of law.  Usually you have a council of elders, composed of post-menopausal women and senior men, and they would hear these cases.  There are also secret societies in West Africa that would also judge infractions, but there was a legal basis to everyday life.

In these cultures, hospitality is such a virtue that you don’t steal, even if you are homeless or hungry. But there were institutions in these societies that policed everyday behavior.

When you go to a museum and you see African masks, most of them were tools of social control, and there was usually a secret society that was responsible for handing out the punishments.  Once they don the mask, they became the institution itself.  Some of my fieldwork looked at a secret society that used a huge mask…when the mask walked in public, a horn would sound only for initiated men.  When that horn sounded, you had to go inside; if the shadow of the mask crossed over you, you would be punished.

Once Europeans started colonizing the continent, we see the development of professional constabularies…basically police forces.  Those people would be African, but the top officers were usually European or they reported the infractions to the European colonial courts.  And there’s hundreds of thousands of records of colonial courts cases, which was how we know about what everyday people were concerned about, whether someone stole something or someone used sorcery or knowledge of potions to harm someone.

Most African colonies begin acquiring their independence and nation states starting in the 1950s.  They began to establish their own police forces.

Today in Western Africa, law enforcement isn’t as institutionalized as it is in the West, you have corruption, you have bribery.  It’s primarily because the governments don’t have the ability to pay their civil servants.

Once, when I was in Mali doing my field work, I was riding in a taxi; at the roundabout, they had police officers with AK-47s.  This officer was standing in the center and whistled at the taxi I was in.  The officer didn’t know I knew Bamana, the local language.  The officer was asking for a bribe because he saw a westerner.  Me.

In Mali, there’s this special kind of “joking cousin” relationship based on last names…you would have a special bond with the person from another family name.  It’s believed to be set deep in the mythical past.  I liken [the joke telling] to telling mama jokes.

I asked the officer his last name, and I figured out what the joking cousin relationship was.  So I let him have it.  This guy with a AK-47 fell to the ground laughing.  The next day, I went downtown to the headquarters and met all of the precinct captains.  And no one hassled me for a bribe ever again.