34346 Nugormesese: An Indigenous Basis of Social Capital in a West African Community T he primary objective of this article nugormesese came under stress. is to present nugormesese as an Nugormesese is an Ewe2 word, Notes indigenous mechanism of social capital in which, in its everyday usage, simply Buem-Kator, a farming community on means "understanding." It is a the Ghana side of the Ghana-Togo derivative from the infinitive border area.1 For the purpose of this segorme--"to understand" or "to article, the concept of social capital will understand it." But, in its sociological be minimally defined to refer to the connotations, its meanings are wide capability of social norms and customs to and far-reaching. It can be conceptu- alized as an institutional framework KI hold members of a group together by effectively setting and facilitating the that facilitated binary interactions terms of their relationships. Unlike between the people in this farming physical capital (machineries, bank community. Nugormesese was a accounts, etc.) and human capital culture of mutual understanding and (knowledge, skills, etc), social capital is a trust that developed particularly relational factor or social resource that between the Buems--the indigenous http://www.worldbank.org/afr/ik/default.htm sustainably facilitates collective action members of the host community--and for achieving mutually beneficial ends. migrant farmers in the area.3 Even Based on this definition, this article will though the breach of this contract show that, by functioning as the underly- would normally attract only "intrinsic ing mechanism of social capital, sanctions,"4 there are instances in nugormesese served as an environment which a violator can be subjectedto a of trust, thus facilitating the relationships verbal reproach or even a material between and among the people in this fine, normally in the form of a bottle farming area at the early stage in the development of cocoa and coffee. These No. 86 export crops were introduced into the November 2005 area at the turn of the 20th century. IK Notes reports periodically on Nugormesese particularly functioned in Indigenous Knowledge (IK) initiatives facilitating binary relationships between in Sub-Saharan Africa and the people either as members of the host occassionally on such initiatives community and migrants, as landlords outside the region. It is published by the Africa region's Knowledge and and tenants, as creditors and debtors, as Learning Center as part of an farm owners and farm workers, or as evolving K partnership between the farmers and non-farmers. As time went World Bank, communities, NGOs, by and the area's social structure had development institutions, and multilateral organizations. The views become more complex as a result of the expressed in this article are those of increased diversity of the people, the the authors and should not be World Bank transformation of the preexisting subsis- attributed to the World Bank Group or tence economy into cash economy, and its partners in this initiative. A the eventual erosion of the underlying webpage on IK is available at //www.worldbank.org/afr/ik normative order of the local institutions, including the land tenure system, 2 or two of the local alcoholic beverage. In this area, where, amedzro (share cropper). This is a stranger farmer who at the early stage of the development of the export-based works on a share contract called dibi na menso medi--a economy, there was a widespread absence of functional Twi word, literarily meaning, "eat some so that I eat some, literacy which could facilitate the drawing of formal too."6 This stranger farmer is on the so-called "agricultural contracts to guide land transactions, nugormesese per- ladder," that is, on the way of becoming both an agbletor formed a crucial role in facilitating all manner of economic, (farm owner) and anyigbator. This is because in this share political, and social relationships between the two groups. contract, the cultivated land is divided into two equal parts As an institutional framework, nugormesese served its between the original landowner and the dibi farmer, to social capital purpose primarily because of its ability to whom both the farm and the land become a property, create an environment of trust. This is because the role of which in theory can be held in perpetuity. effective institutions in the lives of people is analogous to The two groups in the export crops business--Buems, the role of third-parties in trilateral conflict management. particularly the heads of the landowning lineages, and the To achieve its conflict management objective, the third- migrant farmers--needed each other regarding land party must be perceived by the adversarial parties as a transactions. These involved the transfer of the land on the repository of trust. Thus, the key point being made here is part of the Buems and its acquisition by the migrant that the mutual understanding, trust, and respect for each farmers. The members of the host community needed the other--as embodied in nugormesese, are mechanisms of migrant farmers to acquire land from them so that they (the social control. Thus, like my conception of kanye ndu members of the host community) could reap promising bowi (IK Note 56), these three indigenous philosophical cash benefits from the sale of the land to them. On their contexts primarily served as conflict management mecha- part, too, the migrants needed the members of the Buems nisms, hence as a basis of social capital in their respective to acquire cultivable land for the development of the crops. communities. Thus, the land-hunger of the migrant farmers was corre- spondingly met by the desire of the head of the landowning Buem lineages to sell their land--a textbook example of Mutuality of Benefits double coincidence of wants. There were other incentives to the two groups to sustain The question, therefore, is: What role did nugormesese the mutual understanding and have mutual respect and trust play in the early stage in the development of the export- for each other. For example, the number of migrant based economy in Buem-Kator? This question directs farmers a head of a landowning Buem lineage had under attention to what could be called "mutuality of benefits" his "control" was not only a mark of prestige to the lineage vis-à-vis the Buems and the migrant groups.5 Given the head as this could enhance his social standing in the limited nature of information which the Buems had about community, but it could also determine the size of other the migrants on one hand and the virtual absence of economic benefits he would have access to. This was alternative sources of information about the new physical because migrants were customarily expected to make and socio-cultural environments to the migrants on the donations in both cash and kind to their landlords in the other hand, mutual understanding and trust of each other, event of birth, death, and other forms of rites des pas- as embodied in nugormesese, were functionally necessary. sages in the latter's nuclear or extended family. In fact, nugormesese was a functional alternative to The migrants, too, needed the Buems for other socio- formal contracts at the time. economic reasons. For example, the migrants needed to be These relationships are primarily between afetor (land- protected against the existing environmental hazards, lord) or anyigbator (landowner) and amedzro agbledela particularly the dangers posed by carnivores like lions that (stranger farmer) There are three types of amedzro were highly prevalent in the area at the time. Also, the agbledela: one is the amedzro agbledela who works on migrants needed information and guidance from the Buems his or her own farm and the other is apavi (farm laborer). regarding the effective exploitation of their new environ- An apavi is the one who works on other peoples' farm. ment. For example, the migrants had to be helped to This type of apavi can be someone who works as a daily acquire knowledge about things such as hunting tech- or seasonal farm laborer and is usually itinerant or an niques, sources of water, topography, and soil and climatic apavi who is stationary with an established farmstead, conditions of the area. though he, too, works on other people's farm. In-between Even though migrants normally lived close to each other, the itinerant apavi and the established one is the dibi some of the early migrants settled with Buem families, 3 usually those from whom they had acquired land. They most preferred means of resolving conflict between the would live with their landlords while cultivating the newly two groups for its quality of amicability had largely given acquired land and preparing homesteads for themselves on way to the more confrontational statutory court procedures, the newly acquired land. The length of stay with the the decisions of which were usually ignored by the people. landlord depended on the length of time it took the migrant It is an established fact that the impact of Africa's statutory to get his own homestead ready for habitation. The ability systems on resolving communal strife, particularly land- of the migrant to live in the bush, particularly if he was related conflicts, has been of little consequence in most of isolated from other migrants, was also a factor in his its communities. decision to relocate to his own cottage. It was easier for migrants who had relatives or friends or spouses with them to move immediately into their own house, even if it was Conclusion far into the uninhabited bush and largely isolated from other The challenge in the area of Buem-Kator, in fact, in rural residents. Africa in general, today is the increasing breakdown in As time went by, the effectiveness of nugormesese indigenous systems of social control. Even though the came under stress, hence the diminishing quality of its resort to the statutory court systems for conflict resolution mediatory character. By the early 1960s, most of the land- in most African countries has often not achieved the vending lineages in Buem-Kator had begun to see not only desired objective as a result of a persisting "disconnect" the steady disappearance of their land frontiers, but also between the philosophical orientation of the state and that increasing landlessness among them. Because the bulk of of their indigenous communities, there is an apparent the cultivable land of the area had been transferred to the difficulty in adapting the indigenous systems to the exigen- migrant farmers in most sections of the area, the migrants cies of the modern situations. no longer exclusively depended on the host community for Thus, the question is: In what way can African countries the acquisition of land. Some of the migrants have even best redesign their philosophical and institutional environ- evolved into landlords in their own right.Also, having lived ments in order to create workable means of social control? in the area for some time, the migrants no longer needed to This question directs attention to the need for governments depend on the host community for protection against to imaginatively integrate the relevant aspects of their natural hazards and knowledge about the physical environ- norms of trust with those of the people's indigenous ones ment. Furthermore, later generations of the two groups no as a means of dealing with the exigencies of the modern longer shared the warmth and mutual understanding and situations. The potentially innovative character of this trust that characterized the relationships between their proposal lies in its promise of blending the structures and parents. Thus, the mutual needs and reciprocal assistance processes of the two systems of social control, which will that used to bind them together had largely eroded. bridge the perceived gaps between the philosophical At the time of the author's fieldwork, he noticed three underpinnings of the two systems. key developments: one was the proliferation of land-related conflicts between the two groups, another was increasing substitution of more formal contracts to the more informal nugormesese, and the third was a shift in the methods of conflict resolution.Available evidence showed that there was a steady proliferation of conflicts, particularly land- related conflicts, between the host community and the migrant groups, depicting a situation that normally results from painful co-existence of landlessness and virtual absence of non-farm jobs. As noted above, the Buems were much more affected by the migrant farmers. There also was an increasing resort to more formal contracts, which was a shift from mere mutual understanding to written documents regarding all forms of land transactions, though, according to the migrants, these did not seem capable of extinguishing the host community's claim to rights in the land. Third, mediation, which used to be the 4 1. Data for this study were collected from four visits to the field, starting in the 4. The author defined this form of intrinsic sanction in IK Notes 56 as the feeling of summer of 1992 and ending winter of 2004, when the author was working on his moral discomfort that people experience they violate the normative principles that doctoral dissertation. undergird the normative order. 2. Ewe is a language spoken natively by about 13 percent of the population of Ghana 5. The author notes note that migration into uncultivated tropical rainforests was one It is spoken in Togo and southern section of Benin, too. of the key instruments behind the development of cocoa and coffee as export crops in 3. Even though the concept of nugormesese, as used in the present study, is similar to WestAfrica. that of lelorkalorbunu, which the author presented as one of the pillars of kanye ndu bowi"-- "the ingredients of harmony" (IK Note 56), unlike nugormesese, lelorkalorbunu relates only to conflict resolution. Among the Buems, whether the conflict resolution forum was bate kate (adjudication) or benyaogba ukpikator (mediation), there was the need for lelorkalorbunu--mutual understanding and acceptance of both the process and outcome of the particular judicial forum. The author, Ben K. Fred-Mensah, isAssistant Professor of InternationalRelations and consultant in InternationalDevelopmentatHowardUniversity,Washington,DC;e-mailbfred-mensah@howard.eduor bfredmensah@gmail.com.