A Current Bibliography on African Affairs - Baywood Publishing

VOLUME 42, NUMBER 4—2009-2010 / 441
these rites before turning to an analysis of accounts, by the anthropologist Audrey Richards,
of the deaths of two ‘commoners’ in the 1930s. The paper argues that chiefly power resided
less in the threat of death which was enacted spectacularly in the Chitimukulu’s mortuary
rituals than in the promise to create and protect life, located in the practices of quotidian life.
This promise of the creation and protection of life was being progressively undermined by
the conditions of colonial rule.
1494. Wechsberg, W. M. et al. SUBSTANCE USE AND SEXUAL RISK WITHIN
THE CONTEXT OF GENDER INEQUALITY IN SOUTH AFRICA. Substance Use and
Misuse. 2008, 43(8-9):1186-1201.
This study examines substance use and sexual risk within the context of gender
inequality among 163 women from an urban region of South Africa who were participating
in a 2004-2006 study funded by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
Items assessed patterns of substance use, gender inequality, risk communication, and
psychological distress. Multivariate logistic regression analyses revealed that economic
dependence on a main partner and traditional beliefs about a woman’s right to refuse sex
were associated with substance use prior to or during sex with that partner. The findings
demonstrate that substance abuse prior to sex may reinforce traditional beliefs and that
women with more progressive beliefs about gender ideology seem better able to control
their substance use in risky environments.
1495. Wellman, T. J. MAKING TRADITION OF AN ASS. ZÊNÔN THE ALEX-
ANDRIAN, A WHITE DONKEY, AND CONVERSION TO HELLENISM. Religion and
Theology. 2008, 15:321-339.
Modern discussions of religious change in the ancient Mediterranean have frequently
focused on the steady increase in Christian authority and numbers, and the related decrease
in the number of ‘pagans’. This is frequently paired with a supercessionist logic that
suggests Christianity is a new thing in contrast to the older, static, Jewish and pagan cultures.
Looking at an invented conversion ritual (one moving from Judaism to Hellenism),
we can begin to question the standard ideas of tradition and innovation in Late Antique
religious cultures, and to see the ways that some Jews and Hellenes used Christian
discourses to assert their own independence and agency.
1496. Wright, L. ARCHDEACON MERRIMAN, ‘CALIBAN’, AND THE CATTLE-
KILLING OF 1856–57. African Studies. 2008, 67(2):257-273.
Did Archdeacon Merriman accept that Mhlakaza was Wilhelm Goliat? The short answer
is that we don’t know and, indeed, the identification itself is still strongly contested.
However, historical problems sometimes yield, or at least buckle slightly, when
approached from unusual, tangential perspectives. If Goliat was Mhlakaza—and this article
proceeds on the assumption that he was—this would have been, for Merriman, a highly
disturbing and significant matter. For his erstwhile travelling companion and, more
importantly, his first convert to the Church, to be deeply implicated in bringing about an
appalling social catastrophe on the scale of the Cattle-Killing would be troubling from both
a religious and a personal perspective.