ABSTRACT
1. Ntegeka ya Bagurusi or Baraza Mukurato (The Court of the Village Elders).
NOTE: During discussion on these village courts the assessors made the following statements regarding the relationship between them and the recognised courts :
Hardly any civil case is heard in the Gombolola Courts which has not first been before the Court of Elders.
When the grounds of appeal are that witnesses have not been called, it is probable either that they are not true witnesses or that they are witnesses who were refused by the bagurusi.
If new witnesses are produced in the appeal from Gombolola to Lukiko Court, their integrity is suspected by the people because the man who puts them forward may be playing on the lack of intimate local knowledge of the Lukiko. Therefore, unless there is some good reason for their non-appearance in the lower court, new witnesses should not be accredited. The arbitrators in the village courts are sometimes called before the Gombolola and interrogated on their judgments in an unofficial way; their evidence does not appear in the case record, but it has a very strong bearing on the finding. Perhaps this explains why at times the Gombolola judgments appear to take little or no account of the evidence given before them.
Constitution.