ABSTRACT
Once the new age-group of moran have the privileges, they are in a mood to show their mettle. Their manyata recruitment posses are mounted in the spirit of a challenge against the world at large and against their fathers in particular. It is the firestick patrons who select the site for the manyata village within each area and establish it ritually. The manyata and the elders' villages are opposed precisely as moran are opposed to elders. In contrast to the tight organisation of the manyata, the villages of the elders are dispersed throughout Matapato in loose clusters, and they maintain a more casual network of visiting and communication. Plato himself concluded that his Republic could be no more than an ideal, although a necessary one for any person with integrity, establishing it within himself. The manyata, like other institutions founded on Platonic lines, is only a part of a larger, corrupted whole.
