ABSTRACT
This chapter describes and analyses three disputes which reveal the working of social control in present-day Umbundu society. The first dispute is between an elder of the school and a government headman, the second is between a traditional headman and a villager with the intervention of a local self-styled assimilado1, and the third arose from a quarrel between an irregularly installed chief and a traditional headman. The question of bridewealth repayment is subordinate to, indeed enclosed within, the main dispute. It does illustrate one point central to the problem of Umbundu social control, the absence of any court machinery. Guilherme was generally regarded as lacking 'sense', the quality, greatly admired by the Ovimbundu, of good judgement and decent social behaviour, and he confessed himself to be at fault. The missions bring the Ovimbundu closer to the whites than does the administration, without the administration's predominant interest in making demands.
