the object was to pin the opponent. This meant forcing the opponent’s
shoulders to touch the ground, thus placing the antagonist in a “danger”
position. Once this was accomplished, the match was completed.
This way of ending the match was not always the case, however. A wide
variety of cultural and regional styles existed. In southeast Africa, a tradition
of wrestling from a kneeling (in the case of adult men) or seated (in the case
of boys) position employing a single arm developed. As an adjunct to grap-
pling skills, the Nilotic cultures just south of the Sahara (the Bambara of
Mali among others) wore bagussa (mentioned above) during their ritual
wrestling matches. In these sanguinary contests, one attempted to attack the
opponent’s head and in the process shed as much of his blood as possible.
The blood that was shed in this fashion was believed not only to make the
crops grow, but also to heal the sick. The Khoikhoi of southwest Africa, al-
though fighting unarmed, engaged in a type of no-holds-barred wrestling,
which came closer to the Greek pankrationthan to the catch-as-catch-can
amateur style. Nor was wrestling a uniformly male pursuit. There are tradi-
tions of women wrestling in various groups scattered throughout the conti-
nent: Nigeria (Ibo), Sudan (Nuba), Senegal, Cameroon, Benin (Fon), Gabon,
Gambia. The reasons for doing so vary, of course. In some cases, as with the
men, the grappling is connected with the annual round of agricultural cere-
monies; in others, it is an aspect of the courtship process.
As with stickfighting, intervillage and even interstate competitions ex-
isted. The Bachama, for example, staged tournaments in conjunction with
their agricultural festivals, which included their Nigerian neighbors. On
these ceremonial occasions the Bata, Bwaza, Jen, and Mbula were invited
to field teams of their best wrestlers. This martial tradition continues into
the contemporary period, as evidenced by the 1990 Nigerian national
wrestling championship of Julius Donald Ngbarato, a man of Bachama
heritage. Similarly, the Luo of Kenya held competitions in which villages or
districts were pitted against each other. Although the tournaments were or-
ganized, the actual matches seemed less so, for wrestling—like Luo stick-
fighting—is reported as “having no rules at all” (Godia 1989, 68).
Given the fact that African wrestling champions have been regarded
not only as superior athletes but also as superior warriors, it can be as-
sumed that combat wrestling systems also existed. The matches reported
among the Khoikhoi certainly sound combat effective. Therefore it is likely
that, beyond the sporting repertoire reported in the literature, wrestlers
learned the techniques of choking and joint locking (in which a joint is
forced beyond its maximum range of mobility) appropriate to the battle-
field. These systems were probably auxiliary training for warriors, to assist
them if they lost their weapons in combat. Much of this must be left to spec-
ulation, however, given the paucity of written descriptions of these arts.6 Africa and African America