Dozo
The Donzo Ton (tɔn is a Manding word for age-group, religious, or vocational associations) are one of a number of hunting fraternities common in Mandé-speaking areas of West Africa.
Similar, and in the case of West Africa closely related groups, exist as the Kamajor in Sierra Leone, Poro in Liberia, the Mayi-Mayi in Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Karamojong in Uganda.
Along with ritual and initiation, local Donzo Ton will meet to discuss their work, organise hunts, or settle internal grievances, often in the all-night tonsigi gathering.
[3] One explanation for the huge growth in the Benkadi network in the 1990s[4] is the rapid increase in deforestation (and thus more scarce hunting land) in the north, economic hardship in other vocations, along with the growing insecurity across the country fed by fears of civil war spreading from Liberia and Sierra Leone.
These hunter groups, then, were simultaneously respected (even feared) for their power by neighbours while growing in numbers and organisation while the government slid into ethnic conflict and civil war.
At the beginning of the 1990s, President Houphouët-Boigny had called on public-minded citizens to aid the police, and as crime increased, local officials drafted in hunters in Korhogo and Ferkessédougou.
This success fed into the growth of Benkadi groups in all parts of Côte d'Ivoire, as the civil war and fragile peace made local organisation of security much sought after.
Donzo Ton leaders opened security offices, trading not only on their northern successes, but on a public perception of special (even magical) abilities of Donzow.
Unemployed men from around the country came to Korhogo and Odienné, home of Benkadi leadership, to be initiated into a Donzo Ton, and thus have access to work as well-paid security guards.
[6] The transnational and northern source of the Donzo Ton were seen to conflict with the ethnic nationalism of Ivoirité which feared the presence of Burkinabé labourers and immigrants from Mali as not being "true" Ivorians.
