Elites abuse traditions to entrench their power

Nomalanga Mkhize, Business Day

THE "maiden bursary" offered by the uThukela district municipality affirms two points. First, it shows why the principle of constitutionalism is necessary in a pluralist society. By pluralist I mean a society in which many cultural institutions, customs and codes coexist and interact.

We can continuously debate and change the content of that Constitution over time, but a constitution is necessary to act as final arbiter lest we give way to extreme cultural relativism that can legitimise abhorrent practices.

Second, the bursary demonstrated a major ideological faultline of the postcolonial state. Not neocolonialism, but neotraditionalism. By this I mean the tendency of postcolonial political orders to express power and statecraft through a toxic mix of conservative politics, culturalist rhetoric and very masculinised political practice.

King’s culture call is all about land

Nomboniso Gasa, Business Day

KING Goodwill Zwelithini made a fiery speech in Kokstad recently in which he declared 2015 to be the Year of the Regiment. He urged male initiates to be "his regiment and defend African culture against critics".

His call to arms must be understood in the broader context of claims of power over land, resources and customary law.

Claimants still waiting for the promised land

Nomboniso Gasa, Mail & Guardian

The man’s movements were deliberate as he took the microphone at the recent land tenure summit in Boksburg.

“Minister, we support this summit,” he said. “We, the labour tenants on the farms, feel the pressing hard sole of the farmers on our backs. We, who are dragged on the backs of bakkies, without protection … many of us know no other home. Our parents gave their labour as we give ours. Must our children suffer the same fate? There is no political will to ensure that the laws are adhered to, there are no mechanisms to ensure labour tenants are treated as human beings.

Nomboniso Gasa on Traditional Authority in Contemporary South Africa

Re-opened restitution a cover for neo-traditionalist power grab

By Nomalanga Mkhize, Custom Contested

In recent weeks, South African news reports have been filled with leaders announcing claims and counter-claims to land on behalf of their “people” and royal clans under the newly amended Restitution Act of 1994.

These royal claims are said to be justified by South Africa’s history of colonial dispossession, which was the most extreme on the African continent and waged through two centuries of warfare, and 50 years of legislated discrimination.

Verwoerd, Zuma and the Chiefs

By William Beinart, Custom Contested

It may seem mischievous to suggest that Jacob Zuma’s thinking on chiefs and traditional authority echoes that of the infamous apartheid leader H.F. Verwoerd. But, oddly enough, the two men had similar decisions to make about the future of rural South Africa, and the path Zuma is choosing is not all that different from the one his white predecessor trod.

Empty promises to rural people

The land restitution bill is not the game-changer that President Zuma promised, write Nomboniso Gasa and Nolundi Luwaya. Sunday Independent

The Land Restitution Bill approved by the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) on Thursday may raise a cheer from traditional leaders, but it is not the game-changer that President Jacob Zuma promised in his State of the Nation address last year.

Zuma and his Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform, Gugile Nkwinti, punted the bill as a second chance for the Khoi, San and Africans who were dispossessed before the notorious 1913 Natives Land Act redesigned the South African landscape.

Mahmood Mamdani - Define & Rule: Native as Political Identity

Mahmood Mamdani - DEFINE AND RULE: Native as Political Identity from CenterforPlaceCulturePolitics on Vimeo.

Book Launch: Jeff Guy's Theophilus Shepstone and the Forging of Natal

Theophilus Shepstone and the Forging of Natal: African Autonomy and Settler Colonialism in the Making of Traditional Authority is an account of the life of Theophilus Shepstone, Secretary for Native Affairs in the Colony of Natal from 1846 to 1876 and an examination of the nature of the concept of traditional authority in South Africa today.

Speakers: Keith Breckenridge and Jeff Guy

Tuesday, 1st October 2013 at  6pm in the WiSER Seminar Room, 6th Floor, Richard Ward Building, East Campus, Wits University

Refreshments will be served.  Please RSVP: Najibha.Deshmukh@wits.ac.za

Complex legacy of 1913 Land Act ‘held captive’

By Nomboniso Gasa, The Daily Dispatch

26 April, 2013

THIS year marks the centenary of the 1913 Land Act. Yet, very little is in the public debate about its multiple legacies in the present.

The centenary of the Land Act occurs 18 years after the South African constitution was enacted into law. While the function of the constitution in any society is broader than redressing past injustices; there can be no question that such redress is central in laying foundations for a society based on justice, freedom and equality – in all meanings.

There is general acceptance that South Africa’s land reform and redress has been frustratingly low. This is acknowledged by the leaders of the country as it is equally experienced by the communities who live with the legacy of that dispossession. Why is this so?

A chief rules by people power

by Jeff Guy, Mail & Guardian

A central concept of precolonial society provides a key to the way forward in a modern democracy, writes Professor Jeff Guy.

The Traditional Courts Bill is now being debated with gratifying intensity by concerned South Africans. Those who support it argue that by recognising affordable, familiar legal processes in rural areas it brings African beliefs and practices within the bounds of the Constitution.

Respect our rights

by Pumla Gqola, City Press, 6 May 2012

The Traditional Courts Bill is meant to replace the Black Administration Act of 1927 with a law that is constitutional.

Instead, if passed, it will in effect strip between 17 million and 21 million people living in rural South Africa of many of the rights we enjoy in the rest of the country.

Locusts on the Horizon

by Richard Pithouse, SACSIS

Taking over a mode of rule is not the same thing as transforming it. Barack Obama is not George Bush but that fact makes little difference to the bankers looking for a public subsidy or a wedding party in Pakistan at the moment when a drone rushes out of the sky.

Popular Politics in the History of South Africa, 1400–1948

by Paul Landau, Cambridge, 2011

Popular Politics in the History of South Africa

Popular Politics in the History of South Africa, 1400–1948 offers a newly inclusive vision of South Africa's past. Drawing largely from original sources, Paul Landau presents a history of the politics of the country's people, from the time of their early settlements in the elevated heartlands, through the colonial era, to the dawn of Apartheid.

Rural poverty in the Eastern Cape Province: Legacy of apartheid or consequence of contemporary segregationism?

Ashley Westaway, Development South Africa, 2012

Poverty in South Africa in general has not declined since 1994, and it is particularly severe in the former Bantustans. This paper discusses two important issues related to rural poverty in the Eastern Cape Province. It questions the applicability of the notion of legacy to explain recent trends in rural poverty and constructs an argument that explains these trends in relation to post-1994 segregationism. It argues that the notion of legacy is not useful in explaining why rural poverty remains entrenched, long after 1994. Rural poverty today cannot be explained as something left behind after the end of apartheid, because its causes and drivers are the same now in 2012 as they were in 1970. The continuity between the pre- and post-1994 periods is best described by exploring and understanding post-1994 policy decisions and power configurations as an expression of contemporary segregationism.

Millions will lose their ‘citizenship’

by Nomboniso Gasa, Independent Online

'We need no mourners in our stride; No remorse, no tears. Only this: Resolve. That the locust shall never again visit our farmsteads.' The above excerpt from a poem by Odia Ofeimun at the end of the Biafra War in Nigeria comes to mind as I grapple with the contestation on constitutionalism, constitutional democracy, majoritarianism and legislative changes under consideration in South Africa.

Triumph over the tribe

by Paul Landau, Mail & Guardian

Well after apartheid's end, the tribe is still taken as the background for all subsequent African politics. The attraction of the idea is its mythical and timeless quality. It is celebrated by the state as "heritage" and furthered by new assertions of the chiefs' supposedly traditional prerogatives. 

Democracy Compromised: Chiefs and the politics of land in South Africa

by Lungisile Ntsebeza

Democracy Compromised

Democracy Compromised puts the spotlight on traditional authorities and addresses two main issues: first, how despite their role in the apartheid state, traditional authorities not only survived, but have won unprecedented powers of rural governance in South Africa’s democracy, and second, how they derive their authority. In this original and compelling study, Lungisile Ntsebeza carefully details the fascinating history of the chieftaincy in the Xhalanga area of the Eastern Cape.

He shows how traditional authorities have been dependent on the support of the state since the advent of colonialism and how deeply traditional structures have been contested. Light is shed on the unexpected renaissance of these authorities under ANC rule and the role of traditional leaders in the process of land allocation is clearly explained. Written by one of the leading scholars on the South African land reform programme and democratisation in rural South Africa, this book will be of particular interest to academics, researchers, students, activists and policy makers.

Govan Mbeki: The Peasants’ Revolt

South Africa: The Peasant's Revolt

Penguin Library, 1964 & by International Defence and Aid Fund, 1984.

Preface by Ruth First

Chapter 8. Chiefs in the Saddle

Chapter 9. Resistance and Rebellion

Mahmood Mamdani: Citizen and Subject; Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism

Democracy and the Colonial Heritage in Africa: Revisiting Mamdani's Citizen and Subject

by Bill Freund, Left History

Mahmood Mamdani's Citizen and Subject has become one of the most talked about contributions to African studies in recent years. The review article which follows represents a commentary on Mamdani. It amplifies substantially a short review which has been published previously in the African Sociological Review. That review ventured to make a number of critical comments on the book which dispute some of its emphases while elaborating on its themes. This article will attempt to develop these points somewhat further. The idea, however, is not to take away from the value and significance of Mamdani's book which represents an important and original contribution.