Do we want wall-to-wall chiefs in SA?
William Beinart asks whether President Zuma’s courting of chiefs as a means of cementing power undermines democracy
IT may seem mischievous to suggest that President Jacob Zuma’s thinking in terms of chiefs and traditional authority echoes that of infamous apartheid leader HF Verwoerd.
But, oddly enough, the two men have had similar decisions to make about the future of rural South Africa, and the path Zuma is choosing may not be all that different from the one his white predecessor trod.
The 1956 report of the Tomlinson commission was an ambitious prospectus for the development of the African reserves, which FR Tomlinson, a Stellenbosch professor of agricultural economics, considered essential if apartheid was to succeed.
Only through massive state investment in rural development could the homelands take off. Only in this way could the surge of African migration to the cities be stopped. Tomlinson was clear: either his plan was implemented or apartheid would fail.
He suggested investment of more than £100-million (in today’s terms, roughly £7.3-billion, or R130-billion). Three key proposals stand out: African land-holding should be consolidated and privatised; private investment, including foreign investment, should be allowed; and rapid rural industrialisation should be funded by the state.
Many think Tomlinson shaped homeland policy, but this is only partly true.
Verwoerd is often seen as an ideologue and relentless protagonist for “separate development”. But he was also a pragmatist concerned about power. Verwoerd rejected these central recommendations partly because he thought they went too far for the white electorate, but also because individual land-holding would have undermined African chiefs.
He believed apartheid could best be built around a conservative, traditionalist rural African hierarchy as the foundation for compliant satellite statelets.
Tomlinson’s proposals may have created much poverty in the short term by undercutting access to land for hundreds of thousands of families. But they saw potential in the rural areas and offered a route to modernity and development. Verwoerd won, entrenching an ossified traditional leadership and a semi-functional and patriarchal system of local government.
Today, the ANC talks a great deal about the legacy of the bantustans and the poverty it has left behind. Yet one of the most important and underestimated legacies was the entrenchment of chiefs.
Here the ANC’s thinking is more ambivalent and it does not ask the question of whether chiefs were part of the legacy of poverty and failed development. The ANC has changed direction of late in ways that previous leaders and activists may have found disturbing.
The 1996 constitution was vague about traditional leaders. The ANC initially favoured a system of local government that largely excluded them. The dominant view was that chiefs should be nonpolitical and merely represent a certain element of African identity and history.
But the founding of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa) in 1987 had provided a vehicle for chiefs in the ANC alliance. Some older national leaders, such as Nelson Mandela, respected the institution and preferred to have chiefs on side.
In 1990, Patekile Holomisa became the president of Contralesa and helped to shed the image of chiefs as sellouts. After 1994, Mangosuthu Buthelezi and the Inkatha Freedom Party were able to protect chiefs in the government of national unity as well as in KwaZuluNatal. The ANC government agreed
The ANC is opening the way for a reassertion of undemocratic, patriarchal forms of government
to continue paying the chiefs and passed a Remuneration of Traditional Leaders Act in 1995.
In addition to receiving direct payment, traditional authorities have been keen to remain as gatekeepers and conduits for resources from the state. In a number of areas, they have successfully maintained a parallel administrative structure at the village level.
During the homeland period (from the 1950s until 1994), chiefs and headmen were often accused of corruption or keeping resources to themselves and their supporters. This was one of the causes of the Mpondoland revolt in 1960 and the Ciskei insurrections in the 1980s. However, since the transition to democracy, chiefs have used the corruption of elected local officeholders to argue that they represent a better alternative.
Even if not popular, many have retained some authority at the local and regional levels. The central government has secured some of the old tribal authority boundaries and institutions through the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act of 2003.
Critically, it provides for the potential extension of the areas under traditional authorities. The Communal Land Rights Act of 2004 (later declared unconstitutional) and the Traditional Courts Bill of 2012 indicated further the changing balance of opinion in the government. Although some of these measures were promulgated under president Thabo Mbeki, Zuma has made more space for chiefs.
The ANC has come to see chiefs as able to deliver a block rural vote. The party has consistently gained its highest percentage vote in rural provinces such as Limpopo and Mpumalanga and parts of the Eastern Cape, not in the cities. In fact, it is by no means clear that traditional authorities play a significant role in mobilising rural votes.
And so there has been a remark- able turnaround. Under the Afrikaner nationalists, there were two key poles of power in the rural areas: white commercial farmers and African chiefs.
Both played to narrow interests. The transition to democracy seemed to offer new political space and new promise for a different kind of rural development.
Now, under Zuma, the ANC seems to be providing strong opportunities for the chiefs to operate politically and administratively. Some are well organised and believe strongly in their legitimacy and their role. Like Verwoerd, Zuma seems to believe that supporting the chiefs is a good way to tap rural support. In so doing, the ANC is opening the way for a reassertion of undemocratic, patriarchal forms of government.
In Bafokeng and elsewhere, royal groups have gained control of massive new resources through mining. The recent reopening of restitution claims, which Zuma strongly backs, may be one of the most significant new measures for extension of the chiefs’ power. The Zulu royal house has already said it will lodge a major new ethnic land claim.
In the first round of restitution, land claims were made by individuals or local communities. Now the route seems to be open to major claims led by chiefs. The scope for patronage, should any of these be won, is enormous, as are the dangers of ethnic mobilisation and competition.
Chieftaincy and communal tenure may creep outwards from the former homelands. Have South Africans debated whether they want wall-to-wall chiefs? Have they debated whether chiefs were and are part of the problem of rural poverty? Are these the legacies that South Africa wishes to promote?
Is Zuma having his Verwoerd moment — seeing in the chiefs a conservative base for rural support at a time when the ANC may feel threatened by new forces such as a rising black middle class, radical workers action and the Economic Freedom Fighters?
Beinart is a historian and the author of ‘Twentieth-Century South Africa’