The National House of Traditional Leaders is demanding that that the Constitution be amended in rural areas to do away with elected local government and give the amakhosi the power to govern. Under the guise of “tradition and culture”, they wish to re-establish old bantustans. (See Mail & Guardian report below)

Apartheid was a complex system that benefited not only a White minority, it had a range of African, Coloured and Indian beneficiaries as well. The late colonial and apartheid state in South Africa was always White dominated but supported ‘tribal’ leaders in the homelands or bantustans and a minority of Coloured and Indian collaborators.

Apartheid would never have lasted a day without its collaborators located mainly in the rural parts of our country. There were exceptions among 20th century traditional leaders but they were small in number and persecuted by the apartheid state.

Today, most of our university students would struggle to name even five homeland leaders but the activist generations and our parents will never forget Gatsha Buthelezi, Kaizer Matanzima, Lennox Sebe, Cedric Mphephu, Alan Hendrickse, Armichand Rajbansi, Lucas Mangope and many others who collaborated with the apartheid state. Everyone of these chiefs were based in the old homelands: Lebowa (North Sotho, also referred to as Pedi), QwaQwa (South Sotho), Bophuthatswana (Tswana), KwaZulu (Zulu), KaNgwane (Swazi), Transkei and Ciskei (Xhosa), Gazankulu (Tsonga), Venda (Venda) and KwaNdebele (Ndebele).

The power of homeland leaders over people was not fake. Unless you voted for their one-party “regimes”, kissed their hands, gave them money — your access to land, education, health and other social services were restricted. Most damning is the power they exerted over women, girls and young men. African women in most rural areas never became adults with full legal personalities. The system of chiefs, homeland “self-rule” and “independence” was also a part of the violence against our people. Inkatha chiefs killed thousands of ANC supporters who then had to defend themselves. All Bantustan jails were filled with activists while their police shot and beat people indiscriminately during protests.

Our current version of history and struggle is a romantic myth with “bad Whites” and “good Blacks led by the ANC”. We forget that there were many African, Coloured and Indian collaborators who used minority rule to exploit our people. Most of them flooded into the ANC after 1990.

Religion, tradition and culture are an important part of South Africa’s diverse people. Democracy means developing forces into a progressive tradition that respects human rights. A struggle is emerging over democracy and the Constitution in South Africa. This struggle centers around the ideas of freedom, equality, social justice and the right to elect our representatives. If conservative Chiefs and other traditional leaders, Priests, Imams and Rabbis together with their business counter-parts have their way, minority rule will be manifested in different forms. The domination of women, girls, young men, workers, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and inter-sex people will become a part of our daily lives.

It is vital that we read our history and that we understand that the struggle for democracy and social justice is never won — it is a permanent struggle. Now is the time to re-examine the role of “traditional” leaders and collaborators under apartheid. They did not go away, they entered the ANC to continue plundering the state as they plundered the Bantustans and the stooge Coloured and Indian Parliaments.

We have to ensure that tradition, religion and culture is respected and developed, to promote human dignity, equality and freedom, not our subjection.

Zackie Achmat

Fury over traditional system — Mail & Guardian
Pearlie Joubert – Jul 23 2010

More than 40 women and men from some of the remotest rural enclaves of the country trekked to Parliament this week to beg — sometimes in tears — the portfolio committee on rural development and land reform to disband traditional authorities created by the 1951 Black Authorities Act (BAA).

And the MP who spearheaded the defence of traditional leadership was none other than committee member Zwelivelile Mandela, Nelson Mandela’s grandson and chief of the Mvezo traditional council in the Eastern Cape — Mvezo is the village where the former president was born.

“We as women don’t really like the chief that much,” one woman told the committee. “We ask this Parliament to disband the current traditional authority and court.”

By the end of the second day of the hearings, only three members of the 17-strong committee attended.

The committee was holding hearings in preparation for the repealing of the BAA, seen as the last remaining apartheid legislation. The repeal Bill holds that the Act “was a cornerstone of apartheid by means of which black people were controlled and dehumanised, and is reminiscent of past division and discrimination”.

Not a single witness favoured the role of amakhosi or the appointment of chiefs, or saw benefit in bolstering their legal powers and functions. The most devastating testimony came from women denied the right to own communal land and who have no locus standi in traditional courts — they have to be represented by a man. There are about 16-million rural South Africans, the majority of them women.

In their submission to Parliament, the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) quotes Nelson Mandela warning that “the reversion to tribal rule might isolate the democratic leadership from the masses and bring about the destruction of that leadership as well as of the liberation organisations”.

But his grandson clearly has other ideas. At the hearings he made an impassioned speech about the wholesomeness of ukuthwalwa, the marriage custom — meaning “to be carried” — which implies the abduction of often prepubescent girls, who are then forced into marriage. Speaking in isiXhosa, Zwelivelile Mandela reprimanded one of the rural woman who had criticised ukuthwalwa as a distortion. “What is her culture that informs her that [ukuthwalwa] is a distortion?” he asked.

“When a man sees that this one is ripe for marriage, then she is taken and she is put through a ceremony and then she’s ready. Don’t bring in white people’s things such as her age,” he snapped.
Mandela left before the end of the hearings without hearing the LRC’s submission that quoted his grandfather’s opposition to the BAA.

Under former president Thabo Mbeki, the amakhosi chiefs were given powers that exceeded those that they enjoyed under apartheid.

In 2003 the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act was promulgated, effectively entrenching the traditional jurisdictions created during the formation of the homelands, which many rural people do not recognise.

‘We don’t know why our progressive government is doing this’
In their submissions rural residents also found fault with the 2004 Communal Land Rights Act, the 2005 Provincial Traditional Leadership Act and the 2008 Traditional Courts Bill.

The South African National Civic Organisation’s secretary in the Eastern Cape, Mqondisi Ngojo, described the laws as “cruel and unscrupulous”, claiming they were “tantamount to killing our rural people”.

“We don’t know why our progressive government is doing this,” Ngojo said. “The way our government is making the laws is very clandestine, as if they are hiding something … these pieces of legislation are very reactionary, as if they were not done by our comrades. Communities were never consulted.”

Old women and men, most of them active during the anti-apartheid struggles appealed to committee members to acknowledge abuses by often self-imposed traditional leaders.

Mary Mokhaetsi Pilane, of the Bakgatla tribe, asked committee members to explain “how, now that we have freedom, we are in a situation where a chief who has been found guilty of corruption can interdict us from holding community meetings?

“We are very worried about these new laws that entrench the legacy of the BAA … these laws make it very difficult for people like us to challenge the abuse of power.”

Johannes Ramutangwa, of the Ramunangi clan in Limpopo, told the committee that his tribe are “the custodians of the sacred sites in Limpopo since the time when the first people came to that place”.

In 2006 one site was destroyed when a road was built through it. The headman had also turned the site into a picnic spot with an entrance fee, which he pocketed.

Ramutangwa said that earlier this year bulldozers started excavating another sacred site to make way for new roads and six chalets. The clan have been unable to stop the chief from promoting this project.
“The BAA created tribal authorities that give all powers to the chiefs. Parliament must ensure that the
traditional authorities are not again given absolute power over our land,” he said.
• On Friday the National House of Traditional Leaders is making presentations to the constitutional review committee asking that the Constitution be changed to do away with elected local government and give the amakhosi the power to govern.

This article appeared in the Mail and Guardian