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- Convenors:
-
Fred Hendricks
(Rhodes University)
Lungisile Ntsebeza (University of Cape Town)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- KH115
- Start time:
- 29 June, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This Panel addresses the persistence of reserves in contemporary SA by exploring the roles of traditional authorities and the migrant labour system in the urban-rural nexus. Its cases include:the Marikana massacre, the recent attempt to impose chiefs in Cala and the conflict over mining in Pondoland
Long Abstract:
This panel problematizes the connection between land, labour, gender and traditional authorities by highlighting the enduring rural and urban dualities in the lives of South Africans. Labour in the South differs fundamentally with the North in one crucial aspect - many workers retain access to land. While this access is clearly shrinking, even the semblance of access, as in South African reserves, profoundly shapes the nature of citizenship, gender relations, the process of proletarianisation and the prospects for livelihoods revealing the interconnectedness between land and labour. The distorted version of the communal land tenure system in the reserves buttressed by a corrupted chieftaincy were two of the critical pillars of apartheid. Not only do they remain intact in democratic South Africa, they have been reinforced and shored up to create a situation of extreme vulnerability, persistent unevenness and deepening inequality. While contemporary South Africa has a new geographic dispensation in the form of nine provinces, the reserves have not been dismantled. Instead, they remain differentiated from the rest of the country by a distinctive forms of land tenure and local government. In order to understand why migrant labour has persisted in democratic South Africa, it is crucial to appreciate the enduring role of reserves in the political economy of the country as they are deeply implicated in inhibiting the democratic rights of reserve residents by their subjection to traditional authorities while they continue to contribute to cheapening labour power and undermining the rights of women.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Mercia Andrews (Trust for Community Outreach and Government (TCOE))
Paper short abstract:
Thousands of South African farm workers still live and work under exploitative conditions in big commercial farms despite changes since 1994 which introduced new labour laws and new democratic municipalities including in rural areas. They still cannot openly join unions and popular associations.
Paper long abstract:
This paper critically analyses the struggles of farm workers working on wine farms in the Western Cape to join a trade union and to win organisational rights from the farm owners. In South Africa, unions have not been able to organise farm workers hence, union density in the Western Cape, as elsewhere in South Africa remain very low.
The experience of the Trust for Community Outreach and Education (TCOE) in supporting a small independent farm worker union to develop a more open, social movement unionism is used as a case study to build the confidence of farm workers (including migrant workers, women and seasonal workers) to join the union.
The paper will critically explore the strategies and the lessons for new unionism, and what these mean for challenging the power imbalance between farm workers and farm dwellers on the one hand, and farm owners on the other hand.
Kirk Helliker (Rhodes University )
Paper short abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis of rural despotism on white commercial farms and Bantustans in South Africa.
Paper long abstract:
In his seminal work, Citizens and Subjects, Mahmood Mamdani (1996) discusses the existence of ongoing rural despotism in the former Bantustans of post-apartheid South Africa in the form of the chiefdom system, despite liberalisation and deracialisation more broadly since 1994. In examining the differences between political subjects and rights in urban and rural contemporary South Africa, he fails to appreciate the question of another form of rural despotism in South Africa, namely, the presence of what Blair Rutherford (2001) refers to as - borrowing from Foucault - domestic government (with specific reference to Zimbabwe) amongst white agrarian capital. For purposes of this paper, I refer to domestic government as a fiefdom, as it involves feudal-style elements of racism, coercion and paternalism in tightly-controlled places.
In the South African literature, both sets of rural despotism are discussed quite extensively, including in relation to both the pre-1994 period and the post-1994 period. However, and quite amazingly, the literature on these forms of despotism are almost totally disconnected from each other. Thus there is one set of literature on customary tenure and the chieftainship system in the former Bantustans, and another set on private property regimes and labour control regimes on white commercial farms.
The purpose of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis of these forms of despotism in both the pre- and post-1994 period, including (in both cases) continuities and changes in the post-apartheid period.
Fred Hendricks (Rhodes University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the persistence of migrant labour as crucial to understanding the enduring reality of apartheid and the violence of racial capitalism depicted so graphically in the Marikana Massacre.
Paper long abstract:
This paper seeks to problematize the connection between land and labour in the South by highlighting the enduring duality in the lives of migrant labourers in South Africa, particularly on the platinum mines. Labour in the South differs fundamentally with the North in one crucial aspect - many workers retain access to land. While this access is clearly shrinking, even the semblance of access, as in South African reserves, profoundly shapes the nature of work and the process of proletarianisation. Therefore, the land question is intimately connected with the labour question. The distorted version of the communal land tenure system in the reserves buttressed by a corrupted chieftaincy were two of the critical pillars of apartheid. Not only do they remain intact in democratic South Africa, they have been reinforced and shored up to create a situation of extreme vulnerability, persistent unevenness and deepening inequality.
Mazibuko Jara (Pathways Institute)
Paper short abstract:
The Amadiba struggle against Australia’s Mining Commodities' attempts to mine on South Africa’s East Coast expose contradictions between democracy and autocratic rule, the environment and mining, broad-based development and profit, where tradition is manipulated in pursuit of accumulation.
Paper long abstract:
This paper critically analyses the struggles of the Amadiba against Australia's Mining Commodities (MRC). The MRC is infamous for its attempts to mine heavy sands in Xolobeni, in the Amadiba area of Mpondoland on South Africa's East Coast. Vested interests include traditional leaders, Black Economic Empowerment entrepreneurs, elected municipal councillors and the MRC. The Amadiba are amaMpondo inserted into a complex mix of "modern" local government - brought into being by the new democratic dispensation after 1994 - and traditional authorities which precede capitalist South Africa but which were re-shaped by intervening forms of white rule - colonialism, segregation and apartheid. The amaMpondo have a king, several chiefs and a system of headmen and tribal authorities - which have custodial rights over land allocation. All of these have had a history of contestation over jurisdiction and succession before the MRC mining intervention. That intervention has exacerbated these and precipitated further divisions. Overlaying these has been the national and provincial governments, concerned with seeking rural allies.
Amadiba are a poor community. They have self-organised to challenge their oppression and to place their own agency at the centre of any "development". They do not trust government or political parties. They are not an undifferentiated mass enthralled to "tradition" and traditional ways of living. Tradition has already been re-shaped for decades and the activists already experience the dialectical tension between very modern practises and older traditions. And they know that both the state and the companies have cynically manipulated "tradition" to suit their agendas.
Muthuhadini Madzivhandila (University of Mpumalanga)
Paper short abstract:
The Thulamela Municipality is currently experiencing a plethora of public service delivery challenges. This often leads to court litigation and disputes with the institution of musanda.
Paper long abstract:
The study focuses mainly on the current public service delivery system of the government and the role of the institution of the musanda in that process. The basic service delivery system that receives direct attention falls under the Government Cluster, which covers Social Protection, and Community and Human Development. These divisions deal with Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Water and Sanitation, Human Settlements, Rural Development and Land Reform, Basic Education and Sports and Recreation. These are the services that are supposed to be rendered by municipalities. The analysis aims to determine musanda's position in the whole process of providing the public services indicated above.
Fani Ncapayi (University of Cape Town)
Paper short abstract:
Despite the view about irrelevance of the institution of traditional leaders in a democracy, the current rural struggles against the imposition of unelected headmen open up possibilities regarding the democratisation of headmanship as the lower layer within the institution of traditional leaders.
Paper long abstract:
Debates have been going on since the dawn of democracy in South Africa on whether the recognition of the institution of traditional leaders in the constitution was in line with the democratic principles the same constitution espouses or not. While some scholars believe the institution of traditional leadership is compatible with democracy, others see the institution as incongruent with the democratic dispensation. In line with arguments of the latter group is a view that rural residents do not elect their leaders.
This paper reflects on experiences of rural people regarding this issue of democracy, particularly the right of rural people to elect their leaders. The author argues that there are possibilities for the introduction of democracy from below by rural residents. The fact that residents of Cala Reserve successfully challenged, through the High Court, the imposition of an unelected headman gave the residents the right of electing their leaders. Since the High Court judgement there has been a groundsell of rural residents in various rural villages across the Eastern Cape demanding the right to elect their leaders. Victories of rural residents in a few communities their demand to elect their leaders highlights that through struggles rural residents have the ability to introduce democracy from below.
Keywords: Traditional leaders, Cala Reserve, imposition of an unelected headman, democracy from below.
Melusi Nkomo (Princeton University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper describes and analyses how imaginings of the rural home shape everyday interactions and moral actions among isiXhosa speaking migrants, especially people from rural Eastern Cape on the platinum belt in the North-West province.
Paper long abstract:
This paper describes and analyses how imaginings of the rural home shape everyday interactions and moral actions among isiXhosa speaking migrants, especially people from rural Eastern Cape on the platinum belt in the North-West province. I highlight the centrality of rural homestead politics in shaping collective actions and a particular moral politics that has come to characterise the existence of migrants, especially amongst low-skilled mineworkers and other migrants from Eastern Cape. The rural home, workplace (platinum belt) link is implicated in the pursuance of dignity, moral and social order and the shape collective action take as people grapple, with the vagaries of life on the platinum belt. My paper is based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the informal settlements of Marikana and occasional journey to various rural districts in the Eastern Cape.
Lungisile Ntsebeza (University of Cape Town)
Paper short abstract:
This paper reflects on the meaning of democracy for people residing in the rural areas of the former bantustans by focusing on the issue of the appointment of headmen
Paper long abstract:
The implementation of the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act (Framework Act) of 2003 in the Eastern Cape Province in South Africa has revealed an aspect which further threatens the democratic project in this country. This relates to the issue of succession of headmen. According to the Framework Act, the authority to appoint headmen resides with the "royal family", which, importantly, should be guided by the prevailing "custom" of the area concerned. How this clause is to be interpreted has become a hotly debated issue. In the Eastern Cape, for example, the government interprets the clause to mean that the "royal family" has the power to appoint the headman without necessarily consulting the villagers. This interpretation of the law was challenged in one area, Cala Reserve in the Xhalanga district of the Eastern Cape, right up to the High Court.
This paper focuses on the above issue by giving a detailed account of the Cala Reserve case. The paper situates the case of Cala Reserve in the historical context of rural local government in South Africa, in general, and Xhalanga, in particular. I conclude the paper by reflecting on the significance of the Court judgement for rural local government in the former bantustans of South Africa.
Steven Friedman (University of Johannesburg)
Paper short abstract:
Rural power and access to land receive little attention in mainstream political discussion. But former reserve areas have become a core battleground in a fight to determine the country’s political trajectory; how the rural question is resolved fate could, therefore, define the nature of the polity.
Paper long abstract:
For much of the period since South Africa became a democracy in 1994, traditional authority and its power over land distribution been a marginal issue in political and policy debate: government policy was characterised by desultory and largely incoherent attempt to compromise between the rights enshrined in a democratic constitution and the powers of traditional authorities. But the fate of the rural reserves created by white domination has now become a core battleground between contending factions in the governing party who are seeking to define the direction of the polity. These factions represent very different understandings of politics which reflect the reality that only some black South Africans have been incorporated into the post-apartheid formal economy. Widespread economic exclusion has created a power base for patronage politics which is resisted by a faction whose constituency has been integrated into the formal marketplace and is thus concerned to protect it from the predations of patronage. The patronage faction have identified traditional authorities as a key source of support and have been trying to use the law and policy to entrench their power over land and people: this has been resisted by their opponents with varying degrees of success. One consequence is a battle in the reserve areas between traditional authorities and their allies in government on the one hand, small farmers on the other. The outcome of this conflict could play an important role in deciding whether the politics of patronage or that of the marketplace prevail.