Popular perspectives on traditional authority in South Africa

Prof. Robert Thornton, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and Barbara Oomen, Law Faculty, Leiden University.

For all the research done on the resurgence of traditional authority in the contemporary African state, very little attention is being paid to the popular perspectives on chieftaincy. During this seminar the first results of a research project that seeks to remedy this void will be presented.

Using a questionnaire based on the one designed by Barbara Oomen for her research on chiefship in three Sekhukhune villages, Robert Thornton and his students interviewed 1200 respondents in Mpumalanga, the Northern Province and the North West in South Africa on their attitudes towards chieftainship, local government, land and customary law. The 1800 interviews provided both qualitative and quantitative empirical data that reveal a surprising renaissance or resurgence of interest in, and support for, chiefship in many urban and peri-urban communities. Simultaneously, the results demonstrate the very differing scenarios for the interrelation between state, chieftaincy and population locally. For example, support for chieftaincy is often seen to increase with urbanisation. It is argued that the chiefly resurgence should not only be explained by the chiefly potential to manifest itself as an alternative to the state, but also by reference to the continued state support for the institution. It is this ability to slip in and out of roles, to arrive on stage as the messenger of the state one day and as its most powerful rival, heavily cloaked in tradition the next, that seems to constitute the essential potential of traditional leadership in South Africa today.