'The Remaking of Chieftaincy in Post-Apartheid South Africa'

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• Dr Mbongeseni Buthelezi, Public Affairs Research Institute, South Africa
• Monday 24 October 2016, 17:00-18:00
• Seminar Room S1 Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DT.

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As the form of state and its various constitutive elements have been worked out since the beginning of the 1990s, traditional authorities progressively have been accommodated in the state, no longer as the pawns of indirect rule and apartheid eras, but as an assertive force that demands to be heard and accommodated. The Commission on Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims has attempted to resolve the position of customary authorities within the democratic state by determining who is a legitimate chief and who owes their position to colonial or apartheid authorities. In this paper I examine the contradictions inherent in the efforts of the government, through the Commission, to reverse engineer chieftaincy, a strategy that has yielded competing claims, infighting, and much litigation. The paper asks: What is the state trying to achieve with the Nhlapo Commission? Is it likely to succeed? And what are the prospects for chieftaincy in South Africa going forward?

This talk is part of the Centre of African Studies Michaelmas Seminars series.

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