A little-known feature of the vast migrant labour system that supplied South Africa’s gold-mining industry was the Deferred Pay Interest Fund. For much of the 20th century, a portion of the wages... Show moreA little-known feature of the vast migrant labour system that supplied South Africa’s gold-mining industry was the Deferred Pay Interest Fund. For much of the 20th century, a portion of the wages owed to African mine workers was deferred and remitted to them only at the end of their contracts. This is well-known, but what happened to the interest that accumulated on these deferred wages remains virtually unknown. Mine workers did not receive this interest; it was, instead, deposited into a fund controlled by the mining industry. This article examines the operations of this fund in the Transkei in the context of the crisis in the migrant labour system precipitated by newly independent states refusing to supply further migrant labour to South Africa. This prompted the Chamber of Mines to reorient labour recruitment towards the South African bantustans, and the Transkei quickly became the most important source of labour for the mines in the 1970s and 1980s. Although the fund had a mandate to spend on welfare projects in labour-sending regions, we argue that patterns of spending clearly show how it was used to support the reproduction of the migrant labour system. Payments were used as patronage for local elites, upon whom recruitment depended, and for distributing propaganda for the mining industry. In contrast, payments were consistently directed away from education for able-bodied students, because education would reduce the pool of unskilled labour on which the gold industry relied. Money that, arguably, rightfully belonged to mine workers from the Transkei was used to perpetuate their dependence upon migrant labour to the mines. Show less
This article examines two contradictory conceptions of customary law, as either fundamentally democratic or autocratic, and their impact on the constant reconstruction of and resistance to chiefly... Show moreThis article examines two contradictory conceptions of customary law, as either fundamentally democratic or autocratic, and their impact on the constant reconstruction of and resistance to chiefly authority in modern-day South Africa. In the last 15 years or so South Africa has witnessed a strong legislative agenda to centralise the power of senior traditional leaders. The new traditional authority laws’ ahistorical, authoritarian understanding of customary law – as something to be defined and imposed on rural communities by senior traditional leaders – is directly opposed to the Constitutional Court’s interpretation of customary law as something to be determined with reference to practice from and acceptance by the people whose customary law is under consideration. This article studies the net result of these contradictory processes on local contestations over chiefly power in the Eastern Cape. It displays the state’s concerted efforts to impose a model of traditional authority that empowers senior traditional leaders, even in contexts where local communities strongly contest this model, arguing that it contravenes their custom and history, as well as their democratic rights. The article highlights the enduring legacy of apartheid constructions, and the powerful role of contemporary governments in their recreation. New laws are an important tool in this process. They entrench an apartheid model of traditional leaders and minimise rural democracy. It is only with serious efforts of community mobilisation and legal education and support that local communities can successfully access the courts to challenge the actions taken by an alliance of chiefs and state. Ultimately, our analysis highlights an understudied link between the functioning and legitimacy of chiefs in democratic states and the autocratic or democratic conception of the customary law underlying the powers of such chiefs. Show less
Accounts of South Africa's transition from apartheid differ markedly in the role they attribute to violence. The most influential narratives of negotiations tend to portray the violence of the... Show moreAccounts of South Africa's transition from apartheid differ markedly in the role they attribute to violence. The most influential narratives of negotiations tend to portray the violence of the transition period, including that perpetrated by those networks within and without the security forces which have become known collectively as the Third Force, as a reaction to events, doomed to failure and rather disconnected from the main narrative of history. Newly available evidence shows the degree to which the Third Force was integrated into the policy of the National Party (NP) over a long period (from the 1960s onwards), and played a crucial role in determining the nature and outcome of constitutional negotiations in the period 1990-1994. Concentration on the narrative of negotiations, or any account which fails to give due weight to the perpetrators of organized violence including those who constituted the Third Force, implicitly assigns the violence of 1990-1994 to a position somewhat divorced from, or even antithetical to, the pursuit of negotiations. This has deflected attention from the important question of ascertaining the extent to which the agenda and pace of negotiations, and thus the shape of the eventual political and constitutional outcome, were actually driven by proponents of violence who were able to make their influence felt from outside the conference chamber. Ref., sum Show less
South Africa's policy of destabilisation of neighbouring countries was closely associated with the rise of South Africa as a leading middleman in the international ivory trade. South African-based... Show moreSouth Africa's policy of destabilisation of neighbouring countries was closely associated with the rise of South Africa as a leading middleman in the international ivory trade. South African-based traders, acting in partnership or with protection from officers of the South African Military Intelligence Directorate, imported raw ivory from Angola, Mozambique and points further north and re-exported it to markets in the Far East. This was a source of income both for the South African secret services and for individuals associated with them. The same trade routes were also used for trade in other goods, including rhino horn, drugs, gems, currency and weapons. This was not only as a means of earning money but also a technique of destabilisation in itself. The extent of South Africa's involvement in this trade, although suspected by some conservationists, was difficult to prove and did not form the target of any concerted campaign by the leading conservation groups world-wide. In this respect, the strength of the South Africa lobby in the World-Wide Fund for Nature seems to have played a significant role. Since the ending of South Africa's military presence in Namibia and Angola in 1989, the Military Intelligence officers, Special Forces officers and others who conducted the wars for the defence of white South Africa have been intent on the struggle inside South Africa itself. There is evidence that such counter-insurgency specialists are now using Mozambique in particular as a base for operations inside South Africa. Moreover, they continue to have an interest in the ivory and rhino horn trades. Former officers of specialist counter-insurgency units have also found employment as game wardens in national parks. The bold proposals currently being implemented to create large new game parks along the South African-Mozambican border, using modern management techniques and involving local communities in their management, have important implications for politics and national security. Show less
The alternative proposed here for the tribal model as a unit of study is not another, better unit of study (e.g. a mode of production, an expanding social formation, or a well-defined spatio... Show moreThe alternative proposed here for the tribal model as a unit of study is not another, better unit of study (e.g. a mode of production, an expanding social formation, or a well-defined spatio-temporal portion of reality), but a growing awareness of possible problems and interrelations, informed by insights from history and political economy. Thus this paper is an exercise in the interaction of anthropology and history in the analysis of a specific set of data: Introduction - The end of rural anthropology in Zambia? - The unit of study - Studying the Nkoya - Ethnicity, history and the Nkoya experience - Nkoya ethnicity and the dialectics of consciousness - Conclusion: beyond the unit of study. Show less
