AEGIS ECAS 2007 - View abstract

Panel	34. Post-apartheid: ethnographies of the South African transition
Paper ID	516
Author(s)	McNeill, Fraser
Paper	No paper submitted
Abstract	Post-Apartheid polities of traditional leadership and processes of ‘development’ cannot be clearly understood without recourse to historical ethnography. In the Venda example, although contemporary rivalries and essentialist notions of bounded ‘culture’ were exacerbated (if not invented) during the Apartheid-era, they continue to play a central role in chiefly politics and what are experienced as very un-ambiguous processes of ‘development’. . This paper explores the ways in which the pre- and post-Apartheid states in South Africa have constructed and mobilised ideas of ‘development’. I look specifically at the role of traditional leaders in interpreting and implementing developmental discourse from the late 1970s to 2005. Recent literature on the subject has suggested that traditional leaders have emerged in the democratic dispensation as part of a ‘new world order’ in which ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’ are no longer obstacles to engaging with ‘modern’ developments, but are now central mechanisms through which previously disadvantaged people can embrace and control processes of modernisation. In this paper, I use ethnographic evidence from the Venda region to problematise this argument and suggest that an understanding of the continuities between the two periods is fundamental to the comprehension of contemporary processes. This reveals two closely related but fundamentally different historical periods. During the first of these periods – the ‘bantustan’ era – ‘development’ projects comprised a core element in the wider ideological justification for Apartheid. The corrupt and violent political environment of the time was dominated by King Patrick Mphephu, who collaborated extensively with the Apartheid authorities and in a controversial and provocative move was crowned ‘Life President’ and ‘Paramount Chief’ (Khosikhulu) in 1980. ‘Development’ projects at this time centred around state sponsored agricultural initiatives through which ‘the Venda’, were supposed to find meaningful employment, contentment and sustainability. Also central was the ‘development’ of tourism, music and ‘arts and craft’ projects – catering largely for a white South African market – through which Apartheid authorities sought to maintain a hegemonic notion of ‘uncivilized tribalism’. During and prior to this period, ‘the Venda’ was constructed as a separate ethnic unit – and the imposition of a Paramount Chief (although there was no consensus among Venda Kings as to who this should be) was central to this enterprise. This is then contrasted with the contemporary political economy of traditional leadership in which ‘development’ has emerged as part of a ‘rights based’ discourse in a constitutional democracy with a proliferation of foreign donors. The ANC-led government has continued to use essentialist discourse by insisting that ‘the Venda’ must have a Paramount Chief. This has sparked a bitter rivalry between Patrick Mphephu’s successor and his historical arch-rival King Kennedy Tshivhase. The latter has continued the ‘re-tribalisation’ of ‘the Venda’ through the promotion of a wide range of agricultural, ‘cultural’ and ‘traditional’ projects whilst simultaneously postulating himself as a ‘guardian of the rural poor’ against exploitation and market forces.

“Ambiguous Developments? A social and political history of ‘development’ and traditional leaders in pre- and post-Apartheid Venda, South Africa.