Traditional Authority and Democracy in Post-Colonial Africa

Traditional authority- consisting of kings, chiefs, and other forms of social and political organisation such as lekgotla within the Batswana culture has always existed across many different African regions before colonialism. With the imposition of colonialism, the traditional authority would be reduced to serving an administrative function for the colonial project, a phenomenon Mahmood Mamdani has referred to as decentralised despotism. Here, the colonial authority would use the already existing customs and traditions of the African people to rule over them, through the traditional authority, thus using the traditional authority to further the colonial agenda under the guise of preserving the native’s culture and tradition. Other scholars have also referred to this as colonial indirect rule.

Because the traditional authority is such an important aspect of African life, in that it is understood to be a body that preserves culture and is entrusted with custodianship over customary land, it continues to hold great value even in the post-colonial African context, where western social institutions are dominant. This entry therefore seeks to interrogate the role that the Traditional Authority plays in the context of post-colonialism, democracy, and capitalism in the case of South Africa.

In an article titled Chiefs, land and Distributive Struggles on the Platinum Belt, South Africa, Sonwabile Mnwana argues that the traditional authority, by virtue of being the custodians of rural land, has a particular power over the economy and rural development, especially with the increase in private land ownership and commodification as well as the increasing rate of capitalism and globalisation where mining activity has been a large driver of the economy. He argues that while rural land is governed by the social institutions that govern the relations that the people then have with the land, rural land has also attained commercial value through mine reserves, where rural development, is also the driving force of the decisions made by the stakeholders involved. The stakeholders involved include the Traditional Authority itself, the state, the private sector, as well as the members of the community, especially in the areas of rural development.

What he points the reader to, is the relationship that the state has with the traditional authority, and how the ruling party has historically relied on the traditional authority to mobilise rural voter support. He further demonstrates that this relationship has become more commercial, as the state itself, has also adopted neo-liberal principles in its political economy, thus, necessitating the heavy involvement of the private sector in the rural areas. In addition to the commodification of land, he further exemplifies this phenomenon by placing it in the context of ethnic commodification, where just like land, ethnic identities and cultures exist for and are cultivated for the consumption of commerce, and not just exclusively for the value they once retained, which is one of community integration. It can be argued that culture, therefore, just like land, not is not only preserved for the people within the community but for capital as well, illustrating a continued culture of extractivism carried over from the colonial authorities to the traditional authority, state and private sector alike. The question then becomes, who then, between these three stakeholders has more power, and is extracting the most benefit?

Perhaps, the next article, titled: Traditional leadership, community participation and mining development in South Africa: The case of Fuleni, Saint Lucia, KwaZulu-Natal by Llewellyn Leonard can provide some answers to the above question. Leonard, in a case-study done on the community of Fuleni, questions the legitimacy of the relationship that the state and the private sector (mining companies especially) have with one another, and therefore with the land. He notes that the traditional authority has abandoned its mandate to include the local community in the dealings it had with the mining community which sought to start coal mining operations in the area. This is something that has also been prevalent in other communities where the traditional authority has been entrusted as the intermediaries between the mining companies and the local community, but due to corruption, has failed to include the local communities in the dealings it has with the mining companies, therefore leaving the people on the ground in the dark and excluded. One can think about the impact that this has on the values of democracy that South Africa prides itself in, as well as the rights of the local community.

A question that has also emerged is who then, between the private sector and the traditional authority is supposed to have more authority, considering the above factors? It has been argued by other scholars that because the private sector provides the financial capital, then it should have equal if not more authority over such operations in the rural areas with the traditional authority. While this is true, there is something to be said about the dangers of the private sector being given too much controlling power over rural land as seen with the many International Multinational Corporations in Africa, whose sole interest has been with extracting resources without actual recourse. This has especially been seen with the private sector’s neglect of their environmental and social responsibility to the land, which has often resulted in serious health implications for the very people who are kept out of the decisions that are made for them on their behalf by their traditional authority.

To remedy these issues, Leonard proposes that there needs to be more community involvement, and for that to happen, communities have to engage in the constitutional framework discourse to claim their rights, for instance, “the right to live in a clean environment that is not harmful to their health and wellbeing” (Leonard, 2019: 297), as well as holding the state to its constitutional mandate to ensure that there are reasonable measures in place to foster the conditions which enable citizens to gain access to land on an equitable basis. Leonard (2019) further proposes that there should be amendments made to the current undemocratic legislation that does not include the local communities over how lands are used, there needs to be a revisit to the TKLB, which is argued to be very silent on the participation of the local community on decisions pertaining to developments of community land.

This is particularly relevant to the conversation of decolonizing tradition and/or traditional authority since it has been argued that the colonial project also infiltrated tradition by changing some of the fundamental ways in which things were done in the past. This includes the altering of key institutions such as the lekgotla, which served as a judicial court to settle cases with the involvement of the entire community. I argue that such institutions need to be revisited, and evolve to suit the needs of the community, considering the various members of the community, with proper legal representation for the community members to ensure fairness in the process.

References

Leonard, L., 2019. Traditional leadership, community participation and mining development in South Africa: The case of Fuleni, Saint Lucia, KwaZulu-Natal. Land Use Policy, 86, pp.290-298.

Mnwana, S., Buthelezi, M., Skosana, D. and Vale, B., 2019. Chiefs, land and distributive struggles on the platinum belt, South Africa. Traditional Leaders in South Africa: Resources, Respect and Resistance, pp.128-52.