Ethnic Consciousness In The Unresolved National Question – by Ashley Nyiko Mabasa
The manifestation of ethnic conflict in Malamulele signifies that the ANC has not addressed or dismantled the colonial and apartheid social relations. In 2015, David Masondo’s seminal paper ‘Tribalism, language and the national question in post-apartheid SA’ pointed out that the resurgence of tribal consciousness in Malamulele was because of the ANC’s post-apartheid failure to resolve economic problems.
By Ashley Nyiko Mabasa
The resurgence of ethnic consciousness in South Africa does not receive much attention since the democratic transition of 1994. The issue of ethnic consciousness is theoretical, unlike race relation – in which it is recognized that there are ‘whites’ and ‘blacks.’
Ethnicity is the share of culture, religion, identity, history, etc. The question of ethnicity in post-colonial and apartheid politics has been at the centre of debates in different fields of social science. This discourse is not solely confined to academia; it has also shaped theory on revolutionary political practice and activism in many African states. Ethnicity refers to the different indigenous black African populations who were administered under customary law.
In 2013 the people of Malamulele, who are predominately Tsonga-speaking, protested against the Thulamela municipality, which was dominated by Venda speaking persons.
Mamndani draws our attention by contending that ethnicity is a colonial product that aimed to advance imperial interest and was developed and used as justification for colonialism and apartheid – the idea of ethnicity in South Africa was also used to divide and rule black people through Bantustans and separation development.
Colonial state and ethnic formation
The Webster dictionary defines ethnicity as social engineered and interest based to achieve a political outcome. Hraba provided the best definition of ethnic groups: “Self-conscious collectivities of people, who on the basis of a common origin or a separate culture, maintain a distinction between themselves and outsiders.” It is not natural or a primordial feature of society.
To understand the formation of ethnicity, it is important to understand the history of the Indian revolt against the British colony in 1857 to 1858, known as the Sepoy Mutiny.
The anecdote goes that the Indian revolt occurred due alienation of Indian nationalists from their religious and cultural experiences. In this case, the British government using Indian nationalists as police to maintain colonisation. The British forced the Hindu nationalists to clean bullets with the oil of pigs, which was against the Indian religion. And this led to the revolt.
The aftermath of the revolt resulted in Britain rethinking their colonial strategy due to the Sepoy mutiny and its expense.
In addition, the British devised a new method of colonisation, which was divide and rule – the bifurcated states were imposed on South Africans by the colonial apartheid government in the form of the 1970 Bantu Homelands Act. The Bantu Homelands Act concretised tribal authorities as the fundamental rule of the rural people in the countryside. Ethnicity was used as a divide-and-rule mechanism by the apartheid government by concentrating power to chiefs and ndunas who were custodians of ethnicity.
During the apartheid era, political leaders had to declare their ethnicity on the basis of geopolitical allocations of land based on one’s ethnic background. The ethnic conflict between Tsonga and Venda people is not new in this discourse; the ethnic division between Vatsonga and Vavenda people became central as the battle to control local administrative resources during the apartheid era. It became a significant problem in the1960s because people had to declare themselves as members of an ethnic group to access state-controlled resources, jobs, school and houses.
Nadine Gordimer (1969) in her study ‘The Discarded People’ localised the 1960s ethnic battle for the control of state resources between Vatsonga and Vavenda ethnic groups at Sibasa. She further noted that under the apartheid government, Vatsonga complained about Venda chiefs being appointed in predominantly Tsonga areas. This further extends to the Tsonga ethnic group, who were living in Venda territory, getting marginalised as the colonial state always gave Vavenda principalship of schools and labour contracts.
The manifestation of ethnic conflict in Malamulele signifies that the ANC has not addressed or dismantled the colonial and apartheid social relations. In 2015, David Masondo’s seminal paper ‘Tribalism, language and the national question in post-apartheid SA’ pointed out that the resurgence of tribal consciousness in Malamulele was because of the ANC’s post-apartheid failure to resolve economic problems.
According to Bruce J Berman, colonisation is responsible for accentuating ethnicity in Africa. He argues that:
“Social construction of ethnic difference was also spurred by European missionaries who produced the grammars and dictionaries that turned local dialects into the standardised written language of a whole ethnic group, who promptly began to produce texts of their own, articulating their history and culture; and by professional anthropologists, mostly European, who conveyed the concept of culture as a distinct, systematic expression of the social practices and identity.”
It is important to note that ethnicity is not natural, it was created. In case of Zulu ethnicity, its creation involved state buildings, military conquest, physical expansion and the absorption of refugees and defeated people and eventually colonisation by the British empire. As a result, the meaning of being Zulu is not static, but has been shifting over time.
Before 1820, the term Zulu meant a clan name, which referred to the rulers of a small kingdom dominated by the larger and authoritative Mthetwa kingdom. Strategy and military innovation of the Zulu ruler, Shaka, ultimately allowed the Zulu small kingdom to defeat their Mthetwa overlords. After the defeat, a large number of other kingdoms in the region started to regard themselves as Zulu. The Zulu ethnicity was more political, as other ethnicities and kingdoms in the region were not incorporated but shared many cultural attributes, including language, with the Zulu.
Another interesting case of the formation of ethnic groups by Western Christians was the Yoruba ethnicity of south-western Nigeria and the neighbouring Republic of Benin. Like the Zulu ethnic group, in the 20th century, Yoruba meant something different.
Yoruba was a word used by Hausa people from the savanna to the north to describe inhabitants of Oyo. In the early 20th century, the most powerful Oyo went into decline because of the attacks from Hausa and Fulani Muslim battalions. The region of Oyo inclined into decades of internal warfare. As a result, a large number of Oyo people were on the move. New towns were formed and some people were kidnapped and enslaved in Brazil and Cuba. Others were in Sierra Leone and it was here that the idea of being Yoruba started to be reformulated.
The Zulu and Yoruba are amongst African people who undertook the scheme of “ethnogenesis”[1] in the evolution of last few centuries.
In Case of Malamulele and Ethnic Consciousness and Unresolved National Question
At its founding conference in 1912, the ANC issued a vivid call for African unity under the slogan, “We Are One People.” The ANC and alliance partners have been committed to unity and a democratic South Africa.
Marxist-Leninist theoretical framework approach to the national question for many years has been guided by Stalin’s definition. Stalin defined the nation as a “community of language, culture, territory and economy.” Post-Leninist tendencies have seen surfacing of ethnic emphasis or what Joe Slovo called “cultural-linguistic or ethnic” dynamics at the expense of class approach. Slovo attributes ethnic emphasis over class approach toearlier debates on the national question where unconsciously, comrades in exile and inside the country provided the rationale for ethnic separatism.[2] For instance, the 1932 Comintern, mandated Communist Party of South Africa to push the slogans:
“Complete and immediate national independence for the people of South Africa. For the right of the Zulu, Basuto, etc. , nations to form their own independent republics, For the voluntary uniting of the African nations in a Federation of Independent Native Republics. The establishment of a workers’ and peasants’ government. Full guarantee of the rights of all national minorities, for the coloured, Indian and white toiling masses”
The quote from 1932 Comintern, justifies the argument which was forwarded by Archie Mafeje in The dynamics of the Beleaguered State that, SACP uses universal experiences and language to understand and analyse South Africa’s national question and social formation. Today the resurgence of ethnic consciousness and the unresolved national question, are because the ANC government have not paid attention to nation building. Furthermore, the struggle of national building in multi-ethnic communities must not necessitate an obligation of cultural uniformity.
The vantage point of cultural diversity does not stand in opposite direction with national unity. This was affirmed by Slovo[3] in an interview with Lucio Lara that national unity can be made of total different cultures (ethnic groups). The manifestation of the protest by Malamulele people (Vatsonga) for their autonomous municipality shows that the ANC and its alliance, post 1994 have not resolve ethnic challenge as an aspect of the national question.
Ethnic resurgence as a tool to mobilise economic resources
Berman noted that the politics of ethnicity in the post-colonial society cannot be diametrically opposed to politics of resource accumulation in the colonial state. Berman further contended that:
“Ethnicity thus became linked to the ability of big men holding positions in the state to obtain for their communities a significant share of the large-scale collective benefit ‘development’, as well as the more individual rewards apportioned to their person client.”[4]
South Africa’s states have been incorporating and rewarding ethnic elites by providing access to state instructions and resources and therefore institutionalising ethnic patronage as a basis for politics in the post-colonial and apartheid politics. For example, the South African government, prior to the democratic breakthrough, gave the Zulu king 29% of the KwaZulu-Natal land under the Ingonyama Trust in exchange of ethnic stability within the Zulu nation. The Ingonyama Trust is a land deal that King Goodwill Zwelithini signed with the apartheid government three days before the national democratic elections. It was established through the KwaZulu-Natal Ingonyama Trust Act of 1994, on 24 April 1994.
The Ingonyama Trust Act has been used as a form of capital accumulation by tribal authorities in KZN. Italian Marxist Antonia Gramsci problematised the opportunistic collaboration of the fascist regime with traditional leaders and religious social groups under semi-feudal circumstances. Gramsci argues that traditional authorities used hegemony and land as a form of accumulation to sustain the fascist regime. This is not dissimilar to South Africa’s social formation in which the Ingonyama Trust reproduces feudal patterns of accumulating capital by King Zwelithini.
In addition, in this instance, The High-Level Panel Report by former president of South Africa, Kgalema Motlanthe, stated that control of land by the Zulu king has reproduced a comprador bourgeoisie:
“The political system has produced mavericks, popcorn politicians, a comprador bourgeoisie, quasi-bantsutan administrators who possess no responsibility to mobilise, and in fact benefit from the status quo.”
The High-Level Panel Report shows how ethnic consciousness is used as way of mobilising resources. This cannot be completely treated as a different case of the Vatsonga in Malamulele protesting to have their autonomous municipality. The Vatsonga, through the protest, raised the issue that the reason they want an autonomous municipality is because they are underdeveloped, and have been since the post-democratic state.
In 2015, Malamulele community leader Dr Isaiah Ndhambi articulated that the Malamulele community want an autonomous municipality because the Thulamela municipality does not provide service delivery and economic activity for Malamulele.
This is affirming the fact that the Malamulele protest by predominately Vatsonga speakers was about the failures of the ANC to address social relations, which are largely economic challenges.
But the question remains, how does unequal distribution of economic resources reinstate ethnic mobilisation?
In pluralist theory, the answer would be simple: The state’s basic institutional structure and its action is fundamentally neutral because it passes laws and maintains social order – laws passed reflect the battle between different actors (ethnic groups, racial groups and classes) of the society, which is conceived as a constellation of organised interest groups. Therefore, society is composed of a plurality of interest groups: Labour and bourgeoisies, ethnicities, students, etc. The group (ethnic group) with the most influence wins out over the policy of the state.
In this case, the state distribution of resources reflects two things: The preference of the policy makers and top bureaucrats (premier, mayor and council) and the battle which continues within different interests groups to influence the state.
In another words, the pluralist approach refutes the idea that one group will have a systematic advantage over other groups because they are all organised around their interests and all have an advantage over the state.
Pluralist theorists are wrong and ahistorical. In case of South Africa, the colonial and apartheid system engineered ethnic divisions and dictated which ethnic group access state resources or do not – and this was done through appointing chiefs and ndunas.
In addition, ethnic division in labour reserves also served as a tool for cheap dispensable labour. The apartheid productive economies such as mines and agriculture were dependent on extracting cheap labour of different ethnic groups in the countryside.
Wolpe (1972) presented a ‘cheap labour thesis’ which states that urban migrants’ reproduction was subsidised by non-wage economic activity in the rural areas, allowing capitalist enterprises to pay wages below the cost of reproduction. The different ethnic homeland economies performed the functions of social security by providing welfare for “the very young and very old, the sick, the migrant labourer” in periods of rest, providing the capitalist sector and its state the need to expend resources on these necessary functions.[5]
However, there are other social relations which can be attributed to the resurgence of ethnic consciousness. In Ghana and the Democratic Republic of Congo, bordering Rwanda and Burundi, the outbreak of ethnic conflict in 1997 to 1998 can also be attributed to the role of the state in defining both a region of complexity in ethnic identities.
In this case, in South Africa, in the days leading up to the 1994 elections and their aftermath, ethnic divisions were used to stir up tension between the Xhosas and Zulus. Instead of having the democracy of the country work in favour of all black Africans, ethnic divisions led to continual violence between the two groups. Zulus were commonly identified as aligned with Inkatha Freedom Party in KZN and Xhosas were known to be aligned with the African National Congress. This derailed the idea of total democracy and freedom. In some circles, they have contended that the IFP was clandestinely funded by the apartheid state to invoke ethnic violence to derail the establishment of a democratic state.
What is to be done? Ideal of unity and diversity
The Malamulele protest by Vatsonga people signified that ANC has not adequately addressed the colonial and apartheid legacy. South Africa is still confronted with contradictions which manifested recently in Malamulele.
The ANC was formed with the purpose of transcending tribalism. The ANC, under the colonial and apartheid system, recognised tribalism and ethnic division as amongst the reasons the apartheid state was strong and they failed to end this apartheid system, insofar as colonial and apartheid strategy is concerned with divide and rule. Therefore, the ANC was formed as a way to counter that counter-tribalism. Hence, the ANC conference amended the ANC’s new constitution under President Dr AB Xuma by contending that the tribal leaders or traditional authorities cease to represent rural areas’ people in the ANC, that every person will join the ANC instead of being represented by traditional leader, including allowing women to join the ANC.
In 1956, the ANC in Bloemfontein adopted the Freedom Charter as its political programme. This Freedom Charter alluded to the importance of a national identity through the recognition of the rights of each group to pursue its own language and culture. The Freedom Charter attempted to build national unity by putting all South Africa’s indigenous languages in the same barometer. The colonial and apartheid social engineers which attempted to invoke ethnic division through the Bantustan policy partially succeeded. Classifying native people on the basis of linguistic categories in South Africa has been more fluid than boundaries between racial groups, which was enforced by law.[6]
The attempt to segregate people according to their ethnic group might have partially succeed in the rural areas, but in the urban areas, it has failed blatantly, as was shown by the rise of integrated popular movements during the 1970s and 1980s. This includes the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the 1976 student uprising.
In addition, the ethnic division by design of the Bantustan policy might have achieved the apartheid goal of separating people from one another, the manifestation of organisations such as the IFP. Nonetheless, some ethnic groups used ethnic division as a form of resistance against the apartheid system, for instance, the formation of the ‘Venture’ language, which was a combination of the Venda and the Vatsonga language.[7]
The Bantustan policy failed to overcome the issue of language confluence within different ethnic groups in their geographical allocated spaces. This was not only limited to Vavenda and Vatsonga. It extended to the people of the Transkei and the Ciskei who speak the same language, Xhosa, as well as English. The Buntustans had in common Northern Sotho, English and Afrikaans. Basontho at Qwa Qwa had in common Southern Sotho with Lesotho and bordering part of the Transkei. Furthermore, it shared Xhosa with the Transkei.
The ANC has been an adoptive and dynamic organisation. In August 1985, the post-ANC national congress known as the Kabwe Consultative Conference, called upon South Africans to fight against Bantustans as well as the apartheid tricamera parliament in order to establish the alternative of a united, democratic and non-racial South Africa.[8]
Further pledges with Bantustan leaders to fight against apartheid to earn a place in free, democratic South Africa that was envisaged. This is contradictory – the ANC pledged support of the leaders of the Bantustans in exchange for a guarantee that, under the democratic breakthrough, they will continue to exist.
However, the manifestation of an ethnic conflict at Malamulele between the Vatsonga and Vavenda people for control of the municipality signifies the ANC’s failure to discard colonial and apartheid legacy. In dealing with the resurgence of ethnic conflict, the ANC government needs to do the following:
- Draft policies that counter neo-liberal hegemony. The intensification of the neo-liberal dominants’ capitalist nation-state in 1980s and 1990s reserved the African conception of development with rejection of the state owning the strategic centre of economic development, including nation building. Neo-liberalism prohibited state intervention in market relation.
African countries started to face economic challenges, which led them to adopting structural adjustment policies (SAPs). Subsequently, SAPs resulted into currency devaluation, fees for basic services, removal for food subsidies, privatisation of public corporations and state-owned enterprises. The African agenda of state-led industrialisation and economic modification had to be discarded. Politics were only a corrupt invasion in which leaders looted state resources at a grand scale. Neo-liberalism policies contributed to most of the decay of the state in Africa’s escalating struggle for control of resources and the accumulation of wealth in an environment of growing poverty and growing of vertical inequalities between ethnic communities and the conflicts of moral ethnicity and political tribalism. Neo-liberalism imprisons a state to be incapable of creating a new agenda of development.
- The ANC government must dismantle provinces. South Africa has nine provinces which were intentionally designed to contain no majority ethno-racial community and the system is officially described as ‘devolved union’ rather than federation, with strong central government powers. The existence of provinces perpetuates the idea of ethnic division engineered by colonial and apartheid government in South Africa.
- Finally, dismantle the semi-autonomous traditional authorities which continue to reproduce ethnic divisions. The traditional leaders do not only reproduce ethnic violence, but also reproduce xenophobia.
[1] Parker and Ratjbane “Africans: diversity and unity”
[2] Joe Slovo “The Building of the Nation” Presented to the Political Education Workshop 23 – 26 February 1988.
[3] Joe Slovo in the African Communist third quarter, 1978
[4] Berman “Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa” 2002; 15
[5] Wolpe, 1972, Cheap Labour Thesis p. 435
[7] David Masondo” Tribalism, language and the national question in post-apartheid SA
[8] ANC SECHABA ANC Conference June 1985
