The death of King Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu captured national and global news headlines. President Cyril Ramaphosa ordered flags to fly at half-mast, granting the deceased traditional leader a state funeral. The socio-political significance of government’s reaction to this arch traditionalist’s death is far-reaching and must be dissected for what it is worth.
Tributes declaring ‘the King is dead, long live the King’ poured in from all and sundry. Political parties, like Inkatha, ANC and EFF, lavished praise on this ‘ceremonial monarch for preserving bygone cultural traditions’. Behind all this ululation about sacred cultural customs and African heritage lurks a definitive political ideology about traditional authorities in South Africa; a despotic minority with constitutionally shielded wealth and privileges.
The populist vintage of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) was on full display since the announcement of Zwelithini’s death, exploiting the moment to lock media spotlights on Julius Malema, the party’s Commander-in-Chief. Malema passionately defended ‘the King and the Royal House’ against the detractors failing to respect the dead. In a widely reported interview, the EFF leader confessed: “We had a huge debate with the majesty about the land. We had a very interesting engagement on issues of the land. We have always emphasised as the EFF that the custodians of the land are the kings and the chiefs and we need to work with them to make sure we redistribute the land and give to our people, not only males but also females. His majesty cherished and accepted that we have moved into an era that we can no longer be men and women, we have to be one nation.” (Daily Dispatch, 16 March 2021) This sweeping rhetoric typifies the politics and practices of Malema and the EFF. Reconciling their subservience to anachronistic kings and chiefs with EFF leftist superficialities betrays the party’s ideological bankruptcy and principled opportunism.
Some trade unions also joined this idolisation of the deceased traditional leader. COSATU and its affiliates posted several social media tributes to Zwelithini and condolences to the so-called royal house. COSATU’s leaders went so far as to send a high-level delegation to the funeral at the royal palace in Nongoma.
Zwelithini: Apartheid Tribal Stooge, Xenophobe…
Much has been said about how Zwelithini and his ilk were diligent servants of the pre-1994 regime. In collaborating with and aiding our oppressors and exploiters of yesteryear, these tribal leaders were handsomely rewarded with money, land and entertainment. When the ANC negotiated the political compromise with our erstwhile oppressors, giving tribalism a new lease on life was integral to the deal, all perfectly compatible with ANC policies and its long history of operating inferior political institutions (Bungas, Native Representative Councils, etc.). After all, the politics of compromise, inequality and multinationalism define the essence of the ANC tradition and find expression in its Freedom Charter.
The cosmetic makeover of tribalism was a priority that the ‘early-1990s sell-out’ of the liberatory struggle assigned to the ‘governing party in waiting’. With the aid of the liberals inside the ANC, the party rebranded tribal leaders as traditional authorities, rendering discredited lackeys of the oppressive system legitimate.
Zwelithini did not only enrich himself as a stooge upholding the Bantustans in the apartheid era. A self-confessed misogynist and homophobe, Zwelithini’s deep xenophobia mirrored his tribal outlook. On 20 March 2015, he incited his followers with these derogatory words: “Let us pop our head lice. We must remove ticks and place them outside in the sun. We ask foreigners to pack their belongings and be sent back”. (The UK Independent online, 20 April 2015). In the context of mass youth unemployment, this reckless prejudice whipped up a new wave of xenophobic killings of refugees and migrants from the continent.
A recommendation on land policy in the 2018 ‘High-Level Panel Report’, compiled under the leadership of former state President Kgalema Motlanthe, angered Zwelithini and the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (CONTRALESA). The Kgalema Motlanthe report amplified the demand for more equitable access to land, including 3-million hectares under Zwelithini’s sole control through the controversial Ingonyama Trust Act. Threatening the state that ‘all hell will break lose’ if it dared to infringe upon their control over Bantustan land, forced the state to quickly backpaddle, dumping the report into history’s dustbin to satisfy outmoded tribalists like Zwelithini.
Artificially Revived For Capitalism
Chapter 12 of the 1996 Constitution recognises the status of traditional leaders. Clause 212(a) states that “National legislation may provide for a role for traditional leadership as an institution at local level on matters affecting local communities.” (SA Constitution) Laws that protect the privileges of these tribal leaders have been promulgated, with the full backing of the supreme law of the land. National and Provincial Houses of Traditional Leaders exist with wide-ranging powers in areas of local development, especially control over land.
Following an established custom of the post-1994 government, President Cyril Ramaphosa opened the National House of Traditional Leaders on 4 March 2021, announcing a ‘significant milestone’: “The country’s Khoi and San leaders will, after following the prescribed processes, for the first time enjoy official recognition and will serve in the National and Provincial Houses.” The president went on to underscore the dominance of these tribal leaders in land policies, emphasising that “The institution of traditional leadership must be at the forefront of both land reform and the agrarian revolution.” (Ramaphosa, 4 March 2021, Opening of the National House of Traditional Leaders) What type of agrarian revolution, in Ramaphosa’s mind, can these remnants of a bygone age lead in the 21st century given that capitalism itself obstructs ecological, social and human progress?
Historically, tribalism was a way of organising society before the birth of capitalism and centuries ago also dominated how Europeans and people across precolonial America and Asia had lived. As an agrarian mode of social organisation, land was central in how peasants made a living under this pre-capitalist system. Livelihood subsistence relied on the common access to land. Political arrangements corresponded with the needs of communities to reproduce their material life. The political system was basically communal in the sense that the tribal community had rules and practices through which it governed its leadership, elected kings and chiefs. Rooted in clan lineage systems, tribalism has always been at variance with ideas of nationalism and a nation, well known by-products of capitalist revolutions. What this historical fact means is that the fabrication of a “Zulu nation” is not just an oxymoron but a downright fallacy.
In order to impose its own class interests on society, capitalists had to violently destroy tribalism. Through bloody revolutions the capitalists seized control over the economy and the state. As the capitalist class consolidated its gains from the wars of dispossession, the new ruling class saw fit to artificially reinvent tribal elites, harnessing them to the service of labour exploitation and profit accumulation dictated by capitalism. This gave birth to what IB Tabata aptly termed ‘policeman chiefs’, guardians of dispossession, inferiority and inequality. This is the true legacy of tribal despots such as Zwelithini.
What is to be done?
Since its inception in 1943, the Unity Movement of South Africa (UMSA) was the first and only political movement of the oppressed and exploited majority to expose and reject tribalism. The UMSA demand of full democratic rights for all in a single unitary state, codified in its Ten Point Programme and Policy of Non-Collaboration with the oppressor, was a programme for a social revolution. With this programme it mobilised the landless peasants and workers for a united struggle against national oppression and agrarian inequalities with a logic that opens the path towards a socialist transformation of society. However, the unprincipled policies of the petit bourgeois leaders in the ANC, at the behest of the local and imperialist capitalists, subverted UMSA’s revolutionary agenda.
Liquidating the wealth, privileges and domination of this autocratic minority, including all the social and political backwardness which they uphold, has always been at the forefront of our struggle to resolve the agrarian and national problems in the interests of the dispossessed peasantry and working class. How can progressive activists advance this revolutionary goal in South Africa today as the social costs of the political betrayal of the early 1990s multiply? Ultimately, dismantling the political monopoly that tribal autocrats enjoy in the countryside demand that activists directly confront the flaws and limits of the 1996 Constitution. To make this urgent objective a reality, APDUSA calls for a democratically elected Constituent Assembly under control of the labouring majority. In its programme for socialist democracy, APDUSA demands that the Constituent Assembly must draw up a new constitution. In doing so, ‘the Constituent Assembly must have full powers to discharge its duties, untrammelled by any directions and constraints designed to serve self-interested minorities’. A luta continua!