The Situation Today

For large areas of southern Africa, independence came in the 1960s and 1970s. But the condition which stretches basic economic, familial and welfare concerns between rural residence and work site endures down to the present. Migrant labour is still a dominant form of labour mobilization throughout the region, and the mental attitudes intrinsic to it continue. Even in situations where men have been permanently resident in the urban areas with their families for decades, these attitudes are widely found. This is so not because Africans are inherently rural people or are in close harmony with Nature, but because housing and living expenses are far lower in the rural areas than they are in urban areas. This lower cost of living serves as a constant reason for those dwelling in urban locales to keep the rural areas always in mind and to view their urban sojourn as only temporary.^[14] Thus, because at the end of one's period of employment retirement benefits are usually given in the form of a single lump sum of money rather than in monthly payments, if they are given at all, a person—whether unskilled migrant or educated white collar worker—has little, choice but to return 'home' to live out the rest of his days, spending as little money as possible.

The preoccupation with one's connection to the land has been overwhelming, with virtually everyone either possessing a piece of land in actuality or desiring it in his or her fantasies. This continuing fixation on land, I suggest, has resulted from decades of the existence of an oscillating workforce that has only partially proletarianized workers and from the failure to establish the sort of welfare measures that would support a fully urbanized population after retirement. The concern for land as an ultimate fall-back means of survival is clearly an economic concern, then, and, in the circumstances, it is quite understandable. Even in South Africa, the most industrialized of all the countries of the region and one in which complete proletarianization on a substantial scale in secondary and tertiary industry has existed at least since the 1940s, lack of adequate welfare and retirement measures keeps alive deep concern about access to land. Thus the African National Congress still finds that to contend publicly that one of the fundamental roots of the political conflict between black and white in South Africa is the Native Land Act of 1913, and to talk about a land reform that would give dispossessed blacks renewed access to land, have great appeal to their constituency.

Added to this economic concern is the fact that the nation states that have appeared since the 1960s have suffered profoundly from economic weakness, a

weakness which has grown more serious with each passing year. Quite naturally, this has had a negative effect on the possibility of the creation of broad loyalty to the nation state itself. The nationalist message before and immediately after the end of colonialism was that the new dispensation would result in economic improvements and much increased welfare benefits. Unfortunately, this progress has not occurred, and instead the nation state's administrative structures have faltered and shrivelled.

There are thus further economic reasons why sentiments which would be described as 'nationalist' do not converge with citizenship in a new nation state, as it has come to be identified as at least the occasion, and sometimes as the cause, of a declining standard of living for the majority of people. People perhaps accept that they are citizens of the country in which they live, but this acceptance of civil status does not produce the same loyalty as does their ethnic identity. There has therefore been an increased concern with ethnic identities over the past two decades, and with it has come a great acceleration in the 'rediscovery' of culture for more and more ethnic groups, as the essay by Papstein explores in detail.

For economic reasons, therefore, as well as for reasons of psychological satisfaction, it seems clear that ethnic loyalties will continue in southern Africa for the foreseeable future. The exact forms of future ethnic identities are still cloudy, largely because conditions related to certain variables have changed since the development of ethnic consciousness in the colonial period, a process which has for the most part provided the model used in this volume. Education, for example, is now almost wholly under the control of the nation state, and, hence, will not be as easily employed to bring about acceptance of specific ethnic identities among children. In some countries—such as Malawi and Swaziland—the chiefs remain as influential figures in the rural areas. In others, such as Zambia, the chiefs remain, but most of their power has been taken from them. In yet others, such as Mozambique, chiefs have been abolished totally. Therefore it is likely that the symbols of ethnicity will vary from place to place and from country to country depending on the nature of local government and the way the state communicates with ordinary people.

Furthermore, the potential culture brokers are far more numerous now than sixty years ago, and they have been exposed to a far wider variety of thought, usually not associated with missions. This means that while the backward-looking aspects of future ethnic phenomena—concern for the glories of past history, culture heroes, the central importance of language, and the like—will remain pretty much the same as for examples in the past, the forward-looking aspect of the Janus of ethnicity has the potential of wide variation across the political spectrum. In contemporary Zambia, for example, a main focus of ethnic identity for the Bemba-speaking people who see themselves cut off from state power is the predominantly Bemba miners' union.

The unevenness of development that has marked southern Africa since 1886 shows no sign of ceasing now. Therefore it is likely that the content of the ethnic message itself will continue to vary from people to people, as the culture brokers craft messages that will resonate with their own clienteles. For the serious student of political history in the region, then, it will not be adequate to approach ethnicity, or 'tribalism', as if all examples were essentially the same. Concern with the content of the message will be of ever greater importance if we are to understand it.

Finally, as ethnicity and parochial loyalties within the borders of nation states are likely to continue, it is important to cease approaching them from the perspective of the nation state itself. Ignoring them as embarrassing

epiphenomena that should have long ago disappeared will do no good. Condemning them as 'reactionary' or 'divisive' will accomplish very little. Instead, granted that it is virtually certain that the nation states of southern Africa are going to continue as institutionalized governing states in tension with those whom they govern, it will be necessary for the region's politicians and scholars alike to work towards accommodating ethnicity within these nation states.^[15] States like Lesotho and Botswana, where the nation state and ethnicity are largely coterminous, are exceptional. Multi-ethnic states like Mozambique and Zaire, Zambia and, most crucial of all, South Africa are typical. The western model of the nation state which sees it as identical with the cultural nation itself simply does not obtain in such situations and to insist upon its superior claims to legitimacy and loyalty is simply myopic. Instead, accepting that ethnicity does exist as a potent force, Africans will have to produce political solutions derived from African experience to solve African problems, and this is clearly of great importance in the evolving situation in South Africa, the political and economic centre of the region.