Lennox Sebe Changes His Tune

One of the first things that Lennox Sebe did after attaining a position of unquestionable power was to attempt to heal the ugly breach between Rharhabe and Mfengu which he himself had done so much to inflame. Sebe had always had some Mfengu supporters, notably the Zizi chief, Njokweni, whose support—said

to have been purchased by a bribe—gave him his first narrow majority. Sebe sought to extend this support by placing pro-Sebe candidates into vacant Mfengu headmanships and regencies, and he eventually welcomed the whole opposition party, including the wretched Mabandla, into the CNIP. The annual Fingo Emancipation and Ntsikana Day ceremonies were suppressed because they 'divided the Ciskei nation along ethnic lines'.^[30] President Sebe now aimed to build a new and united nation owing allegiance to neither Rharhabe nor Mfengu ethnic loyalties, but united in a single ciskeian nationalism. It is possible, of course, that the President was motivated exclusively by a desire to promote peace and harmony, and that he perceived the dangerous possibilities of uncontrolled ethnic hatreds. But there were other factors as well, and these must be considered in turn.

One major anomaly in Sebe's role as champion of the Rharhabe cause was the uncompromising hostility of the Rharhabe Paramount Chief, Bazindhlovu Sandile. This is not as strange as it might seem. The Sandile family was exiled to the Transkei after the Frontier War of 1877–8, and it only returned in 1961, thanks to the apartheid policy of boosting traditional authorities. Though acknowledged as Paramounts of all the Rharhabe, the Sandile family nevertheless possessed no territory or subjects under their direct control and were regarded as possibly dangerous interlopers by the Ciskei Rharhabe chiefs. Bazindhlovu Sandile, who ascended the Rharhabe throne in 1969, was a weak, colourless man who drank too much and lacked the stature of his late father.

His youth had been passed among the Transkei Rharhabe chiefs, and he recognized the seniority of the Transkei-based Gcaleka branch of the Tshawe royal clan. The political insignificance of the Transkei Rharhabe exiles had, moreover, led them to exalt hereditary rank and faithful adherence to the old customs above the sort of power games and backstairs intrigue endemic in homeland politics. Bazindhlovu rejected Sebe as an upstart commoner, and somewhat naïvely called on his people to follow their Paramount Chief. His view of ubuRharhabe (Rharhabe-hood) thus far transcended the Ciskei in both space and time. It could even be argued that the Sandile family represented an authentic historical tradition of Rharhabe ethnicity, which was incompatible with the bogus pseudo-tradition inherent in any South African-sponsored ethnic homeland.

Bazindhlovu Sandile died suddenly and prematurely in April 1976.^[31] Whereas Bazindhlovu alive was an acute embarrassment to the Ciskeian authorities, Bazindhlovu dead might well have proved an asset. The noble chief Sandile (d . 1878) was precisely the sort of folk-hero whom Sebe and his friends professed to respect, and they wished to co-opt his name into the emerging Ciskei pantheon through the support of his descendants. The Sandile family wished to give Bazindhlovu a traditional funeral at which his Transkei Rharhabe relatives and the Gcaleka Paramount Xolilizwe Sigcawu would all be present. The Ciskei government wanted a Ciskei state funeral at which no 'outsiders' (that is, Transkeians) would be present. A strong CNIP delegation travelled up to the mourning Great Place and demanded the body. Fortunately, the family had already deposited it with a firm of white undertakers. The CNIP men then demanded the body from the undertakers who, forewarned by the Sandile family, refused to give it up. Unable to stop the funeral, the Ciskei government obstructed it as far as possible by refusing to assign earth-moving equipment and by initially refusing to contribute a state subsidy.

Xolilizwe Sigcawu, the Transkei-based king of all the Xhosa, was present at the funeral. So were Sebe and the CNIP. But when Xolilizwe announced that Bazindhlovu's widow would carry on as Regent for her minor son according to

Xhosa custom. Chief L.W. Maqoma rose on the government side. This was something for the 'Rharhabe Tribunal', a pro-CNIP body, he said, not a matter for the family or outsiders to decide. Chief Maqoma himself was, in fact, the CNIP's man for the job. The family nominated Bazindhlovu's widow. To no one's surprise, the government ethnologist supported Maqoma who remained Regent until he fell from Sebe's favour in 1978. In 1987 there is still no sign of the installation of Bazindhlovu's son, Maxhoba, although he is past thirty. This suggests that, for all his vaunted traditionalism, Sebe still sees the Rharhabe paramountcy as a wild card and a potential threat to his exclusive monopoly of legitimacy.

The tragic farce of Bazindhlovu's funeral was repeated at that of his chief councillor, Isaac Sangotsha. Sangotsha had been an active figure in opposition politics until the collapse of the Mabandla party when, an old man, he retired to his country home. A fervent Catholic, Sangotsha refused to attend Easter services at Ntaba kaNdoda (see below) and, almost alone in his village, he went to church on Good Friday. He must have been somewhat indiscreet in his opinions because he was picked up by the police. He returned, broken in health and spirit and died soon thereafter in July 1982. The Ciskei government offered to pay for the funeral and arrange the programme. The Master of Ceremonies was the then Ciskei Vice-President, the Reverend Wilson Xaba, who delivered a sermon on the theme, 'He made some mistakes, but he was one of us.' Isaac Sangotsha was buried in a beautiful coffin by the very men he most hated and struggled against. In the Ciskei one cannot even call one's body one's own.

Returning to our main theme, there was yet another reason for Sebe to abandon a Rharhabe ethnic posture. In as much as me CNIP was an ethnic party expressing pro-Rharhabe, anti-Mfengu sentiments, it was truly a party of like-minded individuals working for common goals. Sebe was the leader, but the party had a raison d'être independent of his personal will and ambition. Men such as S.M. Burns-Ncamashe, L.F. Siyo, A.Z. Lamani and L.W. Maqoma gave their loyalty to the CNIP rather than to L.L.W. Sebe, and they regarded themselves as potential leaders of that party. They saw the election victory of 1973 as a triumph for the CNIP rather than a vote of confidence in Sebe personally. Sebe, however, wished to rule alone. He disliked the corporate nature of his party and wanted to turn it into a patronage machine dependent entirely on himself. First Bums-Ncamashe, in 1975, and then Siyo, in 1977, were pushed out of the CNIP. Prominent hereditary chiefs Maqoma and Jongilanga were shuffled around the ministries so as to remind them of their utter dependence on the word of Sebe. Political nonentities such as A.M. Tapa and Sebe's brother-in-law, Simon Hebe, whose only conceivable qualification for office was their loyalty to the President, were elevated to positions of power. The promotion of selected Mfengu, including arch-rival Mabandla, to the cabinet was an integral part of Sebe's strategy of replacing government by party with government by patronage. Sebe knew that he could count on the absolute loyalty of his Mfengu recruits, who depended entirely on him for support against their Rharhabe rivals and their own betrayed followers. Dropping his anti-Mfengu rhetoric was a small price to pay for the broadening of his support.