1. Quoted in P. Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Cambridge, 1989), 3.

2. Hailey, African Survey, 336.

3. Lazar argues that the dispute between the NP government and SABRA exerted a decisive influence on Verwoerd’s decision to opt for sovereignty in the reserves. By snatching the language of self-determination from SABRA, who in turn had appropriated it from the discourse of black nationalists in colonial Africa (and not from the mass movement inside South Africa), Verwoerd attempted to mollify the disgruntled intellectuals while bolstering “white exploitation, domination and control.” “Verwoerd Versus the ‘Visionaries,’” 386.

4. “Conference of Chief Native Commissioners,” 3 March 1950.

5. Davenport, South Africa: A Modern History, 283 and 317; Carter, Politics of Inequality, 268.

6. Cited in R. Nixon, “Of Balkans and Bantustans: ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ and the Crisis in National Legitimation,” Transformation, 60 (1993), 21.

7. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 23–27. Also see E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (New York, 1985).

8. Nixon, “Of Balkans and Bantustans,” 21.

9. “Conference of Chief Native Commissioners,” 3 March 1950. Writing in 1955, Lord Hailey overstated the case somewhat: “Apartheid has produced little in the way of material results.” African Survey, 168.

10. For example, Fred Rodseth, then still Under-Secretary (Administration), supported the move to augment the authority of chiefs, while Majors Liefeldt and Hartmann (CNCs for Kingwilliamstown and the Northern Transvaal, respectively) expressed reservations about the policy’s reception in the Transkei by the natives themselves. These remarks, as well as those of Major Brink below, are taken from “Conference of Chief Native Commissioners,” 3 March 1950.

11. Fred Rodseth, “Conference of Chief Native Commissioners,” 3 March 1950.

12. Ibid.

13. A frank critique of the act, possibly drawn up by an anonymous officer of the department, may be found in “Memorandum on the Difficulties and Tensions Arising from the Implementation of the Bantu Authorities Act in Tembuland” (1958?), in 28: YT2: 45/2 in CKC. This memo is discussed below.

14. Cited in Tatz, Shadow and Substance, 184.

15. Cited in Carter, Karis, and Stultz, South Africa’s Transkei, 63.

16. “Conference of Chief Native Commissioners,” 3 February 1950.

17. Quoted in UTTGC, Proceedings, 1955, 12.

18. This information is taken from notes by “GMC” [Gwendolen Carter] on “Chief Kaiser Mantazima,” 4 July 1963, 28:XM3:92/1 in CKC. Also see B. Streek, Render unto Kaizer (Johannesburg, 1981).

19. Carter, “Chief Kaiser Mantazima.”

20. UTTGC, Proceedings, 1953, 37.

21. W. W. M. Eiselen, “Co-ordination of Bantu Education and Bantu Education,” text of a speech delivered to the UTTGC on 27 April 1954, in 28: 92/7/1 in Reel 18 of CKC.

22. This account, as well as the quotations, are taken from Mbeki, Peasants’ Revolt, 55–56. Mbeki’s account is substantiated by a document titled “Bantu Authorities for the Transkeian Territories: Plan for Consideration by the Recess Committee of the General Council, September, 1955,” in 28: BU1: 44/1 in Reel 18 of CKC.

23. “Memorandum on the Difficulties and Tensions Arising from the Implementation of the Bantu Authorities Act in Tembuland,” drawn up by the Magistrate of Elliotdale (1958?), in 28: YT2: 45/2, in Reel 18 of CKC.

24. “Conference of Chief Native Commissioners,” 3 March 1950.

25. Taken from Hammond-Tooke, Command or Consensus, 207.

26. For example, see Z. K. Mathews’ response in “A Discussion of the Tomlinson Report, the Native Reserves within the Union of South Africa, Their History, Their Locations, Their Carrying Capacity, Their Capabilities of Development, Economically, Culturally, Educationally, etc.” (1956), in 2: XM66: 77/1, and “The Tribal System in the Native Reserves” in 2: XM66: 77/7, both in Reel 18A of CKC. And for empirical details showing how the Bantu Authorities Act in practice violated the consensual basis of government in pre-annexation days, see “African Leaders Deported,” a document drawn up by the Executive Committee of the Transkeian Organized Bodies (established to combat the Bantu Authorities system), which appears as Annexure A in 28: YT2: 45/2 in Reel 20 of CKC; Mbeki, Peasants’ Revolt; I. Tabata, The Rehabilitation Scheme: The New Fraud (Cape Town, 1945).

27. “Memorandum on the Difficulties and Tensions Arising from the Implementation of the Bantu Authorities Act in Tembuland,” 28.

28. For an exposé of the police methods involved in splitting a tribe, see “Behind a Police Gag, Tribal Authorities Come to a Tribe” and “African ‘Good-Boys’ Beat Up Pressmen,” Contact, 8 March 1958, 7 and 13.

29. See Annexure R. to “Minutes of Caucus Meeting, Cala (Xalanga),” 7 December 1957, in 28: YT2: 45/4 in Reel 18, CKC.

30. “Report of the Enquiry into Unrest in Eastern Pondoland” [Van Heerden Committee], 1960, 13. This report was not published; a copy is located in the South African Library, Cape Town, South Africa.

31. “Memorandum on the Difficulties and Tensions Arising from the Implementation of the Bantu Authorities Act in Tembuland.”

32. Xalanga Tribal Authority to the SNA, 13 September 1957, in 28: YT2: 45/3, in Reel 18, CKC. The history of this conflict is explained in detail in the memorandum cited above.

33. See documents on the crisis in Xalanga in 28: YT2: 45/3, in Reel 18, CKC.

34. Xalanga Tribal Authority to the SNA, 13 September 1957.

35. Chief (name illegible) in “Minutes of Caucus Meeting, Cala (Xalanga),” 7 December 1957. in 28: YT2: 45/4, in Reel 18, CKC.

36. Ibid.

37. “African Leaders Deported: Affidavit,” Annexure E, in 28: YT2: 45/4, in Reel 18, CKC.

38. Chief Magistrate to Acting Paramount Chief Hlatikulu Mtirara, 21 October 1957, in 28: YT2: 45/4, in Reel 18, CKC.

39. Xalanga Tribal Authority to the SNA, 13 September 1957.

40. See Verwoerd’s denials in HAD, 1954; also see “Comparative African Government and Law II: An Evaluation of Self-Government in the Transkei”, (n.d.) in 28: YT 4: 92/14, p. 3, in Reel 18 of CKC.

41. Xalanga Tribal Authority, “Caucus Meeting, Cala,” 7 December 1957, Annexure R, in 28: XM3: 47, in Reel 18 of CKC.

42. With respect to chiefs’ extensive involvement in forced labor schemes, South Africa seems to contrast significantly with the case of Ghana (see Phillips, Enigma of British Colonialism, 43–44). Apart from a claim in Mbeki’s Peasants’ Revolt, complaints about forced labor did not occur in the literature consulted. One reason why compulsory labor may not have been as controversial an issue as it was in British colonial Africa is no doubt the well-elaborated system of recruiting established by the mines at the turn of the century: touts, the WNLA, the Native Recruiting Corporation, and private labor-recruiting agencies were all active at an early stage of the twentieth century, and their links with chiefs and headmen were in theory monitored and regulated both by law and by the local magistrate. Also, the imposition of a national system of taxation payable only in cash, as the Native Taxation Act of 1925 stipulated, perhaps diminished the need for the state and/or employers to rely extensively on compulsory labor.

43. R. S. Canca, “A Spate of Deportations in Tembuland,” 10 October 1961, in 28: YT2: 41/1, Reel 18, CKC. Also see the “Memorandum on the Difficulties and Tensions Arising from the Implementation of the Bantu Authorities Act in Tembuland.”

44. Chief Magistrate of the Transkei to Acting Paramount Chief Hlatikulu Mtirara, 1 November 1957, in 28: YT 2: 45/2 in Reel 18 of CKC.

45. Chief Magistrate to Chief Zwelinqaba Gwebindlala, cited in R. S. Cala to the Chief Magistrate (Appendix C of “African Leaders Deported”) in 28: YT2: 45/2 in Reel 18 of CKC.

46. “Report of the Enquiry into Unrest in Eastern Pondoland,” 16.

47. UTTGC, Proceedings, 1947, 23, and 1953, 34.

48. UTTGC, Proceedings, 1953, 41.

49. UTTGC, Proceedings, 1958, 44.

50. In “Conference of Chief Native Commissioners,” 3 February 1950, 36.

51. Cited in Walker, Women and Resistance in South Africa, 147.

52. Ibid., 233; P. Ntatala, “Widows of the Reserves,” Africa South, 2/3 (1958).

53. Walker, Women and Resistance in South Africa, 234–35; J. Yawitch “Natal 1959—The Women’s Protests” (paper presented at the Conference on the History of Opposition in South Africa, University of the Witwatersrand, January 1978). For more on the ideological character of rural resistance and its possible “conservative” basis, see P. McAllister, “Using Ritual to Resist Domination in the Transkei,” in A. Spiegel and P. McAllister (eds.), Tradition and Transition in Southern Africa: Festchrift for Philip and Iona Mayer (Johannesburg, 1991), 129. Archie Mafeje also notes that urbanized Africans in Cape Town who had no ties to the rural areas were liable to launch scabrous attacks on chiefs who campaigned for votes in the urban areas in 1963 (when the first elections were held for the Transkeian Legislative Assembly). Still, he notes, “scathing as most speeches were, none rejected chieftainship as an institution.” A. Mafeje, “A Chief Comes to Town,” Journal of Local Administration Overseas, 2/2 (April 1963); a copy is deposited in Reel 18 of CKC, 28: XM1: 82.

54. Walker, Women and Resistance in South Africa, 234.

55. Yawitch, Betterment.

56. Walker, Women and Resistance in South Africa, 234.

57. Hooper, Brief Authority, 176.

58. Quoted in Yawitch, “Natal 1959,” 1.

59. Report of the Enquiry into Unrest in Eastern Pondoland (1960), 18.

60. Hooper, Brief Authority, 145.

61. The account that follows is taken from Hooper, Brief Authority, chapter 20.

62. C. Geertz, “Blurred Genres: The Refiguration of Social Thought,” American Scholar, Spring 1980. Also see C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973), 100–125.

63. A. Esherick and J. Wasserstrom, “Acting Out Democracy,” 38.

64. J. Watson, “The Renegotiation of Chinese Cultural Identity in the Post-Mao Era,” in J. Wasserstrom and E. J. Perry (eds.), Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern China (Boulder, 1992), 74–75.

65. E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. K. Fields (New York, 1995).

66. Scott, Weapons of the Weak.

67. See chapter 1.

68. Hooper, Brief Authority, 204.

69. Ibid., chapter 26.

70. W. A. Maree, HAD (1957), col. 4153.

71. Luthuli, Let My People Go, 229–30.

72. Bantu Affairs Commission, Report,1957–1959, Government Printers, UG 36 (1961), 3.

73. Letter by R. S. Canca sent to The Daily Dispatch, recorded as Appendix C in 28: YT2: 45/2 in Reel 18 of CKC.

74. After noting that Africans said they cooperated with chiefs because, as one put it, “I do not want it to be said that I am a Poqo member”, the document continues: “This reference to ‘Poqo’ was probably due to the Government propaganda mentioned.” “Comparative African Government and Law II.”

75. A considerable amount of material relating to the “Chief Sabata Dalindyebo affair” is to be found in the Carter-Karis Collection. See, for example, the following documents: “Memorandum,” 30 January 1963 (no author, but “drafted by the African People of South Africa”) in 28:XD1:45; notes by G. Carter entitled “Chief Sabata, July 5 1963” in Reel 18 of CKC, 28:XD1:92/1; lengthy newspaper articles in Reel 18 of CKC, 28:XD1:99/1–19. Articles in Contact in 1962 also devoted attention to the intricacies of the dispute (e.g., see Contact, 8 April 1962 and 1 November 1962). For a discussion of Poqo, see Y. Muthien, “Protest and Resistance in Cape Town, 1939–65,” in R. Cohen, Y. Muthien, and A. Zegeye, Repression and Resistance: Insider Accounts of Apartheid (London, 1990).

76. Hooper, Brief Authority.

77. HAD (1961), col. 24.

78. Circular, 1956, in Reel 18 of CKC 28:92/7/1, 17; quoted in Horrell, A Survey of Race Relations, 1962 (Johannesburg, 1963).

79. Bantu, 1955, 5.

80. Mbeki, Peasants’ Revolt.

81. Ibid. Also see P. Delius, “Sebatakgomo: Migrant Organisation, the ANC and the Sekhukhuneneland Revolt,” Journal of Southern African Studies, 15/4 (1989).

82. Mbeki, Peasants’ Revolt.

83. The discussion of the Makhuluspani movement is taken from Hammond-Tooke, Command or Consensus, 105–7. Officialdom’s suspicions about the movement come out strongly in “Partial Transcript of the Proceedings of a Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the Murders at Bashee River,” 28 February 1963, in 28:XM3:89, in Reel 18 of CKC.

84. Hammond-Tooke, Command or Consensus, 105.

85. According to Mantazima, “I think Poqo found that Makuluspan is doing their work of killing, and they draw members from that organisation.” Not too much should be made of these claims, however: Mantazima also linked “communists” and “liberals” to the violence in his area. Mantazima’s evidence is contained in “Partial Transcript of the Proceedings of a Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the Murders at Bashee River,” 28 February 1963.

86. For an early description of trading activity in the Transkei, see E. S. Haines, “The Transkeian Trader,” South African Journal of Economics, 1/2 (June 1933).

87. Mantazima repeatedly used this argument to induce wavering and frightened chiefs to accept the new status quo. See his comments in Annexure R of “Minutes of Caucus Meeting, Cala (Xalanga),” 7 December 1957.

88. “Conference of Chief Native Commissioners” 31 January–3 February 1950, in NTS 1812 1 138/276, Annexure, 19.

89. N. J. van Warmelo, in “Conference of Chief Native Commissioners,” 31 January–3 February 1950.

90. Ibid.

91. Ibid.

92. The school also created “opportunities for the commoners to attain leadership positions in the same fields by admitting the sons of councillors (a post a person attains in African society by virtue of ability and not being born into it)….” See “Jongilizwe College, Tsolo College for the Sons of Chiefs and Headmen, Jongilizwe,” in Reel 18 of CKC, 28: U(282)/1: 84.

93. Ibid.

94. Eiselen, “Co-ordination of Bantu Education and Bantu Development,” 27 April 1954, 111–17.

95. N. J. van Warmelo, “Memorandum on Extension of Self-Government among the Native People,” October 1948.

96. Comments are taken from the “Conference of Chief Native Commissioners,” 3 March 1950.

97. Ibid.

98. Ibid., 20.

99. Rodseth blamed corruption and bribery among chiefs and headmen on their small stipends. Ibid., 19. For evidence that officials were well apprised of the scale of corruption among chiefs and headmen, see Tatz, Shadow and Substance, 193–94.

100. “Conference of Chief Native Commissioners,” 3 March 1950.

101. Horrell, Survey of Race Relations, 1959–60, 218.

102. “Report of the Enquiry into Unrest in Eastern Pondoland,” 24.

103. These examples are taken from R. Vigne, “Memorandum on Some Effects of Proclamation R400,” 1961, in Reel 18 of CKC 28:YT2:40.

104. Both accounts are discussed in “Comparative African Government and Law II.”

105. Vigne, “Memorandum on Some Effects of Proclamation R400.” See also R. Vigne, The Transkei: A South African Tragedy (London, 1969).

106. Hooper, Brief Authority; Vigne, “Memorandum on Some Effects of Proclamation R400.”

107. Vigne, “Memorandum on Some Effects of Proclamation R400.”

108. Barnard, Thirteen Years with Verwoerd, 54.

109. HAD (1959), col. 6221. For a discussion of the parliamentary opposition’s objections to Verwoerd’s announcement, see Tatz, Shadow and Substance, chapters 9 and 10.

110. HAD (1958), col. 3805.

111. HAD (1959), col. 65.

112. Some of the reasons listed in the White Paper were (1) to consolidate the various Bantustans into coherent administrative territories; (2) to prepare Africans to assume responsibility for the department’s efforts to arrest ecological involution in the reserves; (3) to establish a diverse and viable economy; (4) to assume responsibility for the education of Africans; and (5) to prepare Africans to assume responsibility for the administration of justice. “Memorandum Explaining the Background and Objects of the Promotion of the Bantu Self-Government Bill, 1959,” White Paper 3 (1959).

113. Carter, Karis, and Stultz, South Africa’s Transkei, 113.

114. Ibid., chapter 6.

115. Department of Information, “The Transkei: Emancipation without Chaos” (n.d.), 9–10.

116. Carter, Karis, and Stultz, South Africa’s Transkei, 116.