The Political Past

Since 1910 Africans throughout the Republic have suffered the imposition of constraints without the extension of many new rights. The Africans in the Cape have been the most affected: until 1910 they exercised the franchise subject to qualifications of literacy and of property or income; their vote had been important in about twelve constituencies. In 1910 they lost the right (which had never been exercised) to membership in the House of Assembly of the Cape Colony, and their votes were not counted in the allocation of seats between the provinces in the constitution of the Union. In 1930 their vote was further devalued by the extension of voting rights to white women; it was devalued yet again in 1931 when the property and income qualifications for voting were removed for whites only. In 1936 Cape Africans lost the right to vote on the common voters' roll and in exchange, were given three parliamentary seats to be filled by whites.

The impact of these changes on the Tswana and the Zulu was different. The Tswana of the Cape lost such political rights as they had had. Africans, and therefore the Zulu, in Natal before the Union, had had the right to vote, but the conditions were so stringent that in 1909 only six Africans were on

[30] P. M. Leary and D. Obst, "The Use of Percentile Charts in the Nutritional Assessment of Children from Primitive Communities," ibid., XLIII (1969), 1165–1168.

[31] Dr. Donald Mackenzie, head of St. Michael's Mission Hospital north of Kuruman, quoted in "Starvation in South Africa," Rand Daily Mail, 11 Nov. 1969.

the voters' roll. The South Africa Act of 1909 therefore affected law rather than practice in Natal. Zulu traditional government had been broken up in the immediate aftermath of the war of 1879, and after the Bambatha rebellion of 1906, their king, Dinizulu, was exiled to the Transvaal, where he died. No major change followed. Indeed, for both Tswana and Zulu, constitutional developments after 1910 notably worsened their positions only if they had acquired rights through residence in the Cape.

The Representation of Natives Act of 1936 gave Africans in the Cape three white members of Parliament, and Africans in the other provinces four white senators, all chosen by a complex system of indirect election. Limited and segregated though it was, the act gave Africans throughout South Africa increased representation in Parliament. While the system lasted, eloquent white spokesmen ensured that some African grievances were brought to the attention of legislators in a way they had not been before 1936. This was small compensation, however, for the disparities between black and white participation in electoral politics. The steady elimination of Africans from political roles held in common with whites without the elaboration of new structures in, and concession of new powers to, the African areas, was a development analogous to the closing to Africans of the market in land in 1913 without at the same time increasing the size of the reserves.

It is the urban Africans who have been most conspicuously disadvantaged by South African constitution making. As in the case of their rural brethren, they originally possessed limited freedom to acquire property in all of the provinces except the Orange Free State. The Urban Areas Act of 1923 extended territorial segregation from the countryside to the towns, and the notion that Africans were "temporary" residents of the urban areas began to find its expression in law. Advisory boards were set up to represent the views of township residents. They were usually under the chairmanship of a white location superintendent and did little beyond noting grievances, having no power to do anything about them. Yet the urban black populations continued to grow, attracted by new opportunities in industry and commerce that, despite the constraints of legal and customary color bars, were preferable to farming in the reserves or working for white farmers. Before 1948 virtually no institutional provision had been made for urban Africans nor were any links provided between the peoples of the cities and the reserves.

When the National Party came to power in 1948 it was able to build upon a long and cumulative tradition of segregation in South African politics and decision-making. From that time it embarked upon a systematic program intended to "retribalize" Africans, to eliminate all participation by Africans, Asians, and coloureds in the disposition of power at national or local levels in the white areas, and to develop new, ethnically-based institutions in the

African areas. These new institutions were ultimately to represent all Africans of a particular ethnic group no matter where they lived.

This institutionalized ethnicity, not of their own making, presented homeland leaders with certain opportunities. Despite their long involvement in an urbanizing economy, the development of a tradition of African, not ethnic, nationalism, and the close links of their homelands to the modern Republic, the Tswana and the Zulu in the 1970s and 1980s may be able to draw upon their own traditions of incipient modernization in the nineteenth century, while avoiding the danger of serving the needs of the Republic more than those of black South Africans. The very emphasis by the government of the Republic on ethnicity, on the historic struggle of Afrikaners, and on the legitimacy of the white presence may encourage the Tswana and the Zulu not only to question the boundaries of the homelands, but to rely upon their past for inspiration and example. There are in both Tswana and Zulu history examples of adaptive modernizing leaders—"conscious social planners" in the case of the Tswana, great military innovators in the case of the Zulu.^[32] At certain periods in Zulu history there was considerable mobility and men of talent were able to rise in the service of the king. Reluctantly accepting white rule, Tswana and Zulu entered the modern economy, at the same time preserving some traditional institutions in the reserves. When the logic of apartheid gave them an opportunity to do so, Tswana and Zulu leaders with traditional and modern credentials attempted to use an imposed system to increase the power of their peoples. These new leaders may thus be able to set the politics of their societies in the mainstream of their own traditions at the same time as they struggle for a greater share of South Africa's power and wealth.

[32] For details, see Isaac Schapera, Tribal Innovators: Tswana Chiefs and Social Change, 1795–1940 (London, 1970), 251–257; Max Gluckman, "The Kingdom of the Zulu of South Africa," in M. Fortes and E. E. Evans-Pritchard (eds.), African Political Systems (London, 1940), 39, 44–45.