Organizational Affiliations and African Ethnicity

Another matter on which ethnic differences emerge relates to partisan and leadership preferences among Blacks. These, however, cannot be understood fully without understanding the ethnic composition of parties and movements.

It is, of course, well known that Inkatha is largely a Zulu organization centered on the nonindependent KwaZulu homeland. Led by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, it is the lineal descendant of the Zulu National Congress, founded in 1928, but it has had wider ambitions. Increasingly, however, Inkatha seems unable to secure support from other homeland leaders and members of Black ethnic groups that gave Buthelezi strong support previously: Ndebele, Swazi, Tswana, and Venda.^[26]

Much less well known is the ethnically skewed leadership composition of two of the main panethnic extraparliamentary organizations, the African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress. In both cases, Xhosa speakers have been disproportionately represented at the top.

Despite its nonracial ideology, the ANC, as noted in Chapter 1, had no non-African members on its National Executive Committee until 1985. After 1985, it had two Whites, two Coloureds, and two Indians. Of the remaining twenty members, as of mid-1989, ten were Xhosa, five Tswana, four Pedi, and one Zulu. In short, fully half the Black leadership of the ANC was Xhosa-speaking, which means that Xhosa were overrepresented by a factor of about 2.2. Zulu were dramatically underrepresented, by a factor of more than 5.^[27]

The most conspicuous ANC leaders are also disproportionately Xhosa. Nelson Mandela, Walter F. Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Govan and Thabo Mbeki, Chris Hani, and Pallo Jordan are all Xhosa speakers. Of the major future contenders for power, only Joe Modise and one or two others are not Xhosa. This imbalance and the factionalism related to it

[26] See Hanf et al., South Africa , p. 355.

[27] These calculations, and those that follow on the PAC, are mine. Data were supplied by several South African informants. I am particularly grateful to Pierre du Toit and W. J. Breytenbach for coordinating the data gathering and to Steven Wilkinson for double-checking ethnic affiliations from written and oral sources. Since Black ethnicity in politics is rarely discussed, and data on identity are hard to come by, it is possible that I have mislabeled the identity of one or two leaders, who, for example, may be products of mixed marriages. But the overall tendencies are undeniable.

have been subjects of concern within the ANC.^[28] There is thus support for the rather casual—and, even then, rarely stated—judgment that the ANC "has been dominated by Xhosas. . . ."^[29] Following coups in the two Xhosa "homelands," Transkei and Ciskei—the latter shortly after the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990—the new military rulers made clear their alignment with the ANC.^[30]

The leadership composition of the PAC is roughly similar to that of the ANC. Taking its Central Committee and principal foreign representatives together, there were, as of mid-1989, a total of nineteen members, two of whom were Coloured and one of whom was Indian. The remaining sixteen were as follows: ten Xhosa, three Zulu, two Tswana, and one Venda. A clear majority was Xhosa—nearly a threefold over-representation. Xhosa are also prominent in AZAPO.^[31]

As I shall explain later, there are important historical reasons for Xhosa to be in the forefront of radical anti-regime activity. For now, the situation is unlikely to change dramatically within either of these movements.

After a long period of factional disputation, culminating in an upheaval in its Central Committee in 1987, the PAC settled into a more stable period, during which it increased its standing with foreign governments.^[32] Further upheaval would be very costly.

The ethnic balance of leadership in the ANC was also related to the balance of new recruits who moved across the border. This in turn was largely a function of developments inside South Africa, which provided waves of recruits. These waves were, in some degree, ethnically differentiated, depending on the location of the key events propelling the move into exile. After the Soweto rising of 1976, there was an exodus of youth from Johannesburg townships to ANC training camps. In the mid-1980s, there was another flow of recruits, this time disproportion-

[28] See Africa Confidential (London), January 12, 1990, p. 3; ibid., February 23, 1990, p. 4; ibid., April 20, 1990, p. 3.

[29] Graham Leach, South Africa: No Easy Path to Peace (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 111.

[30] See Argus (Cape Town), March 5, 1990.

[31] Of the AZAPO officers elected in 1990, seven were Africans, three of them Xhosa. The PAC has reportedly made a point of emphasizing its diverse composition, contrasting it with alleged Xhosa domination of the ANC. Africa Confidential , April 6, 1990, p. 8.

[32] Gary van Staden, "Return of the Prodigal Son: Prospects for a Revival of the Pan Africanist Congress" (paper presented at the Research Colloquium of the Political Science Association of South Africa, October 6–7, 1988). For the background, see Tom Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa since 1945 (London: Longman, 1983), pp. 305–17. See also Africa Confidential , October 16, 1985, p. 7.

ately from the Xhosa-speaking townships of the Cape Province. The Cape was the location of the school and rent boycotts that triggered the 1984–86 resistance movement. There the UDF also emerged most strongly.^[33] It has been asserted that rivalries within the second echelon of the ANC, particularly between Joe Modise and Chris Hani, involve to some extent their mobilization of, respectively, "the Jo'burgers" and other Transvaalers, on the one hand, and the newer militants from the Cape, on the other.^[34] In considerable measure, these would be ethnically differentiated support bases. How reliable such accounts are is open to question, but there seems little doubt that the influx of the 1980s was disproportionately Xhosa.

Against this background, Xhosa and Zulu responses to survey questions about identity are more comprehensible. When Xhosa respond that they are Black or South African, they are providing an answer very much in line with the officially declared policy of the ANC and the PAC, with either of which it is easy for Xhosa to identify, given their leadership composition. More than that, of course, such a response re-

[33] See Steven Friedman, "Black Politics at the Crossroads," South African Institute of Race Relations, PD1 / 86 (Johannesburg, January 2, 1986; mimeo.), p. 9.

[34] W. J. Breytenbach, The ANC: Future Prognosis , University of Stellenbosch Institute for Futures Research, Occasional Paper no. 4 (July 1989), pp. 24–26; Belinda Barrett, "A Profile of the African National Congress (ANC)" (Inkatha Institute of South Africa, May 1989; mimeo.), pp. 24, 60–63; Africa Confidential , August 12, 1988, pp. 1–3. See also Africa Confidential , July 6, 1983, pp. 1–4; ibid., December 11, 1985, pp. 1–5.

flects the exigencies of the present struggle—including the preeminence of race over ethnicity—and its obvious battle lines, the state versus the mainly Black resistance. When Zulu provide a different response, it presumably signifies that they are, for understandable reasons, less wholly identified with ANC or PAC positions and that there may be more than one struggle and more than one set of cleavage lines.

The same contrasting responses are revealed in surveys that tap support for various political organizations. Consider support for Buthelezi and Inkatha versus support for Mandela and the ANC among Zulu in Natal and non-Zulu (essentially, Xhosa) in the Cape, as revealed in the 1986 survey depicted in Table 3. The ANC seems to have about as much support among Zulu in the Transvaal as it does among non-Zulu there. But drop out the two middle columns, and the contrasts between Zulu and Xhosa are striking. For Zulu in Natal, the ANC has some resonance, but much less than Inkatha has. For Xhosa in the Cape, Inkatha is anathema; and the ANC is supported by a strong majority.^[35] Polarity is not too strong a word to use in characterizing these responses, which range from zero to 34 percent and from 19 percent to 62 percent.

The percentages just quoted show Buthelezi's support in decline, but this does not mitigate the Xhosa-Zulu difference. In the late 1970s, Buthelezi had more support in Natal, and the ANC had less in Natal. But Xhosa support was almost equally divided between Buthelezi and the ANC, as the 1977 comparison in Table 4 shows.

Although the respondent categories are not exactly the same, still the two tables together show that the exclusivity of Xhosa identification

[35] See also Martin Meredith, "The Black Opposition," in Jesmond Blumenfeld, ed., South Africa in Crisis (London: Croom Helm for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1987), p. 87.

with the ANC has grown dramatically in a decade. The distance between the Xhosa position and the Zulu position is, despite growth in ANC support in Natal, certainly no less than it was, particularly because Inkatha support has fallen off so completely in the Cape. In percentage-difference terms, the two groups were further apart in preferences in 1986 than in 1977. The average difference on each item was 36.0 points in 1977 and 38.5 in 1986. (The 1977 difference might have been larger if, instead of Durban Zulu, the respondent category had been Zulu in all of Natal.) And, as usual, the political preferences of every other African ethnic group—Tswana, Pedi, Sotho, Tsonga, Swazi, Venda, and Ndebele—fall in between those of the Durban Zulu and the Xhosa.³⁶

A survey conducted in 1984–85 by the Institute of Black Research at the University of Natal confirms the Zulu-Xhosa divergence and adds some further regional qualifications as well. A question about organizational support divided Africans into three cities and one township, each of which represented a major region: Durban (Natal), Langa (Western Cape), Johannesburg (Transvaal), and Port Elizabeth (Eastern Cape). Inkatha received 55.5 percent support in Durban but 3.1 percent in Johannesburg and virtually none anywhere else. The UDF had 51.0 percent in Port Elizabeth, 30.8 percent in Langa, 21.3 percent in Durban, and 12.7 percent in Johannesburg. The Eastern Cape was clearly the most pro-UDF area. The three Black Consciousness or Africanist groupings, AZAPO, the PAC, and the National Forum, were weak everywhere (with a combined percentage share of 6.8 percent in Port Elizabeth and Langa, practically no share in Durban) except the Johannesburg townships, where the three organizations received support of 15.6 percent, 15.2 percent, and 3.3 percent, respectively. ANC figures were lower than in other recent surveys—their high was 27.1 percent in Langa—but it is uncertain from the question whether respondents would have felt free to name a then-illegal organization as an appropriate response.^[37] Again, the difference between Natal and the Eastern Cape stands out above all other differences.

Leadership ratings are an indication of consensus or dissensus. In the

[36] With a single exception, the Pedi, who are slightly below even the Xhosa in their enthusiasm for Buthelezi, but only by 3 percentage points. On every other response relating to the ANC or Buthelezi, Zulu and Xhosa form the extremes within which other groups fall. See Hanf et al., South Africa , p. 355.

[37] Though some, as indicated, named the PAC, which was then illegal. Institute of Black Research, University of Natal, Durban, tables, based on a 1984–85 survey, from an untitled forthcoming manuscript, table 2. Some figures are subject to final correction.

Eastern Cape, Mandela, the Reverend Allan Boesak, and Bishop Desmond Tutu are all "admired" by at least 94.6 percent of respondents, with "disliked" ratings of less than 5.0 percent each. In Durban, although Mandela still leads the pack, admiration for these three declines to an average of 67.0 percent. In Durban, Buthelezi is "admired" by 76.0 percent; elsewhere, he scores much lower, and, by now predictably, lowest by far in Port Elizabeth, with only 6.3 percent positive ratings and 65.4 percent negative. To put the point in terms of ratios of "admired" ratings to "disliked" ratings: in Durban, Buthelezi's ratio is +4.3; in Port Elizabeth, it is -10.4.^[38]

Finally, a question asked how unfair laws could be changed. African responses varied enormously by city. In Durban, nine respondents out of ten chose "dialogue," "government reform," or "peaceful opposition." Only one in ten chose "extraparliamentary peaceful" or "violent" strategies. In Port Elizabeth, these preferences were turned upside down: more than nine out of ten chose the latter two responses (83.5 percent chose "extraparliamentary peaceful" and 10.2 percent "violent"). In Langa and in Johannesburg, responses were, once again, in-between, although Langa respondents tended to prefer softer options and Johannesburg respondents produced a 43.6 percent plurality for violence.^[39]

All of these data illustrate what Mark Orkin has called "a divided struggle," and they show with special sharpness how the Xhosa and Zulu heartlands anchor two ends of a spectrum. The data on which I have drawn in this section are derived from surveys conducted by researchers of varying political inclinations. In addition to a market research organization, the data come from the work of Theodor Hanf and his colleagues, Lawrence Schlemmer, Mark Orkin, and Fatima Meer and her colleagues—researchers who are otherwise often at odds. Some of them have fought survey wars over whether Blacks prefer foreign investment or divestment and over whether Buthelezi still has a strong support base.^[40] That their results are so congruent on ethnicity and political preference is, therefore, all the more significant.

The results are, moreover, congruent with long-standing patterns of

[38] Ibid., table 68b.

[39] Ibid., table 8.

[40] See, e.g., Mark Orkin, Disinvestment, the Struggle, and the Future: What Black South Africans Really Think (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1986; pamphlet), pp. 5–28, 37–44, 62–67; Fatima Meer and Alan Reynolds, "Sample Survey of Perceptions of the Durban Unrest—August 1985," in Fatima Meer, ed., Resistance in the Townships (Durban: Madiba, 1989), p. 276.

organization. The Eastern Cape is the historic heartland of ANC organization. Although it had nationwide objectives, the ANC's best-organized protest, the Defiance Campaign of 1952, drew nearly three-quarters of its participants from the townships of the Eastern Cape, especially around the two main cities of Port Elizabeth and East London.^[41] Port Elizabeth was, according to Tom Lodge, "consistently the strongest centre of ANC mobilization," and East London was "the second most important centre of the civil disobedience campaign in the country."^[42] By contrast, the Defiance Campaign "had only limited success among Africans in Natal. There, the ANC still had few branches. . . ."^[43] Although the ANC did manage to penetrate Natal in the next several years, no doubt aided by the election of a Natal Zulu, Albert Luthuli, as ANC national president in 1952, its following in the Eastern Cape has been consistently much stronger and better organized.

Underlying such patterns, and comparable patterns in Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia, and Nigeria, where anti-colonial movements were divided along ethnic lines, is the intertwining of rational and affective elements in ethnicity. These elements affect followers as well as leaders, as Masipula Sithole has pointed out for Zimbabwe:

It is the masses who respond negatively or positively to tribal ideology, otherwise politicians would not use this resource. The masses calculate that they stand to benefit one way or the other from "our leader" or "our son," or "our homeboy," or indeed "our tribesman" in power, or representing "us" in the corridors of power. Indeed the tribesman politician might appeal to the masses in this way, but the response is not based on simple emotional false-consciousness; the masses do give thought to the promises made and the base of their credibility. It all makes rational sense to them in the same way they would rationalize an economic argument. A homeboy will deliver the goods.^[44]

That, despite such considerations, the extraparliamentary organizations have thus far achieved the degree of interethnic solidarity that they have

[41] Tom Lodge, "Political Mobilization during the 1950s: An East London Case Study," in Shula Marks and Stanley Trapido, eds., The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in Twentieth-Century South Africa (London: Longman, 1987), p. 318.

[42] Ibid., pp. 315, 323.

[43] William Beinart, "Worker Consciousness, Ethnic Particularism and Nationalism: The Experience of a South African Migrant, 1930–1960," in Marks and Trapido, eds., The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in Twentieth-Century South Africa , p. 298.

[44] Masipula Sithole, "The Salience of Ethnicity in African Politics: The Case of Zimbabwe," in Anand C. Paranjpe, ed., Ethnic Identities and Prejudices: Perspectives from the Third World (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986), p. 57.

is a measure of the overwhelming urgency of the struggle against apartheid.