Chiefs and the Department in the 1950s

State policy had historically been pitted against the commercialization of agricultural production in the reserves and had also opposed the development of even a small stratum of rural African entrepreneurs.^[86] The absence of strong class differentiation in the Transkei, and the tendency for rural affluence to correlate with the stratum of African functionaries, meant that chiefs and headmen were the only potential group of collaborators available to the state. But two crucial differences distinguished the dilemma of the chief’s intercalary position in the 1950s. First, chiefs in the apartheid era could not evade the official duties they were expected to execute; they could not, for example, hide behind the very headmen they were now required to control. Second, violence, either from the state or from their own people, was the invariable outcome of whatever choice they made. Mindful that they could rely on state protection once they accepted the Bantu Authorities, whereas opposing the state gained them popular support without any protection from the state’s vengeance,^[87] the preponderant majority of chiefs decided to risk popular ire for the advantages that were there for the picking.

Department officials were aware that chiefs and headmen were only relatively better off than commoners and that, generally, the African rural elite were poor. And poverty, Rodseth noted, was “not in keeping with the position of a chief.” ^[88] They also knew that the nature of chiefs’ aspirations had expanded with time. Initially, chiefs and headmen had used their positions to increase their wealth in the form of additional livestock, wives, and land. Already by the 1930s, to this list many chiefs had added articles (such as “European houses, education, automobiles and liquor”) identified with the status and prestige of the dominant culture.^[89] Thus, whether chiefs were perceived as “progressive” or as “backward,” administrators were keenly aware that they were likely to respond to pecuniary incentives, as numerous requests for stipend increases from chiefs such as Victor Poto in Pondoland and the frequent requests for salary increases from the Bunga must have made clear.^[90]

At the annual conference of CNCs in 1950, Eiselen observed the need for chiefs to acquire formal education, partly to enable them to “keep up with their new responsibilities” but also to “stand up to educated Bantu in the urban areas.” ^[91] In February 1959, Jongilizwe (a “College for the Sons of Chiefs and Headmen”) was established to educate “the future leaders of the Transkei and Ciskei people.” With cavalier simplification, a document dated 1963 (annotated “philosophy of elite education for sons of chiefs”) argued that the need for such an institution lay “in the political developments on the African continent.” ^[92] The document is worth quoting:

The former colonial rulers in Africa found after a time that they could not base the administration of the territories on consultation with the traditional tribal leaders alone, primarily because the chiefs were not really interested in education or intellectual advancement. Therefore more and more of these colonial administrations came to rely on the young intellectuals emerging from the common people. This system of administration did not work either, simply because it negated the traditional leadership of the people concerned. Today the African society is divided between these two types of leadership and many problems arise from the gulf between intellectual leadership and traditional leadership because of the pronounced tribal consciousness of the peoples of Africa.

Together with “the three official languages (Afrikaans, English and Xhosa)” and “world affairs,” the proposed syllabus for Jongilizwe College laid a heavy stress on “personality training,” “diplomacy,” and “Bantu Law.” These were important because “there will have to be inter-relation between the Transkei and the Republic on a public relations level. And it cannot be expected of a Bantu leader with quite a different social and political background to consult with members of a sophisticated modern European society without the necessary prior training.” ^[93] Descriptions of courses and pedagogic methods echoed Eiselen’s warning that “the Bantu will not tolerate any differential education…[or] any colour bar in real education and that they will not accept the inferior article.” ^[94] At the same time, they left it in no doubt that chiefs and headmen would be treated as an elite in statu ascendi.

Having firmly resisted increasing chiefs’ stipends throughout the segregation era, from 1950 onward the department became noticeably sympathetic to the material needs of chiefs. The vehicle for this solicitous view appears to have been a memorandum by N. J. van Warmelo, the department’s Chief Ethnologist.^[95] In this document, which he drew up in 1948 and tentatively placed on the agenda of a conference of Chief Native Commissioners in 1950, van Warmelo recommended the very practical idea of developing standardized “tribal accounts” for the proposed Bantu Authorities structures. The document contained three main points relating to “better tribal administration, better [judicial] courts and better finances.” The proposal to link these three issues accorded perfectly with Eiselen’s advocacy of “greater responsibilities” for the African protégés he hoped to ensconce in Bantu Authorities; van Warmelo also pointedly noted that it was unreasonable to elevate chiefs without endowing them with the wherewithal “to keep [them] in a decent way fitting to their stations…”; and as Rodseth had observed, because “there had been no tendency, no desire or willingness for the councils to tax themselves,” the new changes should enable chiefs to raise the needed resources but would only succeed if chiefs “had the feeling that the glory was their own.” ^[96] On the other hand, van Warmelo was equally insistent that all revenues falling under the control of chiefs should be scrupulously recorded in “tribal ledgers” that should be regularly inspected by the department.

Van Warmelo’s memorandum appears to have set off an unprecedented concern with the sources and administration of “communal monies.” Although van Warmelo himself was somewhat surprised and disappointed at the light in which his ideas were interpreted by Eiselen and others, the document rapidly marshaled a consensus around the need to enrich chiefs as a way of legitimating the Bantu Authorities. Summarizing this new attitude after reviewing the memorandum, Major Hartmann candidly argued that

We [the DNA] are to blame for the present degrading position of the Chiefs. We now go to the Chiefs with our reclamation schemes and say we want something done about them. These schemes are not popular with the people and, not wanting to alienate himself from his people or the Government, the Chief says he supports the reclamation scheme but asks us to tell the people about it and get them to agree to it. We have interfered so much in tribal matters that today the position of the Chief amounts to nothing at all. In regard to the financial side of the matter I think the proposals in the memorandum are on the right lines.…[But] From what sources will the tribal fund derive its income?^[97]

From what sources indeed?

Responding to this central question, van Warmelo introduced a crucial qualification to the notion that chiefs were poor. Noting that poor chiefs “spend money, and a lot of it” on cars, personal secretaries, and liquor, he outlined what would become a central rationale for the establishment of “tribal funds” controlled by chiefs: “The point is that their people give them money. The individual contributions may be small, but their importance lies in the fact that there is no control over this money. They must learn to manage their finances…”; and if chiefs erred in the initial stages, Eiselen added, then that was healthy evidence that Africans were learning the ropes of “self-government.” ^[98] In its zeal to win chiefs over to the new model, the department quietly downgraded van Warmelo’s insistence that communal funds needed to be closely monitored.

Instead, discussion focused on the possibilities of stimulating locally generated revenues. Officials were well aware that their African functionaries had been adept at using their administrative positions to their personal advantage and that bribery was widespread. Rodseth attributed the pervasiveness of the practice to the minuscule stipends paid to chiefs.^[99] Aware that the department’s hopes were in large measure pinned on them, chiefs may well have concluded that Verwoerd’s policy toward communal revenues amounted to tacit approval of such practices in exchange for their cooperation. In any case, the floodgates to rapacity were opened.

The department itself set the tone by amending the Native Taxation and Development Act to increase the general tax on Africans from £1 to £1.15 in 1956. In the six years after 1955, the annual allowance for the Union’s 550 chiefs and 1,700 headmen was increased from £84,150 to £127,000. The £2,500 for the “Promotion of Efficiency Amongst Chiefs and Headmen” was doubled, while the sum spent on “Presents and Rations” blossomed from £1,000 to £9,000.^[100] “So as to allow the Department greater control over chiefs,” Eiselen notified magistrates in 1956, they should retain the practice whereby the chief’s allowance was split into a “Basic Allowance” and a gradated “Bonus” category tied to the number of taxpayers in the chief’s district, with the maximum bonus attainable “only upon the satisfactory performance of his duties.” A rash of “tribal levies” imposed by Tribal Authorities in the Transkei broke out soon thereafter, reflected in the dramatic increase of such funds from £438,000 in 1958 to £1,014,392 just a year later.^[101] A considerable proportion of these revenues no doubt were used for development projects, but since the “chiefs-in-council” themselves drew up the budget, the large amounts under the inscrutable “Miscellaneous” column tell the tale of thinly concealed misappropriation.

At least some chiefs availed themselves of their restored customary right to demand free labor from their people. Mbeki cites one instance in which the Minister of Bantu Development informed parliament that the cost of building a dam had been reduced from the estimated £15,000 to £1,000 through the use of “communal labor.” An angry swirl of complaints arose about the hardships that these exactions inflicted on people living on the edge of desperate poverty. The van Heerden Commission recorded numerous complaints about brazen corruption among chiefs and headmen, the disabling fines they levied on their opponents, and the levies they imposed on whole communities.^[102]

Officials adopted a blasé attitude toward these practices. Either they pointed out that they fell within the chief’s newly enlarged authority or they contended that such behavior amounted to little more than minor pinpricks that would soon disappear, once Africans became accustomed to positions of responsibility. With maladministration thus protected, chiefs recorded their misdeeds with impunity. In one of numerous similar instances, the Cash Book of a chiefdom records that the local Tribal Authority fined a wrongdoer the sum of seven fowls for a minor offense. The fowls were promptly cooked and consumed, and “the reason given is that members of the trial court had been called off a beer drink and that they still had a crave [sic] for meat.” Kaizer Mantazima personally opened his tribal ledger to a researcher to verify his boast that “during the previous 9 months he had personally collected the total sum of £900 (R1800), being fines from those whom he had found guilty of petty fines in…Cofimvaba and Zalanga.” These fines were so onerous, he boasted, that “beasts were even sold” to meet astronomical fines that averaged between £6 and £15 per person, and he noted that the local jails held only a few inmates. According to the researcher, “hardly any one ever appealed for fear of victimization.” There was little reason for sentences to be appealed because “many instances were related in which headmen or chiefs who were tribal heads and parties to some disputes, sat in judgement over the latter and gave verdicts in their favour.” ^[103]

In the event that an appeal was made to the relevant Regional Authority, the tribal head as an ex officio member of the Court of Appeals could safely rely on fellow chiefs to influence the decision in his favor.^[104] An appeal to a higher authority left commoners vulnerable to ongoing harassment by the Tribal Authority; appellants were routinely exiled “for an unspecified period” or charged afresh with new offenses while the appeal process was in motion.^[105] Commoners were delivered to avaricious chiefs bound, trussed, and virtually gagged by such arrangements. Too poor to afford lawyers to press individual cases in the “European courts,” they submitted to sentences that were frequently out of proportion with the alleged offenses and, as Kaizer Mantazima’s boast illustrates, sometimes ruinous to the viability of their households. A number of sympathetic white lawyers rendered their services pro bono, but such sporadic assistance could not stave off the immensity of the assault launched against the Transkeian population. More frequently, liberal white lawyers charged nominal fees, which, although small, required peasant households to channel money already earmarked for essential purposes toward the coffers of the collective effort.^[106] It was thus impossible for communities to engage legal counsel more than once or twice. In any case, a liberal activist noted, “most of the peasants are terrified to give evidence or even to be seen talking to defence lawyers” and remained cowed by “the hardships suffered by the families of those in prison or on trial.” ^[107] With their erstwhile civil and criminal powers restored to them, chiefs were confident that any infraction of rules already heavily weighted in their favor would be condoned by their administrative superiors in the department. In the event that their authority was challenged from below, they also knew that the state had much riding on the viability of Bantu Authorities. They were confident, therefore, that departmental officials and the police would regularly intervene on their behalf. Thus, many chiefs strutted about like resurrected peacocks, generally creating a climate of intimidation and terror that discouraged commoners from questioning even the most flagrant violation of their rights.

Neither the actual rebellions nor the emergence of incipient administrative alternatives even came close to succeeding. Nevertheless, they made it clear that, apart from the stratum of chiefs and headmen, the consensual grounds that Eiselen had viewed as necessary for the success of the Bantu Authorities were simply lacking. More so than at any time during the segregation era, the National Party government came to view chiefs in mythical terms as the people’s only accredited and popular representatives. This view solidified in the late 1950s and 1960s, not because of a growing faith in its essential historical veracity, but for reasons of administrative and political expediency.