Politics and History in a Bantustan Under Apartheid

The establishment of the Mswati and Mlondozi Regional Authorities in the area provided some land for most of the Swazi chiefs in white areas and made possible the inauguration of the Swazi Territorial Authority in 1976. Chief Mkolishi was elected chairman of the executive committee, despite the fact that he was clearly in the minority on the question of relations with Swaziland. David Lukhele was not elected to the executive committee, but Enos Mabuza became Councillor for Education and Culture.

Within little more than a year a split had occurred over the question of whether KaNgwane, as it now came to be known, should progress to the next stage of Bantustan development, which was self-government with a Legislative Assembly. Sobhuza was known to be opposed to self-government for the homeland as he correctly anticipated that it would create or encourage vested interests which would be hostile to fusion with Swaziland. In resisting this development, Chief Mkolishi was therefore acting in Sobhuza's interests, though his reluctance to sign documents relating to land consolidations may have reflected his own dissatisfaction with arrangements that left his royal village of Mbhuleni outside of KaNgwane. The majority opinion, however, felt that the acquisition of self-governing status would strengthen the bargaining position of KaNgwane with

the South African government. The Territorial Authority voted to remove Chief Mkolishi and replace him with Enos Mabuza. The Legislative Assembly was rapidly constituted and, after litigation with Chief Mkolishi, Mabuza was able to consolidate his position. David Lukhele joined Mabuza's 'cabinet' as member for Justice and Community Affairs.^[121]

Both Mabuza and Chief Mkolishi then proceeded to form political parties. Chief Mkolishi founded the 'Inyatsi ya Mswati' which sought to unite all Swazi so that 'we will . . . be able to press the South African Government for a fair deal in so far as the allocation of land for Swazis is concerned'.^[122] He and a minority of the officially recognized Swazi chiefs campaigned for an ethnically 'pure' KaNgwane and protested at the continued presence in the territory of 'Shangaan' and other minority groups.^[123] It was in 1978 that Chief Mkolishi with ten other chiefs formally petitioned King Sobhuza to begin negotiations on their behalf for their incorporation into Swaziland.^[124]

Chief Mkolishi's failure to obtain the support of more than a minority of the Swazi chiefs was an indication that the appeal to a kind of Swazi chauvinism, which had worked so successfully in Swaziland itself, was out of touch with 'traditional' opinion in South Africa. It also reflected the fears of some chiefs of Dlamini dominance, or more precisely, royal autocracy, as Chief Mkolishi was not able to muster the support of all the Dlamini chiefs. Above all, it reflected doubts about the desirability of union with Swaziland. Chief Mkolishi did his best to exploit his royal status, holding an annual sibhimbi (dance) for several days at Mbhuleni, which in the early 1980s was attended by up to 5000 people. He could not, of course, hold an ncwala ceremony as to do so would be tantamount to rebellion against the Swazi king. On his periodic visits to the Provincial Supreme Court in Pretoria, he was accompanied by busloads of supporters in 'traditional' dress.^[125]

It is probable that Chief Mkolishi's limited power base lay with the rural farm population, such as his own Mbhuleni people, who had been long resident close to the Swaziland border and who identified with Swaziland. Government policy was from the mid-1970s, however, acting to transform sparsely populated highveld sheep farms into vast semi-urban squatter settlements. These were the classic 'dumping grounds' where people were forced to live in appalling conditions with no prospect of local employment. Chief Mkolishi's father had claimed suzerainty over all the Swazi of the Carolina and Middleburg districts and beyond, but the resettled population of the new areas, though nominally Swazi, were often Zulurather than Swati-speaking people who had been cleared from urban 'black spots' such as Doornkop, near Middleburg, and Kromkrans, near Carolina, as well as from farms all over the eastern highveld.^[126]

The paradoxes inherent in Chief Mkolishi's position became evident from 1982 when he emerged as not only the leading South African Swazi advocate of the land deal and chief at Eerstehoek of about 50,000 relocated people, but also as a prominent symbol of resistance to forced relocation. He consistently refused to move himself and three hundred other families, his royal village of Mbhuleni, from land which 'belonged to the Swazi people by history and blood'. He was given three months' notice to move into KaNgwane in October 1983, but he had not done so by August 1984. There is no reason to doubt that he was a sincere advocate of the land deal, but he may also have calculated that such a deal presented the best chance of getting a readjustment to the land dispensation which would preserve his ancestral home.^[127]

The position of Enos Mabuza, who formed the Inyanda National Movement in 1978, was also full of paradox, though he was a more sophisticated exponent of

ethnic politics. He regarded Chief Gatsha Buthelezi as his political mentor, modelled his movement on 'Inkatha', and proclaimed that it welcomed members from all ethnic and racial groups and that it was opposed to discrimination on grounds of 'tribe or clan'. He joined Buthelezi's Black Alliance and rejected both 'independence' for KaNgwane and any deal with Swaziland.^[128] At a later date he stated that he saw KaNgwane as 'a region of South Africa, and not as an independent political entity or a vassal state to be of Swaziland'.^[129] If KaNgwane is 'a region of South Africa', it is clearly an ethnically defined region, and Mabuza's frequent protests that he does 'not believe in ethnicity at all' cannot be taken at face value. In a typical interview he stated: 'I was born in an area where there was a Swazi [royal] kraal, and I speak siSwati, but my existence in South Africa is not different from that of my Zulu, Xhosa or Tswana brothers'.^[130] Mabuza is, however, in his own right a latter-day 'culture broker' who has played a leading part, as a linguist, in the promotion of Swati as a written language and in its introduction into the schools. He has also lent his name to efforts to create for KaNgwane a distinct symbolic identity.

These efforts, which were doubtless masterminded in a South African government department specializing in such work, had a distinctly synthetic air. A 'Mother Culture' was employed to advise on matters of custom and ceremonial. She was somewhat improbably said in South African promotional literature to be consulted on occasion by King Sobhuza himself. The Speaker's mace of the Legislative Assembly was an extraordinary confection of Swazi symbols surmounted by a bronze bowl with gold flame 'symbolizing the strength of Swazi culture'. The problem for Mabuza was that as long as King Sobhuza lived, he had a virtual monopoly of authentic Swazi symbols and could also delegate their use to his man, Chief Mkolishi. Mabuza himself was not immune to the king's charisma, expressing on occasion his respect for him and speaking of maintaining good relations with Swaziland on the 'cultural' level.^[131]

Sobhuza himself had decades of experience in the manipulation of cultural symbols and clearly had no doubt that it would be possible to create an artificial South African Swazi or KaNgwane nationality. It was for this reason that he opposed every stage of Bantustan development. In 1981 he advised a deputation from KaNgwane, including Mabuza, not to press its demand for the granting of the second stage of self-government, as this would 'lead to the Swazis in South Africa becoming independent from their king'. He anticipated that the South African Swazi would not only have their own flag and anthem, but might ultimately appoint their own king and hold their own Ncwala ceremonies.^[132]

There is, of course, no evidence that Mabuza had any such intentions. He does not appear, in the lifetime of King Sobhuza at any rate, to have pressed the claim that the South African Swazi constituted a distinct ethnicity, and his efforts at 'nation-building' seem to have been somewhat half-hearted. This may have reflected his own ambiguity on the issue, but may equally have reflected the uncertainty of the South African government as to whether it should promote KaNgwane on the road to 'independence' or seek a deal with Swaziland. Such a deal, envisaged by the Tomlinson Commission in 1955, and provided for in the consolidation proposals of 1972, was a long time in maturing. The independence of Mozambique in 1975, and the subsequent upsurge of activity by, and support for, the ANC undoubtedly increased the interest of some elements within the South African government for such a deal, as did the failure of the 'independent' Transkei, and other Bantustans, to achieve recognition internationally.

There was, however, some tension within the government and the Nationalist party on this issue. Successive ministers responsible for Bantustan affairs, M.C.

Botha and Dr Piet Koomhof, were unenthusiastic and continued to press for Bantustan development as late as 1980, although discussions on border adjustments had evidently started in the mid-1970s. In the end, it was the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr Pik Botha, and strategic planners, who pressed for the deal, not only as a step towards a 'constellation of states' but also as a way of 'incorporating' Swaziland and reducing the threat of infiltration by the ANC through the country. Swaziland is, from a strategic point of view, a part of the Transvaal and has a border with South Africa which is as long as that of Mozambique.^[133]

It became clear in 1984 that the land deal had been offered to Swaziland as an inducement to sign a secret non-aggression pact, under the terms of which Swaziland would clamp down on ANC activities. The agreement, signed in February 1982, was a precursor of the Nkomati Accord with Mozambique of March 1984, which, if it held, would reduce the value of the deal with Swaziland and allow South Africa to renege on its commitment without serious strategic loss. It is too early to assess the significance of the dissolution of the Rumpff Commission in June 1984 and Dr Koornhof's announcement that South Africa did not intend to proceed with the land deal in the immediate future, but it is safe to say that South Africa's ultimate actions will be dictated by its own strategic self-interest and considerations of realpolitik .^[134] No government has had more experience in the cynical manipulation of ethnicity, and it was no doubt aware that a plausible ethnic case could be made both for and against the land deal, though its validity in terms of international law was open to serious question.

Once the land deal became a practical possibility, if not a probability, in 1982, Enos Mabuza was forced to argue against it in ethnic terms. It was only then, and following the death of King Sobhuza in August 1982, that he appears to have maintained explicitly that the South African Swazi had become a distinct ethnicity and that there had been since the mid-nineteenth century a 'divergence between the two groups such that each has developed an independent socio-economic and political character of its own'. He went on to argue that many of the Dlamini chiefs in the eastern Transvaal had come there as refugees or rebels rather than as an integral part of the Swazi nation, and that the history of the Ngomane, Mkhatjwa and Mahlalela clans was 'completely independent of the Dlamini dynasty and domain'. The latter arguments were, to say the very least, controversial, and he had to concede that the 'military outposts' of Mbhuleni, Mjindini and Mekemeke had 'a direct relationship with the Swazi monarchy'.^[135]

He maintained that with the establishment of the KaNgwane Legislative Assembly in 1977 the South African Swazi had been recognized as an autonomous political unit with 'their own country, KaNgwane'. He rejected the South African government's claim that the land deal would 'bring together those who belonged together' and asked whether this principle had been applied in granting separate independence to the Transkei and Ciskei. He also asked whether the South African Swazi were the only 'national group' which overlapped into an adjacent independent state outside South Africa and cited the cases of the Xhosa, the Southern Sotho, the Tswana, and the 'Shangaan-Tsonga'.^[136]

These arguments were countered by David Lukhele, who had parted company with Mabuza in 1981 and joined forces with Chief Mkolishi as an advocate of the land deal in 1982. Lukhele neatly inverted Mabuza's historical argument by maintaining that most of those who opposed the land deal were not Swazi, but 'Shangaan' or Sotho. The opposition of undeniably Swazi chiefs, such as Chief Tikhontele Dlamini of Mekemeke, was put down to their feeling that the land deal had not gone far enough. He dismissed the socio-economic argument as fallacious

and maintained that the Swazi were being divided in the interests of the personal ambitions of politicians who were the creation of the South African government. There could be only one Swazi nation and the Swazi had no desire to be divided like the Xhosa and the Tswana.^[137]

Both Mabuza and Lukhele were guilty of special pleading, but Lukhele was clearly unable to explain, except through the self-defeating argument that the population was not Swazi, why it was that a majority of the chiefs and others who had engaged in Bantustan politics were opposed to the deal. The suggestion that they were government puppets was difficult to sustain as they were opposing its policy. Nor did Lukhele produce a convincing refutation of the socio-economic argument, which Mabuza himself did not elaborate. It is a truism that Bantustan politics are elite politics. Support for Mabuza may have been broadened by his opposition to the land deal, but his original power base lay in the small business and professional class which emerged in the planned towns of the Nsikazi reserve, which was finally reprieved from excision in 1977.^[138] Such people had established vested interests in the Bantustan which could only be threatened by a land deal with Swaziland where salaries were lower and business opportunities were tightly controlled by an established elite. Mabuza also had the support of prominent Swazi businessmen operating in Pretoria and on the Witwatersrand, such as A.J. Sibanyoni and Ephraim Tshabalala (not the Soweto 'millionaire' of the same name), who were the first directors of the KaNgwane Economic Development Corporation, established in 1979.^[139] Witwatersrand-based businessmen may have seen participation in Bantustan affairs as providing salaries, status, possible business opportunities, including the chance to acquire freehold land, as well as protection, through collaboration with the system, for their insecurely based urban ventures. They are most unlikely to have supported a deal which would almost inevitably undermine their position in the towns.

For the mass of the population of KaNgwane who were totally dependent either on commuting or labour migration to the towns and farms of 'white' South Africa there could be no possible advantage in the deal. Even less could it benefit the majority of the South African Swazi who remained outside KaNgwane in the central and eastern Transvaal. To such people, ethnic politics were, if not an irrelevance, certainly a luxury. Mabuza's stated commitment to the maintenance of a unitary South Africa, even if it was to be like Seme's vision of 1912, a South Africa composed of ethnic building blocks, reflected harsh socio-economic realities. The conclusion of the land deal is now, following the installation of the new king of Swaziland, Mswati II, in April 1986, and the disgrace of Prince Mfanasibili and pro-deal members of the Liqoqo, most unlikely. But if it were concluded, it would in all likelihood result in ethnic tensions between South African Swazi and the Swazi of Swaziland, for it would result not only in 'denationalization' and the loss of citizenship, which had in any case been compromised by the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act of 1970, but also loss of livelihood.

If the majority of the South African Swazi can be presumed to have been opposed to the land deal, it is equally difficult to see what the Swazi of Swaziland stood to gain from it. There is no doubt that for King Sobhuza 'border adjustments' meant the reclamation of the land of his ancestor, Mswati, and the reunification of his people. It is, however, by no means certain that he was satisfied with the terms of the deal as they emerged in June 1982, leaving in South Africa, as they did, the royal villages of Mbhuleni, Mjindini and Mekemeke.^[140] He made no reference to the deal in his last public speech on 22 July 1982, just a few weeks before his death. Some of Swaziland's leaders may have seen little to lose in

closer identification with South Africa, the bastion of capitalism in the region. Some civil servants may have been attracted by higher South African salaries and a larger field for their activities, but many of Swaziland's leaders, including King Sobhuza's last prime minister, Prince Mabandla, had doubts if only on grounds of security and Swaziland's probable loss of international status. They did not all relish the prospect of becoming South Africa's policemen in the rounding up of members of the ANC, towards whom Sobhuza had always been sympathetic, conscious as he was of his family's leading part in its founding. It is impossible, at this stage, to unravel the Byzantine intricacies of the succession crisis which followed Sobhuza's death, and which saw the gazetting of the Liqoqo as the 'Supreme Council of State' and the removal first of Prince Mabandla and then of the Queen Mother, Dzeliwe, but it is clear that disagreement over the land deal was one factor in the imbroglio.^[141]

If the land deal were to go ahead, Swaziland would acquire, apart from the dubious advantage of access to the sea at Kosi Bay, a relatively small area of undeveloped and disease-ridden territory with a relatively dense de facto population and a de jure population of close to one million people. Several hundred thousand people, who had been forcibly relocated on Swaziland's borders in nominally rural, but practically urban slums, would become part of its population. The probability was that it would become a dumping ground for more of South Africa's 'surplus' population. It would lose its much-prized ethnic homogeneity with the addition of significant ethnic minorities in the Nsikazi and Ingwavuma areas. The degree of compatibility between the Swazi of South Africa and those of Swaziland was in itself clearly in doubt.