- - -- - LINEAR LIBRARY ', C01 0080 8459 11111 Ull ~11111111 _ _,,1 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL THEORIES OF TRANSKEIAN ADMINISTRATORS IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY A Thesis Submitted For Town The Degree of Master of Arts In the University of Cape Town January 1978 Cape of University by S.J.R. Martin The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgementTown of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Cape Published by the University ofof Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University P R E F A C E This study sets out to examine the order of categories and values, structuring men's thought and perception at a fundamental level although not systematically formulated, in terms of which the Transkeian magistrates viewed the African communities under their governance. It is thus an essay in colonial administration, but the critical focus has been narrowed and is centred primarily upon the ideas and assumptions the magistrates used in the business of ··" administration to explain society, government and law. At the same time, a major concern of this work has been to place the particular problem with which it deals - the elucidation of magisterial ideas and attitudes •within a wider framework of contemporary social and political thought, to fit them into the matrixTown of Victorian culture as it conditioned and shaped the administrators' perceptions and responses touching the indigenous black population. A methodologi­ cal pitfall opens here, of assimilatingCape individual or local currents of ideas to more general patternsof - the 'climate of opinion' or what Matthew Arnold called the 'main movement of mind' of the age; of trying to press disparate, multifarious and often carelessly formu­ lated ideas and assumptions into a conceptual framework or theoreti­ cal construct thatUniversity was independently arrived at and presented as given. The mode of procedure followed was one that allowed the source material to suggest broader patterns and larger perspectives according to which it could be most intelligibly and satisfyingly ordered; one also that wove together various logically independent concepts and general propositions, derived from general studies of the topic and period, and brought them to bear on the Transkeian situation. In this way it is hoped that the main features and con• tours of the magisterial mind have been rendered with as much pre• cision of detail and emphasis as the demands of analytical depth and conceptual rigour would permit. The rather loose sense of period which the title conveys is meant to refer, more or less, to that period of time spanning the annexation of the Transkeian territories, whose extreme points are fixed by the years 1872 and 1894; but the writer has on many occasions strayed beyond these bounds, regarding them as useful markers rather than definitive frontiers. Indeed, these two dates are in only a limited sense major turning points in the history of the Transkei. It can be argued that the extension of white control beyond the Kei was a gradual process, that the course of incorporation by which the African communities were included in the Cape Colony took place across a broad range of aspects, economic, religious, social, as well as political. They are processes which long antedated 1872 and which have continued beyond 1894 up to the present time. The period described as the late nineteenth century spans, in addition, the active careers of four outstanding magistrates, namely Charles Brownlee, Matthew Blyth, Henry Elliot and Walter Stanford; and much of the argument of the work has been developed with special reference to the members of this distinguished quadrumvirate. In constructing this thesis, it was found to fall almost naturally into a tripartite division. The first chapter offers a brief historical introduction to the annexation of the Transkeian territories, a process conceived as an extension of white control in the interests of the stability of the Cape's eastern frontier. The problem of control in the area is considered in its military, politi­ cal and administrative dimensions, and the range of African responses to white encroachment - from passive obstruction to more organized, articulated forms of political resistance ... examined briefly in turn. Chapter two outlines the dominant theoretical framework within which Victorian social thinkers and, by extension, colonial • administrators sought to order their experience and understanding of culture contact: for social evolutionism could accommodate diverse modes of social organization while maintaining the essential unity o~ mankind; without impairing at the same time the absolute validity of western civilization. The conservative respect of the magistrates for traditional social arrangements found institutional expression in the unique 'native territorial system' that was fashioned for the administration of Transkeian Africans in the 1880s and 1890s. This was complemented by a characteristic concern for social reform and progress that would elevate the indigenous people in the cultural scale towards the superior life of western society. Both these con- servative and reformist strains were caught up in and held together by the pervading administrative ethos of a benevolent paternalism, the illiberalism of which is considered specifically in relation to magisterial attitudes to the drink question. Law and the administration of justice in the territories form the substance of chapter three. The issues involved in the recognition and codification of African customary law are discussed with particular reference to magisterial evidence given before and the final report drafted by the Cape Native Laws and Customs Commission of 1883. Thereafter, the judicial structure of resident and chief magistrates' courts established in the Transkei and the legal system enforced there are examined historically as to genesis and development; and from a study of the responses of the Cape officials to the organization of judicial administration are derived some of the central tenets of the magistrates' doctrines of juris­ prudence. Once again, the significance of social evolutionary theory as a conceptual framework within which the administrators attempted to order the interaction of two diverse cultures reappears iri the field of law and justice. For in moulding the legal and judicial systems to the social circumstances of the African people and in harmonizing them with the needs of the society they served, the magistrates in the territories drew upon the categories of current social thought to understand and give effect to the legal requirements of a traditional or rather transitional society newly incorporated in the wbite polity. While accordingly the men on the ground conceded relative merit to tribal laws and customs within the circumstances of the tribesman's time and place, at the same time the absolute validity of western norms and values was reasserted in their characteristically moral appraisal of African customary practices: the relation between law, morality and liberty as estab­ lished by the magistrates being examined in a subsection entitled, familiarly enough, 'Law and the Enforcement of Morals'. In con- clusion, a review is undertaken of major areas of discussion and some significant patterns that emerge overall are highlighted. At this point, I would like to thank Dr. Christopher Saunders and Professor Colin Webb of the History Department and the staff of Special Collections, Jagger Library, for the assistance and encouragement they have given me in the course of research. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS The following abbreviations have been used: C.M. Chief Magistrate C.M.K. Chief Magistrate of Griqualand East Papers C.M.T. Chief Magistrate of the Transkei Papers c.o. Colonial Office Papers Col. Sec. Colonial Secretary C.P.P. Cape Parliamentary Papers memo. memorandum N.A. Native Affairs Department Papers para. paragraph P.M.O. Prime Minister's Office Papers R.M. Resident Magistrate Sec. Secretary S.N.A. Secretary for Native Affairs u.s.N.A. Under Secretary for Native Affairs TABLE 0 F CONTENTS Page Preface List of Abbreviations .I THE ANNEXATION OF l'HE TRANSKEIAN TERRITORIES 1 AND THE POLITICS OF CONTROL i The Extension of White Control East of the Kei, 1 1872-1894 ii The Administrative System of Control in the Transkeian Territories 30 2 SOCIAL EVOLUTIONARY THEORY AND THE POLITICS OF .:51 PATERNALISM i Social Theory 51 ii The 'Native Territorial System' 64 iii Benevolent Paternalism and the Drink Question 84 iv Progress and Social Change 103 3 LAW AND THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE 120 i The Recognition and Codification of African 120 Customary Law ii The Transkeian Judicial System and Magisterial 150 Doctrines of Jurisprudence iii Law and the Enforcement of Morals 178 4 CONCLUSION 192 Appendix - The Transkeian Quadrumvirate: Biographical 198 Sketches Critical Note on Sources 200 Bibliography CHAPTER 0 NE THE ANNEXATION OF THE TRANSKEIAN TERRITORIES AND THE POLITICS OF CONTROL i The Extension of White Control Beyond the Kei, 1872-1894. In 1872 the Cape Colony initiated a cautious forward movement across the Kei that was to draw the clusters of independent African chiefdoms beyond that river within the White polity. 1 By 1894, when Pondoland was at length annexed, the extension of colonial rule over the territories between the Kei and Natal and the progress- ive contraction of this enclave wedged between the two white states had been carried forward to an end, and the Cape and Natal colonial borders met. Already at the beginning of the 1870s, the preconditions of this process of sub-imperialism clearly existed. White influence and white intervention beyond the Cape's eastern boundary was of long standing; and the pressure of the white presence, though of varying intensity, scope and length of time, had probably gone unfelt by none of the traditional societies.