Peasants and Politics in the Western Transvaal, 1920-1940
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PEASANTS AND POLITICS IN THE WESTERN TRANSVAAL, 1920-1940 G.N. SIMPSON PEASANTS AND POLITICS IN THE WESTERN TRANSVAAL, 1920-1940 Graeme Neil Simpson A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. Johannesburg 1986 DECLARATION I declare that this thesis is my own, unaided work. It is being submitted for the degree of Master of Arts in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. It has not been submitted before for any degree or examination in any other University Graeme Neil Simpson 5 August 1986 ii ABSTRACT This thesis examines the political and ideological struggles within Tswana chiefdoms in the Rustenburg district of the Western Transvaal in the period 1920 - 1940. This period was characterized by a spate of struggles against tribal chiefs which took on similar forms in most of the chiefdoms of the district. These challenges to chiefly political authority reflected a variety of underlying material interests which were rooted in the process of class formation resulting from the development of capitalist relations of production within the wider society. Despite the variations in material conditions in the different chiefdoms of the district, the forms of political and ideological resistance were very similar. The thesis examines the extent of the influences of Christian missions and national political organisations in these localized struggles, and also explores the relationship between chiefs, Native Affairs Department officials and the rural African population in the context of developing segregationalist ideology during the inter-war period. iii PREFACE This thesis was originally born out of a desire to extend and expand on the research which I did in the course of my B.A. (Hons.) Dissertation. (Simpson, G.N., 'The Political and Legal Contradictions in the Preservation and Dissolution of the Precapitalist mode of Production : The Fokeng Disturbances, 1921-6', B.A. (Hons.) Dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand (1981).) Whilst doing research into the Fokeng chiefdom in the 1920s, I became aware of a massive correspondence within the Native Affairs files (N.T.S.) which dealt in some detail with other remarkably similar disputes in other chiefdoms of the Rustenburg district. This then, was the first basic reason for undertaking a study of Peasants and Politics in the Western Transvaal, 1920-1940; the raw material was readily available, (well not quite - the fact that the N.T.S. files are closed after 1934 meant that I had to ask permission to see most of the relevant material, and this took some time in coming) and indeed had hardly been explored. From that point on, I simply allowed the documents to dictate the direction. Although it is not always explicit, this thesis provides a comprehensive critique of my earlier work. Not only does it offer very different interpretations of the events at Phokeng, but the method and analytical framework are different to, and critical of, those which I used before. The absence of much secondary literature on Rustenburg district, other than Relly's short thesis (Relly 1978) and the occasional reference in some of Bradford's work, meant iv firstly, that this thesis would fill a gap in the rural history of South Africa, but that the study would face the difficult problem of 'isolation' and a lack of source material as a basis for comparison. As a result the source of comparative analysis tended to shift to internal comparisons between chiefdoms within the district. This proved to be very fruitful. In the process of examining the correspondence, I happened upon the court evidence of two cases in the Supreme Court, one dealing with the Fokeng dispute and one with the Kwena ba Mogopa struggle. This court evidence provided an extremely rich and detailed insight into the consciousness of some of the leading protagonists in the struggles of the district, and formed the basis of the case studies of these two chiefdoms in chapters four and five. Coming out of these two court cases was a particular emphasis and focus on the questions of political authority and legal process and the relationship between, politics, law, ideology and 'customary' control over material resources. This particular emphasis provided the second main intervention of this thesis in its discussion of the relationship between political struggle and the legal process. Although in this respect there was some excellent anthropological work to refer to, (Comaroff (1977) and Comaroff and Roberts (1981)), I am not familiar with any previous examination of these processes in concrete struggles, (except perhaps in the works of Snyder (1981)). This factor has made the work very interesting and exciting for me, but has also severely limited the basis for comparison between the Rustenburg struggles and struggles elsewhere in the country. V . A detailed comparative approach has therefore been less possible in some of the chapters than others. As a general rule, the comparison between localized peasant studies, although interesting, is not always useful, except to prove that local circumstances varied considerably in rural South Africa in almost every period. Nonetheless, in this context I would like to mention the works of William Beinart on Pondoland (1982) and the Herschel district (Feb. 1984). I found these works to be inspiring as well as practically useful. They have informed both the method and analytical framework which I have attempted to apply to the analysis of the Rustenburg district. Although the material circumstances and political struggles in Pondoland and Herschel were distinct from those in Rustenburg, Beinart's approach is one which I found particularly fruitful. Obviously, only I can be held responsible for the final product, however. Extensive reading in the Journal of Peasant Studies and the Journal of South African Studies has also provided a source of comparison (and a means of assessing my analytical method) which is not always explicit within the text itself. However, I have attempted in the introductory chapter to situate this thesis in the context of the wider literature, both in order to develop a theoretical framework which embroiders the historical analysis which follows and in order to specify the method which is being applied in the later chapters. vi Ultimately, the particular focus on traditionally rooted legal disputes does limit the extent of my comparative analysis of the empirical data, especially in chapters four and five which deal most thoroughly with these disputes themselves. However, the centrality of chiefly control within these disputes, and the relationship between chiefs and the state administration, does facilitate broader discussion in the context of developments in other parts of the country and in relation other secondary literature, such as Rogers (1933) and Dubow (1986). The vast bulk of empirical information and arguments presented in this work are drawn from primary sources, in particular the large quantity of unexplored correspondence in the Native Affairs files which relates to the Rustenburg district. This thesis tells a story of political struggle. The background and underlying motivating forces are provided in the material conditions analysed and explained in chapter two. Chapter three examines the early struggles in the district and briefly discusses the influence (or lack of it) of national poliical organisations on the local politics in the Tswana chiefdoms and draws some comparisons with other areas of the Transvaal. Chapters four and five follow a general chronological pattern and tell the tale of the struggles in the Fokeng and Kwena ba Mogopa chiefdoms. These chapters contain a great deal of narrative history which in many respects 'speaks for itself' in outlining the complex and intriguing conflicts between rural peasants,, chiefs and white administrators. The second last chapter examines the particular influences of Christianity and mission education on the politics of the Rustenburg chiefdoms and vii draws some comparisons with mission involvement in Pondoland. The brief conclusions in chapter seven are founded on an interpretation of the information in the intervening chapters and are based on the analytical framework developed in the introduction. The overall product is hoped to be a contribution to the very extensive literature on the nature of peasant politics. This thesis does not attempt to develop generalised conclusions from the very specific local circumstances examined. If anything, the contribution of this study is in its attempt to examine the local, introverted politics of an understudied region of rural South Africa. Acknowledgements The list of people who helped to make this research thesis possible is endless. Needless to say, the list of those that I am about to mention is undoubtedly incomplete. I hope no-one is offended. I must first thank the Human Sciences Research Council for providing finances which made this research possible, and the personnel at the State Archives in Pretoria who were extremely helpful and who enabled me to secure access to 'closed' files through an application to the Department of Co-operation and Development. Most importantly, I would like to thank Prof. Phillip Bonner for endless patience and tolerance in supervising this M.A. thesis. It is just as well that he was not open to either bribery or begging, or this thesis would never have been completed. I would also like to express sincere appreciation to him for a great deal of sensitivity and understanding in respect of my non-academic commitments which often got in the way. My gratitude also to Thea Jarvis who did my typing and who will surely go to heaven. I must acknowledge and thank the African Studies Institute of the University of the Witwatersrand and Belinda Bozzoli who provided me with access to material which I would otherwise have gone without. I must also thank Stefanie Sycholt for translating the mission records for me at an exceptionally low cost.