Adam Ashforth : RECONSTRUCTING AN IMPERIAL STATE

Facing a Hazardous Future

I t now seems highly likely that within the Africanist revolutionaries is more or less near future, some say within the coming year, a inevitable, and may even suit the new regime new will be inaugurated in South as a way of demonstrating evenhandedness and Africa. For any new constitution to gain a statesmanship. More problematic for the new semblance of legitimacy either locally or regime, however, will be repressing Zulu internationally, it will have to look something nationalism and the township youth. And more like a liberal democracy with social welfare generally troubling will be the routine coercion ambitions; majority rule within a unified state. brought to bear upon unauthorized "squatters" There should also be some system built into the and illegal immigrants. constitution for preservation of "minority" Zulu nationalism is, and will continue to be, rights, perhaps through geographical represen- a powerful political force in . tation of communities, although there will not Most discussions of the extent of support, or be any language in the document that recalls lack of it, for the of the "group rights" of . There will Zulu chief Gatsha Buthelezi miss the point that probably also be some system of strengthened in Zululand (and I use the colonial denotation regional government. Basic property rights of advisedly) there are all the seeds of a powerful market capitalism will, in all likelihood, be and divisive nationalism. It may not be a sanctified as well. monolithic political ideology even within the In this same not-too-distant time, shortly rural areas of where the after the ceremonies celebrating the inaugural has its heartland, but the Zulu nation is government of the New South Africa, two composed of many thousands of people who events laden with historical irony will occur. A are prepared to die in its name. That this may black South African president, probably Nelson not seem particularly rational to people who do Mandela, and his Minister for Police will order not share such commitments is beside the a predominantly Afrikaner security force to point. suppress radical Afrikaner nationalists. At It is important to note that however much about the same time, or shortly thereafter, the ideas about Zulu identity may be contested, same leadership will order a crackdown on there is a powerful commitment to nationhood militant Africanist groups. among many Zulu-speaking people, which in a Similar circumstances arose in the early fundamental sense is culturally prior to the years of the Union of South Africa, when the political representations of that nation in the Boer leaders called upon their former enemies Inkatha Freedom party. Zulu nationalism does the Imperial British troops to help suppress not reduce to the Inkatha Freedom party, brother Afrikaner strikers and rebels. In the especially now that that group is so compro- 1990s suppression of the diehard and mised by revelations of secret funding by the

370 • DISSENT South Africa

South African Defense Force and the role of Inkatha warlords in factional violence. That is to say, Buthelezi and his cronies are in many ways captives of Zulu nationalism as well as creators of it. Any regime that attempts to suppress such nationalism in the name of the inclusivist vision of a South African nation that has animated much of the anti-apartheid struggle risks civil war. Any political move- ment that can mobilize support of Zulu- speakers throughout the country, the largest single ethnic group, is a force to be reckoned with. Currently Inkatha looks like it has failed in this ambition, but the more that group is seen to have disgraced the proud Zulu heritage, the more fertile the field for a resurgent national- ism.

Can a Singular Political Community Emerge? Virtually all of the prescriptions for transform- ing social relations produced by the major parties in the south of Africa are framed in terms of a project of nation building. All of the government can justly claim authority unless it proposals that can be entertained for constitu- is based on the will of the people." Many tion making presume the creation of a national radical Africanists have objected to this propo- civil society, even if some people are becoming sition on the grounds that it gives equal validity more pessimistic that such a society can be to whites' claims to the land. But few have legislated into existence. But is it possible to raised serious questions about what "South create within the boundaries of present-day Africa" or "the people" might mean in this South Africa a singular national political context. South Africa is quite simply the community? Can a nation be built, fashioned territory bounded by the borders of the according to the Western European templates ; the people are those who live there. that overlaid the great nineteenth-century polit- Yet the Republic of South Africa is not simply ical ideologies of nationalism, liberalism, and a sovereign national state with racially restric- socialism? One way to address these questions tive voting laws and a history of institutional- is to examine the geographies of state power ized racism such as characterized the U.S. and capitalism within the region. Another is to South. examine whether there are symbols around which all people living inside the boundaries can build a positive sense of identity as citizens South Africa is an imperial state. By this I do of something called South Africa. not just mean that it is a product of European Fundamental to social transformation in the imperialism, nor just that the Boers have been south of Africa are questions of boundaries: colonialists in and destabilizing ag- geopolitical, economic, and cultural. The first gressors in the region. Nor am I just restating proposition of the , the 1955 the now-discredited theory of "internal colo- declaration of nonracial democracy embraced nialism" with its emphases on modes of by the ANC (African National Congress) and production and economic exploitation (al- others, is that "South Africa belongs to all who though I would suggest that the notion of live in it, black and white, and that no is worth revisiting, especially in

SUMMER • 1992 • 371 South Africa regard to the experiences of people subject to ness of the system of domination that was the South African state). And I certainly do not forged into the Union of South Africa at the mean to give credence to the stupid "separate beginning of the twentieth century, the development" fantasies of Afrikaner national- structures of which remain largely in place ism, the doctrines of apartheid, or the repellent today. There is a widespread tendency, too, to lunacies of the white right wing. view the establishment of capitalism in the The South African state is imperial in at region as inevitable and to presume that the least two important senses. First, the geograph- geographies of capital are coincident with the ical core of state power, the populations and geographies of power within the state. In resources that form its primary fiscal base, is retrospect it may appear that white domination not coincident with the range of coercive in a unified national state was inevitable. Yet reach. The majority of people living inside even with the backing of Imperial Britain the the boundaries of the republic (including the early rulers did not have the resources to so-called "Independent National States") are subject all Africans within the region to their superfluous to the requirements of capital and power. The sociospatial distributions that state power. Put crudely, they will never be became fixed at the end of the nineteenth called upon to work for wages or to face century into a framework of , re- death in the name of the state (or offer their serves, and protectorates represented the sons and brothers to do so). Second, the outcome of a long history of wars, alliances, republic claims over territories treaties, deals, and dirty tricks. There was wherein reside people with potentially strong nothing inevitable about the emergence of a claims to separate nationhood. There are national South Africa. numerous groups of people living under the Some African kingdoms were better able to South African state who could exercise a protect their territories during the nineteenth- claim to nationhood in the face of central century conquest of the interior than others. power. At present the Boers and the Zulus are The Basotho under King Moshoeshoe, for the most insistent of these peoples. But it instance, through skillful warfare and diplo- would be very foolish to presume that there macy were able to gain recognition from the are not others who could resurrect memories British and "Protectorate" status. Thus the of precolonial identities, or that such claims tiny mountain country of is an are merely a product or legacy of apartheid independent state, even as it is totally that can be easily dismissed. Moreover, the dependent economically upon exporting labor symbols available celebrating a positive sense to South African industry and totally at the of difference in this context are generally mercy of the South African military. Simi- more powerful than those proclaiming an larly, the Swazi kingdom retained its sover- inclusive identity. eignty under British protection while the more Only the African National Congress and its powerful Zulu kingdom was conquered by the Communist Party (SACP) allies have a tradi- imperial armies. Until the 1950s, there was a tion of inclusive nationalism, dating from the presumption amongst the South African ruling 1940s (the SACP was first with its "Native classes that these territorial enclaves of Republic" manifesto). The ANC is currently (Lesotho) and Swaziland, along the most popular political movement in South with Bechuanaland, would be incorporated Africa; it is also the most popular South into the union. In many ways they served as African political movement outside that coun- models for the Afrikaner nationalists' schemes try. If the ANC gained office within the state, of apartheid. By the 1960s, however, they however, the leadership would still have to were granted independence because, contrary reconcile its inclusivist claims with those to original intentions, the British were com- nations upholding a strongly particularist and pelled to accede to the wishes of their exclusivist vision of their identity. inhabitants. Most popular readings of South African Until the late nineteenth century, much of history tend to underestimate the precarious- southern African history could be told as a

372 • DISSENT South Africa story of complex and protracted turf wars. But Coercing African Labor diamond and gold mining changed all of that. By the end of the century, the region was far One of the primary preoccupations of policy- too important to the global capitalist economy makers throughout the twentieth-century his- to be left to the locals. In a final and brutal tory of the South African state has been the exercise of coercive power (known by the question of securing African labor. Indeed, British as the "Boer War," by the Boers as the legitimating the coercion and control of African "Second War of Freedom," and by others as people as a source of labor has been a the "South African War"), the British imperial fundamental factor in structuring the South government set about subordinating all political African state. The concern with labor generally communities in the region and constructing a had three aspects: first, devising strategies and central state. justifications for coercing and inducing Afri- Creating this state required both a practical cans to sell their labor in the capitalist negotiation of central power with the existing economy; second, controlling the allocation of power centers in the region, political as well as labor between sectors of production; and third, economic, African as well as settler. Boers ensuring the exploitability and reducing the were incorporated with British into a single cost of labor. (more-or-less) democratic political community. For most of the time until the 1970s, these African kingdoms were incorporated into the policies were devised in a context of general- governing structures through a modified ized labor shortage. Since the 1960s, and scheme of indirect rule and recognition of increasingly throughout the 1980s, there have certain political authorities within the "tribal been more people seeking to labor in South system." Under this scheme , acting African capitalism than the number of available through local commissioners, assumed an jobs. Throughout this period, structures of state overlordship in the name of a fictional power such as the "Homelands," which had "Supreme Chief." The mining industry was the originally been understood in terms of strate- power behind the throne. gies for extracting cheap labor supplies from If those parts of the African population indigenous African societies, were transformed that were progressively integrated into the into dumping grounds for people deemed capitalist economy had been incorporated "surplus" to the requirements of South African into the political community in the ways capitalism. working classes were elsewhere, a fully Apartheid was pre-eminently a racist system national state might have been created in of controls on movement and residence, framed South Africa. They were not. A division of in a state ideology interpreting political and citizenship and sovereignty marked by race social rights in terms of nationalist principles and serving to justify coercive labor practices relating people to places. According to this and white supremacist racism was created scheme, different nations were entitled to instead. Yet the dreams of political and social sovereignty over their own homelands, and segregationists have always foundered on the members of these nations were entitled to rights rocks of economic integration. The resulting only in these homelands. In international state that has been formed over the last terms, apartheid is the norm, not the exception. century or so in the south of Africa is part The United States Immigration and Naturaliza- imperial and part national. And the experi- tion Service, for example, with its myriad of ences of those subject to its various aspects largely unaccountable (from the perspective of are fundamentally different. The vast majority those subject to it) and frequently demeaning of Africans in the region have experienced procedures, rules, and paperwork and its central state power as an alien imposition. network of offices and operatives resembles The imperial state has excluded and brutalized nothing so much as the pass system of its subject African populations, fostering a apartheid. More than a million illegal immi- sense of alienation and a desire to destroy its grants are apprehended and removed each year; structures. all others who would seek to enter and work in

SUMMER • 1992 • 373 South Africa the United States must have their passports Africans from the capitalist heartlands of the stamped and are subject to a system of control republic. over movement and residence. The apartheid system both controlled and For more than a century labor migration to obscured patterns of movement that had been in South Africa, especially to the mines, has been existence for many generations over the last an integral feature of life in the southern century. Most of the repressive structures of the African region as far north as present-day apartheid state originated in schemes to limit . In 1960 there were some 486,400 and control the urbanization of African work- registered "foreign" migrants from neighbor- ers. In recent years, however, the urbanization ing states into South Africa on short-term labor of Africans has been taking place at an extremely rapid rate. In the absence of contracts. By 1984, this figure had dropped to repressive controls, large-scale movements of 79,025. This drop is explained in large part population can take place across national because the mining industry, by far the biggest boundaries as well as within the republic. Most employer of migrants, "internalized" its labor of the present populations of Lesotho, force while neighboring "frontline" states , Swaziland, , and started restricting recruitment of their citizens. have at least the language skills necessary to In the 1990s employment within the mining seek work in the urban areas of South Africa. sector is contracting, with low-grade mines Many can enter pre-existing networks of being closed and migrant workers being laid migrant communities. But many will encounter off. At the same time as the figures for the run-of-the-mill ethnic conflicts over jobs "registered" labor migrants are falling, arrests and scarce resources that abound in urban areas and deportations of "illegal" migrants and everywhere. Immigrants from Mozambique refugees are soaring. Even for very poor people can look forward to a very tough time in places in South Africa, the opportunities are greater like Soweto, where the minority Shangaan- than for many other Africans outside the speaking population already occupies the bot- republic. Refugees and migrants could start tom of the pile of ethnic stereotypes. moving into a free democratic and nonracial Whatever constitutional arrangements are South Africa in numbers heretofore undreamed ultimately worked out for the political system of. in South Africa, there are certain structures of In the world's wealthiest states of Western political and cultural power that will persist. Europe, Japan, and the United States ever These will either have to be incorporated into increasing numbers of "illegal" immigrants are any future state, thereby compromising the forming a subproletariat that does not have, and appearances of a decisive break with the never will have, the political, social, and apartheid past, or will have to be sidelined, economic rights of citizens. And although the thereby compromising the effectiveness of militaristic nationalism of the wealthiest states policymaking in the rural areas or creating is perhaps diminishing, the economic bound- nodes of resistance that could become ex- aries distinguishing their full citizens from pressed in terms of nationalism. Among the impoverished outsiders are being strengthened. most complicated of these are those connected Even while the Berlin Wall was falling, the with the "traditional leaders" in the home- United States government was building an iron lands. wall along its southern border with Mexico. Since at least the 1920s, chiefs have been And the declaration that refugees from the drawn increasingly into the government of turmoil in Haiti are "economic" is considered African people in the rural areas. With the grounds for forced removal of tens of thou- Bantu Authorities system instigated in the sands of people back to a precarious fate on 1960s, the position of chief became ever more that island. The irony of nation building in regulated and dependent on the authorities in South Africa is that the most powerful appeal the Native Affairs Department in . to a sense of national commonality may rest on Many chiefs were deposed by the apartheid the naked self-interest of excluding other government and replaced with stooges who

374 • DISSENT South Woo could be relied upon to carry out government speeches, sought to emphasize the African edicts. But many of the chiefs were struggling roots of the congress movement. to make the best out of a bad situation and The ANC is increasingly presenting itself as retained the loyalty and support of their the umbrella organization for homeland leaders subjects. The bureaucrats and official ethnolo- and chiefs in contradistinction to Inkatha, gists who had to deal with these leaders were, which is portrayed as sectional and tribalistic. and are, constantly negotiating the necessity of But this is a difficult and dangerous strategy, recognizing their authority while at the same and while most of the homeland rulers are time trying to control it. pledging allegiance to the ANC and its policy of dismantling the homelands, many of them are at the same time building up the political Political Authority and Traditional Leaders movements through which they mobilize sup- There are many people in rural South Africa port locally. In this they follow the lead of who feel a profound sense of allegiance to Chief Buthelezi. Some, namely Lucas Man- traditional leaders. There are also many gope in Bophutatswana and in the self-serving impostors in positions of chief who (who was initially greeted as a savior have little legitimacy among their subjects. when he toppled the Sebe regime) are girding This situation is extraordinarily complex their forces to go it alone. around the country, and contestation over the authority of chiefs in some instances involves generations-old struggles. In 1989 the Congress The situation with "traditional leaders" is of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Con- especially complex because in practically every tralesa) was established by a group of activists instance where there is an official incumbent in involved with the United Democratic Front. the position of "chief" there is often one or Contralesa is now an ANC-aligned body more challenger. Incumbents are backed by the attempting to garner support for the democratic financial and coercive power of Pretoria and movement while countering the claims of the particular homeland government (buttressed Inkatha and similar movements for chiefly by the authority of the official ethnologists' loyalties. Contralesa's strategy for democratiz- readings of lineage and domain). Challengers ing the chieftainship is to combine recognition draw chiefly on the authority of oral traditions, of hereditary chiefs with popularly elected resistance to apartheid, and popular support. advisory councils and build them into a system Last year in , for example, impover- of local government in the rural areas. ished villagers in Sekhukuneland managed to The ANC's rising interest in homeland risk hundreds of thousands of rands in legal leaders and traditional chiefs was well illus- fees in order to mount a court challenge to the trated last year at the June 16th Uprising individual installed as "Paramount Chief " of commemoration rally in Soweto. Unlike the the Pedi by the Lebowa Government. Fortu- previous year, when the first June 16th rally nately they won their challenge, thus avoiding since the unbanning of the liberation move- financial catastrophe. ments saw a celebration of rambunctious It is frequently forgotten in discussions of the youthful militancy, the 1991 rally was a sedate "new South Africa" that half of the population affair bringing to the platform an array of lives in those rural areas that were once called chiefs and homeland leaders. , "Native Reserves," then "," then a son of the royal house of the Tembu, arrived "Homelands," then "Black States," then at the First National Bank Stadium in his red "National States." Fifty-seven percent of South Mercedes Benz (a gift from workers at the African women live in these regions. These Mercedes plant in East London) accompanied rural people are the poorest, least powerful, by Xhosa praise-singers in a Cadillac limou- and most vulnerable section of the population. sine. His circuit of the arena was accompanied They are for the most part dependent on by amplified praises in traditional style. The remittances of wages from migrant workers in whole performance of the rally, as well as the urban areas and mines. They are easily

SUMMER • 1992 • 375 South Mica ignored. In the mostly desperate conditions of were determined to defend their community by the so-called "Homelands," access to the burning the hostels and forcing the "Zulus back resources necessary to sustain life has for to Kwa Zulu." They were little aware or generations been governed by corruption and concerned about the fact that remittances from patronage. These relationships will not disap- these men's pitiful wages are most often the pear overnight. Moreover, the danger is that difference between life and death for rural new and possibly corrupt forms of local power families. will arise in the rural areas to fill the gap left by the old. Complexities Structurally speaking, the rural peoples of southern Africa can have but little power within The complexity of the new settlement and any state. They do not control productive movement patterns that have emerged in the resources or capital. Their labor is surplus to last half dozen or so years since the pass system the needs of the formal economy. They live and antisquatting regulations broke down in the subject to repressive regimes whose capacities republic are very poorly understood. In the for coercion are economically dependent upon Witwatersrand, the area around , the central state. Their only source of power it is estimated that nearly half of the population comes from the creation of a sense of lives in shacks. Outside there is a huge commonality between themselves and those sprawling shack city known as Inanda with a who do control the productive and destructive population exceeding half a million and resources within the state. Or they can mobilize probably approaching one million people. that power which comes from people who are Nationally the number of people living in prepared to face death in the name of a political shacks or "informal housing" probably exceeds community. the total number of white people in the country. One of the ironies of the fighting between Within these "informal" settlements, control migrant workers in urban hostels and township over access to space and essential resources residents on the Witwatersrand in recent years such as water quickly becomes subject to the is that it made plausible one of the last-ditch patronage of people who control the means of strategies of the era of apartheid, that of violence and who can establish links with dividing the urban and rural populations. Many outside authorities to protect the settlement and urban dwellers have completely lost contact draw resources to it. With the exception of with the rural areas from whence their Inkatha, none of the political movements has ancestors migrated; many others are themselves made much headway in the complex mire of recent arrivals from the rural areas. Culturally, squatter politics. Inkatha has done this only by the urban-rural divide is fraught with all the forming alliances with the corrupt controllers misunderstanding, resentment, and arrogance of black local governments. that urbanites heap on provincials the world Young men in the established, or "formal," over. black townships, the principal combatants in As Africans in the urban townships experi- the battles with apartheid's repressive machin- ence increasing levels of unemployment, the ery, have a different story. They have come of plight of rural people, which is frequently more age within a culture of anti-apartheid struggle dire, can seem unimportant. For instance, the and resistance. Any new regime will have to vigor with which many township residents on incorporate them in more or less formal and the Witwatersrand were prepared to call for the bureaucratized political structures where they dismantling of the hostels and removal of the will discover the limitations of local branch migrants back to Natal revealed how easily the meetings. The glory days of "the Struggle" are antipathies between urban and rural could be already over. Many young people are actively aggravated, especially among urban youths participating in branches of the Youth League, with little understanding of conditions in the writing reports, passing motions, and recording rural areas. Many of the young men I talked minutes. But I also know young comrades who with during the first bout of warfare in Soweto are in the business of stealing weapons from

376 • DISSENT South Africa policemen; for them the war with Inkatha was many of the claims of those who are currently an exciting and dangerous adventure. excluded from the formal economy. Some Half of the population of South Africa is ameliorative measures are likely to be put in under the age of fifteen. Only 20 percent of place, but no large-scale and fundamental black children of secondary school age are redistribution can occur without the agreement attending school. The vast majority of these are of big capital. That is not likely to be receiving an education inadequate for the forthcoming. But repression of such demands requirements of the twentieth-century global can foster the emergence of destabilizing economy. They attend schools that are over- revolutionary movements. crowded and run by teachers who are them- South Africa's moment of truth in the selves poorly educated and demoralized by the liberation struggle comes also at a time when it conditions of their work. Students are poorly is becoming increasingly apparent that the great supplied with facilities and textbooks, nor are their home environments typically conducive to achievements of liberal democracy and the quiet study. welfare state in the West, particularly the Employment prospects are grim. Between 40 enfranchisement of the working classes and the and 50 percent of the work force is unem- provision of a minimum social security, are ployed; the number is increasing as more young things of the past. Socially, politically, and people enter the work force competing for economically disenfranchised underclasses, fewer jobs. In the absence of miraculous particularly of "illegal" laboring immigrants economic growth rates (in excess of 10 percent are becoming the norm in the wealthier per year) most young people will not be able to democracies. In most of the third world, the contemplate a life of even badly paid wage old visions of modernization, development, labor, let alone the dreams of better things for and democracy have foundered on shoals of the children that have been the staple of poverty and debt. Globally, state power more working life all around the globe. For some often resembles a big protection racket than a time now these people have been spoken of as means to security, justice, and welfare. the "lost generation." Over the past couple of years it has been quite common in South Africa to encounter The contradictions of coercion in a reconsti- analogies drawn between Presidents de Klerk tuted South Africa, then, will be twofold. First, and Gorbachev: two bald reformers on a roll. creation of an inclusive political community Today the Soviet Union has passed from the within a unified democratic state will require map. What once seemed like an enormously repression of those who would foster exclusiv- powerful monolithic state has fractured into ist nationalisms, but such repression only dozens of pieces, and the imperial state has furthers the cause of nationalism. Second, retreated to the Russian heartland amid eco- protection of the fiscal base of the state, the nomic collapse. The South African imperium capitalist economy, will require repressing could collapse just as fast. ❑

SUMMER • 1992 • 377