The Indigenous Constitutional System in a Changing South Africa Digby S Koyana Adjunct Professor, Nelson R Mandela School of Law, University of Fort Hare
The Indigenous Constitutional System in a Changing South Africa Digby S Koyana Adjunct Professor, Nelson R Mandela School of Law, University of Fort Hare 1. MAIN FEATURES OF THE INDIGENOUS CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM In the African scenario the state comprises a hierarchy of component jural communities1. In hierarchical order, from the most comprehensive to the smallest, the jural communities are: the empire, the federation of tribes, the tribe, the district or section and the ward. The most common and simplest structure found amongst many peoples was the tribe, which consisted of a number of wards. The comprehensive jural community could be enlarged by the addition of tribes or tribal segments through conquest or voluntary subjugation. It is this way that empires, such as that of Shaka in Natal, were founded2. In such cases, the supreme figure of authority would be the king, and those at the head of the tribes, the chiefs, would be accountable to him. Junior chiefs in charge of wards would in turn be accountable to the chief, and there would naturally be yet more junior “officials”, relatives of the chief of the tribe, who would be in charge of the wards. The tribe itself has been described as “a community or collection of Natives forming a political and social organisation under the government, control and leadership of a chief who is the centre of the national or tribal life”3. The next question relates to the position of the chief as ruler in indigenous constitutional law. In principle the ruler was always a man. There are exceptions such as among the Lobedu tribe, where the ruler has regularly been a woman since 18004.
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