Deborah Ann James Kinship and land in an inter-ethnic rural community Thesis Original citation: James, Deborah Ann (1987) Kinship and land in an inter-ethnic rural community. Masters thesis, University of Witwatersrand This version available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/50301/ Available in LSE Research Online: May 2013 © 1987 The Author LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website. This thesis has been made available on LSE Research Online with the permission of the author. -.=E-- +_. KINSHIP AND LAND IN AN INTER-ETHNIC RURAL COMMUN ITY Deborah Ann James i F 4 il: a:' A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts, - University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requiremenLs for the degree of llaster of Arts. il I ffi tilt 4. ilililil ilt iltililfl tffi I il 01 441178 -_5s_--- F t.:::: -l-1- ABSTRACT This dissertation is a study of the way in which ethnicity shapes various aspects of the life of a Lebowa vi11age. Differing histories as labour tenants on the white farms of the south-eastern Transvaal have determined differing access to agricultural resources for Pedi and Ndebele when they leit the farms for their present home in the village of Morotse. In the contemporary setting, these rural assets are combined with the migrant remittances which have become indispensable to the survival of any househoid in the southern African reserve areas. Again, the resulting combined packages of resources are distributed unequally between the two ethnic groups. Corresponding to this relative poverty or prosperity, a range, of household types has evolved, with a broad contrast between a Pedi and an Ndebele type. The practice of inheritance also manifests a contrast between the two ethnic groups. At times, ethnicity is manifest not simply in different aspects of social structure, but in more overt conflict. I describe an occasion on which ethnic hostility was expressed - relating to the use of agricultural land - and in co4clusion attempt to explain the existence of ethnicity in the village in the light of some recent literature on the topic. I argue ,:i .r' that, in general, ethnicity must be understood in the light of competition 5 tt: over scarce resources in the contemporary ttHomelandtt context. In addi- tion, the particularly strong ethnicity apparent in the Ndebele vi.llage ).. .. t. .. by reference to the history of chiefly authority in J.: section I explain ! the community, and to the observance of particular marriage rules. My final explanation thus j-nvokes the events of recent history and the .: :: circumstances of the- present. - 1l-1 - -- DECLARATION : -!^!i^- 'i- nrr nr'rn unaidedrrnAi'led wwork' It is being ,. I declare that this dissertation is ny own' :- i- *'l-^ tl-irrarqifv of thg :Submittedforthedegreeof}lasterofArtsintheUniversityofthl .]witwatersrand,Johannesburg;IthasnotbeenSubmittedbeforeforany ': or examination'in'in anyanv other universitY'uni i degree .. :: b,Ä^"^,'f L--ot LqF daY of ün'rÄu ' 1es7' ---_- .: t' To Patrick, who tried. his best to help me write this, and to Ben, who tried his best to prevent me. "l ri -v- j: Preface 1: ii My first acquaintance with the Lebowa village I call }lorotse was in 1981, when I visited the village as part of a research project into populati-on relocation which was undertaken by the South African Institute for Race Relations. The section of the project with which I was concerned was a and comparative study of , three settlements in the area of southern south-eastern Lebowa, each manifesting the effects of a different type of relocation. While a major concern of the pamphlet I subsequently wrote (James was the dramatic and emotive story of a "black spot" resettlement 1983), my interest \^ras more strongly engaged by another issue - that of people who had been farm labour tenants in a white area and who were relocated to a reserve or ttHomelandtt area. It was this process which almost al1 the inhabitants of }IoroEse, at different times and for dif- ferent reasons, had undergone. + lr.:.!;;:: r. As I got to know the village and its population better, there were other ttrings which aroused my interest, some of them closely related to the inhabitants' labour tenant background. Firstly, the fact that tenancy on white farms r{as exp€rienced in different ways by different categories these tenants also left the farms for their new hone .j of people meant that l:i. l' I in Lebowa at different times. Because of this, the village had a core at and a periphery of landless .:: of long-established landowning residents .S ner,vcomers: and it struck me that this probably laid the basis for some kind of stratification. Another thing that interested me was that the 'i:: use of this agricultural land owned by the village's longer-standing tr residents had been subject for several years to the dictates of an ag- 1! ricultural Co-operative. 0verlaying older patterns of stratification, the effects of this institution r^/ere profound and villagers' responses i::..\ .: ... s: ..:i: - - -v1 - to it vTere so fierce that it was one of the major topics of conversation during the interviews conducted in this initial phase of fieldwork. Fina1ly, I was intrigued by the coexistence in the village of two strongly demaicated "ethnic groups" - Pedi and Ndebele. Although the differences between the two were immediately apparent, I only learned later that the explanation of many other aspects of Morotse's life - such as those mentioned above - had something to do wlth ethnicity. My interest Ied me to return to the area in 1983 and to undertake more detailed research - for a }laster's dissertation - on the village of Morotse. My home during the four-month field research period was the Roman Catholic mission at Luckau, where I was given a room in the school buildings of Christ the Priest High School. The support and encouragement of the people I met at the mission !^/ere extremely valuable in helping to acquaint me with the area, its history and its problems. Father Michel Barrette, Sister Cathy, So11y Mokoena and Florence Sihlangu alI con- tributed in various l{ays to making me feel at home. I began by finding one or two people in the village who could speak English, and who were willing to be employed as interpreters. Through these people and their families, and later through others to whom they introduced me, I gradually started to understand the life of the vi11age. tly most detailed knowledge came through close acquaintance with a sma11 number of families, and through an awareness of their everyday activies and concerns which anthropologists have labelled "participant observa- tion". I also gained a broader, less specific knowledge through a survey h9p:ih9lg:*i9l*.1_e4 r{it-h the he}p*":*1.::: tl_."_-'p,'_"ters. Out or a - -i! total of 487 households, a sample of 54 were.surveyed, and detailed genealogies drawn of their members. I ensured that the sample included households from older and newer parts of the village, as well as from both Pedi and Ndebele sections. Here, then, my thanks go to my inter- preters Theresa }lakeke and Anna }ladihlaba for their assistance, as well as to their families who made me feel so welcome. In addition, I thank g,::. =5 ' vLl- - Salome }Itshali, Ilonica }lakofane, Sara llthsweni and David Mthornbeni and their families, and all the other villagers \'üho extended their hospi- tality and friendship to me. David Loboli }lahlangu gave me a fascinating account of the history of the Ndzundza Ndebele on which I have drawn in r1 1. Alpheus }lthethwa aided me in my investigations into agri- : chapter extend my gratitude to all these :: cultural matters in the community. I l a:: informants. s' on my leaving the field to write up my research, I was faced with a di- :: lemma. I was convinc'ed that an understanding of history was essential to a proper analysis of the contemporary circumstances and social a-a structures of a village such as Morotse, yet wary of engaging in extensive research into primary sources due to my lack of historical training' lly compromise was to construct an historical account from a combination of secondary sources and selectively used arehival documents ' The and the Beaumont and stubbs commissions of 1913 and 1917-8 respectively, Report of the Native Economic Comnission of 1930 provided essential ev- on the idence on the conditions under which African labour tenants lived white farms of the Middelburg district during the early part of this century. I thank |trs Cunningham of the Church of the Province Library process of at_ Wits for her help in showing me the I E C report ' The combining these historical sources and using them to foregrouna " "o"- temporary study was immeasurably aided by comments and advice from Peter Delius, whose help in this regard and whose numerous discussions with me about the strong ethnicity manifested by the Ndzundza Ndebele have Also been central in enabling me to conceptualise this dissertation' extremely valuable were conments by Philip Bonner, and by the members of the l,üits History Department llaster's seminar to whom he and Peter Delius kindly admitted me.