Chieftaincy, the State, and Democracy: Political Legitimacy in Post-Apartheid South Africa

8. Conclusion: The Chieftaincy and the Post-Apartheid State: Legitimacy and Democracy in a Mixed Polity

conclusion | 217 Conclusion The Chieftaincy and the Post-Apartheid State: Legitimacy and Democracy in a Mixed Polity In my own region my forebears fought wars and battles against colonial and later apartheid regimes in order to maintain our traditional democracy. We cannot afford to dispose of our traditional government institutions in favor of Western kind of democracy. That would mean we fought in vain against domination by foreign powers. Let us merge the two types of democracies for the general good of the people. Ubukhosi is like a two-edged sword. Depending on the person wielding it, it can damage; it can easily be used to injure and cause harm; equally it can be used to defend and therefore build. It is common knowledge that service delivery in rural areas has gone smoothly in areas where government structures had good relations with traditional leaders, while the opposite has been true of those areas where relations have been bad. . . . [I]t is immoral for people to be made to choose between traditional leaders and service delivery—they deserve and are entitled to have both. . . . The present struggle is not about the retention of power for its own sake, it is for the retention of power so that it can be used to safeguard the African value systems which are the bedrock of society. When South Africans went to the polls in 1994, it not only marked the culmination of an arduous transition process but also initiated the establishment of a mixed polity. Through its incorporation of the chieftaincy, South Africa joined a growing number of African states that have decided to blend together the principles of liberal democracy with the principles of hereditary rule. While there were many reasons to officially incorporate the chieftaincy eight 218 | chieftaincy, the state, and democracy into the constitutional dispensation, few could have predicted how this decision would affect the legitimacy of the democratic post-apartheid state as well as the legitimacy of the chieftaincy. Indeed, after fifteen years of democratic rule, we are only just beginning to understand how people at the local level manage to make sense of and give meaning to these different sources of authority. What does seem clear at this point, however, is that the legitimation process is one that has been both contradictory and mutually transforming, and the developments in South Africa since 1994 challenge many of our assumptions concerning the nature of state authority and the consolidation of democratic rule. To understand the struggle for legitimacy, I have focused on relations between the chieftaincy and society as well as between the chieftaincy and the state at the local level. My argument is that we cannot understand the chieftaincy’s continued authority in the rural areas unless we take seriously what it does for people and what it means to people. Whether the chieftaincy establishes and maintains political legitimacy will depend upon the extent to which it performs in a manner that promotes the norms and values of the society over which they rule. More importantly, as these norms and values transform, so must the actions of traditional leaders. In other words, the authority of the chieftaincy, similar to the authority of the state, must be rooted in society if it is to be followed voluntarily. In a mixed polity, where there exists more than one moral order, the legitimation process will be particularly complex and contradictory, especially as the chieftaincy and those living in the rural areas incorporate the democratic norms and values of the postapartheid state. As such, the legitimation process is one that is ongoing and is likely to promote constant negotiation and contestation. As an approach to understand authority in South Africa, the multiple legitimacies framework resists categorizations that are oftentimes utilized in the debate over the chieftaincy, such as suggesting that all chiefs, or the chieftaincy itself, are illegitimate or undemocratic. Instead, it invites analyses that focus on the interactions between the chieftaincy, the state, and the people. The Nature of Political Legitimacy in a Mixed Polity Obviously, these dynamics have taken place in a broader sociopolitical and economic context, and I have situated the struggles for legitimacy into this context. In many cases, the various external factors have created both new opportunities and new challenges for the chieftaincy. It conclusion | 219 is clear that during the first fifteen years of democratic rule, there has been a mixture of continuity and change in...