A comparative study of the politics of chieftaincy and local government in colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwe, 1950-2010
Ncube, Godfrey
This thesis historicizes the paradox of the survival of the institution of
chieftainship in Zimbabwe from near demise at independence in 1980, when it
was largely considered as a discredited institution due to its former alliance
with colonial administrations, to its revival and current importance where it is
an integral part of Zimbabwe’s constitutional and political structure and
wields considerable power. It explores the political manipulation of African
chiefs in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s by the colonial state in its efforts to
combat African Nationalism, and reveals how the alliance of chiefs with the
colonial state drove a political wedge between the chiefs and Nationalists
during the anticolonial struggle, a development that made chieftaincy a
discredited institution at independence. The thesis argues that the fall-out
between the chiefs and Nationalists that was precipitated by the chiefs’ close
association with the Smith regime reversed a promising start that had been
forged between them in the late 1940s and early 1950s when chiefs had
actively supported the emerging Nationalist movements like the African
People’s Voice Association.
The thesis also examines the sources of the enduring power of the institution
of chieftaincy under the onslaught of powerful political and ideological forces
that have sought to transform it since the advent of colonial rule, such as
colonialism itself, modernism and nationalism, and identifies the sources of its
resilience in its mutability. It offers an interesting comparison of colonial and
postcolonial intentions in local administrative policy. It not only unveils how
colonialism transformed the institution of chieftaincy in Zimbabwe but also
builds a case of how the postcolonial state continued to re-invent the same
institution for partisan and political expediency purposes. It notes that the
Rhodesian state’s retreat from its authoritarian attempts to restructure
traditional African society in the 1940s and 1950s, and its reversion to
traditional communal land tenure, was a concession to the indispensability of
traditional authority structures in rural local governance. Similarly, the
postcolonial government’s restoration of chiefs’ powers in 2000, after sidelining them for two decades, also signified their indispensability to the
postcolonial state’s control of the rural populations when it was confronted by
political challenges from a rising tide of opposition movements that sought to
capture the rural constituencies.
Bibliography: leaves: 237-273
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