In 1852, at the close of the eighth frontier war in the eastern Cape region of what was to become South Africa, Governor Cathcart declared that the name of the late Maphasa would cease; the British government would not recognise his chiefdom, his followers were to be dispersed and his land forfeited for colonial settlement. In 2010, after a hundred and sixty years of facelessness, the remnants of Maphasa’s people were officially recognised as a legitimate chiefdom by the postcolonial democratic government.
This paper examines changing repertories of the political expression of ‘the customary’ over a period of a hundred and sixty years. It explores the complexities of a faceless existence under colonialism, and the opportunities for selective chiefly resuscitation created by apartheid’s Bantu Authorities and rural bantustan strategies. It interrogates the meaning of chiefly restitution and land reform in the context of a constitutional democracy struggling to set its compass in a developmental direction.
Perceptions, interpretations and meanings of ‘the customary’ changed over time, across space and reflected competing standpoints and interests. Tracking a single chieftaincy over more than a century and half, exploring its defiance, defeats and complicities enables a deep exploration of the malleability of ‘the customary’, the resurgence of chiefly power and what it meant to be a follower. This study entails the investigation of conquest ideologies and state inventions of tribalism (and their limits); it takes a complex view of the meaning of inclusivity in a post-colonial democracy encumbered by the history and priorities of a settler society.