Michigan State University

Graduate Student, History

Thesis Title: "Only the Fourth Chief": uDlame, Land, and Chiefly Authority in the Natal Midlands, 1973-1994

About

Funded by a Fulbright-Hays DDRA fellowship in South Africa and directed by Peter Alegi, my dissertation uncovers the complex history of conflict, land, and chiefly authority in KwaZulu-Natal through the birth of democracy in 1994. My study focuses on two rural communities in the Table Mountain region outside Pietermaritzburg, the provincial capital. The dissertation’s original argument is that the origins of the violent conflict in Table Mountain during the 1980s and early 1990s between the Zulu ethnic nationalist Inkatha movement and the progressive United Democratic Front—a low-intensity civil war that led to more than 10,000 deaths—are rooted in the seeds of conflict planted by Shepstone’s system of indirect rule in late 19th century Natal.

I examine the role of colonial and apartheid governments in the appointment and succession of Zulu chiefs (amakhosi), the engendering of debates over legitimacy and chiefly authority, boundary conflicts, “faction fights,” and competing land claims in the Natal Midlands. In the Table Mountain region, the amaNyavu, whose chieftaincy predated the rise of the Zulu state under Shaka, made land claims based on their hereditary status against the Qamu, Gcumisa, and Maphumulo chieftaincies established in the area by the British. Decades later, under apartheid, the creation of tribal authorities and eventually the KwaZulu bantustan exacerbated these contests over access to land and political legitimacy, which culminated in the eruption of deadly conflict in Table Mountain in 1990. My evidence comes from a rich combination of written and oral sources uncovered over four years: government documents in local and national archives; print media coverage; recorded oral tradition; and over 60 oral history interviews with residents facilitated by my four years of isiZulu language training.

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