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van Binsbergen W. M. J., 1987, ‘Chiefs and the State in Independent Zambia : exploring the Zambian National Press’, in J. Griffiths et E. A. B. van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal (eds), Journal of Legal Pluralism, special issue on chieftainship in Africa, n° 25-26, pp. 139-201.
Part 1
In West African
countries such as Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone, ‘chiefs’
have successfully entered the modern age as characterized by the
independent state and its bureaucratic institutions, peripheral
capitalism, and a world-wide electronic mass culture. There,
chiefs are more or less conspicuous both in daily life, in
post-Independence literary products, and even in scholarly
analysis.
In the first analysis, the Zambian situation appears to be very
different. After the spate of anthropological research on chiefs
in the colonial era,[1] post-Independence
historical research has added precision and depth to the
scholarly insight in colonial chiefs and in the precolonial
rulers whose royal or aristocratic titles the former had
inherited — or in those (few) cases where colonial
chieftaincies had been downright invented for the sake of
convenience and of systemic consistence all over the territory of
the then Northern Rhodesia. But preciously little has been
written on the role and performance of Zambian chiefs after
Independence. A few recent regional studies offer useful glances
at the chiefly affairs in selected rural districts,[2] but
by and large they fail to make the link with the national level,
and concentrate on the limited number of chiefs of the region
under study. Hardly any attention is paid to chiefs in the many
writings political scientists, political economists and students
of public administration have devoted to post-Independence
Zambia.[3] From
the available literature one would get the impression that a
totally consistent and monolithic, bureaucratic modern state has
completely wiped out such fossil traces of traditional rulers as
could only be of interest to antiquarian anthropologists and
Zambian traditionalists anyway...
In the course of the present argument I shall expose this
perception of chiefs in contemporary Zambia as nothing but an
academic prejudice, and one that is certainly not shared by the
senior officials of the modern Zambian state (cf. Gregor 1967).
Anyone who has intensively and over an extended period of time
participated in post-Independence Zambian society, cannot help to
be aware of the great importance still to be attached to chiefs.
Nor is this importance limited to rural districts outside the
‘Line of Rail’.[4] Zambia is among the few
African countries that have reserved a specific and honorable
place for chiefs at the national level, where the House of
Chiefs (as a complementary institution to Parliament, not
entirely unlike the House of Lords in the Westminster tradition)
is established and regulated in great detail in the Independence
Constitution and its various subsequent amendment acts.[5] The
proceedings of the House of Chiefs are regularly published and
offer very useful (if of course onesided and bowdlerized)
materials on the interaction between chiefs and the postcolonial
state (van Binsbergen n.d.). The relatively stable nature of this
interaction is indicated by the fact that the House of Chiefs for
as long as thirteen years (1968-1981) could be chaired by Chief
Undi, Paramount Chief of the Chewa and as such the
neo-traditional[6] focus of one of the few
major ethnic clusters in Zambia — that of the Easterners who
identify with the Chewa/Nyanja language as their mother-tongue or
lingua franca.
At the same time, the House of Chiefs constitutes only one aspect
of chiefs/state interaction, and probably not the most important
aspect. This is clear from develop-ments in the present decade.
In 1981 Chief Undi was succeeded, as chairman of the House of
Chiefs, by Chief Nalubamba.[7] In a country like Zambia,
where national politics has had strong ethnic overtones, this
indicates that the House of Chiefs is becoming less effective as
an arena for ethnic confrontation. Chief Nalubamba belongs to an
ethnic group (the Ila) which numerically does not rank among
Zambia’s major ethnic groups, whose language is not among the
seven officially recognized Zambian languages, and whose
chieftainship lacks connotations of exalted splendor and
precolonial statehood — in contrast with e.g. the Paramount
Chiefs of the Lozi and the Bemba, the Litunga and Chitimukulu
respectively, who until recently never made it to the House of
Chiefs or other executive or advisory bodies of the post-colonial
state. Subsequently, however, at the Mulungushi Conference of
22-29 August, 1983, these very same Litunga and Chitimukulu have
been co-opted as members of a much more powerful political body
than the House of Chiefs: the Central Committee of Zambia’s
ruling party, the United National Independence Party (U.N.I.P.)
— a most significant attempt ‘to bring the chiefs in the main
political stream, to turn them into nationalists rather than
traditionalists’[8]
A detailed,
book-length study of chiefs and the central state in
post-Independence Zambia would be most timely. The present
argument is only a first instalment toward such an ambitious
project.[9] Primarily, it seeks to
state — for the first time in Zambian studies — the empirical
case for a new, less prejudiced look at chiefs in
post-Independence Zambia. My purpose at this stage is
exploratory, far more than analytical or theoretical. I intend to
argue the need for further data collection and analysis, not to
already offer at this point the extensive and superior data and
profound analysis we are ultimately aiming at — first a more
fertile basis of related studies and publications has to be
created, by a number of scholars from various disciplines.
Where does one find, for the postcolonial period, national-level
data on a issue that scholarship has left untouched? Published
official data (such as the House of Chiefs Minutes and the
parliamentary Hansard) deal with only one type of highly
formalized settings, and therefore their considerable
sociological significance could only be assessed against the
background of richer data of a more general and informal nature.
Findings from personal field-work at the local and regional
level, on the other hand, are necessarily limited if not unique,
and it would require enormous resources of time and funds to go
and expand them into a comparative study, i.e. collecting similar
data in a sufficient number of Zambian locations. Rather
unexpectedly (from an anthropological point of view), Zambian newspapers
turned out to contain the type of nation-wide, manysided,
relatively unprocessed data suitable for a first empirical
exploration.
Of course, journalistic data are not to be taken at face value.
Also Zambian journalists, in their approach to chiefs today, have
occasionally displayed the sort of biases descri-bed above for
academic writers on Zambian society. Chiefs as a topic are
conducive to folkloristic or even touristic stereotypes, and this
in itself constitutes a most significant aspect of the processes
of transformation (cognitive and symbolic redefinition, eco-nomic
commoditization and bureaucratic subjugation) in the course of
which a post-colonial popular culture is begin forged, as a means
of communication between peasants and the state. Chieftainship is
a major item in this popular culture; ‘tribe’ (cf. van
Binsbergen 1985a) is another. It is possible to pierce through
these stereotypes as applied by the reporters, and to glean
empirical information from Zambian newspapers. At the same time,
at a more profound level even the journalistic stereotypes
themselves would amount to significant information: they are
public, widespread and influential statements of collective
representations (involving chiefs, tradition, power, political
and moral order etc.) in postcolonial Zambian society. My
present aim is to bring out these collective representations as
well as hint at the patterns of social and political relations by
which they are generated and reproduced.
An example is in
order here. The most obvious Zambian case of folklorization is
the annual Kuomboka ceremony to mark the Litunga’s moving to
dry land as the water in the Zambezi river rises. The ceremony is
discussed, and photographs of it are shown, in much of the
literature on the Lozi,[10] as well as many general
works on Zambian culture, history and tourism. A recent newspaper
report[11] highlights the 1987
cere-mony in terms that on one level are folkloristic and only
relevant for the study of symbolic and ideological (as distinct
from e.g. political, judicial, social and economic) processes:
‘(...) Over the
years the ceremony (...) has heightened cultural awareness,
pulled in the tourist traffic and its colour has intensified with
the time. This year, however, the ceremony is bound to be a
unique one. It coincides with the 10th anniversary of the present
Litunga, Ilute Yeta’s installation. [sic] (...)
Chairman of the Kuomboka Coordinating Association, Mr Samuel
Mulozi (...) said: ‘‘(...) We are proud of the stature the
ceremony has reached not as a province but as Zambians. Every
country is proud of its cultural heritage and Zambia is no
exception.’’
(...) [V]ests emblazoned with the relevant message (...) will be
worn by more than 120 paddlers of the huge Nalikwanda [royal
barge — WvB] (...)
(...) [T]he association printed cards for identification of
prominent visitors to the ceremony as well as tourists so that
they would find it easy to locate vantage points for viewing the
colourful ceremony. (...)
The vests (...) will not replace the usual attire of royal barge
paddelers, but will be worn inside merely to add decor to the
10th anniversary. The paddlers will still wear their animal skin
paddling skirts, will be barefooted and for headgear, the usual
‘‘mishukwe’’ (headscraf) on which rests the tufts of a
lion’s name [ sic, mane, WvB ] will go as usual (...)
The Kuambnka this year is expected to have more traditional
dances, some from theroyal establishment [ i.e. traditional
court, WvB ] , than is usual because of the installation
festivities. (...)
At the same time,
however, this newspaper article contains plenty of factual
information that has a direct bearing on the place of chiefs in
Zambia today — showing that much more is involved than the
expressions of an impotent peripheral culture, far away from the
political and economic centre of the country. The Litunga’s
membership of the Central Committee is pointed out, as well as
his belonging to the Seventh Day Adventist church — a
denomination that has had considerable appeal among the Zambian
elite. The subtle balance between neo-traditional office and
one’s obligations as a Christian is hinted at:
‘His Kuombokas
have usually been on a Friday, a Saturday being a Sabbath for
him. This year a special dispensation had to be made for the
Litunga to have the joy of remembering his installation day ten
years ago.’
The sponsorship role of Zambian parastatals is indicated. Not
only do transport companies go out of their way in order to
contribute to the ceremony’s success, bridging the more than
500 km between the ‘line of rail’ and Mongu in Western
Province — also the chairman of the Kuomboka Coordinating
Association turns out to be Zambia National Provident Fund (znpf)
deputy director, whereas the innovative, emblazoned vests (with
their strong connotations of commoditization) are said to be
donated by Zambia State Insurance Corporation (zsic). The reader
gets more than a glimpse of the urban-based ethnic associations
behind the rural ceremony:
‘The Kitwe branch
of the association has donated some safari suits for the royal
drummers as well as other paraphernalia. The Kuomboka Cordination
[sic] Association which has other branches in Ndola and
Livingstone will no doubt have its efforts for this year’s
special Kuomboka augmented by the Kuomboka-Kufuluhela Committee
based in Mongu which works in liaison with the royal Kuta [Lozi
traditional court — WvB]. (...) Some elders based on the line
of rail and who are members of the coordinating committee will be
at hand to witness the ceremony.’
These people organize for goals which go beyond folklore and
festivals, and which directly concern the economic upkeep (the
material reproduction, in other words) of the neo-traditional
courts:
‘The (...)
association (...) has a pivotal role, according to Mr Mulozi, in
assisting towards the maintenance of the royal establishment
[i.e. traditional court — WvB] not only at Lealui but other
palaces at Nalolo, Libonda and others in the Western Province.’
In this context, a
well-worn formulae of the Zambian state’s philosophy of
develop-ment is given a new if rhetorical meaning; for while the
Litungaship has enjoyed a considerable state subsidy for nearly a
century now,
‘ ‘‘We
strongly believe in the creation of the concept of self-reliance
at traditional level instead of looking to the Government,’’
said Mr Mulozi. The idea of enabling the royal establishment to
depend more on local communities would go a long way in imbuing
the people with a sense of cultural values and heritage. This in
turn promoted dignity and pride in cultural values.’
Thus even an ordinary newspaper report indicates remarkably close
links between the state and a major chief, through a
neo-traditional ceremony in the Zambian rural periphery — links
in terms of economic support, development ideology, dual office
(of the ceremony’s protagonist the Litunga, but also of the
urbanites who combine modern careers with the furthering of a
neo-traditional ceremony in a remote part of the country). Little
wonder that the Zambian state makes use of the ceremony as some
sort of national showpiece, where even its most senior
office-bearers may appear alongside its most promising
international allies:
‘Last year,
American ambassador to Zambia Mr Paul Hare and Speaker of the
National Assembly Dr Robinson Nabulyato were guests of honour at
the Kuomboka. This year, many more dignitaties, whose names were
not released in advance, were invited.’
Finally, what strikes one in the report is a sense of indirectness.
The intertwinement of state and chieftainship, within the
postcolonial economy and popular culture, is all there, but the
state does not itself undertake the organization of the ceremony,
nor does e.g. the state President participate in person. The
illusion of two separate worlds, of boundaries between the modern
and the neo-traditional, is carefully maintained — almost as if
the raison-d’etre of chieftainship in postcolonial
Zambia is: to evoke a political and cultural focus that
appears to be outside of and independent from the state, yet is
an effective part of the state’s hegemonic apparatus.[12]
The above example may convince the reader of the potential of
newspaper materials for our present research undertaking.
Meanwhile, the shift in emphasis between the House of Chiefs and
the Central Committee indicates variations and developments
within an overall structure of political relations and popular
culture that — from the vantage point of one who has studied
Zambian society for the better part of two decades — does not
appear to have radically changed since Independence (1964). My
aim in the present paper is to chart that underlying structure;
the details of its processual dynamics over the decades then
remain for further study.
It is methodologically attractive to base our exploration on a
well-defined set of data, whose wider context we can already
interpret with the power of hindsight. I have therefore analysed,
with the above questions in mind, virtually all references to
chiefs in Zambian national newspapers in the period 1 February
1972 - 1 February 1973.
The tentative analysis presented in this paper does prompt
further research, and in its empirical generalizations and
hypotheses already indicates some of the directions into which
such research would have to be developed in future. But it is
not, of course, a full statement covering the entire
post-colonial period, nor does it do justice, yet, to all aspects
and regional variations of the topic under study.
For our present
exploration, the two Zambian daily newspapers (the
government-owned Zambia Daily Mail, earlier called Daily
Mail, of Lusaka, and the privately-owned Times of Zambia
of the Copperbelt, with its Sunday Times of Zambia
supple-ment) were processed for the period indicated.[13]
This was a crucial period in post-Independence Zambia, in which unip
finalized the preparation for, and in the end (December 1972)
realized, the Second Republic, a one-party state under exclusive unip
control. To achieve this purpose, the opposition party, anc,[14] had to be persuaded to give up its identity
and amalgamate with unip. In the first half of 1972 the
‘National Commission on the Establishment of a One-Party
Participatory Democracy in Zambia’, appointed by President
Kaunda and chaired by the Vice-President Mr. Mainza Chona, had
organized hearings in all provinces of the country, and had
generated a general reflection and debate as to the future
constitutional and political structure of Zambia; the
Commission’s report was published in October, 1972 (Republic of
Zambia 1972). In the general drive for national unity, tribalism
and regionalism were exposed as the specters behind short-lived
and vigorously squashed expressions of political dissidence, such
as the upp (United Progressive Party). In the western part of the
country, a more lasting threat to national unity and stability
had been posed, ever since the beginning of nationalism, by the
aspirations of the Lozi aristocracy centring on the Litunga: heir
to a royal title associated with the precolonial kingdom (Bulozi
or Barotseland) that had played a major part in the
administrative and missionary penetration of Zambia in the
nineteenth and early twentieth century. Having enjoyed very
special privileges (including Protectorate status) throughout the
colonial period and, at Independence, through the Barotseland
Agreement (cf. Barotseland 1964), it was only in 1969 — three
years before the period covered by our present exploration —
that Barotseland became simply Western Province and its
administrative and constitutional status was forced into line
with Zambia as a whole.[15] Remarkably, in Zambia
at the time these sub-national allegiances were seldom denounced
for being remnants from the colonial and precolonial past. On the
contrary, the political and societal transformation process that
was to culminate in the Second Republic, entailed a reappraisal
of the Zambian past. Here one claimed to find the moral values (humanist
ones, as President Kaunda’s self-styled national philosophy of
Humanism has it) and political procedures whose allegedly
traditional, perennial nature as part of the Zambian heritage
were to lend additional legitimation to the One-Party
Participatory Democracy about to be established. It was in the
past that unip sought a model of internal debate leading to
consensus, without the formalized opposition inherent in the
North Atlantic model of political parties. Moreover, in response
to the popular demands from the grass-roots level, there was an
increasing concern with the fair sharing out of the material
fruits of Independence; a Leadership Code, announced in 1972, had
to ensure that politicians and other leaders in the bureaucratic
bodies of the state or close to the state, would not receive a
lion’s share; limits were imposed on the combination of
political office with gainful employment, entrepreneurship, etc.
Further in the economic domain, the virtual collapse of the
copper market and the two world energy crises were yet to come;
at the Copperbelt even a closed-down copper mine was reopened.
But already one was beginning to realize that Zambia’s
industrial monoculture, copper, had to be complemented by
concerted agricultural development; only one year earlier, in
1971, the enactment of the Village Registration and Development
Act had provided an additional administrative structure for such
development, in a way that stressed the formal responsibilities
of chiefs and headmen. Meanwhile, in a cultural region where for
centuries chiefs had attempted to mediate between their people
and nature[16] meteo-rological
conditions were not in favour of agricultural efforts: the rains,
normally arriving by October, were alarmingly late in 1972.
Under these
circumstances perhaps a somewhat larger newspaper coverage on
chiefs may have been attained than in certain other years. On the
other hand, many of the items deal with the accommodation between
chiefs and state bureaucracies at the local and regional level,
without much reference to the ongoing political process at the
national level, and in ways that appear to have remained fairly
constant over the years. For an exploration, the material
available for 1972-73 would do very well. But like all sources,
newspapers as sources of information on Zambian chiefs must be
subjected to criticism, which relates these sources’ contents
and meaning to the process of their generation and the social
position of those involved in that process.[17]
The 135 items (articles and/or pictures) in the Zambian
newspapers, in the period indicated, contained a total of 174
separate references to chiefs. Twelve of these references were to
past incumbents[18] of Zambian chiefly
titles, and cannot properly be included in an analysis of actual
relations between chiefs and journalists, in an attempt to assess
the flow of current information. The information in the remaining
162 references to contemporary chiefs[19]
often (59%) derived from urban sources; however, a substantial
amount of news was gathered in rural towns (24%), and even in
villages (17%), — the latter primarily the chiefly headquarters
themselves. The prominence of rural sources adds greatly to the
validity and reliability of the newspaper data to be presented
and analysed in the present argument.
Since Zambian newspapers are physically made in the urban
centres, where the concentration of journalists, politicians and
news-generating bureaucracies and enter-prises is highest, one
could advance the hypothesis that a chief’s chances of news
coverage are greater, if:
(a)
the capital or headquarters of that chief is in the peri-urban
area of a major city — the Zambian journalist’s habitual
haunt; and/or
(b)
if that chief is a member of the House of Chiefs, which not only
has its annual sessions in the national capital but which also
tends to bring its members into all sorts of interaction with
senior politicians and bureaucrats who in themselves are already
in the focus of journalists’ attention.
The effect of both factors is manifest but far from overwhelming:
about half of all references concern chiefs who are neither
members of the House of Chiefs nor dwell in peri-urban areas.
There is considerable overrepresentation on chiefs (particularly
Senior Chiefs Mushili and Chiwala) in the rural and peri-urban
areas of the Copperbelt (not too far from the offices of the Times
of Zambia).[20] Yet the coverage on
less conspicuous chiefs is surprisingly large — in the items
reported by the newspapers’ own reporters as well as in those
provided by the Zambia News Agency (zana).[21]
However, a
closer look at the contents of items for which information was
collected at rural towns and in villages, suggests an additional
factor of news coverage on chiefs: on the regional and local
level, chiefs interact with modern politicians and civil
servants, and journalists whose assigned duty it is to report on
the latter, may more or less automatically include the former. In
other words, even a news report on a chief and derived from
information gathered at his or her capital does not always mean
that the reporter set out specifically to get news coverage on
that chief: one may just have been following the trail of a
prominent regional politician. This effect is clearest when
public functions are reported to take place at the chief’s
capitals: chiefs’ funerals and installa-tion ceremonies, as
well as visits from other chiefs. Almost invariably a region’s
senior politicians and bureaucrats take part in these events,
which in itself testifies to the importance attributed to chiefs
in independent Zambia. These public occasions as generated by the
dynamics of neo-traditional political life can be said to have an
important function in bringing together chiefs and modern
officials, exchanging information and establishing or maintaining
social and political ties. [3.18; 4.2][22]
This leads to newspaper reports like the following:
‘8000 see new
Chief Mwangala installed
More than 8,000
people celebrated the long-awaited installation of Chief Mwangala
at Tafelansoni, in Chadiza district.
The ceremony was conducted by Paramount Chief Undi of the Chewa.
Mr. Joseph Phiri, 28, is the new Chief Mwangala. The late chief
died in January last year.
Among those present at the installation ceremony were the
Minister of State for Southern Province, Mr. Zongani Banda,
governors from Chipata, Chadiza and Lundazi, Chief Chikomeni of
Lundazi, Provincial and district heads of departments, and party
officials of the province.
Addressing
people at the ceremony, permanent secretary for Eastern Province,
Mr. Samuel Kafumukache, said that the Government laid much
emphasis on the importance of the role played by traditional
rulers in the development of the country. He said chiefs were
required to participate actively in promoting and fostering the
spirit of unity among the people in their areas for the success
of the country’s development. — ZANA.’ [3.18]
As this quotation demonstrates, the report on such
neo-traditional rallies may reveal interesting relations linking
modern and neo-traditional politics. Not only is the primary
officiant, Paramount Chief Undi, President of the House of Chiefs
and a member of the Chona Commission, but also specific mention
is made of the Minister of State for Southern Province,
Mr. Zongani Banda: obviously a subject of Chief Mwangala, called
to high modern office in which he oversees a different part of
the country, yet keeping in close contact with his rural home and
his chief in Eastern Province.
The rallying function of chiefly funerals is also very well
documented for the funeral of Princess Nakatindi (see below),
which brought President Kaunda and ‘more than 4,000 mourners
from various parts of Zambia’ [4.9] to Nawinda, the
Princess’s chiefly headquarters, way out in Sesheke district
[4.6, 4.9, 4.10, 4.11]. Similar neo-traditional rallies are
generated by kinship ceremonies and rites of passage involving
senior politicians, chiefs, and/or their kinsmen. Towards the end
of this paper I shall discuss one such kinship ceremony: a
name-inheriting ritual focusing on President Kaunda’s deceased
mother, Mrs. Helen Kaunda. Another example is the female puberty
rite staged for a niece of the Vice-President Mr. Mainza Chona:
‘Chona at
Chisungu
Vice-President
Mainza Chona was among several hundreds of people who attended a
two-day ‘chisungu’ (initiation) ceremony of his niece,
21-year-old Miss MacLeanah Hangala which ended yesterday.
It was held at Nampeyo, Chief Chona’s headquarteers [sic] about
24 kilometers east of Monze.
Miss Hangala is an employee with the Standard Bank in Mufulira
and is a former student of Saint Mary’s Secondary School in
Livingstone.
The ceremony was also attended by the Minister of State for
Administration at Freedom House, Mr. Ali Simbule. Kalomo District
Governor Mr. Joseph Hamatwi, Monze District Governor Mr. Cox
Sikumba and District Governor for Mazabuka Mr. Gideon Simusa.
[sic; elliptical sentence — WvB] Mr. Chona later returned to
Lusaka.’ [7.13; cf. 7.13a]
The event is interesting even beyond the fact that a young woman
who by education, upper-class position and relatively advanced
age could be expected to opt out of this neo-traditional rite of
passage, yet went through it. The participation of senior
politi-cians suggests that the ceremony has come to combine its
cultural meaning with that of a social function for Southern
Province’s political leadership. Bringing together the
Vice-President, a Minister of State from the unip national
headquarters, and three district governors, at the capital of
Chief Chona (a member of the House of Chiefs and clearly a close
relative of Mr. Mainza Chona), the ceremony suggests a
considerable continuity between neo-traditional and modern
leadership, and shows how a chief’s capital can still form the
focus of regional ties between modern politicians.
This is an apt illustration of the unexpected structural insights
the newspaper material may yield. Other items from the same
material (see below) enable us to explore these relations
further, e.g. when Mr. Hamatwi articulates himself as a
traditionalist very much in support of chiefs’ claims to powers
over nature and fertility; or when it turns out that some of the
participants in the initiation ritual found themselves, only ten
days earlier, in an large Southern Province mourning delegation
to the name-inheriting ceremony in President Kaunda’s family in
Chinsali, Northern Province — seeking to combine
traditionalism, Tonga ethnic solidarity, and national unity under
unip and President Kaunda...
Plenty of material from very remote districts and concerning
relatively unknown chiefs has found its way to the newspaper
columns. Sometimes the personal links involved in this
rural-urban transmission of information are unmistakable, e.g.
when the death is reported of chief Nyalugwe of Petauke district
(Eastern Province), with the addition that the Editor-in-Chief of
the Zambian News Agency is his nephew. [2.7]
On other occasions the coverage seems to reflect an editor’s
desire to champion a popular cause and challenge the government,[23] e.g. when a quarrel between Chief Ishinde
(Zambezi district, Northwestern Province) and the Permanent
Secretary for Northwestern Province on the establishment of a
forest reserve on this chief’s land was commented upon in the
following terms in an editorial:
‘It is hard to
believe that a chief could tell the Government to go and jump in
the lake. Yet this is precisely what appears to have happened in
the North-Western Province district of Zambezi.
(...) Such courage is to be admired. The chief’s concern for
the welfare of his people is to be praised too. In fact, if we
had more chiefs with such a profound concern for their people,
half our rural development problems would be solved.
We are not encouraging the chiefs to be defiant against the
Government. Far from it.(...) What the chiefs need is to be
treated with respect, the respect accorded them by their own
people.
Only in this way can the Government hope to obtain their
co-operation in development. We are glad that in the Zambezi
situation, no attempt has so far been made to browbeat the chief
into submission. It would be a grave mistake to underestimate the
intense resentment of the chief’s subjects if this were done.
The chiefs, regardless of what some critics would like us to
believe, still occupy an important place in Zambia. It is even
more important now that the success of the rural reconstruction
programme may ultimately depend on their co-operation. (...)’
[3.24]
This not surprisingly led to a considerable row and a restatement
of the official policy on chiefs:
‘The
Secretary-General to the Government, Mr. A.A. Milner, has denied
the accusation carried in yesterday’s Times of Zambia opinion
column which accused the government of not according the chiefs
the respect which they command from their people. Mr. Milner
called the allegation most unfortunate and very misleading.
In a statement last night, Mr. Milner said: ‘‘Since
independence, the government has been at pains to preserve the
respect and authority of our traditional rulers. The government
has always treated these traditional leaders with the respect
they deserve.’’ (...)’ [3.23]
Citing such convincing examples as the establishment and
functioning of the House of Chiefs, ‘two salary increases for
chiefs since Independence’, Chiefs’ membership of the Chona
Commission, and their new roles under the Village Registration
Act of 1971 — I shall return to all these points in the course
of my argument — Mr. Milner tries to play down the conflict and
concludes:
‘The government
has been particularly conscious of the need to honour and respect
our traditional institutions. This is the reason why it has
preserved traditional practices of selection and election in
various parts of the country. This respect for tradition is
profoundly rooted in our Party and government policy.’ [3.23]
In this case, the Times of Zambia — independent from,
and always fairly critical of government — may have been
over-zealous in representing the underdog’s point of view. By
and large, however, it can be said that, whatever the prejudices
of individual journalists and correspondents, the Zambian
newspapers at the time had a neutral view of chiefs, accepting
them as part and parcel of the Zambian society they had the duty
to report on, with measure, often as a by-product of their
reporting commitment vis-a-vis modern politicians and
bureaucrats, and only occasionally taking sides.
In the period
covered, three University of Zambia lecturers were given the
opportunity to write extensively on the place and future of
chiefs, and in these articles the pros and cons were very neatly
matched. These three articles together contain major elements in
the contradictory perception of chieftainship in Zambian society.
Mr. G. Kalenga Simwinga, a Zambian junior lecturer, pictures
chiefs as incompetent vis-a-vis modern bureaucratic and political
structures, as foci of ethnic divisiveness, as unnecessary for
rural development now that the Party has fully captivated the
allegiance of the rural masses. The institution of chieftainship
is called too expensive:
‘In the past three
years alone, the Government has spent about K1,837,150 on chiefs
and their retainers.’ [3.16][24]
What is more,
chieftainship is obsolete and should be allowed to die out, as it
has in Europe, where its remnants (monarchies) can only be seen
in the most backward of countries...
‘(...) The
prevalence of conservative and general reactionary attitudes
among the rural folk is largely attributable to the existence of
this institution. (...) [H]e can only be regarded as a good chief
if he does what is expected of a chief as dictated by custom. His
actions are therefore dictated by the need to fulfil the
expectations of his people. These expectations lead to a vicious
situation which results in stagnation.
(....) At this time of nation building in Zambia, the institution
of chief also represents one of the obstacles to the process of
welding the many ethnic groups into a unified whole.
(...) In the implementation of development projects in a country
like Zambia, where political mobilisation of the masses through
the party is so strong and successful right down to the grass
root level of society the need for chiefs to solicit the support
of rural folk does not arise. The party can easily and
effectively achieve this without the Government paying for a bit
of mystical support from the chiefs.
(...) The question we should ask ourselves now as we enter the
Second Republic is not whether this anachronistic, divisive,
undemocratic and costly institution should be preserved, but how
long it is going to be with us. (...)’ [3.16]
Without picking up the obvious loose ends in Simwinga’s
argument (party support was very far from unanimous among Zambian
peasants at the time, and in a Third-World context the Nordic
countries, Holland, Belgium, even Great Britain could scarcely
pass as underdeveloped in 1972), Dr. V. Subramaniam, a professor
of public administration from South Asia, and mainly drawing on
parallels from that part of the world, agrees with Simwinga’s
view that chiefs are obsolete. He stresses how African chiefs’
were dependent on the colonial state, how both chiefs and
colonialists were taken by surprise by the rapid development of
African nationalism, and how chiefs proved unable to turn
themselves into a modern elite. However, Professor
Subrama-niam’s main purpose is apparently to sound a note of
caution:
‘There is little
to be said against the abolition of chieftainships — except
that, done summarily with trumpet and fanfare, it would lead to
false expectations. And old and shrinking institution may be
allowed to disappear slowly and any dramatic step against it can
be considered a diversionary tactic.
A more urgent problem for the Zambian economy and policy is the
flabbiness and lack of self-discipline of the emerging
professional and commercial middle class.’
Finally, Mr. B. Kakoma, a Zambian junior lecturer of history,
offers both the most sophisticated and the most optimistic view
of chieftainship. He demonstrates that the institution of
chieftainship is capable of far-reaching adaptation to modern
politics. King Sobhuza’s case in Swaziland is generously
interpreted as a amalgamation of a chiefly tradition with the
one-man-one-vote principle, whereas two recent Zambian cases of
chiefly succession are cited as proof that neo-traditional
constitutional arrangements are capable of adaptation so as to
produce chiefly candidates that are well-versed in the modern
political domain and acceptable to the central government: that
of the Lozi Litunga in 1968, when Mr. Godwin Mbikusita succeeded
Mwanawina; and that of Kanongesha, the senior Southern Lunda
chief in Mwinilunga district, North-western Province.[25] Far from regarding chieftainship as on its
way out in Zambia, Mr. Kakoma makes it very clear that the chiefs
are still very important factors in modern politics in the rural
areas:
‘(...) In Zambia
the forces of nationalism are firmly entrenched in national
leadership. The chiefs, even as a collective group in the obscure
House of Chiefs, have never questioned the nationalist claims. In
defending their passive approach to major political issues, the
chief’ spokesmen have argued that the institution serves as a
unifying force in the present situation of multi-party politics
where competition for party members has sometimes erupted into
violence. In any case, as paid servants of the Government, chiefs
cannot afford to oppose the Government and at the same time
expect recognition. But the more politically-minded among them
have not failed to condemn politicians for being too power-hungry
and discountenancing patronage to their traditional leaders.
The base of the chiefs’ political power lies in their local
areas. In those areas where the institution of chieftainship is
strong the selection of a new leader through traditional
procedures more or less serves as an automatic guarantee of his
popularity. (...) It is for this reason that political parties
seek to captivate local support through the chiefs because it is
essential for winning both local and general elections. In part,
this explains why clandestine grooming of qualified candidates
whose loyalty is unquestionable is undertaken by the
nationalists. UNIP policy consists in, as far as possible,
appointing in rural areas regional and branch officials, men and
women who are, if not entirely native to their districts, at
least acceptable to the community as a whole. They must be
persons who can gain the co-operation of the local chiefs. During
local elections, with most of the chiefs’ areas being
designated as wards (or local constituencies) it is a common
practice to put up candidates who are approved by the chiefs.
(...) [I]n Western Province where chieftainship is very strong
(...) UNIP’s initial success was derived from its appeal to the
chiefs, particularly in the campaign against the corrupt regime
of the late Mwanawina. When the party promised reform the elders
took this to mean restoration of power to the chiefs. Hence UNIP
scored an overwhelming victory in the 1964 election. However by
1968 when the next general election came, the traditional leaders
had been estranged by the Government’s nationalist reforms
which increased central government control. The price which UNIP
paid for this was the loss of the province to the opposition
party. That seems to be largely a direct confrontation between
the Government and the chiefs. But more often than not conflict
between chiefs and nationalist have tended to be precipitated at
the low levels with the latter capitulating in the end.’ [2.16]
Having argued the continuing political importance of
chieftainship in postcolonial Zambia in such candid and
convincing terms, Mr. Kakoma’s conclusion scarcely follows and
seems to be largely meant for the gallery:
‘In independent
Africa, therefore, it is for the nationalist rather than the
traditional chiefs who have risen as the masters in charge of all
the decision-making processes. They are able to override the
chiefs because they have the mandate from the masses.
Although at the local level the chief appears to command his
traditional popularity the inherent weakness — the fact that
his influence is restricted to his immediate domain which is only
a tiny portion of the nation state — is irreconcilable [sic]
with [sic] supra-tribal national outlook.’ [2.16]
[1]The colonial anthropological contribution to the study
of Zambian chieftainship centred on the Rhodes-Livingstone
Institute and the Manchester School — and included such classic
studies of chieftainship as Barnes 1954; Cunnison 1959; Gluckman
1943, 1967; Richards 1935; Watson 1958; cf. Werbner 1984 for a
recent appraisal.
[2]Kapteyn & Emery 1972: 11-13; Bond 1975; Caplan 1970;
van Binsbergen 1985a, 1986; van Binsber-gen & Geschiere
1985b: 261-70; van Donge 1985; Papstein 1978, 1985;
Administration for Rural Development 1977: 23-24; O’Brien 1983;
Garvey 1977; Kasevula et al. 1976; Singer 1985; Kangamba 1978a,
1978b.
[3]E.g. Fincham & Markakis 1980; Ollawa 1979; Pettman
1974; Tordoff 1980; Gertzel 1984; Turok 1979. Tordoff 1974 is a
favorable exception in that it contains various shorter
references to the role of chiefs, especially in Molteno’s
(1974) contribution.
[4]The central part of Zambia (from Livingstone in the
south via the capital Lusaka, to the Copperbelt in the north),
which is the most developed in terms of urbanization and
industry.
[5]Cf. Republic of Zambia 1965; Rubin & Tarantino 1980.
In recent years, chieftainship as a qualification for membership
of the House of Chiefs is moreover explicitly based on the Chiefs
Act; cf. the updated version of the Zambian constitution as
presented in Rubin et al. 1985. Official lists of the 280-odd
recognized chiefs and their councillors have been regularly
published by both the colonial and the post-colonial state; cf.
Northern Rhodesia 1943; Republic of Zambia 1966, 1973.
[6]The imposition, upon complex and varied precolonial
political systems, of a conception of chieftain-ship (with e.g.
notions of the coincidence of cultural and political units, of
formal bureaucratic hierarchy encompassing all incumbents under
an apical ‘Paramount Chief’, and of bounded areas of
jurisdiction and administration) as defined and evolved by the
colonial state — specifically in terms of ‘Native
Authorities’ — renders it meaningless to speak of chiefs with
reference to precolonial Zambia. The very concept of ‘chief’
is a colonial creation, the successful attempt to engineer a neo-tradition,
even though that attempt and its products were justified by
reference to some precolonial political leadership, which however
was redefined beyond recognition (cf. Apthorpe 1959, 1960). It is
in this sense that the term ‘neo-traditional’ is used
throughout my argument. A fuller theoretical discussion is
outside our present scope.
[7]Zambia Daily Mail, 17 November 1981; Zambia
Nieuwsbrief, 11 (1982), p. 3.
[8]Times of Zambia, 29.8.83; Touwen-van der Kooij, in
press.
[9]Largely on the basis of my field-work on chiefs in
Western Province, 1972-74, 1977, 1978, and archival research in
the Zambian National Archives and Kaoma district files, 1974 and
1978, I have drafted a number of partial studies in this
connexion, including a lengthy analysis of the Zambian House of
Chiefs: van Binsbergen, n.d. Meanwhile, I am indebted to my
colleague Emile van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal for creating a
stimulating context towards the analysis of my data on
contemporary Zambian chieftainship; and to him and John Griffiths
for their editorial remarks, and their patience while this
contribution was written for the present special issue of the
Journal of Legal Pluralism.
[10]E.g.
Yeta 1956; Gluckman 1951; Turner 1952.
[11]Mubiana, D., [Main title illegible:] ‘
‘‘Malyalya’’ festivities to spill over,’ Times of
Zambia, 3 April, 1987, p. 6. Here as elsewhere below, the
paragraph structure of the newspaper items quoted has been
edited, and the abbreviation ‘Mr’ is changed to ‘Mr.’.
[12]Cf. Bayart 1979; van Binsbergen et al. 1986: 382f and
references cited there.
[13]From both newspapers together, 135 items (articles with
or without pictures; or isolated pictures with a caption) were
gleaned that mentioned chiefs or implicitly referred to chiefs.
This amounts to only one entry per 4 or 5 days for either
newspaper. I may have missed a few due to the somewhat irregular
supply of newspapers in the outskirts of Lusaka, where I then
lived. I am grateful to my research assistant at the time, Mr.
Denes Shiyowe, for processing this and much other newspaper
material into a more manageable physical format; and to the
editors of Zambia Nieuwsbrief (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
for providing additional materials.
[14]African National Congress, Zambia’s first nationalist
party, founded by Mr. Harry Nkumbula in the early 1950s; UNIP
itself had developed out of ANC in the late 1950s.
[15]Caplan 1970; Stokes 1966; Prins 1980; Ranger 1968;
Mutumba Mainga 1973; Mulford 1967: ch. vi.
[16]Cf. Schoffeleers 1979; van Binsbergen 1981: ch. 3;
Ranger 1985.
[17]For a sophisticated recent study of Zambian national
newspapers, cf. Kasoma 1986. This book’s argument, however,
concentrates on the relations between the press and the national
political centre, and does not touch on the topics (chiefs, rural
journalism) around which my discussion revolves here.
[18]Of whom eleven specified by name; in addition, one
reference is to an unspecified collectivity of Bemba chiefs in
the past; these past references do not include councillors, court
justices etc.
[19]Out of these 162 references, 10 were to chief’s
councillors: two to the former Bemba traditional ‘Prime
Minister’ Mr. Chisashi; and eight to Lozi indunas (=
councillors), including four to the Ngambela (Lozi traditional
‘Prime Minister’): three to the parting Ngambela Mr. Suu (who
was demoted by President Kaunda in 1972), and one to the new
Ngambela Mr. Mukonde. As far as status, functioning and relations
vis-a-vis the modern central state are concerned, these
councillors are so much part of the neo-traditional chiefly
structure that I do not hesitate to include them in the total
chiefly data set, despite the existence of sub-national,
neo-traditional constitutional distinctions that defines the
councillors’ status as that of non-chiefs and commoners.
[20]Due to the early colonial pattern of land appropriation
in the Lusaka region, and the extent of Lusaka Rural district, no
equivalent peri-urban major chiefs (of the Soli, Sala and Lenje)
are found in the immediate vicinities of Lusaka; cf.
Brelsford 1935, 1965.
[21]In the corpus, reference is made to as many as 60
different chiefs. Among these 60, only 10 chiefs have more than
two references. Peri-urban location and membership of the House
of Chiefs again turn out to be major factors of such multiple
reference, but they fail to account for two other
multiple-reference clusters: chiefs from Northwestern Province
whose confrontations with government development agencies created
substantial problems; and the Litunga and the Lozi chiefly
aristocracy at large — indicative of the crucial role the
latter has played in colonial and post-colonial Zambia, as both a
threat to and (e.g. in Princess Nakatindi’s case) a keystone of
UNIP’s nationalist politics.
[22]The Appendix gives the item numbers (usually displayed
in the text between square brackets), specific newspaper, date
and headlines if any, of all 1972-73 items that constitute my
corpus of data.
[23]For systematic analyses of challenges, by the national
press, of the Zambian government and party, cf. Kasoma 1986:
117f, 134f, 194f and passim; and Lungu 1986.
[24]In
1972, K1 equalled c. US$ 1.40.
[25]For details on the controversial Litunga succession,
tacitly supported by President Kaunda, e.g. Caplan 1970. Chief
Kanongesha had been involved in Zambian nationalist politics
before his accession, and subsequently was an active member of
the House of Chiefs.
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