CHIEFSHIP, PTY unLTD.: Reflections on Sovereign Un/Accountability, Past and Present

ABSTRACTA number of ‘customary’ African kings and chiefs – historically accountable to the will of their subjects – have sought to turn their offices into lucrative sources of accumulation; indeed, into a form of monopoly capital founded on the assertion of a political sovereignty unaccountable to any other. What historical conditions have laid the ground for this transformation? How widespread is it? What, in the ‘new’ economies, technologies, ideologies and politics of the global order, has given the Kingdom of Custom its material, affective and political heft in this, the twenty-first century? In addressing these questions with particular focus on South Africa, this essay explores the relationship between ‘local’ structural conditions and those exogenous to the country in order to explain ongoing transformations in traditional authority – and their impact on the political and cultural economy of the nation at large.KEYWORDS: ‘Traditional’ African sovereigntyKingdom of custom‘Business chiefs,’ colonialityPostcolonialitySouth Africa Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Dalindyebo v S (090/2015) [2015] ZASCA 144 (1 October 2015).2 For a comprehensive account of the case, see Thamm (Citation2010).3 Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa v Speaker of the National Assembly and Others (2474/16) [3016] ZAWCHC 206; [2017] 2 All SA 463 (WCC) (23 November 2016).4 On contemporary South African chiefship see e.g. Oomen (Citation2005), Williams (Citation2010), Turner (Citation2014), and Krämer (Citation2016).5 See also the essays in Comaroff and Comaroff (Citation2018).6 This and some of the next paragraph are paraphrased from the same text.7 See e.g. Gluckman (Citation1940b) and Schapera (Citation1934; Citation1947).8 Berry (Citation2001) was speaking of colonial and postcolonial Asante; Capps (Citation2016: 455), however, argues that her study ‘sets the agenda for a materialist analysis of the rentier chiefship … ’ in general.9 Case no. 12745/2018P, 11 June 2021; https://www.groundup.org.za/media/uploads/documents/itb_judgment_11_june_2021.pdf.10 All quotes in this and the next paragraph are from Cook (Citation2018: 211–214). Approximately 2,000 mineworkers attended the gathering.11 Leruo has not escaped criticism as a ruler, although his hold on his office remains strong (Comaroff & Comaroff Citation2009: 109). He has also been respondent to a lawsuit filed by the Bafokeng Land Buyers’ Association, which claims that much of ‘his’ territory actually belongs to the ‘individual communities forming the Bafokeng ‘tribe’ … [who bought it] in the mid-19th century;’ https://bafokeng-landbuyers.org/.12 Throughout the trial, Zuma had vocal support from the ANC Women’s League.13 Every indigenous ruler I encountered in the North West and KwaZulu-Natal expressed a desire to take their polities into the market and of being a ‘business chief’; the variance in their success in doing so, however, makes it impossible to quantify the phenomenon.