This dissertation examines the local nature of South Africa’s transition–era political violence (known in isiZulu as uDlame). While common explanations for the conflict focus on the struggle for political legitimacy between the rural and traditionalist Zulu ethnic nationalist movement Inkatha and the young and urban African National Congress (ANC), I argue that for the individuals and communities involved, politics were local. For the peri–urban Nyavu and Maphumulo chiefdoms in the Table Mountain region outside of Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu–Natal, these larger struggles were embedded in a century–old debate over land and what it meant for a chief to be legitimate. Drawing on a rich combination of written and oral sources, the dissertation examines the role of colonial and apartheid governments in the appointment and succession of Zulu chiefs, the engendering of debates over legitimacy and chiefly authority, boundary conflicts, “faction fights,” and competing claims on land. In the Table Mountain region, the Nyavu, whose chiefdom predated the rise of the Zulu state under Shaka, made land claims based on their hereditary status against the chiefdoms established in the area by the British such as the Qamu, Gcumisa, and Maphumulo (chapter one). The construction of a dam during the segregation era and the establishment of Tribal Authorities and bantustans under apartheid exacerbated these contests over access to land and political legitimacy (chapter two). The rise of the ethnic nationalist movement Inkatha in the KwaZulu bantustan, forced relocations, and an increasing population meant many parties competed over scarce land in the Table Mountain region (chapter three). As political violence erupted across KwaZulu–Natal and in the Gauteng townships during the late 1980s, the Table Mountain region initially remained a haven of peace under the “peace chief” Mhlabunzima Maphumulo of the Maphumulo chiefdom. In offering himself as peacemaker and protector, Chief Mhlabunzima attracted new Maphumulo members onto the contested land, sparking the deadly transition–era violence with the neighboring Nyavu (chapter four). Maphumulo’s actions also caused a rift within his chiefdom (chapter five). Local actors used both the national and local contest between Inkatha and the ANC as an opportunity to decide the land dispute through violence. The final chapter (six) turns away from the male-dominated experience of the violence to analyze how women's discussions about it reveal both their claims on ethnicity and uses of Zulu culture as a coping mechanism.The historiographical significance of these findings is threefold. First, my dissertation builds on earlier concerns of African historians about the importance of land for chiefly legitimacy, but goes beyond them by examining other claims to authority, such as hereditary descent, resource allocation, and security and protection during conflict. Second, after the advent of democracy, historical research and public history in South Africa has emphasized commemorative liberation history that tends to overlook the relatively recent painful, divisive years of warfare that almost scuttled the 1994 elections. Third, my study has relevancy in contemporary South African and African human rights debates over state/peasant relations and the role of chiefs and land reform in postcolonial African politics and democracy.
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