Transformation 6 (1988)                                                     Debate
 TRANSFORMING TRADITION OR TRANSFORMING SOCIETY:
 SIT AS, HLATSWAYO AND PERFORMATIVE LITERATURE
Andrew D Spiegel
     Sitas' vibrant eulogy of Mi S'Dumo Hlatswayo's poetry (1986; Transforma-
tion, 2), cries out for a critical response regarding uses in Southern Africa of the
notion of tradition. The article is a significant contribution to a rapidly develop-
ing debate on characterising workers' literature, poetry and theatre, and that
genre's relationship with other similar performative practices. Comment aimed
at Sitas will hopefully resonate with that debate.
     Sitas characterises Hlatswayo's poetry as 'an important revival of the Nguni
imbongi tradition in the service of the black worker's struggle ... a revival and
transformation of the tradition ... (which) offer(s) an interesting formal mutation
of imbongi poetry' (1986:30; original emphases).
     The problem with this characterisation lies in the perception that there exists
some kind of real, authentic (and implicitly static) 'imbongi tradition', which was
historically associated functionally with an hierarchical social structure, and to
which one can refer to establish a kind of static baseline model of a normative
'Nguni imbongi tradition' set in the context of an equally static and idealised
'traditional Nguni society'. Sitas' idea that praise poetry needs to be trans-
formed, rather than applied directly, for use in the trade union context, implies an
acceptance of just such a static conception of what constitutes an original (real;
pure; authentic) traditional form.
     Quinlan's (1986) article, in the same number of Transformation,
demonstrates the fallacy of working with notions of static and authentic
'traditional' forms, albeit in a different context. It thus signals the importance of
recognising that traditional forms are constantly transformed and changing,
despite appeals by their purveyors that they are replications of earlier forms:
Sitas appears to have ignored the recent literature on instrumentalist uses of
traditionally elsewhere in the world (eg Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983).
     Perhaps Sitas' analysis has been influenced by the literature on southern
African praise poetry much of which does represent it as a static tradition of un-
changing form and style, bound up with the hierarchies of chiefs and commoners
in what is portrayed as traditional (Zulu; Xhosa; Nguni; Sotho) society; this
despite Mafeje's efforts twenty years ago (1967) to dispel notions of the imbongi
as praise poet for the chief, and to indicate his role as bard and socio-political
commentator. Setting out to record and analyse examples of praise poetry from a
particular place and period easily leads to the description of a static form in much
the way as occurred with codifiers of 'customary law' (Chanock, 1982). Perhaps,
also, Sitas has unwittingly been seduced by Inkatha's claim to be the purveyor of
authentic Zulu culture (or tradition) (Harries, 1987) which would include in itself
the notion of an 'original' (authentic) imbongi style and form of praise poetry.
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 Transformation                                                               Spiegel
The probable reason for the problem outlined above is that Sitas, like so many
 others, appears to work from the premise of a dichotomy between (if not
 societies, then) forms of practice which are either traditional and reactionary or
 modern and progressive. The dichotomy reflects a notional opposition between
 non-rational thinking and transmission of ideas about form and style on the one
 hand, and, on the other, rational thought and communication. In South Africa,
 moreover, progressives' acceptance of this dichotomy is reinforced by the state's
use of traditionality in creating and bolstering the bantustan system (Spiegel,
 1987; cf Perry and Perry, 1985) so that 'ideologies that stress "tribal order" and
 "traditional" life ... are ... viewed as reactionary concepts that serve to disrupt the
development of a national consciousness' (Mills, 1987: 37).
     For Sitas, acceptance of this dichotomy manifests in his counterposing tradi-
tion to transformed tradition, with a further overlay of implicit opposition be-
tween bad (hierarchical) and good (communitarian): he thus romanticises
Hlatswayo's discovery, in an independent African church, of a 'community of
concern and care ... without status distinctions (and) where ordinary people
shared and prayed together' (Sitas, 1986:52), and he sets this up in opposition to
both an image of earlier hierarchies of so-called traditional Zulu society, as
portrayed in the literature (and by Inkatha: see Harries, 1987), and the contem-
porary hierarchies experienced in certain 'community-based' organisations as
well as on the shopfloor. It was in the former 'communitarian atmosphere', says
Sitas, that Hlatswayo learned the skills now imbedded in his poetry and which he
uses to confront the hierarchies and exploitation experienced on the shopfloor
and more widely by working class people in their daily lives. Moreover, he em-
phasises the dichotomy when he says that Hlatswayo 'is consciously transforming
tradition propelled by a future he longs for as opposed to the izimbongi of Kwa-
Zulu (and thus Inkatha) who are attempting to preserve social hierarchy by link-
ing it to the past' (Sitas, 1986: 54-5, original emphases).
     Two points need to be made here. Firstly, praise poetry, like all other oral
literature and indeed all traditional form, is transformed in the process of each
performance, in its transmission from one performance to the next, and from one
poem to the next. Analysts who set out to discover the commonalities of content
and/or form in examples of oral literature and performing arts must be held
responsible for creating an impression of static, so-called traditional, style and
form, and their example should not be followed blindly.
     Secondly, and more importantly, Sitas' last-quoted observation reveals that
the practice of praise poetry is being used as a resource and drawn upon for
diverse political ends. Both Hlatswayo and the KwaZulu (Inkatha) izimbongi are
using it because it is 'rooted in popular symbolism' of the day (Sitas, 1986:54);
put simply, it has an appeal to their constituencies. But whether this is because,
in people's minds, it is linked to the past or because it foretells the future is a
moot point - even if that future is portrayed as a golden age. Possibly Marx sug-
gested the answer when he wrote that
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 Transformation                                                            Spiegel
         The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare
         on the brains of the living. And just when they seem engaged in
         revolutionising themselves and things ... precisely in such periods
         of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the
         past to their service ... (Marx. 1968:96).
     If this is the case, Sitas has done a great disservice to both Hlatswayo and the
progressive movement. At the general level, his own commitment to images of
the future-as-good has blinded him to the importance of being able to use images
ostensibly drawn from the past as a means of mobilising in the present. More
specifically, he has misapprehended the import of Hlatswayo's work which, by
using a style which is said to come from the past, enables him to draw in others
who value that past, and its symbols, so that they will gain an understanding of
their present and be hastened into perceiving their future as the image in which
Hlatswayo portrays it.
     Moreover, Sitas has implied that Hlatswayo's poetry has so significantly
transformed a version of Nguni praise poetry that he barely deserves the appela-
tion imbongi which Sitas readily bestows on the praise poets of Inkatha whom he
implicitly characterises as exemplifying authentic izimbongi.
     The point at issue here is that, just as the KwaZulu izimbongi do, the imbongi
Hlatswayo uses a practice - readily described as traditional - as a resource for the
mobilisation of people with whom that particular representation of traditionality
resonates. As Morris (1986) has pointed out, people in the Natal region are
sometimes unionists and sometimes Inkatha supporters. In their respective ef-
forts to draw their constituencies into offering more consistent support, neither
Inkatha nor Hlatswayo (and the progressive movement) can afford to disregard
the potency of appeals to the past as phrased in terms of traditionality.
     It is for precisely that reason that the columns of Sechaba have repeatedly
been used to contest Inkatha and Gatsha Buthelezi's claims to be upholding
'tradition'. Such contests over what constitutes the traditional have been recog-
nised as a primary aspect of liberation struggles elsewhere in the world (Tonkin-
son, 1982: Ranger. 1983; Philibert, 1986), and the ANC's continuing conflict
with Buthelezi and Inkatha provides an arena for just such a contest (cf Harries,
1987).
     On occasions such as Shaka's Day, Buthelezi thus adorns himself in leopard-
skins and rehearses his genealogical links to both Cetshwayo, the last inde-
pendent Zulu King, and to Cetshwayo's prime minister (Harries. 1987); and
Sechaba responds with an attack on his use of 'traditional leopard skin regalia'
not only because it 'contrasted seriously with the high technogology of the
microphones before him' but also because Buthelezi 'was not interested in con-
tinuing Shaka's tradition' (Sechaba, Editorial: November 1985). That heritage is
one which Buthelezi, despite his 'traditional status as a chief ... long ago turned
his back on (it is) the strong and proud tradition of struggle which is the heritage
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of all our people including the ones whose loyality and support he falsely claims
- the Zulus'. It is thus, under the heading 'The Tradition Betrayed', that Sechaba
berates Buthelezi's participation in 'the bantustan system, which constitutes the
cornerstone of apartheid' (September, 1984: 4-5). Clearly Sechaba's editorial
writers feel it is important to wrest from Buthelezi his assumed right to decide
what constitutes the traditional so that it can be used as a resource by the ANC
rather than by Inkatha.
     The same should surely apply to progressive interpretations as to the efficacy
of such practices as praise poetry and other performative literature: too great a
concern with the formal transformations of such practices might reduce their
longer-term efficacy in effecting social transformation because much of their ap-
peal and power comes from their appearance of having come, untransformed, out
of the past.
REFERENCES
Chanock, N (1982) - 'Making Customary Law: men, women and courts in
     colonial Northern Rhodesia' in M J Hay and M Wright (eds) - African
     Women and the Law: historical perspectives (Boston, Boston University
     Papers on Africa 7)
Harries, P (1987) - 'Imagery, Symbolism and Tradition in a South African Ban-
     tustan: Gatsha Buthelezi, Inkatha and Zulu history' (University of Cape
     Town, mimeo)
Hobsbawm, E and T Ranger (1983) The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, CUP)
Marx, K (1968) -'The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte', in Karl Marx
     and Frederick Engels: Selected Works in One Volume (London, Lawrence
     and Wishart)
Mafeje, A (1967) -'The role of the bard in a contemporary African community",
     in Journal of African Languages 6(3)
Mills, GT (1987) -'The Social Meaning of Domestic Space: Notes on a suitable
     research methodology for Southern African architectural studies' (Un-
     published PhD thesis. University of Cape Town)
Morris, M (1986) -'Lessons from May Day: UWUSA, Inkatha and COSATU',
     Work in Progress 43
Perry J and C Perry (1985) -'Tinkering with tradition: apartheid and change in
     South Africa', in C Eippler and D Miles (eds) - Minorities and the Stale
     (Special Issue of Canberra Anthropology 8 (1&2))
Philibert, J M (1986) -'The Politics of Tradition: towards a generic culture in
     Vanuata', in Mankind, 16(1)
Quinlan, T (1986) -'The Tribal Paradigm and Ethnic Nationalism: a case study of
     political structures in Qwaqwa', Transformation 2.
Ranger, T (1983) -'The invention of tradition in colonial Africa' in E Hobsbawm
     and T Ranger (eds) - The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, CUP)
Sechaba - Official organ of the African National Congress of South Africa
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    (monthly)
Sitas, A (1986) -'A Black Mamba Rising: an introduction to Mi S'Dumo
    Hlatswayo's poetry', in Transformation 2
Spiegel, A D (1987) -'Politics and ideology in the use of traditional in South
    Africa' (paper presented to the annual conference of South African
    Anthropologists, University of Cape Town)
Tonkinson, R (1982) -'National Identity and the Problem of Kastom in Vanuata' -
    R Keesing and R Tonkinson (eds) - Reinventing Traditional Culture: the
    politics of Kastom in island Melanesia (Special Issue of Mankind, 13(4))
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