A comparative study of the politics of chieftaincy and local government in colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwe, 1950-2010

Abstract

This thesis historicizes the paradox of the survival of the institution of chieftainship in Zimbabwe from near demise at independence in 1980, when it was largely considered as a discredited institution due to its former alliance with colonial administrations, to its revival and current importance where it is an integral part of Zimbabwe’s constitutional and political structure and wields considerable power. It explores the political manipulation of African chiefs in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s by the colonial state in its efforts to combat African Nationalism, and reveals how the alliance of chiefs with the colonial state drove a political wedge between the chiefs and Nationalists during the anticolonial struggle, a development that made chieftaincy a discredited institution at independence. The thesis argues that the fall-out between the chiefs and Nationalists that was precipitated by the chiefs’ close association with the Smith regime reversed a promising start that had been forged between them in the late 1940s and early 1950s when chiefs had actively supported the emerging Nationalist movements like the African People’s Voice Association. The thesis also examines the sources of the enduring power of the institution of chieftaincy under the onslaught of powerful political and ideological forces that have sought to transform it since the advent of colonial rule, such as colonialism itself, modernism and nationalism, and identifies the sources of its resilience in its mutability. It offers an interesting comparison of colonial and postcolonial intentions in local administrative policy. It not only unveils how colonialism transformed the institution of chieftaincy in Zimbabwe but also builds a case of how the postcolonial state continued to re-invent the same institution for partisan and political expediency purposes. It notes that the Rhodesian state’s retreat from its authoritarian attempts to restructure traditional African society in the 1940s and 1950s, and its reversion to traditional communal land tenure, was a concession to the indispensability of traditional authority structures in rural local governance. Similarly, the postcolonial government’s restoration of chiefs’ powers in 2000, after sidelining them for two decades, also signified their indispensability to the postcolonial state’s control of the rural populations when it was confronted by political challenges from a rising tide of opposition movements that sought to capture the rural constituencies.