Traditional leadership and its relation to the democratically elected local government structure in Kwazulu-Natal

[摘要] English: The role of traditional leadership in South Africa has remained a controversial issueover the past fifteen years. The focus of this research is to investigate the relationshipbetween the modern political system of governance and the traditional leadership asforms of dual system of governance in South Africa. The thesis raises issues ascatalysts for robust debated, to move beyond standard political arguments particularlywhen it comes to the meaningful role traditional leaders must play in South Africa today.Debates surrounding the institution of uBukhosi primarily polarised the South Africansociety and this is normal as it is the case with all other issues. There seems to be twoopposing schools of thought on the subject of traditional leaders, even within the AfricanNational Congress' ranks. The thesis also gives a background to these two theoreticalschools of thought and attempts to explain the reason why there is some difficultiesformulating a policy document that is implemental. In this thesis, the two opposingviewpoints are represented by 'modernists' and 'traditionalists' respectively. The otherposition is recognising the role traditional leaders played and believe that traditionalleaders have a role in the democratic dispensation and must form part of localgovernance in rural areas. This relationship is examined from the government'sdocumentations, official political statements by politicians and most importantly, howpolicy (theory) is implemented (praxis) by both government and the institution oftraditional leadership.The argument brought forward in this thesis holds a view that the institution of traditionalleadership possesses the ability for understanding how to govern and effectively makepeople come to an agreement through consensus about social problems that they shareand the possible solutions to these problems, rather than depend on political elites andbureaucrats. In this way the system of traditional leadership provides values that areabsent in the democratic form of governance.The thesis also focuses on issues of governance and political transformation that wasintroduced in the 'Interim' Constitution and further developed in the Constitution. Inorder to establish good working relationships between the institution of uBukhosi andelected government structures, 'trust' is essential between these two systems.Thus the researcher takes a moral stand that government must demonstrate a 'politicalwill' to remedy the situation and work towards authentic recognition of the institution ofuBukhosi and African culture. The study further puts forward a view that traditionalleaders must be seen to be apolitical in decisions they make. Further more, theinstitution of traditional leadership must constantly revisit itself and seriously revise itsstrategies with regard to the position of women in the succession debate for position ofleadership as traditional leaders and other aspects that are seen as inherently opposedto the Constitution. In other words, the institution must also transform, it cannot remainstatic. There must be a 'political will' to come to terms that people on the grassrootswant their traditional leaders to remain in authority, therefore traditional leaders' role ingovernance must be made clearer.The study provides for a rational involvement of the institution of traditional leadership inthe negotiated state. Given the fact that South Africa is currently a constitutional stateguided by democratic principles, democracy should prevail, however, not at theexpense of the destruction of the institution of traditional leadership. Thus, democracyshould not thrive by destroying traditional African leadership system. Finally, this thesisperceives the dual system of governance as two sides of the same coin.

[发布机构] University of the Free State