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This article discusses traditional leadership laws that entrench the 'tribal' boundaries which make up the former homelands, and recent policies that foreclose landownership for the majority of rural people. I argue that these laws and policies reinforce, rather than address, the legacy of the 1913 and 1936 Land Acts. Distorted constructs of unilateral chiefly power are mobilised in attempts to create a separate legal zone of customary authority that undermines the citizenship rights of those living within the boundaries of the former bantustans. The article points to tensions between the new policies and the Constitution's promise of land rights to remedy past discrimination, discussing restitution as a case in point. The example of platinum mining on communal land in North West Province is used to illustrate the significant resources at stake.

These essays give a multidimensional perspective on South Africa's democracy as it turns twenty, and will be of interest to general readers while being particularly useful to students and researchers.

People in the former homelands waged a successful battle against the imposition of 'tribal levies' during the anti-apartheid struggle. Recently, however, there has been a resurgence of traditional authorities demanding annual levies. Those who refuse to pay cannot access government grants and identity books. This article argues that recent laws bolstering the powers of traditional leaders have contributed to this resurgence. It argues that the laws undermine the citizenship rights of the poorest South Africans as well as their ability to hold traditional leaders to account. It suggests that the laws have been ambiguously worded in an attempt to disguise the fact that they are inconsistent with the Constitution. It rebuts the argument that annual tribal levies are consistent with and justified by customary law, by describing their colonial and apartheid genesis.

The Article discusses the Traditional Courts Bill of 2008 and its likely impact on the balance of power in rural areas. It describes improvements women have managed to win over the last 15 years, and argues that they are the outcome of vigorous processes of debate and contestation over the content of custom involving a wide cross-section of people in rural areas. These processes of debate and contestation are put at risk by the top-down construct of chiefly power embodied in the Traditional Courts Bill and other recent legislation reinforcing the powers of traditional leaders to unilaterally define the content of custom within ethnically delineated tribal boundaries. The Article discusses the laws as the outcome of the successful efforts of the traditional leader lobby to bolster their contested authority with statutory power. It argues that what is at stake is which voices are allowed to participate in the definition of custom, and on what terms. It discusses the impact of national law on contested power dynamics at the local level, and the privileging of chiefly voices in the legislative process. It begins with the views put forward by rural women in a series of consultation meetings about the Bill. Notwithstanding the problems associated with such courts they are often the only accessible source of justice in rural areas and many women argue that they should be reformed, rather than abolished. The Article argues that the Bill fails to address many of the problems raised by rural women, and would instead exacerbate them.

The Article discusses the Traditional Courts Bill of 2008 and its likely impact on the balance of power in rural areas. It describes improvements women have managed to win over the last 15 years, and argues that they are the outcome of vigorous processes of debate and contestation over the content of custom involving a wide cross-section of people in rural areas. These processes of debate and contestation are put at risk by the top-down construct of chiefly power embodied in the Traditional Courts Bill and other recent legislation reinforcing the powers of traditional leaders to unilaterally define the content of custom within ethnically delineated tribal boundaries. The Article discusses the laws as the outcome of the successful efforts of the traditional leader lobby to bolster their contested authority with statutory power. It argues that what is at stake is which voices are allowed to participate in the definition of custom, and on what terms. It discusses the impact of national law on contested power dynamics at the local level, and the privileging of chiefly voices in the legislative process. It begins with the views put forward by rural women in a series of consultation meetings about the Bill. Notwithstanding the problems associated with such courts they are often the only accessible source of justice in rural areas and many women argue that they should be reformed, rather than abolished. The Article argues that the Bill fails to address many of the problems raised by rural women, and would instead exacerbate them. Reprinted by permission of Agenda

The death of Nelson Mandela on 5 December 2013 was in a sense a wake-up call for South Africans, and a time to reflect on what has been achieved since ‘those magnificent days in late April 1994’ (as the editors of this volume put it) ‘when South Africans of all colours voted for the first time in a democratic election’. In a time of recall and reflection it is important to take account, not only of the dramatic events that grip the headlines, but also of other signposts that indicate the shape and characteristics of a society. The New South African Review looks, every year, at some of these signposts, and the essays in this fourth volume of the series again examine and analyse a broad spectrum of issues affecting the country. They tackle topics as diverse as the state of organised labour; food retailing; electricity generation; access to information; civil courage; the school system; and – looking outside the country to its place in the world – South Africa’s relationships with north-east Asia, with Israel and with its neighbours in the southern African region. Taken together, these essays give a multidimensional perspective on South Africa’s democracy as it turns twenty, and will be of interest to general readers while being particularly useful to students and researchers.

INTRODUCTIONThe Natives Land Act of 1913 delineated separate territories for black and white ownership and occupation of land, setting aside 7 per cent of the land for the black majority – subsequently increased to 13 per cent by the 1936 Natives Trust and Land Act. After the National Party came to power in 1948 it used the rural reserves established by the Land Acts as the basis for establishing ten ethnically defined ‘homelands’ for speakers of different African languages. Some of the ‘homelands’, such as Bophuthatswana, discussed here, became ‘independent states’. A feature of the anti-apartheid struggle of the 1980s was anti-Bantustan uprisings in ‘homelands’ such as Bophuthatswana, KwaNdebele, Lebowa and Ciskei. The Bantustans were re-incorporated into a unitary South Africa with the transition to democracy in 1994, and a system of elected local government was put in place throughout the country, replacing the system of chiefly rule over separate ‘tribes’ that had formed the bedrock of the Bantustan system. There has been concerted opposition, by lobbies representing traditional leaders, to their loss of power with the end of apartheid, and various laws bolstering the powers of traditional leaders have been enacted since 2003. Deposits of valuable minerals such as platinum, chrome, vanadium, titanium and coal have been discovered in former Bantustan areas, leading to a mining boom in recent years. South Africa's platinum belt spans the former Bantustans of Bophuthatswana and Lebowa and accounts for almost eighty per cent of the world's platinum production. Some of the most platinum-rich land in the western part of the bushveld was bought by groups of African purchasers either before the 1913 and 1936 Land Acts or through exemptions from them. These groups were subsumed within statedelineated ‘tribes’ during apartheid.There are regular explosions of anger and frustration by local people in the platinum belt who are excluded from, and unable to get information about, the lucrative mining deals taking place on their mineral-rich land. These conditions gained national attention in 2012 with the massacre of thirty-four striking mineworkers at Marikana. Rural people living in former Bantustan areas continue to live in grinding poverty despite the valuable minerals in the land they have owned and occupied for generations. Instead, they read in the newspapers about mining companies and politically connected elites – in particular traditional leaders – flaunting vast amounts of money in opaque deals involving their land and mineral resources.

Even more perplexing is that the justice department's proposal re-affirms the bill's reliance on the controversial tribal boundaries entrenched by the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act of 2003. More specifically, it reiterates that \"alignment with this legislation pre-empts the criticism that the bill entrenches apartheid-era boundaries\". One of the reasons the Traditional Courts Bill was so fiercely rejected by rural people during the recent public hearings is that they have had time to make sense of this legislative package since the enactment of the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act in 2003, and provincial laws that bolster chiefly power, in 2005. These laws have elicited a return by some chiefs to the arrogance and abuses of the Bantustan era, and have given rural people a bitter foretaste of what is in store if the Traditional Courts Bill is passed. The ANC's symbolic capital is its pivotal role in the transition from apartheid to democracy. Central to that was dismantling the Bantustan system and creating equal citizenship for all South Africans - black and white, urban and rural. The strongest support for the ANC in the 1994 elections came from rural voters who had been engaged in fierce anti-Bantustan struggles.