TRC Final Report

Volume 3

Chapter 3

Subsection 1

Volume THREE Chapter THREE

Regional ProfileNatal and KwaZulu

■ OVERVIEW OF THE REGION

The Territory¹

1 The province now known as KwaZulu-Natal lies on the eastern seaboard of South Africa, stretching up to Mozambique and Swaziland in the north and bordered by the Drakensberg mountains to the west. It covers a total area of 100 000 square kilometres. The area was originally populated by San hunter-gatherers and by Nguni-speaking peoples who moved down the East Coast of Africa in the eighteenth century and later coalesced into the Zulu nation.

2 English traders and hunters settled in the Port Natal (Durban) region in the early nineteenth century. In the mid-1800s, the province was annexed as an autonomous district of the Cape Colony and the British administration established the Native Reserve of Zululand between the Tugela River and Mozambique. Administration was based on Zulu customary law, set up in a way that allowed the colonial state to co-opt the institutions of chieftainship for its own purposes. Thus, Zulu chiefs became the administrators of the British settler government. Many chiefs gained their positions through loyalty to the white administration rather than through customary laws of genealogy.

3 With the formation of the Union in 1910, the systems of chieftainship were brought together under a centralised administration controlled by Pretoria. The Black (Native) Administration Act (No 38 of 1927) empowered commissioners to appoint and depose chiefs, and laid the rules for chiefs’ succession, family relations and personal obligations. In 1951, the last of the representative institutions for blacks was abolished² and a local government system of tribal and regional authorities was set up within ‘Bantu Authorities’ (also known as ‘Bantustans’).

4 In 1970, the Zululand Territorial Authority (ZTA) was set up with Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi as chief executive officer. In 1972, the ZTA was converted into the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly (KLA), with Buthelezi as the chief minister. The KwaZulu Constitution retained the colonial structures for regulating chieftainship, with chiefs appointed to their positions by the KwaZulu government. By now, the region’s borders had changed substantially; KwaZulu consisted of disjointed fragments scattered throughout Natal. As with other homelands, the boundaries between Natal and KwaZulu were often marked informally by a river, a road or a mountain ridge. The land allocated to KwaZulu was largely barren and the soil degenerate compared to the generally fertile and productive farmland of Natal.

The people

5 KwaZulu and Natal together account for approximately one-fifth of South Africa’s total population. The biggest population group is of African descent, of which 90 per cent is Zulu. About 90 per cent of the white population are English speaking. There is a sizeable Asian presence in Natal and a small section of the population is coloured.

The politics

6 Three main political groupings in the province have been identified for the purposes of this report:

The state

7 In Natal, this included the Natal Provincial Administration, the Department of Bantu Administration, the KwaZulu Government (including the KLA, local, regional, and traditional authorities and the KwaZulu Police or KZP) and structures in the security apparatus.

The Mass Democratic Movement (MDM)

8 This consisted of a loose alliance of organisations, most of which supported the political ethos of the African National Congress (ANC), and sometimes its military wing as well. These included organised labour, student organisations, the United Democratic Front (UDF) and its affiliates from the trade unions, Black Consciousness organisations, the Natal Indian Congress (NIC), the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (CONTRALESA), churches and church bodies, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

Those opposing the state from within state-created structures

9 Among these groups were Inkatha³ and its affiliates, working through the homeland and traditional structures.