Abstract
The Transkeian administration evolved in the second half of the nineteenth century as a consequence of the frontier wars and the incremental expansion of the Cape Colony. It comprised twenty-seven magisterial districts, each under the administrative and judicial control of a magistrate. Authority was exercised directly by the NAD through the Chief Magistrate of Umtata. Unlike the other provinces, where magistrates were predominantly officials of the Department of Justice, the Transkeian administration was organically linked to the NAD.
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Notes and References
J. H. Hofmeyr, South Africa (London, 1931), p. 315.
W. M. Macmillan, Bantu, Boer and Briton (London, 1929), p. 296. In the OUP edition of 1963 Macmillan was somewhat more ironical in referring to ‘the almost vaunted success of this unique, tribally composite but roomy “Bantu Homeland” as a model of Native Administration…’, p. 348.
F. Brownlee, ‘The Administration of the Transkeian Territories’, Journal of the African Society, XXXVI, 144, 1937, p. 337.
J. R. Sullivan, The Native Policy of Sir Theophilus Shepstone (Johannesburg, 1928), p. 82.
R. Martin, ‘Political and Social Theories of Transkeian Administrators in the Late Nineteenth Century’ (MA thesis, UCT, 1978), p. 51.
Biographical material drawn from Eric Rosenthal’s Southern African Dictionary of National Biography (London, 1966);
W. T. Brownlee, Reminiscences of a Transkeian (Pietermaritzburg, 1975).
One of Hertzog’s original four segregation measures was the Natives Union Council Bill. The measure of success achieved by local councils in the Transkei and elsewhere was advanced as ‘part of the reason for the Bill’. See J. B. M. Hertzog, The Segregation Problem. General Hertzog’s Solution (Cape Town, n.d. [1926]) p. 19.
N. L. G. Cope, ‘The Zulu Royal Family Under the South African Government, 1910–1933: Solomon KaDinuzulu, Inkatha and Zulu Nationalism’ (PhD thesis, Natal University, 1985), p. 17.
E.H. Brookes, The Colour Problems of South Africa (Lovedale, 1934), pp. 91–92.
Brookes, History, pp. 246, 64. As in this example, what might be termed the ‘missionary position’ was frequently caricatured. But not all nineteenth-century missionaries were hostile to traditionalism. See, e.g. D. Welsh, The Roots of Segregation. Native Policy in Natal 1854–1910 (Oxford and Cape Town, 1973), p. 261.
In Jeff Guy’s The Heretic. A Study of the Life of John William Colenso 1814–1883 (Pietermaritzburg and Johannesburg, 1983), we learn that for Bishop Colenso ‘the world was not divided between the enlightened, redeemed, Christian and the benighted, heathen, barbarian. While Christians had precious insights, special privileges, duties and responsibilities, all men were saved at birth through the love of God…’, p. 44.
On the legalisation of customary law in the colonial context, see Martin Chanock’s Law, Custom and Social Order. The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia (Cambridge, 1985).
NTS 2093 222/280, vol. I. See article by Herbst in The S. A. Farmer, 22 June 1928, entitled ‘Native Farm Labour’. For farmers’ response see The S. A. Farmer, 6 July 1928. See also typescript of article dated 25 January 1920 by H. G. Falwasser for The Sunday Times. Falwasser argues that the role of the NAD was to serve as the arbiter between ‘employer and employee’ and that it should not engage in ‘actual recruiting of natives’ on behalf of farmers.
NTS 8633 61/362, Note to Minister from D. L. Smit, 15 September 1933; Herbst to Sec. Justice, 18 July 1933. At some point the responsibility for the Act must have devolved upon the NAD, though it is unlikely that it was ever effectively administered. See D. C. Hindson, ‘The Pass System and the Formation of an Urban African Proletariat in South Africa’ (PhD thesis, Sussex University, 1983), p. 94.
See R. Davenport, ‘African Townsmen? South African Natives (Urban Areas) Legislation through the Years’, African Affairs, LXVIII, 271, 1969. For an analysis of the differences between the Godley and Stallard Commissions in terms of a ‘differentiated labour system’, see also D. Hindson, Pass Controls and the Urban African Proletariat in South Africa (Johannesburg, 1987), pp. 35–9.
See M.M.S. Bell, ‘The Politics of Administration: A Study of the Career of Dr D.L. Smit with Special Reference to his Work in the Department of Native Affairs, 1934–45’, MA thesis (Rhodes University, 1978) p. 22, also pp. 19–23. Bell claims that Smit, like J. H. Hofmeyr, saw the 1937 legislation as an opportunity for increasing departmental control in the urban areas in order to ensure that local authorities ‘would treat “their responsibilities” in a more serious light’. The 1942 Smit Report recommended the abolition of the pass laws.
J. Van der Poel, Selections From the Smuts Papers vol. VI, letter no. 414, Smuts to M. C. Gillett, 15 May 1937.
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© 1989 Saul Dubow
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Dubow, S. (1989). The Ideology of Native Administration. In: Racial Segregation and the Origins of Apartheid in South Africa, 1919–36. St Antony’s. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20041-2_5
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