Institutions and idioms of 'customary' authority have returned to prominence in sub-Saharan Afric... more Institutions and idioms of 'customary' authority have returned to prominence in sub-Saharan Africa in the context of the 'rush' for its landed resources. But how is 'the chieftaincy' itself to be conceptualised within agrarian political economy? This contribution initiates a materialist investigation, focussing on the origins of its modern form in the colonial period. Contrary to Mamdani's (Citizen and subject: contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism, London: James Currey, 1996) influential theorisation, it is proposed that the key to its constitution as a distinctive fusion of political and landed power lies in the varied forms of exploitation that mediated and expressed Africa's capitalist development under colonial conditions. This is pursued through a comparison of how the imperial authorities turned to the chieftaincy as a means of addressing the overarching challenge of how to subjugate African labour to metropolitan and settler capital, while constructing stable systems of colonial domination in British West, East and South Africa. Although this choice of cases is selective, it is nevertheless suggestive of the ways in which this contradiction between accumulation and control would become embodied in the chieftaincy itself. The conclusion briefly considers how this intrinsic dynamic might be playing out in the land struggles of the present.
Drawing on a detailed study of three village-level disputes in the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela traditiona... more Drawing on a detailed study of three village-level disputes in the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela traditional authority area, this article explores how intensifying land struggles on the platinum belt around Rustenburg are being mediated through conflicts over group boundaries and identities, and how this in turn is articulating a potentially new yet contradictory rural class politics. In a context where chiefly authorities are themselves becoming major shareholders in local mining operations, the burning question is whether the ‘tribe’ should be treated as the only legitimate African land-holding unit, or whether the collective ownership of mineralised land should reside in smaller socio-political groups, typically claiming decent from its original buyers. The article finds that while contested constructions of rural ‘community’ are emerging as a significant means of defending or advancing popular claims over landed resources, these corporate forms of organisation are simultaneously riven by gender, generational and other social divisions, and are prone to replicating the tribalist logics they seek to challenge. The attempt to establish private property rights through more exclusionary group definitions may therefore also act as an equally divisive force against those labelled ‘outsiders’, not least migrant mineworkers.
Institutions and idioms of‘customary’authority have returned to prominence in sub-Saharan Africa ... more Institutions and idioms of‘customary’authority have returned to prominence in sub-Saharan Africa in the context of the ‘rush’ for its landed resources. But how is‘the chieftaincy’ itself to be conceptualised within agrarian political economy? This contribution initiates a materialist investigation, focusing on the origins of its modern form in the colonial period. Contrary to Mamdani’s (Citizen and subject: contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism, London: James Currey, 1996) influential theorisation, it is proposed that the key to its constitution as a distinctive fusion of political and landed power lies in the varied forms of exploitation that mediated and expressed Africa’s capitalist development under colonial conditions. This is pursued through a comparison of how the imperial authorities turned to the chieftaincy as a means of addressing the overarching challenge of how to subjugate African labour to metropolitan and settler capital, while constructing stable systems of colonial domination in British West, East and South Africa. Although this choice of cases is selective, it is nevertheless suggestive of the ways in which this contradiction between accumulation and control would become embodied in the chieftaincy itself. The conclusion briefly considers how this intrinsic dynamic might be playing out in the land struggles of the present.
Henry Bernstein was co-editor (with Terence J. Byres) of the Journal of Agrarian Change between 2... more Henry Bernstein was co-editor (with Terence J. Byres) of the Journal of Agrarian Change between 2001 and 2008 and co-edited The Journal of Peasant Studies (where he joined Byres) between 1985 and 2000. This interview highlights some of Bernstein's major pedagogical and theoretical contributions to the fields of agrarian political economy and development studies. To do so, it traces his intellectual and political trajectory, providing important context for understanding his published work.
This paper develops an explicitly materialist analysis of the 'rentier chieftaincy' by drawing on... more This paper develops an explicitly materialist analysis of the 'rentier chieftaincy' by drawing on Marx's theory of modern landed property. It argues that the colonial formation of 'tribal' land relations may be understood in relation to the subjugation of African labour to colonial capital, which in turn unintentionally created a potential barrier against investment on tribal land, and hence the conditions for the chiefly appropriation of ground rent. However, the extent to which chiefs could exercise an effective land monopoly in relation to capital was at the same time conditional upon the extent of their proprietorial control in relation to both the subject population and the central state. The politically conditional nature of this chiefly monopoly is captured in the formulation 'tribal-landed property', which is illustrated and developed through a case study of the changing economic relationship between the Bafokeng chieftaincy and mining capital on the South African platinum belt. It is concluded that this may have wider application in the context of accelerating investment over 'communal' land and intensifying struggles for its exclusive control, since these are potentially also struggles over the distribution of the surplus value produced by land-based capitals.
Henry Bernstein was co-editor (with Terence J. Byres) of the Journal of Agrarian Change between 2... more Henry Bernstein was co-editor (with Terence J. Byres) of the Journal of Agrarian Change between 2001 and 2008 and co-edited The Journal of Peasant Studies (where he joined Byres) between 1985 and 2000. This interview highlights some of Bernstein's major pedagog-ical and theoretical contributions to the fields of agrarian political economy and development studies. To do so, it traces his intellectual and political trajectory, providing important context for understanding his published work.
Drawing on a detailed study of three village-level disputes in the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela traditiona... more Drawing on a detailed study of three village-level disputes in the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela traditional authority area, this article explores how intensifying land struggles on the platinum belt around Rustenburg are being mediated though conflicts over group boundaries and identities, and how this in turn is articulating a potentially new yet contradictory rural class politics. In a context where chiefly authorities are themselves becoming major shareholders in local mining operations, the burning question is whether the ‘tribe’ should be treated as the only legitimate African land-holding unit, or whether the collective ownership of mineralised land should reside in smaller socio-political groups, typically claiming decent from its original buyers. The article finds that while contested constructions of rural ‘community’ are emerging as a significant means of defending or advancing popular claims over landed resources, these corporate forms of organisation are simultaneously riven by gender, generational and other social divisions, and are prone to replicating the tribalist logics they seek to challenge. The attempt to establish private property rights through more exclusionary group definitions may therefore also act as an equally divisive force against those labelled ‘outsiders’, not least migrant mineworkers.
Since assuming power in 1994, the African National Congress has pursued an ambitious policy of ‘m... more Since assuming power in 1994, the African National Congress has pursued an ambitious policy of ‘modernising’ the minerals and mining sector in line with its overarching goal of developing an internationally competitive, non-racial and socially stabilised South African capitalism. This is a materialist analysis of the measures and evolution of that policy in the critically contested period between the release of the Minerals Development Bill (MDB) (December 2000) and its promulgation as the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act (October 2002). Despite its apparent radicalism, the bill's core proposal to nationalise mineral rights is a variant of what Marx termed a ‘Ricardian reform’, here designed to accelerate capital accumulation by eliminating the barrier of private minerals ownership. Yet, the MDB also married this classically bourgeois reform with a nationalist commitment to racially transform the structure of mine ownership, thus embodying key contradictions of South Africa's democratic transition in the era of neoliberalism. The struggle over the final form and benefits of the new minerals dispensation would be centred on the platinum industry, where the established (white) producers had the most to lose from the legal abolition of the old mineral property system in favour of the nationalisation and strategic redistribution of the resource base.
The South African platinum industry has grown phenomenally since the mid 1990s to become the sing... more The South African platinum industry has grown phenomenally since the mid 1990s to become the single largest component of the national mining sector in employment and sales-value terms. In line with Fine's (1992) contribution to a general theory of mining, this article presents an initial political economy of that industry by considering the critical role that the apartheid mineral property system played in its dominant strategy of competitive accumulation in the years leading to the current platinum boom. Emphasis is placed on the different forms of minerals ownership that mediated the access of platinum capital to mineral resources in the Bophuthatswana and Lebowa Bantustans, where the bulk of South Africa's vast platinum reserves were geopolitically located under apartheid and how the reproduction of these strategic mineral property relations was secured during the political transition to the benefit of the white platinum corporations. It concludes that the industry's very success in maintaining its proprietary control over the world's largest platinum endowment would combine with an unprecedented surge in global platinum demand to simultaneously position it as the most dynamic element of the post-apartheid mining economy and as the primary target of the new ANC government's minerals reform policy.
Institutions and idioms of 'customary' authority have returned to prominence in sub-Saharan Afric... more Institutions and idioms of 'customary' authority have returned to prominence in sub-Saharan Africa in the context of the 'rush' for its landed resources. But how is 'the chieftaincy' itself to be conceptualised within agrarian political economy? This contribution initiates a materialist investigation, focussing on the origins of its modern form in the colonial period. Contrary to Mamdani's (Citizen and subject: contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism, London: James Currey, 1996) influential theorisation, it is proposed that the key to its constitution as a distinctive fusion of political and landed power lies in the varied forms of exploitation that mediated and expressed Africa's capitalist development under colonial conditions. This is pursued through a comparison of how the imperial authorities turned to the chieftaincy as a means of addressing the overarching challenge of how to subjugate African labour to metropolitan and settler capital, while constructing stable systems of colonial domination in British West, East and South Africa. Although this choice of cases is selective, it is nevertheless suggestive of the ways in which this contradiction between accumulation and control would become embodied in the chieftaincy itself. The conclusion briefly considers how this intrinsic dynamic might be playing out in the land struggles of the present.
Drawing on a detailed study of three village-level disputes in the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela traditiona... more Drawing on a detailed study of three village-level disputes in the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela traditional authority area, this article explores how intensifying land struggles on the platinum belt around Rustenburg are being mediated through conflicts over group boundaries and identities, and how this in turn is articulating a potentially new yet contradictory rural class politics. In a context where chiefly authorities are themselves becoming major shareholders in local mining operations, the burning question is whether the ‘tribe’ should be treated as the only legitimate African land-holding unit, or whether the collective ownership of mineralised land should reside in smaller socio-political groups, typically claiming decent from its original buyers. The article finds that while contested constructions of rural ‘community’ are emerging as a significant means of defending or advancing popular claims over landed resources, these corporate forms of organisation are simultaneously riven by gender, generational and other social divisions, and are prone to replicating the tribalist logics they seek to challenge. The attempt to establish private property rights through more exclusionary group definitions may therefore also act as an equally divisive force against those labelled ‘outsiders’, not least migrant mineworkers.
Institutions and idioms of‘customary’authority have returned to prominence in sub-Saharan Africa ... more Institutions and idioms of‘customary’authority have returned to prominence in sub-Saharan Africa in the context of the ‘rush’ for its landed resources. But how is‘the chieftaincy’ itself to be conceptualised within agrarian political economy? This contribution initiates a materialist investigation, focusing on the origins of its modern form in the colonial period. Contrary to Mamdani’s (Citizen and subject: contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism, London: James Currey, 1996) influential theorisation, it is proposed that the key to its constitution as a distinctive fusion of political and landed power lies in the varied forms of exploitation that mediated and expressed Africa’s capitalist development under colonial conditions. This is pursued through a comparison of how the imperial authorities turned to the chieftaincy as a means of addressing the overarching challenge of how to subjugate African labour to metropolitan and settler capital, while constructing stable systems of colonial domination in British West, East and South Africa. Although this choice of cases is selective, it is nevertheless suggestive of the ways in which this contradiction between accumulation and control would become embodied in the chieftaincy itself. The conclusion briefly considers how this intrinsic dynamic might be playing out in the land struggles of the present.
Henry Bernstein was co-editor (with Terence J. Byres) of the Journal of Agrarian Change between 2... more Henry Bernstein was co-editor (with Terence J. Byres) of the Journal of Agrarian Change between 2001 and 2008 and co-edited The Journal of Peasant Studies (where he joined Byres) between 1985 and 2000. This interview highlights some of Bernstein's major pedagogical and theoretical contributions to the fields of agrarian political economy and development studies. To do so, it traces his intellectual and political trajectory, providing important context for understanding his published work.
This paper develops an explicitly materialist analysis of the 'rentier chieftaincy' by drawing on... more This paper develops an explicitly materialist analysis of the 'rentier chieftaincy' by drawing on Marx's theory of modern landed property. It argues that the colonial formation of 'tribal' land relations may be understood in relation to the subjugation of African labour to colonial capital, which in turn unintentionally created a potential barrier against investment on tribal land, and hence the conditions for the chiefly appropriation of ground rent. However, the extent to which chiefs could exercise an effective land monopoly in relation to capital was at the same time conditional upon the extent of their proprietorial control in relation to both the subject population and the central state. The politically conditional nature of this chiefly monopoly is captured in the formulation 'tribal-landed property', which is illustrated and developed through a case study of the changing economic relationship between the Bafokeng chieftaincy and mining capital on the South African platinum belt. It is concluded that this may have wider application in the context of accelerating investment over 'communal' land and intensifying struggles for its exclusive control, since these are potentially also struggles over the distribution of the surplus value produced by land-based capitals.
Henry Bernstein was co-editor (with Terence J. Byres) of the Journal of Agrarian Change between 2... more Henry Bernstein was co-editor (with Terence J. Byres) of the Journal of Agrarian Change between 2001 and 2008 and co-edited The Journal of Peasant Studies (where he joined Byres) between 1985 and 2000. This interview highlights some of Bernstein's major pedagog-ical and theoretical contributions to the fields of agrarian political economy and development studies. To do so, it traces his intellectual and political trajectory, providing important context for understanding his published work.
Drawing on a detailed study of three village-level disputes in the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela traditiona... more Drawing on a detailed study of three village-level disputes in the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela traditional authority area, this article explores how intensifying land struggles on the platinum belt around Rustenburg are being mediated though conflicts over group boundaries and identities, and how this in turn is articulating a potentially new yet contradictory rural class politics. In a context where chiefly authorities are themselves becoming major shareholders in local mining operations, the burning question is whether the ‘tribe’ should be treated as the only legitimate African land-holding unit, or whether the collective ownership of mineralised land should reside in smaller socio-political groups, typically claiming decent from its original buyers. The article finds that while contested constructions of rural ‘community’ are emerging as a significant means of defending or advancing popular claims over landed resources, these corporate forms of organisation are simultaneously riven by gender, generational and other social divisions, and are prone to replicating the tribalist logics they seek to challenge. The attempt to establish private property rights through more exclusionary group definitions may therefore also act as an equally divisive force against those labelled ‘outsiders’, not least migrant mineworkers.
Since assuming power in 1994, the African National Congress has pursued an ambitious policy of ‘m... more Since assuming power in 1994, the African National Congress has pursued an ambitious policy of ‘modernising’ the minerals and mining sector in line with its overarching goal of developing an internationally competitive, non-racial and socially stabilised South African capitalism. This is a materialist analysis of the measures and evolution of that policy in the critically contested period between the release of the Minerals Development Bill (MDB) (December 2000) and its promulgation as the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act (October 2002). Despite its apparent radicalism, the bill's core proposal to nationalise mineral rights is a variant of what Marx termed a ‘Ricardian reform’, here designed to accelerate capital accumulation by eliminating the barrier of private minerals ownership. Yet, the MDB also married this classically bourgeois reform with a nationalist commitment to racially transform the structure of mine ownership, thus embodying key contradictions of South Africa's democratic transition in the era of neoliberalism. The struggle over the final form and benefits of the new minerals dispensation would be centred on the platinum industry, where the established (white) producers had the most to lose from the legal abolition of the old mineral property system in favour of the nationalisation and strategic redistribution of the resource base.
The South African platinum industry has grown phenomenally since the mid 1990s to become the sing... more The South African platinum industry has grown phenomenally since the mid 1990s to become the single largest component of the national mining sector in employment and sales-value terms. In line with Fine's (1992) contribution to a general theory of mining, this article presents an initial political economy of that industry by considering the critical role that the apartheid mineral property system played in its dominant strategy of competitive accumulation in the years leading to the current platinum boom. Emphasis is placed on the different forms of minerals ownership that mediated the access of platinum capital to mineral resources in the Bophuthatswana and Lebowa Bantustans, where the bulk of South Africa's vast platinum reserves were geopolitically located under apartheid and how the reproduction of these strategic mineral property relations was secured during the political transition to the benefit of the white platinum corporations. It concludes that the industry's very success in maintaining its proprietary control over the world's largest platinum endowment would combine with an unprecedented surge in global platinum demand to simultaneously position it as the most dynamic element of the post-apartheid mining economy and as the primary target of the new ANC government's minerals reform policy.
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Papers by Gavin Capps