apolitical analyses as ‘savage neutralism’.9
It was because of Mafeje’s participation in the study of Langa that certain of these problems were avoided in his book with Wilson. For example, he uses the terms that research participants used for themselves. Mafeje’s first article, ‘A Chief Visits Town’, is concerned to ‘illustrate the attitude of townspeople in Cape Town to chiefs’.10 In ‘townspeople’ he includes both black migrant workers and permanent residents. Mafeje is interested in the first group in particular. ‘Migrant workers,’ he reasons, ‘regard themselves as country people and most of them have their families in the country. Their reaction in any given political situation is of particular interest, as it gives the sociologist an opportunity of seeing how the people’s aspirations fit in the government’s policy of increasing the power of Bantu authorities in the country, and appointing chiefs’ representatives in towns or establishing urban Bantu councils.’ In particular, Mafeje sets out to describe the arrival in Cape Town of Chief Zwelihle Mtikrakra, the third chief of abaThembu. Beyond the descriptive nature of the article, its theoretical thrust is that by the 1960s there were no tribes to speak of in South Africa. The absence of tribal entities in South Africa means that, contrary to liberal functionalist anthropology, there is no absolute divide between rural and urban settings – owing to the migrant labour system, the Africans in the countryside were already incorporated into the British colonial state by the end of the nineteenth century and the classification ‘tribe’ is an anachronism. By the time the apartheid government took office, some Xhosa chiefs in Cape Town (such as Chief Joyi) were not only ordinary labourers, but had also transcended ethnic identities in order to fight racial oppression. In his 1963 article, Mafeje notes that Chief Joyi believed that ‘the chief is a chief by the grace of the people’.11 Although Chief Mtikrakra himself was not really well received in Cape Town, and although a certain section of the Langa population regarded chiefs as oomantshingilane (police spies) or government stooges, some chiefs had a ‘chance of acquiring a position in the national struggle, if they are still, as individuals, acceptable to the modern political leaders’.12 This is a political reality with which anthropological writings had failed to grapple.
Mafeje’s subsequent article, ‘The Role of the Bard in a Contemporary African Community’, was part of his thematic critique of the anthropological anachronism that reduced African societies to tribes.13 He uses the English term ‘bard’ interchangeably with, or to translate, the isiXhosa word imbongi because he saw a similarity between imbongi and the bard in medieval Europe.14 In anthropological literature and linguistics, the bard is reduced to a praise-singer. Mafeje concludes that this is a misplaced assessment because bards are sociopolitical critics more than praise-poets and argues that anthropologists and linguists are ‘over-emphasising the wrong aspect of the institution’.15 There is a functional difference between bards and individual members of society who compose praise-poems for themselves or their loved ones. Anthropologists saw the difference only in status: those who act as praise-singers as a calling and those who do so for personal reasons. The former have greater political significance while the latter act for self-entertainment. As a result of the seriousness of the institution of imbongi, not every member of society can stand up at public gatherings and recite a poem, either for a chief or the general public. Those who do might do so for personal gain or recognition, but that is hardly the central function of the bard. In arguing that imbongi is a sociopolitical critic, Mafeje does not deny that imbongi might from time to time praise the chief (every political institution has its legitimisers). The point was to call into question the view that imbongi is primarily a praise-singer.
Although the terms ‘poet’ and ‘bard’ are often used synonymously, Mafeje contends that the latter is a term of Celtic origin used to designate ancient Celtic poets who enjoyed certain privileges and functions. The term ‘bard’ comes from the Latin bardi, a title for national poets and minstrels among the people of Gaul and Brittany. Although the institution disappeared in Gaul, there is ‘evidence of its continued existence in Wales, Ireland, Brittany and Northern Scotland, where Celtic people survived the Latin and Teutonic conquests’.16 In Wales, an organised society with hereditary rights and privileges, the bards were akin to royal families and were exempt from tax and military service. Their duty was to celebrate victories and sing hymns of praise, and they gave poetic expression to societal sentiments. In this sense, they were very influential. In Ireland, too, bards were a distinct social category, and also enjoyed hereditary rights. They were divided into three types, each of which had a distinct role: those who celebrated victories and sang hymns of praise; those who chanted the laws of the nation; and those who gave poetic genealogies and family histories. In South Africa the role of imbongi is to interpret and organise public opinion. If imbongi is unable to do so, he cannot attain the status of a national poet. The major difference between the South African bard and his European counterpart is that the former does not enjoy hereditary rights and privileges such as tax exemption. South African bards are not an organised society. They pursue their endeavours as individual members of society. Imbongi is self-appointed and his success depends largely on how people respond to him. If the people respond positively, imbongi could be elevated to the level of imbongi yakomkhulu (the poet of the main residence) or imbongi yesizwe (the poet of the nation). In the latter sense, he transcends ‘tribal’ identities.
For Mafeje, there were three key issues that characterised both the South African and the European bards: they usually emerged from the ranks of commoners (were not of royal blood); their role and substance depended on how they were received by the people; and they had freedom to criticise (overtly or covertly) those in power. Having laid this historical and conceptual background at the beginning of ‘The Role of the Bard’, Mafeje goes on to analyse the poems of imbongi known as Melikhaya Mbutuma, who was imbongi of abaThembu’s paramount chief, Sabata Dalindyebo. Mafeje followed Mbutuma as part of his fieldwork in what was then the Transkei for his Master’s thesis in 1963.
The methodological lessons to be drawn from Mafeje’s article on the role of the bard relate to literary, archival research, ethnography and textual analysis. The poems are in isiXhosa; Mafeje first reproduces them in the original and then translates them into English to make their meaning apparent to the reader – but also to subject them to critical scrutiny. Although the process of translation is prone to clumsiness, his translation is accurate and the meaning is not lost. Imbongi yosiba (the poet who writes down his poems) is usually distinguished from imbongi yomthonyama (the poet who recites his poems from memory), but Mbutuma’s poems were in written form, ‘except some of the shorter ones which I wrote down as he recited them in public gatherings’.17 Mbutuma’s poems cover political events in the Transkei region from 1959 to 1963.
In citing these poems, Mafeje illustrates the role of the bard as a mediator between two social categories, the ruler and the ruled. Although the poems are political in content, Mafeje’s goal is not to show Mbutuma’s political astuteness, but to highlight the role of the bard as a mediator (although to mediate in the events of the Transkei of the late 1950s and early 1960s was ipso facto to play a political role), but when the situation fails to resolve, imbongi is forced to abandon his role as a mediator and join forces with either side. If he sides with the ruler whose authority is being questioned, he loses his social status, which depends more on acceptance by the people than on the ruler.
A reader of Mafeje’s article will not fail to notice his political fidelity to the people, which is quite evident in his analysis of the poems and the general political developments in Transkei of the 1960s. Moreover, unlike social anthropologists such as Isaac Schapera,18 Mafeje clearly demonstrates that the people were not merely impressed by the form of the poems from imbongi – they were impressed by the content or substance, and when they asked for imbongi who ‘says worthwhile things’, or when the chief’s entourage took away the microphone from imbongi who was critical of the chief, everyone knew that this was testament to Mbutuma’s political astuteness.
On the ideology of tribalism
Mafeje’s argument is that few social scientists had been able to write about Africa without invariably making reference to