Tribal‐Landed Property: The Value of the Chieftaincy in Contemporary Africa

Abstract

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.Keywords: chieftaincy, customary land, mining, ground rent, South Africa [D]oes the new assertiveness of chiefly politics register a persistent, and indeed resurgent, manifestation of 'pre-capitalist' social relations and ideology? I think not, but rather that it manifests some of Africa's historically specific forms of commoditization and accumulation, of capitalist class dynamics, in new conditions (Bernstein 2014, 101).Wage-labour and landed property, like capital, are historically specific social forms; one of labour, and the other of the monopolized earth, both in fact being forms corresponding to the same economic formation of society (Marx 1981, 954).

Global inequality chains: integrating mechanisms of value distribution into analyses of global production

“…In the abstract, this strategy can be interrogated through a class-relational optic. For example, firms using IP ownership of brands are performing the 'class function' of modern landed property (Capps 2016) in the sense that they are not creating value but appropriating it in the form of groundrent. In sum, by ignoring the class-relational dynamics of accumulation in GVCs, the conception of 'upgrading' inherent in the smile curve mystifies social-property relations and assumes that price (as reflected in value added) reflects the actual production of value.…”

“…Competition among capitalists (for example, productive capitalists, bankers, landed property and commercial capitalists such as retailers) over portions of surplus value can be divided into categories of revenue such as those identified by Marx (industrial profit, interest, ground rent and gains made from trade) and other categories of increasing significance in today's capitalism such as intellectual property rent. These class-relational categories can also be complicated empirically (Capps 2016), with one capital being able to assume different 'class functions' (for example, giant supermarket firms simultaneously assume the 'functions' of commercial capitalist, landed property and banker). However they may manifest themselves, they are nonetheless not independent sources of value; they represent a redistribution (Foley 2012;Harvey 2006).…”

Class dynamics of development: a methodological note

“…55 For example, state ownership of an enterprise under capitalism does not necessarily remove the class contradiction between employer and employees; instead, as gavin Capps puts it, it may be 'the legal form and social location of ownership that has changed' . 56 Of course, legal forms have material implications for the historical specificity of class dynamics, as demonstrated in various contributions to this special issue, including the role of the state in the 'making' of the north Korean working class and the diversity of class mobilisations shaped by the differential evolution of labour politics in regions of India. 57 To take a different example, the colonial legacy of the institution of the chieftaincy in South africa, while 'politically conditional' , allows for a quasi-monopoly of access to valuable platinum reserves.…”

“…57 To take a different example, the colonial legacy of the institution of the chieftaincy in South africa, while 'politically conditional' , allows for a quasi-monopoly of access to valuable platinum reserves. 58 This is also apparent in the financialisation of production, where manufacturing logics are shaped by financial ones, or in supermarket retail which, at first glance, is most obviously commercial capital, simultaneously combines the class functions of modern landed-property vis-à-vis suppliers who pay ground-rent to access the supermarket shelf, industrial capital vis-à-vis employees to maximise the rate of exploitation of their labour, and finance capital in relation to the use of cash flow to fund banking and insurance activities vis-à-vis consumers.…”

Marikana and the Limits of Biopolitics: Themes in the Recent Scholarship of South African Mining

“…Many students have begun dissertations examining the crisis from both the Platinum Belt and the rural villages that have offered up their men and women to the mines. Even before the massacre the scholarship on the Platinum Belt – in part because of the very unusual circumstance that sees a single Tribal Authority, the Bafokeng, as the major beneficiary of mining – was rich and insightful (see, especially, Comaroff and Comaroff 2009; Capps 2010; Mnwana 2011). The four books reviewed here highlight four background causes of the crisis: a violent struggle within the union movement after 2010, the very broad investment in migrancy and its enabling networks by many workers and the mining companies, the constrained forms of workplace and public health, and property relations in mining that distribute profits very narrowly and encourage rent seeking and corruption as a substitute for regulation.…”