Women, Marginality and the Zulu State: Women's Institutions and Power in the Early Nineteenth Century

Abstract

For a number of years the historiography of Southern Africa has been dominated by a materialist framework that has focused upon modes of production and forms of socio-political organization as the determining factors in historical change. Those historians concerned with the history of women in pre-colonial societies – even those who have privileged gender relations in their analyses – have largely been content to construct women's history by applying the insights of socio-economic and political analyses of the past to gender dynamics, and by projecting the insights of anthropological analyses of present gender relations into the past. Some of these historians have concluded that until the arrival of capitalism no substantial changes in the situations, power or status of women took place within Zulu society, even during the period of systemic transformation known as the mfecane in the early nineteenth century.More recently, Zulu gender history has become part of a larger debate connected to the changing political and academic milieu in South Africa. Representatives of a revived Africanist tradition have criticized materialist historians for writing Zulu history from an outsider's perspective and of focusing overly on conflict and power imbalances within the nineteenth-century kingdom in an effort to discredit contemporary Zulu nationalism. To counter this, historian Simon Maphalala has stressed the harmony of nineteenth-century Zulu society, the power advisors exercised in state government, and the lack of internal conflict. Maphalala also claims that women's subordinate role in society ‘did not cause any dissatisfaction among them’, and argues that ‘[women] accepted their position and were contented’. In recent constitutional debates many South African intellectuals including members of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (CONTRALESA), invoked this ‘benign patriarchy’ model of pre-colonial gender relations to oppose the adoption of gender-equality provisions in the new constitution. As Cherryl Walker has noted, the hegemonic definition of traditional gender relations to which such figures have made rhetorical appeals often masks not only the historicity of these relations but also hides dissenting opinions (often demarcated along gender lines) as to what those relations are and have been.

As disputas de narrativas em torno das imagens do imperador Shaka kaSenzangakhona e dos zulus na África do Sul

“…O sistema de amabutho já era praticado por outros povos anteriormente, mas a partir de Shaka foi modificado e regulamentado, passando a obedecer a um único comando, visto que antes poderiam ser subordinados a vários chefes locais. O amabutho era, portanto, "um meio extremamente eficaz tanto de centralizar o poder, quanto de incutir um senso de comunidade nacional, em vez de local" (KNIGHT, 1995, p. 33;Sean HANRETTA, 1998).…”

Marginalising women in politics: Recent trends in KwaZulu-Natal

“…As aforementioned, this is modified by Amadiume's (1987) incisive analysis of the politics of gender in Igbo societies using her society, Nnobi, as case study, which showed that indigenous Igbo society was not based on strict sexual dualism contending rather that sexual dualism and the parallel gender relations it spewed was mediated by flexible gender construction of language and culture (Amadiume, 1987). Therefore, sex and gender did not necessarily coincide in these societies as women played roles usually monopolised by men and were then classified as males just to underscore women's power -facilitated by their economic independence and the existence of a strong goddess-focussed religion (Idemili) which was the basis of women's political power at the extra-descent level of political organisation in Nnobi (Amadiume, 1987: 52-99 Lugg (1978), Fuze (1979) and Hanretta (1998). Economically, Zulu women owned cattle, a phenomenon which was very central in economic and ritual life among southern Africa's pre-industrial farming societies (Weir, 2007: 5).…”

Whose Unkulunkulu?

“…Rather than being peripheral in politics, key women were central characters. 7 Sean Hanretta (1998) suggests that women's leadership was new to the Zulu and that 'the potential for both exploitation and the acquisition of power and prestige increased as women's lives became integrated into the Zulu state' (op. cit.…”